Book by Book through The Good Book: Genesis in Thirteen Easy Installments

CREATION, ORIGINAL SIN, AND SETH

As I said in the intro page, my original intention was to have one post per book, but when I started to try to organize my notes for Genesis it quickly became obvious that unless I wanted to either skip over a bunch of material and characters or create a post that would be Economist feature story length, I was going to need to divide things up. At this point I'm not sure exactly how many Genesis posts I'll end up with, but this first one is going to restrict itself to Chapters 1-4. There is a lot going on here that made me reach for my highlighter.

Chapter 1: This one starts with a perennial favorite example of the euphony we heard about in the into, the opening line to shame all other opening lines:

"In the beginning."

Shortly after that things slowed down for me because the questions kept popping up. If I might bullet point for a bit here.

In verse 2 we learn that "the earth was a formless void"

later in verse 2 we are told a "wind from God swept over the face of the waters"

So was it a formless void or was there water? Say what you will about the mysterious depths of a great body of water, it cannot be classified as a void. And if there was water was there anything remotely resembling a shore surrounding the water? I realize it can be tough to properly describe a void because there really isn't anything there to describe, but if there is water, whether in a claw foot bathtub or immense ocean, just tell us it all started with water and leave the void out of it.

In verse 3 God utters his famous "Let there be light" line. It's a good one, heavy on the euphony, and we know this because humans have latched onto this catch phrase and done their best to wear it to a nub over the past umpteen centuries.

What got my attention was in verse 4 where we are told that "God saw that the light was good." That immediately made me wonder if he (see, no upper case for the divine pronoun, but admittedly I am sticking with the lazy, predictable masculine) really knew what he was doing or was just playing around, seeing what worked and what didn't. I mean did he make something (light) without really knowing beforehand if it was a good idea? What if his first impulse had been to say "Let there be houseflies, or poison ivy, or HOA's? We'll never know.

Verses 6-8 talk about a dome and an upper water and lower water and if you can figure out what the writer is trying to convey with the term upper water you're doing better than the scholarly websites I've spent a good ten minutes consulting. From what my limited research (and remember, any research I do is going to be darned limited, because that's not how I'm approaching this project) has turned up, there is no agreement on what an "upper water" is.
Verses 9-25 describes the creation of land and seas and plants and lights in the sky and "swarms of living creatures" and "winged bird(s)" and wild animals and billy goats.

Each time after God whips up one of these categories of flora, fauna, landscape or skyscape he checks it out and congratulates himself on a job well done. Not once does he say "You know what would be a great idea? Elm trees. Nothing like a majestic elm tree I always say." and then makes elms. He essentially shoots first and assesses his choice afterward.

In verse 26 he gets around to making humankind. Notice the writer does not say God made "a man" but "Let us (is this an example of the royal "we" or are there silent partners in this construction project?) make humankind in our image, according to our likeness, and let them (my italics) have dominion over everything else I've created so far." (I'm paraphrasing at the end.)

Verse 27, verbatim, mind you, gets special treatment from the typesetter.

So God created humankind in his

image,

in the image of God he created

them.

In the footnotes we are told that in Hebrew "humankind" would be "Adam" and "them" would be "him." If that is the case why aren't those translations in the actual text? I mean, let's face it, fewer people read footnotes than introductions.
In verse 28 God blesses them and tells them to do the fruitful and multiplying thing. My question is, did he create just Adam and, the whole human thing being new to him not realize Adam couldn't do much in the way of multiplying all by himself, or did he in fact start things off by populating a small town and telling them to make it a much larger town in short order?

Or, was "them" Adam's preferred pronoun?

Version One of the Creation Story has no Eden, no Forbidden Fruit dangling beckoningly from Centrally Located Trees, no serpent. But it does have a fair number of "thems".
In any case we're now at the end of the Sixth Day, and, as he has done with all of the previous days, God declares his efforts turned out "very good."

Chapter 2: I'm really not sure why there is a chapter break here, because we've still got the Seventh Day of Creation to cover.

Verses 1-3: I've generally known the Seventh Day to be presented as a Day of Rest, but that's not what it says here. Not exactly. What it says is "And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work he had done." Did he finish working or was he finished working?
Then, right in the middle of verse 4 we get a subtitle inserted, a shift into Creation Story Number Dos.

"Another Account of the Creation"

We are not told why another account is offered, it is simply there.

In CS2 there is no mention of a void. The earth already seems to be there, but it was parched, just waiting for someone to turn on the sprinkler system. So God made it rain and raised up a stream and greened the place up. Then he took up "dust of the ground" from a patch that I guess hadn't gotten moist, and made a man. He put the man in his (God's) prize garden, which happened to be in a place marked "Eden" in the Rand McNally's of the time. And in that garden God put lots of trees with tasty and healthy fruit which he encouraged the man to eat. He also planted, smack dab in the middle of the garden, a couple of trees he didn't want the man to mess with: The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and The Tree of Life.

Next we have an interruption about rivers. The writer felt it was important to let us know that a stream flowed out of Eden and divided into four rivers. There's more to it, but mostly it seems like a kind of "squirrel!" moment.

When we resume our narrative God tells the man not to mess with the Knowledge or Life trees because their fruits wouldn't agree with him and in fact would kill him. I think it was nice of God to warn the man, but on the other hand what was the point of putting the trees there to begin with? The writer doesn't say.

Chapter 2 continues with God's decision to create a helper/partner for the man. Unlike in CS1, in this version God seems to be going about the process of humankind creation a little bit at a time. This is also the first time we hear about God not seeing it was good on his first attempt at something. According to this version, the reason we have animals and fishes and birds is because God went through a real trial and error process with the whole helper/partner thing, with the man expressing dissatisfaction with everything God put in front of him.

God: How about a koala? Cuddly little fella, don't you think?

Man: Not my type. It's breath smells like Vicks."

God: Okay. What do you say to this dodo bird?

Man: You've got to be kidding! Look at that face!

God: Well then, give us hint. What's on your non-negotiable list?

Man: How should I know?

That's when God calls in the anesthesiologist, puts the difficult to please man under, and removes one of his ribs. As we all know, from that one rib God created Katherine Hepburn. And it was good. Of course it was. At this point neither the man or the woman have names. God doesn't even call the new rib-person a woman, it was up to the man to come up with that one later.

In verse 24 we get a bit about a man leaving his father and mother and clinging to his wife. This is the only reference I have seen so far that the first man had a mother, but as I noted in the Summary and as we will see in our continuing discussion of Genesis, the introduction of female characters, typically unnamed, of unknown provenance, and brought on stage strictly for their begetting capabilities, is a device beloved by the author.

The chapter ends with the author telling us the man and the woman were naked and it wasn't an issue as far as they were concerned.

Chapter 3: Subtitle: The First Sin and Punishment

Enter the serpent. From the way he is introduced one can infer that the serpent was one of God's many failed attempts to make a helper/partner for the man. If so, the rejection may be what acting coaches would call his motivation.

"Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made."

This part I thought I knew pretty well already. But it doesn't go quite like I remembered.

The serpent asks the woman if God told her not to eat of any of the trees in the garden. It is unclear if the woman already knew about the Hands Off policy or if the man (who was actually with her during this little tete-a-tete with the serpent as we find out in verse 6) decides now is a good time to share what God had told him back in Chapter 2. Either way she tells the serpent God had said to leave that fruit alone because will cause serious injury up to and including death. The serpent tells the woman "You will not die." Those three words, craftily delivered, were all the woman needed. She snags the apple or persimmon, or Sumo orange, or whatever it was dangling so temptingly on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, has a taste and then passes it on to the man, who, as I said, just happened to be with her at the time. No word here about him needing any additional persuasion, he just goes ahead and takes bite.

Just as the serpent had predicted, neither the man or the woman kick the bucket. They do, however, reconsider their comfort level with being naked. We're not told where they got themselves a needle and thread, but "they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves."

Now we happen to have a fig tree in our tiny back yard, and I can tell you that although the leaves grow to a pretty respectable size, plenty big enough for covering ones private bits, those leaves are also what anyone would describe as more than a little abrasive in texture. Ashamed or not, there is no way I'm making a pair of boxers out of those things.

Anyway. It may be that the two humans immediately repented of their choice of coverup because in verse 8 they hear God taking his evening constitutional through the garden and they scurry off to hide. Why? Because they're naked. So much for the fig leaves.

God asks what's the deal with all the hiding. Man says he didn't want God to see him naked. God says "who told you you were naked? Did you eat that fruit?" The man says "Yes, but she made me do it!"

So much for clinging to his wife and becoming one flesh.

God swivels over to the woman, who points at the serpent, who had stayed around to watch the entertainment. We're not told if the serpent had anything to say for himself.

In verses 14-19 God curses the three of them.

The serpent's curse is that he has to go around on his belly and nobody is going to like him. One is left wondering if prior to this he had a proper set of legs and was popular at the community barn raisings.
The woman's curse is a three-parter.

Childbirth is going to really hurt
She's going to want to make whoopee with the man (now referred to as "husband") anyway.
And this is the kicker. "And he shall rule over you." Meaning her husband. You know, the fellow who maybe could have done a bit more to keep them out of this mess.

The man's curse is also a multi-parter:

He doesn't get any more of the forbidden fruit (big surprise)
He's going to have to work for what he does eat
He's not going to be immortal

"You are dust, and to dust you shall return." I'm guessing this is the "eat the fruit and die" part of God's warning. So when the serpent told them they would not die it would have been helpful if he had added "Not right away, it might take a few centuries."

All in all it seems to me both the serpent and the man got off a lot easier than the woman.

And then, in verse 20, the man takes advantage of his "ruling over" status by assigning the name of Eve to the woman. For all we know she may have preferred Lena or Jezebel or Indira, but she is given no say in the matter.

In verse 21, God makes garments of skins for his wayward humans. He may have seen the rashes brought on by their brief fling with fig leaf based outfits and decided there were better options. We are not told which of the wild animals of the field were chosen to make the donation.

The humans, now cursed and clothed, are tossed out of Eden.

All because God didn't want them to know stuff and live forever. Or at least that's what I'm getting out of this so far.

Chapter 4: I told you four chapters was going to take a while, didn't I?

The man (still no name) and Eve decide to proceed right away on the whole painful (for Eve) child bearing process. First, they have a son name Cain, and then another son name of Abel. Time passes quickly, because in the next sentence we're told Abel is a shepherd and Cain is a farmer, or "tiller of the ground." We are not told where they learned their respective trades, nor is any mention made of what their old man (Adam) has been doing to support his family all these years. We are led to believe that Abel was good at shepherding but Cain was perhaps a subpar farmer, because when they made offerings of their labor to God, he had nice things to say about the fat portions of sheep from Abel but he rejected Cain's offering from his farm, which may have been fruit or root vegetables or mixed greens, we don't know. We do know God's rejection irritates Cain to the point he lures his younger brother out into a field and wallops him with fatal results. Once again God goes on one of his tours of inspection, this time he happens upon Cain and asks where he might be able to "happen upon" Abel, you know, the one God actually likes. Cain, in another bit of inspired Biblical Euphony, replies with,

"Am I my brother's keeper?"

Catchy, but God's having none of it and besides he already seems to know about the whole going out to the field and walloping business, and so he banishes Cain. Cain objects, pointing out the disadvantages of being banished.

""I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me."

This is where I really began to wonder if we were getting a complete picture. What we've been told so far is that God made Adam and Eve, those two made Cain and Abel, and Cain killed Abel. Simple math indicates the world's population of humans at this point should be three. But evidently there are others who have sprung up in the meantime and they are of a homicidal frame of mind. Did God make them too? If so, why did he make them a danger to others? Or were there other deities who wanted to get in on the whole Creation business by cranking out competing bands of humans? What I'm trying to say here, and not for the first, or possibly last time, is "Where did the other people come from?"

It's pretty clear we're not going to get any answers to that question from this book, not even if we read all of the footnotes.

Chapter 4 closes out with a subtitle that announces:

Beginnings of Civilization

Which is welcome news, as things haven't been what I think we can call civilized so far. But what it actually delivers is one of those Ancestry.com bits where we learn the fascinating following:

Cain knew his wife. Good for him, because we sure don't know anything about her, including her name or where she came from. But Cain recognized her just fine and she thought that was enough for her to do her part in a begat. And so they had a son.

There are a lot of sons in Genesis. Not so many daughters.
The son's name is Enoch. He grows up, locates some unnamed woman and she begets him a son named Irad.
Irad knows some other incognito lass and she bears him a son named Mehujael. This is pretty much where the fun names begin.
Mehujael charms some female into birthing a son named Methushael.
Methushael continues in the family tradition of being able to locate willing members of the softer sex from God only knows where and she presents him with a son named Lamech.

Lamech gets a whole new bullet point section here because not only did he persuade two members of the rib-derived sex to tie the knot with him, but they persuade him to put their names on the documents so they wouldn't suffer the humiliation of Biblical Anonymity like their mother-in-law and those who had come before her. So now we have Wife Adah and Wife Zillah. A and Z.

Adah begets Jabal. If you live in a tent and tend to livestock, you're a descendent of Jabal. It says it right there in Genesis.
Adah also begets Jubal. If you're a musician Henry Louis Gates Jr. should be able to trace your family tree to Jubal.
Zillah begets Tubal-cain. If you're a member of the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers, you guessed it, you can call Tubal-cain Grandpa.
Zillah also begets a daughter! How about that! Not sure how she worked that into the pre-nup, but the girl had a girl. The daughter's name is Naamath. We aren't told this explicitly, but rumor has it she was good at football.

Right after this roll call we're told that Lamech, remember Lamech? babbled to Adah and Zillah something about killing a young man who had given him an owie. Somehow he links this to Cain and the promise God had made to Cain about not getting murdered. Not sure what that's all about.

And then we come all the way back to Adam. As in seven generations ago, what is he still doing hanging around Adam. He bothers Eve one last time and the result is Seth. Seth has a son named Enosh. Once again the person doing the actual birthing is left unidentified, most likely to exclude her from being able to claim any royalties or residuals, the family having learned their lesson with Adah and Zillah.

Well, I think I've learned a bit more about the Bible so far already! Amazing what first reading and then making some notes will do for comprehension and retention.

Next up: It looks like Noah is on the horizon. Bobbing on the waves.

CHAPTERS 5-8. ALL ABOUT NOAH

In Genesis Pt. 1 we covered all of about 3 1/4 pages of what is a forty-two page book. I really tried to make a bit more progress with Pt. 2, but once again I don't want to make any of these entries either unwieldy or lacking in rigorous academic, well, rigor.

CHAPTER 5:

Chapter 5 is a thirty-verse begat fest, devoted to nothing but tracing the male line from Adam to Noah and letting us know that the men back then lived a really long time. So when God told Adam and Eve back in Chapter 3 that they had snacked their way out of enjoying immortality his concept of an appropriately disappointing human lifespan was apparently somewhere just shy of a millennium. We may be able to attribute this to the fact that it can be tough for an immortal deity to wrap his or her head around the whole time passes thing.

Adam (and Eve, this I guess should be implied) has Seth when Adam is a spry and fertile 130 years old. We really don't know how long Adam, aka "Man" had been frolicking in Eden before Eve showed up, but let's say Eve is at least at the century mark herself. Adam lives to be nine hundred and thirty years old. We never learn how long Eve held out.
Seth fathers Enosh when he is 105 years old. He then carries on until the Grim Reaper comes visiting during his nine hundred and twelfth year.
Enosh is a mere stripling of ninety when whoever his helpmate is pushes out son Kenan. Enosh croaks at age nine hundred and five.
Kenan is a precocious lad anxious to outdo his father and so at age seventy he (and some woman) add son Mahalalel to the family dinner table. He then carries on for another eight hundred and forty years and dies at nine hundred and ten.
Mahalalel one ups Kenan by starting a family at age sixty-five. Introducing Jared. But then Kenan ruins the family run of nine hundred plus by exiting this mortal coil at just eight hundred and ninety-five. So close.
Jared waits until he is one hundred and sixty-two before he finding the right girl and collaborating on son Enoch. We don't know if his late start as a parent was a factor, but he lives to be nine hundred and sixty-two. Impressive, even considering the gene pool.
But then Enoch messes mightily with the family average in a pretty extreme way by only making it to age three hundred sixty-five. He does, however, manage to do his part in bringing Methuselah into the world.
Methuselah, who most likely is the first recognizable character we've had in the list since Adam (or maybe Seth, and that's a big maybe) wins the longevity prize by going nine hundred and sixty-nine years, beating Grandpa Jared by an entire seven years. His offspring, or at least the one we get to know about, is Lamech.
Lamech plays the field before settling down at age one hundred and eighty-two when he contributes the Y chromosome that results in Noah. Ah! Another familiar name! Lamech brings the family average down a bit by succumbing to who knows what at age seven hundred seventy-seven.
Noah fancies himself a man about town, footloose and fancy free until he hits middle age at five hundred. At that point he gets busy and out come sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

CHAPTER 6:

This chapter begins with a mention of the fact that people are "multiplying" and that somehow amongst all that multiplying daughters are becoming a part of the community. Not only that, but the sons are finding the daughters to be "fair" and so they "took wives for themselves for all that they chose."

I have no idea how all the dots are connected here, but evidently the introduction of attractive daughters prompts God to rethink the whole lifespan thing and he comes down with a new rule that says humans are now limited to one hundred twenty years and this is not open to negotiation.

We'll see if he applies that new rule with any degree of consistency.

Then we get what, at least as far as the two minutes of research* I've done has revealed, is the lone reference in the Bible to some folks called the Nephilim. We are told they were there "in those days--and also afterward." That's it. Nothing about their favorite professions or where they went to school or if they were coupon clippers or anything. If they show up again in Leviticus or Joel I'll try to mention it.

And then it's back to the aforementioned daughters with this:

"when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown." (italics mine)

Once again, one can't help but feel that a bit of follow-up would be nice, but that seems to be the author's style, throwing out a juicy side tangent every once in a while just to see if we're paying attention.

Heroes being born or not, evidently at this point everyone is going around having evil thoughts, making wickedness "great in the earth" and God is having none of it. He decides his little creation just isn't working out they way he had hoped (in other words it is "not good") and he decides to wipe out all life, including the critters, who must have been having evil thoughts too.

But then we are told in a boldface subtitle:

Noah Pleases God

Yep, somehow Noah had made it to and past his five hundredth birthday, living in a world filled with evil thinking people and vague and mysterious Nephilim and wild creatures filled with bad intent, without having done anything questionable. I think we can agree this took real strength of character. The fact that social media had not yet made an appearance most likely worked in his favor, but still you gotta admire the man. God does, and so he gives Noah a heads up about his whole annihilation plan, a blueprint for a really big boat, and a coupon for cedar wood at Lowe's. God tells Noah to gather his family and a bunch of those fifty-gallon food containers they sell at the store catering to the LDS clientele and get ready to go on a cruise.

CHAPTER 7:

In verse 2 God fleshes out his instructions by telling Noah to not only gather his kin, but also "seven pairs*** of all clean animals, the male and its mate: and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and its mate,".

***Honest. It says it right there in Chapter 7, Verse 2. "Seven pairs."

So all this time we've been telling the kiddos in Sunday School that it was a strict two-by-two sort of arrangement for the fauna. But in verse 2 we are told the ones who had established good grooming habits get to bring some of their friends and family along.

Then, in verses 8-9, as we're getting close to launch time, we're told:

"Of clean animals, and of animals that are not clean, and of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground, two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah..."

We go from seven pairs to just one pair in one quick hurry. Were the extra dozen each of the tidy animals that had received invitations victims of overbooking?

Next we get a description of the flood, with lots of cubit references. We're also told that the flood killed "human beings and animals and creeping things and birds of the air." Personally, I think it was especially mean to give some creatures the gift of flight and with it a bit of hope to escape and then basically give them no place to land for even a brief breather for what turns out to be close to a year and just wear them out until they drop from the sky from exhaustion. But sometimes I think too much.

No mention of what the aquatic creatures thought about the sudden rise in sea levels. They may have had some ideas about how nice it was going to be to have the place all to themselves.

vs. 24 "And the water swelled on the earth for one hundred fifty days."

CHAPTER 8:

I love how this one opens up.

"But God remembered Noah"

Not sure what else God had been attending to for that five months, but it's nice that Noah and his entourage popped back onto his to-do list.

But then he takes his time in bringing them to port. First he makes a wind blow. Then he closes up the fountains and restrains the rain. At that point the water begins to recede, but it takes a while. One hundred fifty more days later, on what we would know as July 17th, the ark parks on Mount Ararat. So Noah's family and all those creatures had been bobbing around for ten months.

The water does some more abating. Forty more days pass and Noah opens a window. I think we can agree that the ark probably needed a good airing out by then. He sends out a succession of birds to do some advance scouting. Seven days later a dove brings him an olive branch. Seven days after that he sends out another dove and it goes AWOL.

Finally, Noah pokes a long stick in the ground and, after getting God's okie doke, decides they can disembark.

Now we come to the part where Noah does the Old Testament thing of building an altar (we already know he was handy with tools) and then he...

"took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar." (you can just assume from now on that italics will be mine unless I tell you otherwise.)

So, not only did twelve of each of the hygienically advanced creatures get left at the dock, but the ones who did make it onto the boat ended up getting rotisseried. Does that mean that the creatures we now have on this dear planet are all descended from the unclean passengers of Noah's ark? Kinda makes a person wonder what our forests and meadows and national parks are missing out on.

Doesn't matter, because God likes the smell of roasting flesh and he promises not to initiate any more mass extinction projects.

vs. 22 "As long as the earth endures,

seedtime and harvest, cold and

heat,

summer and winter, day and night,

shall not cease."

A careful reading of verse 22 reveals that God has given himself a loophole. "As long as the earth endures." If he gets pissed again there's nothing in the contract to stop him from just blowing up the whole place and then even the jellyfish and barracudas are out of luck.

*I am purposely severely limiting my outside research for a couple of reasons.

The idea here is to read The Bible in much the same way I would read any other book. My expectation of any book, but especially one that claims to be the Be All and End All of where we can find All The Answers, is that it not be so poorly written and/or edited that any reader paying any sort of real attention is left scratching his/her/their head due to conflicts in continuity, consistent and believable character behavior and motivation, and tangents that go nowhere.
Unless God decides to reinstate the whole nine hundred life span option life is way too short to go chasing after iffy explanations based on shaky information.

CHAPTERS 9-11. NOAH TO ABRAHAM

Chapter 9:

A theme that keeps popping up in Genesis is that God wants his favorite humans to "be fruitful and multiply." He either promises it as a reward or he makes it an instruction. In the case of Post-Flood Noah and his sons Shem, Ham and Japheth, it's part of the covenant he makes with them in Chapter 9, verses 1-17. As a matter of fact, he includes it in both verse 1 and verse 7, just to make sure the boys are paying attention.

I will also mention here that God promises once more not to wipe out "all flesh" and as a sign of this promise he's going to make rainbows. I think that's nice.

Then we go back to the fruitful theme. Verses 18,19 tell us once again that Noah's sons were called Shem, Ham, and Curly*** aka Japheth, and "from these the whole earth was peopled." So far I haven't seen any mention of that trio on "Finding Your Roots with Louis Henry Gates Jr." but I haven't seen every episode.

***Just kidding, but you knew that.

But before the brothers are able to get down to the serious business of multiplying in bulk, Ham makes the mistake of seeing old dad in the altogether. Evidently this was a big deal in that family, although you would think that privacy hadn't been all that easy to come by during that year on the ark. But Noah gets royally irritated and so right after being on the receiving end of a Covenant from God that includes rainbows, Noah uses verses 25- 27 to put a curse on Ham that includes a name change (Canaan) and a reduction in sibling pecking order to "lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers."

I'm not at all sure how the name change is intended to serve as a deterrent from any further shenanigans, however unintentional, but being made your brothers' slave, that's gotta sting.

In verse 28 Noah lives an essentially undocumented three hundred and fifty years and in verse 29 he dies at the ripe old age of nine hundred and fifty. So it looks like he got an exemption from the one hundred and twenty max rule.

CHAPTER 10:

This one is another begat chapter, filled to the brim with the offspring of Shem, Japheth, and their demoted to slave brother Ham/Canaan. Following what seems to be a pattern of setting up a situation only to completely ignore it, we don't learn anything about how much or even whether Shem and Japheth took advantage of the fact that they had paternal carte blanche to tell their brother what to do. All we get in this chapter is a list of names. Zillions of names. You'll need to grab a copy for yourself if you want all the names, we'll just pick out a few here.

Japheth has seven sons, including Gomer and Javan. Gomer has sons too, but evidently they don't amount to much. Javan's sons, on the other hand, we're told, "From these the coastland peoples spread." which we're to assume was a good thing.

Ham may have been a lowly slave, but he still finds time to father four sons, including Cush, who himself becomes the father of Nimrod, which I dare you to say without smiling. Another son of Ham's, name of Egypt fathers a bunch that turn into Philistines, so that didn't turn out well.

Another of Ham's sons is named Canaan, which you may recall was what Noah rechristened Ham when he put his curse on him so perhaps he wasn't Ham's favorite, or he was and his complete name was Canaan Jr. and maybe the family just called him Junior. But what is really remarkable about this young fellow is that he doesn't just have his own sons, he has whole peoples, nine different tribes distributed over a pretty wide territory are all attributed to Canaan Jr's aptitude when it comes to being fruitful.

Jebusites
Amorites
Girgashites
Hivites
Arkites
Sinites
Arvadites
Zemarites
Hamathites

God must have been very happy to see his "fruitful and multiply" directive get so much respect.

Brother Shem also contributes to the family tree, but from the information we get here it seems the only descendent of his of any real consequence is named Eber and finding out why he was consequential would involve extracurricular research and you know how I feel about that.

CHAPTER 11:

This chapter is divided between another one of those Big Genesis Stories and yet another begat info dump. The story is about The Tower of Babel. Maybe not quite as well known as The Flood, and only given nine verses here, but still an enduring and puzzling tale in its own right.

Essentially the story of The Tower of Babel is that everybody is getting along and working on ways to improve Life on Earth, and inventions are being invented and one of those inventions is really high quality bricks and the people decide to use these high quality bricks to build a tower. God, referred to here as the Lord, takes notice of the high level of cooperation on display and how it seems these humans just might continue to make progress and "nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them." and so he steps in and says "Not on my watch!"

So Dear Reader (me) has no choice but to conclude that in God's eyes all that cooperation and construction work was almost as bad as the violence and general rascality that prompted him to introduce The Flood. But, if you'll recall, God, aka the Lord, had promised Noah he would not fly off the handle and wipe out all non-swimming life on earth again, and evidently he wasn't irritated to the point of destroying the entire planet, so he settles for scattering the humans and making it so they can't easily, or even with a fair amount of effort, understand each other. In other words, God gives us the blessings of lots of languages as well as what we call tribalism. The variety of languages turned out to be a boon for the education community and the developers of apps like Duo Lingo, Pimsleur, and the aptly named Babbel, but let's face, for the rest of us it's damn inconvenient. And tribalism's appeal is mostly for folks who like to seize territory and kill people. And college sports.

If I had had any doubts as to whether God was the original pot stirrer they have been dispelled by now.

The rest of Chapter 11 is devoted to Shem and his descendants, with an emphasis on the descendants of Terah. There are two major takeaways I got from these twenty-two verses. One is that Abram, son of Terah (spoiler alert, before long he's going down to the local courthouse and officially changing his name to Abraham), the fellow credited with being the first authentic Jew as well as the Father of the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, was the great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson of Shem. Add another "great" to connect him to Noah, and another couple dozen (give or take) to lead us back to Adam. I told you Genesis covers a lot of narrative and genealogical ground.

The other takeaway is that God's stipulation in Chapter 6 that the human life expectancy was now going to max out at one hundred twenty years seems to have been intended to be applied incrementally. Shem made it to a nice round six hundred, and it took four or five generations after him to bring the birthday count down into the two hundreds.

I'll see you at Chapter 12.

* The photo up top is of a Yellow-bellied marmot at Rocky Mountain National Park. Cute fellow.

Abram and Lot

CHAPTER 12:

At the beginning of the chapter the Lord (we seem to have transitioned from "God" to "the Lord") tells Teran's son Abram to head out on his own and not to worry because things will be great. If anyone gives him problems they'll have to answer to the Lord.

So, at the tender age of seventy-five Abram leaves his father's house, and he and wife Sarai and nephew Lot set out to find the plot of land the Lord had chosen for Abram on which he would establish a great nation. Of course, they bring along all their stuff and "the persons whom they had acquired in Haran."

People acquiring other people goes way back. Doesn't make it right.

Back to our story.

Abram, Sarai, Lot, and their entourage journey for a bit until they come to the land of Canaan. Remember Canaan? Evidently it was not only Noah's term of bitterly disappointed endearment for Abram's Uncle Ham, but also a place, a territory if you will. When they arrive in Canaan the place is swarming with Canaanites, which sounds about right. But the Lord shows up and tells Abram that he intends to give Canaan to Abram's offspring, of which he and Sarai have none so far. Whether the Canaanites have been consulted we aren't told. My guess is no.

Abram, et all keep moving. Abram builds a couple of altars along the way. Eventually they end up in a place called "the Negeb" which from what I've determined is also sometimes referred to as "the Negev"** and which is a dry patch of land where the southern end of modern day Israel is currently located. Low in potential for great nation status.

And true enough, in the next verse the place is having a famine. And where do Old Testament people go when a famine strikes? You guessed it. Egypt.

On their way to Egypt, Abram gives Sarai a nice compliment that then turns weird.

"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."

I realize some countries have strict immigration laws, but this seems extreme. No matter, Sarai goes along with Abram's plan, which is for the two them to pass themselves off as brother and sister, and it works. To a degree.

Pharoah does indeed take a fancy to Sarai, who, if she was close to Abram's age we can suppose was in her mid to late sixties at this time, so she must have had a good diet and excellent skin regimen. Not having had any kids yet may have played into it too, I don't know, but it is true that children can wear a person down a bit if you let them. Or Pharoah was just into mature women. But the upshot is Pharoah and Sarai become an item and Abram, the bogus brother, benefits by way of...

"sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female slaves, female donkeys, and camels."

It seems passing his wife off as his sister and not saying a discouraging word while she cavorts with the local head honcho turns into a solid financial play on Abram's part. Along with everything else, he gets to increase his slave count. Good for him.

But we know that the Lord is bound to take notice, eventually, and when he does it turns out the Lord has a low opinion of heads of state making whoopee with other men's wives, regardless of the circumstances, one of the bits here that I think some present day advocates for introducing more Bible into politics have conveniently set aside as inconvenient. He expresses his displeasure by sending "great plagues". Not to Abram for the deception he has played, but to Pharoah, for falling for the whole brother/sister act. Not for the first time I've got to wonder about just how he approaches justice, but I guess it's just him being him.

All in all Pharoah takes the whole plagues thing with a "lesson learned" attitude. He has his Secret Service escort Abram and Sarai back across the border, allowing them to keep everything they had gained during their visit. Pretty open minded on his part, although, now that I think about it he may have simply wanted to avoid any additional plagues.

Side note: Lot hasn't been mentioned for a bit, has he?

CHAPTER 13

Lot is back. Either he was with Abram all along or waiting patiently at the border wondering when his relatives were going to come get him. The three of them retrace their steps back through dusty Negeb and "as far as Bethel." where they visit one of Abram's altars. Abram and Lot decide now is a good time to part ways before their separate business interests start to collide. Lot chooses the plain of Jordan (spoiler alert: the town of Sodom just happens to be in Jordan) for his new digs, while Abram settles in Canaan.

Abram builds another altar. The construction gene must have been passed down from Noah.

CHAPTER 14

A whole slew of kings show up. Kings with names like Arioch and Chedorlaomer, and Tidal of Golim make war with another batch of kings, including those in charge of Sodom and Gomorrah. The military festivities proceed for a good fourteen years. Lot gets caught up in the whole thing and ends up a prisoner of Chedorlaomer and the gang. As soon as Abram gets wind of this he gathers up his posse and rides to Lot's rescue. Of course, he doesn't neglect to rescue Lot's "goods, and the women and the people."

The king of Sodom, seeing an ally in Abram, offers him "goods for himself" which Abram declines, which is the first time he has seen fit not to pad his purse when the opportunity presented itself.

* One of the many sculptures featured along Main Street in my hometown of Mesa, Arizona. I took a shine to this one as I earned my youthful discretionary funds delivering the Mesa Tribune way back when.

**My research for this entry.

GOD AND ABRAHAM

CHAPTER 15:

The Lord, aka God, comes to Abram in a vision, so perhaps we're looking at the beginning of the end of in-person visits, I guess we'll see. As he often does when chatting with a human for whom he has plans, the Lord starts by telling Abram that he can count on God and great things are in store for him. Great nations rising from his loins in a fruitful and multiplying sort of manner. The usual.

Abram points out that he and Sarai are still childless. God has him look up at the night sky and promises his descendants will outnumber the stars, which, considering there was little in the way of light pollution at the time, would have appeared numerous indeed. In any case it is an impressive promise effectively delivered.

I'm not at all clear why he feels compelled to do so at this point, but Abram scurries off to sacrifice a cow, a goat, and a ram, all three years old. Three being one of those significant biblical numbers. Along with the livestock he also splits open a turtledove and a pigeon. One each. All that blood and gore attracts the attention of some scavenger birds which Abram shoos away.

Sacrificing and shooing being exhausting work, Abram falls asleep, and "a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him."

That line in verse 12 brought to mind the line in "Spamalot" about a "dark and very expensive forest" although I imagine there is no intended connection.

The Lord makes a slight amendment to his pledge. The deal now is that Abram's descendants will have to bide their time for four hundred years before they can actually claim title to the land, and not only that but they will be "oppressed" in the meantime. Something about needing to wait for the Amorites to bring their iniquity up to the proper boiling point first.

We end the chapter with the Lord sketching out some border lines for the promised land and a list of all the current resident tribes in line to be dispossessed in four centuries.

CHAPTER 16:

We are reminded, again, that Abram and Sarai are childless.

Sarai, perhaps determined to demonstrate that her husband isn't the only one capable of plans bound to strike a modern audience as a bit problematic, suggests they go the surrogate route, enlisting the services of Hagar, one of her Egyptian slave girls. Abram signs on without argument.

Hagar gets pregnant and, hormones being what they are, she gets a bit snippy with Sarai. Sarai chastises Abram, as if this is all his fault. Abram tells Sarai to do what she wants. A sign of a man who understands it's best not to fight when none of it makes sense.

Sarai banishes Hagar, who goes traipsing around the wilderness until she comes across an angel who asks her how things are going. Hagar explains her current in-between jobs situation. The angel advises her to turn right back around and try to work things out with her supervisor (Sarai). The angel tells Hagar to name her unborn son Ishmael. In verse 12 the angel also says:

He shall be a wild ass of a man,

with his hand against everyone,

and everyone's hand against him;

but he will become a literary first person narrator

with a killer opening line.

Okay, those last two lines I made up.

Hagar correctly guesses that the angel is actually God, or El-roi as she calls him, which is an indicator the she may have suffered from a speech impediment, and she marvels at the fact that she survived a personal encounter from the Almighty. It may be that she has heard what an impulsive, occasionally destructive nature this particular deity has.

She goes back home (or as much of a home as anyplace can be for a slave), gives birth to Ishmael, and in the process becomes one of the very few women so far in this text to not only participate in begetting, but actually get credit for it.

We close out the chapter with the news that Abram was eighty-six years old when Ishmael is born. We do not find out what kind of a mood Sarai is in.

CHAPTER 17:

Skip ahead thirteen years, Abram is now ninety-nine years old. He gets another visit from the Lord, who says, and I am paraphrasing here:

"I am God Almighty and now seems like a good time for me to make good on the promise I made to you and your wife about having a child. You know, back when."

We can excuse Abram if he is skeptical.

The Lord addresses this understandable skepticism by changing Abram's name to Abraham, which, according to a footnote, may very well mean "ancestor of a multitude" which is good enough for Abraham nee Abram. The Lord adds "kings shall come from you." and that's the clincher.

The previously mentioned four hundred year waiting period is not mentioned this time.

The Lord does, however, specify a little something he neglected to mention earlier that he is going to require of Abraham to show he is fully committed to this latest edition of the God/Abraham Covenant.

No rainbows this time, this time it's all about foreskins. Before we get to the end of this chapter we will have eight entire verses dedicated to the removal of foreskins.

But before we get to the end Abraham gets a chuckle out of the news that Sarah (she gets a new name too) will bear a child. We learn she is currently ninety years old, so my guess about her age relative to Abram's back in Egypt was close.

Abraham, trying to put another option on the table, puts in a good word for his thirteen year old out-of-wedlock son Ishmael, but the Lord tells him that although he has nice plans for Ishmael there won't be any true covenanting going on in that direction. No sirree, that's reserved for Isaac, the miracle baby Sarah will have.

Abraham busies himself with attending to every single foreskin to be found amongst his family and employees. It takes him all day.

CHAPTER 18:

Remember how we had two creation stories, one after the other? Well, Chapter 18 brings us a second "Abraham you and your better half will have a son" story.

In this one the Lord appears as three men who happen to be passing by Abraham's tent. He invites them to dinner. One of the men inquires after Sarah, mentioning in a casual sort of way that when he passes that way again she will have a son. Sarah, eavesdropping at the tent entrance, can't help but laugh. The Lord wants to know what's so funny. Sarah says "I didn't laugh." The Lord says "Did too."

Then the three men who are really God announce they are making Sodom their next stop. Abraham offers to walk at least part of the way with them. As they are walking God ponders to himself whether he should tell Abraham all about the great plans he has for him, apparently blanking on the conversations they have had in earlier chapters.

There is a bit of confusion regarding whether the three men and the Lord are one and the same because the three men keep trekking while the Lord stays back for a bit to discuss his Sodom and Gomorrah plans with Abraham. There is a substantial amount of back and forth regarding just how many righteous persons it would take for the Lord to spare those two famously wicked municipalities, with Abraham trying his best to bargain in favor of leniency. They leave the minimum required at ten good citizens and part ways.

*Isn't that a pretty picture of the Irish countryside?

More with Lot and Abraham

CHAPTER 19:

If you will recall from Pt 5, we left God and what were described as two men--but we know they are really angels, don't we?--on their way from Abraham's home to visit the Sodom and Gomorrah greater metropolitan area. The two men/angels went on ahead while God and Abraham had a little chin wag about how many righteous folks it would take to spare the iniquitous cities from destruction. The agreed upon number had been ten.

Chapter 19 opens with Lot sitting around the gate to the city of Sodom. The two "men" approach and he invites them to come to his place for dinner. Some natives of Sodom get wind of the fact that there are strangers in town and they come around Lot's house to inquire. Apparently their behavior indicates they have ill intent. Lot meets them outside and attempts to tone things down by offering his two virginal daughters if the mob will let his guests enjoy their brisket undisturbed.

I'll leave it to you to figure out who we're supposed to be cheering for here.

The angels keep things from getting out of hand and the crowd is sent back home. They then tell Lot that, recent behavior notwithstanding, he is in favor with God, and since they don't anticipate finding another nine good citizens within the prescribed radius anytime soon, Sodom, its sister city Gomorrah, and the surrounding environs are scheduled for the fire and sulfur treatment. They advise Lot to gather his daughters, their fiancés, and his wife and head for the hills. The young men think it's all a joke and decline the invitation.

As a matter of fact even Lot turns out not to be an easy sell and the angels end up dragging him out the door and through the city gate, so we're left to wonder exactly what his attraction to the place might have been. Once out on the plain Lot negotiates temporarily relocating to a nearby town called Zoar instead of heading directly for the hills as he had been instructed.

According to Biblical scholar and expert humorist David Steinberg, it is at this point that Lot's wife makes a nuisance of herself, complaining about the fact that Lot had been too cheap to hire a cart or even invest in luggage with wheels, and what was so bad about Sodom anyway? Lot gets fed up with the kvetching, and he suggests she turn around and wave goodbye to the place. Which, of course, the angels had told him would be a really bad idea.

We leave Lot's wife, now a silent and immobile pillar of salt, on the plains outside of Sodom. Lot and his virgin daughters soldier on.

Attracted by all the smoke, Abraham has a look.

Evidently Zoar wasn't quite what Lot had been hoping for and so he and the girls do end up living in a cave in the hills. The older of the two girls gets it in her head that the family tree isn't going to have a chance at growing any new branches if they just hang out in the boondocks with no eligible young men around. So makes a suggestion to her younger sibling, and it isn't that they should run away and go find a couple of handsome young sperm donors, but that they should get old dad drunk, engage in a bit of extreme inbreeding, and secure the continuance of the line that way. Two nights in a row they execute their unsavory plan.

The liquor back then must have been potent but not debilitating.

The results are Moab, the original Moabite. and Ben-ammi, who at first I thought was the fellow who invented that great kitchen and bathroom cleaner Bon-Ami, but who actually started the Ammonite tribe.

CHAPTER 20:

Back to Abraham and Sarah, who have wandered their way to a place called Gerar. Since it turned out so profitably before they decide to pull the old brother/sister gag again.

A fellow name of Abimelach almost falls for it, but God warns him off in no uncertain terms. Abimelach confronts Abraham about what he now knows was a major deception Abraham and Sarah had tried to play on the community in general and him in particular, and Abraham offers this as his excuse: "Well, you're right, she is my wife, but on the other hand, she's also my half sister as we only share a father, not a mother."

Right.

Believe it or not, Abraham still ends up on the positive side of the ledger, with Abimelach gifting him with sheep, oxen, and, you got it, more slaves. In return Abraham puts in a good word with God for Abimelach and the curse God had put on Abimelach and his family as punishment for Abimelach almost being fooled by Abraham and Sarah gets lifted.

CHAPTER 21:

Sarah has a child. I know it has already been mentioned before, but this time the actual announcement is made. Abraham keeps his foreskin promise to God and when his new son Isaac is eight days old he throws a bris party.

We are told that Abraham in now one hundred years old, but he still had a steady hand.

Sarah, now with a new baby boy of her own and therefore confident in her bargaining position, sends Hagar and her teenage son Ishmael packing.

The slave girl and her son have a tough time in the wilderness. An angel helps out by directing them to a well. That was nice. Hagar and Ishmael build a little home and she advertises with success in the Cairo Times Picayune for a wife for Ishmael, as he had expressed a preference for Egyptian females like dear old mom.

There is an episode in which Abraham and his now good buddy Abimelach come to an agreement regarding a well.

CHAPTER 22:

This has another famous story. I bet you've heard it before so I'll keep it to outline form.

God tells Abraham to sacrifice his long awaited, multiple times bargained for, one and only son Isaac.

Abraham says "Whatever you say."

Abraham pretends that he is taking Isaac on a father-son camping trip, accompanied by a couple of young men of his household, aka slaves. By this time he must have enough slaves to field a twelve team soccer league.

Once they are out town Abraham tells the slaves to give him and Isaac some space.

Abraham builds another altar, piles up the wood, ties up Isaac, and plops him on top.
An angel shows up at the last minute and tells Abraham it was just a test and why doesn't he roast this nice ram the angel had brought along with him?

I got two closely related takeaways from this short chapter.

The foreskin thing wasn't enough for God.
God likes to change the rules as he goes along.

CHAPTER 23:

Sarah dies at age one hundred twenty-seven. See? The hundred twenty year limit still hasn't kicked in. Close, but there are still exceptions.

Abraham buys her a nice burial plot, with a sizeable amount of adjoining acreage, for four hundred silver shekels.

* Today's photo is of a bench outside of Muckross House in the south of Ireland, outside of Killarney. This Genesis book is taking forever to get through, so I thought we could all use a little sit-down and rest.

More Sibling Drama

To be honest, Genesis has ended up taking way more time to read, absorb, and write about than I had anticipated. Stick with me though, as it looks like we're within a mile or so of the finish line in this particular marathon within a marathon and I will try to summon up a final kick.

From here on out we're essentially dealing with Isaac's son Jacob, aka Israel, and Jacob's son Joseph, one of about five hundred sons** Jacob and a variety of women collaborated on. I promise that I'll do my very best to make sure you don't miss anything important (or just interesting), but I will also be doing a bit more Reader's Digest worthy condensing.

Chapter 24 opens up with Abraham calling over one of his servants and having the fellow put his hand under Abraham's thigh. This is not recommended in today's modern workplace, but nobody seems to think anything about it here as it is standard etiquette when you're sending someone off on a business trip to find a wife for your son. The hope is that a blushing bride will take young Isaac's mind off that fact that his mom has recently passed away. The servant succeeds in bringing back the lovely Rebekah, who just happens to be Isaac's cousin, although the author tries to muddy this connection a bit by putting it this way in verse 15,

"...Rebekah, who was born to Bethuel son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham's brother..."

Chapter 25 lets us know that Ol' Abraham still has some life in him because he not only finds himself a new bride, but the two of them produce another six sons. All six are sent off to seek their fortunes elsewhere as soon as practicable in order to keep the field clear for Isaac.

In the next paragraph Abraham comes to the end of an eventful and fruitful one hundred seventy-five year life. Sons Isaac and Ishmael give him a nice send-off, but only one gets the Family Blessing from God passed on to him and it's Isaac.

We learn that Isaac ties the knot with Rebekah when he's forty years old and another twenty years pass before the happy couple are blessed with a set of fraternal twins in Esau and Jacob. Isaac grows partial to Esau and Rebekah favors Jacob.

The boys grow up. In a questionable display of sibling behavior, Jacob finagles his slightly elder and quite hungry brother Esau out of his birthright in exchange for some stew. Somehow the author interprets this as Esau not caring about said birthright. In any case, we now know Jacob has more than a bit of the stereotyped used car salesman in him.

Chapter 26 rolls out what by now we can legitimately call a couple of shopworn devices: escape from famine and the wife/sister scam. This time it's Isaac and Rebekah going on one of those God directed road trips into Gerar to visit our old friend King Abimelach of the Philistines. God provides his usual incentive of promising a large extended family and blessed nations to hurry them on their way. The wife/sister ploy gets played on King A, but they can't keep it up for long because Abimelach sees Isaac "fondling his wife, Rebekah." Right out in public I suppose, unless we are to assume the king went about peeking inside other people's tents. Abimelach tells all his Philistines to have nothing to do with Isaac and Rebekah. An early example of attempted social cancellation.

All to no avail however, as Isaac prospers like you wouldn't believe, or I guess you would because God is on his side, right? Finally, all the Philistines who were trying so hard to ignore him now can't help but be jealous and the grumbling gets pretty loud. Abilmelach has no choice but to tell Isaac and Rebekah to leave town. They pack up and go, but they haven't gotten far when Isaac takes it into his head he wants to build an altar and dig a well. Both are declared a success.

Abimelach shows up with his army and he sees the nifty altar and neatly dug well and concludes that it is not good policy to be on Isaac's bad side so they make a mutually agreeable covenant, covenants being what people made before there were treaties or business contracts.

Esau gets married. Twice. His wives, both of them hailing from the Hittite side of the tracks, and his mother do not get along.

Chapter 27 is where we truly start to move into Jacob's tale.

Isaac's eyesight is beginning to fail him in his old age and Rebekah decides now is a good time to pull one over on her beloved husband. After Isaac gives Esau an assignment to go hunting, which is Esau's specialty, she sends Jacob in, disguised as his ever so slightly older but much fuzzier brother Esau, and Isaac ends up giving his blessing to Jacob. It's a really lovely blessing that covers a lot of ground in verses 27-29.

Ah, the smell of my son

is like the smell of a field that the

Lord has blessed.

May God give you of the dew of heaven,

and of the fatness of the earth,

and plenty of grain and wine.

Let peoples serve you,

and nations bow down to you.

Be lord over your brothers,

and may your mother's sons bow

down to you.

Cursed be everyone who curses you,

and blessed be everyone who

blesses you!

It should come as no surprise that when Esau comes back from his hunting trip, eager to show old Pops how well he had done, he is disappointed to find that the blessing he had been expecting is no longer available. Evidently, in Old Testament times blessings were like timeouts in the NBA. Once you've used your allotment that's it. So instead Isaac tries to cheer up Esau with this in verses 39-40,

See, away from the fatness of the

earth shall your home be,

and away from the dew of heaven

on high.

By your sword you shall live,

and you shall serve your brother;

but when you break loose

you shall break his yoke from

your neck.

So at least he tries to end it on a hopeful note. But Esau is still pissed off and he decides that as soon as Isaac passes on brother Jacob is going to be real, real sorry.

Rebekah, being a good mother and therefore able to intuit what is doing on in even her non-favorite child's mind, picks up on the fact that Esau is now entertaining thoughts of fratricide ala esteemed ancestor Cain, and she sends Jacob away.

The chapter closes with Rebekah complaining to Isaac about Hittite women and expressing her fervent hope that Jacob doesn't come home with one.

* The Verde Valley Railroad. It's really a lovely thing to do if you find yourself in Clarkdale, Arizona.

**I trust my readers to recognize exaggeration for effect when they see it.

The Adventures of Jacob

Pt. 1

If you will recall, when we last left Jacob he had gotten on the wrong side of his brother Esau by doing things like extorting Esau's birthright from him in exchange for food, and fooling their dad Isaac into giving the One-and-Only-Paternal-Blessing-Allowed-Under-House-Rules to Jacob.

This had made things tense in the family home and so their mom Rebekah had told Jacob the thing for him to do was skedaddle before his brother took him out in the field and tried his hand at the whole rising up and murdering business. Her advise was to go spend some quality time with her brother Laban in Haran.

As we pick up the tale in Chapter 28, Jacob is getting similar instructions to visit Uncle Laban from his dad, who evidently holds no grudge against the boy for tricking him in Chapter 27. He expands on this by recommending Jacob steer clear of those Canaanite women and instead "take as his wife" one of his cousins on his mother's side. Isaac then passes on the standard Abrahamic Blessing involving multiplying and laying claim to land under the family's Manifest Destiny Motto. So it looks like he did have another blessing up his sleeve after all.

Esau goes out and lassos a Canaanite wife to add to his collection, just to irritate his father.

Jacob points his feet toward Uncle Laban and his unsuspecting daughters. On the way he stops for a nap, using one of the stones in the area for a pillow because he finds a firm support stimulates his creative side. Sure enough, he dreams that angels are clambering up and down a ladder that reaches up to heaven (as far as he can tell). Then God speaks to him and he gets the boilerplate bit about lots of offspring and God being his BFF. Just like his dad had told him. Manifest Destiny, it can't be anything else.

When Jacob wakes up he tips the stone on end and pours oil on it and gives it a name and says that as long as God holds up his end of the bargain it's okay by him if the Almighty skims a bit off the top.

In Chapter 29 Jacob has a meet-cute with his cousin Rachel, so things seem to be starting out well on that front.

There is, however, a catch. Uncle Laban is short on hired help and he sees that Jacob is a strapping young fellow who would be useful around the farm. So he tells Jacob that he can have Rachel for his wife after seven years of doing chores. Jacob is so smitten with cousin Rachel he signs on without objection.

Seven years pass with Jacob receiving "Meets or Exceeds Expectations" on each of his annual reviews and so Uncle Laban gives his thumbs up for the wedding. But then he pulls a switcheroo by sending Rachel's older sister Leah into the conjugal tent, which of course is damn dark inside, and before you know it per the local ordinances of the day Jacob finds himself matrimonially entangled with Leah.

The men meet at the bargaining table again and Jacob finds himself signing up for another seven year term. Anything for his sweet, sweet Rachel. She really must have been something, don't you think? There is a bit in verses 27,28 about completing a week that is a bit fuzzy to me, so I'm not at all sure if Jacob added Rachel to his entourage after just a week or he had to wait the full seven years before entering fully into a state of bigamy with the sisters. In any case he's Uncle Laban's worker bee for another seven years.

Leah presents Jacob with four sons.

Rachel, so far, is batting zero.

In Chapter 30 the shine already seems to be wearing off the fairytale romance between Jacob and Rachel and it all has to do with the lack of son (or even daughter) production. Dismissing his excellent track record with sister Leah, Rachel puts the blame on Jacob. Which makes her demand that he put in a little horizontal mambo time with her maid Bilhah all the more perplexing, but she does and like a dutiful husband Jacob plays along. The result is a son they name Dan. I know, amongst all of the Kedars and Adbeels and Abimelechs we now have a Dan. Dan is immediately claimed by Rachel and Bilhah is told to go back to polishing silver and emptying chamber pots.

Not to be out maneuvered, Leah sets up some quality time for Jacob with her maid Zilpah. The result? Two more sons, names of Gad and Asher. No Dans for her.

Now we come to a whole bit that involves mandrakes. I've got to admit that my mind immediately went to the scene in one of the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling when the kids are in herbology class and have to don protective gear before they harvest chubby and and very loud tubers. But the mandrakes in question here are apparently of a more congenial nature and they certainly are considered valuable enough to serve as a bartering chip.

Here's the mandrake story: Reuben, one of the early issue sons of the union between Jacob and Leah, brings his mom a basket of mandrakes he had found lying around in some field. Rachel expresses an interest in the mandrakes and so Leah tells her she can have them if Rachel foregoes her scheduled romp with the much in demand Jacob and directs him towards her instead. A bargain is made and before you can say "Laban's your uncle!" Jacob and Leah end up with two more sons and a daughter. Yes! A daughter. Her name is Dinah, as in "Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah!" fame.

The friendly sisterly begetting competition isn't over yet. God performs his womb opening procedure on Rachel and she has son Joseph. Yes, we're finally introducing Joseph, the fellow who will be the main focus of the last umpteen verses of Genesis and who inspired Donny Osmond to crisscross North America starring in the touring company of a certain Broadway show.

Meantime, Jacob and Laban are having a falling out, mostly having to do with how well Jacob is doing, apparently at his uncle's expense. They settle in at the bargaining table once more, but this time Jacob puts on his best negotiating hat and dazzles Laban with talk of speckled and spotted and black livestock until the old man's head is spinning and then he introduces sticks of wood that possess magical goat herding and breeding properties and Laban, like the reader, finds it darned near impossible to keep up, and he ends up putting his "X" on the dotted line of a covenant that blatantly benefits Jacob and leaves Laban in the cold. And so not for the first, nor probably for the last, time the rascal God has chosen to be his favorite comes out on the winning side financially in a really big way.

vs, 43: Thus the man grew exceedingly rich, and had large flocks, and male and female slaves, and camels and donkeys.

In case you had been wondering just where the whole idea of Prosperity Theology came from, I think by now we've cleared it up for you.

*One of my favorite pieces from my Blue Water Bottle Period of photography. I call it "Blue Bottle and Bike Rack"

Will this book never end?

Jacob, the Sons of Jacob, and Poor Dinah

When last we left Jacob he was spinning along quite profitably, having gotten the best of his ol' Uncle Laban, which I suppose shows what a clever fellow he was and maybe that's why God was so smitten with him. I dunno. The behavior that gets the Almighty's Stamp of Approval can sometimes be a real headscratcher.

As we pick things up in Chapter 31, Laban's sons are grumbling about how Jacob has taken advantage of their dad and they just might do something about it, by golly. Jacob gets wind of this and goes to his wives Leah and Rachel and expresses his dissatisfaction with the long standing employment situation he has had with Laban and the women decide that, now that they think about it, they don't much like their dad either, cheap old bastard.

Jacob gathers up the many, many goodies he has accumulated in the past umpteen years and gets ready to head back home, because he's bound to feel more appreciated by the brother he cheated out of both a birthright and a blessing.

In verse 19 wife Rachel takes it into her head to pocket her father's household gods before she leaves. If you want to do the research and find out what a household god is, go for it.

It takes Laban three days to figure out that his crew foreman/son-in-law-twice-over has blown the pop stand, but three day lead or not, he gathers his kinfolk and takes off after what must have been a mile-long caravan of wives, sons, livestock and other property and even a daughter (remember Dinah?) or two. After seven days of giving chase Laban and his kinsfolk, who had nothing else pressing to do at home, catch up with Team Jacob. Laban demands his household gods be produced tout suite. Jacob says he has no idea what Laban is going on about, so Laban conducts a search through the tents and ice chests and comes up empty because Rachel is sitting on them and nobody thinks to ask her to move.

Jacob "became angry and upbraided Laban" in other words he plays the wronged party part. Then, in verse 37 it looks like perhaps he simply misunderstands what it is Laban is anxious to recover because he says, "what have you found of all your household goods?" Not "gods", but "goods". This throws Laban off balance, as it did me, and now Jacob once again has the upper hand bargaining-wise. He goes on about how rough he had it while working for Laban and how if he, Jacob, hadn't had such a great relationship with God he would have come away with practically nothing after years and years of honest work, and wasn't Laban ashamed of himself?

So they do what anyone would have done in such an awkward situation, they gather a bunch of rocks and fashion a temporary little pillar and sit down next to the pillar to have lunch. Laban makes Jacob promise to be a good husband and Jacob makes Laban promise not to follow him anymore and the pillar is declared to be a witness to the promises so everyone understands just how serious and binding the whole thing is.

Laban and his kinsfolk camp out for the night and then go back home.

In Chapter 32 Jacob and Company are getting close to what used to be Jacob's home and it finally occurs to him that his slightly older but much hairier brother might not be super glad to see him, so he devises a plan of sorts to minimize any fatalities. Basically he tells his troupe to divide up so as not to be one big target and then he sends some servants ahead with a hefty share of the traveling livestock show and tells them to give these goats and sheep and cows and donkeys and capybaras** to his brother as a Please Don't Kill Me offering.

As the selected herd moves ahead, the rest of the company pitches their tents and settles in for the night.

Jacob tells his immediate family to cross the neighboring stream so he can have some time to himself but that doesn't work out because some stranger shows up and they wrestle "until daybreak". Not only is Jacob denied his eight hours, but the stranger whacks him hard on his hip socket (it doesn't say right or left) leaving him with a limp and giving us one of the original dietary guidelines. So when someone tells you not to eat "thigh muscle that is on the hip socket" you won't have to ask why, because now you know it's because Jacob wrestled with a stranger and that should be good enough for you. I know, I don't get it either.

Chapter 33 opens with Jacob limping around trying to shake it all off, and as he's putting in a lap or two he spots Esau approaching with four hundred of his men. Jacob gives the order for his entourage to split up as previously decided but it all turns out to be unnecessary because Esau "ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept." It says it right there in verse 4. Esau never having had the chance to meet his sisters-in-law, nephews and nieces, introductions are made all the way around. Actually, the chances of the girls being included in the social niceties are slight. Jacob figures he still needs to make the offer of goods and services, but Esau waves them off. Instead Esau offers to have some of his sturdy fellows accompany Jacob to Seir, but Jacob says essentially "No need, I know the way. You go on ahead and we'll be there in a jiff." Good enough for inexplicably loving brother Esau.

Once Esau and company are safely over the crest of the hill and out of sight, Jacob changes course and points the caravan towards Succoth, where he builds a home for himself and "booths" for his cattle, who probably would have preferred a table, but there you go.

Immediately after we're told Jacob settles himself and his livestock in at Succoth we are then told he "came safely to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan." He buys a piece of land, pitches a tent and erects an altar. I hope you're following this, because I find it hard to keep up.

Let's carry on into Chapter 34, because why not? This is where Dinah gets a bit of stage time but not for a good reason. The son of the local Poobah spots the only daughter of Jacob important enough to have a name across the town square and, being one of the privileged little pricks*** that seem to be so common in our inspirational reading here, he "seized her and lay with her by force" which should have come as no surprise to anyone because the Chapter 34's title is "The Rape of Dinah."

Now this is where things get weird. Well, weirder.

The youthful rapist decides he actually has taken a tender fancy to Dinah (what a complex individual he is!) and he tells dear old daddy, the local Poobah, that he would like Dinah to be his wife and it's all he really wants for his birthday.

So Daddy approaches Jacob and his sons with a proposition that not only involves Dinah and his impetuous son--who by the way is named Shechem, just like the town--but all of Jacob's daughters (who knew he had more?) and all of the Poobah's daughters in a general swap. Jacob's sons respond with what you would have thought would be a real deal breaker, which is that they will agree if the Poobah and Shechem and indeed all of the men of the town get themselves circumcised. Well, Poobah sees nothing unreasonable with that and they, pardon the expression, shake on it.

Before you can say "good luck with that" all the local men are signed up, lined up, and snipped. As they are hobbling about post-op, that's when Jacob's sons Simeon and Levi leap into action. Taking advantage of the fact that they are up against guys who can barely take mincing little steps, much less put up a fight, they kill every single one of them, yelling "serves ya right, ya heathen bastards!"**** as they go. Then just to complete the job, they enlist the rest of the brothers (I believe there were a total of eleven at this time) to plunder the place and carry off any portable females they can lay their hands on.

Jacob is understandably dismayed by what his boys have done, mostly because he had just settled in and now he was likely to be seen as being "odious to the inhabitants of the land." The lads respond with ,

"Should our sister be treated like a whore?"

And I've got to say, you can kind of see where they're coming from. You can also see that they are setting what I think we can call a dangerous precedent of Disturbing Overkill.

*It's a butterfly. I forgot to make a note about exactly what kind of butterfly, but I think you'll agree it is a corker.

**Just seeing if you're nodding off. At least so far there are no capybaras in the Bible. So far.

***I do apologize for the language, but honestly, these people are trying my patience.

****Artistic license on my part. But you knew that.

When next we meet, I will try to power us through a slew of begats and introduce The Adventures of Joseph.

Goodbye Isaac

Hello Joseph and the Amazing Coat With Sleeves

We've made it to Chapter 35. Only fifteen more after this one.

God sees that Jacob's boys have put him in a tight spot by killing all those men and bringing a bunch of new women and children onto the payroll, and so he suggests the family should, once again, gather their belongings, including goats and slaves and household goods, and migrate, this time specifically to a place called Bethel, where Jacob should build an altar. There's an interesting bit in which Jacob lets his family and employees know that before they move on they will need to turn over any extraneous foreign gods and earrings they may have acquired during their travels. He passes around a shoe box to collect said items and buries them under a tree.

Just to make sure nobody bothers the Jacobians** on their way to Bethel, God puts a terror on all the communities along their route. Not sure what form that terror took, but it makes for light traffic, so that's good. They do lose a member of the staff along the way and she is buried under a tree, kind of like the foreign gods and earrings.

God pays another personal visit to Jacob and says,

"Your name is Jacob; no longer shall you be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name."

We'll see if that takes, or at least how long before it does. As we've seen before, sometimes the things that God declares "Are so" aren't necessarily so right away.

God follows up with the usual promise of nations and whatnot and Jacob (see? he's still referred to as Jacob) notarizes the contract in the standard way by pouring oil on a stack of rocks.

Evidently that was all the business they needed to complete in Bethel, because in verse 16 "they journeyed from Bethel". Rachel, once again pregnant, does her best to deliver the next son, but as we all know, childbirth is a risky business and mom doesn't make it. Right before her soul departs she names her son Ben-oni. Right after she dies, Jacob exercises his veto power and renames the boy Benjamin. So much for respecting his late wife's wishes.

In verse 21 they pitch their tents by a tower and the name Israel pops back up. In verse 22 one of his boys is making his life difficult again.

While Israel lived in that land, Reuben (the firstborn***) went and lay with Bilhah his father's concubine; and Israel heard of it.

Kind of makes a person wonder if that sort of thing hadn't been going on for a while and it's only being brought up here because Jacob/Israel is finally catching on. But I suppose I shouldn't speculate too much. But here's the thing, this incident is mentioned and then dropped in favor of...

A list of Jacob's sons and the mothers who bore them. Twelve sons from four mothers. And in case you're wondering if that's a typo, the name Jacob is the one still being used here.

The travels finally take them to Mamre/Kiriath-arba/Hebron (all these places with multiple names must have been a real challenge for the map makers of the day) which is where Isaac has his retirement home. They get there just in time to say goodbye to the old man, who, in another blatant violation of the one hundred and twenty year rule, passes away at age one hundred and eighty.

I invite you to have a nice long sit-down with Chapter 36 if you are so inclined. Have snacks handy. Forty-three verses of the "clans of the sons of Esau." That will be the extent of our coverage.

Chapter 37 picks up with Joseph, Jacob/Israel's second youngest son, turning seventeen and deciding he needs to take some steps to make his mark amongst such a large group of brothers, all but one having seniority status over him.

After doing some shepherding with the brothers provided by Bilhah and Zilpah, Joseph gives his father a "bad report" about them. We're told that Israel is likely to give weight to this report because he

"loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age (so much for Benjamin getting baby brother privileges) and he had made him a long robe with sleeves."

And here I was waiting for the whole Broadway worthy Technicolor Dreamcoat to finally brighten up this story and it turns out the special thing about the garment was the fact that it had sleeves. I suppose the technology of the day made sleeves a challenge to produce, but it's still tough to get a modern reader excited about them and so it's no wonder Tim Rice decided to embellish a bit when he wrote his play.

Joseph, having gotten a fresh dose of confidence with his new sleeve-inclusive coat, tells his brothers all about a couple of dreams he had in which the whole family was bowing down to him. This pisses off his siblings and even irritates his father, who tells him to pipe down.

The brothers go out to do their usual daily shepherding, but Joseph, apparently thinking he is now above such quotidian tasks, is loitering around the tent. Israel (the name seems to have finally stuck) tells him to get his butt out to the fields, which is good, but then he tells him that he just wants Joseph to see how everyone else is doing at their shepherding and to bring a report back, which is pretty much playing into the uppity teenager's hands.

The brothers see him coming and take a vote as to whether or not they should kill him, throw him into a pit, and leave his body to be eaten by wild animals, the usual sort of thing that jealous siblings would do in that day.

Reuben, the eldest and the one who likes to spend time with his father's side piece, talks them down to just throwing Joseph in the pit and seeing where things go from there. They spot some Ishmaelites approaching and figure maybe they should sell their bothersome brother and at least make a modest profit out of the enterprise.

But then some Midianite traders muddy the waters by fetching Joseph out of the pit and they sell the boy to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver.

It occurs to the brothers that not only are they not coming out of the afternoon with any profit, but now they will have to explain why Joseph will not be showing up for dinner. Luckily, when the Midianites took him out of the pit he dropped his coat, so they smear some goat blood (it's always good to have a bit of goat blood on you for just such occasions) on the coat and take it home to show their dad, who in verse 34 is once again referred to as Jacob, so honestly, I just give up on that. Whatever his name is, Joseph's dad is really upset.

Meantime, we're told that the Midianites had taken Joseph to Egypt and sold him to a fellow name of Potiphar, a captain of the Pharoah's guard. And yes, I know that just a few verses earlier we were told that the Midianites sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites, but that sort of continuity issue seems to be standard issue here and I'm not going to quibble about it now.

* A moody and striking black and white image from Monument Valley. I recommend a visit. Stay overnight if you can, the sunrise and sunset are worth it.

**Not the context in which most readers would expect to find the term "Jacobians" but it just seemed to flow.

***Not only the firstborn (of Jacob and Leah) but also the man who discovered how delicious the combination of corned beef, sauerkraut, swiss cheese and Russian dressing can be when placed between a couple of slices of freshly baked rye bread. It is rumored that he used his innovative sandwich to woo his father's concubine, but this is not established fact.

Judah Knows Best

If you will recall, Joseph, son of Jacob has been shuffled off to Egypt, everyone's favorite summer getaway destination. While he gets settled in as the newest member of the Potiphor household staff we will be spending quality time with half-brother Judah, one of the mid-position sons produced by the Jacob+Leah corporation. Judah was younger than Reuben, Simeon, and Levi, and older than Issachar and Zebulun. Middle children often complain, and with some justification, that they don't get the attention heaped on the oldest or youngest, but not here. Reuben may have slept with his father's concubine and Simeon and Levi slaughtered all those folks in Shechem, but those accomplishments merited a mere verse or two each. And if Issachar and Zebulun have been given any mention outside of their birth announcements I'm afraid I missed it.

But Judah is given all of Chapter 38 and I think you will find it easy to understand why.

It all starts when Judah "goes down from his brothers", which is Biblical talk for "puts some distance between himself and his immediate family." He ends up near a "certain Adullamite" name of Hirah, and in short order he takes a fancy to a young Canaanite woman (these Canaanites pop up all the time here in Genesis, don't they?) who follows the typical if not 100% adhered to protocol for The Women of Genesis by remaining nameless, but whose father is known in the local marketplace as Shua. Judah courts daughter of Shua for something less than a verse and then they marry.

Not having either his father's nor his older brothers' counsel regarding the obligations of a husband on his wedding night, you would think Judah would be at a disadvantage when it comes to executing his husbandly duties, but he recalls some advice he got third hand from his two best friends in high school, and so he "went in to her" and we all know what happens next. A son they named Er, because they couldn't think of anything when the registrar came around to fill out the paperwork. They are better prepared for son number two, naming him Onan. When the third son comes around they pull letters out of a hat and come up with "Shelah", which makes the boy grow up to be contrary, kind of the like the main character in the Johnny Cash song "A Boy Named Sue".

But apparently not as contrary as Er, because right after Judah picks out a bride for him, Er does something to irritate God, who naturally puts him to death before he can do any going into with his new wife. What it is he did that deserved such a punishment you ask? You won't find an answer here in Genesis. Or at least I didn't, and I have a sneaking suspicion that any biblical scholar trying to foist off an answer is making it up as he goes, something I would never do here.

Anyway, Judah turns to second son Onan and tells him it's up to him to take up where Er left off. Onan has other ideas about how he wants to go about living his best life and he expresses his defiance by spilling "his semen on the ground whenever he went in to his brother's wife." This conjures up a vision of the young man showing up at his sister-in-law's door with a juice glass of the precious stuff, then once he's inside artfully tripping or otherwise losing control of the cargo and saying "Whoops! Sorry about that. You've got a maid to clean that up, don't you? Tell you what, see you next Wednesday."

Neither his father nor the Lord found this little gambit the least bit amusing. Onan's father frowned and looked over his spectacles at his disobedient son. Then God killed him.

It is now we get to learn the young woman's name. It is Tamar. Good for her, getting any sort of billing here.

Judah tells Tamar her job now is to hang in there until son number three, that's Shelah, has grown into his big boy robe. She says okay, fine, whatever.

Time passes. We're not told how much, but let's just picture the hands of a kitchen clock spinning and calendar pages being blown away like in a 1940's movie, and after that goes on for a bit Judah's wife, affectionately known to one and all as daughter of Shua, dies. It can be safely assumed that she saw no reason to stick around in order to see any grandchildren come into the family because that just wasn't in the cards.

Grieving Judah feels the need to visit his old buddy the Adullamite and so off he goes.

Tamar comes to the conclusion that enough calendar pages have flown offscreen by now that her part in the family drama should be moving forward and so she goes looking for Judah to see when she can expect son number three to pay a brotherly visit. When she finds out Judah has not only gone on a restorative holiday but that Shelah has been strutting about town in his big boy robe for weeks now, she gets peeved at being put so low on the patriarchy's list of priorities. She takes off her widow's outfit, puts on a veil, and sits herself down by the gate to the town where Judah is vacationing, presumably to confront him about his poor communication skills.

Sidenote: We are not told if Tamar put anything on outside of the veil. This may at least partially explain what happens next...

Judah saunters by, likes the look of the young veiled lass sitting in the lawn chair, and, lonely for female companionship and assuming any female lounging around instead of fetching water or making scones must one of the temple prostitutes, which was one of the few career paths available to women back then, he pulls over to the curb to let her know that yes, he is interested in partying. Tamar plays along, gets Judah to agree to her terms, which includes him handing over his signet, his cord, and his staff for her to hold until he sends her a nice young goat as payment. Why these three items you ask? The best answer I've been able to formulate in the twenty or thirty seconds I've thought about it is that these are the items a coroner in those days would have looked at to establish identity on a corpse back before they had dental records or knew about fingerprints and DNA evidence. Especially the Cord, which very few men owned in those days, the vast majority not even able to afford a base model Auburn.**

Later, Judah has a young goat sent round to take care of his financial obligation to the supposed temple prostitute, but delivery cannot be made. According to temple records, none of their prostitutes had been scheduled at the city gate on the date in question. The young woman being sought must have been a freelancer.

Tamar, having slid back into her widow's garb and resumed her usual daily routine, finds herself with child. Big surprise there, right?

When she starts to show, word gets back to Judah that his daughter-in-law must have been having a social life without consulting with him first and so Judah declares that, as the concept of a double standard has not yet been invented, the young woman should be brought to the town square, secured to a sturdy lamp post, doused with charcoal lighter fluid, and ignited for the edification and entertainment of all.

Tamar keeps her cool. She says, "Before you do anything hasty, have a look at these quality items belonging to the chap who got me preggers." And from under her generously proportioned widow's garb she produces the signet, cord and staff.

Judah says, "Perhaps I was a bit hasty. Nothing to see here."

Six months later she presents the Man Who Would Be a Grandfather But Instead Became a Father Again with twin sons, Perez and Zerah. Those two managed to throw the whole eldest son question into doubt by one making a partial entry into the world before stepping back to make way for his brother.***

And with that we come to the end of Chapter 38.

When next we meet we will catch back up with Joseph and his Adventures in Egypt. If you have seen the Broadway musical good for you. I'm sure it was a delightful experience that prepared you not one whit for the upcoming chapters.

*Pretty pink flowers

**Included for the vintage auto aficionados. Apologies to everyone else.

***I don't know about you, but I'm dying to see if any of these dangling story threads will be woven into later books.

Back to Joseph

I honestly have no idea why the author of Genesis veered away from the Joseph story to present us with the unsavory and rather tragic details of Judah's dysfunctional family, but now that we have Chapter 38 well and truly behind us we can get back to the Boy Who Briefly Had Sleeves.

If you will recall, Joseph was thrown into a pit by his half brothers, who found his attitude toward them to be condescending and bratty. He was then hauled out of the pit by a wandering band of Somethingites, who turned a quick profit by selling him to another wandering band of Somethingelseites. They transported him across what was apparently the porous border into Egypt where they knew a certain Potiphar, captain of the Pharoah's Guard, was in the market for an insufferably proud household servant.

Chapter 39 opens up with a repeat of the who-sold-whom-to-who** just in case one needs a refresher, and then it follows quickly with the statement that "The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man" without providing us with any insight into just what it is about Joseph that the Lord finds so appealing. But it does provide us with yet another biblical endorsement of Prosperity Gospel Religion, where being in good with God is sure to lead to material wealth and influence. Just saying.

Joseph's boss Potiphar somehow picks up on the fact that the Lord is with Joseph and so without even checking his references, employment history or educational background he puts him in charge of not only the house but "all that he had" and wouldn't you know it, before you can say "Judah's staff" everything's coming up roses in the Potiphar family fortunes.

But you can't have everything going smoothly for too long, it doesn't make for a compelling story.

At the end of verse 6, but the beginning of a new paragraph, (I have no idea why they do that) we're told that "Joseph was handsome and good-looking". Most of us would settle for one or the other and be satisfied and we would be right, because soon enough Joseph learns the downside of being doubly attractive. In this case it makes him a target of lust for Boss Potiphar's wife, who must be thinking it's about time for the women of Genesis to assert themselves. She gives it her best college try, but, good lad that he is, and probably not seeing any real profit in getting involved with an older woman who also happens to be his boss's wife, he fends off her advances with admirable good sense. Until, that is, one day when in the middle of a tussle, she manages to snag his garment. There is no word on whether or not it had sleeves, but it doesn't matter because she waves it around as evidence that young Joseph tried to go into her without a note from Potiphar saying it was okay by him. Which, when you think about it, Joseph quite possibly could have obtained, seeing as how the Lord was with him and Potiphar wanted as much of that positive juju to rub off on him as possible.

But it turns out there is only so much even an opportunistic capitalist like Potiphar can overlook if he wants peace in the bedroom, so he accepts the wife's version of events and has Joseph tossed in the slammer. Wouldn't you know it, the chief jailer spots the Lord's Seal of Approval on Joseph and he makes the young man Head Trustee. And "the Lord made it prosper." Of course he did. So now we have a prosperous Egyptian penitentiary, although how that manifests itself I have no idea.

People have been fascinated and bewildered by dreams since way before Freud, and Chapter 40 is all about the dreams troubling a couple of Joseph's fellow inmates. For some reason, possibly because he is handsome, good-looking, and as Head Trustee has the key to the snack drawer, they decide to share their dreams with Joseph to see what thoughts he might have.

The two dreams are actually kind of similar, both involving the number three, but Joseph's interpretations for each couldn't be more different. One dream, according the Joseph, means the dreamer will soon be released from jail. But his take on the other inmate's dream is slightly less encouraging: that fellow's head is destined to be separated from his shoulders and then things will really get rough for him. Both interpretations turn out to be accurate, so now Joseph has a truly marketable skill to offer to He Who Can Commute His Sentence aka Pharoah. Unfortunately, the lines of communication between Cairo City Jail and the Pharoah's Office are not all that even a deserving Favorite of the Lord might want, and it's two years later, in Chapter 41, before the former inmate with the Good News Dream overhears Pharoah mutter something about a crazy dream he had last night and darned if he can figure out what it must mean. Former Inmate, who up until that moment had conveniently forgotten about Joseph, suddenly recalls that he has a good pal back in pokey who just might be of some help to Pharoah.

Joseph is fetched, made presentable, and listens patiently while Pharoah repeats the details of his perplexing dream. Lots of sevens are involved, along with cows and ears of grain making appearances. Without a moment's hesitation, Joseph tells Pharoah exactly what has been foretold by this dream, which is that there will be seven years of good crops followed by seven years of famine, and not only that, but he advises Egypt's Top Man how to go about working the situation to his advantage.

Pharoah likes what Joseph has to say and not only issues a full pardon but, you guessed it, he puts Joseph in charge of, well, pretty much everything except the keys to the harem.

No point in carrying things too far.

Along with his new job as Chief Famine Crisis Administrator, Pharoah also gives Joseph a new name, which we won't bother to include here since it is only mentioned the one time and is pretty much unpronounceable anyway. Not only that, but he is also presented with a wife of his very own, the lovely and charming Asenath, daughter of Potiphera (not to be confused with Joseph's former boss Potiphar) who does him proud by presenting him with two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim.

The chapter closes by letting us know that, thanks to Joseph's savvy plan of socking away some of the grain during the good crop years, Egypt enters the famine era as the region's breadbasket and is doing a brisk trade with the surrounding famine stricken areas.

We move on to Chapter 42 (out of 50, so believe it or not we are finally near the end of Genesis. Well, nearish, anyway.) and Jacob hears about the ready supply of grain in nearby Egypt so he tells his boys to get off their lazy duffs and go buy some of the stuff before they all starve. The only son excused from the journey is little Benjamin.

Reuben, Simeon, Judah (who apparently was able to take some time off from his busy personal life) and the other seven brothers present themselves at the Cairo Grain Mercantile and who do you think meets them at the check-out counter? You got it, their tossed in the pit brother Joseph, who recognizes them right away and is delighted to find that they have no idea who he is. This may be put down to the fact that they must have been tired from the long walk from Canaan plus the person across the counter from them was fluent in Mid-Atlantic Egyptian, which meant a translator was required.

Joseph sees an opportunity to get a little of his back from the rough treatment his brothers gave him a decade and a half earlier and so he accuses them of being spies. The ten brothers vehemently deny the charge and, as proof they are legitimate grain customers, they tell Joseph that they are "your servants, are twelve brothers, sons of a certain man in the land of Canaan." Apparently they think this should establish their credentials.

But Joseph hasn't gotten to be the Overseer of All of Egypt, and General Manager of Cairo Grain without possessing basic math skills, and so he counters their claim of legitimacy by pointing out that they total a mere ten, not the dozen they claim. They try to explain it away by saying one stayed home and the other one has gone missing, but he's not buying it. One brother among such a crowd flying the coup sounds plausible enough, but unless they produce the one who just couldn't be bothered to come along he considers them all suspect. Tell you what, he says, one of you stays here with me and the rest of you go fetch brother number eleven, or twelve, whichever. Then I'll do some serious grain business with you. And just to show his heart's in the right place, they can buy a sack of grain each to see them through for the next couple of weeks. Deal?

Simeon draws the short straw, and so he's the one to accept Joseph's hospitality while the rest of the brothers are sent back to Canaan with sacks of grain into which Joseph had placed the bags of money the boys had given him as payment.

When the now nine brothers return home with the grain they find that their money is also in the sacks and this is a cause for concern. Why, I'm not sure. Perhaps they are afraid that what may have been a honest bookkeeping error will be blamed on them, used as an excuse not to honor the agreement to be able to purchase even more grain when they return with little Benjamin. Jacob is of the opinion that they've muffed the whole thing royally, and he moans about how life is so harsh for a nice old man like himself. After all, he sent out ten sons and had every reason to expect the entire complement to return. Based on that track record there is no way he's going to allow them to take Benjamin back with them.

Reuben offers to let his dad kill a couple of grandsons if they don't return with Benjamin, but Jacob is not interested. The chapter ends with Jacob forbidding his sons to take Benjamin to Egypt.

But famines are persistent things and this one is a doozy. So in Chapter 43, after some time has passed and the pantry is once again accumulating cobwebs, Jacob switches over to his alias of Israel and tells his boys to go back to Egypt and buy more grain. Judah reminds him about the whole Benjamin requirement and, without even having to promise the old man he could kill a couple of grandchildren if they don't bring Benjamin back in one piece, he convinces Israel to Let His Youngest Son Go.

Israel tells them to grease the wheels of commerce and maybe even avert any additional detentions by taking some tasty organic Canaan fruits and nuts as presents for the hard bargaining Egyptian. They also load up on the traveler's checks, just to make sure they can cover any past due bills.

Joseph sees them coming and he's so excited to see Benjamin with them he sends his steward out to invite them to his place for a little noon time nosh. The brothers misinterpret his intentions, thinking he's planning on doing them mischief, maybe even stealing their donkeys for goodness sake. But what are they going to do, say no thanks to the invite and have to face Jacob/Israel/Daddy with empty sacks?

The chapter ends on a hopeful note, with everyone sitting around enjoying a nice meal, although the author makes sure to let us know that the seating was segregated, as any dining room comingling of Egyptians and Hebrews was considered an abomination by the Egyptians. Not sure why, unless it was because the Hebrews always pass on the hip joint platter it comes around and the Egyptians find that weird.

* A broad billed hummingbird. Real looker, isn't he?

**I would have consulted my Strunk and White to make sure I got my whos and whoms*** in the right place, but I think I loaned it out.

***Should I have apostrophes there?

Let's See If We Can Wrap This Up

Home stretch time. Joseph and his brothers have enjoyed a nice lunch together, he's happy he got to see little brother Benjamin, and now, in Chapter 44 it's time to send the brothers back to Canaan with lots and lots of grain, plus, it turns out, a few surprises.

Just like the last time, Joseph puts the boys' money bags into the sacks of grain, essentially claiming the patent on the instant one-hundred percent rebate. But he also has his steward place a silver cup in Benjamin's sack and then sends the steward and a posse to accost the boys as they are hoofing it back to Canaan. What did they mean, the steward huffs, by making off with their benefactor's favorite silver cup? Didn't they know it is an integral part of his divination hobby? Shame, shame, shame.

The brothers plead innocence and implore the steward to check their bags, confident no silver cup will be found. Even after the experience they had the first time, it never occurs to them that contraband may have been slipped into their cargo without their knowledge, and they are taken completely by surprise when the Silver Cup of Divination is found in the sack of grain under Benjamin's care.

The steward and his enforcers haul the inadvertent thieves back to face Joseph. He frowns down on them and declares that the one who had possession of his silver cup will be his slave and the rest of them should mosey on out of town and consider themselves fortunate. Judah, knowing that old Israel/Jacob/Dad is going to be really, really upset if they return without Benjamin, and might even take Judah up on his offer to kill Judah's sons, offers himself up in place of Benjamin. The section where Judah is pleading his case is mostly a rehash of a bunch of stuff we already know, but I'm beginning to think that the audience the author was aiming this material at had serious retention issues and so he felt it advisable to throw in recaps a bit more often than modern editing practices might dictate.

Judah does finish his entreaty with a nice flourish in verse thirty-four.

"For how can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? I fear to see the suffering that would come upon my father."

And it works, as we see in Chapter 45. Unable to keep up the charade, Joseph bursts into a really noisy fit of crying, rips off his fake nose and glasses, or whatever disguise he had been using to keep his brothers from recognizing him, and exclaims, "I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?" If his brothers hadn't been so gob smacked by whole business they might have answered, but as it is they just stand there, slack jawed.

Joseph then explains that not only is he the brother they assumed was dead, or at the very least a miserable slave to one of the many "ite" tribes who operated under the Right to Work laws that favored employers and dealt harshly with those on the non-payroll, but he has come to the conclusion that the part they played in getting him carried away from the land of their father, rascally and underhanded though it may have been, was actually to be celebrated since the upshot of it all is that he can now be savior to his famine stricken kin. You can bet at least some of his brothers are muttering to themselves about the Random and Unfair Nature of Life, but he's got the upper hand, no doubt about it.

Confident that he now has their attention, Joseph shares his plan. He tells them that, in his capacity as the most important person in Egypt with the possible exception of Pharaoh, he has arranged for them, along with Ol' Dad and all the wives and kiddies, to settle in a very desirable and yet somehow sparsely populated section of the nation called Goshen, where he can keep them under his watchful and protective eye. He kisses all his brothers and they weep and "after that his brothers talked with him." which is nice because it means he's finally letting them get a word in edgewise.

Pharaoh seconds Joseph's plan and arranges wagons for them to take back so the women and children have a comfy migration. Joseph gives each of his brothers a parting gift in the form of a new outfit, with little Benjamin getting five outfits and a bag of money. So maybe he did hold a bit of a grudge against the others after all.

In Chapter 46 we once again have Joseph's and Reuben's and Judah's and Dan's father bouncing back and forth between being called Jacob and Israel, but by now we all know he answers to either one and if it doesn't confuse him why should we have a problem with it?

A good portion of this chapter is given over to a head count of Jacob/Israel's extended family and at the end of that section we're told that they total a respectable sixty-six "not including the wives of his sons". Which in the context of everything we've read so far makes total sense, I mean, why would you count the wives? It's not like they could vote or open their own grain accounts without their husband's signature. The headcount goes on to say that if we add in Joseph's two sons the total is actually a nice even seventy, which threw me at first, but then I thought, well maybe that also includes Joseph himself and, inconsistent though it might be, his wife, Asenath. I tried going back and counting, but I'll be darned if I could make any of my counts add up to an exact seventy no matter which way I factored the spouses. If it matters later on I'll let you know.

The caravan pulls into Goshen** where they are met by Joseph. He tells them to make sure they are truthful about their shepherding way of life, which he's thinking they might have been loath to admit since the Egyptians aren't fond of shepherds. We're not told why. But so far we know they won't eat at the same table as folks who come from the other side of their eastern border and they don't like shepherds. File those bits away for next time you're playing the home version of Jeopardy.

Just be careful if the answer is "This Old Testament Egyptian actually held shepherds in moderate regard." because then you want to say "Who is Pharaoh?" We know this because when Joseph brings five of his brothers to the palace they follow instructions, fess up to having their shepherding certifications and Pharaoh declares that's just fine by him. As a matter of fact, he puts them in charge of his livestock.

The next visitor Joseph brings to Pharaoh is his old dad, who for this event is going by Jacob. Amongst the rest of the small talk, Pharaoh asks Jacob his age, to which the old man proudly declares, "the years of my earthly sojourn are one hundred thirty; few and hard have been the years of my life." He backs up the "few" part by letting Pharaoh know that he comes from a proud line of notoriously long lived ancestors. Then he does the Commander in Chief of the Egyptian Military a solid by bestowing his blessing on him.

Now we come to verses 13 through 26 and I've got to admit that they raised not a few hackles with this reader. If you'll recall, there's been a famine of biblical proportions going on for the past few years, and the only reason Egypt and its neighbors aren't on the verge of starvation and massive civil unrest is that Joseph was clever enough to make sure they set aside silos and storehouses and 50 gallon survivalist buckets full of grain during the plush years. So now they've got the food they need to ride out the famine. That's the good news.

The bad news is that Joseph isn't giving the stuff away, not even to the farmers whose crops he stashed away during the years of plenty. Nope, he uses the bargaining power of all this much in demand food to effectively throw almost the entire Egyptian population into abject poverty and finally into slavery. The exceptions, the ones whose standing and income are protected, are the priests. Oh, and while we are not told this explicitly, it's made pretty clear that his family, the recently arrived and not quite assimilated Israelites of Goshen, have also been left with their earnings and dignity intact. But everyone else gets the honor of being turned into what are essentially sharecroppers on what used to be their own land, with twenty percent of everything they grow going right back to the Man Who Already Has Way More Than Anyone Could Ever Need, aka Pharaoh. Any percentage Joseph might be skimming off the top isn't mentioned, but it seems likely, doesn't it?

Verse 27 gives us another hard transition back to the clan of He Who Cannot Settle on a Name. For what I think is the first time, the entire group is referred to as Israel. "Thus Israel settled in the land of Egypt, in the region of Goshen; and they gained possession of it, and were fruitful and multiplied exceedingly." This is what I was telling you about, the fact that Joseph's strongarm extortionist ways with the general Egyptian population did not extend to his extended family.

By verse 28 Jacob and company have been in their adopted land of Goshen for seventeen years, and Jacob, recognizing that even though most of his ancestors had hung around for century upon century, he has already played fast and loose with the one hundred twenty year limit and at one hundred forty-seven it's time for him to shuffle off this mortal coil. But first he has some final business to attend to with his boys. Joseph, being the most consequential of the bunch, gets summoned first. He puts his hand under ol' Dad's thigh, which was what they did back then when a contract was being made and no notary was available. The contract in question here is Jacob's request that his son makes sure he is buried not in Egypt, but in the family plot back home. Joseph, whose hand is beginning to lose feeling, pledges he will do as the old man wishes.

Jacob isn't done. In Chapter 48 he has Joseph brings his two boys to see Grandpa so he can bless them. No thighs are mentioned. Joseph positions the boys in front of Jacob so the older one is to Jacob's right and the younger one to his left. As we have learned earlier, blessings are a tricky and specific thing and getting the patriarchal blessing by way of the old man's right hand carries way more weight than that which can be transmitted through his left hand. For reasons never explained (where have we read that before?) Jacob crosses his hands and in doing so declares the younger son, Ephraim, will be the greater of the two. We'll see if we hear anything more about that particular storyline.

Chapter 49 is a sort of versified rendering of Jacob's Last Words to His Sons. Some of his remarks he presents as blessings, but some of them seem to be a summing up of what he thinks of each one of them. He divides things up between some very nice compliments, some harsh words of parental disappointment, and some bits that suggest the hospice nurse may have ladled in the painkillers a bit much. He takes a very brief break in between Dan and Gad to tell God he's just about ready, but otherwise he steams right on through all twelve in one go.

Reuben gets told he is unstable and if he thinks that escapade with his dad's concubine was forgiven and forgotten he is very much mistaken.
Simeon and Levi are taken to task for that circumcision and slaughter prank they pulled back in Chapter 34.
Judah gets four verses full of what I think is praise, but honestly most of it I have no idea what he's getting at. It does seem that either Jacob is in the dark about the mess involving Judah's sons and daughter-in-law, or he sees no reason to bring it up as it was all just a rather extended example of boys being boys.
Zebulun is told he has a life as a beachcomber to look forward to. Something like that.
Issachar he declares to be "a strong donkey."
Dad sums up son Dan as both a judge and a snake. Feel free to research that one.

This is when Jacob addresses God with, "I wait for your salvation, O Lord."

To son number eight he says "Gad shall be raided by raiders, but he shall raid at their heels." Okay.
Asher apparently has a future in either the grocery or restaurant business.
I cheated and checked out the footnotes for the bit aimed at Naphtali, which is "Naphtali is a doe let loose that bears lovely fawns." Supposedly that just might mean Jacob thinks Naphtali has a way with words. Or it may have been the meds.
When he gets to Joseph it's no surprise that compliment after fulsome compliment spills from the old man's lips. He sums things up by saying, "The blessings of your father are stronger than the blessings of the eternal mountains" and ends by telling the gathered that Joseph is "set apart from his brothers," as if they needed any reminders.
Young Benjamin he calls a "ravenous wolf, in the morning devouring the prey and at evening dividing the spoil." Once again, I have no idea where that came from.

Verse 28 seems to me to be important. We've all heard about the twelve tribes of Israel, and it seems this is where they got their start, with the twelve sons of Jacob aka Israel. Just what the world needed, more tribalism.

The chapter ends with Jacob reminding his sons for the umpteenth time

that he expects to be buried in the family plot back home. Satisfied he has made himself clear, he "drew his feet up into the bed, breathed his last, and was gathered to his people."

Chapter 50 begins with Jacob's embalming--which evidently is a lengthy process indeed--takes us through the time of mourning, and proceeds to reassure us that not only were Jacob's wishes honored regarding his place of burial, but he was given a military escort that made quite the impression on the folks back home.

Joseph forgives his brothers after they tell him their father had asked them to ask Joseph to take it easy on them.

They all go back to Egypt after the interment. Joseph lives to what may have seemed to him to be the disappointingly tender age of one hundred and ten. After all, he was the second youngest and yet at

least some of his older brothers were still around to receive his final instructions, which I'm sure they appreciated.

And so ends the Book of Genesis, with the Twelve Tribes of Israel in the Land of Goshen, living the good life under the protection of an open minded monarch, who must have been pretty darned old himself by now.

* A cactus flower. Kinda dramatic looking, isn't it?

** You may have heard of this Goshen place before this, I know I had, but never knew where it was or even if it was a real place. I allocated my two minutes of research to checking this out, and evidently it was in northeastern Egypt, by the delta, well suited to raising flocks of sheep and other livestock. Egyptians, not being enthusiastic about the shepherding lifestyle, mostly lived elsewhere and so it was available at the time.

Some Numbers,

and

Some Thoughts

Well, we made it. For a while I was beginning to think that the first book in the Bible was going to beat me, but it didn't, and I'm raring to head right on into Exodus in the next couple of days. But before we do I thought I would look back at some of the things that stood out to me about Genesis. Here we go.

Some Numbers:

Chapters: 50
Words: 32,046 (No, I didn't count them, I did what you would do, I Googled it.
Creation Stories: 2
Major Players: 17. A purely arbitrary tally on my part and obviously some are way more major than others. The Adventures of Jacob and Joseph account for half of the chapters and at least half of the words. Feel free to make your own list.

God
Adam
Eve
Serpent
Cain
Abel (brief, but impactful)
Seth
Enoch
Noah
Shem
Ham
Japheth
Abram/Abraham
Lot
Isaac
Jacob
Joseph

Major Stories (the ones just about everyone has heard of, whether we've gotten the details correct or not): 7

Creation. We're just going to count this as one even though there are two versions presented.
Cain kills Abel
Noah and the Flood
The Tower of Babel
Lot and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and their suburbs
Jacob's Ladder
Joseph's Coat

Number of Generations: 23

I'm not going to tick them all off, but trust me, I counted, twice, maybe three times, and I'm pretty confident of this number. Adam to Joseph it's twenty three generations. I think.

Average age: 529.7. This I arrived at by adding up all the men (of course) in the line from Adam to Joseph, following the branches of Seth to Noah and then Shem to Joseph. Longevity winner, of course, is Methuselah at nine hundred and sixty-nine. Joseph burned the candle at both ends and the middle and wore himself out by his one hundred tenth birthday.

Sidenote regarding the whole "what happened to God saying one hundred twenty is now the max age way back in Chapter 6" question. If you have been paying attention you will have noted that I refer to it a few times as we keep encountering a whole bunch of folks who zoom past one twenty without so much as a glance. Evidently there is a school of thought that maintains that when God says "My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years." he was actually talking about when he was planning on starting the Big Flood, sort of like a two minute warning in a football game I guess. I don't know, it sure reads to me like his intention is to limit lifespans, but when you've got an entire industry built around interpretation I suppose you can spin it a whole bunch of ways. Then we get into the whole exegesis vs. eisegesis mess, where the experts get to tell you what something in the Bible means (exegesis) as opposed to what the words are actually saying to any reasonable reader who doesn't have a library of other books whose purpose it is to "explain" the Bible.

Thank you for staying with me as we made our way through Genesis. Next up? The book that puts a movie theme earworm in my head every single time.

"This land is mine, God gave this land to me,

This brave and ancient land to me."****

lyrics to the Theme from the film Exodus by none other than Pat Boone

****And isn't that where all manner of folks have gone to provide justification for doing some pretty nasty stuff to other folks? In America we call it Manifest Destiny.

Book by Book through The Good Book

Genesis in Thirteen Easy Installments

No comments:

Post a Comment

Apropos of Nothing Biblical

Visitors to "Book by Book"