Exodus 24 - Moses Climbs A Mountain...Again

[hlaoroo]

From the King James Version, with capital letters for pronouns like "He" when referring to the LORD (because I'm used to that in my NKJV at home, so in case I get confused with the 1600's English, I can reread it in a more understandable language. In theory, anyway.)

So we left off with hundreds of thousands of Children of God miraculously escaping the evil clutches of the Pharaoh to wander in the desert with only manna to eat (totally worth it!). They find a mountain with God on top of it telling Moses and Aaron to climb it (they accept!). God gives them a whole bunch of laws (good idea, oh LORD!). And then:

1. And He said unto Moses, Come up unto the LORD, thou, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and worship ye afar off.
2. And Moses alone shall come near the LORD: but they shall not come nigh; neither shall the people go up with him.

So Moses and Aaron have to climb the mountain again, but this time with a bunch of elders that don't get to actually interact with Him. And no other Israelites. They're not worthy enough. Keep them far away from God, for their own good, only let the elders tell them about Him.

3. And Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD, and all the judgments: and all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the LORD hath said will we do.

To be fair, it wouldn't have been very smart for someone to disagree with Moses in a group of hundreds of thousands of his genocidal zealots who believe he's a prophet of God.

4. And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel.
5. And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the LORD.
6. And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basons; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar.
7. And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient.
8. And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD hath made with you concerning all these words.

I stand corrected, hundreds of thousands of genocidal zealots COVERED WITH OX BLOOD.

9. Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel:
10. And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under His feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in His clearness.
11. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel He laid not His hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink.

So let me get this straight: Moses and Aaron went up a mountain to talk to God, whom they knew would be there because there was a cloud on top of it. They came down the mountain and told the people that God was up there, and to prove it they sent elders up the mountain with them, and there they saw Him on top of a paved stone, but didn't move or say a thing the whole time they were there.

Now I know what you're thinking: "So that means that Moses and Aaron carved a statue while they were on the mountain and called it God." Wrong, I tell you! It was clearly God because the Bible said that they saw God. Don't believe me? The Bible also said back in Exodus 20 (a.k.a. the Ten Commandments) verse 4 that they can't make any likeness of God in heaven, earth or water. So there. You should all feel ashamed of yourselves, questioning the Word of God like that.

12. And the LORD said unto Moses, Come up to Me into the mount, and be there: and I will give thee tables of stone, and a law, and commandments which I have written; that thou mayest teach them.

Didn't Moses already write the law and commandments down in verse 4? Yes, but not IN STONE, by GOD HIMSELF. Unalterable, unbreakable, I don't see how this could end badly AT ALL, unless maybe Israel betrays God and starts worshipping a shiny metal animal or something. But that could never happen, these are the Children of God we're talking about!

13. And Moses rose up, and his minister Joshua: and Moses went up into the mount of God.
14. And he said unto the elders, Tarry ye here for us, until we come again unto you: and, behold, Aaron and Hur are with you: if any man have any matters to do, let him come unto them.

Just stay here with Aaron, fellas. I got to, er, break in the new guy.

15. And Moses went up into the mount, and a cloud covered the mount.

And back he goes, up the mountain again. How old is he, like 80?

16. And the glory of the LORD abode upon Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days: and the seventh day he called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud.
17. And the sight of the glory of the LORD was like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel.
18. And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and gat him up into the mount: and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights.

You know shit's going down up there. Mainly six chapters of how to build a vessel for God and how to worship it. Ya-hu!

[Quasar]

18. And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and gat him up into the mount: and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights.

Oh man, slash fic bait!

[BaldySlaphead]

9. Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel:
10. And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under His feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in His clearness.
11. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel He laid not His hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink.

So let me get this straight: Moses and Aaron went up a mountain to talk to God, whom they knew would be there because there was a cloud on top of it. They came down the mountain and told the people that God was up there, and to prove it they sent elders up the mountain with them, and there they saw Him on top of a paved stone, but didn't move or say a thing the whole time they were there.

That's not how I read it (from the version above, not the source, I hasten to add); All the Hebrew elite take a hike up the mountain and saw The Magnificence Of GOD^(tm). God didn't twat them even though He had every right, and the nobs had a slap-up feast while they were up there.

Now I know what you're thinking: "So that means that Moses and Aaron carved a statue while they were on the mountain and called it God." Wrong, I tell you! It was clearly God because the Bible said that they saw God. Don't believe me? The Bible also said back in Exodus 20 (a.k.a. the Ten Commandments) verse 4 that they can't make any likeness of God in heaven, earth or water. So there. You should all feel ashamed of yourselves, questioning the Word of God like that.

Since I see no reason not to view these stories as myth, I can't see why it isn't to be taken at face value. Where does your statue idea come from? What am I missing?

[BeamStalk]

Lots of interesting stuff here from Dr. Friedman. The chapter is mainly E source up until verse 15b. P source starts with the sentence "And the cloud covered the mountain." Verse 18 is a mishmash of P, Redactor, and J source.

P source:

And Moses came inside the cloud

Redactor:

and went up into the mountain.

J source:

And Moses was in the mountain forty days and forty nights.

Now the interesting stuff. The names of Aaron's sons are the same as King Jeroboam's sons, Nadab and Abihu. As we will see in Exodus Chapter 32, it was the sons, Nadab and Abihu, that created the golden calf for Aaron. Likewise during Jeroboam's reign his sons, Nadab and Abihu, created a golden calf to be worshiped at the behest of their father.

In E source, Nadab and Abihu are the only named sons of Aaron. While in P source, Eleazar is named as a third son. E source is likely from the northern kingdom, which used Levitical priests. P is from the Aaronid Priests during the Babylonian exile. So there is a definite agenda being played out between these. Also in line with the previous paragraph, Jeroboam was king of the Northern Kingdom and it was an insult to compare him to the ancestors of the Southern Kingdom with whom they were at war.

E source here also uses some of the exact same words and terminologies used during Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac. "Nearim" for servants and "merahoq" for from a distance are among these. This is used to show that the E source was its own narrative before being placed together with other stories. The idea was a linking of the two stories of divine communication upon a mountain. They parallel very well.

In verses 15 through 18, the redactor book ends the P source from the others with the use of the phrase "and went up into the mountain." Also notice that the mountain went from the Mountain of God to simply Mt. Sinai with the Glory of YHWH descending upon it. Another clue that this was two different authors. Also the phrase "YHWH's glory (kebod YHWH)" occurs 13 times in the first five books and only 1 of those times is not accredited to P source.

Edit: Got my kings mixed up.

[zilch]

Again, beams, thanks for the critical background. It continually amazes me that Christians can't see the obvious: the Bible is a mishmash of many somewhat different theologies. It's like the way some wag characterized the Catholic atheist philosopher George Santayana's position: there is no God, and Mary is His mother.

cheers from slushy Vienna, Chil-Z.

[hlaoroo]

The statue idea I got out of the text came mainly from the "paved work of a sapphire stone" under the feet of God. Maybe I'm getting the biblical definition of "paved" wrong, but I'm imagining that God was on top of this stone (or a pile of stones?) that was altered from its natural form. Additionally, since there's no mention of God actually DOING anything in the presence of the elders of Israel, I'm guessing that he was fairly immovable the whole time. To me, it suggests a statue, but you're right in that it doesn't say specifically, though since the Israelites aren't supposed to make any images of God I doubt that Moses would have admitted that it was really just a statue. God does speak in verse 12, but only to Moses, which leads me to ponder: Did the rest of the elders hear Him? Did they marvel at his voice? Did they ask why they couldn't come up the mountain with Moses? It doesn't say, although one could argue that I'm being nit-picky on that issue.

I'm just wondering what the elders actually may have seen. Did they take hallucinogenic drugs? Did they conspire with Moses to fool the people of Israel into thinking that they saw God? Moses and Aaron were on the mountain before the elders, so I think that it's possible that they could have carved a statue and called it God the first time up. I merely made an assumption that I thought was the most rational explanation of the events. Then again, with a text this old, it's probably so distorted that this whole event probably never even took place.

Great stuff, by the way BeamStalk, about Aaron's sons! Although I thought Jeroboam was king of the northern kingdom while Rehoboam was king of Judah. Still though, the Hebrew Bible that Christians use for their OT's use the history of the southern kingdom, so it would make sense to have that slander in there.

[BeamStalk]

Great stuff, by the way BeamStalk, about Aaron's sons! Although I thought Jeroboam was king of the northern kingdom while Rehoboam was king of Judah. Still though, the Hebrew Bible that Christians use for their OT's use the history of the southern kingdom, so it would make sense to have that slander in there.

You are right, he was king of the north, so it would be an insult to compare him to the southern ancestors.