Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

18:13-27 – After everything that has happened with Pharaoh and Egypt and crossing the desert and the miracles, Moses is still acting like he’s just the guy everyone looks to when they are having problems. He’s a really interesting guy because while his father-in-law is visiting and after his wife and children just returned to him, he “sat to judge the people,” which I think means that the people just brought him all their problems and he was the one who was supposed to sort it out. Jethro saw this and asked him “what is this thing that thou doest to the people? Why sittest thou thyself alone, and all the people stand by thee from morning unto evening?” I took this to mean, “why are all these people talking to you all the time?” Moses answers saying, “because the people come unto me to inquire of God: When they have a matter, they come unto me; and I judge between one and another, and I do make them know the statutes of God, and his laws.” There are several problems here, first that t...

18:1-6 - The Israelites had just experienced their first victory in battle, which for a group that had gone through so much together already, this must have been scary but also empowering for them. It’s always nice to know that you can protect yourself and that God Himself is on your side when it comes up. At this point, Jethro brings Zipporah back to Moses with their two sons. There has been so much going on in the last year that it’s easy to remember that Zipporah and the boys had gone home back to Jethro before Moses even made it to Egypt in the first place. So much has happened during their time apart, that I would imagine that Moses was probably a different guy than when Zipporah left, so it would have been interesting to see their initial interactions and how they integrated back into family life together. There’s always a transition time when a family is reunited, I’ve seen this many times in the military, and it’s usually painful and difficult for all involved, so it just would...

17:8-14 - Water has been provided for this huge group of 3 million Israelites and here comes Amalek and the Bible just says that "then came Amalek, and fought with Israel in Rephidim." That's all it says, so I thought, "ok here comes a guy and just attacks this enormous group. It would make sense that they would have to start on the outside and try to fight themselves into the middle, but it's not as straightforward as the Bible makes it sound. Apparently, according to both TB and the IM, "they attacked the Israelites in a most cowardly way, killing first the feeble, the faint, and the weary at the rear of the marching nation. For this lack of respect toward God, the Amalekites were cursed by the Lord. The Israelites were subsequently commanded to 'utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.'" I think it's important to note something that TB reminded us of here, and that was that this group of 3 million people and all their ...

17:1-3 - Chapter 17 is short but has some interesting insights. TB notes that it’s universally agreed that chapter 17 is not in chronological order and actually happens a few chapters later. TB also points out that this happens only a couple of weeks after the manna started showing up. I was under the impression that they didn’t fight anyone until 40 years after they left Egypt, which apparently is incorrect, and the fact that this is only a couple of weeks later is important. Mostly it’s important because when Moses takes the Hebrews out of the Sin desert to a place called Rephidim, there “was no water for the people to drink.” This begs the question, why would God command Moses to take the people to a place where there was no water? Interestingly, TB suggests that this place Rephidim was very close to where he had lived in Midian for all those years previously and that as a shepherd, he would have been pretty familiar with it and would have known whether or not there is water there ...

16:14-36 - Whenever I heard of "Manna from heaven" I always imagined there being like chunks of bread just sitting on the ground to be picked up and put into a basket. When describing the manna it is explained as being "a small round hating, as small as the hoar frost on the ground," which "round thing" is defined as "fine, flake-like" in the footnotes. I'm not exactly sure what that means, like is it something you have to scrape off the leaf by your fingernails and lick it? Verse 31 tells us later that "it was like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey." I guess it was pretty unusual because it was named "manna" by the people because when it showed up, the Hebrews asked "Man hu" which TB says is the Hebrew equivalent of "what is it?" Moses answers them "this is the bread which the Lord hath given you to eat," and tells the people two things that seem to co...

16:9-13 - God, as always, is merciful to the people, even if they are getting out of hand with their complaining, and tells Moses to tell Aaron to tell the people, “Come near before the Lord: for he hath heard your murmurings.” This is God saying, “I know your needs and of course I’m going to take care of you.” This might be one of the ways in which God demonstrates his versatile nature, he’s able to defeat the Egyptian army single handedly, but he’s also going to make sure that everyone is fed and cared for. Additionally, the people are reminded of God’s care and presence when “they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud.” TB notes the significance of the people looking around them and seeing the presence of God when he asked, “why did Moses have to tell these people to stop, look up, and come-near to God’s presence? Because, while God’s presence is available to us, we must choose to ‘come-near’ to Him… Israel had either taken their eye...

16:1- 8- I was thinking about why I was so irritated by the “murmuring” comment the other day, and I had some thoughts. I imagined myself being in the wilderness there without food or water, and yeah it would have sucked and I probably would have mentioned it at some point, but what most likely happened was the kids, who have a lower tolerance for hunger and thirst, probably went to their mamas and cried that they were hungry, thirsty, and tired. This would have caused the mama bear to come out in a lot of women who would have probably turned to their husbands to be like “what the heck? Feed us.” The husbands would have gone next to Moses and “murmured” “where’s the food?” There are some times when the example of true murmuring is given, like when they say “weren’t there enough graves back in Egypt that you had to bring us all out here to die?” or “we would rather be slaves in Egypt than starve out here in the desert!” Those are all statements that are not helpful nor are they more t...

15:22-27 - The Hebrews are so joyous at their deliverance that they are singing and dancing, but our needs as humans require constant food and water for survival, so by the time they had traveled 3 days into the wilderness, they had no water. TB did the math on this and said that for a population this size with this many millions of people and this many millions of animals, the traveling hoard of Israelites would have needed 10 million gallons of water per day. That is an outrageous amount, the need would be so great that it’s shocking that they were able to get anywhere in the desert with the need being that great. They finally did come to an oasis called Marah, which in Hebrew means bitter, indicating that the Hebrews named it instead of it being a place that other populations were familiar with because if it was named bitter then why would anyone go there expecting the water to be potable. When they got to the Oasis and the water was not drinkable, “the people murmured against Mos...

15:1-21 - The sea has closed behind the Israelites and the entirety of the Egyptian army pursuing them has been destroyed. Additionally, the entirety of the nation of Egypt as a world power has collapsed. The Hebrews have seen the power of the hand of God and His willingness to wield that power in their behalf, and they are overcome with joy. I also have to wonder how much of their good mood had to be with basking in spiritual light for the last big while the Egyptian army sat in spiritual darkness. This joy has led to a phenomenon that we haven’t seen yet in the Old Testament, but that we will see frequently here after, the whole of Israel began singing a song praising God in his triumph over Egypt, recounting the entire event. They use very descriptive and enthusiastic language such as “salvation,” “drowned,” “greatness,” “stubble,” “congealed,” and “trembling,” etc. TB notes that in Hebrew, this song rhymes, with divisions into stanzas and metered in a way consistent with ancient He...

14:23-31 - In the movie the Ten Commandments, the part where the Israelites are going through the Red Sea on dry ground is pretty dramatic. The Egyptians are being held back by a pillar of fire, the Israelites are trudging through the spilt ocean, then suddenly the pilar of fire disappears and sends the Egyptians into the path before the Hebrews had even cleared it. I always thought, “why would God not make the Egyptian’s wait until after the Hebrews had already gotten through, why would He scare them like that?” Of course, what I didn’t understand was that this was theater and not historically accurate and God most likely didn’t let the Hebrews get chased through the miraculously opened sea and be terrorized. In fact, we don’t really have any explanation as far as what happened except “the Egyptians pursued, and went in after them to the midst of the sea.” There’s a whole thing about God binding up the wheels of the Egyptians, then they get scared and try to flee because they recogniz...

14:19-22 - This massive hoard of an Egyptian army is closing in around the Israelites and they are freaking out, even despite Moses’ assurance that God will protect them. The cloud that had been guarding them during the day and had been fire by night is described here as “the angel of God,” which TB talks about whether or not it is actually an angel or God himself using the original text, but I’m not going to get into that because it doesn’t matter that much to me. But now this entity that has been either God Himself or representing God as a protective and assisting force this whole time suddenly moves and becomes a barrier between the Egyptian army and the Israelites. Just like what happened in the ninth plague, this cloud became to the Egyptians, “darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these (Israelites).” TB notes that the words used here are the same ones used to describe the ninth plague which are “Orr” for light or enlightenment, and “chosek” for darkness, meaning spir...

14:10-18 - The Israelites are stuck between the wilderness and a large body of water in some sort of geological cliff type of feature. As far as which body of water it is, the Bible specifically states that it’s the Red Sea repeatedly, but TB suggests that it’s actually the sea of Aqaba because of something in the translation of the word. Still others that doubt the validity or significance of the story suggest that it’s something called the Reed Sea which is just like a marshy swamp type of land that can get pretty dried out in certain times of the year. The IM talks about the Red vs Reed sea debate, but also notes ‘Bot Latter-day Saints have information that the Exodus account is correct. Both the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants state directly that it was the Red Sea (see 1 Nephi 17:24-27; D&C 8:3).” The people see the entire Egyptain army heading straight for them and, interestingly, their first reaction is to be snarky with Moses when they say, “Because there we...

14:1-9 - As the Israelites wind their way through the wilderness, going the way that God tells them, Pharaoh is getting pretty antsy, saying, “They are entangled in the land, the wilderness has shit them in.” TB notes that this is the description of a very specific type of environment where they are more like trapped in a crevice type place with elevated areas on the sides and a large body of water in front and wilderness behind them. He says that there are a few places like that geologically that the people could have been when Pharaoh decides to go after them. TB also makes sure to mention that even though in the minds of the Hebrews, they were free forever, as far as Pharaoh was concerned, they had negotiated a three day journey into the wilderness so that the Hebrews could worship their God, then they would return. I think about this and wonder, would God lie to Pharaoh in order to get him to agree to something then change the terms? That doesn’t sound reasonable. If that was the...

13:19-22 – On the way out, Israel took all the stuff that they could carry, and one of those items that Moses made sure to bring with them was “the bones of Joseph… for he had straitly sworn the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you; and ye shall carry up my bones away hence with you.” TB notes the full circle moment that is happening with Joseph being the beginning of Israelites in Egypt and now he’s being brought out and back “home” to Canaan. The full removal of all things Hebrew from Egypt, it’s one of the literary ways of completely disconnecting the first part of the book of Exodus from slavery and disfavor and now focusing 100% on leaving Egypt and embarking on Israel’s new mission, serving God. TB also notes that the pathway that Israel is taking out of Egypt, instead of taking the Road of the Philistines, the Road of the Wilderness, God isn’t showing them some hidden way to get to Canaan. The route from Goshen to Canaan was well known and well established, pr...

13:17-18 – As the Israelites were being led out of Egypt, imagine all those people, millions of people and millions of animals and all their stuff and I would imagine the wagons and everything, just imagine the grandeur of such an event, not in materials but in scale! Apparently, on the way out of Egypt, there was a large road, a popular thoroughfare where the people probably imagined that they were going to be traveling on, but God took them another way, “through the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea, “lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt.” Why would this massive road show the people war? TB notes that this large road was a trade route that was also known as “Way of the Land of the Philistines.” Trade routes are notorious for their thievery, highway robbers, etc, as well as this being known explicitly as a popular way for Philistines which are going to become mortal enemies to Israel. TB also notes that “it had Egyptian fortresses strate...

13:1-16 - Moses here begins to expand on what the Passover ordinance will look like in the future because in verse 5 it clearly states that this ordinance and all these requirements are not meant to be strictly instituted until “the Lord shall bring thee into the land of the Canaanites… which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee, a land flowing with milk and honey, that thou shalt keep this service in this month.” I’m pretty sure that while traveling in the wilderness the Israelites were supposed to keep the minimalist version of the Passover, but all these other things are to be added once they are settled in the promised land. I have to ask myself this question when reading this though, when getting all these extra instructions for when they are settled, do they think “perfect then I’ll be ready for this when we’re settled in Canaan next year?” I wonder this because I know that the people will wander in the wilderness for 40 years before getting there, but surely they don’t. As a ...