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.

Genesis: Chapter Fifteen (God's Covenant With Abram)

In which Abram starts thinking and is so shocked that he has that capability that he thinks it's God speaking to him, and in which God proves himself to be functionally useless

After helping the Sodomite sinners defeat their Elamese oppressors, "the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision" (15:1). Yep. Abram imagines that God is speaking to him, so he automatically assumes that God really is speaking to him, which is like dreaming that you can fly and then assuming that you can safely jump off the Sears tower.

God says:

Do not be afraid, Abram.
I am your shield,
your very great reward.

But Abram is beginning to doubt the Lord. He finally comes to the realization that his wife is barren and the "offspring" who will inherit his belongings is a slave named Eliezer of Damascus. When he queries God about this, God tells him in 15:5:

This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir. Look up at the heavens and count the stars — if indeed you can count them. So shall your offspring be.

God drops the line once more. Does Abram bite?

Yes, he most certainly does. "Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness." (15:6)

But when God tells Abram that the land he stands on all belongs to Abram, Abram's still a little skeptical, as well he should be. He asks, "O Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?" (15:8)

"Trust me," says God, and Abram believes him.

Actually, that's not the whole truth, but I almost wish it were. God's actually got something more insidious planned out. "Bring me a heifer," God says in 15:9, "a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon."

It's either ritual time or time for stew. Abram takes notes.

Abram's Grocery List

• 3-year-old heifer
• 3-year-old goat
• 3-year-old ram
• Dove
• Young pigeon
• Milk
• Eggs
• Those little chocolates that Sarai likes

So Abram gets all of this stuff together, chops everything in two, and "arranged the halves opposite each other" like an obsessive serial killer, but he leaves the pigeon whole. He has to keep the buzzards from chowing down on his bloody animal sacrifice. (15:10-11)

Abram promptly falls asleep "and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him" (15:13). And then God makes his covenant while Abram's passed out, hardly giving Abram a chance to retort:

Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.
...
To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt, the Euphrates — the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites."

I am a powerful fortune teller. I predict that in the next four hundred years, war will break out, but afterward there will be a period of relative peace. People will die and other people will be born. At least one newborn will be named Robert, and one Frances.

God's prediction here is not something so specific that no human could have guessed it. He predicts that a person with no education will become a slave, as will his entire family and every generation that passes from his loins, but that four hundred years later, they'll get pissed off and revolt. The only thing obviously wrong about this prediction is that Abram's wife is still barren!

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!

Genesis: Chapter Fourteen (Abram Rescues Lot)

In which a completely nonsensical war breaks out and Lot becomes the only Sodomite worth a thought.

MEANWHILE!

Amraphel, Atrioch, Kedorlaomer, and Tidal (the kings of Shinar, Ellasar, Elam, and Goiim) start a war against Bera, Birsha, Shinab, Shemeber, and Zoar (the kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, and Bela). The latter group has been under the command of Kedorlaomer, and they don't like it. They rebel. (14:1-4)

This war rages on for fourteen years, when Kedorlaomer and his crew finally destroy the Rephaites, the Zuzites, the Emites, and the Horites, then turn back toward En Mishpat (also known as Kadesh) and conquer that entire region. (14:5-7)

Sodom amasses his forces in the Valley of Siddim, and that's where the final battle goes down. (14:8-9)

"Now the Valley of Siddim was full of tar pits, and when the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, some of the men fell into them and the rest fled to the hills." (14:10) Kedorlaomer's crew wins the battle (because the Sodomites and Gomorrans all ran away, so it's kind of a default thing), and they "seized all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their food" (14:11) and then they take off to return home.

But the plot thickens when Lot, who's living near Sodom, is taken away by the Elamese forces along with everything he owns (14:12).

One of the Sodomite escapees runs to Abram, somehow knowing that Abram and Lot were related despite their having split up in the last chapter. Abram gets angry (and you wouldn't like him when he's angry), and he gathers up the 318 men that had settled around him and allied with him over the past unknown amount of years to track down his nephew. (14:13-14)

One night, Abram hatches a devious plan. He separates his 318 men into smaller groups who each go out and attack different places in the dead of night. "He recovered all the goods and brought back his relative Lot and his possessions, together with the women and the other people." (14:15-16)

There's something particularly odd about all of this. Stay with me here --

An army made up of five kings' people go to war against an army of four kings' people. The slightly larger army runs away from the smaller one. Why? Was the other army noticably larger? Were there more able-bodied people on the "good" side than Sodom had? Besides, this was a rebellion, not a mild complaint. A true rebellion can't be slapped on the wrist. That's not going to stop anything. A true rebellion happens when people decide they hate the way they're living and they decide to fight against it, death being a completely viable alternative to the oppression.

Sodom, et al were one army ahead of the game, and yet they ran away! I know I'm being a bit nitpicky here, but this is not war! This isn't even an attempt at war. This was nothing more than a bunch of people making threats en masse about something they don't know or care enough about to die for.

And now, despite the fact that five entire armies went to war and lost to four entire armies, Abram thinks it's a really good idea to make his own go at those four armies with a little over three hundred men. I have speculated in previous chapters that Abram was one taco short of a combination plate, and this is proof of such.

But for whatever reason (probably because he's God's chosen one), he manages to succeed. What's more, "After Abram returned from defeating Kedorlaomer and the kings allied with him, the king of Sodom came out to meet him in the Valley of Shaveh." (14:17)

So Abram kills the king, and suddenly everyone in the Sodomite group is his best friend, but the guys from the Kedorlaomer camp don't do anything? They don't, say, amass four armies and come after Abram? They already know that, even though the Sodomites are Abram's good buddies, they just run at the first sign of trouble. And 318 men fighting four armies will not survive. As George Zimmer might say, "I guarantee it."

The king of Jerusalem breaks out the bread and wine. This king is also a priest, and he blesses Abram:

Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
Creator of heaven and earth.
And blessed be God Most High
who delivered your enemies into your hand.

Abram was chosen by God, so it's not like he needed the blessing. I'd also like to take a moment to point out that somebody just thanked the Christian deity for allowing people to be killed. Just sayin'.

That brings us up through 14:20, in which Abram gives a tenth of everything he recovered from his escapade to the priest/king for blessing him. Jeez, this Abram guy is really not smart at all.

The king of Sodom seems to be a mostly nice guy. He tells Abram that he doesn't want all the possessions that Abram is about to give to him. He only wants the people. (14:21)

But Abram rejects the offer because of how the Sodomites "were wicked and were sinning greatly against the Lord" (Gen 13:13). He says,

I have raised my hand to the Lord, God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth, and have taken an oath that I will accept nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or the thong of a sandal, so that you will never be able to say, "I made Abram rich." I will accept nothing but what my men have eaten and the share that belongs to the men who went with me — to Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre. Let them have their share.

What a prick! So I know that the Sodomites were supposedly working against God, but we haven't been told what exactly they were doing that was so bad. And I know that Abram was supposedly blessed by God. But still, this is taking it a bit far, don't you think? Abram saved his nephew Lot — who is somehow the only special Sodomite in the bunch, the only one who isn't "wicked" and "sinning greatly against the Lord" — and then rejects payment for it on the grounds that the Sodomites are evil people (God said so!).

That sounds familiar and relevant somehow. It sounds exactly like the way that the far right Christian fundamentalists sound when they try to speak politically. They're full of an uneducated, pompous self-righteousness that they believe is the only thing they need to make sense of the world, when in reality, they're just stupid people listening to a fake God telling them lies. They'll make exceptions for anything they feel doesn't match their worldview and make up excuses to match those decisions. They'll even warp truth. I imagine Abram is rationalizing this by thinking that Lot wasn't really a Sodomite. Lot was somehow forced into living there or something (he wasn't; it was his choice). That's a lot like killing someone, but thinking that you're exempt from the repercussions because God told you to do it.

Genesis: Chapter Thirteen (Abram and Lot Separate)

In which a fight between nephew and uncle is narrowly avoided by Abram being a generally cool guy, and in which God lies and lies and lies and lies and...

The first thing this chapter does is inform you that Abram and his crew have begun the journey home to the Negev, now extremely wealthy. They have an abundance of livestock and precious metals. (13:1-2) Abram "went from place to place until he came to Bethel". This is where, in Gen 12, he built the altar. Once again, he calls "on the name of the Lord". (13:3-4)

Lot, Abram's nephew, has been traveling all over the countryside with his aunt and uncle. His father, Haran (who is Abram's brother), died back in 11:28. In a way, I'm kinda glad that this crew is who it is. We learned from Gen 11 that people aren't afraid of committing incest, and I'm getting kinda tired of having to read about it. Sarai is not immediately blood related to either of her companions, so unless Abram and Lot decide to go at it, incest among these three is impossible.

In 13:5-6, Lot has some possessions that he's been carrying around, but he has to stop and settle because "the land could not support them while they stayed together, for their possessions were so great that they were not able to stay together." I'm not sure what this means. And "I'm not sure what this means" is something I've said so many times by now that I'm not sure it holds any meaning any more. What's the problem? Is it that they simply can't find enough physical space for all of their cattle, silver, gold, and tents that they have to split up? There's no footnote here to explain what "the land could not support them" really means. Support, when referring to physical strength like I think this is, means the ability to assist and keep one on one's feet, but the land didn't just start caving in beneath them because it wasn't held up by enough support columns.

After deciding to split up, Abram's slaves who tend Abram's cattle start to argue with Lot's slaves who tend to Lot's cattle. Abram tries to calm things down by suggesting:

Let's not have any quarreling between you and me, or between your herdsmen and mine, for we are brothers [Figuratively, not literally; they're literally uncle and nephew. -Ed.]. Is not the whole land before you? Let's part company. If you go to the left, I'll go to the right; if you go to the right, I'll go to the left.

That's redundant, but peaceful, and it brings us all the way through 13:9.

Lot knows that the land of Jordan has enough water to support his cattle's drinking habit, and they split up without any further argument. Lot heads into Jordan while Abram moves back into Canaan. 13:10 mentions that "This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah," which doesn't happen in my Bible until Gen 19, and I have no idea why we need a note explaining that something hasn't happened yet when we had no idea that whatever that thing was ever happened, and when we weren't going to find out about it for another six chapters. Way to go, Bible, giving us spoilers for yourself. Ah, it's okay. The best parts were in the trailer, anyhow.

Lot finally settles down near the town of Sodom. The Sodomites "were wicked and were sinning greatly against the Lord" (13:13).

Meanwhile, Abram is visited by God. God instructs him to

Lift up your eyes from where you are and look north and south, east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted. Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you."

Yep. Once again, in 13:14-17, God makes another empty promise. He says that the land belongs to all of Abram's offspring, but we know from 11:30 that Abram's wife Sarai is barren, and cannot bear children. If Abram wants offspring, either Sarai is going to somehow become fertile or Abram's going to have to sneak off and have an affair. Surely, since Abram was chosen by God to make this two-chapter-long journey, and since Abram is such a shining example of a human being, and since this is the Bible where God manages to do impossible things (that's called a miracle), I'm betting that Abram stays loyal to his wife and Sarai's uterus begins to magically work.

Abram believes God's lies once again, and he moves to live "near the great trees of Mamre at Hebron," and then he builds another altar (13:18).

Abram and Sarai's journey to the center of the middle east is a long one, and they've left behind them a trail of altars and diseases like some kind of twisted, Arab Hansel and Gretel. One way or another, God is lying to his people here. Twice in the past two chapters has God mentioned Abram's offspring, but never once mentioning how that's going to be made possible. And he's very long-winded, at that.

Genesis: Chapter Twelve (The Call of Abram, Abram in Egypt)

In which God selects Abram at random to be falsely rewarded for doing nothing, and in which Sarai is kidnapped into sexual slavery by the Egyptian Pharoah.

God begins commanding again right off the bat in Chapter Twelve. "Leave your country, your people and your father's household," he says to Abram, "and go to the land I will show you." God promises Abram that he will start a "great nation" and that God will "make [Abram's] name great." God "will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse" (12:1-3). God really is down with this whole vengeance thing. Aside from choosing people who marry their infertile cousins at random and granting them a legacy, he sure does like to tell these people that anybody who isn't nice to them will feel the terrible wrath of the lord.

So Abram takes off with his nephew Lot and his wife Sarai. They take all their things and all of their slaves (God doesn't seem to have a problem with slavery) and leave town when Abram is seventy-five years old. Or like, six and a half if you're counting in real time (12:4-5).

They pass into the land of the Canaanites until they finally stop at the "great tree of Moreh at Shechem." God offers the land to Abram, saying, "To your offspring I will give this land." (12:7)

Wait... What? *rifles through pages, finds passage* AHA! Genesis 11:30 says, "Now Sarai was barren; she had no children."

I'm having trouble reconciling what it means when God says one thing knowing that it means nothing. This is an empty promise. Abram will have no offspring because his wife is barren. She is infertile. She is not a baby-making machine. So when God says that the offspring of Abram and Sarai will inherit the land, he is telling Abram comforting nothings, probably to convince Abram to do something. Does Abram realize he's been taken? Did he just want a change of scenery and take the opportunity when God handed it to him? Who knows? One thing's for sure. Whether Abram knows it or not, God is lying to Abram.

Abram must not be aware of this because in 12:8 Abram "built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord." Then in 12:9 he moves on to a place called Negev.

When famine encompasses Egypt, Abram decides to spend some time on the African continent (12:10). I'm left to assume that he does so to bring some kind of aid to the Egyptians because the Bible does not provide a reason for Abram's actions. But he does have a fear of the Egyptians. He thinks that when they see Sarai's beauty, they will kill Abram to take Sarai for their own. He proposes in 12:13 that she pose as his sister (which is not too far off from the truth) so that this will not happen.

Sure enough, when Abram and Sarai show up, the Pharoah's officials think Sarai is worthy of presentation to their king. They take Sarai to the palace. The Pharoah approves of Sarai and thinks her "brother" is so awesome that "Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, menservants and maidservants, and camels." (12:14-16)

God takes pity on Sarai because of how unfairly she is treated by the Pharoah. The book doesn't say what kind of horrible atrocities are done to her, but one might assume sexual slavery. In 12:17, God "inflicted serious diseases on Pharoah and his household" because of it, fulfilling half of his promise from before.

The Pharoah, through his punishment, becomes aware of Abram and Sarai's ruse. He confronts Abram, reiterates Abram's plan back, returns Sarai to her husband, and tells them to get out of the country. Abram gets to take all of the cool stuff the Pharoah gave him. (12:18-20)

What's left unexplained at the end of this chapter is why Abram went to Egypt in the first place, and what he did while he was there aside from wind up in some wacky hijinks with the king. I understand there was a famine, but generally speaking, people don't move toward a place of dispair unless they are there to provide aid in some way. In a monarchy such as Egypt was, the people are going to get what the king gives them, and external help will be no help at all. Abram perhaps didn't understand this and went anyway. But while he was down there, he didn't do anything to that end. His wife got kidnapped, which obviously causes problems with the rest of the itenerary, and he spent the rest of his trip watching the Pharoah undergo various illnesses.

Personally, I think this chapter is nothing more than an illustration of God following through on something that didn't involve killing people. God did make a guy sick, however, and he did make a rather large empty promise to Abram. In the end, I'm still left making wild conjectures at why God selected Abram, what he selected Abram for, and why Abram went to Egypt. In literary jargon, God's selection of Abram and subsequent commandment for him to move about the countryside could be seen as a McGuffin, an event that takes place solely for the purpose of catalyzing an unrelated plot.