Really Terrible Bible Stories vol. 2: Exodus Excerpt – Chapter 15, Part One!

XV

God’s Extensive, Expensive Interior Décor Requirements for Homeless Refugees

(Exodus 25-27)

 

 

The next time someone who considers Exodus to be holy writ snarks at me about gay guys being into interior decorating, I shall have to request they turn to chapters 25 thru 27 in their Holy Bible. God has really put some serious thought into how he wants his living space set up and decorated. I mean, it’s verging on the pathological. It’s not the sort of thing you’d expect the creator of the universe to get hung up on. You’d expect him to DIY if he’s that bloody picky. And even if he chooses to delegate, you’d hope he’d hire an established firm, rather than a ragtag band of freed slaves lost in the desert. But no. He’s got some really detailed requirements, and he expects the Israelites to fulfill them.

He starts by demanding people bring him stuff. See, the all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the universe doesn’t know if you really really truly love him enough unless you give him lots of expensive gifts. But, y’know, only if you really want to. Not like he’d withhold his favor from you if you didn’t, or anything like that.

Oh, wait. Yes he would.

Anyway, God wants stuff for the tabernacle he’s been dreaming of. Sure, he could create it himself. Don’t be ridiculous! Of course he could! He’s absolutely not imaginary at all, and he totally did make the earth, heavens, and everything else in existence in six days. This tabernacle project would take him maybe a few minutes in the morning, tops. But then it wouldn’t be special. (Ex. 25:1-2)

So he tells Moses to ask the people for their (completely voluntary!) offerings of:

  • Gold, silver, and brass.*
  • Blue, purple, and scarlet yarns, and fine linen.
  • Goats’ hair.
  • Tanned rams’ skins (dyed red) and badgers’ skins
  • Shittim wood.
  • Lamp oil, spices for said lamp oil, and sweet incense.
  • Onyx and gemstones for the priest’s fancy breastplate and the ephod. (Ex. 25:3-7)

Next, God says what they should do with all these (completely voluntary!) expensive offerings: the all-powerful creator of the universe needs a bunch of nomads to make him a very heavy large box to live in, plus a bunch of ornate furniture, all of which they’re going to have to pack up and carry all over the desert. (Ex. 25:8)

God’s obviously put a lot of thought into his dream mobile home. He wants it to be built from fancy wood, and plastered with gold inside and out. Also, he wants a gold cover on it. He wants the hardware, like the rings for the carrying poles, to be made of gold, too, which is shiny but hardly practical. The carrying poles must also be gilded, because why be practical when you can be ostentatious? And, just to give you an idea of how micro-managey God is, he makes it clear that the poles are never to be removed from the rings. Why? Because God says so, that’s why. (Ex. 25:9-17)

After giving minute instructions about the beaten-gold cherubim he wants places on the Ark, as if it wasn’t going to be hard enough to carry around already, God then tells Moses he wants a table. Not like a Shaker table or a modern, simple Swedish design or anything nice like that. No, he wants a baroque dining table made of some of the most expensive wood available, acquired from a tree covered in thorns. Then he wants it slathered in gold. And he wants solid gold plates, cups, and bowls for it. Apparently, it’s supposed to always be set, because God wants the shewbread (bread of the Presence) to always be on the table. This will make carrying it around with its gilded poles tricky. (Ex. 25:18-30)

In addition to all that other opulent stuff, God wants a pure gold lamp stand. He’s really put a lot of thought into this thing. He insists it be made of one piece of hammered gold, and it’s got to have six branches with eighteen almond-blossom shaped cups, plus four more cups for the center stem, and he wants an almond bud underneath each pair of branches where they meet the stand. There has to be seven lamps made for this thing, plus solid gold lamp trays and snuffers. The whole shebang is supposed to weigh around 75-110 pounds. Imagine having to carry a 110lb lamp stand around the desert for 40 years. (Ex. 25:30-40)

All the Israelites must have “borrowed” a heck of a lot of jewelry from their Egyptian neighbors before running off, is all I’m saying.

To be continued…

Image is the cover for Really Terrible Bible Stories vol. 2: Exodus. The painting is Charles Sprague Pearce's Lamentations over the Death of the First-Born of Egypt, showing an Egyptian man and woman weeping over the coffin of their infant.

Really Terrible Bible Stories vol. 2: Exodus Coming Soon!

Really Terrible Bible Stories vol. I: Genesis is now available at Amazon! Worldwide, even! Pick up your copy today.

 

 

*Bronze according to the New Revised Standard Version. But I’m pretty sure God wouldn’t go with anything quite so elegant.

Fine leather. Hopefully, God didn’t mean actual badgers, as there weren’t any in Egypt or the Sinai.

Acacia. But feel free to shout “Shittim!” in church. It’s biblical!

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Really Terrible Bible Stories vol. 2: Exodus Excerpt – Chapter 15, Part One!
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5 thoughts on “Really Terrible Bible Stories vol. 2: Exodus Excerpt – Chapter 15, Part One!

  1. 1

    The interior of Mormon temples, at least the ones built before about 1990, have a decor inspired by this kind of bilge. (I know this largely from pre-dedication visits and surreptitious pics taken by others; I left young enough that I had only been through the “baptisms for the dead” crap, and none of the important ceremonies.) But they prefer brass to gold, mostly.

  2. rq
    3

    God really has terrible taste in decorating. Ugh.
    Reminds me of this house we looked at (online) back when we were still in the market. It was going for something pretty impressive for here, and the interior was pretty much every ostentatious thing you could imagine (marble staircase, Greek-imitation statues, gilding, curlicues, etc.) thrown together into one giant mess that was supposed to scream ‘Impressively rich!’ but instead was moaning something about ‘Scarily tacky!’

  3. 5

    He wants the hardware, like the rings for the carrying poles, to be made of gold, too, which is shiny but hardly practical. The carrying poles must also be gilded, because why be practical when you can be ostentatious?

    So that’s made of gold and gilded with gold as well? As well as being hellishly (heavenishly) expensive, gold is also one of the heavier metals weight~wise -weighing more than frex lead. Plus its deforms pretty easily being fairly malleable so .. how heavy is this whole ark contraption again and how likely is it that those golden poles with extra gold coating will actually stand up to the strain of carrying all that weight again?

    (Sadly such scientific practicalities also seem to rule out in the Golden Condor in the old 80’s ‘Mysterious Cities of Gold cartoon.)

    No, he wants a baroque dining table made of some of the most expensive wood available, acquired from a tree covered in thorns.

    /Botantical pedantry nitpick. Not all acacia species have thorns – locally most of ours (Eg. Acacia pycnantha “Golden wattle”, A. melanoxylon “Blackwood”, A. retinoides “Swamp wattle”, etc) don’t although some (Acacia paradoxa “Kangaroo thorn”, Acacia verticillata “Prickly Moses”*, Acacia rhigiophylla “Dagger-leaved wattle”, etc .. ) do &/or are prickly with sharp pointed or edged leaves. Not sure whether all varieties of African and South-West Asian (?) acacias are similarly variable in thorniness or not – would need to research and know more about the individual species and which one(s) was actually the specific Shittim species.

    * Yes, really :

    http://www.anbg.gov.au/acacia/species/A-verticillata.html

    (Phyllodes = “leaves” – technically modified leaf stalks / petioles.)

    No, I don’t know what the reason for the second part of that name is!

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