Chapter 04

Joseph Wheless

17 page printout, page 79 - 95
CHAPTER IV

THE WONDERS OF THE EXODUS

THE exodus is so wonderful, and so humanly impossible that its
accomplishment by Providence deserves our especial attention. We
will therefore attentively review its wonders, which are
superlative if one Bible wonder may excel another; they differ
rather in wonder as one star differeth from another star in glory.

"IN THE FOURTH GENERATION"

The exodus took place in the "fourth generation" from the time
of the original migration into Egypt. We have seen the four degrees
from Jacob: Levi, Kohath, Amram, Moses. Making extreme allowance
for length of life, we have been able to sum up only 350 years for
the "sojourn in Egypt," though the inspired text says 430 years; at
all events, the exodus was "in the fourth generation" (Gen. xv,
16).

Watch the Chosen People grow and multiply: "Thy fathers went
down into Egypt with threescore and ten persons; and now Yahveh thy
God hath made thee as the stars of the heaven for multitude" (Deut.
x, 22). The seventy Jacobites who migrated into Egypt were the slow
increase of the 215 years since Abraham. According to the schedule
in the text (Gen. xlvi, 8-27), of these 70 there were 68 males and
two females: Jacob and his twelve sons; their 51 sons (grandsons of
Jacob); four sons of two of the grandsons (great-grandsons of
Jacob); and two females, Dinah, daughter of Jacob, and Serah,
daughter of Asher and grand-daughter of Jacob. Joseph and his two
sons by his heathen Egyptian wife were already in Egypt, but are
included in the seventy; two of the sons of Judah, Er and Onan,
were killed by Yahveh in Canaan before the migration (Gen. xxxviii,
3, 7, 10; xlvi, 12). These 51 living sons of the twelve sons of
Jacob who came into Egypt give an average of 4 1/4 male children to
each of the sons of Jacob; none of the twelve is recorded to have
had any children, sons or daughters, after their arrival in Egypt,
except the one daughter to Levi, Jochebed, who married her nephew
Amrarn, father of Moses (Ex. vi, 20), and was thus the mother of
Moses and his great-aunt. Adding the four great-grandsons of Jacob
to the 51 grandsons makes 55 male descendants of Jacob; these,
together with Jacob and his twelve sons and the two women, make up
the total of seventy, though this does not include the wives of the
twelve. But it is stated: "all the souls that came with Jacob into
Egypt ... besides Jacob's sons' wives ... all the souls of the
house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were threescore and ten
(Gen. xlvi, 26, 27).

Assuming that all the 55 male descendants of Jacob who came
into Egypt married and had only sons for children, or sons to the
average of 4 1/4, and that this average held through the four
generations, the Hebrew population in Egypt would naturally augment
in about the following manner: The first generation (offspring of
the twelve) that came into Egypt was 55 males; liberally allowing
five male children each, the second generation, sprung from these,
would number 275; the third generation, offspring of the second,
would number 1375; the fateful "fourth generation," that of Moses
and the exodus, would reach the sum total of 6875 male persons.
This liberally estimated natural increase is obviously exaggerated;

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it allows five male children to each male of the four generations,
and takes no account of females, who would naturally be quite half
of each generation, to furnish wives for the contemporary
generation and mothers for the next. Moreover, it errs in
discounting mortality and assuming that each male of each
generation would live at least until he was married and had his
five male children. Thus the actual total of males must be less
than the 6875 above allowed. Even on the impossible hypothesis that
not one died throughout the four generations of 215, or 350, or 430
years, so that all would be living at the time of the exodus, the
grand total would be but 8580 persons. But we know, of course, that
this assumed immunity from death is not true, for "Joseph died, and
an his brethren, and all that [first] generation" (Ex. i, 6); and
it is a safe assumption that most of the first three generations
died before the exodus.

Any rational rearrangement of these obvious vital statistics,
allowing anything short of fabulous increase, could make no
appreciable increase in the totals stated. Even if we begin the
count of the "four generations" with that succeeding the original
51 sons and four grandsons of the 12 sons of Jacob, and count their
275 assumed offspring as the first generation, we should then have:
first, 275; second, 1375; third, 6875; fourth, 34,375 altogether.
But this would be a fifth generation to "sojourn in Egypt," and
therefore unscriptural.

THE HOSTS OF THE LORD OF HOSTS

Hear now what "holy men of old spake as they were moved by the
Holy Ghost" to tell us about the numbers of this exodus. The
inspired record, after relating the "spoiling of the Egyptians" by
the Chosen says: "And the Children of Israel journeyed from Rameses
to Succoth, about 600,000 on foot that were men, beside children.
And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and
herds, even very much cattle" (Ex. xii, 37, 38)!

Only about a year later (Num. i, 1), at Sinai, the formal
census of this warrior host was taken, of every male "from 20 years
old and upwards, all that were able to go forth to war in Israel;
even all that were numbered were 603,550" (Num. i, 45, 46)! Even in
this host the Levites were not numbered (i, 47); when afterwards
they were separately numbered, "all the males from a month old and
upward were 22,000" (Num. iii, 39). On the very conservative, and
quite inadequate, basis of estimating these warrior-males to be but
one out of every four of the old men, women, and children, we
should have a Hebrew population of 2,414,200 souls, not counting in
the 22,000 Levites and the great mixed multitude of slaves and
camp-followers who accompanied the hosts of Yahveh. The Jewish
Encyclopedia and most accepted authorities estimate the total
numbers of the exodus to be about 3,000,000!

SOME PREGNANT FIGURES

If the sacred historian had taken his stylus and a scrap of
papyrus and calculated a bit, be would have figured out that in
order to accomplish this prodigy, each of the 55 males of the first
generation in Egypt must have had 40-odd children each, about

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equally divided between males and females; each of these 20-odd
males must have had again 40-odd children, male and female, and so
on to the fourth generation, in order to have produced 603,550
soldier-men twenty years of age and over, or the total of 2,414,200
(or more) children of Israel who set out from Egypt.

But the inspired history nowhere indicates any such prodigious
prolificness among the Chosen People in Egyptian slavery. The
highest number of children in one family anywhere noted during the
"sojourn" is the five daughters of Zelophebad; Amram had only three
children, Moses, Aaron, and Miriam; Aaron had four sons (two of
them killed by Yahveh) and no daughter.

The mothers of Israel were also evidently of the Hebrew race;
it is hardly probable that the Hebrew slaves were permitted to
marry the free native women; if this had been customary, the Syrian
"seed of Abraham" would have been sadly mixed in 430 years. Indeed,
that the fact was otherwise is implied by the inspired statement
(Ex. i, 19): "the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women" in
child-birth, which clearly indicates that the wives of the Chosen
were also of the Chosen. it follows that it is out of the seventy
only that the 2,414,200 and more of the exodus could have sprung,
and it is evident that they could not. At best, 8000 is a liberal
calculation, if not one of them had died in the 430 years; and
Yahveh himself, immediately after the exodus, says that his Chosen
were "the fewest of all people" (Deut. vii, 7).

But we will not discount the inspired arithmetic, and will
accept its figures, which lead to some highly interesting
considerations. Where and how did these children live, and move,
and have their being in Egypt -- at that time (1491 B.C.) the
mightiest and most splendid empire of the world? This is the first
puzzle. Already, shortly after the death of Joseph, the "new king
which knew not Joseph" is found complaining to his people: "Behold,
the children of Israel are more and mightier than we" (Ex. i, 9);
and he therefore made slaves of this more numerous and more mighty
race, and set them to building his treasure cities and to other
construction jobs, for which Egypt had long been famous, as witness
the Great Pyramid, built (3933 B.C.) but a few years after the
celebrated garden of Eden was closed down in the fall. All this
host of Israel could hardly have lived in the cities along with
their masters, as there were probably no cities large enough to
contain them. They were necessarily scattered in the country, and
for the curious reason that these poor slaves at the time of the
exodus owned several millions of sheep, horses, and cattle, "even
very much cattle," and great areas of land would be required to
pasture them all.

Let us look the sheep in the face. Moses told the children, in
instituting the passover, on the eve of the Exodus: "Take you a
lamb according to your families, and kill the passover" (Ex. xii,
21). These lambs were to be "without blemish, a male of the first
year," and were to be taken, "every man a lamb, according to the
house of their fathers, a lamb for an house" (Ex. xii, 3); though
if a household were too little to eat a whole lamb, the next-door
neighbors might be invited to share it. Very liberally allowing ten
persons to one lamb, 2,414,200 persons would require 241,420 male

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lambs of the first year for this one day's passover sacrifice.
There would probably be as many female lambs of the same year,
which would make 482,840 first-year lambs, to say nothing of the
sheep and goats. Sheep-raising statistics show that, in average
flocks of all ages, the total number is about five times that of
the increase of one season's births; this would give us exactly the
same number of sheep as of Hebrews, 2,414,200. Modern sheep-raisers
seldom have grazing lands which will support more than two sheep to
the acre. Allowing five to the acre for biblical Egypt, 482,840
acres of land, or 754 square miles, nearly two-thirds the area of
the state of Rhode Island, would be required merely for pasturing
the sheep of the slave Israelites, not allowing for their other
cattle and horses, none of which had been killed in the plagues,
and of which the children of Israel had large "flocks and herds,
even very much cattle." So the children must have been scattered
through the land and have considerably overflowed the bounds of
their original ghetto of Goshen in order to tend their herds -- if
slaves could be allowed to own property and to attend to their own
affairs.

THE AMAZING PASSOVER

All Scripture, besides being "given by inspiration of God," is
said to be "profitable for instruction"; we find other curiously
instructive features of this exodus passover. In Exodus xii we have
the tangled and marvelous story. Yahveh tells Moses that "in the
tenth day of this month" the people should "take every man a lamb,
... and ye shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same
month; and the whole congregation of Israel shall kill it in the
evening" -- of the fourteenth day; and "of the blood, strike it on
the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses wherein
they shall eat it." For the ceremony he gives particular
directions: "And thus shall ye eat it: with your loins girded, your
shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat
it in haste" (xii, 11). It is here ordered that there should be a
four-day interval between the "taking" on the tenth day of the
month, and the killing on the fourteenth day; but Yahveh overlooks
this, or changes his mind, for be says: "For I will pass through
the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the first-born in
the land of Egypt. ... And this day shall be unto you for a
memorial" (xii, 12, 14). "Then Moses called for all the elders of
Israel," and told them to take "a lamb according to your families,
and kill the passover," and strike the blood on the door posts
(xii, 21). "And it came to pass that at midnight Yahveh smote all
the firstborn in the land of Egypt" (xii, 28). This clearly proves
that the entire passover transaction, from the first commands of
Yahveh about the lambs to the massacre of the first-born at
midnight took place all on one day, and at latest on the "tenth
day" -- the four-day interval is forgotten and eliminated.

But how was such a thing possible? We see the two and a half
million people scattered over an indefinitely large territory;
Yahveh appears sometime during the day (the tenth), and tells Moses
and Aaron: "Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel," giving
them life-and-death orders and minute passover cooking
instructions, which they must perform that same day "in the
evening" in order to escape the massacre of the first-born. Then

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Moses called for all the elders of Israel and repeated the
instructions to them. There were no telephones or radio
broadcasting plants in those days to help disseminate this order in
all its details to the head of every family of Israel, scattered
throughout Egypt, or Goshen, or the Delta, or wherever they were,
so that they might pick out 241,420 first-year male lambs without
blemish, kill and cook them, according to entirely new recipes
(xii, 8-10), and strike the blood, in this novel way, on the door
posts, so that, says Yahveh, "when I see the blood, I will pass
over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when
I smite the land of Egypt." How these fateful orders were ever
delivered "unto all the congregation of Israel" in that fraction of
a day Yahveh only knows, as it is not revealed unto us in his Holy
Word.

THE MARCHING ORDERS

But this is not all of this bit of Scripture, given for our
instruction. That same night "at midnight Yahveh smote all the
firstborn in the land of Egypt, and the firstborn of the cattle,"
of the Egyptians (Ex. xii, 29), though these same cattle had
already been killed by each of several prior plagues: "all the
cattle of Egypt died" of the murrain (Ex, ix, 6); then these dead
cattle had boils (ix, 9); then they were all killed over again by
the hail (ix, 25). As soon as this fatal decree of Yahveh was
executed, that midnight, "Pharaoh rose up in the night [that same
night] ... and he called for Moses and Aaron by night [that same
night, after midnight], and said, Rise up, and get you forth from
among my people, both ye and the children of Israel; and go, serve
Yahveh as ye have said; and be gone" (xii, 31) -- "and bless me
also" (xii, 32), he added, maybe ironically. As "the Egyptians were
urgent upon the people, that they might send them out of the land
in haste; for they said, We be all dead men" (xii, 33), haste
became the order of the day, or rather of that same night.

As soon as the royal leave was thus granted to Moses, after
midnight, he must at once get the marching orders to the scattered
millions of Israel. These were in their respective homes throughout
the land, dressed and ready, in "watchful waiting" for they knew
not what as yet, since it could not be known what effect the
massacre of the first-born would have upon the Pharaoh; and the
people were under strict command: "And none of you shall go out of
the door of his house until morning." But in some strange and
unrevealed way, whether by miracle or telepathy, the divine command
through Moses to all the millions of Israel went broadcast (the
second time in one day) to borrow" all the clothes and jewellery
they could, and to "spoil the Egyptians" (xii, 36); after which
they should all mobilize immediately at the great city Rameses. So
that self-same day, somehow, all the hosts of Israel, 2,414,200 of
them, with "their dough before it was leavened, their kneading-
troughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders" (xii,
34), their plunder, their old and decrepit, their babes and
sucklings, their sick and infirm, their women in confinement and
childbirth (for in such a population there are scores of births
every hour, and the inspired word tells us that "the Hebrew women

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are lively" in this) -- the whole mixed multitude, driving with
them their "flocks and herds, even very much cattle, there was not
an hoof left behind," at the divine command, began the world's
greatest one-day feat.

First, from all Egypt, east, west, north, south, "the hosts of
Yahveh" gathered at Rameses. Such a mobilization is without a
single parallel in history, sacred or profane, since Noah's animals
flocked from the four corners of the earth into his famous ark, for
which they had a whole week. Arrived at Rameses somehow, behold,
"even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of
Yahveh went out from the land of Egypt" (xii, 41). That there may
be no doubt about it, the divine assurance is vouchsafed a second
time in the same chapter: "And it came to pass the selfsame day,
that Yahveh did bring the children of Israel out of the land of
Egypt by their armies" (xii, 51); and they marched from Rameses
across the desert sands to Succoth, which, according to the Bible
maps, seems to be about thirty miles. But apparently this was not
"out of the land of Egypt"; it was evidently yet in Egypt, on the
western border of the Red Sea. For when Pharaoh and his army
"pursued after the children of Israel" (Ex. xiv, 8), the children
were still on the Egyptian side, and the miracle of the "parting of
the waters" of the Red Sea had to be performed to enable the hosts
of Yahveh to cross to the eastern or Arabian side of the Red Sea.

THE HOSTS ON THE MARCH

The hosts of Yahveh went not like a straggling rabble of
fugitive slaves, hastening to escape, but proud in formal marching
array, as armies march. If they marched in close order, as many as
fifty abreast, with an interval of only one yard between their
serried ranks, there would have been 48,284 ranks, which would form
a column twenty-eight miles long! But the truth is even more
remarkable, if the Bible is accurate on the point; for the Hebrew
text says: "And the children of Israel went up by five in a rank
out of the land of Egypt" (Ex. xiii, 18; see marginal note) --
which would make the column 280 miles long! Such a multitude, with
all its encumbrances, could not possibly march through the desert
sands very many miles a day -- say ten, fifteen, or twenty at the
most. (The American army of chosen foot-troops marches only twelve
to fifteen miles a day under average conditions.) Moreover, the
front ranks must march the whole 28 (or 280) miles before the rear
ranks could even start. So hardly half of the "hosts of Yahveh"
could even get away that first day, even if they had started early.
But they had first to gather at Rameses from all over Egypt --
several hundreds of miles in length -- and we know not how much of
that wonderful day they occupied in the rendezvous; the whole host
could not possibly reach Succoth, somewhere, according to the text,
"Out of the land of Egypt," till the second or third day, or the
next week, or the next month, even if they could all have mobilized
at Rameses on that "selfsame day," as they are said to have done.
How many interminable miles the column was stretched out by the
millions of sheep and cattle, not marching in close battle array,
of course, unless divinely hurded, we have no revelation, nor
adequate data to compute.

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What the millions of cattle fed upon in the prolonged hike to
the Red Sea, across the desert sands, with scant vegetation, divine
revelation does not tell. Nor were the children much better
provided for; they had only a little unleavened dough on their
shoulders, "because they were thrust out of Egypt, and could not
tarry, neither had they prepared for themselves any victual" (Ex.
xii, 39).

A remarkable circumstance may be noted here: these fugitive
slaves are represented as having slaves of their own which they
carried away with them. Their provident Yahveh, in his ordinance of
the passover, the very first law he ever gave them, as they fled
from slavery in Egypt, made provision for the observance of that
pious ceremony by "every man's servant that is bought for money,"
after the bloody violence of circumcision had been perpetrated upon
him (Ex. xii, 44).

THE HOSTS AFRAID OF WAR

Wonders such as these never cease in the providence of Yahveh
to his Chosen People Israel; the relation of such wonders by the
sacred writers is incessant. When the "hosts of Yahveh" got to
Succoth, Yahveh was afraid for them, and "led them not through the
way of the Philistines, although that was near; for Elohim said,
Lest peradventure, the people repent when they see war, and they
return to Egypt" (Ex. xiii, 17); although they were 603,550 armed
warriors, and were being led expressly to the armed conquest and
extermination of "seven nations greater and mightier" than all
Israel! So "Elohim led the people about, through the way of the
wilderness of the Red Sea: and the Children of Israel went up
harnessed [armed] out of the land of Egypt (xiii, 18).

Where did these fleeing slaves get their arms -- swords,
spears, shields, bows and arrows, armor, for 603,550 soldiers?
Slaves are not usually allowed to keep arms, nor to be so trained
that on one day's sudden notice they can, presto, change from a
horde of slaves to soldiers who march out "by their armies" full
panoplied for war. And if they were armed soldiers going forth to
conquest, under the personal command of their God, a notable "Man
of war," why should they "repent if they see war," between other
peoples, and wish in fright to return to slavery? Revelation is
silent on these mysteries. And despite of all Yahveh's concern for
his warriors "lest they see war," they had not been three months
out of Egypt before they had war with the Amalekites at Rephidim,
when Aaron and Hur had to hold up the hands of Moses all day before
the Israelites could finally win the battle (Ex. xvii, 8-13).

THE RED SEA MASSACRE

Yahveh was not yet satisfied with plaguing the Egyptians and
with showing off his terrible and holy wonders upon them. He had
bloodily baited Pharaoh into letting his slaves go; half a dozen
times Pharaoh in terror had "inclined to let the people go," but
Yahveh had interfered and "hardened Pharaoh's heart that he should
not let them go." And when the Israelites finally got away and
Pharaoh was happily rid of them, Yahveh devised another wholesale
destruction, to his own honor, and said: "I will harden Pharaoh's

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heart that he shall follow after them, and I will be honored upon
Pharaoh, and upon all his host, that the Egyptians may know that I
am Yahveh" (Ex. xiv, 4). The tragedy of the Red Sea and the death
by drowning of the hosts of Pharaoh do not concern us now; but it
is interesting to note that as soon as the valiant warriors,
603,550 strong, saw the hosts of Pharaoh, also very suddenly
mustered, appear in pursuit, "they were sore afraid; and the
children of Israel cried out unto Yahveh," and they cravenly said:
"Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians; for it had been
better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in
the wilderness" (Ex. xiv, 10, 12) -- a different cry, this of
603,550 armed warriors of Yahveh, from that of one later patriot
who fired his country's heart with the words: "I know not what
course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me
death!" And through their whole sacred history the people of Yahveh
blubbered and wailed at every trial and in every time of danger,
real or fancied.

THE CHILDREN WAIL FOR WATER

Only three days after this Red Sea massacre Yahveh's Chosen
People got further into the wilderness of Shur, and "found no
water" (Ex. xv, 22); whereupon they wailed again and started an
insurrection; then moved on to Marah, the waters of which were so
bitter they could not drink, and they wailed again, and cried:
"What shall we drink?" (xv, 24). So Yahveh made the bitter waters
sweet for his crying children, and brought them on to Elim, where
there were twelve wells of water, and seventy palm trees; and the
whole 2,414,200 Israelites, all their camp-followers, and their
millions of cattle encamped there by the twelve wells under the
seventy palm trees (xv, 27). This is the last natural water supply
they saw until thirty-eight years later they happily encountered a
well of Beer! (Num. xxi, 16). They were supplied miraculously with
water only twice, or once with the phenomena recorded in two ways.
The want of water is no metaphor in that "desert land," in that
"waste howling wilderness," as it is often described, "that great
and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and
scorpions, and drought, where there was no water" (Deut. viii, 15);
the Children of Israel wail and cry: "Why have ye brought up the
congregation of Yahveh into this wilderness, that we and our cattle
should die [in] this evil place? ... neither is there any water to
drink" (Num. xx, 4, 5).

SMITING THE ROCK FOR WATER

After leaving the twelve wells of Elim, the Israelites came
into the wilderness of Sin, in the middle of the second month after
the passover, and started a bread riot, which was quieted by the
miracle of quails and daily manna (Ex. xvi). Then they marched on
to Rephidim, and at once rioted because "there was no water for the
people to drink," and they were about to stone Moses to death.
Yahveh here came to the rescue, and told Moses to take his wondrous
rod and "smite the rock in Horeb" and bring water from it; and
Yahveh stood upon the rock to watch the performance. Moses smote
the rock, the waters gushed out, and the people drank; and Moses

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"called the name of the place Meribah, because of the chiding of
the children of Israel." This is related in Exodus xvii, and is
said to have occurred in or near the wilderness of Sin, some three
months (Ex. xvi, 1) after leaving Egypt, in 1491 B.C.

But in Numbers xx, under the marginal date 1453 B.C. (that is,
38 years later), the same or a very similar story is told again,
but differently. For "then came the children of Israel into the
desert of Zin [instead of Sin], in the first month," and stopped at
Kadesh; and "there was no water for the congregation"; so they
wailed and rioted again, because they and their cattle were like to
die. This time Yahveh told Moses to take his rod and go with Aaron
to a certain rock, and "speak ye to the rock" -- instead of using
the rod to smite it. But Moses was annoyed this time, and he meekly
yelled at the Israelites: "Hear now, ye rebels" (xx, 10), and
instead of gently speaking to the rock, as Yahveh had commanded, he
"lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice," and
the waters gushed forth abundantly.

But now Yahveh was angry with Moses and Aaron, and he said to
them: "Because ye have not believed me, therefore ye shall not
bring this congregation into the land which I have given them"; and
the sacred writer informs us: "This is the water of Meribah;
because the children of Israel strove with Yahveh" (xx, 13). Here
we have the desert of Sin and the desert of Zin, and two waters
Meribah, but thirty-eight years apart, and each with entirely
different circumstances; which was which let him unravel who is
curious. In either event, so far as revealed, this is about all the
water that the millions of Chosen and their millions of cattle had
to drink in the terrible wilderness for almost forty years.

FOOD RIOTS -- HEAVENLY MANNA AND QUAILS

As for human food and cattle-feed, this mystery of the ages
has never been satisfactorily solved by revelation or speculation.
The children of Israel started out, as we have seen, with only a
little unleavened dough, "neither had they prepared for themselves
any victual" (Ex. xii, 39); and of course they carried no cattle-
feed. One naturally wonders what they and their cattle had to eat
until "on the fifteenth day of the second month after their
departing out of Egypt" they reached the wilderness of Sin (Ex.
xvi), Here was their first recorded food riot; the whole
congregation rebelled, crying: "Would to God we had died by the
hand of Yahveh in Egypt, when we did sit by the flesh pots, and
when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth
into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger"
(xvi, 3)! It is curious that they should die with hunger when they
had at least 2,414,200 sheep and "very much cattle" along with
them. That the sheep alone, with nothing at all to eat or drink,
throve and produced at least 241,420 male lambs every year of the
forty years in the wilderness for the annual passover feast is
another divine mystery. And it is truly a marvel, when the Chosen
had started out with only a little dough on their shoulders,
quickly consumed raw, and then for forty years were complaining and
rioting because they had no bread to eat, where they ever got the
tons of "fine flour" with which to make the famous "shewbread" for
the altar of Yahveh, and the untold amounts of "unleavened bread"
which they must eat in their feasts, and the "fine flour" they were

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required to offer with their countless sacrifices; to say nothing
of the great quantities of oil accompanying them, or of the
millions of animals and birds for the manifold and interminable
sacrifices which they are said to have made all through the forty
years in the wilderness. Amos questions (v, 25) and Jeremiah denies
(vii, 22) flesh sacrifices in the wilderness. And as we shall soon
see, the Aaron family were simply gorged with meat from these
sacrifices, which they were under dire obligation to eat at all
hazards.

However, when the Israelites started their food riot, Yahveh
was merciful, and said he would "rain bread from heaven" (Ex. xvi,
4) for his children; but Moses misinturpated or exaggerated the
message, and reported to them: "Yahveh shall give you in the
evening flesh to eat, and in the morning bread to the full" (xvi,
8). Yahveh graciously amended his promise to conform to the version
which Moses had reported. And this is the way that Yahveh fulfilled
his bounteous promises: that evening "quails came up, and covered
the camp" (Ex. xvi, 13), and in the morning heavenly manna, which
had very peculiar qualities, and tasted "like wafers made with
honey" (Ex. xvi, 31) or else "the taste thereof was like the taste
of fresh oil" (Num. xi, 8), but whether olive oil, castor oil,
kerosene oil, hair oil, or oil of saints is not revealed. Anyhow
the children of Israel didn't like it at all as a steady diet. This
is all they had to eat however for forty years, as the quails were
a special treat for one day only; we hear them at their next food
riot longing for the leeks and onions and garlic of Egypt, and
saying: "There is nothing at all, besides this manna" (Num. xi, 6);
and again they said: "Our souls do loathe this light bread" (Num.
xxi, 5); and, odd as it is, "they wept in the ears of Yahveh,
saying, Who shall give us flesh to eat?" (Num. xi, 4).

Passing strange was this danger of starvation in the presence
of several million sheep and cattle, unless, indeed, the poor
beasts were so starved themselves as to be not fit to eat. And
Moses explicitly had these cattle in mind; for when Yahveh promised
him flesh for the children of Israel to eat, he reasoned thus with
Yahveh: "The people, among whom I am, are six hundred thousand
footmen; and thou hast said, I will give them flesh, that they may
eat a whole month. Shall the flocks and the herds be slain for
them, to suffice them? or shall all the fish of the sea be gathered
together for them, to suffice them?" (Num. xi, 21, 22) To starve to
death under such circumstances! And "the anger of Yahveh was
kindled greatly"; and he graciously promised: "Ye shall not eat one
day, nor two days, nor five days, neither ten days, nor twenty
days; But even a whole month, until it come out at your nostrils,
and it be loathsome unto you" (Sum. xi, 19, 20)!

So, in his loving-kindness and bounteous providence, Yahveh
provided a quail feast on prodigious scale; for "there went forth
a wind from Yahveh, and brought quails from the sea" (perhaps
flying-fish, for sea-quail are not known on the market, at least in
these days); and note this: those quails fell and were stacked up
on the face of the earth "as it were a day's journey round about
the camp, and as it were two cubits high upon the face of the

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earth" (Num. xi, 31)! This simple inspired narrative, related in
one Bible verse, and about which I never beard a single sermon in
my life, is the most stupendous miracle of Divine bounty in all
sacred history, and peremptorily challenges our admiring attention.

MIRACLE AND MATHEMATICS

Let us figure a bit on this astonishing fall of quails, and
see how far figures, which do not lie, may be an aid, or a
handicap, to faith. The quails were stacked up "two cubits high"
for a distance of "a day's journey round the camp." A Bible cubit
is 22 inches; two cubits are therefore 44 inches. A biblical "day's
journey," according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, is 44,815 meters (1
meter is 39.37 inches, or 1.1 yards), which equals 49,010 yards,
27.8 miles. Now, the camp of Israel (laid out as indicated in
Numbers ii, and glowingly described by Balaam in Numbers xxiv) was,
according to accepted calculations, twelve miles square. It would
be crowded, with about 16,800 persons to the square mile; the
densest population in the worst slums of any modern city is only
some 25,000 to the square mile, in many-storied tenement houses.
And this doesn't allow a square foot for the millions of cattle.

Around this camp, twelve miles square, on all its four sides,
lay heaped these miraculous quails, piled 44 inches high. Assuming,
for the sake of a minimum of miracle, and therefore of strain on
faith, that this stack of quails began close to the four sides of
the camp and extended for 27.8 miles in every direction, we have a
solid square of quails measuring from one outer edge to another
67.6 miles, deducting of course the twelve-mile square occupied by
the camp in the center. The solid mass therefore covered 4569.76
square miles, from which deducting the 144 square miles of the
central camp leaves us 4425.76 square miles of quails piled 44
inches high. This stack of quails thus covered an area by 500
square miles larger than the whole states of Delaware and Rhode
Island, plus the city of Greater New York! Such is the bounty of
Yahveh, or such the boundlessness of inspiration. As to the space
occupied, one quail, packed tight by the weight of the mass, might
be compressed into about 3 inches of space each way, which would
amount to 27 cubic inches of space per quail, or 64 quails to the
cubic foot of space throughout the mass. Now, a surface of 4425.76
square miles, heaped 44 inches high with objects each occupying 27
cubic inches would make a considerable mass, which we must reduce
to terms.

One linear mile contains 5280 feet; one square mile therefore
contains 27,878,400 square feet. The whole area of 4425.76 square
miles would equal 123,383,107,584 square feet. Each square foot
being covered 44 inches, or 3.66 feet, high with quails, each quail
occupying 27 cubic inches of space, with 64 quails to the cubic
foot, the total would be 452,404,727,808 cubic feet of quails. A
bit of ready reckoning, on this conservative basis, gives us just
28,953,902,579,712 quails in this divine prodigy of a pot-hunt!
Ever soul of the 2,414,200 of the "hosts of Yahveh" therefore had
the liberal allowance of 11,993,167 quails. We can well believe, if
the Children of Israel had to eat so many quails, even in "a whole
month," that, as Yahveh promised or threatened, they would "come
out at your nostrils and be loathsome to-you!"

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It was a prodigious task to harvest all those quails; indeed,
inspiration tells us, "the people stood up all that day, and all
that night, and all the next day, and they gathered the quails: ...
and they spread them all abroad for themselves round about the
camp" (Num. xi, 32). This must mean all around within the camp; for
the quails were already spread abroad for 67.6 miles "round about
the camp" outside. Indeed, as these wonderful quails stretched for
nearly 28 miles, a whole day's journey, on every hand around the
camp, an ordinary uninspired mind cannot grasp the process by which
the millions of Chosen ever accomplished the incessant going back
and forth, out and in, the hundreds of thousands of times necessary
to harvest their marvelous crop of quails. And how quails covering
compactly an area of 4425 square miles could be "spread abroad,"
when garbered in, in the 144 square miles of the camp, already
crowded with tents and people, or where they ever put the feathers
and "cleanings," is another holy wonder -- if the whole affair were
not simply a matter of simple faith. And it is curious where the
2,414,200 Israelites stood to be able to get at the quail-picking;
and how each person could gather up 11,993,167 quails in 36 hours,
which would require them to gather up, each one, 335,366 quails per
hour, or 5589 quails ever minute, or nearly 94 quails per second of
uninterrupted time, leaving them no time to carry the quails the
average 28-miles into camp to spread them abroad, and no time to
eat, or sleep, or sacrifice, or die, which over 1700 a day did, or
to bury their dead, or to be born, as the comparison of the two
censuses shows 1700 a day were, or for any other of the daily
necessities of camp-life.

Devoutly conjuring away all these trifling speculations, let
us behold the climax of tragedy which capped this miracle of divine
bounty. Yahveh had promised his flesh-famishing Children flesh to
eat for "even a whole month," until they should be so gorged with
eating quail that it should come out loathsomely at their nostrils;
and Yahveh's divine word would seem to be inviolable. But when each
of the children of Israel had gathered up his ration of twelve-
million quails, and started with great joy and hunger, as we may
imagine, after thirty-six hours' hungry wait, to eat them, lo!
"while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed,
the wrath of Yahveh was kindled against the people, and Yahveh
smote the people with a very great plague" (Num. xi, 33), and
untold numbers of the Israelites were slain by their bounteous
loving heavenly Father! And this simply because they "lusted" for
something to eat besides that loathed, oily-honey manna. Whether
the miraculous quails were divinely instilled with miraculous venom
and gave Yahveh's Chosen wholesale ptomaine poisoning, or whether
it was simply another case of Jahvistic slaying, so abundant in his
sacred record, the divine revelation leaves us unadvised. In either
event, Yahveh seems to have violated his sacred word, or at best
"kept the word of promise to the ear, but broke it to the hope," as
his children did not get their promised "flesh to eat for even a
whole month," nor at all.

THE MOSES FAMILY

When Moses started on his divine mission extraordinary to the
Pharaoh of Egypt, and of course before the exodus, he took along
"his wife and sons" (Ex. iv, 20), whose names are not there given.

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A very few months later, when Moses had led the children of Israel
into camp at Rephidim, his father-in-law (Jethro or however named),
who lived somewhere near Rephidim, "took Zipporah and her two sons"
and went to pay a visit to Moses at the camp. The two sons are now
named, according to the Hebrew, American Indian, and other savage
usage of naming children in commemoration of some notable event:
"the name of the one was Gershom; for, he said, I have been an
alien in a strange land: and the name of the other was Eliezer; for
the God of my father, said he, was mine help, and delivered me from
the sword of Pharaoh" (Ex. xviii, 3, 4). The name of the first son
thus commemorated the sojourn of Moses in the land of Midian,
whither he fled after he murdered the Egyptian, and where he
married Zipporah, daughter of Jethro, heathen priest of Midian. The
name of the second son commemorated the exodus from Egypt and
deliverance "from the sword of Pharaoh." But as the exodus had
taken place only a couple of months before, it is curious how this
son of Moses, born we know not how long before Moses left Midian
"to go unto Pharaoh," could have a name commemorative of an event
which had just, in the providence of Yahveh, come to pass.

WHO PROPOSED THE JUDGES OF ISRAEL?

Another incident of inspired narrative is also connected with
this visit of Jethro, as related in Exodus xviii. Moses was very
much over-worked with the strenuous task of trying to run the whole
encampment alone and to hold in the "stiff-necked and rebellious
people," and be "sat to judge the people from the morning unto the
evening"; for Moses said: "I judge between one and the other, and
I do make them know the statutes of Yahveh and his laws." But this
was at Rephidim, before the "hosts of Yahveh" came to Sinai, where
the "statutes and laws of Yahveh" are said to have originated; so
Moses is mistaken in talking about making known such statutes and
laws even before he knew them himself, which, as we shall see, he
never did. Moreover he admits that he was very unsuccessful in his
teaching, for forty years later he complains to his followers: "Yet
in this thing ye did not believe Yahveh your God" (Deut. i, 32).

However, his good pagan father-in-law felt sorry for Moses,
and said to him: "The thing that thou doest is not good. Thou wilt
surely wear away. ... for this thing is too heavy for thee; thou
art not able to perform it thyself alone." And Jethro further said:
"Hearken now unto my voice, I will give thee counsel"; and this was
his advice to Moses: "Provide out of all the people able men. ...
and place such over them, to be rulers" over different sections,
"and let them judge the people at all seasons. ... So Moses
hearkened to the voice of his father-in-law, and did all that he
had said. And Moses chose able men, ... and they judged the people"
(Ex. xviii, 17-26). Certainly Jethro is entitled to the credit for
this plan, which he originated. We might therefore be surprised, if
all sense of surprise had not been paralyzed in this search of the
Scripture, to find Moses in his harangue to the people by Jordan
(Deut. i, 9-19) bragging about the institution of judges as a
device all his own and begun at Horeb, at a later date. Moses there
says: "I spake unto you at that time, saying, I am not able to bear
you myself alone. How can I myself alone bear your cumbrance, and
your burden, and your strife? Take you wise men, and I will make
them rulers over you. And ye answered me, and said, The thing which
thou hast spoken is good for us to do. So I took the chiefs of your

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tribes, wise men, and known, and made them heads over you." Both of
these inspired stories cannot be accurate, whatever one may think
as to the historicity of either.

THE TENTS OF ISRAEL

In Egypt the Chosen, though slaves, lived in houses: they
escaped the passover massacre by smearing blood on the "door posts
of their houses"; the Egyptians, being highly civilized, with great
cities, lived also in houses, not in tents. Yet we find the
2,414,200 Chosen, from Succoth on through the forty years' journey,
encamped in tents; scores of times these tents are mentioned in the
sacred texts. We will inspect these tents with the eyes of faith.

The encampment of spreading tents must have presented a
beautiful and impressive spectacle, for, when he saw it, "Balaam
lifted up his eyes, and he saw Israel abiding in his tents
according to their tribes; and the spirit of Elohim [Gods; Balaam
was a pagan] came upon him. And he took up his parable," and said:
"How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!
As the valleys are they spread forth, as gardens by the river's
side, as the trees of lign aloes, ... and as cedar trees beside the
waters" (Num. xxiv, 2-6). But this glowing record of the encampment
of tents flatly contradicts another inspired text, which is the
foundation of one of the great sacred festivals of the Chosen even
to this day, the Feast of Tabernacles, a little later instituted
(Lev. xxiii, 40-43) by Yahveh himself. Here Moses commands the
Chosen to take, every year at harvest time, "boughs of goodly
trees, branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and
willows of the brooks," wherewith to construct "booths"; and, says
Yahveh, "ye shall dwell in booths seven days; all that are
Israelites shall dwell in booths: That your generations may know
that I made the Children of Israel to dwell in booths when I
brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am Yahveh your God." The
waste howling wilderness "where no water is," could not, of course,
afford trees such as these "goodly" ones, nor any trees at all, and
certainly not trees enough to build "booths" for forty years for
2,414,200 Chosen People. However this may be, they never observed
the dwelling in booths till after the "discovery" of the Book of
the Law, and the return from the captivity -- "since the days of
Joshua unto that day had not the children of Israel done so" (Neh.
viii, 17). This is an indication that the law of Moses had never
existed through all those ages.

If the Israelites were in the wilderness at all, and lived in
anything, it was in tents. So for a moment we will consider these
tents, and the holy camp, and several curious features connected
with their encampments. Where did the Chosen get their tents, and
how did they manage to lug them along on their flight out of Egypt?
The inspired history tells us that they fled in such haste that
they carried only unleavened dough and their kneading troughs bound
up in their clothes on their shoulders, without even any victuals
(Ex. xii, 39); there is not a word about heavy and cumbersome
tents. Tents are heavy, with canvas or hair-cloth, ropes, poles,
and pegs; in the U.S. Army a little "dog-tent" merely to shelter
two soldiers lying down, is divided between its two occupants as
luggage. But these tents of the Israelites must have been big

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family affairs, for men, women, and children to live in with
decency and some degree of comfort, and they must have been very
heavy. How did the Israelites carry them? But first, how did they
get them? As they lived in houses in Egypt, it would be remarkable
if each family, awaiting marching orders for the promised land,
which until a single day previously they had no premonition of,
should have had a tent in the garret.

And how many tents must they have had? To crowd indecently ten
persons, male and female, old and young, sick and dying, into each
tent would have required at least 241,420 large and heavy tents, to
be lugged in their first flight, and for forty years wandering in
the wilderness. We are nowhere told that the children of Israel had
horses, or knew how to ride; it seems that 750 years later the
Chosen could not ride horses even if they had had them, for Rab-
shakeh offered them, on behalf of the King of Assyria, "two
thousand horses, if thou be able on thy part to set riders upon
them" (2 Kings xix, 23). And while it is said (Deut. xxix, 5) that
in the whole forty years "your clothes are not waxen old upon you,
and thy shoe is not waxen old upon thy foot," yet we are not told
that tents were thus providentially preserved. How the clothes and
shoes of the little children who started on the forty-year tramp
sufficed for them as they grew larger, unless the clothes and shoes
expanded along with their skins from year to year, has become an
old joke. No such Providence is recorded as to the tents of Israel.

THE GREAT ENCAMPMENTS

As for their encampments, who shall justly estimate their size
and extent, for a host of two and a half million people, with all
their slaves and camp-followers, and with more than that number of
sheep and cattle? The question would be of no concern if it did not
involve some further strains on faith. Every one of the forty-two
times the camp was pitched (Num. xxxiii), there must be suitable
space found for some 250,000 tents, laid out (Num. ii) regularly
four-square around the holy tabernacle, after that was constructed,
and with the necessary streets and passages, and proper spaces
between the tents. A man in a coffin occupies about twelve square
feet, six feet by two. Living people would not be packed in their
tents like corpses or sardines; they must have at least, say, three
times that space, thirty-six square feet or four square yards each.
A tent to house ten persons with minimum decency must occupy
therefore an average of forty square yards.

If the 241,420 such tents were set one against another, with
no intervening space or separating streets, they would occupy
9,656,800 square yards, or over 1995 acres of ground; a little more
than three square miles. But the desert was vast, there was no need
for such impossible crowding; ample room was available for seemly
spacing of tents, for streets and areas, for the great central
tabernacle and its court, and for the 22,000 Levites, not counted
in the soldier-census, who must "pitch round about the tabernacle,"
as well as space for the rounding up of the millions of cattle.
These allowances for order, decency, and comfort would much extend
the circuit of the camp, and make more reasonable the accepted
estimate that "this encampment is computed to have formed a movable
city of twelve miles square," or an area of 144 square miles, which

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is certainly modest for a population equal to that of Chicago,
which covers 198 square miles. The tabernacle stood in the center,
thus six miles from the outskirts of the camp in either direction.

SOME FEATURES OF CAMP-LIFE

So much for the lay-out of the sacred encampment. What is the
point of faith involved? Whenever a sacrifice of sin-offering was
made by the priest, a daily and constant service, "the skin of the
bullock, and all his flesh, ... even the whole bullock shall he
carry forth without the camp unto a clean place, where the ashes
are poured out, and burn him on the wood with fire" (Lev. iv, 11,
12). This was the personal chore of the priest himself, of whom
there were oddly three, Aaron and his sons Eleazar and Ithamar. And
there were thousands upon thousands of sacrifices, for every
imaginable thing and occasion; and the carcasses and offal of the
slaughtered cattle must always be taken "without the camp" and
burned, by these three poor priests, and Father Aaron was over 80
years old. So these chores would keep them going, time after time,
six miles out and six miles back, lugging heavy and bloody
carcasses and offal through the main streets of the camp,
incessantly, and leave them no time for their holy, bloody
sacrifices of myriads of animals, as described in Exodus xxix, and
all through Leviticus. Moreover, the entire garbage, refuse, ashes,
and filth of every kind of two and a half million people and
millions of cattle must be constantly and with extreme care carried
outside the camp, practically under the awful threat of
annihilation; for "Yahveh. thy God walketh in the midst of thy
camp, to deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee;
therefor shall thy camp be holy: that he see no unclean thing in
thee, and turn away from thee" (Deut. xxiii, 12-14); and everybody
who reads the Bible knows what the Chosen's enemies used to do to
them whenever their Yahveh wasn't looking closely after them.

These inspired verses enshrine, too, for our admiration,
material details: even the ordinary personal necessities of nature
must be relieved "without the camp," and covered up by digging with
a paddle (Deut. xxiii, 13); the 603,500-odd valiant soldiers of
Yahveh were commanded by Yahveh: "Thou shalt have a paddle upon thy
weapon" for this digging operation! There must have been an advance
revelation of the peculiar pattern of these funny weapons, with a
spear-point on one end and a scavenger-paddle on the other, for the
Chosen to have got them manufactured to special order by the
arinourers of Egypt. And it is to be wondered how the non-
combatants, women-folk and little children, did their digging on
these occasions, unless they borrowed some warrior-paddle not then
in use, or had a paddle-armed soldier for an escort when they went
perforce "without the camp." Just think for a moment, and then
admire the strange providence of Yahveh: two and a half millions of
his Chosen People, old and young, sick and infirm, men, women, and
children, trotting at all hours of day and night, from the more
central parts of the encampment some twelve miles out and back, to
find a suitable spot "without the camp" to respond to their several
calls; and often even before they got back home, having to turn and
trek all over again! And every mother's son and daughter of the
"hosts of Yahveh" must make an average of six miles, both ways,
several times daily.

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Moreover, as Yahveh got angry with his Chosen, whom he had
repeatedly promised to bring into Canaan, and as he caused every
one of them, except Joshua and Caleb, to die in the wilderness,
there were on the average 1700 deaths and funerals per day for
forty years, at the rate of 72 per hour, more than one for very
minute of every day and all the corpses must also be carried
"without the camp" for burial, an average of six miles going and
returning. And as the census taken at the end of the forty years
shows but a slight decrease in numbers from that taken at the
beginning, the entire host was renewed by a birth-rate of over one
a minute for forty years; and all the debris must be lugged without
the camp and disposed of. Verily the Chosen had their troubles.

THE "BURNING QUESTION" OF FUEL

There is also the question of fires and fuel. The myriads of
sacrifices and burnt offerings at the tabernacle, besides the
wasteful burning "without the camp" of practically entire animals,
and that too when the children of Israel were straying and rioting
for "flesh to eat," required many fires and hence much firewood.
Where, there in the "waste howling wilderness," did they get so
much fuel? -- a burning question nowhere answered by revelation. In
the Arabian wilderness at certain seasons, and always at night,
when the fiery sun had set, the cold was fearfully intense; the
Chosen must have been grievously beset to find firewood to keep
themselves from freezing, and it is never once recorded that stove-
wood was miraculously provided either to keep them warm or to cook
manna, to say nothing of the big quail feast. The inspired Word
tells us much of the fires and of the ashes, but vouchsafes nothing
about the immense forests which must have been required to supply
a population like that of modern Chicago with firewood for heating,
cooking, and burning hecatombs every day for forty years.

****     ****

Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.

The Bank of Wisdom is a collection of the most thoughtful,
scholarly and factual books. These computer books are reprints of
suppressed books and will cover American and world history; the
Biographies and writings of famous persons, and especially of our
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IS IT GOD'S WORD?
by
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1926

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