The Book of Genesis, Chapter 13

Genesis 13:1-18

Summary

Abram leaves Egypt and goes through the desert. Abram's folks and Lot's folks get into a bit of a tiff because the land is having a hard time supporting them both, so Abram says to Lot, "Dude, we've got tons of space, you go one way, I'll go the other way, we shouldn't fight over this."

Lot heads east to the area around the Jordan, which was nice because Sodom and Gomorrah hadn't been kaplooied yet. That happens later. Abram goes in the other direction, towards (possibly founding?) Hebron.

Commentary

There's not a lot of action in this chapter, but it is an important parting of the ways. At the first, Abram and Sarai —with Lot in tow— head out of Egypt and into the Negeb. I did a little reading, and from what I can tell, the Negeb is a desert area in Israel, which is reasonably fertile. The term also refers to "the south" in general.

The group, now consisting of many herders working for both Abram and Lot, travel all the way back to the place between Bethel and Ai, where Abram built an altar to the Lord. It's kind of fascinating to me that they travel back there, because it was early in their days together when that happened, and almost seem to go back to split.

First, though, comes the strife between Abram's herders and Lot's herders. There's no real description of it, it's just stated that it happens. The bible describes the group:

"Now Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents" (Gen 13:5).

The fact that they have flocks, herds and tents seems to suggest that they were in fact a great many people moving together, which makes sense. It's very hard to eke out a living all on your own in the wilderness, which was pretty much everywhere at that time in history.

All of these folks living together in a place with limited resources, and conflict of some kind was inevitable. All we're told is that

"[T]here was strife between the herders of Abram’s livestock and the herders of Lot’s livestock." (Gen 13:7)

It doesn't sound too bad, actually, it probably consisted mostly of harsh words and the occasional fistfight. Still, it doesn't pay to have people fighting each other when they ought to be tending the livestock.

This leads to the talk. Boys and girls, when two groups of herders don't love each other like they used to... well, they probably go separate ways. What did you think I was talking about? Abram takes Lot aside, and says

"Let there be no strife between you and me, and between your herders and my herders; for we are kindred. Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left." (Gen 13:8-9)

So Lot agrees, and seeing that the Plain of Jordan was lush and verdant, he decides to take his herders, and his tents and his cattle, and heads off in that direction. Over there happened to be Sodom and Gomorrah, and Sodom was a wicked place, but it had not yet been destroyed.

Abram moved to the Land of Canaan, where God makes an excellent promise to him. God tells Abram to look around, see the grand majesty of the land in all directions around him, because

"[A]ll the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring^* for ever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted.Rise up, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you." (Gen 13:15-17)

And here, at long last, God promises Abram to make his offspring very plentiful. There's no mention of making him a nation, at least not in this chapter, there might be a little later on with a different author.

It's a very odd thought to view God as choosing favourites. I'm not used to it, though from what I understand of Old Testament God, I might hvae to get used to it. Abram is a devout man, of course, and it's understandable that if God were to pick a favourite, he might pick Abram. I guess I've always been brought up to think of God as loving all people equally, but that's a little more in the style of New Testament God, and I won't be there for awhile.

Still, moved by this promise from the Lord, Abram moves his tents to the Oaks at Mamre, and builds an altar to the Lord.

I'm back!

Hey everybody, the blog returns. At least until I have to go to camp, probably.

The Book of Genesis, Chapter 12

Genesis 12:1-20

Summary

God really likes Abram. Like so much. At a ridiculously advanced age (though maybe less so, with the number of people living past 200), God tells Abram to go on one hell of a road trip in exchange for blessings galore.

Abram goes traveling, hitting up Canaan and Bethel, building an altar to the Lord in each place, and eventually a famine hits, and Abram has to go to Egypt for food. In order to prevent the Egyptians from getting jealous, he tells his wife to pretend she's his sister, but this kind of backfires when the Pharaoh takes her to be his wife. Abram says nothing and gets a bunch of stuff. I wish I was making this up.

Eventually God starts plaguing Egypt because of Sarai, and Pharaoh goes to Abram and essentially says "Dude, what the hell?" and has the whole lot of them (haha, punny) escorted out of the country.

Commentary

The beginning of this chapter is really fantastic. God takes a rather large interest in Abram, and decides to send him out with his family to settle in a new land, which God will show him. God promises blessings:

"I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (Gen 12:2-3)

I find this blessing very beautiful, myself, and I'm getting ahead of myself, but I seem to remember a similar sentiment when Jesus sends out his disciples in pairs. The footnote at the end of this blessing suggests an alternative wording which I find very interesting.

"In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed" might be replaced with "In you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves". I am a Christian by choice, it's true, but there's a great deal of humanism in me as well, and this speaks very much to that. Rather than blessing us, we are given the power and the strength to bless ourselves.

So, at the age of 75, with his wife, his nephew, and all of their stuff, Abram set out to Canaan. He passed through Canaan to "the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh" (Gen 12:6). The word "oak" here is sometimes translated as "Terebinth", which is a reasonably large tree related to the Pistachio family. The implication is that this is some sort of grove, and here God appears before Abram and informs him that this will be the land of his descendants. Abram builds an altar to God here. A similar event happens between the lands of Bethel and Ai.

Like every good story, though, the plot thickens. Famine strikes, and Abram and Co. are forced into Egypt to find food. Abram says to his wife:

"I know well that you are a woman beautiful in appearance; and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, 'This is his wife'; then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared on your account." (Gen 12:11-13)

It's not a bad idea, really. At the time, I'm sure it made sense to fear being killed and having your wife taken from you by Egyptians. Unfortunately, it backfires. When they get to Egypt, the beauty of Sarai is a very well-known fact: She's so beautiful that the Pharaoh takes her into his household. I'm assuming this is a euphemism for taking her as a wife or a concubine or something like that.

This probably would still have happened if Abram had told the truth; assuming his fears were justified, it would probably would have gone much the same way, except with a dead Abram.

It sounds bad at first, but when you take a look at the next verse, the whole story takes on a whole new level of bad:

"And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female slaves, female donkeys, and camels." (Gen 12:16)

I hate to say, it but looks a little like Abram sold his wife. It's probably more accurate to say that Abram, under duress, gave up his wife and was well compensated for it, but it still feels very, very wrong, and God agrees.

For those of you who thought that the whole "Plagues on Egypt" thing was unique to Moses, I'm afraid to say that they're not.

"But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife." (Gen 12:17)

That's right, folks, when Moses—with God's blessings, I might add—called down the plagues, it was at least the second time this had happened to the Egyptians. Maybe that's why the Egyptians enslaved the Israelites in the first place, they were still sore about this whole thing.

As I said in the summary, Pharaoh's reaction is relatively calm and reasonable. He doesn't have anyone killed, he just essentially says "What the hell, dude?" to Abram and sends them on their way, probably still wondering "Why did [he] not tell me [she] was [his] wife?" (Gen 12:18).

The Book of Genesis, Chapter 11

Genesis 11:1-32

Summary

At this point in time, every human being on earth shared the same language. So the people got together in a place called Shinar, and decided to build a city and a tower with its top in the heavens. They want to do this to avoid being scattered on the earth. Somehow this threatens God, as God sees that the humans can do whatever they want. God's reaction is to confuse the languages of all the people working on this structure and scatter them across the earth, further proving God's sense of irony. After this lovely story, we have a genealogy of Shem's descendents.

Commentary

I really want to like Old Testament God. I really do. But sometimes it's very hard. I've often heard this story used to represent God punishing the hubris of humanity, but reading this actual text I have to at least sympathise with the humans. Their stated aim is,

"Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth" (Gen 11:4).

The people fear the fleeting nature of their existence and want to make a monument so that people will have some common ground, rather than splintering into their own tiny little groups. I see this as a relatively natural response to the great calamity that went before this story. God, on the other hand, has different plans.

The language the Lord uses in the passage is not the language someone offended by the pride of another would use. It is the language of fear. God doesn't remark on the presumptiveness of these people, no, he says,

"‘Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them." (Gen 11:6)

Evidently God has some issues with humans being able to achieve so much by working together, and God continues in this way:

"Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech." (Gen 11:7)

Is it really crazy to suggest that the language used here implies that God is afraid of what humans can do? Rather than celebrate the success of his creation, God shatters the interactions of the humans and scatters them across the globe.

This story functions as an explanation of why there are many different languages and people around the world. The narrative, from the story of Noah onwards, requires a story of this nature in order for the world we live in, and the world they lived in, to make sense. It's unfortunate that one of the underlying messages in this story is that we shouldn't reach too high, that if we work together, God's going to put a stop to it.

The genealogy that follows is very dry and formulaic, you can read it if you like, but the form goes something like this:

"When [So and So] had lived for [X] years, he became the father of [Somebody or Other]; and [So and So] lived after the birth of [Somebody or Other] for [Y] years, and had other sons and daughters." (Gen 11:12-27)

The last five verses of the chapter refer to a couple very important characters, but first I'm going to list the names leading up to them:

Shem
Arpachshad
Shelah
Eber
Peleg
Reu
Serug
Nahor
Terah

Whew! Each name is the father of the one below it and the son of the one above it. Now, Terah had three sons, Abram, Nahor, and Haran. So, counting backwards, Abram is the great⁸ grandson of Noah. Just so we have an idea of the number of generations here.

A very sad story is flirted with, for a moment, here. It says that

"Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans." (Gen 11:28)

I know that at the time, a child dying before his parents was more commonplace, but it still hits me a little to see that happen. The bible doesn't elaborate, but I can imagine that this wasn't a happy time for Terah.

Abram's wife was Sarai, and Nahor's wife was Milcah, who was Haran's daughter. That sounds very weird, but if Haran died, it's very possible that Nahor married his niece to protect her and ensure she had a place in his family. Sarai was barren at this point, and didn't have any children.

The whole dysfunctional family sets out to travel to the land of Canaan, but instead they end up settling in Haran. It's confusing, but from what I can gather Haran is both a guy's name and the name of a place.

While in Haran, Terah finally dies, much younger than the 900+ years people were living earlier, but still at a great age of 250.