Moses gathered everyone together and said, “God wants you to make him a church. Hop to it.” So they all gathered up as much of the required materials as they could get their hands on and brought it to Moses, who put a couple of guys named Bezalel and Oholiab in charge. They made the tabernacle, the ark and all the other crap God wanted.

God told Moses how he wanted his church tent arranged, and Moses got it done. Then God filled the tabernacle with his spirit and a cloud covered the tent. After that, whenever the cloud was on the tent, the Israelites would start walking. When the cloud lifted, they’d stop and make camp.

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35 36 37 38 39 40

God said to Moses, “Since you broke the first tablets, we’ll have to do this all over again. Cut two more tablets and meet me on the mountain in the morning. Come alone.” So Moses went, and God started talking about how loving and forgiving he could be if only the humans would behave themselves. He said, “I hate sinners and I will punish them until they’re dead. Then I’ll punish their children and their grandchildren. I figure by the fourth generation I’ll have probably grown bored.

“So here’s what we’ll do,” he continued. “I’ll get rid of all the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And when you guys get there, you’ll tear down their pillars and altars because I’ve changed my name to Jealous and I don’t want you worshiping any other gods. And let’s just do a quick review since you people are pretty stupid and can’t seem to remember simple rules.” So God repeated all the rules from before, which took another forty days and forty nights during which Moses didn’t have anything to eat or drink.

When Moses came down from the mountain, his face was glowing because he’d been talking to God. He told everyone what God had said, and then he put a veil over his shiny face. From that point on, Moses would remove the veil whenever he chatted with God, and after relaying God’s message to the people he would put it back on again.

Original text

After all that, God was ready to move on. He told Moses, “Get moving toward that land I promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I’ll send an angel before you and drive out all the jerks already living there. I’m not going with you though. I don’t like you all very much and I’m pretty sure I’ll end up killing you if I have to spend another minute with you.” When the people heard this, they got really upset and for some reason took off all their jewelry.

Original text

I went to the rally in Washington, DC on Saturday. It was crazy and crowded and a little stressful, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

I loved all the signs and took pictures whenever I could. (The last one is me, looking terrific after an all-night car ride.)

The people went to Aaron and said, “Your stupid brother brought us out here to the desert, then he went up into a mountain and we haven’t seen him since. We need you to make us some gods.” So Aaron gathered up everyone’s gold and made a calf out of it with a graving tool. Everyone suddenly became convinced the cow brought them out of Egypt and they decided to have a feast in its honor. God told Moses he’d better watch out because the Israelites were about to die a fiery and wrathful death, but Moses pleaded with him and said people were going to think he just brought them to the desert to kill them. God didn’t like people to gossip about him, so he decided not to kill anyone that day.

Moses took his tablets of testimony and finally came down from the mountain. When he got to camp, he found the people singing to the stupid calf. He threw down the tablets, breaking them, and then destroyed the damn thing. He asked Aaron what he could possibly have been thinking, and Aaron was all, “These people were evil! They demanded a god, so I took their gold and threw it in the fire, and that cow was what came out!”

Moses looked around and saw that the whole camp was in chaos. He announced that everyone who wanted to be on Team God should gather around him, but only the Levites came. Moses told them to take their swords and start killing. So that’s what they did. About three thousand people died, but that wasn’t enough for God. He sent down a plague for good measure and promised this sin would be visited upon them again one day.

Original text

I’m sorry, but all of this is incredibly boring. More rules about what people are supposed to wear, how to collect taxes, how to burn incense. I’m skipping to more interesting things.

Original text 28 29 30 31

God was hard up for money, so he asked Moses to ask the people for gold, silver and bronze, along with yarns of blue and purple and scarlet, fine linen, goats’ hair, tanned rams’ skins, goatskins, acacia wood, oil, spices, onyx stones and, you know, whatever else they had lying around. He also wanted Moses to have the people build him a house and an ark.

Now, this is not a flood-escaping ark. This ark is a box, and God wanted it to be 36 inches long, 27 inches wide and 27 inches tall. He wanted it to be made out of acacia wood and overlaid with pure gold. “When it’s done,” God said, “make a cover for it out of gold, and do it up with gold angels and stuff. Then you’re going to make a table and overlay that with gold, too. And when it’s done, make me some bread and serve it to me on that table with gold dishes. I’m also going to need a golden lampstand. Make it pretty, with flowers.”

“Oh, yeah,” God said. “I’m going to need a tabernacle made of fine linen, and I want pictures of cherubim woven into it.” Then God talked for like an hour about how exactly he wanted this tabernacle to be made. Then he told Moses how he wanted his house to be arranged. (Some pretty good blueprints can be found here.)

“When all that’s done, you’re going to need to make me an altar. Make it out of acacia wood and cover it in bronze. And the tabernacle is going to need a court, I think twenty bronze pillars ought to do it for the south side. Twenty silver pillars for the north. And I’m afraid of the dark, so I’m going to need an oil lamp to always be burning nearby. Aaron and his crew can take care of that.”

Original text 25 26 27

Moses wrote down all of God’s rules, and then he woke up early the next morning and built an altar at the foot of Mount Sinai, along with twelve pillars to represent the twelve tribes. He got some people to make sacrifices at his altar, and then he took half the blood from the sacrifices and put it in basins. He threw the other half at the altar. When all the people had gathered, he read to them from the book he’d just written, and they agreed to do whatever God said. Then Moses threw blood on the people. Oh, gross.

Moses and Aaron got a couple guys named Nadab and Abihu and seventy elders of Israel, and they all went into the mountain to hang out with God. After some food and drink and partying, God asked Moses to come to the top of the mountain so he could give him some stone tablets with the rules on them. Moses told everyone to wait for him, and then he went up the mountain. As soon as he went, a cloud came along and covered the peak for six days. It looks like Moses wandered around for those six days, and on the seventh he finally found God hanging out in a fireball. Moses wound up not coming back down from the mountain for forty days.

Original text

God talked at Moses for a really long time up on that mountain, telling him all the rules he wanted the Israelites to follow. Here are some highlights:

• You’ll be put to death if you steal a slave and then sell it.
• You’re allowed to kill someone who breaks into your house, but you have to do it at night. If morning comes and the guy is still alive, he has to pay. If he can’t pay, you can sell him. If the stolen animal is found on him, he’ll pay double. Weird desert math.
• If you seduce a virgin and have sex with her, you’d better be prepared to marry her and pay her father her bride-price. If her father won’t give her up, you still gotta pay up.
• You will kill all sorcerers.
• Don’t boil a goat in its mother’s milk.

When he ran out of silly laws to talk about, God told Moses he was going to send an angel to lead the Israelites to Canaan and defeat the people who already lived there.

Original text 21 22 23

As soon as Moses got settled, God started rattling off his rules:

1. I am your only God.
2. You will not worship anyone or anything but me. I’m kind of a jealous bastard, so this is important if you want to stay on my good side.
3. Do not use my name in vain.
4. Remember not to work on the Sabbath.
5. Don’t be a jerk to your parents.
6. Don’t kill anyone.
7. Don’t cheat on your spouse.
8. Don’t steal shit.
9. Don’t gossip or spread rumors.
10. Be happy with what you have.

I guess Moses heard all of this, but to everyone else it just looked like thunder and lightning and a smoking mountain. They were a little freaked out.

Original text