Numbers

From RationalWiki

Numbers is the fourth book in the Pentateuch. The name of the book comes from the part where Moses is commanded by the LORD to count the Israelites in the desert who can bear arms (there are 603,550 Israelites who are fit for military duty, which means that Moses spent a helluva lot of time counting people). Interestingly, the book is not called "Counting".

“	ONE...Israelite who can bear arms! Ah, ah, ah! TWO...Israelites who can bear arms! Ah, ah, ah!	”
—The Count, Sesame Street

The book starts out with Moses and the Israelites wandering through the desert, having escaped Egypt some time before. For some reason, God liked the Tribe of Levi (not the jeans) more than the other tribes, and told Moses to assign them special duties in the Tabernacle. After this, God sends a plague which destroys 14,700 Israelites.

Somewhere along the 40-year march, some Israelites get thirsty. Being in a desert with 603,550 thirsty Jews probably would not have been a fun experience, and Moses realized that pretty quickly. In quite possibly the greatest piece of LSD-induced writing ever made, God tells Moses to speak to a rock. Moses refuses, and hits the Rock instead. God gets mad, and tells Moses that he won't enter Canaan.

Now is as good a time as ever to wonder how God talked to Moses. One would like to think that God boomed a commanding voice from the Heavens, but that would defeat the purpose of Moses being "special" in his ability to talk to God. If God appeared as a voice inside Moses' head, then he would be a crazy senile old person who got locked up because they heard "voices". We know that he once talked to Moses via a "Burning Bush" (how Moses deciphered a message from flame is not known, but it is obvious that Moses must have been a time-traveling superspy, like Altaïr from Assassin's Creed). However, a burning bush would be impractical for the frequent conversations that Moses had with God, especially because Bushes were scarce in the desert (in 2007, however, "Bush"es can be found in the desert a few times every year, visiting the soldiers of ~~The USA~~ God's Kingdom fighting the infidels). A lot of burning bushes would also create smog in the air, and give some the Israelites emphysema, but that isn't mentioned. The bushes would also make nice smoke beacons for the Egyptians to follow, which is a bit counterproductive to the plan of an all-knowing God to escape the Egyptians.

Numbers chapter 5 includes a how-to guide to performing abortions. The instructions are rather woo based as they rely on an herbal bitter-water concoction that has the mystical ability to distinguish between a pregnancy occurring within a marriage and a pregnancy resulting from adultery or fornication. This priestly abortion method purportedly only works if the woman got pregnant out of wedlock, according to Numbers 5. Nonetheless, it's a fun chapter to pull out and beat over the heads of pro-lifers.

[edit] Numbers fun

The book of Numbers was written by Moses. In chapter 12 verse 3, he wrote: Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth. If Moses were alive today he would be a ghost-writer for politicians seeking the White House. (Given he can open up the earth to swallow people with the chasm^[1], he really should seek to become the ~~supreme ruler~~ ~~eternal emperor~~ president instead of being a mere ghost writer.)

Intersestingly enough, the book of Numbers talks nothing about number theory or sequence of integers