Book of Exodus

"Thou shalt not steal."

"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour."

"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s."

"He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death."

"Life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."

"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."

"You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt."

"Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk."

"Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared."

"And thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and the Thummim; and they shall be upon Aaron’s heart, when he goeth in before the ."

"Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him."

"And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf."

"And the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play."

"A stiffnecked people."

"Who is on the ’s side? let him come unto me."

"And the spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend."

"Joshua, the son of Nun."

"Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live."

"And he was there with the forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments."

"Tell them, I AM, Jehovah said To Moses; while earth heard in dread, And, smitten to the heart, At once above, beneath, around, All Nature, without voice or sound, Replied, "O Lord, THOU ART.""

"Jacob’s descendants, the Israelites, find their way to Egypt and become too numerous for the Pharaoh’s liking, so he enslaves them and orders that all the boys be killed at birth. Moses escapes the mass infanticide and grows up to challenge the Pharaoh to let his people go. God, who is omnipotent, could have softened Pharaoh’s heart, but he hardens it instead, which gives him a reason to afflict every Egyptian with painful boils and other miseries before killing every one of their firstborn sons. (The word Passover alludes to the executioner angel’s passing over the households with Israelite firstborns.) God follows this massacre with another one when he drowns the Egyptian army as they pursue the Israelites across the Red Sea. The Israelites assemble at Mount Sinai and hear the Ten Commandments, the great moral code that outlaws engraved images and the coveting of livestock but gives a pass to slavery, rape, torture, mutilation, and genocide of neighboring tribes. The Israelites become impatient while waiting for Moses to return with an expanded set of laws, which will prescribe the death penalty for blasphemy, homosexuality, adultery, talking back to parents, and working on the Sabbath. To pass the time, they worship a statue of a calf, for which the punishment turns out to be, you guessed it, death. Following orders from God, Moses and his brother Aaron kill three thousand of their companions."

"[H]istoricity is not important! What's important is what the text means, what is the text trying to say."

"I couldn’t help but go to the Book of Exodus, where it talked about where God said, “If you don’t let my people go, I’m going to cause flies to come as a sign of what’s wrong. But I won’t let the flies be on the people, but the fly will be a symbol that you’re just wrong. You’re lying. Let my people go.”"