Genesis Chapters 15 - 19: Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash

This is one of the parts that makes me say WTF.  It's got a bit of everything...  forced sexual encounters, abuse of a slave, drunken incest...  I really should get a children's bible to see how this gets explained to kids...

I know I don't have many followers or anything, but maybe someone will get the Pogues reference.

God blesses Abram and tells him that his descendents will be as numerous as the stars in the sky. Abram reminds God that he and his wife have no children. God tells him not to worry, he'll take care of it.

Abram wants some proof that this land will be his forever. God tells him to bring him a cow, a goat, a ram, a turtledove, and a pigeon. Abram does this and splits the cow, goat, and ram in half and then lays the halves back over themselves and then sits back to receive a message. He waits and waits, then falls asleep and has a hideous dream. God tells him that his people will be slaves in a foreign land for 400 years, but that he will get them out and bring them back.

No, really, it's fine...

In the meantime, Sarai gets tired of waiting for kids, so she tells Abram to get her Egyptian slave Hagar pregnant. Abram does this and Hagar gets all "neener neener neener" because she's having a baby and Sarai's not. And Sarai's probably a tad jealous too, seeing that maybe this wasn't what she wanted after all. She complains to Abram, who tells her that it's her problem to deal with.

Sarai mistreats Hagar, abuses her, and is so utterly horrible to her that Hagar runs away. One of God's angels catches up to her and tells her to get her butt back to camp, but promises her that God will multiply her offspring. He says that this son, Ishmael, will be a "wild donkey of a man" and he'll fight with everyone and everyone will fight with him. Basically, Ishmael will be an ass.

After Ishmael is born, when Abram is 99, God again tells Abram that he's going to multiply him greatly. He renames him Abraham which means "father of nations," and changes Sarai's name to Sarah. Then he tells him that to mark this covenant, every male of the household, including purchased foreign slaves, must be circumcised. Any one who isn't gets banished.

God tells him that Sarah will have a child. Abraham has the nerve to laugh to himself at the thought, considering that he's 99 and Sarah is 90. But God says it will happen and that their next son Issac will be born in a year.

When they're done talking, it's circumcision time.

Shortly after, Abraham is sitting in the door of his tent and God appears to him as three men. Abraham invites them for snacks and foot baths. He makes them veal and bread and cheese curds and they sit under a tree for a picnic. Sarah is in the tent, but listening from the door, and when she overhears them say that she will have a child in a year, she laughs to herself at the thought. God hears this and asks why she laughed. She totally denies that she ever did but God calls her on it.

So the angels go on their way, and Abraham walks with them to show them out. They tell him that they are going to check out Sodom and Gomorrah because they've gotten some reports that things are not really going well over there.

Abraham asks him not to wipe out the whole city just for the sins of a few. He asks, "If there are fifty righteous people there will you wipe it out?"

God says, "Alright fine. If there are fifty righteous people there, I'll spare the whole place."

Abraham asks, "Well.... what if there are only 45?"

God says, "Sure. Forty-five."

"What about forty?"

"Sigh... ok forty."

"Thirty?"

"What? Really? Ok, thirty... is there anything else?"

"Twenty?"

"You are seriously pushing your luck, but ok.... twenty."

"Ummm.... ten?"

"Oh for crying out loud, FINE! TEN! But that's IT! Now get out of my way!"

The two angels (Two? Maybe the third had other plans?) get to Sodom and find Lot sitting there. Lot offers snacks and foot baths. They try to get out of it so they can go to the town square, plus they'd just had snacks and foot baths at Abraham's place.  But Lot insists.

Right at bedtime, the men of the town come knocking and want Lot to send the two men out so that they can "know" them. This isn't a social call as in, "Hey, lets go out and have a few beers and chat and get to know each other." This is down and dirty biblical knowing.

"Hey, why don't you two girls go see who's at the door?"

Lot is horrified at his town's attempt to rape his angelic house guests. He goes out to try to reason with them and in an attempt to appease the masses, he offers up his two virgin daughters instead.

The townsfolk would rather rape angels than Lot's virgin daughters, and they try to break down the door. The angels pull Lot back inside and strike the townsfolk blind, then tell Lot to gather up his family and get out because they're going to open up a half ton of hurt on this town.

Lot tries to convince his daughters' fiances that they need to beat feet out of the city. But they don't believe him. It could also be that they're a little angry that Lot had offered their future wives up for a mass raping.

So Lot and his wife and his two daughters are ushered out of the city and told not to look back. The angels tell them to go to the hills. Lot looks across the valley and says, "Hills? *sigh* So hard to walk up hills... But how about that little village down there? It's much closer..."

"FINE! Go to that village! Just get out! Why are you people always arguing with me all of a sudden?"

Sodom and Gomorrah get wiped out with sulfur and fire, but Lot's wife looks back and turns into a pillar of salt. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Abraham stands on a hill and sees the destruction.

Lot decides that maybe the hills were a better choice than this little village, so he goes up there with his daughters to live in a cave. His daughters come up with a scheme to get their dad drunk, have sex with him without him noticing, and have babies. Both end up having children by their father.

Genesis Chapters 10 - 14: Abram Travels the World

Bring on the begats!

First is a list of Japheth and Ham's descendants. They have lots of kids and they all live a long time.

"Wow. That's a really nice tower! These people have some

 ambition.... Hmmm.... maybe a little too much."

Their people start spreading out and some of them decide to build a tower to show how awesome they are and make a name for themselves. God comes and sees this and thinks it's a bit much.

So he goes and scrambles up their language so that they can't talk to each other and make such ambitious plans, and he scatters them all away from the city they were building.

Next is a list of Shem's descendants. On and on. Lots of kids, everyone lives a long time. But kind of less and less time with every generation. After eleven generations, we get to Abram (eventually known as Abraham) and Abram's nephew Lot.

Abram's father, Terah, takes Abram, Lot, and Sarai (Abram's wife) and travels toward Caanan. But they stop in Haran and Terah dies there. God tells Abram to keep going to Caanan, so he and Lot and Sarai pack up and go. In Caanan, God tells Abram that he'll give this land to his descendants and Abram builds an altar there.

And then he keeps on walking... all the way to Egypt.

Abram is worried that the people there will see how beautiful his wife is and kill him and steal her away, so he tells her to lie and say she's his sister. And of course, the Pharaoh thinks she's beautiful and takes her to be his wife. And he treats Abram nicely and gives him livestock and slaves because he thinks he's the pretty lady's brother.

God brings down some nastiness on Pharaoh and he realizes that it's because Sarai is Abram's wife. He yells at Abram for lying to him and tells them to take their stuff and go.

The moral (?) of the story: It's ok to lie and let your wife be carried off by a king to save your own skin. You might even get very wealthy in the process! Totally worth it!

Abram, Sarai and Lot and all their male and female slaves and camels and sheep and oxen and donkeys and silver and gold go back to Caanan. Abram and Lot both have tons of stuff and are starting to get in each others' way, so they split up. Lot chooses to go east toward the Jordan Valley toward Sodom. Once Lot is gone, God tells Abram that everything he can see is going to be given to his offspring forever. Abram moves his tent to Hebron and builds an altar.

It would make a good movie.

Lot's decision to go to Sodom is a poor one. There are quite a few wars going on and Sodom and Gomorrah get overrun by four allied kings. Lot and his family and possessions get taken away by the enemy. Abram hears of this and takes 318 trained fighting men and rescues Lot and all his people from the four kings. I wish there was more detail about this against-all-odds rescue.

Abram returns and the priest-king of Salem blesses Abram and Abram gives him a tenth of everything. The king of Sodom offers Abram all the spoils of his conquest (except for the slaves... the king wants those). Abram declines so no one can say that the king made him rich, but he tells the other people who fought with him to take their share.