OK, we're finally at Abraham. The Bible up to this point was mostly prologue. It was explanation of how the earth was created, how man was created, how man was separated from God, why life is so hard for mankind, why people live in different countries and speak different languages…and we have an official curse on the people of Canaan to boot! The stage has been set for the Children of Israel to make their entrance and royally screw everything up.
But first we gotta talk about the patriarchs. First, this Abraham guy…he is THE patriarch of the Israelites, and some stuff happens during his life that we must pay close attention to. I've got so much to say about him that his story will probably take 2 or 3 posts. For this entry I'll start at God's call to Abram and pause right before Abraham seals the deal by circumcision, which will happen in chapter 17.
Chapter 12
In this group of chapters, the promise of God to Abraham is echoed several times. The promises are, of course, to make him great, famous, have innumerable descendents who will be an independent nation with their own land. Here is the first call and promise. He tells Abram where to go, and starts making promises.
1 – Now the Lord said to Abram…
While God will sometimes justify his selections, as he did with Noah and will do in the future with Lot, he gives no reason for choosing Abram. He just got lucky in the ancestral lottery.
5
Slavery. Y'know after I had read the Bible the first time, I was a little disgusted at the fact that slavery was apparently A-OK with God. It made no sense to me whatsoever. I read the first few mentions of slavery over and over again. Because it was Abram who had slaves. The topic of slavery certainly wasn't unfamiliar to my world. A fair portion of my ancestry was in bondage quite recently. Historically speaking, slavery just ended. In the larger context of historical timescales, 144 years is not very long at all. We had all seen Roots, we all learned about slavery in the United States in school. The effects of this practice are profound and are still with us.
So there I was reading about Abram and his slaves. This was probably the first thing that really made me raise an eyebrow. Long after I first read the Bible, as time went on and my belief eroded, I eventually wondered this: How the HELL do black people follow this religion? Before I actually read the Bible, I assumed that God hated slavery. I assumed that he was on our side! All I had heard of slavery in the Bible was the story that everybody knew about: The Exodus! The Egyptians held the Israelites in bondage, and God delivered them because slavery is bad! It mirrored our own story. Whites held us in bondage, and eventually God delivered us because slavery is bad! Then when I started reading, it was apparent that God freed the Israelites because they were his chosen desert tribe. Anybody else in slavery, God apparently didn't give a damn.
The very word slavery invokes emotion among blacks in the United States. It is rightfully considered to be downright evil. It is just plain wrong to own another human being, and consider them property, and deny them freedoms that you have. Yet Abraham keeps slaves and God doesn't say anything bad about it. I remember waiting for God to condemn slavery in the Bible. I waited, and waited, and waited. It never happened. I cannot not worship or even respect a god who allowed people to be the property of other people. It's as simple as that. Slavery was just a little too close to home, so this was the first real bone I had to pick with God.
10-13
So there was a famine, and Abram and Sarai went to chill in Egypt. Before they entered, Abram got a little nervous. He knew that his wife was beautiful. Of course the patriarch of the Israelites had a hot wife. Back in the day, if a king saw your wife and wanted her, he was gonna take her and probably kill you. So he was all like, "OK, let's just say that you're my sister instead of my wife so they won't whack me." Let's remember this whole let's-say-you're-my-sister business. This will return.
14-20
And Abram was right! The pharaoh's toadies saw her and told the pharaoh about her and he made her his wife. Now let's just wait a minute before we continue, because you need a good laugh. Sarai was apparently a hot piece of ass at the age of 70. Yeah…remember this is an elderly couple we got here. Somehow a 70 year old woman turned heads, and the pharaoh was like, "Dayum! Lookit dat ass! Mmmph…must be jell-o 'cuz jam don't shake like that! Baby girl, what I gotta do to get wit' YOU?!"
And for those of you familiar with the culture of the internet:
Let's take a moment to point out the reference to "Pharaoh." Just Pharaoh. Capitalized, no less…as if it were a proper name. This is the first of many mentions of Pharaoh. Genesis and Exodus refer to "Pharaoh" all over the place. 155 times to be exact. Of course this refers to many different Egyptian pharaohs over many centuries. It never refers to them by name, curiously. Well actually, it's not curious. The names of characters in myths and fairy tales aren't always important. "Many years ago there was an Emperor so exceedingly fond of new clothes…"
Abram was treated very well. He totally dodged a bullet by concealing that he was Sarai's husband. Of course, the pharaoh is now shagging his wife. I suppose it's better be alive and having your wife get worked over by the pharaoh, than the alternative…which would have been being dead and still having the pharaoh get to bang your wife. And he got all kinds of goods, and slaves, and herds and flocks, and silver and gold! Abram is the first pimp in recorded history. He pimped the SHIT out of his own wife, no less. Bitch betta have my shekels!
But apparently God hit the pharaoh with great plagues… because he believed Abram's lie. Yeah, real fair, God. Somehow (it doesn't explain) the pharaoh finds out the truth and kicks those two troublemakers the hell outta his country. Inexplicably, he let them leave with all the riches he gave them. I lol'd.
Chapter 13
14-16
So he told Lot to move outta the basement and get a job, God was like, "Phew, now that THAT freeloader is gone, here's what I'm gonna do for YOU." And he promises to give him a shit ton of descendents. Apparently, there's nothing Bronze Age people wanted more than tons of descendants, because God promises that to EVERYBODY! Jeez! Funny thing is, mathematically, it's very likely that anybody alive in the 19th century BCE who had any descendents at all had LOTS of them. For instance, if you know that your ancestry is mostly British, and you threw a rock into a crowd of the weirdo Bronze Age people who lived there in the 19th century BCE, there's a VERY good chance that you just brained one of your ancestors. When you go back that far, any one person alive at that time is either the ancestor of no one alive today, or is the ancestor of millions of people alive today. That's just how ancestry works. I wish I could talk about this some more, but I'll leave you with that for now.
Chapter 14
So apparently, Lot got caught up in some shit. Some Canaanite kings rebelled against some eastern kings who had previously subjugated them. The eastern kings crushed the rebellion, and since Lot was living near the rebellious lands he ended up getting captured. Let's note that the rebels were Canaanites, and the eastern kings were Shemites, descendents of Noah's son, Shem. Get it…Shemites, Semites? Shem is the father of all Semitic peoples, if you recall.
Anyway, Abram takes his army of slaves and with 318 men, kicks the crap out of these 4 eastern kings who had kicked the crap out of 5 Canaanite kings. Obviously the scale of these conflicts is pretty piddling. But this cements Abraham's status as the true heir to the blessing of Shem, and not these poseur ass kings.
We have some telltale anachronisms here. Amalekites are mentioned in 14.7, but Amalek hadn't been born yet. The city of Dan mentioned in 14.14 was not named Dan until the time of Judges, and Dan himself also hadn't been born yet.
18-22
Here, God is referred to as "God Most High." The name used here is El, who was the high god of the Canaanite gods. And here was Abram referring to El! See what's happening here? We'll come to back to this in a couple of chapters.
Chapter 15
So here's God making more promises. Lots of descendents yada yada yada, all this land yada yada yada… This is like the third time already, and Abram should be thinking, "Uhhh, so what's the catch?" You just wait and see, Abram. You're gonna LOVE what he wants you to do.
When God makes these promises, Abram was wondering how the hell he was gonna get all these descendents, because Sarai was barren. He just figured that his slaves would have to be his heirs. But God assured him that it would be his own biological children who would be his heirs. Keep this promise-objection-reassurance pattern in mind as you read the Old Testament. I actually do respect Judaism for this part of their tradition; the fact that many of the main characters in the Bible will actually question God, almost to the point of arguing with him. Well, just wait 'till we get to Jacob. They're not always unquestioningly following orders, and that's a good thing. But there are times that they DO unquestioningly follow God's orders or go along with God's evil plans that kind of make a mockery of the bright spots where they question God.
12-16
We have a fake prophecy here. Because of the linguistics and the writing style, scholars are aware that this passage was inserted long after the section that it follows. It's talking about the Israelites being slaves in Egypt. Whoever inserted this probably thought he had gotten away with it and that no one would ever know that it was added. Gotcha!
18-21
And here's where God caused a whole lotta trouble. He delineates what lands he is giving to Abram's descendents…and lists the people already inhabiting those lands. *sigh* This particular promise is still fucking shit up in the world TODAY. We'll talk about this later.
Chapter 16
So Sarai has a GREAT idea.
"Ok, so God like promised you all these offspring and descendants and what not, right? Well how about you knock up my slave girl? THAT'S how we'll get around this whole barren thing!"
Sarai is the first of several barren women in the Bible desperate to have children. Notice it's always the woman's fault. You'll never hear about a man with a low sperm count.
It was actually customary for a wife to use a servant as a surrogate. The servant would have children and the woman would claim them as her own. Problem is, this isn't what God had in mind. He wasn't being clear earlier when he told Abram that his heirs would be his biological children. He left it open to interpretation about who the biological mother would be.
So Sarai handed Hagar the Egyptian slave girl over to Abram. I bet Abram wasn't complaining! He probably told Sarai, "I thought you'd never ask!" She got pregnant and apparently didn't look up to Sarai the way she used to. Sarai got pissed and was cursing Abram, but he was all like, "Chill! Don't take it out on me if Hagar is getting snotty…she's your servant…why don't you lay the smack down if she's copping a 'tude!" So Sarai smacks her bitch up, and Hagar is like, "Screw this; I'm outta here!" The angel of the Lord appears to her in the wilderness. It's apparent here that the angel of the Lord is not one of God's flunkies, but God himself in bodily form. After she explains why she has run away, he says, "Return to your mistress, and submit to her" … "I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude" … Now you have conceived and shall bear a son; you shall call him Ishmael, for the Lord has given heed to your affliction. He shall be a wild ass of a man, with his hand against everyone, and everyone's hand against him; and he shall live at odds with all his kin."
LOL @ "wild ass of a man". I know they weren't trying to be funny in this translation, but I swear, I'm gonna use the phrase "wild ass of a man" one of these days. So God commands her to go back to her mistress and submit to beatings and forced childbirth so that she can bear a wild ass of a man who will be the enemy of all humanity. Boy, I really don't understand why people are seriously obsessed with having a shit ton of descendents, because that's the only 'good' thing in her future according to God. But she takes the deal! WTF?
13 – So she named the Lord who spoke to her, "You are El-roi"; for she said, "Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?" 14 Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; it lies between Kadesh and Bered.
El-roi translates as "God of seeing" or "God who sees". Beer-lahai-roi means "the Well of the Living One who sees me". "God of seeing" was the name of the deity at the Beer-lahai-roi well who, in this passage, is now identified with Israel's god. Look, there it is again! We're seeing the beginnings of the formation of the identity of the god of Israel. The ancestors of the Israelites had their tribal god as we know. Now take a look at what's happening in this passage and in 14.18-22. They're co-opting other known gods and identifying them with their god. Abram agreed that El, the high god of the Canaanite pantheon of gods is his god, and the writer of this passage is claiming another known deity that resided at this particular well to be the god of Israel as well. Interesting, no?
And we'll pause here at the birth of Ishmael, because this is about as long as I want this entry to be. I know how you kids have internet attention spans! We'll pick up at the penis butchering in the next installment!
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