An atheist riffs on the Bible (New International Version): Exodus 23

Regular paragraphs are the verses as written in the Bible.
Indented italicized paragraphs feature my comments on the previous paragraph.
Note that I might appear especially nitpicky and I know that some of these verses are not taken literally by everybody; I'm just having some fun basically.
Why the New International Version or NIV? Why not? The Bible has already been translated countless times before and I can't read or speak the original languages in which it was written, which is why it is stupid in the first place to assume that a divine being would communicate with us through a book.

New International Version

Exodus 23

Laws of Justice and Mercy

¹ "Do not spread false reports. Do not help a wicked man by being a malicious witness.

So this is definitely a "don't lie" commandment (by the way, lots of commandments to follow for people that God himself recognizes as weak and evil). How many good men and prophets have lied so far? Just about every single one of them from the very beginning of the book, including Jacob who was basically rewarded for lying. I mean Moses himself is alive right at this point in the book, receiving these laws because people lied for him at his birth.

² "Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, ³ and do not show favoritism to a poor man in his lawsuit.

Wow that's good advice (though it is basically "don't lie" once again). Now follow this advice to the rule and don't follow this book just because so many people choose it, if you know it's wrong.

⁴ "If you come across your enemy's ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to take it back to him. ⁵ If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help him with it.

That's one case of pre-Jesus compassion, which is kinda odd considering how evil the LORD has been until then. Anyway, helping your enemy is not always a good idea and it should not be a commandment, but it's not bad advice per se.

⁶ "Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits. ⁷ Have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put an innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty.

How about not letting them put the innocent to death. Why would you let them go so far without doing anything? But basically once again not bad advice; the LORD should follow his own advices, because if we take Pharaoh's case for instance, he was hardening his hearth artificially so that he could make an "innocent" man suffer in the end. (Well not innocent, but not guilty of everything.)

⁸ "Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and twists the words of the righteous.

Well well well, the LORD has been giving a couple of good advices so far in this chapter. He might suck at being nice most of the time, but here he knows what he's talking about. Strangely, this is something a human could come to by rational thinking too.

⁹ "Do not oppress an alien; you yourselves know how it feels to be aliens, because you were aliens in Egypt.

He's repeating himself from last chapter, but that's not bad advice. I hate racism and intolerance (making me intolerant of intolerance). I'll repeat what I said earlier though, why not point out here by the way that slavery is wrong for they have known what it was and it was not desirable? Probably because it was written by humans (not a god) and at the time they were not ready to go that far to be kind. After all, owning slaves is helpful for the slave owner. Immoral, but helpful.

Sabbath Laws

¹⁰ "For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, ¹¹ but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what they leave. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove.

That's when he starts to give bad advice, when he's doing these symbolic unexplained things, obsessing with the number 7 for some arbitrary reason and forcing people to do something without a reason. I mean I just don't get why you should ALWAYS do that each 7 years, why not give something to the poor from time to time or find another solution, but not this absolute commandment.

¹² "Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest and the slave born in your household, and the alien as well, may be refreshed.

That looks like a good reason. I'm opposed to forcing people to not work on a particular day of the week, but I agree that everyone should be granted the right to rest from time to time (by the way, please God say don't own a slave). It's something we tend to agree on and it's not a god-given right by any means. We just like it that way and someone can rationalize in a work environment for example that the employee will work better if he gets to rest one day a week and it's better for a company or something like that. In fact 2 days of rest a week are given where I live.

¹³ "Be careful to do everything I have said to you. Do not invoke the names of other gods; do not let them be heard on your lips.

OK that one is particularly bad. Be a robot, follow my authority, you don't need a reason other than I made you bitch! And why would people invoke the names of other gods if there's just one God? I guess it's not that clear to people or maybe there really were other gods. Of course I don't believe in any of these, so... And I hate thought crime once again. I said earlier that God could punish thought crime in the case of murderers or people about to do bad things, because he absolutely knows they're really going to act on their thoughts, but just saying the names of other gods, I don't see how that's so bad and deserves punishment.

The Three Annual Festivals

¹⁴ "Three times a year you are to celebrate a festival to me.

Oh, not seven? The whole concept of this perfect being who still has needs is just ridiculous.

¹⁵ "Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread; for seven days eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you. Do this at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in that month you came out of Egypt.
"No one is to appear before me empty-handed.

This is purely symbolic. The only reason I can see behind this is not that a real God asked for it. It's that God really doesn't exist and a human wrote this passage so that the idea would still be implemented in people's heads. Even if something doesn't exist, if you're forced to worship it three times a year it might become natural and you might assume there's a reason for your actions, so a God must exist. Of course I can't say that's the case for sure, but it's not impossible and it certainly makes more sense than a perfect being with needs.

¹⁶ "Celebrate the Feast of Harvest with the firstfruits of the crops you sow in your field.
"Celebrate the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in your crops from the field.

But I can't argue too much with celebration, because there's nothing bad about celebrating. It's even better when you're celebrating something true or a good concept like it's good to be alive, it's good to spend time with people you like, things like that.

¹⁷ "Three times a year all the men are to appear before the Sovereign LORD.

So I can actually meet the guy? Because I'm a man, so he has no reasons not to show himself to me according to this verse. I should see him three times a year. Never saw him before though, strange... I'd like to know what this meeting is about too, but somewhat I've been excluded for the past 23 years. Hmm, I'm not circumcised, maybe that's the problem.

¹⁸ "Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast.
"The fat of my festival offerings must not be kept until morning.

I'm beginning to think God is some kind of monster with a strange digestive system or some severe allergies.

¹⁹ "Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God.
"Do not cook a young goat in its mother's milk.

"Do not cook a young goat in its mother's milk.": WTF¹⁰

God's Angel to Prepare the Way

²⁰ "See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. ²¹ Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him. ²² If you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you. ²³ My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out. ²⁴ Do not bow down before their gods or worship them or follow their practices. You must demolish them and break their sacred stones to pieces. ²⁵ Worship the LORD your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you, ²⁶ and none will miscarry or be barren in your land. I will give you a full life span.

"Do not bow down before their gods or worship them or follow their practices. You must demolish them and break their sacred stones to pieces.": OK, nobody will disagree with me on this one. This is the Jewish version of "kill the infidels". "I will take away sickness from among you, and none will miscarry or be barren in your land. I will give you a full life span.": another promise he never kept. I mean no matter how devout you are to this God, you can get sick at any time, die at any age and there are good sterile religious people for sure.

²⁷ "I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn their backs and run. ²⁸ I will send the hornet ahead of you to drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way. ²⁹ But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you. ³⁰ Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land.

OK so God can do anything and drive the enemies away, but he couldn't help his people take care of the wild animals? This looks more to me like a natural fight then. Doing it slow, preparing your attack and an army before successfully taking possession of the land. I'm sure they attributed their victory to God afterwards, but this verse stills looks just like an excuse for explaining why God couldn't do magic basically and everything seems so natural in their process of taking possession of a territory.

³¹ "I will establish your borders from the Red Sea ^[a] to the Sea of the Philistines, ^[b] and from the desert to the River. ^[c] I will hand over to you the people who live in the land and you will drive them out before you. ³² Do not make a covenant with them or with their gods. ³³ Do not let them live in your land, or they will cause you to sin against me, because the worship of their gods will certainly be a snare to you."

You know what, if what these other people are worshipping and what they're doing is so tempting, maybe these people following the LORD are on the wrong side. Maybe they just picked up the most boring God of them all (because I'm sure this book is written implying there are lots of gods, not just one). Anyway, real beliefs should survive scrutiny and exposure to bad stuff. I mean I can't make you an atheist if you're sure your beliefs are true, can I? And it's not like God isn't tempting humans with all kinds of shit to sin all the time according to his version of what a sin is. He's the guy who put ignorant beings in a garden with a beautiful tree they were not allowed to eat of its fruits.

Footnotes:

a. Exodus 23:31 Hebrew Yam Suph; that is, Sea of Reeds
b. Exodus 23:31 That is, the Mediterranean
c. Exodus 23:31 That is, the Euphrates