The story of Passover always confused me. The Israelite god is going to destroy all the firstborn of Egypt in order to convince Pharaoh to let the slaves go (after, according to the passage, this same god “hardened Pharaoh’s heart” against the idea of releasing his slaves). He commands the Israelites to smear blood above their door in order to receive protection and save their own firstborn. Why in the world did an all-powerful, all-knowing god need the Israelites to smear blood on their door lintel in order to indicate to this god that the occupants were, in fact, Israelites? This so anthropomorphizes this god as to make it laughable. It leaves readers imagining this god moving physically from house to house, door to door, checking to see if there’s blood, then acting accordingly. Now, granted, I believe the text refers to an angel doing the actual killing, but spirit is spirit, right (in whatever sense “disembodied mind that has the ability to affect the physical world” might mean)?
Yet there’s a more brutal way of expressing this confusion:
