Score: Moses - 1, YHWH - 0

July 6, 2009, 7:04 am by dc-agape.

Exodus 17:1-15

The quantity of water required by the Israelites was catching up with them.  And they complain about it, since the all-mighty YHWH had forgotten his chosen people needed water.  Again, the people would have preferred Egypt than dehydration.  I guess slavery isn’t that bad, when you have all the food, water, and livestock that the Israelites had.  What I never understood about this part was why reminding YHWH of human needs was considered “testing him”.  The Israelites came out of Egypt to follow YHWH; you would think that a supernatural being that created humans would remember that pesky need for WATER!

Now the other thing about the water from the rock story that I find difficult to grasp is the amount of water that came from the rock.  Remember in my last post I calculated that the people would need 6,000,000 liters of water would require 6,000 m³ of area.  Is it possible to get that much from a rock in the desert?  And Moses would have to do this daily, yet this does not seem to be the case.  Most of this stuff is just Tall Tales.  Any kernel of truth has been blown out of proportion by the Traditions of Men. 

The path for the Israelites was chosen by YHWH so they would not have to face war (Exodus 13:17).  But that is exactly what happens when they face the Amalekites.  In this story we first meet Joshua, the battle master for the Israelites and successor to Moses.  This is also the story of how Moses controlled the battle between the Amalekites by raising and lowering his staff.  So they win the battle, not because they outnumber the Amalekites, or because they fight better, no…they win the battle because Moses held his arms up all day!  If I was Joshua, that would be very disheartening. 

Two verses contradict each other in this chapter.  They are:

Exodus 17:14 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it, because I will completely blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.”

Yet just two verse later:

Exodus 17:16 He said, “For hands were lifted up to the throne of the Lord.  The Lord will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation.”

Just by recording the word Amalek in the Word of God, YHWH has just negated his own words.  Worse than that, 31 more times will the word Amalekites be repeated in the Bible.  So the memory of the Amalekites was never “blotted out”.  So the word of Moses was accurate, yet the word of YHWH was false! 

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