Tl;dr: The Holy Bible

Anyway now the Israelites have made their way sorta back towards Moab / Midian?  Which you may recall is where Moses fled after murdering that dude and it’s where his wife is from and stuff.  So now there are a shit ton of Israelites and everyone in Moab is worried about like, how they destroy everyone in their path?  And so the king, Balak, sent some elders to go find someone to put a curse on the Israelites so they wouldn’t like completely destroy Moab too.  

So the guy they go to is named Balaam and he’s like “...Kay.” and God’s like “Hold up there dude I’m gonna need you to put ZERO curses on Israelites on account of they are #blessed.”  So Balaam told the elders he wasn’t gonna do it and the elders told King Balak and Balak was like “OK but what if i give you a bunch of money?”

And Balaam was all “Still no?”  And God was like “Nice.  Actually i do want you to go see Balak, but only do what I tell you.”

So Balaam goes and God changes his mind or something* because he sends an angel to stand in the road and stop them.  But only the donkey sees it, so it panicks and runs off the road.  Balaam beats it (!!) and gets it back on the road but it presses against the wall(??) to get away from the angel and crushes Balaam’s foot, so Balaam beats it again(!!).  Then finally the donkey just lays down on the ground and Balaam is like “What the everloving fuck are you doing”

And then God gives the donkey speech and is like “Why the hell are you beating me?”  And the angel reveals himself to Balaam and is all “Why the hell are you beating your donkey??”  

So Balaam’s like “shit shit sorry” and the angel’s all “It’s okay, but go with Balak’s men and say exactly what I tell you to say.”  So he does.  

*Actually this is probably a failure of the translation from oral storytelling to written storytelling - two different versions of the story melded into one, but the end result is the same:  Balaam goes along to see Balak but can only do/say what God tells him.

So the Israelites are just traveling along on their way to the Promised Land and some Canaanite king attacked them.  They said to God, “Hey just let us win this one and we will totally annihilate their cities!” And God was like “sweet” so they did.

Then after a little while they started grumbling again about how they were thirsty and sick of the manna and quail and stuff, and wouldn’t Moses do something about that please?  But God always sticks up for his man Moses so he sent venomous snakes to bite everyone!  And after a bunch of people died they figured it out and were like “Shit dude we’re sorry about being so whiney, please have God save us!”

And God said to Moses “I mean I’ll do it but i won’t be happy about it.  Have everyone gather up a bunch of bronze, and melt it into the shape of a snake.  And put that snake up on a pole, and then everyone can look up at it and live.”  So Moses did and that, my friends, is what we call

~~Foreshadowing*~~

Then the Israelites did a bunch more wandering.

Then some more people decided not to let the Israelites through their territory so God helped them destroy everyone!  Neat!

*The Christ.  It’s foreshadowing the Christ.  Kind of.  Sorta.  There’s some narrative resonance there anyway.

Miriam died at this place called Kadesh.  Then all the Israelites started whining again because they were running out of water, and the lands they were wandering through didn’t have any decent fruit to eat.  So Moses and Aaron went to God and asked for some help.  God said “OK Fine - take your staff and speak to this rock, right? Ask it real nicely and I’m gonna make water come out of the rock, and everyone should leave you alone.”

But when Moses and Aaron gathered everyone around the rock, they were still all whiney and stuff and pissed Moses off (also like his sister just died, cut a dude some slack), so he hit the rock with his staff instead of asking nicely.  Water still came out of it but God was like “OK well you 100% did not follow directions, and you know how I feel about that.  Now neither of you get to enter the Promised Land either.”

Then they tried to move through some land called Edom, and Moses sent a scout ahead to ask for permission but the King was like “no fuckin way dude” and Moses was all “Please?  We’ll pay for any water our animals drink, we’ll stick to the highway, we’ll play nice!”

So then the King was like “Did I fuckin stutter?” And sent an army.  So Moses was all “Okayyyyy nvm” and they had to go around.  Then they made it to this place called Mount Hor and Aaron died, and they made Eleazar the new high priest and everyone mourned Aaron for 30 days the end.

More Cleanliness rules and so on, including a recipe for making Special Cleansing Water with cow ashes and stuff, and how you should stay away from dead things if at all possible.

So God says to Aaron, “Ok I gave you and your sons the priesthood as a gift, so you have to take care of it!  No one else gets to go in the sanctuary but you, and you’re responsible if anyone misbehaves in or around the tabernacle, got it?”

Also God reiterates that like, the priests get to eat most of the offerings everyone else brings to the Lord, after it has been Appropriately Processed.  And all the other tribes gotta tithe, and those offerings support the Levites whose main job is just to keep up the tabernacle, etc.  But God always gets First Dibs.

God was all “OK now i’m going to put all this whining to rest.  Every tribe get a walking stick and carve your tribe’s leader’s name on it and put them over by the tent where everyone worships and wait a day and then someone’s is gonna sprout and that guy’s in charge.  And wouldn’t you know it but Aaron, leader of the Levites, started growing buds and flowers and shit.  So everyone took their walking sticks back and Aaron put his in the Ark of the Covenant as a reminder to any other people who wanted to whine about Moses.

And “The Israelites said to Moses, ‘We will die! We are lost, we are all lost! Anyone who even comes near the tabernacle of the Lord will die. Are we all going to die?’” Which is pretty #relatable

Name Soup!

Korah son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, and “certain Reubenites”—Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab, and On son of Peleth— started a coup against Moses with 250 of their closest friends.  

Moses was pretty pissed about it, obviously, and was like “Listen ok fine, we’re just gonna do a lil thing here where God’s gonna prove that he’s the one in charge, that I’m not making this shit up.”  And God was like “Okay, well I’m just gonna smoke this entire damn camp”

And Moses was like “God no”

So instead everyone got up in a line and Moses said “Hey so if I’m making it up these guys are going to die a regular old death.  And if God’s calling the shots, they, uh, won’t.”

And then the ground opened up and swallowed up the guys who led the coup and all their family and all their shit.  “They went down alive into the realm of the dead,” which i’m guessing means that they went straight the fuck to hell.

Unsurprisingly, everyone panicked.

Especially when God’s Holy Fire burned all the other people who had joined up for the coup.  #yikes

And God was still super pissed and he made a plague come down on everyone and they were panicking some more so Aaron had to quick do a sacrifice to calm God down, but 14,700 people still died.  It was pretty intense.

God set out the rules for what kinds of offerings would be Acceptable Offerings, once the Israelites got into the Promised Land.  Also there’s a re-iteration of what needs to happen if you sin unintentionally (some offerings), or if you sin intentionally (exile).

And apparently some guy forgot about the Sabbath rules so when a bunch of people caught him chopping wood outside of camp they brought him to Moses who decided that he needed to be stoned to death.  So he was.

Finally, God tacks on a decree that people should put blue tassels on their clothes because they look cool because they will remind the Israelites that they should be following God’s laws.

So all the Israelites were getting pretty restless and they started whining again about how much they missed being enslaved in Egypt, which shows you how little you want them along on your cross-country road trip.  Like, they started to try to stone Moses and Aaron, and some Next-Gen leaders named Joshua and Caleb had to step in.

God got pretty pissed (again) and was like “Fuck you then, I’m gonna kill you all and then you won’t get to go back to Egypt OR into the Promised Land, how do you like that??”

So Moses was all “Whoa, God, slow your roll.  If you kill everyone then it’s gonna get back to the Egyptians and they’re gonna be all like ‘Hah I told you so, your god’s a wimp!’ And do you really want to prove the Egyptians right?”

God was like “yeah good point OK Here’s The Plan!  Everyone who’s 20 years old or older?  Yeah, you don’t get to go into the Promised Land.  You get to live out your days here in No Man’s Land and your kids get to inherit the Good Stuff.  Except for Joshua and Caleb, they’re pretty cool I guess.  So y’all have to wander around in the wilderness for 40 more years until you’re all dead, and then I’ll lead your kids and grandkids into the Promised Land.  And if y’all try to go there without me, y’all gon’ die.  Yahweh out.”

When Moses told all the people this they were like “That super sucks!  Can we at least go out over there to the top of that hill to get a look at it?”

And Moses was like “...No???  You will die??? God said?????” But some went anyway and SURE ENOUGH The Amelekites & the Canaanites who owned that territory and them ‘invading’ and beat the snot out of them. So.  There.

Here’s another one of those chapters with a list of cool names in.  They’re all the guys that Moses chose to go scout out this place called Canaan.  Anyway one from each tribe went, and they brought back some fruit to show off how cool the land was.  When they got back they all talked about how cool Canaan is, and who all lives there and how big the cities are and stuff.  This guy Caleb was like “Let’s TAKE IT!” and almost everyone else was like “Uh, what are you talking about? There’s no way.”  

And they went around telling everyone how huge and scary the Canaanites were, including (completely not true?) things about how the descendants of the Nephilim were living there.  This is the second mention of Nephilim in the Bible and so help me but I am intrigued.  Why is there nothing else in here about them except the (probably false) rumor that they were so giant “We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”  smh

OK so you know how when Moses was young and murderous he ran away from Egypt to the middle of nowhere and that’s where he found his wife?  Welllll apparently that started to not sit too well with Miriam and Aaron, so they started griping about it.  And then we get this glorious line:

3 (Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.)  

Let me remind you that as legend tells it, Moses was the person who wrote down the first 5 books of the Bible.  Yeah.  Like.

Anyway God got pretty upset on Moses’ behalf and told them off, and then Miriam got a Defiling Skin Disease.  Aaron noticed first and was like “Aw come on man!  No hard feelings, right?” and then also this lovely quote:  “Do not let her be like a stillborn infant coming from its mother’s womb with its flesh half eaten away.”  Which.  Ew.

So Moses was like “Yikes God, heal her please!” and God was like “OK but she’s Unclean now so make her sit outside for 7 days.”  So they did.  And then when she was ready to go they packed up and went somewhere new.

Some people were whining and God heard and got mad and burned their tents down. (seriously.)  Moses prayed to God to stop and he did but like, that was pretty harsh.

Plus all the Israelites were getting super sick of just eating Manna (that fancy magic bread from heaven?) all the time, and they were kinda whiny about that too.  God was pissed and Moses was like “Honestly like I’ve had it up to here with these people too.  Why are they even my problem?  Why am I still responsible for them?  Where am I supposed to find meat for them? Just kill me now.”  which ends somewhat melodramatically but you know i can see his point too.  

So God says, “OK find 70 elders and they’ll help share your burden.  Also if these fuckers want meat, I’ll give them meat.  And they’ll eat it - ohhhh, they’ll eat it.” and Moses was like “um” but God was really on a roll here: “Not for just one day, or two days, or five, ten or twenty days, but for a whole month—until it comes out of your nostrils and you loathe it.” (direct quote v19-20)

Moses was all “That is...a lot of meat.”  and God said “BITCH I AM THE LORD WATCH ME DO IT”

And do it he did.  The wind blew all these fuckin quail in from the sea til it covered the land three feet deep, and no one collected less than one and three-quarter tons and you know what this is mythology but I’ll be damned if I’m going to believe that these conversions were done correctly and/or that this is meant to be taken literally because SHIT that is a lot of quail.

Anyway then there was a plague and a bunch of people died so you bet yer britches they stopped whining about meat.

Coordinating six-hundred-thousand-some-odd people is hard work, so God suggested they make some trumpets out of silver and use those to communicate.

Anyway then one day the cloud lifted up, so someone blew the trumpets and everyone started packing up.  They went in order according to what tribe they were in, and there are a lot of names of leaders and stuff in here.  Honestly this book is great if you’re looking for Vaguely Ancient And Mystical Character names istg.  Anyway. Somewhere along the line Moses’ brother-in-law Hobab decided to stick around with him, and this is the first we hear of him. But Moses is like “Hey dude we’re finally going to The Promised Land™!” and Hobab’s like “Kay have fun, I’m going home.”

And Moses was all “Naw, dude, come with us! it’ll be fun!  Plus you’re like, a totally bad-ass wilderness expert? So we need you.”  So Hobab stuck around (presumably? we don’t actually know? but it’s implied) and they kept on truckin’.

It was time to celebrate Passover, which was pretty cool except for there were some people who had been taking care of a dead body, so they were Unclean, and they went to Moses like “um we want to be involved too?  Sitting outside the rest of the camp while everyone else celebrates sound Pretty Uncool.”  So Moses was like “Hang on lemme call up God, see what he says.”

So God says “Yeah fair point well made.  You can celebrate Passover too, but next month.  Anyone else who tries to beg out and not because they’re Unclean, they’re in trouble.  But you guys, yeah, it makes sense.  See ya next month.”  

Also Numbers 9 wants to remind us that that giant cloud that was The Lord Our God sat over the tabernacle, and whenever the cloud lifted, everyone packed up and followed it/its twin Fire Pillar on until it was time to camp again.  

God has Aaron set up the lampstand.  Then all the Levites from 30-49 years old are presented and made ceremonially Clean so they can do all the tabernacle-y work.  They shave their whole bodies, give a bunch of offerings, and then from the age of 30 til age 50 they work, and ta 50 they get to retire.  They can be advisors or whatever but they don’t have to do any actual work.  Pretty sweet gig.

This is an incredibly long chapter detailing the fact that once they got everyone divided up by tribes and clans, and they got the tabernacle all set up just right, every single one of the leaders of the tribes came to bring a big ole’ offering to the Lord.  And it details every last piece of that offering.  Every.  Last.  Piece.

God establishes the Nazirite Order which is basically a bunch of people that vow to be dedicated to God and never cut their hair or eat/drink anything grape related, so no wine, and actually nothing else fermented at all either.  They also aren’t allowed to be around dead bodies, which makes everyone Unclean for a little while but Nazirites vow not to ever become Unclean in that way. Like.  If they do they gotta start their vow all over again which sounds like a real bummer, especially with as unpredictable as the Bronze Age Sinai Peninsula could be.

This chapter is also where that one blessing comes from, the one you probably heard if you’ve ever been to church?

The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious unto you. The Lord look on you with his favor, and give you peace.*

*Pick your translation