Exodus 25

EXODUS 25

Now that the preliminaries of escaping Egypt and parting the Red Sea and drowning Pharaoh and fighting the Amalekites are out of the way, Exodus gets to the exciting part.

Moses took offerings from the people of gold, and silver, and brass, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats’ hair, and rams’ skins dyed red, and badgers’ skins, and shittim wood, and oil for the light, and spices for anointing oil, and for sweet incense, and onyx stones, and stones to be set in the ephod, and in the breastplate, and made a dwelling place for God.

They made an ark of shittim wood two and a half cubits long, and a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half tall, overlaid with pure gold, within and without, and capped with a gold cover. It had a ring of gold in the four corners and two rings on each side, for staves of shittim wood overlaid with gold for porters to bear the ark. The stone tablets were put inside. Gold images of cherubim were made for the cover of the ark, despite God telling people never to make images of things in heaven.

A table was made of shittim wood overlaid with gold, two cubits by one cubit, and a cubit and a half tall, and it had rings and staves to bear it as well. The table was for the dinnerware and the candles and the showbread.

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Exodus 24

EXODUS 24

Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel approached Mt. Sinai, but only Moses summited the peak to talk to God. The rest of the people had to remain on the flats at the foot of the mountain. Moses wrote all the rules that God told him the people must follow from that moment until the end of time, and read them out, and the people swore to obey all of them.

Then again went up Moses, but Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went to the top with him.

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. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink.

And this is most interesting because in the New Testament, St. John would claim, on multiple occasions, that no man has ever seen God.

Then Moses stayed on the mountain alone for forty days and forty nights while God worked on carving the Ten Commandments into stone with his own finger.

Exodus 23

EXODUS 23

• No false reporting or conspiracy to commit false reporting.
• Don’t join a lynch mob.
• No favoritism for poor men in criminal or civil case law.
• If you see your neighbors animals running astray, round ’em up.
• Do not accept bribery.
• Let the fields like fallow every seven years.
• Don’t work from sunset on Friday until sunset on Saturday.
• Don’t even mention the name of the gods of the pagans.
• Keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering.
• The men must stand for a personnel inspection by God three times a year.
• Do not cook a baby goat in its own mother’s milk.

Exodus 22

EXODUS 22

• The going rate for restitution of stolen animals is five to one for oxen, and four to one for sheep.
• Grazing animals in another man’s field, or burning another man’s crops is considered theft.
• Killing a thief in the act is not a capital crime.
• If a thief does not have sufficient goods to make restitution, he goes into slavery.
• If you swear to God that you didn’t dip into the flocks you were keeping for another man, that’s good enough for the judge.
• If you seduce a virgin, she must become your wife, unless the father says nay, then you shell out beaucoup shekels.
• Witches are to be killed on sight.
• Sleeping with animals other than homo sapiens merits the death penalty.
• Worshiping a god other than Yahweh is also a capital offense.
• No teargassing strangers or putting their children in cages.
• No picking on widows and orphans, because if God hears about it, he will make your own wife a widow and your own children orphans.
• Lending money to poor Hebrews must be without interest and good luck making a living at that.
• Respect other gods and politicians (Thou shalt not revile the gods, nor curse the ruler of thy people.)
• Don’t eat carrion like vultures do.

SUSE Linux 9.3

SUSE 9.3

After playing with Lindows 4.5 for about a year with much frustration, the Spring of 2005 rolled around. The local stores sold copies of Windows XP, but they were upgrades, and required a preexisting installation of Win98 or WinME before they would work. I still hadn’t learned to burn my own Linux install disks from ISO’s at that point. So I got on Amazon and ordered a copy of SuSE Linux direct from Novell for $30 just to get something worth using.

The installation went without a hitch, and I quickly learned to use YAST (Yet Another Setup Tool) to add more software from the SuSE CD. The only problem was I had to hand massage the OS to get it to recognize my Ethernet connection, but when that was straightened out I was able to go online and grab software above and beyond what existed on my installation disk. By and large I was happy with it, and it taught me that not only could I install my own operating system to any computer, I could install hundreds of different programs downloaded for free from the Internet.

The cool thing about SuSE was that I could install the OS on as many computers as I liked from now until doomsday (not realizing at the time that the product would start to date like cheese). There was no product activation scheme or some other way to separate me from my money. After Novell got my initial $30 they were happy. But that was the last time I would ever shell out any money for Linux.

Exodus 21

EXODUS 21

• If you buy a Hebrew slave, he only works six years, and in seventh he goes free, unless he’s a she, then she never goes free.
• Kidnapping for the purpose of slavery is a capital crime.
• Beating a slave to death is only punishable if the slave dies quick. If he lingers for a day or two, no biggie.
• Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
• Maiming a slave shall be cause to let the slave go free.
• If an animal is known to be aggressive in the past, and the owner did nothing, and it kills a man, then the owner dies too.

Exodus 20

EXODUS 20

Then God spoke to Moses the Ten Commandments (orally before committing them to stone):

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.

3. Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain.

4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

5. Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

6. Thou shalt not kill.

7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

8. Thou shalt not steal.

9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.

Catholics traditionally use the restatement of the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy chapter five as the template for the Ten Commandments which they teach catechumens. It more clearly states the precept of not coveting another man’s wife as separate from not coveting his earthly goods. In order to maintain the number ten (because Exodus itself, in chapter 34, calls them the ten commandments), the first two commandments are merged into one, to read “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

Thus, Catholic catechisms often will not state the commandment against making graven images because it’s “covered” by saying have no other gods. Anti-Catholic Protestant sects such as the Seventh Day Adventists jump on that omission, claiming that Rome “changed the Bible” to allow devotions using Marian statuary, but that is not precisely true. Catholic Bibles retain the original text.