Genesis 24, or "Your Oath is Invading my Personal Space"

Isaac gets a wife; I race through this post so I can get some sleep

I'm going to keep this post short, as my bed is calling to me.

Abraham wants a wife for his son Isaac, but not just any wife, a wife who comes from the land and clan of his relatives. Abraham's servant swears to go out and accomplish this task. As we learn through the servant's actions, back in the Biblical days oaths were sworn by putting your hand underneath the thigh of the person you were swearing to. Thankfully this gesture eventually evolved into the hand shake, then the high five, and finally, the fist pump.

The servant arrives at Nahor (Abraham's hood from back in the day). He stands near a spring and asks the Lord to help him find the right girl. The servant prays that when he asks a girl to give him water, if she answers yes and offers to water his camels as well, she'll be the one he takes back to Isaac. A beautiful girl named Rebekah comes out and passes the test. The servant explains to her and her family the situation, she agrees to go back with him.

They return to Canaan where Rebekah and Isaac are married at once.

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In a strange coincidence, while researching this Bible chapter I stumbled across a series of books called "Women of Genesis" written by Orson Scott Card. One book is devoted entirely to Rebekah. The coincidence is that I just finished reading Ender's Game for the first time and am now reading Speaker of the Dead.

Card is a Mormon, which explains his motivation to write about the Bible. Maybe I should give these books a shot when I'm done with Speaker.

GENESIS 23, or, "The World is a Messed Up Place and I Have No Right to Complain About Anything"

Sarah dies, Abraham looks to give her a proper burial. I decide that I, like many Americans, have no real problems

Usually I try to lighten my posts up with a healthy dose of snarkiness, but it's hard to find anything funny about a grieving old man who is trying to find a final resting place for his wife.

Sarah lived a good long life of 127 years. She died in Canaan where she and Abraham were strangers among the Hittites that lived there. Abraham appealed to the Hittites to sell him a plot of land that he can make into a burial site. They were very accommodating; a man named Ephron offered to give Abraham the land for free, but Abraham insisted on paying a fair price.

The land was bought, and Sarah was put to rest.

The tomb where Sarah - and eventually Abraham - were buried still exists today and is called the "Cave of the Patriarchs". It is also said to be the burial place for three other Biblical couples: Adam and Eve, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah. I find the Adam and Eve bit hard to believe since there's no specific mention of their burial place in the actual Bible.

Not surprisingly, the tomb has great significance to the three Abrahamic religions, and of course has been the source of much conflict for thousands of years. It has switched between Jewish and Muslim possession several times, most recently being captured by the Israelis after the Six Day War in 1967.

In one particularly gruesome episode, in 1994 an Israeli physician named Baruch Goldstein entered the tomb with a sub machine gun and opened fired on a group of Muslims who were at prayer there, killing twenty-nine and injuring a hundred and twenty-five more before he himself was killed by the survivors. Amazingly, Baruch is revered by some as a hero, his grave reading, "To the holy Baruch Goldstein, who gave his life for the Jewish people, the Torah and the nation of Israel".

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Can't make it out to Hebron this year? Take a virtual tour of the Cave of the Patriarchs at its official website.

GENESIS 22, or, "In a Bind"

God puts Abraham through the ultimate test by commanding him to sacrifice his own son. Plus: Genealogy!



I assume most of you know this story, but just in case, here's a recap: God had been making a big deal about the birth of Isaac for a long time, and finally, in the last chapter, he delivered the goods. Abraham and Sarah, even though they are both in old age, had their son; not just any son, a son who would go on to father God's great nation.

After all that fanfare, Abraham finds himself here, in chapter 22, being asked by God to take Isaac up to a mountain and sacrifice him. Unquestioningly, Abraham does as God commands. He ties Isaac up and just as he is about to thrust a knife into him, an angel tells him to stop, explaining that God now knows for certain that Abraham is a true believer, and that Isaac doesn't need to be harmed.

Then, somewhat incongruously, we learn about the lineage of Abraham's cousins.

What does this story mean? Obviously, there's the lesson of faith - that your belief in God should be so strong that you should be willing to kill your own offspring for him. Barbaric, yes, but we should also keep in mind that God doesn't actually allow Abraham to kill Isaac. One illustrious Jewish scholar, Rabbi Joseph H. Hertz, Britain's Chief Rabbi of the early 20th century, wrote about how in that time, child sacrifice was actually quite common and that "in that age, it was astounding that Abraham's God should have interposed to prevent the sacrifice, not that He should have asked for it... Unlike the cruel heathen deities, it was the spiritual surrender alone that God required." Thus proving God superior and more compassionate to other gods.

Also of note is how some have drawn parallels between the binding of Isaac and the crucifixion of Christ, which was particularly interesting for me to learn after I observed in the previous entry that the story of Jesus' birth and Isaac's birth had some telling similarities. I'll let Wikipedia take it away:

"The majority of Christian Biblical commentators hold this whole episode to be an archetype of the way that God works; this event is seen as foreshadowing God's plan to have his own Son, Jesus, die on the cross as a substitute for humanity, much like the ram God provided for Abraham. And Abraham's willingness to give up his own son Isaac is seen, in this view, as foreshadowing the willingness of God the Father to sacrifice his Son; also contrasted is Isaac's submission in the whole ordeal with Christ's, the two choosing to lay down their own lives in order for the will of God to be accomplished, as no struggle is mentioned in the Genesis account. Indeed, both stories portray the participants carrying the wood for their own sacrifice up a mountain."

Since we've weighed in on the Jews and Christians, it's only fair to get the Muslim interpretation of this chapter as well. Many Muslim traditions hold that God doesn't tell Abraham to sacrifice Isaac at all, but Ismael. Ishmael, you'll remember, is Abraham's other son through his maidservant Hagar. He is also the figure Muslims trace their heritage back to. Though the Biblical text specifically uses the name "Isaac", God does also say, "your only son". Muslims use this phrase to interpret the text as saying that these events occurred before the birth of Isaac, back when Ismael was Abraham's "only son", and somewhere along the way the name "Ishmael" in the Biblical text started to be replaced by the name "Isaac".

There have been many interesting interpretations of Genesis 22, and I urge anyone reading this to check out this transcript of an interview with author Bruce Feiler by Krista Tippett on her radio show "Speaking of Faith". He offers many excellent insights into how Genesis 22 has been read throughout the centuries by different people of different faiths.

Pop Culture References to Gen 22: The first verse of Bob Dylan's song "Highway 61 Revisited" deals with the Binding of Isaac.

Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."

GENESIS 21, or, "Who you laughing at?"

Abraham's son Isaac is born, Hagar and Ishamel are sent away, there's some kind of contention over a well

After chapters and chapters of GPAASASBAASWSBTWTOTBC, Sarah finally gives birth to hers and Abraham's son Isaac; the name "Isaac" coming about because it means "to laugh" and Sarah laughed at God when He told her that she was going to have a son at such an old age. She laughs some more after giving birth, still incredulous about the whole thing. She was a jolly old gal.

You know, Mary wasn't this skeptical when she was told she was going to have a baby even though she were a virgin. Sarah was no Mary, I'll tell you that. And now that I think about it, that's an interesting point: the major event in both the Old and the New Testament is a miraculous, prophesized birth. AND in the Old Testament, the miracle of the birth is that the woman is too old, and in the New Testament, the miracle is that the woman is a virgin, which is a little like saying she was too young. Am I stretching this out too much? It's interesting nonetheless.

Abraham circumcises Isaac, the babe grows, and once he is weaned Abraham throws a party. At the festivities, Ishmael, Abraham's son through his maidservant Hagar starts making fun of Isaac, so Sarah wants Ishmael and Hagar sent away for good. But who could blame the kid? Obviously he's jealous that Isaac is getting all the attention.

If you remember, Sarah tried to pull this crap in Genesis 16 as well. Sarah is not a fan of Hagar and Ishmael. Abraham is conflicted, God tells him to do as Sarah says, that Ismael will be taken care of and a great nation will come of him as well as Isaac.

Hagar and Ishmael are kicked out, and God follows through on his promise, miraculously giving Ishmael water when he was about to die of thirst. After, Ishamel grew up to be an archer, and they both ended up in Egypt where Ishmael found a wife.

Back at Abraham's camp, ol' Abimelech, the ruler introduced in the previous chapter approaches Abraham. Now that Abimelech knows that God is on Abraham's side, he wants Abraham to swear that he'll deal fairly him. Abraham swears that he will, and then complains to Abimelech that a well of his was taken over by the ruler's servants. Abimelech is all like, "Why are you blaming me? Why didn't you tell me about this before?" And then Abraham is all like, "Well, I'm telling you about it now!". And then Abimelech is all, "What do you want me to do about it?", and Abraham is like, "Fine! Fine! Forget about it! I'll just dig another well!"

And he did.

By the way, the most interesting thing to note about this chapter is that Abraham is the father of both Judaism and Islam. Jews trace their ancestry back to Isaac, and Muslims trace theirs back to Ishmael. So even though the two sides are still fighting to this day, we should remember that it is essentially a sibling rivalry. Isaac and Ishmael didn't get along much, just like Israel and Palestine, but Genesis 21 teaches us that God has blessed both nations.

God on NPR: Here's a except from Krista Tippett's interview with author Bruce Feiler, who has some great insights into the story of Abraham and how it effects religion today.

BF: And Sarah says to Abraham, 'Kick Ishmael out into the desert.' And he clearly doesn't want to. Ishmael is his first son. He's been looking for a son for 90 years at that point. And what happens is God says it's okay, that he too will become a great nation. And so Ishmael is kicked out into the desert. But unlike a lot of people — figures in the Bible — he never leaves Abraham's realm of love and paternity, and he never leaves the sphere of God's blessing. And what is interesting is how the text seems to be bending over backwards to create a sort of balance.

Ishmael goes out into the desert, but his mother, Hagar, is much more elevated. Isaac gets the land, but through the malice of his mother. Hagar is the only person, male or female, in the Hebrew Bible to ever speak and name God directly. And God promises Abraham that he will have many generations — Isaac and Jacob — but He promises the same to Hagar, which means Hagar is, in effect, a female patriarch. And this balance, I think, is stunning because the split — when this story comes along, the split among the religions is still thousands of years in the future, and yet the text seems to understand that all of these people are related to one another, that there will be violence, but there also is peace.

I mean the thing that I hold onto here — one of the last things I did, as you know, is I went to Hebron, one of the bloodiest cities on the planet, the epicenter of Muslim-Jewish conflict. I drove south on this sniper road where the Israelis and Palestinians shoot at one another, before arriving at the Tomb of the Patriarchs. It's this giant building that looks like a cross between a gymnasium and a castle. The last time I had been there, there were 10,000 Jews dancing in the festival. Today, it was empty, so dangerous that four soldiers with helmets and machine guns had to escort me inside — four.

And I go to this little tiny room between Abraham and Sarah's tomb. All three faiths agree this is where they're buried. There's a ramshackle synagogue there with a chandelier hanging down with half the bulbs out, and it's there that Abraham, at 175, dies. And in one of the most haunting and overlooked passages in the Hebrew Bible, Genesis 25:9, his sons Ishmael and Isaac, rivals since before they were born, estranged since childhood, leaders of opposing nations, come, stand side by side, and bury their father. Abraham achieves in death what he could never achieve in life, this moment of reconciliation. A hopeful side-by-side flicker of possibility when they're not rivals or warriors; Jews, Christians, or Muslims. They are brothers.

GENESIS 20, or, "GENESIS 12"

Abraham and Sarah go to Gerar, where Abraham tries to pull the ol' "she's my sister not my wife" routine.

Oh Abraham.... When are you going to learn that when you feel threatened by a ruler in a foreign land, you're only going to get that ruler in trouble when you pretend that your wife is your sister and he then kidnaps her unaware that she's a married woman?

This is basically Genesis 12 all over again, except instead of Egypt, they're in Gerar, and instead of Pharaoh it's Abimelech.

What is the punishment for trying to sleep with Abraham's wife? Death to you and the infertility of all the women in your household, that's what. So don't even think about trying it.

By the way, isn't Sarah supposed to be ninety something by now? Why are men still trying to kidnap and have their way with her?

God on Blogs: Someone compiled the nine most badass verses in the Bible. Why don't they teach more of this stuff at Sunday school?

GENESIS 19, or, "Okay, everyone who's going to escape the wrath of God, please take one step forward... Oh, not so fast Lot's wife"

Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed, Lot escapes with his daughters, incestuous activities ensue.

Having failed to find just ten good people in Sodom and Gomorrah, God sends two angels to the cities to destroy them. After decades of scrutinizing the Dead Sea Scrolls, the consensus among modern theologians is that the angels looked something like this:



If you remember back to Genesis 13, Lot and Abraham decided to go their separate ways, with Lot settling to the east near Sodom. When the angels arrive at Sodom, they find Lot at the city gates. My NIV Bible tells me this is a significant detail - "Traditionally, city fathers gathered in the gateway to make important decisions. Lot's presence suggests that he had become 'one of them' during his time in Sodom, which may explain why he struggled against leaving."

Lot persuades the angels to stay in his house for the evening. Their presence does not go unnoticed by the townsfolk. Every man from the town gathers around Lot's house and they call out to him - and I swear that I'm not making this up - "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them."

Lot, being the good father that he is, offers the rape-hungry crowd his two virginal daughters. But no: Man-love is what the townsfolk want, and man-love is what they shall get.

The mob tries breaking down the door, but the two angels fend them off by blinding them. The angels tell Lot that they are going to destroy the town, and to gather his family and leave. They warn him not to look back as the destruction ensues.

As Lot, his wife and his two daughters flee the city, Lot's wife looks back at Sodom while it is being burned by sulfuric rain and she is turned into a pillar of salt. Here's a picture of a rock formation overlooking the Dead Sea called "Lot's Wife":



After a short stay in the town of Zoar, Lot and his daughters take shelter in a cave. The problem with caves is that they make horrible places for meeting guys. So Lot's daughters do what what any reasonable girls would in that situation - Get their father so drunk that he won't mind having sex with them. Both daughters become pregnant, and the Bible gives us no clues as to whether their children were born with the correct number of fingers and toes.

A big question surrounding this chapter these days is whether or not it's an example of God's condemnation of homosexuality. I think though that one can make a pretty strong argument that it's more rape than homosexuality that is the sin of the Sodomites here. Also, some have argued that the original Hebrew text can be translated as "to meet with" rather than "to have sex with."

Also, for me this chapter is another instance where I wonder "Why I'm a being told about this?" What lessons am I supposed to learn from Lot unknowingly having sex with his daughters? They aren't punished or rewarded for it. It just happens as a sort of weird epilogue to Lot's story.

God on YouTube: An excerpt from Dogma where the angels played by Matt and Ben reference Sodom and Gomorrah.

GENESIS 18, or "GPAASASBAASWSBTWTOTBC"

The Lord pays Abraham another visit, Abraham tries to stop him from laying the smack down on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

You know what? I'm getting pretty tired of typing out "God promised Abraham and Sarah a son but Abraham and Sarah were skeptical because they were too old to bear children." So from now on, I'm just going to use the acronym GPAASASBAASWSBTWTOTBC.

The chapter begins with Abraham being visited by God in the form of three men. Whenever they talk the Bible writes it as "they said" this and "they said" that, making me imagine that the three men always spoke in unison, which had to be eerie. Food and water is exchanged. Then GPAASASBAASWSBTWTOTBC. After GPAASASBAASWSBTWTOTBC, Sarah laughed, because, again, just to clarify, she was SBTWTOTBC.

When God asked why she laughed though, Sarah lied and said she didn't.

The Lord then tells Abraham that he plans to destroy the nearby cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because He has caught wind of how evil it has become. Abraham thinks this is a tad hasty. What about all the good people in Sodom and Gomorrah? He tells God, "Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike." Obviously Abraham wasn't around during the flood days when God did exactly that.

God says that if He finds fifty righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah, He'll spare the cities. Then Abraham asks what would happen if instead of fifty, He only finds forty-five good people? So God replies that He would spare the cities for the sake of forty-five righteous people.

Abraham continues to talk God down in this fashion until God has finally agreed to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if He finds just ten good people there.

Sex and the Bible: Even though the word "sodomy" implies homosexuality in most people's minds, the term is more general than that. Sodomy can refer to any form of sexual intercourse held to be unnatural or abnormal, including masturbation, oral sex, anal sex (hetero or homosexual), or bestiality. So the Sodomites weren't just gay, they were into all kinds of kinky stuff.