Genesis Chapters 16-19

Genesis 16-19

In this post:  Abraham bangs the maid and has a bastard son named Ishmael, God shows that he is pro-slavery as well as supportive of beating and raping your slaves, Abraham goes on a circumcision bender, God has a bit of fun with Genocide, and Biblical family values on display.

Chapter 16

The First Key Party

This chapter opens with Sarai feeling bad that she hasn’t given Abram any children (16:1), so she comes up with the idea of letting Abram impregnate her maid.  Abram is fine with the idea so he and the maid Hagar get it on and she gets pregnant. Years later, when the Governor of California does this people lose their minds over it, but Abraham does it and he’s a great man.  Go figure.  

Anyway, when Hagar learns that she’s pregnant she gets upset, probably over Sarai pimping her out to Abram. (16:2-4)

Sarai whines to Abram about Hagar’s attitude.  Abram tells Sarai that Hagar belongs to her so she can do what she wants to with her, so Sarai beats her pregnant servant like any good slave owner would, and Hagar runs away. (16:5-6)

God tracks Hagar down and tells her to go back to her mistress so she can be beaten some more and have more kids.  He then tells her that the bastard she’s carrying will be a boy named Ishmael, and that he will be a wild man.  So Hagar does as she’s told and goes back. (16:7-14)

When she gets back Ishmael is born.  He is born in 1952 BC when Abram is 86 years old. (16:15-16)

Chapter 17

13 years later, in 1939 BC, God comes back to visit with Abram, and after bragging about how wonderful he is, he changes Abram’s name to Abraham, and offers him a deal. (17:1-5)

God says he will give Abraham many kids, some of whom will be kings, and that these kids, and their offspring, and so on will rule over the lands of Canaan forever.  In return, God wants a bunch of foreskins.  Abraham, his sons, and every man slave or free in his kingdom must have their foreskin cut off for God, and from then on every male baby must have his foreskin cut off when he turns eight days old.  Anyone who doesn’t give up his foreskin will be cut off from God.(17:6-14) It is never explained why God has such a foreskin fetish,

Then God says that Abraham has to change the spelling of his wife’s name from Sarai to Sarah, and that he will give him a son through her. (17:15-16)

Abraham laughed to himself about the idea of him having a son with his 90 year old wife when he’s 96.  But, God says it will happen and that they will call him Isaac, and he will grow up to be a great king in good standing with God. (17:17-19)

God then says that Abraham’s slave bastard will do well also, but not as well as Isaac, and then he leaves. (17:20-22)

So, Abraham rushes home and starts cutting off everyone’s foreskin.  He cuts off his foreskin, Ishmael’s foreskin, all his subjects’ foreskins, and all his slaves’ foreskins.  It’s one big foreskin party. (17:23-27)

Chapter 18

This chapter starts out with Abraham lounging on the porch of his tent with God, when three men suddenly appear in front of him.  It seems that the men are angels and Abraham immediately offers to wash their feet and feed them. The men look at him and say “…So do, as thou hast said (18:1-5) So, we have hungry, uppity angels, with dirty feet.  Abraham has Sarah and one of his cowboys fix up a nice meal for his guests and they chow. (18:6-9)

After the angels eat, they, God, Sarah, and Abraham have a discussion about how Sarah will soon have a child even though she is old and has gone through menopause (18:10-15), then the  Angels, and God get up and head toward Sodom and Abraham walks with them. (18:16)

God decides to tell Abraham about the destruction he has planned for Sodom and Gomorrah.  Abraham asks if he intends to kill the good people along with the bad, and he and God start haggling about the number of good people it will take to spare the rest; God really wants to kill these people, but Abraham not so much.  So, after some negotiation, God says that if he can find 10 good people he will let the rest live, but if not then they all die. Then God goes his way and Abraham goes home. (18:17-33)

Chapter 19

This chapter starts with Lot lounging at the Sodom city gate when two of the angels that we saw earlier come by. Lot convinces them to come to his house and have dinner and spend the night (19:1-3)  What happened to the third guy is never mentioned.  As they are getting ready for bed, a crowd of people surround the house and demand that Lot turn over his guests to them.  Lot goes outside and says that he can’t give them his guests, but he’ll give them his two virgin daughters to rape if they want. (19:4-8) The crowd turns down Lot’s offer and rushes the door. (19:9)

The angels grab Lot, pull him inside and strike the crowd blind. (19:10-11) Then they tell Lot that he needs to get his family and all his stuff and leave the city, because God doesn’t like the people here and they are here to destroy them. (19:12-13)  So, Lot tells his sons-in-law about it and they don’t listen. (19:14)

When morning rolls around the angels tell Lot to grab his wife and the two girls that he had offered up for rape and leave so they won’t get killed with everyone else.  So, they all hold hands and leave the city. (19:15-16)

Once outside the city, the angels tell them to run for their lives, not to look back, and escape to the mountains. But Lot is scared of a monster or something getting him in the mountains, so they decide that he can go to a small nearby town named Zoar and be safe there, and by sunrise Lot and his family are in Zoar. (19:17-23)

So, with Lot out of the way God sent fire and hot rocks down on Sodom and Gomorrah as well as the rest of the area around them destroying all the cities and towns in the area as well as all the people, plants, and animals (19:24-25)  It can be assumed that there were no more than 9 babies in the whole mess, because God had said 10 would stop it all.  So, 9 dead babies is OK, at least to God.

Lot’s wife got a little nosey and looked back (she probably heard all the babies screaming).  God promptly turned her into a pillar of salt. (19:26) Here we learn that God doesn’t like witnesses to his massacres.

When Abraham got up that morning he saw all the smoke and destruction, but wasn’t turned to salt. (19:27-29)

Lot decides that he doesn’t trust God’s promise about being safe in Zoar, and heads for the mountains where he finds a nice cozy cave for him and his daughters (19:30)

Once settled in the cave, the daughters began talking about how there aren’t any men around for them to have sex with. So, they decide to get their old man drunk and that the oldest girl will have sex with him. (19:31-32)

A Family That Plays Together…Is Sick

So Lot gets stupid drunk and bangs his oldest daughter. The next night the youngest has her turn with her drunk father. and both girls end up pregnant. It seems that Lot was quite a horn-dog when he drank, and would have sex with anything that got near him, including his virgin daughters. (19:33-36)

The first girl’s son became the father of all Moabites, and the second girl’s son became the father of all of Ammon. (19:37-38)

Next time:  We find out Abraham’s dirty little secret, Abraham lies again and makes money off of it, Isaac is born, Hagar gets uppity again, Abraham tries to kill one kid and the other almost dies due to neglect, and Sarah dies.  A good time to be had for all.  I hope you will join me.  Ron.

Genesis Chapters 12-15

Genesis 12-15

In this post we follow Abram/Abraham and Lot around the Middle East, Witness God’s first plague, see Abraham the Liar in action, watch Lot’s and Abraham’s relationship change in the blink of an eye, see Abraham the Warlord in action, and discover that God can’t read a compass

Chapter 12

For the next few chapters of Genesis we follow the life of Abram or as he will be called later, Abraham.  At the beginning of this chapter we fade in on Abram as God tells him to take Sarai his wife, Lot his nephew, all their possessions and slaves, and leave Haran on a journey to Canaan, which Abram promptly does in 1963 BC at the age of 75 (Gen 12:1-5)

Since we learned at the end of chapter 11 that Haran was in the land of Canaan, Abram and his posse basically journeyed from Canaan to Canaan, or to put it another way, they walked in a big circle. And settled on “the plain of Moreh (tree)” (Gen 12:6) in modern Day Israel, not to be confused with Moria which was not in Canaan, but rather in the Misty Mountains.

God appears to Abram by the tree, and gives him the land around it, Abram builds an altar, says “thanks” and heads south. (Gen 12:7-9)

Abram then finds out that there is a famine in the south, so he heads for Egypt. (Gen 12:10)

While on the way to Egypt, Abram tells Sarai that since she is so hot the Egyptians will kill him and take her if they think she’s his wife, so she should pretend to be his sister. (Gen 12:11-13)  Had the Egyptians known about Abram’s family’s history of incest, they would have killed him anyway thinking that sister would also mean wife.  Sure enough, when they get into Egypt, the Egyptians see the hottie with Abram and take her to the Pharaoh who gives Abram some animals and slaves for her while under the impression that she’s his sister but not wife. (Gen 12:14-16)  Apparently sisters were worth drought animals and slaves back then.  Abram seems to be OK with his wife living with the Pharaoh, after all he got new slaves and camels, but God doesn’t approve.

God sees what is going on and sends his very first plague down on the Pharaoh and his family (Gen 12:17) thus beginning God’s habit of hurting children to get his way. There is no mention by Egyptians of any plagues during Senusret 1’s reign, but they may have been embarrassed about the whole sister/wife mix up and told everybody in the Middle East who could write to ignore it.

Pharoah goes to Abram and asks him why he lied about Sarai being his sister, and thus getting him in trouble with the plague god, then tells Abram to take his hot wife, and all his stuff and leave.  Abram does as he’s asked and leaves along with all the new stuff he had gotten for pimping out his wife. (Gen:18-20)

Chapter 13

So, having been ejected from Egypt, Abram and his posse take all their stuff and go to Bethel. (Gen 13:1-4)  13:1 says that they headed south, but Bethel is north-east of Egypt in modern-day Israel.  So, either Abram circumnavigated the globe going south to north, the poles have changed since then, or the divinely inspired word of God or God himself has problems with a compass.  The latter would explain the whole walking in circles thing earlier.

It seems that Lot had been doing quite well for himself also, because we learn that Lot went along with Abram, but they each had so many sheep and goats, that the cowhands of the two of them started getting into fights.(Gen 13:5-7)

So Abram and Lot have a meeting to sort hings out.  Abram tells Lot that with all the land around them, that there shouldn’t be any reason to fight, and told Lot that he could pick half and Abram would take the other half. (Gen 13:8-9)

So, Lot looked around and decided that he liked the “plain of Jordan”, and headed east toward Jordan where the wicked city of Sodom was. (Gen 13:10-13)  Lot, it seems, could read a compass and went the right way.

After Lot left, God told Abram to stand in the place where he lived:  now face north, east, west, and south, and that all of the land he could see would belong to him and his descendants forever. (Gen 13:14-17)  So, having figured out a compass, Abram packed up and moved to Hebron which ironically, is in the land now called the West Bank or Palestinian territories, where he built another altar. (Gen 13:18)

Chapter 14

As it turns out, Lot hadn’t made a very good choice about where to live.  It seems that war was rampant in the area, and eventually Lot ended up being captured along with all of his stuff, by the kings who defeated the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. (Gen 14: 1-12)

One guy escaped from the whole mess and went and told Abram what had happened. (Gen 14:13)  When Abram heard what had happened to Lot (who was now suddenly his brother, and not his nephew) he armed his servants and they went and smote the bad guys and rescued Lot and his lot, as well as the other people who had been captured in Sodom and Gomorrah. (Gen 14:14-16)

Why God had decided to make Lot, Abram’s brother is not explained.  It’s possible that he was trying to correct the mess with Lot’s uncle also being his brother-in-law.  Though this made it worse, because now his brother was also his brother-in-law.  Well, as the old saying goes: incest is best, put your sister to the test.

So, when Abram got back from his smoteing trip, the King of Sodom who had been stuck in a slime pit since 14:10, came out to meet him.  He heaped a bunch of flattery on Abram and then said that he could keep the spoils looted from his kingdom, if Abram would just give his subjects back to him. (Gen 14:17-21)  Seems like a nice enough offer.

Abram got a little holier-than-thou with the king and said that he wouldn’t keep a dime of the spoils other than what his men had already eaten or taken, so that the king wouldn’t be able to say that Abram was rich because of him. (Gen 14:22-24)

Chapter 15

So, after the smoteing, God came to Abram in a dream and took credit for everything that Abram had accomplished.  Abram whined about not having any kids, and God promised him that he would eventually have lots of kids, and Abram took his word for it. (Gen 15:1-6)

Then Abram asked for another dream, so God told him to get a three-year old heifer, a three-year old “she goat”, a three-year old ram, a turtle-dove and a young pigeon as an offering (Gen 15:7-9)

So Abram got the animals, cut the cow and goats in half, placed butchered animals side by side with the birds on top like cherries.  He kept the vultures off of the carcasses, and when it got dark fell asleep and had a nightmare. (Gen 15:10-12)

In his nightmare, God told Abram that his descendants would end up slaves for 400 years in a foreign land, but, with God’s help, would come out with “great substance”, and that Abram himself would die peacefully of old age. Then, four generations after Abram dies, his descendants would come back to the land he was in and win a war with the Amorites who would by then deserve it. (Gen 15:13-17)

The same day, God gave Abram all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates. (Gen 15:18-21)  Apparently, nobody told the Egyptians about this, because there is no record of the Egyptians losing half their kingdom during the 12th Dynasty.  In fact it is one of the more stable periods in their history.  But, God’s divine authors seem to overlook reality quite a bit, so why be historically accurate at this point.

So, next time we continue on with the stories of Abraham when he starts having bastard children, he and his wife get name changes, guys start losing foreskin to the knife, and God spots sin in Sodom.  Sounds like a lot of fun, see you then.  Ron