Bleu Neptune

As time went by and seeing no sight of Moses, the people of Israel lost faith and patience to wait for him to return. Then, they requested a golden calf as a substitute of God. They easily forgot about what God told them to do. Similar thing had happened before when Abraham and Sarah were waiting for having a child of their own. They tried to do it in their own way. But it turned out that God's way was way better. Imagine one's child has a rock or metal as the substitute of their parent. How would that parent have felt about that? It is understandable the frustration and anger God must have felt toward the people of Israel. But I still don't believe that God actually ordered the Levites to have the others killed. I look at that event as a metaphor meaning to eradicate things that are of less significance in our lives. In the Old Testament, God was distant and a majestic presence. Even God himself told Moses that no one could see Him and live. People could only glimpse H

I would like to meet whoever absolutely enjoys this part of Exodus because I have failed to do so. I am not a person who is fond of rituals. It is really hard for me to see the point of including the instruction in details of how to make the tents and the holy sanctuary. Maybe it was written down so people back then who had to make them would know how to do so. For people of other times, it is like reading a manual of something that we have never seen and will never use. I suppose it is like looking at a picture, sometimes you zoom in trying to see all the details but the whole point is to zoom out to see the panorama. We get lost if we get too caught up in the details. God instructed them to make these things to remind the people of Israel that He was among them and would be guiding them whenever they needed Him.

God created these laws for people of Israel to follow. Some of them aligned to the laws of modern day, while others seemed pretty cruel such as the law of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth..etc. I cannot help thinking that all these were made by humans according to their perception of God. Also, some of the rules were misogynistic. Women were basically properties to men. A male slave could be free when the seventh year arrived yet a female slave could not. But it was addressed to people at that time. Slavery has been long abolished, too. It was hard to swallow all of the content but a few verses still stood out that can still apply to the modern world. "Do not wrong or oppress any outsiders living among you, for there was a time when you lived as outsiders in the land of Egypt." Exodus 22:21 "Do not oppress an outsider. You know well what it is like to be an outsider living in a foreign land, for you were strangers once in the land of Egypt." Exodus 23:8