Sumerians Look On In Confusion As Christian God Creates World

In advance of next year's resumption of this very worthwhile project, we will be posting the odd little thing.

This is from the woundrous Onion...

Members of the earth's earliest known civilization, the Sumerians, looked on in shock and confusion some 6,000 years ago as God, the Lord Almighty, created Heaven and Earth.

According to recently excavated clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform script, thousands of Sumerians—the first humans to establish systems of writing, agriculture, and government—were working on their sophisticated irrigation systems when the Father of All Creation reached down from the ether and blew the divine spirit of life into their thriving civilization.

"I do not understand," reads an ancient line of pictographs depicting the sun, the moon, water, and a Sumerian who appears to be scratching his head. "A booming voice is saying, 'Let there be light,' but there is already light. It is saying, 'Let the earth bring forth grass,' but I am already standing on grass."

"Everything is here already," the pictograph continues. "We do not need more stars."

Religion and the environment/back to the KJV

It's been a while, I know. A very long while. It's been a busy year - heading back to Palestine, completing not one but two books - the Leila Khaled biography I've had in the pipeline for ages, and an unplanned edited volume of the writings from Gaza of my amazing friend Sharyn. So dealing with the beautiful but sometimes slightly impenetrable language of the King James Version, and hefting the bloomin' great thing around as well, kind of slipped onto a very back burner...
But post-books and with a little time to think, I'm certainly planning to resurrect this project, although I can't speak for Husband. But he did just post the following on the Manchester Climate Fortnightly blog, and a thought it made a good start to some of the issues I'll be thinking about:

Monday, 16 November 2009
And ye shall know the truth, and it shall set you free...

MCFly attended the Faith Network of Manchester conference about Faith and the Environment, at the wonderful MERCi building in Ancoats. It was one of those evenings where everyone (between 35 and 45 people, slightly older than average 'climate' meetings tend to be) had a good time, but that you leave with nagging doubts about its effectiveness. Good grub, good chat, but not as incisive or interactive as it might have been...

After housekeeping and a brief intro to the history of MERCi (sustainable in many ways) we had four speakers.
On Buddhism, Clive Pyot spoke about his own community and the precepts he tries to follow. For more on Buddhism and the environment, see here. If it was true back in ol' Gautama's day that all existence is suffering, what's it gonna be like when the Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet">positive feedback loops kick in, eh?

On Christianity Rev John Hughes spoke about people's definitions of Christianity (he favours “God is, as Jesus is, therefore there is hope”) and Operation Noah and ecofeminism

The representative of Islam, Zahid Hussein, spoke of the Ecomosque project, and Rabbi Warren Elf finished off the session with a brief take on Judaism and the guidance to be found in the Torah.

Because of significant time over-runs, there was no time for questions and discussion in the big group- everyone legged it for the food, which was vegetarian and delicious (huzzah to the cook!)

There was an invitation and expectation that we should all “schmooze”, but this was not done coercively (name badges, enforced mingling etc) so people seemed to largely stick with those they already knew.) After a nice long break, we climbed back to the top of the building. Initially we were told that, as per the plan, we were going to get into groups to tackle very specific questions and come up with one-sentence pledges that would be stitched into a big pledge. Then followed some extended introductions, and since time was then very short, the initial plan was curtailed, and we were invited to be in big groups (of about 10 people) to discuss things generally and fill in a pledge leaf for a pledge tree. In MCFly's experience these groups tend to be dominated by one or three people, with the others drifting off mentally if not physically, so we cast ourselves out of the land of Nod.

MCFly's unsolicited advice- The evening might have been more intriguing and thought-provoking if the speakers had been invited to wrestle with one or more of the following-

* 1) My faith's doctrine and how it does or doesn't equate with “sustainability.” What are the tensions, what have the tensions been historically?
* 2) The existing PRACTICE of my faith and how it does/doesn't equate with sustainability (i.e. is there a gap between my doctrine and my faith's practice around environment, and if so why.)
* 3) What are the OBSTACLES that stand in the way if I try to make my doctrine/practice more in line with sustainability?

After all, for each religion there are problems;

Christians have the dilemma between the two bits of Genesis in which God says “hey, this creation is yours to subdue, fill yer boots” [domination] or else He/She says “look, I'm giving you this to look after” [stewardship]. Further, some evangelical Christians (and yes, I know some- and like them) – are very unconcerned about Climate Change because God Has A Plan. This segues nicely into Buddhism- there are some interpretations that allow people to “meh, it's all just one big cycle o' suffering, so what's the point trying to hold stuff together- everything changes”. I'm not saying it's a right interpretation, but it is prevalent.

Islam- well, take a look at the Haj- is flying to Mecca more than once (or even once...) compatible with sustainability? It's one big can of worms- ass soon as you start dissing people's interpretations of what it means to be a good adherent to their faith, it's gonna get messy. (Please not, most of the world's Muslims seem to live in countries with pretty low per capita carbon emissions. Before Westerners start lecturing, we might need to sort out the plank in our own eyes).

Judaism- I am not so clear on the tensions within it on environmental issues, but you could- without conflating Judaism and Israel- take a look at Israel's environmental record (nothing to write home about), and the reasons for the weakness of its environmental movement.

The point is, these problems (and others) exist. If they didn't, we wouldn't be in this mess. It seems a pity to hold an event that focusses solely on the good things that are going on. There has to be SOME time devoted to the problems, and how they might be overcome. If not, we simply violently agree with each other and are none-the-wiser for dealing with the real problems, because they haven't been named. As a Quaker might say, we've not born witness.

Given that the total time spent on the four speakers was closer to an hour than 40 minutes, despite the invocation on the agenda “max 10 mins each” it might have been better to have a fifth speaker- a secular humanist, or an animist or a pagan as well, and kept everyone strictly to their time (with a card held up to give them a two minute warning, or some such).

MCFly's two pence. In vulgar anthropological terms, religion is part of terror management, and also a way of maintaining social solidarity and rules of engagement within (and less commonly between) tribes. To that extent, religions mostly seem to follow the Golden Rule, which Christians will explain as “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Kant's categorial imperative yadder yadder. (And a nice little side line in telling you to behave in this life cos you get your reward in the next. But we digress...)

Well, if you're gonna retrofit the Golden Rule for “the Environment”, you simply need to say that “others” means not just other hairless two-legged apes stumbling about now but ALSO other species AND other humans and species that haven't yet been born.

Voila. We'll send you an invoice.


Random important quote

"Activism is my rent for living on this planet." Alice Walker


Further Reading

The stuff about Buddhism in Only Planet (pages 111-113)
The ">Ecology of Eden by Evan Eisenberg (long, but really really amazingly good. If you skim the 'Earth Jazz' tosh, that is)
Dancing towards Armageddon by http://www.arcworld.org/

Things MCFly thinks they should read, if someone invents an extra 12 hours in the day:

">The Great Transformation, by Karen Armstrong

Leviticus 23 to 24: Feast your eyes on this

Chapter 23

Blah blah Keep the Sabbath.

Blah blah lots of bread/lambs etc ya gotta sacrifice before you stuff your cakeholes

Blah blah how to calculate days of atonement, feast of tabernacles etc

And boy, is God the Union Steward enforcing the work to rule tactic:

Verse 30 “And whatsoever soul it be that doeth any work in that same day, the same soul will I destroy from among his people.”

This is cute:

Verse 40 “And ye shall take you on the first day the boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook; and ye shall rejoice before the LORD your God seven days.”

And then there seems to be one of those Guinness Book of Records attempts- how many people can you fit in a phone box. In my experience, Time Lords always win that one...

Verse 42: “Ye shall dwell in booths seven days; all that are Israelites born shall dwell in booths”

Chapter 24

Light pollution and the 24 hour society is nothing new...

Verse 1-2 “And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Command the children of Israel, that they bring unto thee pure oil olive beaten for the light, to cause the lamps to burn continually.”

Cakes equals covenants, it seems

Verse 4-8 “He shall order the lamps upon the pure candlestick before the LORD continually. And thou shalt take fine flour, and bake twelve cakes thereof: two tenth deals shall be in one cake. And thou shalt set them in two rows, six on a row, upon the pure table before the LORD. And thou shalt put pure frankincense upon each row, that it may be on the bread for a memorial, even an offering made by fire unto the LORD. Every sabbath he shall set it in order before the LORD continually, being taken from the children of Israel by an everlasting covenant.”

And who gets to eat it? Who the heck do you think, hmm?

Verse 9 “And it shall be Aaron's and his sons'; and they shall eat it in the holy place: for it is most holy unto him of the offerings of the LORD made by fire by a perpetual statute.”

And the “son of an Israelitish woman, whose father was an Egyptian” gets in a fight, curses the Lord and they make an Example of him:

Verse 14 “Bring forth him that hath cursed without the camp; and let all that heard him lay their hands upon his head, and let all the congregation stone him.”

Remember Shirley Jackson's story “The Lottery”?

Anyhow, there's more of the stuff that Leviticus is justly famous for-

Verse 20 “Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again.”

Before they return to the main plot (artful, these suspense raising diversions...)

Verse 23 “And Moses spake to the children of Israel, that they should bring forth him that had cursed out of the camp, and stone him with stones. And the children of Israel did as the LORD commanded Moses.”

Leviticus 20 to 22: Insert snarky title here.

Chapter 20

Here's what God's gonna do if anyone is Israel (inc. 'strangers') 'giveth his seed (worships, methinks) Molech:

Verse 3 “And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name.”

In fact, you gotta kill him (Commandments be damned I say) or else you and your family will get caught up in God's secondary action (I thought those were illegal?)

Verse 4-5 “And if the people of the land do any ways hide their eyes from the man, when he giveth of his seed unto Molech, and kill him not. Then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go a whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Molech, from among their people."

If this stuff ever caught on, Amnesty would melt under the workload

Verse 9 “For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him.”

Verse 10 “And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.”

Yep, and a repeat of no homosexuality, no adultery, no bestiality etc etc

And no shagging during that Time of the Month

Verse 18 “And if a man shall lie with a woman having her sickness, and shall uncover her nakedness; he hath discovered her fountain, and she hath uncovered the fountain of her blood: and both of them shall be cut off from among their people.”

Keep All these rules and it'll turn out peaceful and socially just, oh yes-

Verse 24 "But I have said unto you, Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it unto you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and honey: I am the LORD your God, which have separated you from other people.”

Chapter 21

Priests sisters don't seem able to marry, though maybe I'm getting this wrong.

Verse 3 “And for his sister a virgin, that is nigh unto him, which hath had no husband; for her may he be defiled.”

And some sartorial 'advice'

Verse 5 “They shall not make baldness upon their head, neither shall they shave off the corner of their beard, nor make any cuttings in their flesh.”

Watch out daughters!

Verse 9 “And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire.”

And despite the LORD's previous (Ch 19,14), He takes a dim view of anyone less than Aryanly perfect coming into his temple.

Verse 18-21 “For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous, Or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded, Or crookbackt, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken. No man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the LORD made by fire: he hath a blemish; he shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his God.”

They get to worship ('eat the bread') but are not welcome at the altar.

And Moses passes all this along.

Chapter 22

More bonkers rules- or rather, repeats of one's I've already done my cod-funny sneering at.

But catch this language.

Verse 21 “And whosoever offereth a sacrifice of peace offerings unto the LORD to accomplish his vow, or a freewill offering in beeves or sheep, it shall be perfect to be accepted; there shall be no blemish therein. Blind, or broken, or maimed, or having a wen, or scurvy, or scabbed, ye shall not offer these unto the LORD, nor make an offering by fire of them upon the altar unto the LORD.”

Beeves? Plural of beef.

Wen? n. (wĕn)

[AS. wenn; akin to D. wen, LG. wenne.]
(Med.) An indolent, encysted tumor of the skin; especially, a sebaceous cyst.

More of the same, rules-wise.

And. Don't. Call. God. Names.

Verse 32-3 “Neither shall ye profane my holy name; but I will be hallowed among the children of Israel: I am the LORD which hallow you, That brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am the LORD.”

Leviticus 18 to 19: At last, loopy Leviticus launches!

Chapter 18

God tells Moses to remind everyone how much He has done for them and all he wants in exchange is unthinking unswerving obedience.

Verse 6-7 “None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness: I am the LORD. The nakedness of thy father, or the nakedness of thy mother, shalt thou not uncover: she is thy mother; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness.”

Got that, anyone caring for their parents? Let them sit in their shit until the carers arrive... No carers because social services is out of money? Well, your parent is out of luck. Wouldn't want to risk old Lordy's wrath, would we?

Whole long list of people you cannot see naked.

Er, huh?

Verse 21 “And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.”

Ah, here it is, the verse that the homophobes Milk for all it's worth:

Verse 22 (drumroll please) “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.”

Must have been happening a fair bit though, for them to make a rule about it. Ditto for the bestiality outlawed in the next verses.

And if you don't keep all these rules...

Verse 25 “And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.”

Chapter 19

More orders: No other gods. Peace offerings.

Oh, and here's a bit as important as Ch 18, verse 22

Verse 9-10 “And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest. And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger: I am the LORD your God.”

Disability Discrimination Act avant la lettre

Verse 14 “Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the LORD.”

No gossiping, dammit

Verse 16 “Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people: neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbour: I am the LORD.”

Remember, you gotta keep ALL these statutes.

Verse 19 “Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.”

Death penalty for adultery, so (as my mother says) 'be careful where you dip your wick'

Verse 20 “And whosoever lieth carnally with a woman, that is a bondmaid, betrothed to an husband, and not at all redeemed, nor freedom given her; she shall be scourged; they shall not be put to death, because she was not free.”

No tats

Verse 28 “Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD.”

No pimping yo daughter

Verse 29 “Do not prostitute thy daughter, to cause her to be a whore; lest the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness.”

Don't tarry with tarot, and don't go potty about Potter

Verse 31

“Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God.”

Be nice to strangers

Verse 34 “But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.”

EU standard measures!

Verse 36 “Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall ye have: I am the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt.”

Leviticus 14 to 17: Pure and simply boring

Leviticus 14

Leper goes to priest, who has to

verse 5-6 “And the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water. As for the living bird, he shall take it, and the cedar wood, and the scarlet, and the hyssop, and shall dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water”

Crikey, try getting that prescription filled at your local chemist!

And the priest has to do some lamb killing and burning and tips of right ear and toe of newt eye of frog and all that guff.

And there's a sliding scale if the afflicted be poor:

Verse 21 "And if he be poor, and cannot get so much; then he shall take one lamb for a trespass offering to be waved, to make an atonement for him, and one tenth deal of fine flour mingled with oil for a meat offering, and a log of oil"

And there goes God again, promising real estate

Verse 34 "When ye be come into the land of Canaan, which I give to you for a possession, and I put the plague of leprosy in a house of the land of your possession"

(followed by rules about cleansing and purifying and so forth)

Chapter 15

God tells Moses to tell the Israelites that running sores are unclean. This whole chunk of Leviticus is turning into a running joke, and it's making me sore.

More purity stuff-

Verse 4-7 “Every bed, whereon he lieth that hath the issue, is unclean: and every thing, whereon he sitteth, shall be unclean. And whosoever toucheth his bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. And he that sitteth on any thing whereon he sat that hath the issue shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. And he that toucheth the flesh of him that hath the issue shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.”

Now, a lot of this stuff makes sense, and was useful in the days before a germ theory of contagion. But I ask you

Verse 14 “And on the eighth day he shall take to him two turtledoves, or two young pigeons, and come before the LORD unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and give them unto the priest”

I mean, it's like something out of the Old Testame... oh, yeah, um. never mind.

Ah, and here is the Lewinsky doctrine-

Verse 16-17 “And if any man's seed of copulation go out from him, then he shall wash all his flesh in water, and be unclean until the even. And every garment, and every skin, whereon is the seed of copulation, shall be washed with water, and be unclean until the even.”

And this next bit is sure to be a red rag to the feminists-

Verse 18-19 “And if a woman have an issue, and her issue in her flesh be blood, she shall be put apart seven days: and whosoever toucheth her shall be unclean until the even. And every thing that she lieth upon in her separation shall be unclean: every thing also that she sitteth upon shall be unclean.”

Oh FFS. It's. Menstrual. Blood. Deal. With. It.

Verse 29-30 “And on the eighth day she shall take unto her two turtles, or two young pigeons, and bring them unto the priest, to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And the priest shall offer the one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for her before the LORD for the issue of her uncleanness.”

Chapter 16

Now, we come back to Aaron's dead kids. God gives Moses a bunch of instructions to pass on. Including

Verse 7-10 “And he shall take the two goats, and present them before the LORD at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the LORD, and the other lot for the scapegoat. And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the LORD's lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering. But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the LORD, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness.”

So, no bad thing to be an (e)scapegoat.

Gotta kill a bullock and sprinkle its blood around.

And it goes on. Yea did I create a rod for mine own back when I said I would read this in/for a year.

There must be some way to atone for this sin against common sense?

Verse 33-4 “And he shall make an atonement for the holy sanctuary, and he shall make an atonement for the tabernacle of the congregation, and for the altar, and he shall make an atonement for the priests, and for all the people of the congregation. And this shall be an everlasting statute unto you, to make an atonement for the children of Israel for all their sins once a year. And he did as the LORD commanded Moses.”

Chapter 17

Ah, now the priests are channelling God, demanding their 'cut'. Remember that scene in The Godfather Two about 'dipping your beak'...

Verse 3-4 “What man soever there be of the house of Israel, that killeth an ox, or lamb, or goat, in the camp, or that killeth it out of the camp. And bringeth it not unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, to offer an offering unto the LORD before the tabernacle of the LORD; blood shall be imputed unto that man; he hath shed blood; and that man shall be cut off from among his people”

And No Other Gods. Alright?? How many times do I have to tell you, eh?

Verse 7 “And they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils, after whom they have gone a whoring. This shall be a statute for ever unto them throughout their generations.”

No blood drinking either.

Verse 14 “For it is the life of all flesh; the blood of it is for the life thereof: therefore I said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh: for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof: whosoever eateth it shall be cut off.”

Leviticus 11 to 13: I got you under my skin...

Leviticus 11

God tells Moses what is edible and what ain't.

Verse 20-2: "All fowls that creep, going upon all four, shall be an abomination unto you. Yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth; Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind."

And ooh,germs, germs everywhere! OCD GOD?

Verse 32: "And upon whatsoever any of them, when they are dead, doth fall, it shall be unclean; whether it be any vessel of wood, or raiment, or skin, or sack, whatsoever vessel it be, wherein any work is done, it must be put into water, and it shall be unclean until the even; so it shall be cleansed."

Purity and Danger and all that Mary Douglas stuff...

Leviticus 12

Women are unclean for seven days after giving birth to a boy. After his circumcision-

What's that useless piece of skin at the end of a penis called?
A man...

she's unclean for another 33 days, and shall touch no halloed thing, nor come into the sanctuary.

Since females are obviously inherently yuckier and ickier, after giving birth to a “maid child”, a woman is unclean two weeks, and then a further 66 days.

In either case, burnt offerings are due the prie... sorry, the LORD

Leviticus 13

God does dermatology outpatients clinics...

Verse 2-4 “When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh a rising, a scab, or a bright spot, and it be in the skin of his flesh like the plague of leprosy; then he shall be brought unto Aaron the priest, or unto one of his sons the priests: And the priest shall look on the plague in the skin of the flesh: and when the hair in the plague is turned white, and the plague in sight be deeper than the skin of his flesh, it is a plague of leprosy: and the priest shall look on him, and pronounce him unclean. If the bright spot be white in the skin of his flesh, and in sight be not deeper than the skin, and the hair thereof be not turned white; then the priest shall shut up him that hath the plague seven days.”

Basically, if the priest thinks you've got leprosy,

Verse 21-25 "But if the priest look on it, and, behold, there be no white hairs therein, and if it be not lower than the skin, but be somewhat dark; then the priest shall shut him up seven days: And if it spread much abroad in the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean: it is a plague. But if the bright spot stay in his place, and spread not, it is a burning boil; and the priest shall pronounce him clean. Or if there be any flesh, in the skin whereof there is a hot burning, and the quick flesh that burneth have a white bright spot, somewhat reddish, or white; Then the priest shall look upon it: and, behold, if the hair in the bright spot be turned white, and it be in sight deeper than the skin; it is a leprosy broken out of the burning: wherefore the priest shall pronounce him unclean: it is the plague of leprosy."

- and these versus remind me of an extremely crude diagnostic algorithm- then you'll be treated like an, er, leper.

Verse 45-6 “And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean. All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be.”

But given how clothes are expensive and all, and a proper dry cleaner isn't to be had for a good 3400 years or so, then decontamination is important...

Verse 56-9 “And if the priest look, and, behold, the plague be somewhat dark after the washing of it; then he shall rend it out of the garment, or out of the skin, or out of the warp, or out of the woof: And if it appear still in the garment, either in the warp, or in the woof, or in any thing of skin; it is a spreading plague: thou shalt burn that wherein the plague is with fire. And the garment, either warp, or woof, or whatsoever thing of skin it be, which thou shalt wash, if the plague be departed from them, then it shall be washed the second time, and shall be clean. This is the law of the plague of leprosy in a garment of woollen or linen, either in the warp, or woof, or any thing of skins, to pronounce it clean, or to pronounce it unclean.”

And look, I've gone all this way without making ONE joke about failing driving tests/comments to prostitutes etc etc. You've got to hand it to me...

Leviticus 7 to 10: The calm before the storm

Leviticus 7

More rules about trespass and sin offerings and who gets the leftovers...

Verse 6 "Every male among the priests shall eat thereof: it shall be eaten in the holy place: it is most holy."

So there were female priests? But they weren't in the protein-grubbing gang...

Burn, sprinkle blood, tabernacles. Yawn.

Verse 26 "Moreover ye shall eat no manner of blood, whether it be of fowl or of beast, in any of your dwellings."

Leviticus 8

God gives Moses some get-up instructions for Aaron. Gotta keep up appearances.

Verse 6-7 "And Moses brought Aaron and his sons, and washed them with water. And he put upon him the coat and girded him, with the girdle, and clothed him with the robe, and put the ephod upon him, and he girded him with the curious girdle of the ephod, and bound it unto him therewith. And he put the breastplate upon him: also he put in the breastplaste the Urim and the Thummim."

And they kill a bullock. Annoint, purity, yadder yadder yadder.

Verse 31 "And Moses said unto Aaron and to his sons. Boil the flesh at the door of the tabernacle of the congregationL and there eat it with the bread that is in the basket of consecrations, as I commanded, saying, Aaron and his sons shall eat it."

Leviticus 9

And Aaron sacrfices a bullock, goat and lamb, which the LORD torches

Verse 24 "And thre came a fire out form before th LORD, and consumed upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat which when all the people saw, they shouted and fell on their faces."

Leviticus 10

Aaron's kids get torched by the LORD, and Moses consoles Aaron by saying 'that's how it goes, mate.'

Verse 1-3 "And Nadab and Abihu, he sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer and put fire therein and put incense thereon, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the LORD, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the LORD, and devoured them, and they died before the LORD. Then Moses said unto Aaron, This is tit that the LORD spake, saying I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace."

And the LORD gives some complicated rules for Moses' cronies to follow, which they muddle, and Moses chews out Aaron's kids. Aaron takes up their cause and Moses so 'oh, that's alright then'.

Ah, next chapter gets going with the strange rules Leviticus is known for...

Exodus 32-40: more bloodshed, more gold

OK, I'm even further behind now. Blame the evil three legged cat (I'm sure there must be something in this fat book about casting weird little yowly three-legged things like that out into the wilderness). He killed Marc's computer monitor by throwing up down the back of it, so we're now sharing a computer and on rationed blogging time.
Anyway.
Chapters 32 and 33 recount the tale of the making of the Golden Calf. As if to confirm all the stuff I've been talking about regarding the importance of ritual, the Israelites take a very short time indeed to start freaking out about the fact that Moses has vanished up to the top of Mount Sinai to commune with God, and demand that Aaron makes them something else to worship instead.
Collecting jewellery off them, Aaron takes very little persuading to make a statue of a bull calf, which immediately becomes the new God.
God, who has been showing himself to be a rather insecure and demanding character since at least the beginning of Exodus, and of course on occasions like ordering Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, gets understandably stroppy about this:

“Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them”
(Chapter 32 verse 10)

Moses manages to talk him down a bit, and back down at the bottom of the mountain seems to be happy to go along with some spectacular buck-passing by Aaron (I thought we had major legal precedents established that 'he told me to' was no excuse?):

“And Aaron said, let not the anger of my lord wax hot: thou knowest the people, that they are set on mischief.
For they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before us: for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.”
(Chapter 32 verses 22-23)

Despite this, Aaron gets comprehensively forgiven and reinstated into his God-assigned role as the head of a lineage of priests, while in a typically Biblical bit of understated callousness 3,000 people apparently get butchered for this bit of cow-worship, but this only warrants one very short verse and no real explanation as to why. Bit like the massacre of the people of Shechem or various other non-Israelite groups, who, like the girl in the B movie whose function is just to scream and look terrified, just exist to get minced to show off Israelite power:

“And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.”
(Chapter 32 verse 28)

Yep, that's it.
Having generously forgiven the leadership of this rather hierarchical set-up, God now reinforces his position by ordering the destruction of any other gods who might be knocking around, and yet again all those commandments about rituals get repeated, just in case anyone had forgotten them.
Chapters 35-38 mainly recap in the actual performance the instructions delivered by God to Moses for the making of the Ark of the Covenant, involving lots of gold, silver, brass, shittim wood and purple, red and blue cloth. The level of detail entailed extends to listing the number of tenon joints needed to hold some of the boards together:

“One board had two tenons, equally distant from one another: thus did he make for all the boards of the tabernacle.
...
And forty sockets of silver he made under the twenty boards; two sockets under one board for his two tenons, and two sockets under another board for his two tenons.”
(Chapter 36 verses 22 and 24)

Collecting all the materials for this – all apparently accumulated from the existing wealth of the Israelite people (even though they've been enslaved in Egypt for several generations?), so at least it's recycled. I remember from archaeology classes at uni that one of the types of evidence considered to indicate that a society was hierarchical is the carrying out of large-scale construction projects (Stonehenge, for example), the presence of crafts specialisations (because people doing specialised crafts obviously need someone else to be growing/producing the goods to feed them, since they don't have time to do it themselves, so you need some kind of social system that supports this differentiation) and burials or other accumulations of wealth such as gold jewellery or ritual objects.
Giving little credence to hippy notions of co-operation, it is assumed that the presence of hierarchies and leaderships is necessary to get enough people together at the same time and for long enough to actually build anything of any significant size or value – and although this Ark isn't particularly huge in itself, it does involve major accumulation of wealth and of labour, with all the society's women apparently engaged in weaving the hangings, and its skilled craftsmen (rejoicing in the wonderful names Bezaleel and Aholiab) devoting their time to this effort.


We also get quite a bit about the priests' ephods, which is apparently a word of which there is controversy about the meaning of, but may be some kind of loincloth, or possibly a kind of ritual apron. In this case, they seem to be accompanied with 'curious girdles,' which also sound great but lack specifics as to why they are curious... this for me is one of the joys of the Old Testament and especially the King James Version, that we come up against some bizarre and in some cases totally incomprehensible words and phrases, their exact meanings lost in the mists of time, but their general resonance remaining.
And so the Book of Exodus ends, with the completion of this great creative and ritual work, a social bonding experience between the Israelites who donate their valuables and time to create a symbol of their belief and their identity as a people. And, armed with a growing conviction that they are God's one chosen people, and with a substantial list of laws as to the proper conduct of society, they're ready to head off to the land of Canaan:

“For the cloud of the LORD was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.”
(Chapter 40 verse 38)

Leviticus 5 to 6: The protein-grubbing priest class...

Leviticus 5

And now comes some of the arcane ritual cleansing/purification stuff that Leviticus is (in)famous for.

Verse 2 “Of if a soul touch any unclean thing, whether it be a carcase of an unclean beast, or a carcase of unclean cattle, or the carcase of unclean creeping things, and if it be hidden from him, he also shall be unclean, and guilty.”

So, guilty until proven innocent, and proving yourself innocent isn't easy.

But you can atone for your sins, which is quite Indulgent of the Lord. There's even a sliding scale, and not just for touching the sleeping snake...

Verse 7 “And if he be not able to bring a lamb, then he shall bring for his trespass, which he hath committed, two turtledoves, or two young pigeons, unto the LORD: one for a sing offering, and the other for a burnt offering.”

And the priest will sprinkle and sort out absolution.

Verse 11 “But if be not able to bring two turtledoves, or two young pigeons, then he that sinned shall bring for his offering the tenth part of an ephah of fine flour for a sin offering he shall put no oil upon it, neither shall he put any frankincense thereon: for it is a sin offering.”

Got that?

The priest did-

Verse 13 “... and the remnant shall be the priest's, as a meat offering.”

And there's more sin extortion. It's a nice little protection racket, is this...

Chapter 6

And the LORD has more rules about lying and so on.

And instructions to Aaron about how to dress up for the burnt offering show. And how to get the altar just so...

Verse 13 “The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar: it shall never go out.”

Won't somebody think of the carbon emissions??

Ah, here we go...

Verse 14 "And this is the law of the meat offering: the sons of Aaron shall offer it before the LORD, before the altar. And he shall take of it his handful, of the flour of the meat offering, and of the oil thereof, and all the frankincense which is upon the meat offering, and shall burn it upon the altar for a sweet savour even the memorial of it, unto the LORD.”

And if any is left over, it's given to the widows and orphans, right?

You. Haven't. Been. Paying. Attention. Have you? Hmm? Have you? Admit it.

Verse 16 “And the remainder thereof shall Aaron and his sons eat: with unleavened bread shall it be eaten in the holy place: in the court of the tabernacle of the congregation they shall eat it.”

As Marge Piercy had one of her characters say in the extraordinary novel “Vida”- “Keep naming the enemies. Put faces on where the money goes.” Or in this case, the protein...

Oh, and funny how the LORD locks in this...

Verse 18 “And the males among the children of Aaron shall eat of it. It shall be a statute for ever in your generations concerning the offerings of the LORD made by fire...”

You'd never know it was the priest class writing and regurgitating this shit would you? Nothing self -serving in it at all...

Chapter closes out with more recipes. Jamie Fernly-Ramsay has nothing on this guy.

Oh, and no bloody in the bloody tabernacle, owright?:

Verse 30 “And no sin offering, whereof any of the blood is brought into the tabernacle of the congregation to reconcile withal in the holy place, shall be eaten: it shall be burnt in the fire.”

Leviticus 1 to 4: Sexing the Pigeon

Leviticus1

And the LORD gives Moses some fairly exact(ing) instructions for how (burnt) offerings are to be made to him. Bullocks and sheep must be blemishless males.

The gender-restriction more relaxed for turtledoves and pigeons, possibly cos it's not quite so easy to tell...

Verse 17 “And he shall cleave it with the wings thereof, but shall not divide it asunder: and the priest shall burn it upon the altar, upon the wood that is upon the fire: it is a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD.”

Leviticus 2: Priests snaffle God's leftovers, taxing protein...

And goes on to explain how to get their meat out, and that Aaron and his sons get the left-overs.

(Crafty protein source, as Marvin Harris would point out. Protein. Important stuff, amino disrespect to the notion of offering meat to Bearded Skymen, nosiree...)

Leviticus 3

Verse 2 “And he shall lay his hand upon the head of his offering, and kill it at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation: and Aaron's sons the priests shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar round about.”

Won't someone think of the health and safety implications??

Oh, and how to sacrifice this and that. It really gets my goat.

And here's the kosher kicker:

Verse 17 “It shall be a perpetual statue for your generations throughout all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor blood.”

Leviticus 4

Repetitive instructions on how to kill bullocks to attone for individual and collective sins from positions of ignorance.

And there seems to be a sliding scale for rulers who sin and common folk.

Not much fun being a lamb, I'd say.

Verse 35 “And he shall take away all the fat thereof, as the fat of the lamb is taken away from the sacrifice of the peace offerings: and the priest shall burn there upon the altar, according to the offerings made by fire unto the LORD: and the priest shall make an atonement for his sin that he hath committed, and it shall be forgiven him.”

As befits an oral tradition, there's a lot of repetition in these four books. We skim it so YOU don't have to...

Exodus 24-31: some very, very detailed instructions

I've slightly had my comeuppance here. OK, so I decided to talk about the importance of ritual in my last post. But this section is really going for it – although I suppose if you're setting out details of religious rites that are meant to last for thousands of years it could take a while.
But God has obviously put some very serious thought into exactly how he wants worshipping.
So, after a ceremony to celebrate the fact that the Israelites have been given the Ten Commandments (involving, as usual, some gory sacrifices), Moses heads up to the top of Mount Sinai, and doesn't come down for 40 days.
As far as can be told from chapters 25-31, that 40 days is spent being given intensively detailed instructions on what God wants the Ark of the Covenant to look like. Marc obviously finds the instructions rather OTT and the lists pretty boring, but I quite like some of them.
The descriptions of what the Ark should look like is quite enjoyable to read, with excitingly lush materials:

“And blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair,
And rams' skins dyed red, and badgers' skins, and shittim wood,
Oil for the light, spices for anointing oil, and for sweet incense,
Onyx stones, and stones to be set in the ephod, and in the breastplate”
(Chapter 25 verses 4-7)

It's a bit like reading fat glossy women's magazines, full of celebrities wearing designer labels and wearing fabulous shoes – you wouldn't necessarily want to do it yourself, but it's kind of fun.
The Ark is also to include something called a Mercy Seat, which explains the origins of the Nick Cave song (also covered by Johnny Cash) which I had vaguely wondered about before. It apparently translates better as a seat of grace, which fits with it being where God shall appear.



One question that occurs to me is exactly where all this gold and other expensive trappings are meant to come from, from a people apparently still wandering around in a desert and who only a few chapters back were busy kicking up a fuss over the prospect of dying of thirst.
Not only do we have extensive amounts of gold and gems on the design spec, with chapter 25's long lists of bowls, candlesticks, vessels and other bits of metalware which have to be made with pure gold, but also lots of precious jewels:

“And thou shalt set in it settings of stones, even four rows of stons: the first row shall be a sardius, a topaz, and a carbuncle: this shall be the first row.
And the second row shall be an emerald, a sapphire, and a diamond.
And the third row a ligure, and agate, and an amethyst.
And the fourth row a beryl, and an onyx, and a jasper: they shall be set in gold in their inclosings.”
(chapter 28 verses 17-20)

Many of the cloths have specifically to be purple, which as far as I can remember from my ancient history means that it has to be dyed with extracts from the murex shell, which was fabulously expensive and very much sought after, with major trade routes and conflicts linked to various empires' desire to get their hands on good supplies of it. And we're not just talking the priests' robes here, but also curtains for the temple courtyard which are meant to be 20 cubits in length – which I think is about 30 feet, or 10 metres.
Aaron, Moses' brother, is designated the father of a line of priests, since this is to be a hereditary post – and a rather cushy billet too. As well as getting to wear all that purple, the priest class seems to do rather well out of the massive amount of blood sacrifices ordered, which include large quantities of bullocks, rams and lambs – surely a huge challenge for this desert nomadic people?

“And thou shalt offer every day a bullock for a sin offering for atonement: and thou shalt cleanse the altar, when thou hast made an atonement for it, and thou shalt anoint it, to sanctify it.
Seven days thou shalt make an atonement for the altar, and sanctify it; and it shall be an altar most holy: whatsoever toucheth the altar shall be holy.
Now this is that which thou shalt offer upon the altar; two lambs of the first year day by day continually.
The one lamb thou shalt offer in the morning; and the other lamb thou shalt offer at even:
And with one lamb a tenth deal of flour mingled with the fourth part of an hin of beaten oil; and the fourth part of an hin of wine for a drink offering.”

(Chapter 29 verses 36-40)
But, it needs noting, the priests get to eat a bit of this stuff – that which isn't completely incinerated as burnt offerings – which implies that they're going to have a better diet than a lot of their people.
And, as with events such as the massacre of Shechem and the Tower of Babel, the actual handing over the the stone tablets gets just a brief mention at the end of these very long and details demands for how ritual must be carried out:

“And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.”
(Chapter 31 verse 18)

Exodus 38 to 40: Taber-knackered

Exodus 38

Cripes, I hope this Bezaleel guy got an hourly contract rather than piece rates, cos this job is going on well over time and budget. And I hope he got it in writing...

Verse 1 “And he made the altar of burnt offering of shittim wood: five cubits was the length thereof, and five cubits the breadth thereof: it was foursquare: and three cubits the height thereof”

And he keeps making, verse after verse after verse.

It's almost hypnotic.

Then there's some quantity surveying/cost accounting (verses 24-5)

Exodus 39

And it goes on. And on. Onan onan on. Wankers.

Verse 10 “And they set in it four rows of stones: the first row was sardius, a topaz and a carbuncle: this was the first row.”

And then they get onto the clothes, and make big fashion statements.

Verse 26-7 “A bell and a pomegranate, a bell and a pomegranate, round about the hem of the robe to minister in, as the LORD commanded Moses. And they made coats fo fine linen of woven work for Aaron, and for his sons.”

And finally along comes the quality control guy.

Verse 43 “And Moses did look upon all the work, and behold, they had done it as the LORD had commanded,even so had they done it: and Moses blessed them."

Exodus 40

The LORD gives Moses some presentational and H&S tips on the tabernacle's opening. Moses does as he is told, and the temple becomes the green light/red light for the onward journey:

Verse 35-8 “And Moses was not able to enter into the tent of the congregation, because the cloud abode thereon, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. And when the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the children of Israel went onwards in all their journeys: But if the cloud were not taken up, then they journeyed not till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the LORD was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.”

Ah, so they're on the road again...

And that's that for Exodus, thank the LORD.

Exodus 17-23: rules and regulations

Still wandering in the wilderness in the south of the Sinai peninsula, the Israelites apparently haven't yet learnt the graceful art of gratitude, but continue to get snitty with Moses at every opportunity:

17/2 "Wherefore the people did chide with Moses, and said, Give us water that we may drink. And Moses said unto them, Why chide ye with me? Wherefore do ye tempt the LORD?
17/3 And the people thirsted there for water; and the people murmured against Moses, and said, Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst."

Although having said this, the continued concerns about water are a strong reminder of how important a supply of H2O is, and how lightly we now take it in societies where it is still plentiful, and prefigures the significance it has in the conflicts of the modern Middle East and, increasingly, in Africa and Central Asia.


But in this case, Moses resolves the situation by smiting a rock on Mount Horeb, which flows with water – Mt Horeb apparently being another name for Mt Sinai, where there are little green gardens amongst the desert rocks.
The Israelites also find themselves doing battle with the Amalek, a tribe which appears on a number of occasions in the Bible and was the cause in various bits of Jewish theology of discussions over the justification of a war of total extermination – indeed genocide – against another people:

17/13 "And Joshua discomforted Amalek and his people with the edge of his sword.
17/14 "And the LORD said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven."

On a lighter note (though they would hate me for saying this, probably), the Amalek are also identified with the Nephilim, a reference which only sad old goths like me will get excited about.
In Chapter 18, Moses is reunited with his wife and, apparently more importantly, his father-in-law Jethro, to whom he enthuses about God's “goodness” in delivering the Israelites out of Egypt, which given the horrors God seems to have put them through for the sake of repeatedly winding up Pharaoh seems a bit overstating it.
But Jethro does have one use, in teaching Moses the graceful art of delegation and avoiding burnout:

18/22 "And let them judge the people at all seasons: and it shall be, that every great matter they shall bring unto thee, but every small matter they shall judge : so shall it be easier for thyself, and they shall bear the burden with thee."

I can think of many environmental activists and social entrepreneurs who obviously need to pay closer attention to their Bibles...
Chapter 19 sees God being demanding again, listing the various forms of devotion and worship he's expecting. But he also lays on some fairly spectacular scenes in the runup to the Ten Commandments

19/18 "And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly."

Given that we're in a fairly major volcanic zone, this is the kind of thing that can probably be explained adequately through natural phenomena, but to a few thousand people who live in tents and are vulnerable to dying from cold, heat, thirst and starvation, you can see why it might have quite a psychological impact.
Chapter 20 is basically the Ten Commandments themselves. These largely make pretty good sense in terms of maintaining a stable society, especially in the unstable and difficult situation of roaming around a big desert, where people need to be able to rely on one another and conflicts over each other's truthfulness, light-fingeredness, cattle, oxen, asses, offpsring or spouses could be seriously disruptive.
The comment about:

20/5 "I the LORD thy God a jealous God"

might however be stating the obvious, given many of the pronouncements of the previous dozen chapters.
The ensuing verses dealing with the correct way to perform rituals also emphasise the importance of belief and rites to a people who, by nature of their rather antagonistic tendencies to anyone whose land they turn up in and their wandering nature, need a very strong internal social cohesion. Plenty of anthropology sees ritual (not necessarily the belief behind it) as a form of 'social glue,' bonding people together, and at this point in the Israelites' history this all makes pretty clear sense. The best-known example of this theory is probably Victor Turner's studies of ritual amongst the Ndembu of what was then Northern Rhodesia. See this paper by Mathieu Deflem for a broad discussion of the topic. Chapter 23 also returns to this obsession with ritual, setting out days of rest and feast days.





Chapters 21 to 23 are primarily taken up with a more detailed setting-out of many more rules and laws of Israelite life. A lot of these can be somewhat disturbing in their inequity and sometimes cruelty, but also need to be seen as a product of their time – the problem then arising is when fundamentalist religious believers take them as graven in stone and try to enforce them on other people in a contemporary setting.
So, we have justifications for slavery, with laws which allow for lighter punishments for killing one's slave than for killing a free man (chapter 21 verse 20). Slaveowners can separate husbands and wives or parents and children, and female slaves appear to be subject to sexual use as well as being forced to perform other types of labour. Male ownership of women is also enshrined in rules such as that which states that if a person attacks a pregnant woman and causes her to miscarry, the compensation goes not to her but to her husband – the owner not only of the woman but of her child, born or unborn (chapter 21 verse 22).
The bits about executing cows who kill people is a bit weird, though:

21/28 "If an ox gore a man or woman, that they die: then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten,"

although the practice seems not to have entirely died out in the USA until the 20th century. I'm going to refrain from making stereotypical anti-American comments about that, since I've got a feeling the French might have been doing it to farmyard animals too. But I may be thinking of medieval stuff about executing pigs for being witches...
Many of the rules are also a good illustration of the main concerns of an agrarian society, setting out the punishments and compensations involved if people damage crops, set fires or endanger other people's livestock (chapter 22 verses 5 and 6). There are explicit instructions to let fields lie fallow and rotate crops (chapter 23 verses 10 and 11). Widows and orphans also get special protection, which seems fair enough (22/22).
More scariness pops up though, with some famous lines:

22/18 "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,"

juxtaposed with more weirdness; I mean, I find the idea of bestiality as grim as the next person, but execution does seem a slight over-reaction. But then I'm not a raped sheep:

22/19 "Whosoever lieth with a best shall surely be put to death."

And eating roadkill is, apparently, out, which may disappoint a few strange people who take resource conservation to considerable lengths:

22/31 "...neither shall ye eat any flesh that is torn of beasts in the field; ye shall cast it to the dogs."

And the injunction against 'raising a false report' (23/1) surely means that thousands of tabloid hacks are truly stuffed. But is this a bad thing?



The closing of chapter 23 is, however, another rather chilling outline of the kind of justifications that are used by some Zionists for the right of the modern state of Israel and those even more extreme, violent and disturbing settlers to use any means, up to and including mass murder, to clear the lands of modern Palestine and Israel, possibly extending into Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan, of any person who is not Jewish:

23/31 "And I will set thy bounds from the Red sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river: for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou shalt drive them out before thee.
23/32 Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods.
23/33 They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee sin against me."