03 Genesis 12-20

Shem, the son of Noah, was one of only four guys to survive the flood and commissioned by god to get out there and repopulate the world. Abram is nine generations down in the line of decendents from Shem.

 

Abram, son of Terah, brothers are Nahor and Haran.

Haran’s son is Lot, daughter is Milcah, and son is Iscah.

Haran‘s daughter Milcah becomes the wife for his brother Nahor! (Uncle married neice)

 

Abram is commanded to leave his home and family in Haran. Took his wife Sarai, who was very beautiful but she is barren, and also took his nephew Lot. They set out for Canaan.

 

The lord said he would give Abram the land of Canaan for his offspring.

Nice offer, guess he needed some motivation?

 

He moved on to Negev but there was a famine there, so he went on to Egypt.

 

Abram was scared that the Egyptians would kill him to get at his beautiful wife, so he lied and said she was his sister.

Here is a guy who has god on his side continuously, but he is afraid of a few Egyptians because they might want to kill him and take his wife. The lie protects him, but exposes her to even greater danger, but that does not seem to matter.

 

The Egyptians thought she was so beautiful that they gave her to the Pharaoh. She then lived with the Pharaoh as his wife and Abram profited greatly because of this – well, until the lord got annoyed about the arrangement, and started giving the pharaoh a hard time with plagues. Then, when the pharaoh discovered she was Abrams wife, and she was getting him in trouble with god, he wanted to know why Abram lied like that. Then he gave her back to Abram and told them to leave Egypt and even arranged that they could do safely. It was a pretty good deal because Abram got to take all the wealth he had got from the pharaoh with him.

Essentially he prostituted his wife to the richest man in the land and ended up rich himself because of it.

 

So Abram goes back to Negev and on to Bethel. Headed back to where the Canaanites were living. He and nephew Lot had gained so much wealth and animals while in Egypt, that they were stressing ability of the land to support them all. So Abram and Lot split up, Lot going to the Jordan Valley and Abram went off to live with the Canaanites.

 

Lot was then living near the city of Sodom and all the men there were an evil bunch. Abram was again offered all the land where the Canaanites were and so he went off to Hebron and stayed there.

 

In and around the Jordan Valley there came to be a lot of warring, and all the kings of the lands lined up for battle. The kings of Sodom and Gomorah did not do well, and had to go. The winners, the other five kings, took all the spoils of war from the cities and then took Lot and all his possessions as well because he was living there. But Abram got to hear about it, took his guys and rescued Lot and recovered his possessions and his people.

Now this story goes that these five kings defeated the other four kingdoms, but then Abram with his 318 men turned up and gave them all a flogging and took back all the stuff. They must have been pretty good fighters.

 

So the kings of Sodom and Gomorah turn up and thank Abram for beating up their enemies, but because these kings were preists of the most high god, Abram gave them one tenth of the spoils of war.

 

The King of Sodom, being a very kingly kind of guy, says “just give me the people, and you can keep all the stuff.”

Abram seems then to have bit of a conscience attack, and says that he promised god that he would not take anything, and offers to give it all back anyway. Then he says that he does not want the king to later say that they were the ones who made Abram rich.  But Abram also, being pretty cunning, says that his men who went and fought with him can take their share. So, that would mean that he got all the spoils anyway as those guys were in his employ.

 

God still thought pretty highly of Abram and kept talking to him. Now Abram starts to panic because he has no heir, no children.

Probably just as well that his wife was not able to have kids or she likely would have had a few to the pharoah and Abram would still have had no kids of his own.

 

So, Abram complains to god about this issue, and god tells him that his offspring will be as numerous as the stars in the sky. Abram liked the story so said that he believed it. God again makes huge promises about Abram having all the land around there even though it was already inhabited by the Hittites, Canaanites and a bunch of others. But god does not care too much for them. Abram wants god to prove it and asks how can he know this is going to happen. So god has him chop up a cow and a goat and a ram and a couple of birds then shows him a dream that terrifies him. It must have been god’s way of getting his attention, because after this, he passes a flaming torch among the chopped up animals, and starts to make a covenant with Abram about giving him all the lands again. A covenant must be more promising than a promise because this giving of the lands to Abram has been going on for a long time now.

 

So, Abram and his beautiful wife Sarai start arguing again about not having any kids yet. She blames god for not allowing her to have any, but comes up with the idea that maybe her Egyptian slave woman Hagar can bear some children for her. (The surrogate mother thing did indeed get started early in human history). Abram, being a man, does not object, and so she goes off and gets the slave woman and tells Abram to get on with the job. Abram being a good guy and loving husband dutifully does his wife’s bidding and starts having regular sex with the maid. Hagar gets pregnant, but then starts to get a bit superior and has a bad habbit of looking down on Sarai. As you could guess, the mocked woman Sarai is not impressed and wishes that the lord would judge between her and her husband.

Seems that any husband who starts plonking the maid is going to be in trouble no matter how nicely his wife asks him to do it!

 

Of course, Abram just does not want to get into this at all, so he hands back the pregnant slave woman to his wife and says that she can do whatever she wants with her. So, Sarai really gives the poor pregnant slave woman such a hard time that she runs away. It takes an angel of the lord to go out and find her and tell her to go back and put up with the treatment from Sarai. He also starts to make promises about how her offspring are going to be as numerous as the stars.

 

Hagar dutifully returns to Abram and Sarai and later she gives birth to a son that they are told to name Ishmael. The angel already told Hagar that this guy would be a troublemaker.

 

It took another 13 years before the lord turned up again, and started making covenants with Abram again, and more promises about “multiplying him greatly”. Then he also changed his name and so after this he is known as Abraham. There is a lot more promises about him being given all the lands of the Canaanites again too.

 

Then comes the condition that is a bit tough for all the guys. The covenant only works as long as the guys are circumcised. So, if you have a foreskin, you are out! This goes for everyone in the house, family and servants, even if they are slaves purchased from foreigners, they had to be circumcised.

 

As for the wife, Sarai from here on has to be called Sarah. God makes a promise that the barren one would also have a child, which Abraham now thinks must be a bit of a joke because not only is she barren, but she is now getting very old, and even passed menopause! Still, a promise is a promise, so Abraham goes off that very day and circumcises himself and all the men in the household without exception, because he did not want to be guilty of breaking the new covenant on the first day.

Must have been rough because Abraham was then 99 years old and had to have his foreskin lopped off and this likely by quite primitive means.

 

Some long time later, Abraham is sitting in his tent overlooking the Jordan Valley with a view of Sodom and Gomorrah when the lord and a couple of his mates drop by and Abraham makes a big banquet for them. Again the lord tells Abraham that his wife Sarah will have a son from him. Sarah thinks this is pretty funny and starts to laugh. The lord asks what she is laughing about and she lies directly to god and says that she did not laugh. But god contradicts her and says that she did. Bit of a tiff there but they get over it okay and again they get promises of being multiplied greatly and that they can have all the lands.

 

The lord says that it has come to his notice that the folks in Sodom and Gomorrah are not being nice, and that he is going to go and check, and will kill all of them if it is true.

Not really sure why the all knowing god has to actually go there to check to see if the rumour is true, but lets not try to change the story here.

 

Abraham says, as humbly as he can, not wanting to upset the good lord, that it could be that there could be a few good men in there, and what about them? What if there is 50 good men, and the lord then agrees that if there is 50 good men he will not kill anyone. So, then starts a bit of bargaining as it seems that Abraham is playing the humanitarian in the face of god here. How about if there is 45? Ah, okay, deal, no one is destroyed. How about 40? Deal! 30? Deal!. 20? Deal! 10? Deal!

 

At that point, the lord decided it was time to go, and Abraham went back to his tent (probably thinking that he had just saved the entire population of Sodom and Gomorrah).

 

The two mates of the lord that had visited with Abraham and his wife, (well, angels actually), turn up at the the city of Sodom and there is Lot, Abraham’s nephew, sitting at the gate. Lot invites these two guys into his house, and they agree and all sit together and have a meal. Before they go to bed for the night, all the men of Sodom, young and old, surround Lot’s house and ask for the two men to be sent out to them so that they can have sex with them.

Yes, the story really is getting weird here.

 

So, Lot starts to play the hero and goes out to try to bargain with the bad lads of the town who really did seem to be out to have sex with someone. He pleaded with them “Don’t do this evil.” To appease the crowd, Lot offered his two virgin daughters in place of the two guys who in reallity were angels of the lord. What the crowd did not know is that the angels were there to destroy the whole town for just this kind of stuff. Clearly, Lot thought pretty highly of these guys given that he was willing to sacrifice his two virginal daughters to be gang raped by the mob just to get them out of being threatened more by the mob. Luckily the angels who are still hiding inside the house could see that Lot was not doing a very smart move, and dragged him back inside the house and barricaded the door.

 

The angels then said that this was good enough evidence for them that Lot and family were good people, but everyone else in the town were not. They told Lot to pack up eveyone in the house and get them out because they were about to slaughter everyone in the town, men, women and children, so it was a good idea for Lot and his family to be somewhere else.

 

Now it was that in Lot’s house, there were also the future sons-in-law, the fiancés of his virginal daughters that he had just offered for the amusement of the sex maniac crowd of guys outside. Lot told them all that they had to get outta there because these two visitors to the house were actually angels of god and about to kill everyone in the town. The sons-in-law were having a hard time taking Lot seriously and given his performance so far on this day, who could blame them?

 

Finally, in the morning, the two angels had to drag Lot, his wife, and his two daughters out of the house, and escort them out of the city. They left the sons-in-law sleeping knowing that they would suffer the same fate as the rest of the town. Seems that it just does not pay to be too rational when you have avenging angels in the house.

Offering your two daughters to an evil mob to be gang raped is okay, but to question the liklihood of the entire town being wiped out by the same two guys who cowered in the house and not go out to face the angry crowd was just not acceptable.

 

Lot and his wife and daughters were instructed to run as fast as they could to the mountains and not to look back at the destruction that was about to happen. Lot complained that he could not run that fast and was scared that he would be caught up in the destruction and offered a compromise that he would run to a nearby town, named Zoar, and that the angels would have to spare that small town as it would be a great place for him to hide. The angels being reasonable guys (after all, Lot had just saved them from being raped by the men of Sodom, right?) said okay, they would agree to that.

 

Then came the burning sulphur from the sky and wiped out the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah and all the crops in the fields and the whole place. Lot and his women folk were in Zoar doing okay, but Lot’s wife could not stand the curiosity and did look back at the destruction, and was turned into a pillar of salt.

It really has been a rough day for Lot. Visitors (destroying angels from the lord no less) dropping in unannounced, being attacked by a  sex crazed mob, daughters offered for pack rape, dragged out of their home by the angels of the lord,  future husbands for the daughters killed, home totally destroyed, homeless and sheltering in the neighbouring town, and now the wife gets turned  into a pillar of salt!

 

As soon as they possibly could, Lot and his two daughters left Zoar because they were afraid to stay there. With what they had been through, they thought it safer to move up to the mountains and hide in a cave for a while and let things settle down a bit. Given that they are all alone up there, and Lot now has no wife, and is starting to get a bit old, the daughters start to worry about their father’s linage being stopped because he had no sons, and now no other women around for him to do a bit of fathering. The older daughter made up the plan that they should do the job themselves but they were worried that dad would not go along with it. So, they filled him up with wine the first night, and then the first daughter went in and had sex with him. The next night, the second daughter did the same, but again they had to make sure that Lot was drunk. So, now the two virginal daughters are no longer virgins, and Lot, even being old and drunk at the time, manages to get them both pregnant with sons on the first try.  So, Moab, father of the Moabites and Ben-ammi father of Ammonites were born as a result of the drunken incestuous sex romp in a primative cave of Lot and his two daughters.

No wonder you don’t hear too much about the Moabites and the Ammonites after this.

 

Now Abraham moved on from there (god just burned the place to the ground using burning sulphur from the sky so moving on seems like a good idea) back through Negev. For a while he stayed in Gerar, and he went back to the old story that his wife Sarah was actually his sister. The local king named Abimelech heard of this good looking woman and sent for her and decided to keep her for himself.

 

God was not too happy about this so tells the king in a dream that he and his kingdom is about to be destroyed because he has taken for himself the wife of a prophet of god. The king is terrified but protests to god that he has not actually had any sex with this woman yet, so why should he be destroyed. And anyway, they had both lied about her being Abrahams sister, and that she was not his wife. God agreed with the argument so told the king to return the woman to her husband and all would be okay.

 

Next morning, Abimelech called Abraham and asked him why he had lied and set up the king for a major problem with god. Abraham said that he thought they were not afraid of god in this kingdom and that he would be killed so that the locals could get at his wife.

Actually, we know that this is an old trick for Abraham and it worked so well with the pharaoh in Egypt so seemed a pretty good scam to pull on the king of Gerar.

 

There was also then a major announcement here. The story about her being his sister is actually half true! Abraham’s father Terah was also the father of Sarah but to a different woman. (Sarah’s mother is not actually named in the story). Well, this is the story that he told the king to prove that he is not a liar. It is not really known when he was lying but he had convinced Sarah that she should show him how much she loved him by not letting anyone know that they were actually man and wife.

Again this is Abraham protecting himself at by putting his wife in more danger – what a man! Just as well god likes him.

 

Then the king brought sheep and cattle and male and female slaves and gave them to Abraham and returned his wife to him as well. He also said that Abraham and his wife could live anywhere they wanted to in his kingdom. He also said to Sarah that he was giving her husband a thousand shekels of silver to cover the offence against her and he made sure that all who were with her saw that he gave this compensation.

The king makes compensation to Sarah for his offence against her, although he said, and even convinced god, that he had never touched her. It is likely that the king is just so terrified of copping the wrath of god because of this lying prophet and his equally devious wife  that he wanted to be super nice and be sure to appease everyone.

 

So, because the king had been so nice, and paid him off well enough, Abraham had a chat with god about it. Seems that for some time Abimelech, his wife and his slave girls could not have any children because this was how god showed them that he was not happy. Abraham being a nice guy fixed it with god to have the problem removed and they could all go about their business of multiplying happily.