Genesis 19

I kind of want to go back and give all my posts at least some sort of subtitles. Just looking at the list of post titles is snore-inducing! But I think my current project must be maintaining my posting schedule (goal: every 3 days, at least), as I've obviously struggled with that in the past. The good news is that I will have a more consistent work life now that I have transitioned out of the military, so I have high hopes for more consistent blogging. And now back to our regularly scheduled genesis!

We left off in chapter 18 with Abraham bargaining for the good people of Sodom, getting god to agree that even ten righteous folks means the city isn't going to get sodomized (couldn't resist, sorry). Chapter 19 picks up with the two angels arriving in Sodom, where Lot (Abraham's nephew) happens to be hanging out at the gate. Lot convinces the angels to come to his home for some hospitality, but after their feast, there's a small problem. All of the men of Sodom come surround Lot's house. Seriously, "young and old, all the people to the last man." How big is Lot's lot? Yikes! I'll chalk that up to hyperbole. So this crowd of men calls for Lot to bring out his guests so that they may "know" them. Winkwink bible-speak for sex.

Lot isn't very happy with this. I guess that isn't the kind of house he's running. So he goes out and tries to bargain with the mob, offering them his two virgin daughters for whatever use they like. He just wants them to leave his guests alone as they are "under the shelter of my roof." Somehow his daughters aren't? That is some fucked up priorities right there. Also, it isn't stated whether Lot knows these two are angels or not. I wouldn't be surprised if Abraham had sent a speedy runner to warn his nephew in an attempt to save the city, but if so, it isn't recorded here.

Anyway, the men are not impressed with the idea of Lot's virgin daughters, plus they're pissed that he's trying to tell them what to do when he is an immigrant. The mob tries to attack him, but the angels pull him inside and struck the mob with blindness. Now that they were blind they couldn't find the door, which considering some of them were literally standing at the door is pretty impressive.

The angels are suitably happy with Lot, and tell him that he needs to get himself and his family the hell out of dodge before the city goes down. Apparently Lot didn't have at least ten people in his household, so Abraham's bet doesn't work out. Also his son-in-laws thought he was joking when he told them to leave, so it ends up just being him, his wife, and his two daughters who flee the city. The angels warn them not to look back and not to stop anywhere in the whole Plain.

Lot doesn't want to go all the way to the hills, so he asks the angels if he can escape to a little city nearby. The angels decide to grant him his request and not destroy that little city. Phew, close call for whoever lived there! No clue where they fell on the righteousness scale, but the angels don't seem concerned about that. I guess it helps that those people didn't form a mob to try to sodomize them. So Lot runs away, and god rains down sulfur and fire on Sodom, Gomorrah, and the whole of the Plain (except Zoar, Lot's haven). Unfortunately, Lot's wife looks back at the destruction, so she turns into a pillar of salt. Oops!

Abraham watches the smoke rising from all this destruction, and it is said that god sent Lot out of the city in remembrance of Abraham. Not because Lot tried to save the angels? That's weird. Guess he was offering up his daughter's hymens for no good reason if god was gonna warn him anyway.

The last part of Genesis 19 is such a crazy story that it almost deserves a post of its own. Especially as this one is already getting long. But, one chapter per post! So.

Lot and his daughters leave Zoar after this because Lot is pretty freaked out by the whole sulfur and fire raining down from heaven thing. It's just the three of them, since Lot's wife got salted, living in a cave. So when his oldest daughter wants to have a baby, she doesn't have a lot of options. She says that there is "not a man on earth to come in to us." Does she really think they are the only 3 people left on earth? Sure, the whole Plain just got smoked, but there were people in Zoar, presumably. And since her family isn't even from there originally, it makes no sense that she thinks everyone everywhere is dead. But apparently she does.

So she tells her sister about this great plan for impregnation. They will get their father drunk in order to lay with him, and that way their offspring can continue. The older daughter goes one night, the younger daughter the next. Both times, Lot doesn't know when they lay down or rose.

Woah.

Re-read that again. Yup, his daughters raped him. One hundred percent. Pre-planned sexual assault upon their father. It works in that each of them get pregnant (Lot really must have a very magical penis to be able to impregnate two women while that drunk!). And from them come the Moabites and the Ammonites. That's a very fucked up story, and I suppose it is not surprising that both tribes were enemies of the Israelites.

So that's Genesis 19. In a nutshell, utter destruction of multiple cities plus father-rape and mud-slinging tribal origin stories. Yay?

Genesis 18

This chapter is broken into two completely separate stories. The only common tie is they are both about Abraham (and god, I suppose, but that's pretty much everything in this book). First, we continue the story of Genesis 17, where god promised that Abraham and Sarah would have a son, even though they are old.

The lord appears to Abraham as three men. It doesn't specify how the lord is three different men, and it's unclear if Abraham knows who they are. He is certainly quick to offer them his best hospitality. As they're sitting around over a meal of one of his tenderest calves, one of the men asks about Sarah and says that they'll return in "due season" and she'll have a son. Sarah is listening and laughs at this, because she and Abraham are so old. She appears to be post-menopausal; at least, that's my take on "it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women." I love the euphemism speak!

So then god wants to know why Sarah would laugh at that, since doesn't she know god can do anything? Except, of course, it hasn't really been established by these 3 men that they are god. So how was she to know they weren't just crazy wanderers? Anyway, now that Sarah knows it's god, she gets scared and tries to deny laughing. Aaaand scene. That's a little ominous of an ending. If this were a TV show, I'd totally be expecting Very Bad Things to come Sarah's way. But if there are, it's not in this chapter, as we now segue on to the beginning of the Sodom and Gomorrah story.

The men (who are god) are headed to Sodom, and Abraham is walking with them for a little bit because he's a good host. God has a little argument with himself about whether he should tell Abraham his plans—I guess it comes in handy to be embodied as three people when you want to talk to yourself! He ends up deciding to spill the beans. Turns out the purpose of this trip is that he's heard a great outcry about the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah and he's going to see for himself if it's as bad as all that. So, definitely no omniscience going on here. He can hear prayers, apparently, but doesn't have eyes everywhere.

Now the men split towards Sodom, but Abraham stays to talk to god. That's a little weird. Maybe the three men were totally separate from god appearing to Abraham? It's honestly impossible to tell. But now it's just god and Abraham, and they're hashing out a deal. Basically, Abraham can't believe that his god, who is just, would destroy everyone in the city if there are righteous people there. (Um, hasn't he heard of the flood?) So he gets god to agree to spare the cities if there are 50 righteous men. But then that seems to high, so basically Abraham keeps bargaining until he gets that number down to 10 righteous men. God here definitely does not come off as an omniscient, omnipotent deity of all. He's haggling with Abraham about his plans!

So now god is off to see if he can find ten righteous men in Sodom, and Abraham is presumably going back to bang Sarah so they can have that kid. Wonder how that's going to end?

Genesis 14

Two posts in a week! I'm getting far too regular, I think it is almost time for me to let this blog go defunct for two years again...

Today's chapter isn't very exciting in any way, which is a little odd since it talks about a battle involving nine kings. That sounds like it should be epic, but it was merely mindnumbing. The bible that I am using has all the longer names spelled out in some form of phonetic notation that actually just makes them seem even longer and more confusing. There are several of these names jammed into one sentence, which makes the eyes glaze over a bit.

Some kings are rebelling against some other kings, and it ends up five kings on one side and four on the other. Didn't the ancients know that too many kings spoil the region?? I can only imagine how tiny their kingdoms were.

The reason that this battle is even mentioned at all is not because it's significant that all these kings (including one who might be Hammurabi, apparently) were fighting, but because the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah lost (they really just have the worst luck, eh?). Lot, if you remember, was living in the plains near Sodom, so he ends up getting captured. Luckily, someone escapes and lets Abram know.

Obviously, Abram isn't just going to let Lot be carried off after all the trouble he took to never have to see him, so he takes 318 men and goes and defeats the army that just won the battle. Yeah. The five kings who just whooped the ass of four other kings goes on to lose to a shepherd with a couple hundred men. I guess their kingdoms/armies are even smaller than I thought!

When Abram returns with all the shit he re-captured, the king of Sodom is pretty happy about it and blesses Abram. Abram gives a tenth of it to the king, but the king tries to make Abram keep all of the goods (he's happy to take the people). Abram says he doesn't want the king to be able to claim to be making Abram rich, which I think was a pretty good call on his part. I've read enough fantasy to know that you don't want to end up in debt to a king.

All in all, I think they managed to make what could have been an interesting story way, way more boring than it needed to be. Although I did get a good laugh out of Chedorlaomer. King Cheddar!

This is what you get when you Google King Cheddar...

Genesis 13

On a random note, I think it's totally awesome that my bookmark is still in the right place even after moving across the country!

Anyway, on to Abram and Lot!

Last we saw them, they were getting kicked out of Egypt for running a scam on the pharaoh. Pharaoh can't have been too pissed, though, because he let them take all of their things. Apparently, that was a lot. Both Lot and Abram are established here as being wealthy dudes—lots of livestock and precious metals. Guess that stuff about rich men and needles comes later, eh?

Because they were both so rich, they were having trouble living together. Herders getting into fights all over the place—in my mind this is like Slytherin vs Gryffindor right before a Quidditch match. Abram, being a relative decent dude, offers Lot first pick on which side of the land he wants, and Abram will take the other. Where are all the people who actually live in these lands? How can these guys have so much livestock that they seemingly have to settle in different countries? Weird.

Anyway, Lot thinks he sees a good deal and takes the plain of Jordan, to the east. This is probably not a good idea in the long run, since Sodom and Gomorrah are over there and, spoilers, I'm pretty sure they'll feature negatively at some point. For now, all it says is that they haven't been destroyed yet and that Lot settles his tents near Sodom, whose people are ominously described as "wicked [and] great sinners against the Lord."

Abram heads over to the land he got left with (turns out to be Canaan), and god shows up and tells him that someday, all the land will be his. I guess this is in return for him being fair and giving Lot first choice, but it seems like a big middle finger to Lot to have this come right after he settles his own land. Here we get the metaphor of Abram's descendants being as uncountable as the dust of the earth. I foresee more of these in our future. God tells Abram to walk around the land and get used to the idea that it will all belong to him and his descendants. Abram must think that is cool because he builds yet another altar. Seriously, how many of these things is he leaving in his wake?

And that's it for Genesis 13. It's not the most thrilling chapter with which to make my return, but I'm happy to be back and blogging!