An atheist riffs on the Bible (New International Version): Exodus 4

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 4

Signs for Moses

¹ Moses answered, "What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, 'The LORD did not appear to you'?"

That's exactly what I'd do and considering that so many people claim to talk to God regularly, I'd probably be right if I was to not believe a guy who approached me and told me he spoke to the LORD.

² Then the LORD said to him, "What is that in your hand?"
"A staff," he replied.

Hey big guy! You're the ultimate creator of everything that is; I think you know what a staff is.

³ The LORD said, "Throw it on the ground."
Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it. ⁴ Then the LORD said to him, "Reach out your hand and take it by the tail." So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake and it turned back into a staff in his hand. ⁵ "This," said the LORD, "is so that they may believe that the LORD, the God of their fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has appeared to you."

What a weird choice! Considering that a serpent was behind the downfall of humanity, it's strange that God would pick a snake as a way to tell people he was with the guy. (And couldn't he just appear to the people or implant them with the idea that Moses is really a man chosen by the LORD?) If a guy did this trick in front of me, I'd suspect a magic trick of some kind (you've seen what these magicians can do, even if they're fake). If there was no way it was a trick, like no smoke during the trick to hide the staff being replaced by a snake; if I really saw the staff morph in a real snake right in front of my eyes from beginning to end in real time, then I would know that something not explained by science is going on and I would want further investigation on the matter. Maybe it would be real magic, I don't know (all it would be is something not yet explained by science), but it's not a clear message that God exists at all. It's not like the guy appeared right in front of me and created something out of nothing, which he's known to be able to do if he really exists. (Anyway, he knows exactly what I need to believe if he really exists and has the properties people attribute to him, so I'm ready if you're out there.)

⁶ Then the LORD said, "Put your hand inside your cloak." So Moses put his hand into his cloak, and when he took it out, it was leprous, ^[a] like snow.

Strange that God needs to do this trick while the hand is hidden. He works exactly like a real magician, behind your back!

⁷ "Now put it back into your cloak," he said. So Moses put his hand back into his cloak, and when he took it out, it was restored, like the rest of his flesh.

So we have confirmation that God can make you sick and heal you in an instant, at least we know this for skin conditions. Now I'm asking "where are the miracles"? I have some not too severe bad skin condition, nothing I can't live with and I don't really care (it's just skin after all, I'm not feeling sick or dying from it), but still it's not treatable with our current knowledge. I know I'm not a believer, so I wouldn't expect a miracle for myself, but unless the condition is treatable (including very rarely treatable), you won't see anyone recover from it, even if they're the most devout Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists or anything else you might think about. See whywontgodhealamputees.com for a very good example.

⁸ Then the LORD said, "If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first miraculous sign, they may believe the second. ⁹ But if they do not believe these two signs or listen to you, take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground. The water you take from the river will become blood on the ground."

And if they don't believe you after that, then I guess we're fucked! You know, I myself am wondering why God is going with these miracles that most people would most likely associate with the devil. Of course, the devil has not been properly introduced yet. (In all seriousness, God already knows whether they'll accept any sign or not.)

¹⁰ Moses said to the LORD, "O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue."

Seriously though, I was led to believe that Moses was a prophet, I would never have thought for a second he wasn't eloquent. Is God such a poor judge of character?

¹¹ The LORD said to him, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD ? ¹² Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say."

Oh I see, magic. But isn't that going against his free will? Well, I guess God has already done many free will violations so far, so I shouldn't complain. If I was God though, I wouldn't brag too much about making people handicapped, it's just evil and I think (or hope) most people would agree, even believers. My brother is mentally handicapped, from birth; would God brag about that? (Now if I was to answer God's questions, I would say that natural processes are responsible for what you are, with the science to back it up.)

¹³ But Moses said, "O Lord, please send someone else to do it."

He clearly doesn't want to do it, once again pointing out the "you're supposed to have free will, yet you can't go against God's will" dilemma.

¹⁴ Then the LORD's anger burned against Moses and he said, "What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you, and his heart will be glad when he sees you. ¹⁵ You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth; I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do. ¹⁶ He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him. ¹⁷ But take this staff in your hand so you can perform miraculous signs with it."

So much for God saying that he could make Moses a better speaker. Now he's asking Aaron to do it with Moses just relaying God's words. I thought one of the most important prophets of the Abrahamic religions would be less of a shy coward.

Moses Returns to Egypt

¹⁸ Then Moses went back to Jethro his father-in-law and said to him, "Let me go back to my own people in Egypt to see if any of them are still alive."
Jethro said, "Go, and I wish you well."

Wow, Jethro sounds like he doesn't care about Moses' fate too much. I know God is with him, but Jethro probably doesn't know that (well he's a priest, maybe I don't know).

¹⁹ Now the LORD had said to Moses in Midian, "Go back to Egypt, for all the men who wanted to kill you are dead." ²⁰ So Moses took his wife and sons, put them on a donkey and started back to Egypt. And he took the staff of God in his hand.

I did expect something like that anyway. It's not like the LORD would send him in a trap with his enemies still alive. Or would he?

²¹ The LORD said to Moses, "When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. ²² Then say to Pharaoh, 'This is what the LORD says: Israel is my firstborn son, ²³ and I told you, "Let my son go, so he may worship me." But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.' "

"But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.": why would you go ahead and do something like that? "This is what the LORD says: Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, 'Let my son go, so he may worship me.' But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.": Israel as in Jacob? Jacob is the LORD's firstborn? What the fuck!? But beyond all that, let's just examine the evil of that sentence. God will kill Pharaoh's firstborn as a punishment to the guy. I agree it's a punishment and it will work, but what about the firstborn himself? He didn't do anything. If my father kills another man's baby, is that man entitled to killing me? No! Everybody would want this man to be punished and go to jail. We don't consider that to be moral. And the crime that the LORD is accusing Pharaoh of isn't even true to begin with! This is not the same Pharaoh as when Jacob was alive as far as we know and that Pharaoh didn't seem to force Jacob to stay. (I'll just assume that we're talking about something else than Jacob in this verse, but if so, what and why so confusing?)

²⁴ At a lodging place on the way, the LORD met {Moses} ^[b] and was about to kill him. ²⁵ But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son's foreskin and touched {Moses'} feet with it. ^[c] "Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me," she said. ²⁶ So the LORD let him alone. (At that time she said "bridegroom of blood," referring to circumcision.)

I have no words; I don't even know what that was about. Let me try to see what happened. Moses, whom God has just chosen as a prophet to liberate the Hebrews from Egypt, is going back to Egypt, just like the LORD told him to. He stays at some place to rest and for no apparent reason, God wants to kill him. I don't know if anyone saw the LORD coming, but his wife makes a move and cuts off the foreskin on her son's penis, put it on Moses' feet to shield him from the LORD. I think I can explain the shield working because it's part of God's covenant with them (I can't explain why he chose circumcision as part of that covenant though), but I can't explain anything else in this passage. It's one of the strangest things I've ever read and so out-of-context. Did God try to kill Moses BECAUSE his son wasn't circumcised? If so, that's stupid, not what was said in the covenant and the paragraph in its whole is poorly written. It doesn't even seem to be in the right chronological order after God chose Moses personally to represent him.

²⁷ The LORD said to Aaron, "Go into the desert to meet Moses." So he met Moses at the mountain of God and kissed him. ²⁸ Then Moses told Aaron everything the LORD had sent him to say, and also about all the miraculous signs he had commanded him to perform.

If I was in Aaron's shoes, I would be like: "Holy shit, you've gotta show me these tricks NOW!"

²⁹ Moses and Aaron brought together all the elders of the Israelites, ³⁰ and Aaron told them everything the LORD had said to Moses. He also performed the signs before the people, ³¹ and they believed. And when they heard that the LORD was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped.

I'm sure that went unnoticed.

Footnotes:

a. Exodus 4:6 The Hebrew word was used for various diseases affecting the skin-not necessarily leprosy.
b. Exodus 4:24 Or {Moses' son}; Hebrew him
c. Exodus 4:25 Or and drew near {Moses'} feet