Abram and Sarai: Genesis 12

Chapter 12 of Genesis introduces of to Abram and Sarai, the parents of one of the most dysfunctional families ever.

This story is much more important than the stories that come before it. You can see that in the fact that it is about as long as all the earlier stories in Genesis put together. There's an important shift here. Up until now we've seen God dealing with the whole world. We've also seen, in story after story, from Adam and Eve, ot Cain and Abel, to the World before the Flood, to the Tower of Babel, the world has been rebellious and unresponsive to God's call. It's been a difficult relationship and the old methods haven't worked so now we see God try something different.

The story of Abram is the story of God forming a special relationship with one person, one family, and one people. This isn't with the idea that Abram and Sarai are somehow better or more deserving than other people. The idea seems to be that God has to start somewhere. But that doen't mean that the blessing is only for Abram and his descendants. From the very first the story makes it clear that this blessing, all the people of the world shall be blessed.

Abram is an odd choice for a hero. He isn't particularly strong, brave, wise, or anything of the sort. The one thing that sets Abram apart is his faith. when he is called out of his ancestral home by God, he goes. Abram's trust in God will falter fairly often in during his story and he often misunderstands what God is calling him to do. Still, this deeply flawed man always holds on to this relationship to God and that becomes his one saving grace.

If God is shown to be reliable in this story, Someutes his wife in this chapter is proof of that. Perhaps the only praiseworthy thing about him is his faith.

We are told that Abram is 75 years old in this story. By implication, Sarai would be 65. The age here isn't literal; it goes to underscore the idea that the couple are barren. They comes from a culture where there is no idea of an afterlife. The only kind of immortality they are aware of is the kind where your family and good name continue after you die. A childless couple in this culture is as good as dead and dishonered. Only a son could save them, and the scribes putting this story down want to make sure we know, a son is impossible.

It's no wonder Abraham is willing to grasp at any little bit of hope. When God offers him a son, numberless ancestors, and an honorable name that will last forever, that is literally everything that matters to a man who has nothing.

Abram and his family head out into the unknown based in faith in a promise from a God who he hasn't known accepts for what may be selfish reasons but, by accepting he becomes the first to participate in this new relationship.

While Abram is faithful, he's still not a very good man. When the family heads to Egypt, Abram effectively prostitutes his wife to the King of Egypt. Aram's excuse is that Sarai is so beautiful that Pharaoh would kill him and take her if he didn't do this. There is a hidden agenda, though, as we can see in verse 16.

Because of her, Abram got along very well: he accumulated sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, men and women servants, and camels.

This sounds like a con game that Abram is running on Pharaoh, and one that he will repeat several times. It also sounds like God is complicit in this operation, and punishes Pharaoh for something that was clearly Abram's fault. That's hard for modern Christian readers to take and rightly so. It reflects a primitive, tribal understanding of God that is not consistent with what Jesus reveals to us about God.

In ancient times, the idea was that God only cared about the chosen people. This is an idea that the Gospels clearly reject in Matthew 3:7-10 any other places. God cares about all people and insists that his followers practice the kind of justice that honors this fact. That's something that the writer of this part of Abram's story didn't seem to understand.

Still, the bottom line of the Abraham story is still true. God is faithful to people, even when the people don't really deserve it.

The Tower of Babel: Genesis 11

Chapter 11 continues the genealogy of Noah's sons, but not before a quick detour into the story of The Tower of Babel. This is the last of what are called the "pre-history" stories of the Bible. Up until not everything has happened in a long-ago and far-away that can't be identified with any historical time place. That will change as we get into the story of Abraham.

The story is pretty straightforward; all the people of the earth live in one place and speak one language. They decide to build a tower that will reach into heaven and proceed to build it. God sees their effort, doesn't like it, and says: "One people, one language; why, this is only a first step. No telling what they'll come up with next - they'll stop at nothing!.

God takes away the ability to communicate and scatters them across the face of the earth. This provides a (fictional) explanation for the fact that there are so many different languages in the world. As short as the story is, it raises a number of questions in our minds.

1) What was the Tower?

There have been a number of searches for the tower, especially in the 19th Century when archaeology was in its infancy and most people assumed that this was a literal story. One attractive possibility was that it was inspired by the Etemenanki which was 7 story ziggurat devoted to the god Marduk that stood in the city of Babylon. The Jews would have been seen it during the Babylinian exile when they lived as captives in Babylon.

It's impossible to know if this was the inspiration for the Tower of Babel, but it seems likely that the Tower is supposed to make us think of ziggurats. These were high places or artificial mountains created in the pagan religions of the ancient Near East. The idea was that mountains were sacred places where the earth rose up to touch the heavens. When you built a city, you would construct an artificial mountain, or ziggurat, as a central place of worship. This sounds very much like the reason the people gave for building the Tower of Babel.

2) Why did God object to the Tower?

It's not made clear in the story, though Jewish tradition suggests that it was the pride of the people. Failing to trust God, they decided to reach up to heaven on their own terms and built the Tower. This answer is similar to the story of Adam and Eve where the humans don't trust God and try to gain divin knowledge on their own terms. In both stories, falling out of harmony with God produces a disaster.

There is also a very good chance that this story was written either during the exile in Babylon or soon after. If that is the case then the Tower could represent the powerful enemies of the Jews and the ziggurats where they worshipped their gods. The story serves as a reminder that, no matter how powerful their enemies appear to be, God is in control.

3) Why did God scatter the people and give them different languages?

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann has a wonderful insight on this in his commentary on Genesis. The Tower of Babel is a story of people who are great because of their cookie-cutter sameness. The people of Babel all speak the same language and (presumably) eat the same food, wear the same kind of clothes, and belong to the same culture. You can accomplish a great deal in a homogeneous culture but only at the expense of diversity. Brueggemann suggests that God scatters the people to show them a better way. The unity God wants for the human race is diverse people drawn together by common faith and values, not a sterile sameness.

In other words, God doesn't object to the tower, per se, but to the way it's being built. Human beings should aspire to more than being builder-ants. The many languages and the scattering are not a punishment, but an opportunityu to live up to a much greater potential.

The story shifts back to genealogy with verses 10-32. I won't touch on these other than to say that they carry us to the story of Abraham.

More Genealogies: Genesis 10

The genealogies of Genesis 10 bring the story of Noah to a clost. it is likely that the hypothetical priestly source or P wrote this because P loved lists.

Modern people have a lot less to gain from this kind of thing than the ancients, so I'll just touch on it. Basically, this list answers the question 'where did all of these people come from?' It provides a bridge between the story of Noah and the populated world that the Jewish people were familiar with.

This chapter (like the stories that have come before it) is not historical. it's a story that served to remind the Jews that God wasn't just their God but the one who created and ruled over the the whole world. That was important, because in the time this story was written, the kingdom of Judah had beed conquored several times and reduced to the status of a privince in the Persian Empire. The Jewish people feared that they were nothing more than a footnote in another culture's history. This genealogy was meant to remind them that this was not the case.

We really don't learn much anything about the people in this chapter except for their names and where they settled. The only exception to this is Nimrod, who is described as the first man on earth to become a mighty warrior. He is also described as a mighty hunter. Reading this you get the impression that Nimrod may at one time have been the hero of his own story which is now forgotten. There are Jewish traditions that suggest he was the Great King of Babylonia, that he built the Tower of Babel, and that he had at least one meeting with Abraham. However, none of this shows up in the Bible.

FOOTNOTE: If you've been reading this blog, you may have noticed that I refer to the people who wrote it by several different names. Sometimes I say "Hebrews", sometimes "Israelites", and sometimes "Jews." There is a method to this madness that has to do with the history of Israel.

The word "Hebrew" appears to come from the Egyptian word "apiru" or "habiru" which refers to foreigners (often slaves) living in Egypt. Historians believe that the Habiru were a mishmash of different Semitic peoples who were united by the worship of God to become one people when they left Egypt.

When the Hebrew people settled in the Promised Land they named the place "Israel" after their ancestor Jacob, and the people were called the "Israelites." After the death of King Solomon the nation split into two. The northern kingdom kept the name of Israel while the southern kingdom was took the name "Judah" and its people were called "Jews." Eventually, the northern kingdom was conquored and destroyed by the Assyrian Empire leaving only Judah and the Jews to carry on the faith.

When I refer to "Israelites" in this study, I'm referring to writers from the northern kingdom, and when I use "Jews" I am referring to writers from the southern kingdom.

Noah's Strange Drunken Interlude: Genesis 9:18-29

The story of Noah ends with an odd and disturbing episode which you can read in parallel versions here.

Early on we were told that Noah was a good and virtuous man but what we see in this strange story makes us wonder. Noah plants a vineyard and uses the grapes to make wine. Unfortunately, he overindulges, gets drunk, and passes out naked in his tent. Noah's son Ham happens to see his father in this state and tells his brothers. That might seem like bad manners to us but it's deadly serious to Noah.

That's something that's always puzzled me about the story. Seeing someone naked (especially a parent) sounds very embarassing, but it's hardly a crime. Why was Noah so upset that he insisted on punishment?

It probably has to do with the fact that the ancient Middle-East was dominated by a culture of honor. We think of honor as a man keeping his word and doing the right thing, but that's not what the word originally meant. In these cultures your standing in the community came from what people thought of you. If they saw you as someone who was smart, strong, and ruthless--someone they didn't want to mess with--you had a lot of honor. If you did something that made you appear weak or unreliable to the community, you lost honor.

Things get brutal in this kind of culture. If someone does something that harms your reputation, you have to take revenge to get your honor back. If someone insults you, you may have to fight a duel with them. If your daughter disobeys you and marries a man you don't approve of, or dresses inappropriately, or becomes the victim of rape, or otherwise embarasses the family, then an honor killing is called for. Honor is all about what people think of you, not the sort of person you actially are. In other words, the problem wasn't that Noah couldn't control his drinking, it was that there was a witness who knew how badly he had embarassed himself.

Noah's other sons, Shem and Japeth, do what loyal sons are supposed to do in the culture of honor: they covered things up, literally. They walked in backward so they could pretend that they had no knowledge of their father's embarassment, and covered him with a sheet so that nobody else could see him like that. They preserved his reputation, which in this kind of culture, is preferrable to telling the embarassing truth.

Under the rules of the culture, Noah had good reason to be angry with Ham, but that's not who he punishes. Instead, Noah proclaims that his Ham's son, Canaan, has lost his status as a member of the family. He and his descendants are to be the slaves of Shem and Japeth and their descendants.

It's not at all clear why Noah doesn't punish Ham directly. Other than that, though, the punishment fits the code of honor. Ham dishonered his father, now Noah dishonors Canaan by making his descendants slaves. It is disproportionate revenge, but that's what the code of honor calls for. It's a harsh thing to do, but that's not the point. In this culture, love is not the priority, reputation is. If you had to kill every single one of your children to restore your family's honorable name, you would would do it and the culture would praise you for it. (We can still see this dynamic in cultures that practice honor killings).

If I haven't made it clear yet; I believe that culture of honor is a terrible thing. Just because Noah lived this way is no reason to assume it is a good set of values, or that we are supposed to imitate him. As we move through the Bible one of the things you'll see is how God leads the people away from this unjust and brutal way of life into a culture of justice and compassion. For Christians the example for living needs to be the humility of Jesus, not the honor-obsessed brutality of Noah.

There's one more thing to say about this story and that is a note on how it has been misused in history. Before the Civil War, preachers in the South used to use this story to justify slavery. Canaan, they claimed, was black and became the ancestor of the peoples of Africa while white people were the descendents of Shem and Japeth. They pointed to Noah's curse on Canaan as "proof" that God meant for black Africans to be the slaves of white people.

i doubt that I need to go into all the reasons that this is a case of badly messed-up thinking, but I will, just to be complete.

1) The curse was from Noah, not from God. The action of a prideful man seeking to restore his reputation is not the same as God's will.

2) There is nothing in scripture that claims either that Canaan was black or that Africans are descended from him. In fact, the historical Canaanites were ethnically pretty much identical to the Jews, the only differences were religious and cultural.

3) The most important point: The story of Noah is not a historical story! As I've several times, this is a made-up story, like a parable. It's meant to teach us about God and humanity but it's not meant to be taken literally.

Details of the Flood Story: Genesis 6-9

Noah and the Ark is a rich and vivid tale. having gone through the story as a whole, I'd like to take a look at a few of the details.

There are quite a few significant numbers here. Noah is given 7 days warning before the flood. The rain falls for 40 days and nights, and Noah is 600 years old. Numbers have a great deal of symbolism in the scriptures, and knowing that symbolism can help us understand the story in more depth.

The number 7 showed up in the story of creation, and every time it reappears it reminds us of that story. Seven in Hebrew is "sheh'bah" which comes from the a root word meaning "fullness" or "completion." It shows up many times in the Bible and is also the root of our word "sabbath." Whenever we see this, it signifies that something has reached completion. When it shows up in this story it makes us see this is more than a story of a flood; it is the story of God creating over again.

The number 40 is symbolic of a very long time. It shows up in many stories where a person or group of people are preparing for some new beginning. The people of Israel wandered for 40 years before crossing into the Promised Land, Moses stayed on Mt. Sinai for 40 days before receiving the 10 Commandments, Jesus spent 40 days and nights in the wilderness before beginning his ministry. Like the number 7, the 40 days and nights here reminds us that is the story of a new beginning.

The number 600 is not very common in the Bible, but it is 50 x 12 and multiples of 12 have their own symbolism. The number 12 is found in nature as the number of months in a year. It is a number of wholeness. In the Old Testament it represents the people of Israel, in the New Testament, the followers of Jesus.

This story is the first to use the term "covenent" in the Bible. This is an idea that we will see again throughout the scriptures. Here it is not an agreement between God and a chosen people but between God and all of creation.

God offers a rainbow as the sign of the covenant. This is a beautiful symbol cherished by people of faith to this day but it had even more meaning when it was written.

The composite bow was an important weapon in ancient times. Craftsmen would layer different materials like wood, horn, and sinew (animal tendons) to make a bow that was much stronger and more flexible than one made only of wood. If you look at a cross-section of the bow you see that the materials forned layers, like the bands of color in a rainbow.

In the imagination of the ancient Hebrews, the rainbow was God's weapon, a composite bow of miraculous size and beauty. By placing it in the clouds, God was symbolically laying down his arms and proclaiming peace with the world.

Special Note: Anthropomorphism and Literalism

Big words, but don't worry, the ideas behind them aren't that bad.

In the last blogs we have looked at the overall meaning of the story of Noah. It's one that we love to tell to children because it reflects a childlike understanding of who God is. It shows God as someone who makes mistakes, gets angry, and throws tantrums, but who is ultimately loving and kind to people, animals, and the world.

When you apply human characteristics to God this is called anthropomorphism. When we talk about Adam hearing God's footsteps in the Garden of Eden or God talking to Moses face to face that doesn't mean that God literally has feet or a face just like a human being. The Bible is using a storytelling technique to give us an image of God that we can understand. When the story of Noah talks about God making mistakes and losing his temper, it's the same thing. What we see in the story are made-up details to help us begin to understand God rather than a literal and accurate picture of all that God is.

As children grow up they begin to understand that God is not really like that. For one thing, God isn't someone we can see in the sense that we can see a human being. For another, God isn't limited to being in just one place the way human beings are. God is an invisible presence who is with us no matter where we go. God appears to the people of the Bible in many forms from a burning bush, to a man who comes to Abraham's tent to the small, quiet voice that called to Elijah.

God isn't a bush, of course, or a human being, or a quiet voice. These things are all symbols that God uses to reveal his presence. If we started worshipping the symbols, that would be worshipping something that isn't really God. That's something that the Second Commandment forbids, calling it idolatry.

This is the problem with taking the Bible literally: we end up mistaking the anthropomorphized (or humanized) version of God in the stories for the real thing. That can stunt our spiritual growth, and trap us in a very limited and childish view of God.

That's a shame whan it happens, because it blinds us to the deeper understanding of God we find in so many other places in scripture, and especially in the words of Jesus. It can even encourage us to be harsh, judgmental, and unloving ourselves.

The story of Noah, like many Bible stories, is wonderful and--if we understand it-- can provide a beautiful starting point for learning about God. But if misunderstood, if taken literally, it can stand in the way of our growing in the understanding of God.

To paraphrase a saying I've often seen in the United Church of Christ; we should take the Bible very seriously, but not literally.