The Bible/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions
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*** This happens for the first half of the plagues, not the last half, and is in the original.
** [[Two Words|Three words:]] God hates slavery.
*** The Bible actually condones the practice, with certain limits on cruelty towards the slave, such as releasing slaves every 50 years.
**** Although the fact that it's only permission to enslave ''pagan'' nations indicates some pretty severe [[Moral Myopia]].
**** Slavery back then tended to be a bit different and slaves weren't necessarily slaves for life. In some cases, it was more of an indentured servant sort of deal. You also couldn't take them against their will for the purpose of making them a slave (apart from prisoners of war, but that's different).
**** Ancient Egypt didn't practice slavery at all. It would have served no purpose in their economy, where the farming majority were displaced with nothing better to do for a chunk of every year anyway.
**** In dealing with any forms of slavery one has to understand that different cultures have different forms of slavery which can aren't always analogous to American/Colonial slavery.
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**** A column of smoke and fire is hardly divine. Additionally other gods had ALREADY used both smoke AND fire as symbols and disguises. And that's nothing of that when Moses went for the "talk" they had NOT been forbidden from creating 'idols'.
** A traditional Jewish answer to this kind of question is that the trauma and theatrics of leaving Egypt, as well as the completely unnecessary length of the time spent wandering in the desert, were really intended to purge the Israelites of any traces of "slave mentality." If they'd just been magically transported out of Egypt, as you suggest, their external condition would have changed but their mindsets wouldn't have. All the unnecessary stuff was really intended to constitute them as a free people.
*** Still superfluous, then. The golden calf is a symbol that they had still had
** Here is a bit better
*** Punish the bully, yes. Punish the bully's family, his employees' families, his neighbor's families, rather than the bully himself? That'd just make ''me'' a lot worse than the bully.
**** You guys don't seem to know how racism works. It's a ''system'' everyone is complicit, especially the Upper class merchants and farm lords (think sharecropping [[Older Than You Think]] 500 years early) and the prissy soon to be Pharaoh kids. These people were evil. And as anyone would tell you in the american South (for example) it's pretty powerful,, that whole nation had the sin on its hands, the fact that he didn't level the bastards and instead left them off easy to repent is a sign of his mercy.
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***** And not to mention killing all of the first-born sons, including young infants. [[Sarcasm Mode|Because people are born 'racist'...]]
***** Ahem... are all of you forgetting that the Egyptians were terrorizing and killing the Israelites' children for ''years'' before Moses showed up to lead them out, as well as the whole slavery bit? Even after one of God's people had basically saved Egypt from starvation a few years back? In my opinion, A) God hardened pharaohs heart so he could punish the Egyptians properly; if he had simply said "Oh, well, sure, you can leave", justice wouldn't have been met (the "Old Testament [[God Is Evil]]" thing is baseless if you realize that, if God punished someone, they ''really'' deserved it; you're mistaking evil for strictness). B) He wanted to show the Egyptians that their gods were absolutely ''nothing'' compared to him; he even left their "strongest" gods for last, creating a heavy darkness (Ra) and showing his power over death (which was also a [[Take That]] for them doing the same thing to the Israelites)
* One of the plague was the slaughter of all the animals in Egypt. Then what did the Pharaoh army harnessed to their chariots to pursue the
** The plague was not God killing all of Egypt's animals. Apart from God distinguishing between the Egyptian's animals and the Israelite's animals, the plague was only to kill livestock. Livestock are defined as "farm animals regarded as an asset." The horses at farms were livestock, but the horses pulling chariots weren't. Those latter horses were war horses, or military animals to use a modern term; they're bred and trained to be used in war which involves combat and carrying supplies. As they weren't livestock, they weren't targeted by the plague as God stipulated it only targeted livestock. Even if their war horses died, the Egyptians could've gotten more war horses from other nations with coin or trade or as tribute.
== Maccabees ==
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