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Israel in the desert

 God gets Israel out of Egypt with a mighty hand. God brings them to Mount Sinai unto Himself. All along the way God proves the children by starving them or making them go without water or feeding them bread with no meat or vegetables. The children complain and act rebellious and later, God kills many of them on several occasions.

The Bible reads like it's Moses out in front of 2 million people trudging across a barren landscape. There is no formal hierarchy or organization. There is no training process communicated by God. There is a camp setup commanded by tribe, but God repeatedly expects the people to cheer and rejoice over hardship and suffering. Every time they "murmur" God brings it up throughout the old and new testament. They failed, but God is seeing if we get it, Generally we do not.

Also, if the goal was to create an elite army of eternal priests, it would seem reasonable to explain this clearly and organize a boot camp training regime. Instead God repeatedly pushes them beyond their limits and then kills some of them.

God calls Moses up onto Mount Sinai and keeps blabbing away with rules and regulations for 40 days. Meanwhile the children are supposed to sit like obedient hamsters eating manna in their desert cage. Granted, God has recently freed them from cruel bondage in Egypt, maybe they were supposed to sit in the doorway of their tents for months staring up at Mount Sinai in awe.

While Moses is up on Mount Sinai 40 days they corrupt themselves and make false idol gods and start having a wild party. Moses calls on the Levites to kill many of them, and they kill about 3000 people with the sword. We all need to unwind and celebrate at times and the people needed some way to rejoice, unwind and really be thankful, but without Moses they went wrong. After 400 years of bondage they needed positive supervision and strict training.

God tests them without training to see what they are made of, knowing that humanity has failed in the garden, before the flood, and at Sodom and Gomorrah. And the people in Canaan have gone so wrong the land is vomiting them out. It seems unlikely that Abraham's descendents will have some innate superior qualities.



Or maybe



















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