Holy Moly: Family Strife

So Abram and his family, and Lot and his family, have been kicked out of Egypt.  Why Lot got kicked out when it was Abram who did the things necessitating being kicked out is uncertain.  Maybe Abram made Lot come along.  "So Egypt is getting too hot to hold someone of my awesomeness.  Come on Lot, let's hit the road."

"But I've got a home and lands and friends here..."

"They're not your friends.  You need to come with us."

"But..."

"Come on Lot."

Well, turns out that the land they go to can't support both of their families and flocks.  Or maybe Lot remembered being dragged out of Egypt by Abram.  There's fighting between the clans.

Abram has a solution.  "Why don't you go over there, and I'll go over here.  The land is wide and full of resources.

Or maybe Lot said, "Listen, Abram, I... need to be alone for a while.  It's not you, it's me."

The Bible makes sure we know that there were Canaanites and Perizzites living on the land too.  That's probably because we're foreshadowing some things, but it might also be to point out that Abram and Lot were in hostile territory.  To me, it just points out the total land grab that's going on here.  I'm not bashing Abram and Lot; they're not going around lopping off Perizzite heads or anything to conquer the territory.  But it does smack a bit of the white man landing on the shores of America and claiming the land because hey, no one's living... sorry, could you brown people move out of my sight line... as I said, no one is living here.

Lot heads to Sodom.  Sodom is a wretched hive of scum and villainy.  We'll get back to them.

God says to Abram, "Hey, so this land is all yours and you're going to have so many descendants that they'll be like specks of dust."  Are the Canaanites and Perizzites consulted?  Of course not.

But there are other ways to read this: God is still obsessed with the "being fruitful and multiplying" thing.  At the time, if you were an extremely beset-upon tribe like Israel, pumping out the offspring was probably not just a good idea but a matter of survival.  I'm not even talking about the horrifying infant mortality rates: they're living in lands which, while God has given the land to them, are still occupied by other tribes who might not be friendly.  Increasing the size of the clan was for safety as well as anything else.

These are just-so stories, people.  There's nothing wrong with that.  Why does Israel live here now?  Why do we have these lands?  Why are people trying to oppress us?  See, there was this guy named Abram...

Holy Moly: Land Grab

Genesis 12 begins with Abram, Sarai, and Lot, along with the family, continuing the journey to Canaan.  Only it doesn't.  It begins with God telling Abram to leave his home and head to Canaan.  Let's remember the strange chronology of the Bible and move on.

God says to Abram, "Head to Canaan and I will bless you and all people through you.  This land will be yours."

I can't help but wonder what the Canaanites thought about this.  Some guy shows up, says, "Hey, so, this land is mine because God gave it to me."

But the Bible doesn't really care about the Canaanites, as has been amply demonstrated already.  So this part is more important because it's a continuation of God making certain people His chosen.  Abram is, if not the first Jew, at least the father of Judaism.  He's the chosen.

Where's Canaan?  Why, it's the area where Israel is today.  See, God gave it to His chosen people, which is why that particular area of the globe is so peaceful and no one ever fights about land.

I'm not going to bash Israel (the state, not the character in the Bible) because I'm not really interested in being called anti-Semitic.  But if you want to know the origins of the problems in that part of the Middle East, they're right here, where God gives Canaan to the ancestor of the Israelites.  I'm not blaming the Israelites for taking God up on the offer at all.  It's choice real estate.  But that's why Israel is where it is and not, say, North Dakota.

Abram doesn't stay long though.  He's a nomad so he travels the land, going where the flocks go or where the water is or where the food is available.  He becomes something of an absentee landlord of Canaan, which I can't help but thinking that the Canaanites probably appreciated.

Famine strikes the land and Abram and his retinue head for Egypt.  Egypt, at this point, was probably the place to go if famine was striking.  The Nile delta is a fairly reliable food source, and the infrastructure could support a larger population.  That's not to say that Egypt never had famines, but it was more stable than the desert of Canaan.

So Abram heads there.  I imagine that he was probably just one of many refugees from the famine, and I can also imagine that the Egyptians might have been a little hesitant to take in more people.  But the problem isn't that Abram will be turned away at the border, but rather than apparently the Pharaoh wants to increase his harem.

Abram knows his wife is a looker, and he knows that Pharaoh tends to take a shine to new female faces, but he also knows that Pharaoh doesn't like those new faces to be married.  He's worried that if the officials find out that Sarai is his wife, they'll kill him and she'll wind up with the Pharaoh.

So he does the only logical thing and attempts to disguise her as an ugly woman... no, just kidding, he totally tells them she's his sister, and yes, absolutely, she would love to join the Pharaoh's court.  It doesn't say, but I'm pretty sure Sarai didn't just go to court to be a pretty face.  Pharaoh makes her his wife.  So Abram is pimping out his own wife to save his skin.  Classy.

God gets pissed, as God is wont to do, and sends plagues down on Pharaoh.  Which seems like a pretty shitty thing to do: Pharaoh may be in the market for wives, but he didn't know the woman was already married.  He even treats her and her "brother" quite well.  But God doesn't care.

Pharaoh finds out what's happening and kills Abram... no, only kidding again, he tells Abram, "Jeez dude, why did you tell me she was your sister?  Now your God is pissed at me.  I wouldn't have married her if I knew.  So, be a bro, take her back and get the fuck out of dodge before God makes it worse."

That, at least, is what he means.  Maybe we're supposed to read it as Pharaoh punishing Abram by exiling him, but frankly, had I been Pharaoh and had I gotten a reputation for killing men and taking their hot wives, I would have just killed Abram.  We never see any evidence that Abram was right in his paranoia.  Again, maybe we're supposed to just know that Egyptians are bad and everything Abram says is true, but if so, why does Pharaoh let him keep all his profits from pimping his wife?

I'm pro-Egyptian, as has probably become evident.  I'm not anti-proto-Israelite, but it seems like Abram gets off lightly in this story.  Maybe Pharaoh doesn't kill him because Pharaoh's pretty sure that if marrying Abram's wife makes God pissed, then God will be really pissed if Pharaoh kills Abram.  It's a story written from the point of view of worshipers of Yahweh rather than Horus, so Yahweh is obviously going to be the most powerful.

The Egyptians didn't survive to pass on a Bible, or at least their religion didn't.  It's a shame, because I'd like to read the opposite side of this story.  But frankly, I have a feeling that even if the ancient Egyptian Pantheon were still being worshiped today, Abram wouldn't merit a mention in their Bible.  That's not to say that the story is false, just that people tell legends of things which make them look good or make their gods look powerful.  Maybe it's spin.  Maybe it's not.  But in any case, I feel like Pharaoh acted pretty well, given the circumstances.

Holy Moly: Shem's Descendants

We're going to breeze through some more geneology here because we should now all understand that yes, it's important, but no, it's not terribly interesting.  Shem begets Arpachshad, who begets other (male) people, and it's not until the children of Terah (or rather, the male children, because I bet you there were some daughters in there) that it gets interesting.  But let's step back for a moment.

Who the hell built the Tower of Babel?  Because according to the Bible, everyone but Noah's family was wiped out by a great flood.  See, if I were writing the Bible I would have put the Babel story somewhere else, after Noah and kin have gotten to the business of repopulation.  But I didn't write the Bible.  Nobody did.  It's a collection of stories and legends and history that got lumped together thousands of years after the fact.

So let's assume that Babel actually took place somewhere in the hundreds of years of geneology which comes after it and move on, shall we?

Terah's son Abram is going to be important.  So is his grandson Lot.  And it's important that we know right up front that Abram's wife Sarai is unable to bear children.  That will come up later.  But at the end of the passage, Terah and his sons Abram and Nahor, plus his son Haran's son Lot, plus their assorted family units, have left the land of their birth and are heading to Canaan.  Cliff hanger!

Since this is a short one, let's talk briefly about the division of chapter and verse in the Bible.  It's not very good.  It breaks up stories or puts stories together.  I'm not sure exactly how it came to be, but I can tell you that it didn't come to be because some guy named Moses sat down at a certain point and wrote it all down and divided it thus.  Why am I dividing my discussion of the Bible up by chapters?  It's easier.

Also, Haran is a place and a person.  Who came up with this?  It probably means something, but I'm not even sure the people who collected the stories know for certain.  Maybe Haran just happened to be on the way to Canaan.  Anyway, that's where Terah dies, and his descendants are going to head to Canaan because God told them to.