spent the last month writing the whole story down on your fuckin’ rolly-scrolls— Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all that fairy-tale shit—and now we’re gonna toss the whole thing out into your oblivion pile just ’cause my happy little family is down there partying in the desert?
17 What, thou seest some bullshit little golden calf and feel all threatened by that?
18 ‘Smite this, smite that, look at me, I’m the L ORD All-Smitey, la di da’?
19 Dick move, dude.
20 Verily.
21 Thou mayest be God, but thou actest like The Man. ”
22 And that was when I forbade Moses from entering Israel.
23 I am by no means averse to receiving constructive criticism; I received it from Abraham, and I would go on to receive it from many other great men in my career; David, and Muhammad, and Kanye.
24 But such criticism must be offered in a spirit of respect, both for me and the organization as a whole; and when disrespect is shown—nay, flouted—an example must be set, even with someone like Moses.
25 Of course, in the Bible it says I punished him for striking a rock with his rod to make it gush water, rather than merely waving it over the rock, as I had directed.
26 Yea; the Bible saith a lot of things.
CHAPTER 12
1 O f the 40 years’ wandering in the desert, the less said the better.
2 Only a handful of incidents from that period are recounted in the Bible; some military skirmishes, and a few spy missions, and the occasional admonitory epidemic; but for the most part it was a dreary time.
3 The Israelites bivouacked at dozens of lonesome encampments, every one of them devoid of any kind of nightlife or theater scene.
4 The migration quickly fell into a routine; at the front of the procession was the Ark of the Covenant, and the small band of priests in charge of it; and behind the band followed the ragtag bunch known as Arkheads;
5 Ex-rebels grown middle-aged and fat, passing their days listening to the same chants over and over again and living off whatever scraps fell from the sky;
6 And perpetually in need of a miracle.
7 But their children were a different generation, shrewder and savvier; as their leader I chose Moses’s assistant, Joshua; he was brilliant, and hardworking, and completely full of “it.”
8 Even better, he came from the tribe of Ephraim, the southernmost tribe; and so spoke with an Ephraimic accent, drawling his vowels and saying “y’all” instead of “ye all”; which gave him broader appeal than the usual breed of northeastern tribal liberals.
9 Day by day, week by week, year by year, older Israelites died off, and younger ones rose to take their place.
10 And these younger ones knew of my vow, that no Jew would enter the Promised Land until the last survivor of the Exodus had perished; and they had seen that I was not inclined to artificially foreshorten the lives of these survivors;
11 And so by the start of the fourth decade of itinerancy, it became a more and more common occurrence for the rapidly-aging pool of ex-slaves to meet with “unusual” deaths.
12 There was a sharp increase in the number of accidental spearings; children began waking up to discover their parents’ bodies mysteriously filled with gallons of sand they had swallowed as they slept;
13 And during their travels, more and more of their elderly forebears perished on the wayside of exhaustion; the kind of exhaustion that manifests itself, in deep ligature marks about the head and neck.
14 Lo, even poor Aaron died under mysterious circumstances; for one day when he was leading services, the four young vice-priests holding the Ark of the Covenant above him all somehow slipped simultaneously, causing it to crash down upon him.
15 (Verily, that Ark was way more trouble than it was worth.
16 Word to the wise: leave it in that crate in the warehouse.)
CHAPTER 13
1 O n a beautiful spring morning—40 years to the day after that immortal sunrise when he and I wished the Jews a merry isthmus— Moses stood atop Mt. Nebo.
2 His
17 What, thou seest some bullshit little golden calf and feel all threatened by that?
18 ‘Smite this, smite that, look at me, I’m the L ORD All-Smitey, la di da’?
19 Dick move, dude.
20 Verily.
21 Thou mayest be God, but thou actest like The Man. ”
22 And that was when I forbade Moses from entering Israel.
23 I am by no means averse to receiving constructive criticism; I received it from Abraham, and I would go on to receive it from many other great men in my career; David, and Muhammad, and Kanye.
24 But such criticism must be offered in a spirit of respect, both for me and the organization as a whole; and when disrespect is shown—nay, flouted—an example must be set, even with someone like Moses.
25 Of course, in the Bible it says I punished him for striking a rock with his rod to make it gush water, rather than merely waving it over the rock, as I had directed.
26 Yea; the Bible saith a lot of things.
CHAPTER 12
1 O f the 40 years’ wandering in the desert, the less said the better.
2 Only a handful of incidents from that period are recounted in the Bible; some military skirmishes, and a few spy missions, and the occasional admonitory epidemic; but for the most part it was a dreary time.
3 The Israelites bivouacked at dozens of lonesome encampments, every one of them devoid of any kind of nightlife or theater scene.
4 The migration quickly fell into a routine; at the front of the procession was the Ark of the Covenant, and the small band of priests in charge of it; and behind the band followed the ragtag bunch known as Arkheads;
5 Ex-rebels grown middle-aged and fat, passing their days listening to the same chants over and over again and living off whatever scraps fell from the sky;
6 And perpetually in need of a miracle.
7 But their children were a different generation, shrewder and savvier; as their leader I chose Moses’s assistant, Joshua; he was brilliant, and hardworking, and completely full of “it.”
8 Even better, he came from the tribe of Ephraim, the southernmost tribe; and so spoke with an Ephraimic accent, drawling his vowels and saying “y’all” instead of “ye all”; which gave him broader appeal than the usual breed of northeastern tribal liberals.
9 Day by day, week by week, year by year, older Israelites died off, and younger ones rose to take their place.
10 And these younger ones knew of my vow, that no Jew would enter the Promised Land until the last survivor of the Exodus had perished; and they had seen that I was not inclined to artificially foreshorten the lives of these survivors;
11 And so by the start of the fourth decade of itinerancy, it became a more and more common occurrence for the rapidly-aging pool of ex-slaves to meet with “unusual” deaths.
12 There was a sharp increase in the number of accidental spearings; children began waking up to discover their parents’ bodies mysteriously filled with gallons of sand they had swallowed as they slept;
13 And during their travels, more and more of their elderly forebears perished on the wayside of exhaustion; the kind of exhaustion that manifests itself, in deep ligature marks about the head and neck.
14 Lo, even poor Aaron died under mysterious circumstances; for one day when he was leading services, the four young vice-priests holding the Ark of the Covenant above him all somehow slipped simultaneously, causing it to crash down upon him.
15 (Verily, that Ark was way more trouble than it was worth.
16 Word to the wise: leave it in that crate in the warehouse.)
CHAPTER 13
1 O n a beautiful spring morning—40 years to the day after that immortal sunrise when he and I wished the Jews a merry isthmus— Moses stood atop Mt. Nebo.
2 His
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