the bible you never knew Exodus 1

Exodus 1

After Joseph and his family lived happily ever after, their descendents did not live happily forever after. Why? Because they were slaves. Sadly, after Joseph had moved to Egypt, God had become rather bored of playing with the humans and had started to find just how enjoyable lounging around doing nothing was. The problem, however, is that when one is lounging around doing nothing, somehow the time goes even quicker and quicker and, before you know it, poof! 400 years gone and you aren't even out of your pyjamas yet. God felt a little guilty since he had, after all, promised countless times to both Abraham and Jacob that their children would rule the world. God needed to set them free, but in order to do that, he needed a prophet...

Down on earth, whilst God had been lounging around doing nothing, plenty of things had been happening. Only a few years ago the Egyptian Pharaoh had ordered the killing of Israelite babies in order to keep the population down. One baby though, escaped. His mother put him in a basket and went to the river where she let him go. The basket floated down the stream and ended up beside the Pharaoh's daughter. The baby was taken in and was called Moses because he was taken out from the water. The baby grew up, and grew up knowing that he was an Israelite. This was all fine and well until, one day he killed an Egyptian for beating an Israelite slave. Moses, being a good and moral man, instead of advocating the immorality of keeping slaves and, instead of giving himself up to the law, decided to do a runner. Moses ran as far as Midian where he rescued a group of girls from robbers. As a reward, Moses was given one of the girls as his wife. After a few years with his wife in Midian, God, who was watching him, decided it was time to get in touch.

One day, when Moses was out looking after the sheep, a bush suddenly burst into flame: this, in itself, was surprising, but what really got Moses freaked, was when it started talking.

"Moses" said the bush "I am GOD."

Moses, having never been advised by anybody not to trust bushes, was confused but not particularly distrustful. "God?" he inquired tentatively.

"Yes, I am the lord your God. Since the beginning was, I was, and since I was, the beginning was. God is my name and my name is God: no other name do I have and no other name has God for God beith my name and my name beith God," said the Bush.

Moses looked confused. "So the name of this Bush is God?"

"NO!" cried the Bush, clearly irritated. I am not the Bush, I am merely using the bush to talk to you and to look impressive."

"So what are you then?" asked Moses.

"I am that I am," the Bush replied simply.

Moses, who didn't think that explained anything, just looked even more confused, "but what does that mean?" he asked.

The Bush sparked angrily , "It means, I don't know, ok? From now on just do as I say. You can to take the sandals from your feet, for a start: this is holy ground."

"Oh" said Moses "Actually, I reckon it's pretty firm, look - (and here Moses stamped the ground) seems pretty solid to me."

"Look" the Bush said impatiently "Obey and take them off."

"Alright," said Moses "If it bothers you that much. I don't even see why wearing sandals or not is gonna affect me anyway."

"Now," the Bush said "I am God so you must do as I say. I've been watching what's been happening to my people, the Israelites, recently in Egypt and I'm all rather upset about it. I have some nice hot, sandy desert flowing with milk and honey for you guys, but I need to get you all out of Egypt."

How're you gonna do that?" asked Moses.

"You're gonna tell Pharaoh to let them go."

"No way" said Moses "He'll never listen"

"Well, it doesn't matter if he listens or not" said the Bush "I am God, and I pretty much do what I want – I'm kinda really only doing this to make myself look really cool. So take this staff I'm giving you and go to Egypt and do some real funky stuff in my name, ok?"

Moses still looked kind of uncertain. "Do I have a choice?" he asked.

"Not really," the Bush replied.

Later on, when Moses had had longer to think about it, he somehow had the feeling that perhaps it wasn't so unusual to hear such crazy things from the mouth of a Bush.
Moses, however, was good as his word and set off to Egypt to free his people. On arriving in Egypt, he hooked up with his brother, Aaron, and they both went to Pharaoh and said "Let my people go."

Pharaoh sneered: "Why should I?" he asked nastily.

"This Bush spoke to me in the desert and told me that he was the God of the Israelites. He said that he will do really nasty things to you all unless you do as he says," explained Moses.

Pharaoh laughed, "Yeah right, whatever you say."

Moses was unperturbed - he and Aaron took their staffs and said: "Behold – the power of God!" Slowly the staffs turned into snakes and hissed at the Pharaoh, who was unimpressed because God, who was finding this enjoyable, was programming the Pharaoh's brain to deny the Jews their freedom. Thus, Pharaoh merely raised an eyebrow and said:

"Party tricks - my sons' entertainers do this trick all the time." Pharaoh said. "I will not let your people go; instead they shall work, and work more than they have done before."

After this, Moses' popularity with the Jews went down markedly, but he did not give up. God told him to go to Pharaoh by the River Nile and turn the Nile into blood so that Egypt would stink and all the crops would rot. God, after all, had spent 400 years lounging around doing nothing, and now that he had an activity, he found he was rather enjoying it. All that imagination he had used up during the creation was coming back to him in the form of really terrible deaths he could give people. Next, for example, was frogs. Millions of frogs, all of them bouncing, hopping, ribbiting and croaking absolutely everywhere: in the fields, in the houses, in the beds and the bathrooms. Pharaoh got so frustrated that he finally agreed to let the Isrealites go, but this rather alarmed God, who had just begun having fun, and so God went into Pharaoh's heart and mind and hardened it against Moses.
Thus another plague was given to Egypt; this time it was lice - thousands and thousands of them and, just like the frogs, they were everywhere. Pharaoh begged Moses to have them stopped, promising that he would free the Jews, but, when once more, Pharaoh changed his mind, Moses and God let leash yet more plagues. After the lice, a disease was sent to all the Egyptian livestock so that all the animals would die and then, after that, Moses sent for boils to appear on all the Egyptians and all their livestock (even though the livestock was now dead), but God was still hardening the heart of Pharaoh so that Pharaoh would not yield. The next plague was extremely heavy, dangerous hail and balls of fire. Moses warned the Jews and the god-fearing Egyptians to keep themselves and their livestock (even though the livestock of the god-fearing Egyptians was dead) inside lest they be killed by the hail and falling balls of fire. Pharaoh once more begged for the plague to end, promising the freedom of the Jewish slaves but, once the plague was over, the Pharaoh once more failed to keep his word.

Moses was now getting rather frustrated by this and was wondering when it would all come to an end either way, but God spoke to him and assured him of success. "It's ok," said God "This is all part of my plan. I'm hardening Pharaoh's heart so I can show off my power to all the Israelites. Once they've seen all the really scary stuff I can do, they won't bother worshipping silly statues anymore." And so they entered into the next cycle of plagues with locusts which ate everything that hadn't been ruined by the hail and then with a darkness that lasted three days. After these last two plagues, Pharaoh once more promised to let the Israelites go, but God was not yet satisfied.

"Not yet," he said to Moses, "There's one more thing I really wanna do – I've been saving it for last. Once I've done this, Pharaoh and the Egyptians will want nothing to do with you and everyone will think I'm amazing. Moses agreed, having decided by this time that the Bush was certainly not to be messed with, and so the next day the last plague came: the death of the first born. God warned the Israelites to put blood all over their front doors so as to escape the plague, which, during the night, killed all the firstborn of both the people and the animals (even though all the animals had been killed in an earlier plague). During this time, God also executed judgment upon the Egyptian Gods even though they did not exist.

After the plague the Isrealites were allowed to go free, but not before God gave them rather complicated instructions on the eating of bread. Still, they made it towards the Red Sea when, suddenly, Pharaoh and his men appeared on horseback to recapture the children of Israel. The people were terrified, having just realized that they had never considered just how they were going to get across the sea, and now they saw that they were well and truly screwed. They were a little more relieved when a giant fireball plunged to the ground blocking the Egyptians path, but they still all ran panic stricken towards Moses, who luckily knew just what to do. He struck his staff into the sea and the sea began to part, letting the Israelites through. Finally, once the Isrealites were safe towards the other end of the sea, as God's last trick, He decided to let the Egyptians past the fireball and into the Red Sea, only to have the sea come crashing down on them all, drowning them, smashing them against rocks and so on.

The Children of Israel, on the other side of the sea, saw this and celebrated. They had won their freedom