Genesis: Chapter Twenty-Two (Abraham Tested, Nahor's Sons)

In which God exhibits the behavior of a psychopathic murderer, but decides that's a bad thing when he realizes his orders would prove himself to be a logical fallacy.

A nonspecific amount of time after Abraham double-lies to Abimilek, God calls upon him, and, without explanation, instructs Abramam to take his son Isaac to Moriah and burn him in sacrifice. It's bad enough that God should ask his chosen one to do this, but that Abraham begins working toward this end without question is more fucked up than I can express in words.

Abraham chops wood, saddles his donkey, and takes Isaac and two slaves to the mountain that God specifies. It's three days' travel, but they finally arrive within viewing distance of the mountain. Abraham tells the slaves to wait behind while he and Isaac go to pray. "We will worship and then we will come back to you," he says in 22:5, which is a lie, and none of us are surprised to see Abraham lie at this point. With all the lies God's been telling Abraham, it seems to have become part of Abraham's psyche. Or maybe God is just a projection of man, human nature, and culture, and since man has an innate ability and necessity to lie to get by in any culture, God takes on those qualities. Or I could be some nutbag who doesn't believe in God.

So Abraham takes Isaac up the mountain. Abraham makes Isaac carry the very wood upon which he will burn. Abraham carries a torch and a knife. Isaac, the precocious little bastard, begins to wonder out loud, "The fire and wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"

Abraham's satisfactory reply: "God himself will provide the lamb." (22:8)

They reach the top of the mountain. Abraham builds an altar from the wood. Abraham ties Isaac to the altar. Isaac doesn't complain at all. He doesn't struggle. Abraham raises the knife (it would be terrible if he burnt his son alive, wouldn't it?). And then, at the very last moment, an angel calls out, "Abraham! Abraham!" Abraham holds off for a moment. (22:9-11)

"Don't hurt that kid!" screams the angel. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son." (22:12)

And this is all very frightening to me. This can be read (and I'm sure it is) as a message to Christians: FEAR GOD! Do what God says blindly out of fear! Even if God tells you to commit murder — filicide — you should do it immediately and without question! Do not ask why you should commit such an atrocity! Just do it!

The thought that a Christian might think that even murder is acceptable and excusable under God's command chills me to my core. That a Christian is supposed to do this out of fear for an ambivalent God that doesn't exist is another matter.

Abraham looks around and sees a ram caught in something by the horns, and he kills and burns it instead. The Chosen One names the mountain "The LORD Will Provide" because obviously, God provided Abraham with an excuse not to kill his son — the very one that God previously said would be the beginning of a massive amount of offspring to populate the world — right after giving Abraham an excuse to kill his son. (22:13-14) This is seriously fucked up! People read this stuff to their children before bed!

God speaks to Abraham again: "Because I told you your son would spawn generations and then told you to kill your son and because you were going to, but then stopped because I told you not to, I will now say again that your son will spawn generations, which is something that couldn't have possibly been true had you actually killed your son. Had you managed to follow my initial instructions, you would have proved wrong a prophecy of mine, thus showing that I am fallible and not omnipotent, and we can't have that, so I had to stop you. Wouldn't want you proving that I don't exist or anything." (22:15-18)

So they go to meet the servants they left behind, then go back to Beersheba. Abraham stays there.

So you'll remember way back in Chapter Eleven all about how Nahor (Abraham's brother) married his daughter-in-law, Milcah, even though it wasn't really necessary to. Well, Chapter Twenty-Two now ends with a quick addendum to Chapter Eleven's stream of genealogy.

Milcah and Nahor give birth to Uz, Buz, Kemuel, Kesed, Hazo, Pildash, Jidlaph, and Bethuel. Nahor also bangs a woman on the side, Reumah, and they have four sons together, Tebah, Gaham, Tahash, and Maacah. No word on how many were burned as a living sacrifice to angry, waffling gods.

Genesis: Chapter Twenty-One (The Birth of Isaac, Hagar and Ishmael Sent Away, The Treaty at Beersheba)

In which Sarah's a bitch and Abraham's an asshole and Hagar is in a really bad situation, but then Abraham lies after saying he's done lying in order to look like a better person.

Back in Chapters 12, 13, 15, 17, and 18, God assured Abraham over and over again that his wife, Sarah, who is barren and incapable of reproducing, would actually reproduce, but many years passed, and it never happened. When Abraham impregnates Sarah's servant, Hagar, it's made clear that that child, Ishmael, is not the one that God is blessing Abraham's family with. In Chapter 19, God makes an entire family incapable of reproduction, but later cures every last one of them, but at the end of all of that, God still has not cured Sarah, showing that God is evidently capable of it, but unwilling to do it for the wife of His Chosen One. (Although, if you've read Gen 19, you'll know how sketchy God's healing magic is.)

Finally, in the opening five verses of Gen 21, God finally "was gracious to Sarah", and he makes her fertile. They conceive, and the child is named Isaac. Isaac is born when Abraham is 100 years old (something Abraham doubted the possibility of previously), and Isaac is circumcised (quite surgically, I'm sure, with a sharp-edged rock or something) at the age of eight days old.

Sarah is disbelieving, but happy. (21:6-7)

When Isaac is off the tit, Abraham throws a feast (so Isaac can eat a bunch of food, no doubt). At the party, Ishmael (Isaac's somewhat illegitimate step brother) mocks the child. This cheeses Sarah off more than it cheeses Isaac off, and Sarah orders that Ishmael and his mother, Hagar, be sent away. "Get rid of that slave woman and her son," she orders Abraham, "for that woman's son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac." (21:8-10)

God, being a sensible family man, says to Abraham, "Look, don't freak out about this. Just, you know, banish those people. Isaac's the one that matters. Don't even worry about Ishmael. I know he's your kid, too, but you don't need to take care of him. I'll pay your child support this time." (21:11-13)

So Abraham gives Hagar some leftovers and a canteen the next day, and he kicks them out of camp. Water skin slung over her shoulder, pack of food in one hand, and screaming child in the other, Hagar slumps off into the Desert of Beersheba. (21:14)

Eventually, Hagar runs out of water, so she puts Ishmael under a bush for shade. She steps away for a little while, terrified that she's going to have to watch her son die a slow and agonizing death, even as she dies the same painful way, and cries. God hears Ishmael's cries (not Hagar's), and he responds. "What is the matter, Hagar?" God asks, as though he wasn't the one who agreed that they should be kickbanned from #abraham. "Look," he says for the second time today, "don't freak out about this." And he creates a well full of water that Hagar fills her skin with to slake hers and her son's throats. (21:15-29)

So... I guess they just settled down here around the magic well. The Bible just kind of leaves off with a rushed denoument saying Ishmael grew up to be an archer and married an Egyptian. (21:20-21).

There's a sign that some literary license may have been taken with this story, though. In 21:20 it says he became an archer, and in 21:16 Hagar is said to step "about a bowshot away" from Ishmael under the bush. This may represent an attempt at being poetic or creating parallelism or somesuch. Truth be told, if this is actual history, creative license shouldn't really be granted. If creative license is granted to historical writings, it's no longer history. It's myth. Like Homer's Iliad or Odyssey, which are each more believable than this shill.

A while later, Abimelek (the guy Abraham lied to as a way of proving that he was now the judge of all humankind, not God, back in Gen 20) and his army commander approach Abraham and ask him to swear that he won't be a dick and lie to them anymore. Abraham swears he won't, but then goes on to bring up an event that's rather important to him that he's kind of pissed off about, but hasn't yet mentioned.

See, Abimelek's army siezed a particular magic well a few days ago. Suddenly Abraham gives a shit about Hagar and Ishmael. Abraham is the only character so far who's more ambivalent than God himself. (21:22-26)

So they make a pact. Abraham brings seven sheep to Abimelek "as a witness that I dug this well". They call the well Beersheba, which means both "well of seven" and "well of the oath," (more creative license?) and make a treaty over it. Abimelek's army backs off, and Abraham the nomad "stayed in the land of the Philistines for a long time." (21:27-34)

This chapter has some odd timing issues that aren't readily comprehended, but with a little literary license, they can mostly be made sense of. The first section has Abraham and Sarah banishing Hagar and Ishmael into a desert that's already called Beersheba. Later, the well appears. Then, even later, Abimelek's men take control of the well. Later still, Abraham claims to have dug the well. Even later, the well is named Beersheba. I'll grant some license here and say that the author probably wrote this after the well was named, and the desert was probably named after the well (Desert of the Well of Seven/the Oath makes a certain amount of sense). This explains away the naming sequence. From a post-facto standpoint, it would be all too easy to refer to a geographical region by its current name, especially if it had no official name before.

What doesn't add up here is who dug the well. 21:17-18 has God hearing the crying child and responding that they should not be afraid because God "will make [Ishmael] into a great nation." Immediately in 21:19, "God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water." No, it doesn't explicitly state that God created the well, but the juxtaposition of these two ideas implies it.

21:30 has Abraham claiming he dug the well, and at the time, he's just gotten done telling Abimelek that he "will not deal falsely with [Abimelek] or [his] children or [his] descendants" (21:23). So if Abraham isn't lying, then he dug the well.

That's all well and good (snort), except this means that Abraham sent Ishmael and Hagar away from his camp, waited a while, then ran around them to a point a good distance ahead, dug the well knowing that Hagar would stop from exhaustion at that exact point in the vast, vast desert, then ran back to his camp without actually telling Hagar that he was doing this, which is way more effort than it would take to just follow Hagar with a few extra water skins and dig the well. Also, it makes Hagar not realize that Abraham's an alright guy who would dig a well for his mistress ill-begotten child who are lost in the friggin' desert, which works against what should be Abraham's intention.

I'm not buying it. Someone's lying here. Either God dug the well or Abraham dug the well, or someone else dug the well and left it. Not surprisingly, that last option is the only one I'm willing to buy, and that means that I think Abraham's a lying sack of shit.