Curiosity – I never called you an am ha’aretz, what I did say was that it is a little curious that you should be so proud of not having learned Tanach, and proud because you did not learn it because you were in yeshiva. I mean, these are HKB”H’s messages from Him Himself through his prophets to all humanity for all time and you’re proud not to have learned them?! You’re proud that your yeshiva education means you haven’t bothered learning what H’ said to us?! HKB”H says “Here, these are the things I am making sure you know. This is how I am telling you how the world works and how you should live your life. These are messages from Me to you that are so important I have created a mechanism called prophecy were I communicate to human beings so that they may tell people what I want and write it down so that all future generations may learn from it and know.” Curiosity says “Nah, not me – I learned in yeshiva…”
I mean, what are you going to do when you get upstairs after 120? Tell H’ “Well I didn’t bother with the bits You said, but I can kler 7 tzedadim in the issur of hezek which have no real nafka mina l’halacha…”?!
As far as your quick looking up of a piece of Tanach (that you never knew existed just a few hours ago and are now apparently an expert in…). You’re wrong. First of all, my comment was about the licking/lapping (not the kneeling) – you compared drinking from a water fountain to a horse lapping from a trough and said it wasn’t for bnei torah, the pasuk says that those that “lapped like dogs” davka were the bnei torah. Anyway, as you yourself said, those that knelt were disqualified as it showed that they were used to kneeling (and davka at the edge of the water, as kneeling to one’s own reflection was a way of avodah for one of the avodah zarahs of the time – see medrash) to avodah zarah. Nobody kneels to water fountains…
Furthermore, those that lapped from their hands were lav davka standing up – nowhere do the pesukim or mefarshim mention this, and as ubiquitin points out it is physically impossible. They had to get the water from the river, therefore they either bent over, cupped the water in their hands and licked it off (much, I may say, like someone drinking from a water fountain) or lay on their front, put their lips to the water and pushed it in with their hands (which would make the dimyon to a dog licking water extremely understandable if you’ve ever seen a dog drink from a river…). I double-checked the mefarshim you quoted and not one mentioned a word about standing, so which “meforshim … clearly state the soldiers who were accepted were standing up to drink”? The mefarshim explain why those that knelt were unacceptable, the kneeling is mefurash in the pasuk and not something that ubiquitin ever argued about. Calling him an apikores for disagreeing with something you decide to shtip into a pirush is a bit out of line…