Time Frames and Taboo Data Blog

…or Promises Not Kept

At Mount Sinai, Moses allegedly received directly from God the list of Laws under which the Israelites were to forever abide.  But when Moses trudged down the mountain to the Israelite camp with the stone tablets of  Law he found the Israelites had fashioned a golden calf idol to lavish their attention upon.  In anger Moses hurled the tablets of Law at the dejected Israelites and the Laws became rubble.  There was no backup technology in those days so Moses had to camber back up the mountain again to get a second batch of commandments that spelled out the rules by which the Israelites could make themselves worthy of receiving God’s conditional love.  This set of stone tablets survived and were then lugged around in an ark for years and served as the Israelites’ battle standard during their weary wanderings, for there had been no map included with the commandments.

The rest of the Old Testament pivots upon the alleged covenant that Yahweh is said to have established with the Israelites at Sinai.  For some never explained reason Yahweh pledged to make  the Israelites—out  of all the people on the planet—his chosen ones and bestowed special favors upon them.  Yahweh’s promises included a peaceful and affluent homeland.  Oddly, that land was already occupied!  But all  they had to do to receive the “Promised Land” was to indulge in a bit of genocide to show their worthiness of the gift.  According to the priest written “history,” the Israelites thus received their “inheritance” by cleansing the land with Canaanite blood as Yahweh cheered them on. 

Once the Israelites were in possession of the coveted land, the Israelites had every expectation, according to their understanding of the Sinai contract, to live peacefully in their enclosed, uncontaminated region.  But even Moses apparently neglected to note the fine print clauses attached to the Sinai Covenant.  The inherited land was not as peaceful as anticipated.  After years of guidance under assorted Judges, the Philistine armies routed the Israelite tribal levies in battle and took the Ark of the Covenant as booty.  The priests and “prophets” came to the conclusion that the reason for their problem was because Yahweh had expected them to set up their inherited land as a kingdom.  Sure enough, the “prophet” Samuel avowed that indeed such was the wish of Yahweh, and the Lord’s selection was Saul to be first king of Israel.  Saul proved to have been the Lord’s spur of the moment decision, for it proved to be a not-so-omniscient choice; and even as Saul continued to reign, God was directing the “prophet” Samuel to select the youngest son of Jesse (of the Benjamin tribe), David, to be groomed for king.  The timeframe for David is traditionally placed as 1040?-973 BCE.

So how did the Lord show his favor for David?  In a combat situation with a Philistine giant named Goliath.  Priest “history” asserts  that the youth David, who was too young to serve in the military but brought supplies, was the only one connected to Saul’s defence forces who was brave enough to meet Goliath in one-on-one combat.  The priest authors noted that David shouted, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with javelins; but I come to you in the name of the Lord.”   And the Lord made certain that the single small stone from David’s slingshot struck the most vulnerable spot on Goliath’s helmeted skull.  Later on, however, the Lord did nothing to assist all those in dire need who joined with David when he became the renegade leader of fugitives and soldiers.  After Saul’s death some 23 years later, traditionally placed about 1013 BCE, David was allegedly anointed king of Israel. 

The “word of the Lord,” according to the minor “prophet” Nathan, was relayed to David with another glorious covenant promise (1 Kings 7:12-16); that the house, the kingdom and the throne of David “…shall be established for ever.”  The only restrictive clause in this covenant was that if the king did wrong in the Lord’s sight, then the king, not the people, would be punished; even so, God would not take the kingdom away from David as he had done with Saul.  This sounds like an unconditional promise—the house of David was to continue for ever.

Genuine history seems not to have followed the Lord’s plan: the kingdom of the Israelites was conquered and completely destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BCE, never to be resurrected as a monarchy ruled over by a descendant of David.  (Incidentally, something time-altering occurred in 587 BCE that forced every nation on Earth to begin recalculating its chronology.  It was not because David’s kingdom fell.)  Today, of course, there is the nation of Israel, but it is not under the rule of a descendant of David; it functions loosely as a democracy.  This means that the greatest covenants that God extended to the Israelites were sacred promises that was not kept.

That fact does not seem to register with the army of Bible thumpers who choose to cherry pick verses out of scriptures that will inflate their egos.  Ignoring the unfulfilled promises of the covenants that were avowed to have been extended to the Israelites allows them the privilege of accepting the present day democratic nation of Israel as the fulfillment of God’s promises.  The reason  for their self-inflicted blindness is that it allows them to indulge in spiritual lust over the New Testament book of Revelation and the alleged  “prophecy” of Armageddon—the promised first step to Christian domination of Earth.

This entry was posted on July 23, 2010 at 2:26 am and is filed under agnoticism, Atheism, Atheist, belief, Bible, culture, faith, history, humanity, random, religion, thoughts with tags Ark of the Covenant, Armageddon, Chosen ones, Covenants, David, democratic Israel, Goliath, Israelite "prophets', Promised Land. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.