The Gist - Read the Bible, like, Really Quick

The people told Moses and Aaron that this whole situation sucked and they'd have been better off dying in Egypt or in the wilderness on the way to... to not those places. Josh and Caleb spoke up and said that the land was awesome and if God was happy with them, he'd lead them into it, waxing poetic about how it flows with milk and honey and not mentioning who has to clean it all up or whether anyone has allergies. They instructed the people to trust in God and not worry about or be afraid of their enemies because "we will devour them" ( yeah, it's actually there. 14-9 ). "We could eat all this milk and honey or we could flippantly talk about cannibalism re: the giant people who have a vested interest in protecting their land from our invasion." The people were afraid because they were talking about going head-to-head with giants with a "don't worry about it" attitude, which is widely perceived even now to be fantastically stupid.

God told Moses he was gonna give the land of Canaan to the Israelites. "Y'all should explore it," continued the LAWD.  "Send a leader from each of the twelve tribes." So Moses sent out twelve dudes to explore Canaan.  They all had names and fathers, and if you're interested in that, grab yourself a Reg'lar Ol' Bible and check out verses 4-16.  ...Or just...  here: One of these dudes had a dad basically named Suzie.  Let's all go back in time and give Gaddi a wedgie, shall we?  For really, really old time's sake? Moses instructed the explorers to check out the land and find strenghts and weaknesses of the people there, how many there were, what their towns were like, whether they were fortified--the typical stuff you do when you have to assess whether or not the currently-occupied land God gave you was good enough for you or if it was a fixer-upper. This kind of thing would resurface now and again throughout history. Image source:  htt

Moses married a Cushite and Aaron and Miriam weren't cool with this and started to doubt his authority. Taking a line right out of Weird Al's "Amish Paradise," it is noted in verse 3 of this chapter that Moses "was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth." Seriously,  check it out .  Totally says it. The LAWD called all three of 'em out of the tent for the pre-Jesus equivalent of a come-to-Jesus meeting, which was a cloud column in front of the tent yelling at Aaron and Miriam. "I hereby call a Come-to-Cumulus meeting to order.  Y'all done screwed up again." "When y'all have a prophet, I talk to him in dreams and visions.  But Moses is so righteous that I just flat-out talk to him face-to-face.  Dude knows me.  So y'all need to show some respect." God left and Miriam and Aaron were ashamed.  As a result of her doubting Moses's authority, Miriam developed leprosy, so Aaron aske

Some of the people started complaining about how hard their lives were, so God whipped some fire around their camp and killed off a few of them in the outskirts in his rage. The remaining people begged Moses to do something to stop the smite-fire and so he prayed and God relented. "Have some perspective.  Yeah, things are hard, but you could be ON FIRE!!!" The non-Israelites among them started getting homesick for Egypt, which made the Israelites recall the awesome food they had to eat in Egypt and how they're getting a little bored with this "manna" stuff. Manna, manna, manna, manna, manna, manna, manna, manna, BATMANNNNN(A) Moses heard them whining and vented at God, who was getting pissed again.  "Why are you treating me like crap?  What did I ever do to you that I have to take on all these whining jerks?  I ain't they momma!  And now they want meat.  How am I supposed to get them meat?!*  If you're gonna keep treating me like this, jus

God told Moses to make two silver trumpets for calling the community together and setting out camp.  God and Moses worked out what the trumpet blast signals meant and explained it to the sons of Aaron, as they would be the ones using the trumpets. "Silver trumpets on bass drums.  So metal.  Yet  so not metal. " So anyway, they all left Sinai and set out for the Paran desert.  Moses talked to some dude named Hobab about staying with the Israelites, 'cause Hobab had some experience hangin' out in the wilderness and, so far, not dying, which is quite handy.

God told Moses to make sure the Israelites celebrate the Passover when it's time to celebrate the Passover and Moses told 'em that at Sinai, and they agreed to celebrate the Passover when it's time to celebrate the Passover. Some of them, though, weren't able to celebrate on the appointed Passover day because they were unclean (due to some spoilsport corpse).  Moses thought about it and said "lemme talk to the LAWD 'bout this corpse business." "Sorry 'bout the delay of celebration, guys." --corpses God said it's cool, that they can celebrate the Passover next month, presumably after much ritualistic bull-slaughtering and whatnot.  He went on to express his disdain for those who are ceremonially clean and can celebrate Passover when they're supposed to but don't celebrate it and told Moses that any foreigner living with the Israelites must also celebrate Passover whenever they can. A cloud appeared above the Tentmoot and staye

God told Moses to tell Aaron how to arrange the super-awesome golden lamps, and Aaron arranged the lamps correctly lest he end up like his crispified progeny from back in  Leviticus 10 . God then told Moses that the Levites needed to be ceremonially cleansed, which of course meant that they needed to shave their whole bodies, wash their clothes, and be sprinkled with water.  Then, of course, young bulls to the fire and all that, because the young bull supply somehow didn't run out in the last chapter. Fig. B's Levite still needs some slaughtered bulls, but at least the TAP-OUT shirt is gone, which is tremendously pleasing to the LORD. "Bring all the Israelites to the front of the Tentmoot," continued God, "and they'll all lay hands on the Levites.  Aaron will present the Levites to me and I'll give them some homework assignments from that point." "Is that it?  Normally there's more about cattle-slaughter and ripping pigeons apart by the

Moses set up the tabernacle and altar and whatnot and then the leaders of Israel made offerings.  Among these offerings were six carts and twelve oxen, which were dispersed among the Levites 'cause God said "disperse these among the Levites." "When do we get beards, too?" For twelve days, one tribe's leader brought an offering for dedication to the altar.  Lots of plates, bowls, flour, incense, and doomed livestock to be ritualistically murdered at the Divine Butcher Shop.  Moses and Aaron collected the offerings and Moses heard the voice of God speak to him from between the two cherubim above the atonement cover on the Ark of the Covenant. Even after the 12-day wait, the gruesome, ritualistic murder of ridiculous amounts of livestock, the precious cookware, and all the grain and incense for Tentmoot dedication, it still seemed much cheaper and considerably safer than getting an iPhone and hittin' GAWD up on SnapChat.

God told Moses to tell the Israelites how to set themselves apart as Nazarites, or ascetic hairy grapeshunners who denounce the grape and the razor. Ascetic hairy grapeshunner in his natural habitat, which of course is a white plane with a curvy line to indicate a background, as the artist is feeling rather lazy today. "In addition to bein' all hairy and sayin' no to grapes, Nazirites can't go near dead bodies, even if the dead bodies are... or, y'know,  were , family.  In fact, if someone dies in the Nazirite's presence, the Nazirite has to cut off his or her hair after a week and then go on about some more dove/pigeon-slaughtering.  The Nazirite starts over because someone was inconsiderate enough to die while the Nazirite was around.  When the Nazirite's dedication period is over, he or she needs to bring a year-old no-defect male lamb, a perfect year-old ewe lamb, a ram without defect, and grain and drink offerings to the Tentmoot entrance.  The pr

"Cast away the lepers or anyone with a skin disease or who's bleeding, spewing pus, vomiting a whole lot, that kinda thing," commanded God.  "Or if they're otherwise ceremonially unclean, like those weirdos who hang around all weekend frolicking about in corpses." So Moses did. Having read the Bible, I know that I will have to drastically improve my zombification skills.  Still, this was quite fun. "Also," continued the LAWD, "tell the Israelites that anyone who sins against any other person is unfaithful to me, guilty, and must confess the sin, and then make restitution.  Give the measure of restitution to the person you wronged and add 20%, via rules of the Divine Pawn Shop.  If the person you wronged has no close relative to give the restitution to, give it to the priest." God then thought for a moment about other sage wisdom he could impart to his dirt-clod creations.  After a while, he commanded Moses's attention: "Hey!

God commanded Moses and Aaron to number all the other clans and give them jobs according to their clans. Really that's pretty much all this amounts to.  I'm not goin' any deeper here 'cause this is The Gist, not VH1's "Behind the Ol' Israeli Census."  Not my job, folks.  Movin' on.

God told Moses to bring the Levi tribe to Aaron for indefinite priestly assistance.  Nobody but the Levites, Aaron, and his leftover not-murdered-by-God-because-of-the-wrong-incense sons were to approach the Tentmoot or they'd be killed. Just in case you forgot, and because I enjoy this one, here's a reminder of how the all-loving, all-powerful, all-merciful God murdered his very first priest's sons for burning the wrong kind of incense. "In place of my right to take your firstborn of everything," God clarified, "I'm taking all the Levites for holy-place upkeep.  Now go count 'em for me--every male over a month old." So Moses did--they amounted to 22,000.  There were 273 other firstborn Israelites and for some reason they had to be redeemed with money (presumably to resolve the LAWD's debt with his bookie).  So Moses collected about 35 pounds of sanctuary shekels to redeem the 273 excess firstborn and gave the money to Aaron and his le

God told Moses how the Israelites were to encamp around the Tentmoot, and Moses told them, and they did it. No, seriously.  That's all that happens here.

God talked to Moses in the Tentmoot in Sinai and told him: "Take a census of all the Israelite clans and families, listing every man one by one.  Count every man over 20 years old who are able to serve in the army.  One man from each tribe--from the tribes Reuben, Simeon, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Ephraim, Manasseh, Benjamin, Dan, Asher, Gad, and Naphtali--will help you." "The guys helping you are the heads of their clans in Israel," continuethed the LAWD. So Moses and Aaron called the Israelites together and everyone registered their ancestry. For a low monthly fee, you can have a ghost of a chance of figuring out where you came from!   SPOILER ALERT:  It's Earth. The able-bodied army-bound 20+-year-old men from each tribe are listed by number as follows: REUBEN:  46,500 SIMEON:  59,300 GAD:  45,650 JUDAH:  74,600 ISSACHAR:  54,400 ZEBULUN:  57,400 EPHRAIM:  40,500 MANASSEH:  32,200 BENJAMIN:  35,400 DAN:  62,700 ASHER:  41,500 NAPHTALI:  53,400 ----------

God told Moses to tell the Israelites that Matt's really tired of typing the phrase "God told Moses to tell the Israelites." He didn't really.  It probably didn't cross his mind at the time, and if it did, I would be but a lowly scribe, and therefore would be expendable and likely horrifically murdered in the manner of Aaron's sons earlier on for the wrong incense.  Here's a quick reminder of what happened to them, and by which I can only dream to measure the outpouring of wrath upon my person for growing weary of something so trivial: Oh.  Right.  Immolation-death after a divine tantrum 'cause they burned the wrong kind of incense. Moving on, though, he told Moses to tell 'em all this stuff: --- If you wanna make a special vow to dedicate somebody to me by giving the equivalent value, males are worth more than females, and the breakdown is as follows: SOURCE :  God pulled these numbers out of his mystical, shiny ass. You can vow other st