Genesis 15

The subtitle for today's chapter is "God's Covenant with Abram," which at least sounds a little more exciting than some of the previous ones. (I'm still impressed with how boring they managed to make the Battle of Siddim.)

God comes around to congratulate Abram and say again how awesome things are going to be for him. Abram points out that, so far, that doesn't seem to be the case, because he still doesn't have any children. This is pretty justified, in my opinion, and god seems to think so too, because he doesn't get mad at Abram. Instead, he takes him out and shows him the stars and we get yet another metaphor for how numerous Abram's descendants will be. It's funny how god is sometimes totally okay with people questioning him and sometimes it's The Worst Thing Ever.

Abram is still a little skeptical at this point, so god tells him to bring a bunch of animals and sacrifice them. Abram cuts them in half and guards the carcasses. This seems a little gruesome to me, but apparently is traditional. And frankly, gruesome doesn't seem to phase the OT god.

Once night comes around, god delivers a promise to Abram. He says that the descendants of Abram will be slaves in a land not their own, and they will be oppressed for 400 years. But it's okay because after that, god will judge the people oppressing them and things will get good for Abram's line. Abram himself is promised an easy death after a long life. And then they will come back after 4 generations, which allows time for the Amorites' iniquity to become "complete."

There are so many wtf things about this covenant. Four hundred years of oppression?? That's all fine for the people around at the end of it, when god apparently will get around to rewarding them, but what about all the people who will be born, live, and die in misery? Sure, heaven, I guess, but that's seems like a fantastically shitty deal to me. Especially because it's unnecessary. God is omniscient and omnipotent, so he's just showing off his puppet mastery here. He knows that the Amorites are in iniquity because he made them that way. So why the four generation wait? Why the 400 years? It just seems like god is creating some cosmic play, using the lives of real people as fodder. I find it vaguely sickening.

So then god sends a smoking fire between the pieces of the dead animals and delivers the promised covenant. He promises to give the land of a bunch of different people (Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, etc) to Abram's descendants. God is apparently quite the racist. I know this is the OT god and such, but are we seriously to believe that this is the same god that cares about all of humanity? Cause right now it just seems to be one petty tribal god promising his particular tribe that one day they'll be the ones on top.

That's all for the great covenant of Abram...tune in next time to see how it plays out!

Genesis 8

Sorry for the delay in posting. I wrote the first half of this last week, but then had a few 12 hour work days in a row and my husband got hurt so I had to take care of him all weekend. Not that I mind, but it kept me from blogging!

It's almost discouraging to realize that we're only on the 8th chapter, but I have no time limit and taking it in these small chunks is making it a lot easier to keep up with posting. So we'll continue on, one step at a time, and I'll try not to feel too overwhelmed. I only have to think about one chapter for now! And that's the wrapping up of the flood in Genesis 8.

But God finally remembers Noah and all the animals (Did he forget about them? It usually seems like the implication of "remembering" something is that it was forgotten at some point!) and sends a wind to blow away the waters. Wait, what? If the waters are covering the whole earth, where is the wind blowing the water to? This makes sense from a flat earth perspective, but for a globe it's illogical. However he did it, though, the waters start to recede. Eventually the ark comes to rest on Mt. Ararat.

Given that the there is a specific location given for the resting place of the ark, and given that it wasn't more than a few thousand years ago according to the Biblical timeline, surely we could find evidence of the ark's remains on Ararat? Indeed, various expeditions have attempted this before. None of them have found anything! Well, that's not true. None of them have found anything that didn't turn out later to be a hoax. To be fair, the bible only says that it came to rest on "the mountains of Ararat," which may refer to a nearby peak to the actual Mt. Ararat. Still, nothing has been found on any of them either.

I find it interesting that the ark rests on its mountain on the 17th day of the 7th month, but "the tops of the mountains appeared" only when the water had been receding for 10 months. At that rate, it would take a lot longer to clear the water. Maybe God was tired, or just really laughing to himself about how cranky the Noahs were getting.

Noah sends out birds to see if they can find places to roost or find anything of note. The third bird he sends out, a dove, brings back a fresh olive leaf. This happens about 2 months after the tops of the mountains appear from the water. I don't know a ton about olive trees, but a quick Wikipedia check tells me they flourish in coastal areas and the like. Coastal areas tend to be about sea level. So in 2 months, the water completely disappeared and the olive tree had time to grow and bloom? Or is this an olive tree that survived being underwater for a year? And if it did, how does that fit with God wanting to kill every living thing on earth? (For that matter, what about the fishies? Were they on God's good list? And if so, why didn't he just temporarily give a couple animals gills until the flood had passed? Or just protect them in a bubble? The ark just seems SO unnecessary for am omnipotent god!)

One year and two months and some days after the start of the flood, God finally okays the ark to be emptied. Maybe it's just me, but there's no way I would sit in a dank, smelly, cramped ark for months while I waited for the ground to dry. Nope, I'd sneak out a window and run around in the mud and breathe the fresh air in great big gulps (I know, I'm such a bitter, cheerless atheist). This is probably why I would've been drowned! Noah and his family are so obedient. I can just picture God saying "Good boy! Good boy! C'mon out! Who's a good boy? You are! Oh yes you are!"

So after the ark empties out, Noah builds an altar and...wait for it...sacrifices some of all the clean animals to God. Wait. This is the same God who just killed millions of animals in the entire world, and now he is pleased by Noah killing some of the ones God went through all the trouble to save? I mean, wow, you'd think even God would've been sick of the blood by now. But anyway, apparently these last few animals dying did the trick, and God says that he will "never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth." That's okay, then, because humankind is pretty capable of cursing the ground ourselves, I think. It's the second part that gets me. God, listen, you made them. And if they're evil-leaning from the very start, that means you made them evil-leaning! How are you complaining about this? I was gonna write an analogy about script writers not liking the ending of their own movies, but that doesn't even begin to compare. God is omniscient and omnipotent. Which means he had to have known what was going to happen, he had to have been able to make something else happen, and so what the hell is so pouty about? It doesn't add up.

I don't know how I had so much to say about such a short, relatively uneventful chapter, but I guess I did! And now, hopefully, back to daily updates, at least while I'm at class and not on my ship every day.

Cheers!