The Bible in Fewer Words

God keeps giving Moses commandments. Here are a few from this episode: A thief who is too poor to pay back what was stolen, shall be sold to pay for the theft. If a man entices an unmarried woman to have sex with him, he must marry her, unless the father refuses to give her to him, in which case he must pay him the going price for virgins. Kill witches, people who have sex with animals, and people...

Exodus 21 contains God's commandments on slavery. Verses 20-21, for example, say that you may beat your slaves, as long as they survive for at least a day or two after the beating - because a slave is your money. God also provides instructions for taking a second wife and selling your daughter - and tells you what to do if she fails to please her new master. The chapter also commands parents t...

As Moses prepares to meet God on Mount Sinai, he tells the men not to have sex with their wives, and warns the people not to come near the mountain or God will kill them. Then, after the eighty year-old Moses goes up and down the mountain a few times, God delivers the (ten?) commandments. The text and notes for this episode can be found here . If you enjoy these podcasts, consider supporting us at...

In this episode, the people complain about the lack of food, so God sends them quails and manna from heaven. They complain about the lack of water, and God has Moses strike a rock with his staff to make water come out. Then they fight a war with Amalek, and God makes them successful when Moses's hand is up, but they are defeated when his hand is down. When Moses was too tired to do that, Aaron...

Moses parts the Red Sea so the Israelites can cross on dry land. Then God lets the water rush back to drown the Egyptians - after taking off their chariot wheels to make sure they couldn't escape. The text and notes for this episode can be found here . If you enjoy these podcasts, consider supporting us at Patreon.com/BFW .

God finally finishes up his ten plagues by killing all of the Egyptian firstborn children and animals. He also devised a clever way to avoid killing the Israelite children - by having them kill a lamb and wipe it's blood on their doorposts. That way, when he saw the blood, he'd know not to kill the firstborn children in their houses. After God finished child-killing, the Israelites left Eg...

God continues to send plagues on the Egyptians: he kills their farm animals and sends boils on man and beast. Then he took a little break and hardened the Pharaoh's heart again. The episode ends with God sending three more plagues: hail, locusts, and three days of darkness. The text and notes for this episode can be found here . If you enjoy these podcasts, consider supporting us at Patreon.co...

The plagues continue in this episode, with the second plague of frogs. But the Pharaoh's magicians knew how to do frogs, too. The third plague did the trick, though. Lice! The magicians couldn't do lice, so they knew it was done by the finger of God. The fourth plague was flies, and the magicians didn't even try to do this one. How could they compete with the Lord of the Flies! The tex...

Moses tells God that he can't be his spokesman because he has uncircumcised lips. But God says, that okay, his brother Aaron can speak for him. So God teaches them some magic tricks, and they're off to see the Pharaoh. When they arrive they do the water to blood trick (the first plague of Egypt), but the Pharaoh's magicians know that trick, too. Shucks! The text and notes for this epis...

The Bible is filled with strange stories. But this is one of the strangest. It all takes place in just three verses, so it's easy to miss - or skip over, saying, "I don't know what the hell that was, but I think I'll just keep reading and not think about it too much." The text and notes for this episode can be found here . If you enjoy these podcasts, consider supporting us a...

In this episode, God appears to Moses in a burning bush and teaches him some magic tricks. The text and notes for this episode can be found here . If you enjoy these podcasts, consider supporting us at Patreon.com/BFW .

The baby Moses floats down a river and is rescued by the Pharaoh's daughter. Sometime later, he murders an Egyptian, flees to Midian, and marries a woman named Zipporah. The text and notes for this episode can be found here . If you enjoy these podcasts, consider supporting us at Patreon.com/BFW .

In this episode, Jacob asks Joseph to put his hand under this thigh while he promises not to bury him in Egypt. Then he dies, after messing up a blessing of Joseph's sons Ephraim and Manasseh, and giving a bizarre deathbed speech. The text and notes for this episode can be found here . If you enjoy these podcasts, consider supporting us at Patreon.com/BFW .

There's a famine in Canaan, so Jacob sends his sons to Egypt to buy grain. The person they have to buy it from is Joseph. He pretends not to recognize them, but eventually he reveals himself to them as the brother they hated and tried to get rid of. The text and notes for this episode can be found here . If you enjoy these podcasts, consider supporting us at Patreon.com/BFW .

In this episode: Potiphar's wife tries to seduce Joseph, and then accuses Joseph of trying to rape her. So Joseph is imprisoned. While in prison, Joseph interprets the butler and baker's dreams. The Pharaoh asks Joseph to interpret his dreams, and Joseph does that. The Pharaoh gives Joseph a new name (Zaphnathpaaneah), a wife, gold chain, and chariot - and told everyone in Egypt to obey hi...

There's a lot going on in this episode. Here are some of the highlights: Judah had sex with a Canaanite woman and they had three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah. Judah found a wife for Er, whose name was Tamar. Er was wicked in the sight of the Lord, so God killed him. Judah told Er's brother Onan to have sex with his dead brother's wife. Er did that (more or less) but spilled his seed on t...

In this episode, God renames Jacob (again) as "Israel" - although God continues to call Jacob "Jacob" now and then. Rachel dies in childbirth while delivering Benjamin. Reuben has sex with his father's concubine. We learn about Jacob's family values. (He loved Joseph more than his other children.) Joseph's brothers decide to kill Joseph, but throw him in a pit inste...

This is the Bible's version of Romeo and Juliet. It includes the best example of a good father in the Bible: Hamor. Hamor was willing to endure a painful circumcision so that his son, Shechem, could marry Dinah, the woman he loved, and his people and the Israelites could live peacefully together. Unfortunately, while Shechem, Hamor, and all of the males were recovering from their circumcisions...

Jacob and a man wrestled all night. The man refused to tell Jacob his name, but gave Jacob a new name: Israel, and said that he had wrestled with God and won. The text and notes for this episode can be found here . If you enjoy these podcasts, consider supporting us at Patreon.com/BFW .

Jacob, his four wives, and twelve children leave without saying goodbye, taking lots of Laban's stuff without permission - including his "gods". Laban and his sons chase after them. When they catch up to them, Laban searches for his graven images, but Rachel hid them in a box that she was sitting on and said, "I can't stand up because I'm menstruating." So that did...

Jacob has sex with his wife's sister by mistake and doesn't figure it out until the next morning, Rachel trades sex with Jacob for some mandrakes, and God opens and closes wombs along the way. Over a twenty-year period, Jacob and his four wives have eleven sons and one daughter, which must be some kind of record outside of Utah. This episode also shows Jacob's (and God's) biologica...

Like his father Abraham, Isaac didn't want his son to marry a Canaanite. So Isaac told Jacob to go visit his uncle and marry one of his daughters. On the way, he dreamed about a ladder going from earth to heaven with angels going up and down on it. When he arrived at his uncle's village, he met Rachel at the well (which is the place to meet women in the Hebrew scriptures). The text for eac...

When Isaac was old and nearly blind, Rebekah and Jacob trick him into giving Jacob the blessing that belonged to his brother Esau. But it was all according to God's plan because, as the Bible says, God hates Esau. ( Malachi 1:3 , Romans 9:13 ) The text for each episode can be found at the Skeptic's Annotated Bible website , where we encourage you to read along with us. Text and notes for t...

Isaac repeats his father's "She's my sister" lie to the same king that his father lied to long ago. And he enriches himself in the same way. The text for each episode can be found at the Skeptic's Annotated Bible website , where we encourage you to read along with us. Text and notes for this episode can be found here . If you enjoy these podcasts, consider supporting us at Pa...

When Abraham was at least 140 years old, he found another wife named Keturah, and had another six sons (and God knows how many daughters). He died when he was 175, giving pretty much everything to Isaac. Isaac's wife, Rebekah, was barren, but God fixed that after Isaac prayed about it. She had twins, Esau and Jacob. Esau was the first to come out, so he was the firstborn son. But Rebekah and J...