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 Eighteen (The Three Visitors, Abraham Pleads for Sodom)

In which Abraham orders his wife to make bread out of two gallons of flour, and in which God decides it's okay to kill up to fifty good people if you think they're surrounded by evil.

The first two verses of this chapter are disconnected.

18:1 — It's mid-day in the middle east. It's hot. While Abraham sits beneath a shady tree, God appears to him.

18:2 — Abraham looks up and sees three men who are not God.

The second verse is the important one. The first one only establishes the presence of God (because he's apparently not as omnipresent as Christians would have me believe). But then in 18:3, Abraham speaks to the three men (whose feet he is bowing at) as if they were God, and offers them water and food. Through 18:5 he refers to himself as their servant, and he is acting very much like a sycophant to these men.

The men demand that he do what he offered.

Being a man, Abraham's not one to take on a woman's duties, so he commands Sarah to "get three seahs of fine flour and knead it and bake some bread." (18:6) In case you were wondering, a seah is "a unit of dry measure ... which equals one-third of a bath", which is about twenty-two liters, making one seah about 7 1/3 liters or nearly 2 gallons. Of flour alone. That's way too much bread for three men.

Being a slave-owner, Abraham's also not about to take on a slave's duties, so he has a slave kill and cook a calf as well as bring along some milk and curds (18:7-9).

Abraham watches them eat while they question him about the location of Sarah. He answers, and suddenly God is back saying that he'll be back in about a year "and Sarah your wife will have a son." (18:10)

Apparently, Abraham never bothered to tell his wife that God had spoken to him and told him that they'd have some babies eventually (she probably would have thought Abraham delusional) because she overhears the conversation and laughs. I wonder what she thought Abraham was doing that one time when he went around and chopped everyone's dick off. It's not like that's a rational thing to do. She must have asked what the deal was. She must have wondered why Isaac was hobbling around bowlegged looking despondant and in massive amounts of pain. Something's amiss here, and it smacks of an abusive relationship.

Back to the point. In 18:12 Sarah laughs and makes the rational thought, "After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?"

But she's caught red handed! God says to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh ... Is anything too hard for the LORD?" Then he confirms, "I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son." (18:12-14)

And then this exchange happens, which is too funny not to print in full:

Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, "I did not laugh."
But he said, "Yes, you did laugh."

At first she was all :P but then she serious'd. (18:15)

Later on, the three visitors get up to leave. They start heading in Sodom's direction, and Abraham follows them briefly to see them off into the desert heat. God randomly thinks to himself throughout 18:17-21:

Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just, so that the LORD will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.

The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.

Cliff notes: God's heard rumors about the kinds of terrible things they do down in Sodom (even though the Bible's audience doesn't know what those are yet), but he wants to verify that the rumors are true (because he's not as omnicient as everyone would have me believe), so he's going to physically travel to Sodom (because God has a physical form that he designed man after, being that it's such an intelligently designed one that men are born with the foreskins he despises so much) and take a peek around, and he's going to do all of this because... Well, because Abraham's awesome.

The visitors leave. Abraham grows a pair of balls and talks Serious Business™ to God. I feel the words in 18:23-25 are of particular importance, so I'll let them speak for themselves:

Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing — to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?

Abraham is basically asking God if God's history of amounting innocent deaths to collateral damage is the right kind of impression that the being we're all supposed to follow, worship, obey, and (most of all) mimic should be making. It's an important question that can be applied to any time of war the human population has ever been involved in. With one difference. God is the judge of all humanity. He decides what's wrong and right. God's answer to Abraham's question will be an insurmountable, immutable law seared into the very flesh of time, history, society, and government forever. God must choose his answer wisely. And what he comes up with in 18:26 is:

Well, if the collateral damage is less than fifty, it's acceptable.

Did you hear that, warlords and world leaders? Did you hear that, Dead Hitler? If you reckon something to be wicked, just kill it. As long as there aren't a whole fifty good people in range, just drop that bomb. Words of wisdom from the Amazing God Almighty. Praise Jesus! Hallelujah! Amen!

Abraham is no more a fan of this (non-)logic than I am, and he further questions God (after a little brown-nosing) throughout 18:27-32, saying, "Well, what if there are less than fifty good people in Sodom? Will you still kill them?"

And God changes his mind. "Okay," says God, "If there are forty-five good people, I will spare the city."

Abraham says, "What if there are forty good people there?"

"For the sake of forty, I will not kill everybody."

"How about thirty?"

"Fine," says the Lord, "I won't kill everyone if I find thirty nice guys."

Abraham pushes his luck: "Twenty?"

"Okay, okay," says God, "I will suffer them if there are twenty good people."

Abraham: "Ten?"

"For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it."

Abraham's a hell of a negotiator. Having talked the odds of God comitting genocide again down to something favoring the continued existence of the Sodomites (Abraham may have been motivated to do this by caring for his Sodomite nephew Lot), God leaves Abraham to his thoughts. After a while, Abraham goes home.

Genesis: Chapter Seventeen (The Covenant of Circumcision)

In which God is a paedophile and wants a collection of penis skin.

Right out, God asks Abram (who is now one year short of being a centenarian) to "walk before me and be blameless" (17:2). God tells Abram that it's time for him to make good on his former agreement, so God will make Abram have lots of children. No word yet on if Abram will have to rape all of his servant girls to make this happen.

God renames Abram (which means "exalted father") to Abraham (which means "father of many") "for I have made you a father of many nations" (17:4-5). God frames this claim with an air of importance, claiming that some of Abraham's offspring will be kings and rule nations. God gifts the entire land of Canaan to Abraham.

I can't wait to see what happens when Abraham walks into Canaan — the land in which even God admits Abraham is an "alien" (17:8) — and runs up to its leader shouting, "I'm the king now! God says so! Haha! Get down from that throne!"

But then God throws a curveball in 17:10-14:

This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner — those who are not your offspring. Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.

Okay, so all humans forever and ever must have their foreskins cut off at the age of eight days old. That foreskin is a constant sacrifice from Abraham and his future family so that they can remain on top and in good favor with God. This all makes perfect sense.

What makes even more sense is that God now claims that Abra(ha)m's wife is no longer called Sarai, but Sarah. "I will bless her," God says, "and will surely give you a son by her." (17:16)

But Abraham is getting used to God's trickery, laughs, and argues, "Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?" God confirms this is true despite its apparent ridiculousness, then tells Abraham to name his child with Sarah Isaac. Isaac will be fruitful and have many kids, and twelve rulers will spawn from him. That's where the covenant for future population will be upheld. (17:17-21)

So Abraham takes Ishmael (the illegitimate child of Hagar and the Arab Formerly Known As Abram) and removes his foreskin, which I'm sure was a very clean and surgical procedure thousands of years ago, then does the same to every other male he's living with (these are all servants, since he has only one son and his nephew Lot is living far away), and finally circumcises himself. That's right, "Abraham was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised" (17:24).

That sounds very painful, but what's worse is that Ishmael was thirteen at the time. This may be difficult for females to associate with, but imagine that you're a thirteen-year-old boy, confused by adolescence and puberty, trying to figure out what to do with that thing in your pants that keeps getting hard and feeling good for no reason at all, when all of a sudden your father comes to you with a crude knife and truncates your penis. It would be scarring in both the physical and emotional way. All in the name of God.

Another point of interest in this chapter is that we have some direct evidence against the whole "lunar month/year" theory. I can understand the disbelief that Abraham had about bearing children at the age of 99. There's no way Abraham is spry. He's past his prime. And Sarah is not significantly younger. At ninety, she's certainly gone through menopause and is no longer producing eggs for fertilization. Even if Abraham were still fertile, there's simply no way that Sarai could get pregnant.

But when you look at it from the perspective of a lunarist (my word), they were both around eight Gregorian years old. It's not feasible that they could have had a child a year ago (Ishmael), and it's still not feasible that they should have a second child now.

Once again, either God is making the impossible possible (and that's the general assumption of this chapter) or God is promoting sexual relationships between children under the age of ten.

Genesis: Chapter Sixteen (Hagar and Ishmael)

Genesis: Chapter Sixteen (Hagar and Ishmael)

In which God condones adultery and slavery while admitting to being either powerless or uncaring, and in which an illegitimate child is born and destined to be mean to everyone he ever meets because God says so.

Previously on All God's Words...

Nothing has been done to help Sarai recover her fertility. Certainly, if God has the power to be Abram's shield, to help Abram and his army of 318 people destroy four entire armies run by kings, to flood the earth and destroy all life thereupon, to even create new universes, planets, and life to live on them, then certainly — certainly — he has the power to give a single woman a functional reproductive system, after he's promised her husband offspring! Certainly, God must know how that particular system works if he created it!

He apparently doesn't know how the reproductive system works or he doesn't have the power to take care of Sarai's problem (or he just doesn't care). At the outset of Genesis 16, Sarai tells Abram, "Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her" (16:2). In 16:3 she gives her servant woman, Hagar, to Abram "to be his wife."

"He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress." (16:4) Sarai feels bad because Hagar hates her, even though it was her own decision to let Abram sleep around. Still, she accuses Abram of wrongdoing in 16:5

You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.

So Abram gives Hagar back to Sarai and tells Sarai to "do with her whatever you think best." Naturally, "Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her."

So now Abram and Sarai are without child because their only offspring (which was only half theirs) is in the womb of a woman who has run away from the marital conflict. It's about now that Hagar, near a spring in the desert called Beer Lahai Roi (The Well of the Living One Who Sees Me) meets with an angel who tells her:

Go back to your mistress and submit to her. I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.

You are now with child
and you will have a son.
You shall name him Ishmael,
for the Lord has heard of your misery.
He will be a wild donkey of a man
his hand will be against everyone
and everyone's hand against him,
and he will live in hostility
toward all his brothers.

It's worth noting here that the name Ishmael literally means "God hears." Apparently it implies that God's a belligerent asshole as well because God is going to make Ishmael a very mean person. Somehow, this is supposed to coerce Hagar into returning to the woman who mistreats her and continue to live in agony and suffering.

There are two outrageous streams of thought here.

Sarai's Logic

• I am barren.
• My husband needs a legacy to give all this land and property to.
• We have a fertile servant girl.
• Therefore, my husband can mate with the servant and produce offspring.
• Now the servant girl is pregnant.
• She hates me because she's carrying a child she won't be allowed to raise while I will return her to servitude after the child is born.
• Therefore, I should treat her like hell.

Hagar's Logic

• There's a woman who hates me because I am bearing her husband's child even though she told me and her husband to do it.
• She's treating me worse than even her other normal slaves.
• RUN AWAY!
• An angel tells me my child is going to be a total dick to everybody.
• I should go suffer the wrath of crazy people so this kid can be a privelidged douche.

So she does. She goes back and gives birth to a kid. Abram names him Ishmael when he is 86 years old.

This all makes total sense.

A Modern God

God makes a lot of demands in the Bible. What to eat. What to wear. How to act. Who gets to live. Who must die. Sometimes, his demands just don't jive with what we as a modern society hold to be valuable facets of life. So I thought I'd take a moment to cover some of them from recent readings.

Chapter Eleven shows that God likes it when his followers are incestuous, or at least he doesn't mind. Sure, Abram doesn't marry within his own family, but other family members of his do. They're not punished at all for marrying their cousins. Nowadays, the miracles of modern science show us that reproducing with close blood relatives can produce genetic problems leading to decreased mental activity and retardation. A study from the US National Library of Medicine reports that in a group of 21 children of incestuous relationship, twelve showed genetic abnormalities (57%). Nine of those abnormalities were considered severe (43%). Abram was no doubt the product of several generations of incest, which could explain his numerous delusions and his honest belief that God would give land to the offspring that his wife is incapable of producing.

God also endorses lying. He never offers up any shame or guilt about lying to Abram, his chosen one, about his offspring's inheritance. These days, lying is considered a crime under certain circumstances. Perjery and fraud are two such examples, yet we swear people into oath before these very court cases on a Bible.

That's just something to think about when trying to bring Christianity into a modern context. Commonly, Christians claim to understand that the Old Testament is very old and that its relevance is slim, but all too often they seem to forget that much of their faith is based on these books. The ten commandments are there as is the creation story (both of them). A critical look at everything so far causes all of it to just fall apart.

Keep your eyes open in the near future for strange approvals of things like adultery as well.