So this week dubbies read that the mean bad philistines were punished by the desert god for having his ark. The desert god punished them with (drum roll please)....... Hemroids and rats. Yep. The all powerful god of heaven and earth punished his peoples oppressors and the people who stole his precious ark with hemroids and rats. Hmmmmmm...
Ok the desert god dosent seem overly powerful there nor does he seem particularly creative. A lack of fiber can cause hemroids, no need for an all powerful diety to smite you on that and rats have been a plauge on civilization long before the philistines stole the golden fleece, er, ark.
But lets put that aside for a moment..... What happens next is where it really shows what an A hole he is.....
After giving the villians hemroids and rats as punishment, they get the hint and decide to send the golden fleece, er ark, back to our heros. They put it on a cart pulled by cows and send it on the road back to an isrealite villiage. The cart pulls up and the faithful isrealites see it and are overjoyed! As perscribed by the desert god they get some levites (from where we arnt told) who pick up the ark and they have a huge sacrifice to show how happy they are that they got the ark back.
What does the desert god do in return......? He kills 50,070 of them for the "sin" of having LOOKED AT THE ARK!!!! What the hell???? You mean to tell me that the desert god MAKES the bad guys send the ark back and then kills HIS OWN PEOPLE, the "good" guys, because they saw the ark as it came back????? And the only punishment the bad guys got for the EXACT same "crime" (looking at the ark) were hemroids and rats?
im sure ive read this before but it really struck me last night what a complete asshole the desert god is.