An atheist riffs on the Bible (New International Version): Exodus 3

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 3

Moses and the Burning Bush

¹ Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. ² There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. ³ So Moses thought, "I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up."

"Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.": I think the book is not even trying anymore. No, in fact it must be trying to be so bad, because you can't mess up something like that by accident. In the last chapter, just before this one, it was Reuel that was the priest of Midian and father-in-law to Moses, not Jethro. Might it be that he has several names? Maybe, maybe not, we'll just never know. I'm not going to make a study each time something like that happens, like with Anah in the book of Genesis.

⁴ When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, "Moses! Moses!"
And Moses said, "Here I am."

Bah, nothing special. I can replicate the exact same thing after consuming some types of shrooms, the freak out. It's funny from an outsider's look though, looking at Moses talking to a bush and wondering "What the hell?"

⁵ "Do not come any closer," God said. "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground." ⁶ Then he said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

So is looking at God a bad thing? He's the one who appeared to you after all and your ancestors did see him without expressing shame or fear (well they did show fear, but not in the form of hiding, rather obeying everything he said fearing that he'd do something bad to them).

⁷ The LORD said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. ⁸ So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. ⁹ And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. ¹⁰ So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt."

Whys is it that God is always so useless? First, he lets his people (thought he was for everybody) suffer for a long period without doing anything, unlike he promised. Then when he decides to do something about it, he asks a third party to do it.

¹¹ But Moses said to God, "Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?"

After all, Moses has been some kind of coward so far and he would be risking his life by going back to Egypt. Seems to me that God is not picking the best suited candidate for the task.

¹² And God said, "I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you ^[a] will worship God on this mountain."

Like that's going to help. And worshipping God on a mountain is not necessarily a sign that it was he who sent him, is it? (I mean, George Bush worshipped God, yet he was a terrible president that didn't seem to get a lot of holy help, not that there's such a thing).

¹³ Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?"

Why would they ask that? Nobody asked that so far. And if there's truly only one god, then just God is fine. Most importantly, if Moses himself would be wondering that, then how come they'd know that?

¹⁴ God said to Moses, "I am who I am . ^[b] This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.' "

Wow, what a name! (I guess everybody in the Bible is named for strange things and situations, including God himself.) His name is like that's so because I said so.

¹⁵ God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, 'The LORD, ^[c] the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.' This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.

So the LORD would probably be the equivalent for "I am" according to the footnotes. Everybody called him the LORD; I just assumed it was a title, not a proper name. But this name is commonly known among Hebrews, isn't it, so it's not a proof of anything on Moses' part. What's funny to me is that here, God predicts that he will be known by that name every generation to come, yet it's not the most common name by which he's known. (God, Jesus, Jehovah, Yahweh, Love, Heavenly Father or just Father are all common names by which people refer to this god. LORD is certainly one of them, probably most common than some of the names I just mentioned, but still God isn't known exclusively or most commonly by that name.)

¹⁶ "Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, 'The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—appeared to me and said: I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. ¹⁷ And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—a land flowing with milk and honey.'

Milk and honey? Sign me up!

¹⁸ "The elders of Israel will listen to you. Then you and the elders are to go to the king of Egypt and say to him, 'The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Let us take a three-day journey into the desert to offer sacrifices to the LORD our God.' ¹⁹ But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him. ²⁰ So I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonders that I will perform among them. After that, he will let you go.

At least God has some common sense here, but like I said before, he's God. If he wants the Israelites to have good lives not living under oppression, he can just instantly resolve everything with no problem.

²¹ "And I will make the Egyptians favorably disposed toward this people, so that when you leave you will not go empty-handed. ²² Every woman is to ask her neighbor and any woman living in her house for articles of silver and gold and for clothing, which you will put on your sons and daughters. And so you will plunder the Egyptians."

There has been stealing before in the Bible, but it was usually the result of a war where people were dead and left things behind. Here, God asks his own people to clearly steal from a direct divine order, breaking one of the popular commandments in the beloved list he himself gives later.

Footnotes:

a. Exodus 3:12 The Hebrew is plural.
b. Exodus 3:14 Or I will be what I will be
c. Exodus 3:15 The Hebrew for LORD sounds like and may be derived from the Hebrew for I am in verse 14.