Genesis Chapters 20 - 22: You say you love me. Now prove it.

Abraham and Sarah pack up again and travel to Gerar. Again, Abraham tells Sarah to pretend she's his sister. And yet again, the king comes and takes Sarah away (because 90 year old women are totally hot). Before the king does anything with her, God comes to him and lets him in on the truth that Sarah is married to Abraham and suggests he return her to Abraham. Or sleep with her and die. His choice.

The king calls Abraham over and tells him he knows that Sarah's his wife and asks, "Why did you tell me that she's your sister?"

"Because this is a godless place and I thought you'd kill me so you could take her for your own. And besides..."

*drum roll*

"She is my half sister from my father."

In the same way that this worked out pretty well for Abraham in Egypt, he benefits again. The king gives him oxen and sheep and male and female slaves, and 1000 silver pieces, calls the whole thing even, and tells them they are welcomed to stay as long as they would like.

Just as God promised, Sarah gives birth to Isaac. There is much rejoicing. But Sarah doesn't like Hagar and Ishmael hanging around enjoying the festivities, so she tells Abraham to kick them out. He's a little disappointed, but God says to do it too. Abraham gives her some provisions and sends her off to wander the forests. God protects them and they survive.

The king and Abraham have a disagreement about a well, but they get it settled, and then the king goes back home anyway.

A while passes and God decides to put Abraham to the ultimate test. He tells Abraham to take his only son and BURN him as an offering to God.  Alright technically it's not his only son... he kicked the first one out to wander the wilderness with his mother. But I digress.

Abraham has questioned God in the past. He asked for proof that this land would belong to his descendants forever. He laughed when he was told Sarah would get pregnant. He questioned God's decision to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and negotiated terms for destruction of the cities.

But this request to kill and burn his son inexplicably goes completely unchallenged.

No.  To this, Abraham says, "Hey Isaac! Wanna go for a donkey ride? C'mon! Let's go!"

They ride off with a couple of servants and a pile of wood so they can have a nice sacrificial fire. They ride for a few days and come to a good spot. He tells the servants, "You guys wait here by this rock with the donkey. We're going to go... pray... over there behind those bushes. You stay here no matter what you hear. No peeking. I mean it."

Right about now Isaac notices that something is up and asks, "Hey Dad... we brought wood for the burnt offering but didn't we forget the lamb?"

"Oh... yeah... Um. God will have a lamb waiting for us when we get there!"

"Wow, Dad! God sure is terrific!"

"Yeah. Yeah, he's a heck of a guy..."

He builds and altar, piles the wood up, then ties up his son and tosses the kid up on top. He is JUST about to slit his son's throat when God yells out, "DUDE! STOP!"

"God, you scared me! What?"

"Don't kill your son. Seriously, I just wanted to see if you actually would do it. Here. Burn this goat instead." 

Abraham looks over and there's a goat with its horns stuck in a shrub. Abraham burns the goat instead of his son and names this place, "The Lord will provide." I can think of a lot of other names for this place, like, "The place where the Lord messed with my head." Or "The spot where my child was scarred for life."

God's love and trust is not unconditional.

God again blesses Abraham and tells him again that his offspring will be numerous and powerful and blessed because he obeyed his voice. He also informs him that his brother Nahor has had eight children with his wife and four more kids with his concubine.

Sarah lives to be 127 and dies in Hebron. Abraham asks the locals for a place to bury her and Ephron offers a nice cave to the east of Hebron. Abraham asks, "How much?"

Ephron answers, "Aw, just take it. It's fine."

"No, really. I insist. How much?"

"It's worth 400 shekels of silver but seriously, you can have it for free."

Abraham give him the money and buys the cave and the field and the nice trees all around it and buries Sarah there.

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.