Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

Like I mentioned yesterday, the Midianites in general weren’t just one single tribe in one single place, they were spread out covering a lot of territory and when Israel defeated them, they only defeated one part of that territory. After they won their battle, the leaders from the tribes of Rueben and Gad noticed “hey this is some really great grazing land here and we have a lot of grazing livestock so maybe we should just stay here instead of going in to the land of Canaan and getting a land inheritance there. The group of “princes” approach Moses and Eleazar with this idea and TB makes sure to note that they aren’t demanding this or refusing to move forward like the previous people were, they just wanted to explain their position and see what Moses has to say about it. Their request at first took Moses back because he was like “you guys want to have your lands here and just not go into Canaan and fight for your brethren to obtain their lands of inheritance?” Basically, he didn’t wa...

Chapter 31 has a lot to do with the previous chapters concerning the event with Balaam and Balak where the king Balak hired the “priest” Balaam to curse Israel with evil so that Balak could defeat them in battle. At the end of their encounter, there was an uplifting account of Balaam refusing to curse Israel because it was so obvious to him that God had already blessed them and Balaam refused to go against God. Everyone went home and if that was the end of the story then that would have been just fine. The problem became that Balaam went back to Balak and told him that Israel was only protected by God if they were righteous to Him and encouraged Balak to send in his women to corrupt the Israelite men, and the Israelite men were happy to be corrupted. This resulted in God sending a plague upon the people, killing 24,000 of them and only ended because Phineas, a prominent priest and Eleazar’s son, speared an Israelite man while having sex with a Midianite women, killing them both. Becaus...

There are two main concepts in chapter 27, the first being a interestingly progressive inheritance policy. Some women came to Moses because their father had died and had no sons to inherit his land. They still aren’t in the land of Canaan so I don’t think that there’s any actual land to inherit at this point but there is the promise of land when they settle and the daughters want to make sure that they have a place when the time comes. They also specify that their father wasn’t involved in the rebellion of Korah, which must have been because of their heritage. I assume that this issue is brought to Moses because the policy at the time was that only male heirs could inherit the land and there were no male heirs of this man so the women asked why couldn’t the land go to them. Moses takes the issue to God who agrees with the women that they should be able to inherit the land owed to a man if he dies without any sons. I think that this is a pretty progressive policy at the time so it’s ano...

Even though the last 3 chapters have been about the adventures of Balak and Balaam blessing and trying to curse Israel, the people of Israel were just living in the land minding their own business. They would have had no idea what was going on and that made me think about all the times that God works on our behalf that we don’t know about. And just to be clear, some of those times the work he’s doing isn’t what we would have chosen, we could even see it as a negative, like what happened with my family recently. Looking back I can see all the ways that the Lord intervened to arrange the circumstances that allowed for that to happen and even though I know that this was what He had planned, I still hate it and it’s all just what I see in hindsight, I had no idea that it was leading up to this at the time. It’s like he threaded a hundred needles to ensure this outcome and I’m so mad about it and my heart is broken but I take comfort in the fact that if this is His plan, then he’s already w...

Israel has the snake bite thing under control and moves throughout the land trying to find the best way into Canaan. They go to one king of an area and ask if they can pass and that king says no and gathered his people to fight Israel “and Israel smote him with the edge of the sword, and possessed his land.” I always thought that Israel was the underdog in all their fights but it seems like from the census that they had like 600,000 plus soldiers and I can’t think of very many armies that size especially anciently. And the problem with an army that size is feeding them, supply lines, and here God is providing their food straight from heaven, so that issue is solved. Interesting to think about. Israel continues up the country and defeats at least one more city state, “until there was none left him alive: and they possessed his land.” I wonder why God had Israel kill all the women and children as well, maybe because He knew that the Israelite men wouldn’t be able to resist the foreign wo...

Chapter 21 is a little bit different in that it talks about the people of Israel’s first military victory. A king in Canaan learned about the Hebrew’s coming and decided to do a pre-emptive strike in which he attacked part of the camp, he took some of the Israelite’s captive. The people went to God and promised that if He would deliver the attackers into their hands then they would utterly destroy their cities. God agreed, and Israel attacked the Canaanites, won, I assume they got their people back and then destroyed the cities. For some reason, the Hebrews were again disappointed and complained against Moses, saying that they hated the manna that they were eating. “and the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.” But the people immediately recognized that the fiery serpents were sent because they had sinned and asked Moses to pray that the serpents would be taken away from them. Moses did pray for that, but instead of just t...

There is apparently a 38 year leap between the end of chapter 19 and the beginning of chapter 20. Now the people of Israel are close to entering the Promised Land and again are struggling in the desert because they are out of water, and instead of bringing it up to Moses, “hey we don’t have water, have any ideas about how we should get some?” It’s “why have ye brought up the congregation of the Lord into this wilderness, that we and our cattle should die there?” 40 years later and it’s the exact same story, I bet Moses was exhausted with it. And keep in mind that the Israelite’s have been eating manna for 40 years and they complain about that too, that they are tired of this miraculously provided food. Moses and Aaron go to the tabernacle to ask God what they should do, and God tells them to go to rock, and speak to it and “thou shalt bing forth to them water out of the rock.” This water is not only supposed to give water to all 3 million Israelites but also all their livestock. TB no...

Chapter 19 is just a procedural for how someone would become clean again after becoming unclean and just as a run down, the IM summarizes the whole chapter, saying, “Anciently, an Israelite who had been in the presence of one who died or had been dead was held to be defiled. This chapter in Numbers describes the way he which such a person was purified. First, a red heifer was slain, burned, and the ashes laid aside. Then the ashes were placed in pure water and the mixture sprinkled upon those who had been defiled. This was known as ‘the water of separation,’ since by it one was separated, or purified, from sin. Failure to avail oneself of the cleansing power in this way resulted in being ‘cut off from among the congregation.’” TB talks about holiness on this lecture, and that concept is just too abstract for me to understand, but he did say something that made me think about it differently. He compared “holiness” as being greater than “cleanness.” Now, I work in medicine and there ar...

There has just been ANOTHER rebellion in which tens of thousands of Israelites were killed miraculously by God because of their disobedience, and it wasn’t just disobedience like I am disobedient, this was quite egregious. I was thinking today, and I have before, wondering if I was in that environment if I would be disobedient like them. Are all people roughly the same, if we had the same circumstances that they did back then would the church be in the same state that of rebellion? And again I was listening to the end of the book of Helaman and it talked about all the signs and wonders that the Nephites and Lamanites say the years preceding Christ’s birth and it says that even with all those miracles, the people still hardened their hearts, so I thought that maybe that’s just human nature, to be rebellious and if that’s true then am I rebellious or is it just a matter of time before I become as bad as the Israelites or the Nephites or the Lamanites? But then I heard Helaman 15:15 whic...

Just to review, it’s not even been two years since the Israelites have left slavery in Egypt and there have already been numerous rebellions including the making of the golden calf, the people complaining about manna not being good enough, the foreigners rebelling in chapter 11, Aaron and Miriam, and then they just got finished with the huge rebellion in which the people refused to go take the Promised Land and got barred from there for life, then went to war to fight it against God’s will and part of their army was destroyed. So it’s been a very long couple of years of fighting, rebellion, death, and destruction, and it is not going to get better any time soon. There was a man named Korah who was a Levite but not a priest and he convinced 250 of Israel’s high leadership to “gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, and said unto them, Ye take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them.” They told Moses that the rest of Israel is ju...

Chapter 15 seems kind of just thrown together, and TB says that the placement of chapter 15 has caused many scriptorians to think that it was out of place, but he disagrees and so does the IM. TB’s coverage of this chapter is 3 lectures long, so 3 hours long, but honestly most of it either covers topics that were covered previously or gets weirdly political. I have to remember that this was recorded in 2016 at the end of Obama’s term and it makes sense that he’s a deeply Republican man who strongly supports Israel so I will take his political opinions with a grain of salt. All this to say I didn’t find his commentary on this chapter very useful and so I won’t recommend it too much here. The first 26 verses are reiterating the various sacrifices that the people of Israel need to offer in various situations, but I’m not going to go over them here because they were covered pretty extensively in Leviticus. The IM suggests that the sacrificial offerings are again reiterated here because “...

Chapter 13 ended with 10 of the 12 scouts reporting back to the people that taking over the land of Canaan would be impossible and suicidal to attempt and chapter 14 is wild. Even though Caleb and then Joshua both report to the people that Canaan can be taken with help from God, the people don’t want to hear the good news and “lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night.” The people turn against Moses and Aaron and start saying things like, “Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would God we had died in this wilderness!” They wished that they had never been taken out of Egypt because they believed that if they went to war against the inhabitants of Canaan, “our wives and our children should be a prey.” To be fair, it is kind of daunting to face combat knowing that if you lose your family will be enslaved and murdered, so I get that, no matter how much faith someone has, that reality is still there. But these people took it beyond just being nervous,...

According to TB chapters 13 and 14 go back to back together but they are both pretty long so I’ll separate them here. At this point Israel is still less than 2 years removed from leaving Egypt and it’s time for the people to start the plan to take the land of Canaan. The KJV says that God was the one who told Moses to send spies to the land of Canaan and implied that it was some sort of like military reconnaissance, at least that’s how I interpreted it. TB suggests that that interpretation is incorrect for a couple of different reasons. First, he says that it isn’t God who commands Moses to send the scouts, but instead it is the people who want to go check out the land and Moses asks God’s opinion on it and God says that yeah that’s fine. TB likened it to driving around a neighborhood before making an offer on a house. Secondly, TB notes that this almost certainly is NOT a military expedition for the purposes of planning because in all future military endeavors, the Israelite army only...

Chapter 12 is short but has some very interesting concepts to discuss. It starts with Aaron and Miriam, Moses’ brother and sister, “spake against Moses.” This basically means that they complained about him. Now if one of my brothers was the prophet, I would probably complain against him too because no matter how good he is, he would still be my little brother and that’s fair, but it seems like there were a couple of different factors that came into play here. It’s important to remember that Aaron is the highest high priest and Miraim is a prophetess, so they are very spiritual, very high up in the religious hierarchy, very influential, so it doesn’t sound like this was just a sibling squabble, but had serious ramifications throughout the entire Israelite community. First, the words they used to complain against Moses was “because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.” But wait, I thought Moses was married to the Midianite woman name Zippor...

For the lectures for chapter 11, the recording was not great and my hearing might be getting worse so I didn’t really hear everything that TB was trying to say but I think I’ll be able to muster through it. One thing that TB did point out is that the timeline from chapter 10 where the people were excited to move away from Mount Sinai for the first time to the time that they started complaining in chapter 11 was only 72 hours. Sure the move would have been difficult and dusty but that wasn’t very long and hearing things like this actually makes me feel pretty good about myself and my “enduring to the end” because I usually wait a little bit longer before I start complaining. That’s a lie, I complain loudly and immediately, but I guess I’m not alone in that, I have the Israelites doing that with me. TB notes, “Chapter 10 ends with this optimistic, prayerful, joyful poem, which expresses the mental and emotional state of the people of Israel as they begin to strike camp for their journey ...