Sensible Madness

After God had given Moses the Ten Commandments (plus 4 bonus commandments!), he proceeded to outline a whole bunch of other rules for the Israelites to follow as well:

1. Care and feeding of Hebrew slaves:

   Anyone who buys a Hebrew as a slave can only keep him for 6 years. In the seventh year, the slave has to be let go.

After Moses got back to the top of the mountain, God started laying down the law, thusly:

1. I am your God, and I saved your whiny asses from slavery in Egypt. Don't even think about worshiping any other gods.
   

Three months after the escape from Egypt, the Israelites came to the wilderness at Sinai and camped before a mountain where God was hanging out. God told Moses to remind the Israelites about all the great stuff he (God) had done for them, and also to tell them that he owned the whole planet, and not just the patch of desert they had been wandering around all this time. God further said that if the Israelites did everything he told them, they would totally be his favorite people, and he would make them into a kingdom of priests and holy men.

Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, was serving as the priest of Midian, affectionately known as the "Ozarks of the Middle East", when he heard about all the great stuff God was doing for Moses and his people, what with the rescuing them from Egypt and not letting them starve to death and all. Wanting to get in on some of this manna and water-from-a-stone stuff, Jethro decided to take Moses' wife Zipporah (which means "happy firestarter") and his two sons to the wilderness where Moses was camped out.

Eventually, the people of Israel got tired of living in Sin (ba dum, tish), packed up, and traveled to Rephidim. Unfortunately for them, there was no water there, and everyone got very thirsty.

The Israelites left Elim, and continued their journey toward the promised land. After 2 and a half months of wandering aimlessly, they arrived at the wilderness of Sin, which one would have to take as something of a bad omen.

Moses and the other Israelites got together and sang a song about how great God was, to celebrate the wholesale slaughter of Egyptians they had just witnessed. One can assume the original song rhymed in ancient Hebrew, but it doesn't rhyme in 17th century English. We can only assume this means 17th century English monks were lazy bastards, as is the author of this work. Anyway, the song went something like this:

So after saving everyone's ass, God came to Moses and told him that he wasn't quite done beating on Pharaoh yet, so he had a plan: Moses was to get the Israelites to camp out in an area nearby, but backed up against the sea. This would make Pharaoh believe the Israelites were cornered, and with the help of God's heart-hardening, make him want to go after the Israelites. Then, God would spring his trap, Pharaoh would be royally screwed, and all the Egyptians would worship God like he'd been trying to get them to do this whole time.

God, not quite done harping on this whole Passover thing, told Moses that the Israelites must sanctify all firstborn children, both of men and of animals, to God. All of them, God said, belong to me.

And so Moses went out to talk to the Israelites, and repeated much of what God had said to him. He told them that God really couldn't stand leavened bread, and no one was allowed to eat any of it. If anyone complained, they should just think about how God just saved their sorry asses from Egypt and shut the hell up.

Deciding Moses and Aaron still weren’t suitably impressed by the sheer awesomeness of what God was about to do, he pulled them aside and explained, at great length, what was about to happen.