The first rule is “Stop worshiping fake gods, you’re making the real god angry” and the second is “Stop just making up new gods from scratch. We’re monotheists. Fucking act like it.” The third, incidentally, is often interpreted to mean “Stop saying my name as a swear word” but is more traditionally understood to mean “Stop claiming you’re me or that you’re speaking in my name”… which is fucking wild considering everything in the books that follow.
Getting genocided and wondering who the fuck Yahweh is
It’s not like they didn’t know who Yahweh was. They were Jews fleeing Egypt precisely because they held a faith that contradicted the Egyptian high priesthood. You have to go back to the context of the story and recognize Moses only goes up the mountain because he’s completely losing control of the refugees he’s leading. They’re hungry, they’re lost, they have no direction or purpose anymore, and the cohesion of the society is falling apart.
So Moses goes up a hill and says “Okay, God, you got us this far. Now what?” And God sets down commandments. Then Moses returns down the hill and announces “I’ve got new instructions” and a bunch of the refugees say “Fuck no, we hate Yahweh now. We’re going to worship this big bronze bull and steal and rape and murder one another and you can’t stop us”.
And then there’s basically a mini-civil war in the refugee camp that ends (like so many civil wars do) in a genocide of the losing side.
Also, at least two of the rules are basically just “my god is better than your god”
Getting genocided and wondering who the fuck Yahweh is
The first rule is “Stop worshiping fake gods, you’re making the real god angry” and the second is “Stop just making up new gods from scratch. We’re monotheists. Fucking act like it.” The third, incidentally, is often interpreted to mean “Stop saying my name as a swear word” but is more traditionally understood to mean “Stop claiming you’re me or that you’re speaking in my name”… which is fucking wild considering everything in the books that follow.
It’s not like they didn’t know who Yahweh was. They were Jews fleeing Egypt precisely because they held a faith that contradicted the Egyptian high priesthood. You have to go back to the context of the story and recognize Moses only goes up the mountain because he’s completely losing control of the refugees he’s leading. They’re hungry, they’re lost, they have no direction or purpose anymore, and the cohesion of the society is falling apart.
So Moses goes up a hill and says “Okay, God, you got us this far. Now what?” And God sets down commandments. Then Moses returns down the hill and announces “I’ve got new instructions” and a bunch of the refugees say “Fuck no, we hate Yahweh now. We’re going to worship this big bronze bull and steal and rape and murder one another and you can’t stop us”.
And then there’s basically a mini-civil war in the refugee camp that ends (like so many civil wars do) in a genocide of the losing side.
My friend, they weren’t monotheists at that point. There were all sorts of gods and Yahweh was just one of them.