by Farrell Till
The writer(s) of the Pentateuch apparently could not see the absurdities in many of the scenarios presented in the stories of the Israelite exodus from Egypt and subsequent wanderings in the Sinai wilderness. Where, for example, did the people find water and grazing land for the huge flocks and herds (Ex. 12:38; 17:3; Num. 32:1; Deut. 3:19) that they had with them? How did just three priests (Ex. 28:1; Lev. 10:1-7) manage to officiate at all of the daily sacrifices and then carry all of the offal remains out of the camp (Lev. 4:7-12,21; 9:8-11; 16:23-27; Num. 19:1-7) for disposal by burning? Biblicists apparently don't wonder about problems such as these, just as the biblical writers seemed unaware of them.
There is, however, an example of a logistical absurdity that the biblical writer was apparently aware of, and so he posited an explanation that was itself another absurdity. Because the people were terrified by the report of giants in the land of Canaan, Yahweh decreed that all adults, except for Joshua and Caleb, would have to wander in the wilderness until they were dead; then those who had been children at the time of this incident would be allowed to enter the promised land (Num. 14:26-35; Dt. 1:34-39). Although people routinely lived longer than a hundred years at this time (Gen. 50:26; Ex. 6:16-20; Num. 33:38-39; Deut. 34:7; Josh. 24:29), for some reason probably known only to the inscrutable Yahweh, all of the Israelites who had not been minors at the time of the spies' report of giants in the land of Canaan died after only 40 years of wandering in the wilderness (Num. 14:33; Deut. 2:7). All the people, then, who had been in their twenties at the time died, for some reason, before or during their sixties.
The scenario of millions of people wandering in the desert for 40 years posed the problem of clothing. Unless the people dressed in animal skins (left over from the sacrifices) like cavemen, where did they obtain the materials for clothing and shoes for a period of 40 years? Well, the writer of Deuteronomy addressed that matter: "I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes are not waxed old upon you, and your shoe is not waxed old upon your foot" (Dt. 29:5).
So there is the explanation. Yahweh providentially kept the clothes and shoes from aging. There is a problem with the explanation, however. As the wilderness-wandering tales were spun, all Israelite adults, except Joshua and Caleb, died in the desert for their disobedience, and only the children were allowed to grow up and enter Canaan. So how could adults have worn the same clothing they had worn as children, even if Yahweh did protect it from rotting? Anyone who has reared children knows that they will often outgrown perfectly good clothes and shoes, which have to be replaced with larger sizes, so how exactly did Yahweh solve this problem?
Oh, I know! I know! God can do anything, so in addition to protecting the clothes from rotting, he also caused them to grow with the children. As for the shoes, he handled that the opposite way: he kept the children's feet from growing. I am not kidding. This is exactly what the inspired, inerrant word of God claims that Moses said in a speech after the 40 years of wandering were over: "The clothes on your back did not wear out and your feet did not swell" (Deut. 8:4). In praising Yahweh for the providential protection of his people from the time of the exodus, Ezra, a leader of the Judeans who returned to Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity, made the same remarkable claim: "Forty years you sustained them in the wilderness so that they lacked nothing; their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell" (Neh. 9:21).
How stupid of me for taking so long to figure this out! God, who can do anything logically possible to do, made the children's clothes grow with their bodies, but he kept their feet the same size for forty years so that someone who was only, say, two years old when the 40-year curse was pronounced on the rebellious adults later went into Canaan with feet that were still the same size. How he/she was able to maintain balance while walking is anyone's guess, but I suppose the omnipotent Yahweh somehow took care of that problem too.
Yes, I'm sure that's the answer. God did it. That is always a convenient way to explain any absurdity in the Bible.
No comments:
Post a Comment