Chapter 8: The Immigrants

Yahweh stood aloof from humanity for centuries before returning to Earth with the angel of Yahweh (which was really the Angel of Koth on temporary loan and transfered to earth through a temporary enlargement of the wormhole tunnel). Yahweh wanted to see if the human family she had chosen would remember and obey him without the same constant intervention that Koth 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 to be with Joseph, Moses was born to an Immigrant couple in the tribe of Levi.

At this time the Immigrants, who were all descendants of Israel, 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.

Moses 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 Moses 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 Moses, 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 Moses was returned into the arms of his own mother until he grew and was adopted by Pharaoh's daughter.

Years later, after Moses 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. Moses 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 Moses was an "Egyptian" who killed other Egyptians. And word of this even got up to Pharaoh, who sought to have Moses executed.

Moses 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 Yahweh returned to Earth after centuries of neglect. Yahweh saw the Egyptian oppression of the Immigrants, and remembered her covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and created a plan to release their descendants from bondage.

One day when Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, he came to Mount Horeb, and the angel of Yahweh descended with fire and smoke and noise. There she commissioned Moses to represent Yahweh to Pharaoh as Yahweh put her plan into action to bring the children of Israel out of Egypt. Moses doubted Yahweh and feared that Pharaoh would not listen to him. And he also feared the Immigrants in Egypt would not believe him.

Yahweh taught Moses a few magic tricks to use as coins to buy his way. But Moses still wanted to wiggle out of the mission, and Yahweh grew angry. Finally she said Moses 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 Yahweh's plan to rescue them, they went to Pharaoh.

All Moses wanted at first was three days off for the people to go into the desert and hold a feast for Yahweh. 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 Moses, and Moses complained to Yahweh that so far his mission had only made things worse for the people.

Then began a sequence of ten plagues. Each cycle began with Yahweh telling Moses to request a few days of religious leave for the Immigrants, and if the religious leave was not granted, Moses 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 Moses 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 Moses' 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 Moses made the frogs go away. Moses 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 Yahweh, 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 Moses to remove this plague, but after Moses 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 Yahweh.

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 Moses caused the hail to stop. But Pharaoh went back on his word again, and Moses 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 Moses he never wanted to see his face again, and the next time they met, Moses would die.

Then Moses 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 Moses 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 Yahweh 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 Moses 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 Yahweh. The Immigrants had lived in Egypt a total of four hundred and thirty years.
The angel of Yahweh 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. Yahweh 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.
Moses 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, Yahweh 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 Yahweh 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 Yahweh called in Koth'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 Koth's colony there.

At Mount Sinai Moses received the Law of Yahweh and the people entered into a Covenant to obey all precepts of this Law.

The law was entirely dictated by Yahweh to Moses in the Meeting Tent, or Tabernacle, which was set up outside the camp of the Israelites. The angel of Yahweh landed there in a cloud of smoke. Tradition holds that the Law was written in a single month.

The procedure for making a sin offering was to bring a young bull without blemish to the altar in front of the tabernacle, allow it to be inspected by the priest, then put his hand on the head of the bullock. His sin would transfer to the animal. Then he had to kill it. The priests (Aaron's sons) would take the blood and sprinkle it around the altar. The sinner had to flay the offering and cut it into pieces. Then the priests had to arrange the head and the fat upon the burning wood on the altar, but the guts and legs were to be washed in water before they were burned.

Similar procedures were given for sacrificing sheep and goats. For turtledoves or pigeons, the priest had to twist off the head of the bird before he burned it. The feathers were cast on the east side of the altar.

Unleavened bread offerings were also burnt, but part of the bread was given to Aaron and his sons to eat. They had to be fried with oil, had to contain salt, but they could contain no honey.

First fruits from the grain harvest were offered to Yahweh, but they were not burnt. But 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 AD, 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 the practical application of these passages in Leviticus are quite limited.

Traditionally, for Christians, they are viewed as foreshadowing the sacrifices of Yeshua for the sins of all mankind. They also serve as a model for the elaborate rituals of the Catholic Mass which memorialize and make present in all times and places the moment of Krista's death.

We get the first of the food laws in Leviticus: "It shall be a perpetual statute for your generations throughout all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor blood." The penalty for eating the fat or blood of any beast is death.

If anyone commits a sin inadvertently, he is supposed to bring a young bull to Yahweh for a sin offering. If he becomes unclean, he is supposed to bring a female lamb or a kid from the goats to offer, but if he is unable to offer them he can bring two turtledoves or two young pigeons, one for a sin offering and one for a burnt offering.

If he commits tresspass (ie. violates the holy things of Yahweh 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.

Fraud is listed as a sin, along with failing to report that one has found lost property. Aside from the usual tresspass offering of animals, the monetary damages is principal plus 20% interest.

The fire is to burn on the altar forever, and never go out.

None of these rituals were really unique, all the people in the surrounding areas performed like service for their gods, as late as the Roman Empire. It provides a snapshot into a kind of religion that appears utterly alien to modern eyes.

Moses followed precise instructions from Yahweh to consecrate Aaron and his sons as priests, in the presence of all the people. After the elaborate ritual, which involved animal sacrifices and again serves as a model for the rituals involved with Catholic Holy Orders today, Aaron and his sons were to remain inside the Meeting Tent for seven days. On the eighth day "Aaron lifted up his hand toward the people, and blessed them", making the first annual sin offering for all the people in his new office as the high priest.

And the glory of Yahweh appeared unto all the people. And there came a fire out from before Yahweh, and consumed upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat: which when all the people saw, they shouted, and fell on their faces.
 
Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu ad-libbed the procedure and lit incense without strictly following the rules. Hence it was "strange fire" and Yahweh burned them up for doing it. Aaron was forbidden by Moses from even showing signs of grief for his lost sons, because the wrath of Yahweh would afflict the whole House of Israel.

Apparently the defective ritual occurred because Aaron's boys were drunk, because right after that, Yahweh 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.
 
Aaron had two sons that were still alive, but they were still new at this game too. They pissed Moses off by failing to eat all of the sin offering in the compound of the Tabernacle. At least it didn't rise to the level of a capital offense, but they had to have been thinking, with two dead brothers now, that this priestcraft they had bitten off was more than they could chew.

Now the food laws came fast and furious. The Israelites could not eat camels, rabbits, pigs, nor anything that went on four paws. They could eat fish with fins and scales, but things with neither fins nor scales, such as squid, they could not eat.

Among the birds the Israelites could not eat eagles, ospreys, vultures, kites, ravens, hawks, owls, swans, pelicans, herons, and storks. Among the insects they could eat locusts and beetles and grasshoppers, but every other insect was abomination. Neither could they eat weasels, mice, turtles, ferrets, chameleons, lizards, snakes, snails or moles. The blood of all beasts was forbidden because it was essentially the life principle of all flesh, Yahweh reserved blood for making atonement for sin on the altar.

The rule of circumcising every male child on their eighth day was enshrined into the written Law at last, rather than an oral tradition.

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-Krista 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 probably simple psoriasis, rather than leprosy, but the shunning was identical, and many people suffered needlessly.

Then Yahweh revealed the everlasting ordinance for making annual atonement for the sins of all Israel.

1. Use a young bullock and two goats for a sin offering.
2. Use a ram for a burnt offering.
3. Put on the holy garments.
4. Cast lots, and assign one goat to Yahweh and one as the scapegoat.
5. Offer Yahweh's goat as a sin offering.
6. Use the bullock to make atonement for the high priest and his family.
7. Bring incense into the tent with the Ark of the covenant, so that the smoke will keep the Ark from killing the high priest.
8. Use a finger to paint the bullock's blood on the mercy seat of the Ark with seven dabs, all pointing east.
9. Kill the goat of the sin offering, and bring his blood through the veil, dab it seven times, and then sprinkle it on and around the mercy seat.
10. Sprinkle blood on the altar outside of the tent.
11. Lay both hands on the head of the live goat, confess all the sins of the House of Israel to put them on the head of the goat, then send the goat away into an uninhabited wilderness.
12. Clean up the whole mess.

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.

Leviticus 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 Leviticus 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.

Yahweh 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.

Yahweh told the people not to lie to each other, or 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.
Yahweh 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'.

Yahweh generally had a problem with mixing things. She didn't want to see different kinds of cattle bred together, or different kinds of seed sown in one field, or clothing with linen and wool mixed together.

If a man lay with a betrothed woman she was whipped, but all the man had to do was bring a burnt offering to Yahweh. Enchantment and fortunetelling was forbidden, as was getting tattoos. Men were commanded not to put their daughters into the sex care provider industry. In the marketplace, just weights and measures were commanded.

The death penalty was assigned for the various sexual sins mentioned in chapter eighteen, even for lying with a woman having her period. Yahweh 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 Yahweh, 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 Yahweh".
Priests were forbidden to marry hookers or divorced women. If the daughter of a priest becomes a hooker, she is to be burnt with fire. Priests were required to marry virgins.

Men who had imperfections such as blemishes, blindness, lameness, flat noses, hunchbacks, dwarfism, scabs, or broken balls could not approach the altar of Yahweh. If a descendant of Aaron was imperfect in the same way, he could not offer sacrifices to Yahweh, but he could still eat the holy bread.

Strangers could not eat the holy bread unless they were slaves owned by the priests. Anyone who came near the holy things of Yahweh in an unclean state was to be put to death.

If a cow or a ewe were being prepared for sacrifice, it was forbidden to kill both her and her young on the same day.

The 14th day of the 1st month at sundown was Passover. This was the same time when Yeshua-Krista ate the Last Supper, then was betrayed, and crucified the next morning. At sundown began the feast of unleavened bread, and the first day of that was a no-work day. That was why Jesus was hastily buried and then left in the tomb until the day after that.

Fifty days later was the feast of Seven Weeks, or the feast of Weeks, which came to be known as Pentecost. It was a thanksgiving feast for the grain harvest, and among Christians it marks the birthday of the Church, when the Holy Spirit came to animate the disciples and turn them into Apostles.

The first day of the seventh month was the feast of Trumpets, which is known as Rosh Hoshanah. The use of a trumpet blast to announce the day lends some Christians to believe that whatever year the Rapture comes, it will have to happen on this day of that year, with a last trump.

The tenth day of the seventh month was the Day of Atonement, when the high priest made a sin offering on behalf of all Israel. Everyone was required to rest from labor and fast on this day, mourning their sin.

The fifteenth day of the seventh month was the beginning of the week-long feast of Booths, when the people left their homes and camped on their roof or in their front yard in booths (or huts) made from tree branches to memorialize the hardships of the people when they wandered in the Sinai desert. Except that when the feast was first implemented, the people really were wandering in the Sinai desert camping in booths. This betrays the late invention of the feast. In other words, this feast was not really instituted directly by Yahweh in the desert of Sinai, but retrojected by the priests after the Babylonian Exile.

Leviticus then outlines the law of retaliation: Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. It also commands that there is one law, for both the Israelites and the strangers who live with them.

A man with an Israelite mother from the tribe of Dan and an Egyptian father got in a quarrel with an Israelite and cursed Yahweh's name. Moses announced the penalty for blasphemy, then had the Israelites carry it out. The man was stoned to death.

At Mount Nebo Moses 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 Sophia, contended with Koth for permission to bring Moses to Gorpai where he would live out the few days of life remaining to him and be buried. But Koth had vowed that no nephilim would cross over to Earth. Michael nevertheless secured Koth's permission by reminding Koth that Yahweh was still owed many favors for his role aiding the creation of the nephilim. Koth replied:

Do not say 'many favors', the owing of me to Yahweh matches the number of fingers on one of your hands.
 
And so Michael was permitted to pass through to Earth. Moses was taken from the Immigrants, and they never found his grave. Koth owed Yahweh only four favors now.