Immigrants
From CleanPosts
THE IMMIGRANTS
El stood aloof from humanity for centuries before returning to Earth with the angel of El (which was a poor copy of the angel of Belial, constructed by El at Belial's direction). El wanted to see if the human family she had chosen would remember and obey her without the same constant intervention that Belial made with family Gerash on Gorpai.
In 1577 BCE, three hundred and fifty years after Israel and his clan of seventy Immigrants moved to the Nile Delta region of Egypt, Moshe was born to an Immigrant couple in the tribe of Levi.
At this time the Immigrants had grown in population to rival that of Egypt itself, and the Egyptians feared they would someday unite with their enemies and overthrow them. So the Egyptians put all the Immigrants to hard labor to keep them under observation and control.
Moshe was born during a period of time when Pharaoh's anti-Immigrant sentiment was particularly intense. At that time, Pharaoh ordered his subjects to kill every Immigrant boy-child they found, but allow every Immigrant girl-child to live. The parents of Moshe tried to hide him as long as they could, but when that was no longer possible his mother made a little boat and set him gently adrift down the Nile river.
The daughter of Pharaoh found the boat one day while she was swimming in the river, accompanied by her maids who walked along the river bank. She remembered her father's order to kill all the Immigrant boys, but she had compassion on the baby, and forbade that he should be killed.
The sister of Moshe, who had been following the progress of his little boat from the river bank, spoke to the daughter of Pharaoh and offered to find one of the Immigrant women to nurse him. The daughter of Pharaoh agreed, and Moshe was returned into the arms of his own mother until he grew and was adopted by Pharaoh's daughter.
Years later, after Moshe came to understand that he was really an Immigrant, and had met his real brother Aaron, he came across an Egyptian flogging an Immigrant for not delivering his quota of bricks. Moshe slew the Egyptian and buried him in the sand, taking great care that no one saw the crime. But the Immigrant he saved had a big mouth, and word got around that Moshe was an "Egyptian" who killed other Egyptians. And word of this even got up to Pharaoh, who sought to have Moshe executed.
Moshe soon learned that Pharaoh was looking for him and he fled to the land of Midian, where he met a girl named Zipporah, fell in love, and married her.
Now the angel of El returned to Earth after centuries of neglect. El saw the Egyptian oppression of the Immigrants, and remembered her agreements with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and created a plan to release their descendants from bondage
One day when Moshe was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, he came to Mount Horeb, and the angel of El descended with fire and smoke and noise. There she commissioned Moshe to represent El to Pharaoh as El put her plan into action to bring the children of Israel out of Egypt. Moshe doubted El and feared that Pharaoh would not listen to him. And he also feared the Immigrants in Egypt would not believe him.
El taught Moshe a few magic tricks to use as coins to buy his way. But Moshe still wanted to wiggle out of the mission, and El grew angry. Finally she said Moshe could let his brother Aaron do all the actual taking to Pharaoh and the people.
After Aaron spoke to the people and got them on board with El's plan to rescue them, they went to Pharaoh. All Moshe wanted at first was three days off for the people to go into the desert and hold a feast for El. Not only did Pharaoh tell them no, he punished the Immigrants for trying to get three days off. He told his taskmasters not to deliver straw for their bricks. From that day forward, the Immigrants were to gather their own straw for their bricks. They were also required to deliver the same number of bricks every day that the did when the straw was just given to them.
The Immigrants complained to Moshe, and Moshe complained to El that so far his mission had only made things worse for the people.
Then began a sequence of ten plagues. Each cycle began with El telling Moshe to request a few days of religious leave for the Immigrants, and if the religious leave was not granted, Moshe would do something with his wizard's staff to change Pharaoh's mind. More often than not, Pharaoh's court wizards were able to duplicate the plague on a small scale, so Pharaoh was not impressed and denied the religious leave.
The first plague was a heavy spill of rock oil, which covered the surface of the Nile river with a brown syrupy layer, and many of the people said the god of Moshe had turned the river into blood, and it was bitter, and they were forced to dig new wells near to the river to drink. But Pharaoh's magicians were able to mix oil with water and produce the same brown mess in the court of Pharaoh, so Pharaoh did not give in to Moshe' request for religious leave for the Immigrants.
The second plague was a great swarm of frogs that covered every square foot of Egypt. Pharaoh's magicians were also able to bring forth frogs, but they could not remove the frogs, so this time Pharaoh said he would grant the religious leave if Moshe made the frogs go away. Moshe made the frogs go away, but Pharaoh went back on his word and did not grant the religious leave for the Immigrants.
The third plague was lice, and Pharaoh's magicians could not duplicate this plague, but Pharaoh did not let the Immigrants go on religious leave to worship El, and he waited out the plague, which only lasted a few days anyway.
The fourth plague was a swarm of flies that came upon the Egyptians and covered their skin, but did not come upon the Immigrants. Pharaoh begged Moshe to remove this plague, but after Moshe did so, Pharaoh refused to grant religious leave for the Immigrants.
The fifth plague was a fungus from Gorpai that exterminated all the Egyptian livestock but left the Immigrant's livestock standing. Pharaoh refused to let the Immigrants go on religious leave, and he took the Immigrant's cattle for his own people to replace the cattle which had been slain.
The sixth plague was a loathsome skin disease, also from Gorpai. Pharaoh's magicians could not even heal themselves, let alone anyone else afflicted in Egypt, but Pharaoh hardened his heart and did not grant the Immigrants religious leave to worship El.
The seventh plague was giant hailstones that slew all the cattle that Pharaoh had stolen from the Immigrants, as well as anyone standing outdoors. But none of the hail fell on the Immigrants. Pharaoh admitted his guilt, and Moshe caused the hail to stop. But Pharaoh went back on his word again, and Moshe at great length began to discern a pattern.
The eighth plague was a swarm of locusts that ate every green thing in Egypt. Again, no religious leave was granted.
The ninth plague was a darkness in Egypt so thick that the Egyptians could not even see each other across the room, and it was hard to breathe, but the Immigrants all had light in their houses. Pharaoh told Moshe he never wanted to see his face again, and the next time they met, Moshe would die.
Then Moshe said to him, "O Pharaoh, you have spoken true, you will never see my face again. But to you I say, all the first-born of this land will die at midnight. The firstborn humans, the firstborn animals, even the firstborn of Pharaoh, but the firstborn of the Immigrants and their beasts shall escape this judgment. Then when your servants come and bow down before me, and beg me to take the people on the religious leave I have requested, only then will we go."
Then Moshe told Aaron to instruct the people in the Passover ritual, which involved each Immigrant family killing a lamb without blemish, marking their front door with the lamb's blood in the sign of the cross, roasting the lamb, and eating it in haste while the angel of El passed over the land of Egypt and smote the firstborn of every house where there was not a token of blood on the frame of the front door.
And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants, and all the Egyptians, and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead.
Then Pharaoh sent servants to prostrate themselves before Moshe and beg him to take the Immigrants and go into the desert on the religious leave they wanted. What Pharaoh had in mind was a temporary leave of absence, and he was counting on them coming back to make more bricks later.
That is why their Egyptian friends and neighbors "lent" them jewels of silver and gold, ostensibly to wear for the feast, and much clothing for the trip. They all assumed the Immigrants would return within the week and give it all back.
So a great multitude went into the desert on foot, six hundred thousand adults, and all their children, and all their animals. The crowd was not pure Israelite, but included those of mixed ancestry, half-Israelite and half-Egyptian.
There were in such a big hurry that they had to eat unleavened bread, because there was never time to let the bread rise, and that is in fact what the Feast of Unleavened Bread commemorates, the necessity to make do when responding immediately to El. The Immigrants had lived in Egypt a total of four hundred and thirty years.
The angel of El led the chosen people out of Egypt, concealed inside a moving pillar of smoke during the day, and at night this was seen as a pillar of fire which gave them light to see. El did not go straight to Canaan, the land of promise, because she knew when the Immigrants saw the Philistines and their chariots of iron, their courage would fail, and they would run back to Egypt.
Moshe took the bones of Joseph with him to fulfill an oath that Joseph laid on the House of Israel when they were to embark for the promised land at last.
The Red Sea separates Egypt and Arabia, and at the Sinai peninsula it divides into two long fingers of water that resemble the eye stalks of a snail. In ancient times the left eye stalk terminated at what is now Lake Timsah, or Crocodile Lake. Timsah Lake and the Bitter Lakes are in the ancient depression of this old seabed. Perhaps the land has risen a bit, or the sea level has fallen. But so nearly flush with sea level is this whole area that a simple ditch dug in only ten years was sufficient to link the lakes with the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea to create the Suez Canal and cut seven thousand miles off the route from India to Europe.
Soon after fleeing Egypt, El led her people to make their first encampment on the west shore of that extension of the Red Sea which today is a string of lakes.
When it became obvious the Immigrants were not coming back to make bricks for Egypt again, nor to return the jewelry and clothing they "borrowed", Pharaoh took his charioteers and went out after them.
The tide went out, and the stretch of land between Lake Timsah and the Great Bitter Lake became mudflats that were dry enough for those who go on two and four feet to cross to the eastern shore, but those who went on chariot wheels had more trouble. Pharaoh and his Egyptian cavalry became stuck in the mud, and they could not escape before the sea tide flooded the mudflats and drowned all of them.
Now the way was clear for the Immigrants to move toward the land El promised to them, but it would take another forty years before they had sufficient numbers to pose a threat to the current inhabitants of Canaan, and the desert of the Sinai did not have sufficient water and food to support a million people and more. So El called in Belial's debt to her, and soon food and water flowed in the wormhole tunnel from Gorpai to Earth where once it flowed the other way to establish the nephilim in Belial's colony there.
At Mount Sinai, Moshe received the Law of El and the people entered into a Covenant to obey all precepts of this Law.
The law was entirely dictated by El to Moshe in the Meeting Tent, or Tabernacle, which was set up outside the camp of the Israelites. The angel of El landed there in a cloud of smoke. Tradition holds that the Law was written in a single month.
The procedure for making sin offerings by roasting animals was laid out. Unleavened bread offerings were also burnt, but part of the bread was given to Aaron and his sons to eat. First fruits from the grain harvest were offered to El, but they were not burnt. All of these offerings were made in the compound of the Tabernacle, which was replaced by Solomon's temple, and later the Second Temple of Nehemiah's day.
After the temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E., there no longer remained to the Immigrants a temple nor a tabernacle for these sacrifices to be made. Jews today continue to copy these laws faithfully from generation to generation, but without a temple these precepts are largely moot.
If anyone committed a sin inadvertently, he was supposed to bring a young bull to El for a sin offering. If he violates the holy things of El such as ripping the veil in the tabernacle then he needs to sacrifice a ram, plus bring money to fix the holy item he damaged.
Moshe followed precise instructions from El to consecrate Aaron and his sons as priests, in the presence of all the people.
And the glory of El appeared unto all the people. And there came a fire out from before El, and consumed upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat: which when all the people saw, they shouted, and fell on their faces. Later, Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu ad-libbed the procedure and lit incense without strictly following the rules. Hence it was "strange fire" and El burned them up for doing it. Aaron was forbidden by Moshe from even showing signs of grief for his lost sons, because the wrath of El would afflict the whole House of Israel.
The defective ritual occurred because Aaron's boys were drunk, so right after that, El told Aaron directly: Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations.
If a woman had a female child she was required to undergo rituals of purification which took twice as long as for a male child, because girls were double yucky to the Patriarchy.
There were detailed rules for dealing with lepers. Yeshua Bat-El considered these laws to still be in force when he was healing lepers. He commanded them to seek out a priest for their follow-up care. In the 21st Century the disease is easily treated, and seems to mostly affect places like rural India where it is difficult to obtain access to modern treatments. In the US in 2002, there were only 92 cases of leprosy. And most cases historically were simple psoriasis, rather than leprosy, but the shunning was identical, and many people suffered needlessly.
The laws governing sexual relations were largely targeted at males. First of all, incest was forbidden. One may not have sex with one's mother, the wife of one's father, or one's sister whether she was raised at home or abroad. Sex with a granddaughter, a half-sister, or a step-sister was forbidden as well. Sex with an aunt, the wife of an uncle, a sister-in-law or a daughter-in-law was not allowed. A three-way with a woman and her daughter was completely out of the question. Sex with a woman having her period, or sex with another man's wife was unlawful. Sex with animals was forbidden for both men and women.
El did not say that it was forbidden to have sex with the daughter of one's father's sister or brother. So it was lawful to marry a first cousin. It also did not forbid visiting a harlot but it did forbid the practice of sacrificing to devils after visiting a harlot (presumably to ward off venereal disease). Neither did El ever say that sex outside of marriage was forbidden.
But male homosexuality was explicitly forbidden: Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. The corollary, that womankind shall not like with womankind as with mankind, was not mentioned. The men of that tribal society probably had no clue that lesbianism existed.
El made a law that farmers were not to harvest every square foot of their land but leave some food for the poor and strangers to pick.
El told the people not to lie to each other, nor joke around by swearing at deaf people or laying obstacles for blind people. Laborers were to be paid at the end of the shift, and not to be made waiting all night for their salary. Judges were not to be biased toward the poor nor toward the rich but judge justly.
El forbade the people from having hatred for one another, and even made the first statement of the Golden Rule in the Bible to love one's neighbor as another 'I'.
If a man lay with a betrothed woman she was whipped, but all the man had to do was bring a burnt offering to El. Enchantment and fortunetelling was forbidden, as was getting tattoos. Men were commanded not to put their daughters into the sex care provider industry.
The death penalty was assigned for the various sexual sins mentioned in chapter eighteen, even for lying with a woman having her period. El gives the reason for all these things: She has taken the Israelites out of all other nations to be a holy people unto him, set aside for El, just as the Tabernacle was set aside from the camp of the people. Moral excellence was only an incidental feature of holiness. The primary meaning of holiness is "set aside for El".
At Mount Nebo Moshe partitioned the lands east of the Jordan River among the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh. And Michael, a nephilim of Gorpai who was clandestinely a servant of Chokhmah, contended with Belial for permission to bring Moshe to Gorpai where he would live out the few days of life remaining to him and be buried. But Belial had vowed that no nephilim would cross over to Earth. Michael nevertheless secured Belial's permission by reminding Belial that El was still owed many favors for his role aiding the creation of the nephilim.
Belial replied: Do not say 'many favors', the owing of me to El matches the number of digits on one of your hands.
And so Michael was permitted to pass through to Earth. Moshe was taken from the Immigrants, and they never found his grave. After that, Belial owed El only four favors.
