God rescues Israelites from bondage! Then kills them in the desert.

I have a friend at work who was never indoctrinated with Bible stories as a child, and so presents a wonderful opportunity for me to regale her with the ironies of God's love-hate relationship with humanity in general and Israel in particular. For example:

God sees the suffering of the Israelites (as opposed to the more modern appellation, "Israelis") and he hears their cries. The brutal Egyptians are forcing them to make bricks without straw! God feels compassion for them and sends Moses to rescue them. Yay!

After fighting with Pharaoh for a bit, and killing all the firstborn kids of the Egyptians, God gets them loose, and they leave Egypt. Freedom!

Everything's going well for a while, until the Israelites balk at fighting the giants who live where God is telling them to go. God gets pissed at them and vows that every last one of them whom he rescued, except for the two spies who were ready to fight and kill for God, will die in the desert. And they do.

An apologist will say, Oh, but God rescued the race of Israelites, not the specific people who were slaves. Fine. But if he had told those specific people that they would all die in the desert, do you think they would have gone with Moses? I doubt it.

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