An atheist riffs on the Bible (New International Version): Exodus 24

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 24

The Covenant Confirmed

¹ Then he said to Moses, "Come up to the LORD, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. You are to worship at a distance, ² but Moses alone is to approach the LORD; the others must not come near. And the people may not come up with him."

Sure, they shouldn't come too near or else they'd see how Moses is tricking them. Don't get me wrong, I don't "believe" that Moses tricked his people in this book and invented God (I don't even know for certain that Moses himself existed in the first place), but I'm just having fun since it could certainly be implied in various passages of the story.

³ When Moses went and told the people all the LORD's words and laws, they responded with one voice, "Everything the LORD has said we will do." ⁴ Moses then wrote down everything the LORD had said.
He got up early the next morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain and set up twelve stone pillars representing the twelve tribes of Israel. ⁵ Then he sent young Israelite men, and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls as fellowship offerings ^[a] to the LORD. ⁶ Moses took half of the blood and put it in bowls, and the other half he sprinkled on the altar. ⁷ Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the people. They responded, "We will do everything the LORD has said; we will obey."

Of course, because we're sheeps and it's not like any of these laws don't make sense...

⁸ Moses then took the blood, sprinkled it on the people and said, "This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words."

I sure wouldn't like an old dude to sprinkle blood on me. Seriously it can't be said enough, why does the God of the Bible like blood so much. Blood that he has created himself too, it's not like he needs it from us through these sacrifices.

⁹ Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up ¹⁰ and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of sapphire, ^[b] clear as the sky itself. ¹¹ But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank.

Another instance of God himself, not an angel, the LORD himself appearing in front of several people at the same time. That's all I'm asking for myself if such a being exists. Or maybe only a small group of people are now in on the trick, along with Moses, and spread the lie from there on. Also strange that God himself likes jewels, because he's God and he has everything. We only attribute some value to jewels because they're rare, but we're puny humans.

¹² The LORD said to Moses, "Come up to me on the mountain and stay here, and I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and commands I have written for their instruction."

Why not give him the stones right now? Maybe that's part of the trick, fabricating these false tablets might be hard and take some time, I don't know.

¹³ Then Moses set out with Joshua his aide, and Moses went up on the mountain of God. ¹⁴ He said to the elders, "Wait here for us until we come back to you. Aaron and Hur are with you, and anyone involved in a dispute can go to them."

"Aaron and Hur are with you, and anyone involved in a dispute can go to them.": or if there truly was a benevolent omnipotent God, he could settle the dispute.

¹⁵ When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it, ¹⁶ and the glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the LORD called to Moses from within the cloud. ¹⁷ To the Israelites the glory of the LORD looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain. ¹⁸ Then Moses entered the cloud as he went on up the mountain. And he stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights.

"When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it, and the glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai.": well, the LORD being everywhere from what I'm told, his glory should always be everywhere (including rape scenes and during murders?) "For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the LORD called to Moses from within the cloud.": that's quite a long time for someone to wait doing nothing, in fact waiting to hear a voice out of nowhere, especially for an old man like Moses (I would leave the place in less than an hour if all I could find was smoke). Then again, there's the Bible's obsession with the number 7. "To the Israelites the glory of the LORD looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain.": of course, it's a trick, only a volcano or something like that. I think I said it once before, but I'm going to repeat myself here: I don't believe God was just a volcano, no, but I think people have attributed various natural phenomenons to God in order to explain them with the very limited knowledge they had. "And he stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights.": the LORD has already made Moses wait patiently seven days before he even spoke to him and now 40 more days? Maybe this is all real and for some reason God is not quick to do whatever he needs to do (or Moses is not quick to follow what the LORD tells him, after all he's quite old). Maybe it's just hard to hear him, because we're just humans not made to hear a god clearly and that's why Moses is taking some time. Or maybe Moses is imagining all this stuff and has to wait 40 days to become insane enough to imagine all the crap that's to follow. Or maybe Moses is preparing a false story and false stone tablets and it takes him a while to make sure that everything is believable by his people, not counting that taking some time will certainly make his claims more believable (and maybe he's not that bright himself). Or something else that I can't think of, not excluding the possibility that not only was there no God, but maybe no Moses either and this is just a story book written by a very bad author or authors. Certainly among these possibilities, the ones asserting that all of this stuff is true and what is written here was inspired by God are not very probable if at all possible.

Footnotes:

a. Exodus 24:5 Traditionally peace offerings
b. Exodus 24:10 Or lapis lazuli