Joshua Anointed
Numbers 25:1 to 35:9
25:1 The Israelites hung out in a place in Moab called Shittim and became infatuated by the Midianite culture there, especially the women. Shittim was modern. Shittim was fancy. Many Israelite men enjoyed hooking up with Midianite girlfriends and they also began to study the sophisticated city folk's worldviews which included the worship of Chemosh. Naturally Yahweh got extremely angry again. Yahweh hates Chemosh and he's not too fond of Midianite women. Luckily, when an Israelite man was seen walking blissfully down the street holding hands with his Midianite girlfriend, a priest skillfully ran them both through with a single spear thrust. The awesome two-fer killing with one thrust was pretty impressive even to the master smiter himself. Yahweh explained that this entertaining event cooled his anger somewhat, so that he only slaughtered 24,000 people that day instead of more. Yahweh said "Kill all these damned Midianites. Kill all of them! Damn how I hate all this damn Chemosh competition crap."
26:2 Yahweh said to Moses "Count up everyone who is able to go to war again." Moses and the priests began counting the more than half million Israelite males over 20 years old. Anyone who complained or otherwise got in the way was quickly swallowed up by the Earth or killed by one of Yahweh's famous fireballs.
Yahweh promised the larger tribes that they would be given a larger piece of the territorial pie eventually, once they had actually conquered some territorial pie.
In other news, some of the tribes built a fire for Yahweh in a strange new way and he freaked out again and killed them over it. Also 23,000 of their relatives were denied land rights or killed outright just for being related to the fire makers. Many of the innocent relatives were simply left behind to starve in the wilderness. Meanwhile Yahweh had been busy working out some of the fine legal details of family inheritance rights and he told Moses to take notes.
27:22 Under Yahweh's instructions, Moses poured a bunch of oil right on Joshua in front of the tribes thus making him a very important person. Being all drippy with oil poured by Moses meant all the people had to obey Joshua. It cemented his position to the tribal armies of which he was already the supreme commander.
Yahweh explained yet again just how many and how often animals should be killed and cooked, and he told just how he liked it done right down to his favorite way to do the gravy. Yahweh made it clear he really liked gravy. The number of such holy barbecues a person had to construct depended on the times he had sinned. Yahweh also gave out new rules regarding the making of promises and contracts.
31:1 Yahweh said to Moses "Tell Joshua to send in 12,000 soldiers and kill all the Midianites." So the army sent a detachment which killed all the Midianite males and brought back captured women and girls and lots of stolen loot. Moses and his priests met them returning and was astonished that they had the gall to bring back some women who were not virgins. Moses told the troops to stop right there and stab those non-virgin sluts to death immediately with their swords. All the fresh young child virgins however, they were ok so they could keep those as sex slaves. About 32,000 little girls were acquired as sex slaves by the Israelites at this time. The rest of the women, the mothers and older sisters and so forth, were ruthlessly murdered on the spot as Moses had commanded.
32:1 The tribes of Gad and Reuban were majorly into cattle ranching and this stolen Midianite land seemed pretty good for that. They suggested this to Moses and asked if they could stay here. Moses said he would agree to them staying and keeping this region for themselves if they would first come along to Canaan and help him conquer the people living there. He said that by doing it that way Yahweh would be less likely to get all upset and kill everyone again. The leaders of the Gad and Reuban tribes agreed with that, but began right away to build cities and fences in the newly stolen land.
33:5 The places that the Israelites camped were many in those 40 years between their stay in Egypt and the time when Aaron died. After that they continued to camp and migrate, camp and migrate, from one place to another. Again and again Yahweh told them that they were to murder all the people in Canaan and destroy all of the churches they found there or be severely punished. Yahweh and Moses spent a lot of time chatting about the geography of Canaan and how it might best be divided up among the tribes.
35:9 Yahweh explained a new system to be established whereby certain cities of refuge would be declared where a man guilty of accidental manslaughter could run to and be safe from retaliation by the victim's relatives so long as he didn't leave that city. The assailant could remain there until he died but if he left he took his chances on revenging relatives. On the other hand, if the high priest of the refuge city died the killer would be allowed to return home and the relatives had to leave him alone. If he left before that he might be killed by the relatives with impunity.
