Genesis 22 (Abraham, Isaac and the toughest chapter in the Old Testasment)

There's an old joke that Abraham was fussing with his pc when Isaac wandered past.

Whatcha doing pop?" he asked.

I'm trying to load Windows 7 on my old laptop," Abraham said.

It'll never work," Isaac replied. "You don't have enough memory on that thing."

"Don't worry, my son," Abraham said. "God will provide the RAM."

I think I've heard more jokes about this story than any other in the Bible. That may be because we have to laugh at it to keep from crying. It's a wrenching story and probably much more for us than for the people who first told it.

The chapter opens with the statement that "God tested Abraham." God speaks to Abraham and tells him to take his son Isaac to a certain place and there to kill him and offer his body as a burnt offering to God.

What kind of a God makes a demand like this? What kind of a father would even consider doing such a thing? And yet, Abraham doesn't even seem to hesitate. Of course, the story has a happy ending; God tells Abraham not to kill his son and gives him a ram as a sacrifice. Nobody dies (except the ram) and father and son live happily ever after. That should be enough.

I've heard a lot of explanations for this. Fundamentalist friends have told me that we're not supposed to question the Bible. If God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, God must have had a good reason for doing it and we should just accept that.

I don't buy that. For one thing, it's not honest. For another, questioning God is something that people of great faith do pretty often, both in the Bible and throughout history. When God does something that seems so far out of character, the faithful thing to do is to question and even to challenge. Failing to do so can lead us to some very dark places and twisted ideas.

So what's going on here? I don't think I can give a simple answer for that, but here are some of my thoughts.

- One of my professors in seminary said that, as horrible as the story is, it says something important about human commitment. Being committed to God means doing the right thing, no matter the sacrifice involved. That means standing up for justice for all people, even when that is an unpopular cause. However, when we are confronted with the need to stand up to racism, sexism, homophobia, and other things that marginalize people, we find it easy to make excuses. We are afraid of losing a job, or of being rejected in our social circle, or even afraid that the people doing the persecuting will do something to harm us. In the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s (for example) people who stood up for racial equality often ran the risk of being harassed, arrested, assaulted or even killed.

The professor pointed out that children were the most compelling excuse people had for remaining on the sidelines. "I'd do something, but I have my children to think about."

The professor's point was that, as long as we do that, injustice will prevail. To follow God, we have to give up our excuses; even when the excuse is our children. Only when we're able to make that sacrifice are we truly following God. It's a challenging idea and a little intimidating, but important to keep in mind.

- On a more historical note, we know that child sacrifice was a reality in the ancient Middle East. While the information is limited, and biased, it seems that the sacrifice of children to gain favor with the gods was practiced by Israel's neighbors. There is a law, repeated several times in the Hebrew Scriptures (Lev 18:21, Lev 20:3, Deut 12:30-31, Deut 18:10) specifically forbidding the practice. Since you don't normally make a law forbidding something unless people are actually doing it, this strongly suggests that this was practiced by the people of Israel as well. This story may have been used as a way to end the practice by showing that God rejected the sacrifice of Isaac.

- As I said, there isn't an easy answer to understanding this story. The one answer I can give with perfect confidence is that we are supposed to do terrible things without questioning them if God says so. The scriptures are filled with examples of people of great faith questioning and arguing with God. Job argued about the justice of his situation, Jesus bitterly questioned God at Gethsemane, and even Abraham argued with God about the destruction of Sodom. Questioning and arguing are not signs of a lack of faith. Someone with integrity will always question and even argue when the message that seems to be coming from God is ungodly. When you think about it, the name "Israel" even means, the one(s) who struggle with God.

If you are ever called on to do something that goes against the character of God, question it. If you are told that God wants you to do something that is not just, or compassionate, or merciful, argue with it. Don’t accept it easily; not even if it comes from your preacher, or your church's doctrine, or even if it comes from the Bible. There's a difference between true faith and blind obedience, and I believe that the people who struggle with all their passion and integrity to do the right thing are closer to God than those who unthinkingly do what they're told.

Genesis 21 (Promises to Isaac and Ishmael)

Genesis 21 concludes the story of Hagar and Ishmael. Islamic tradition picks up on this and names Ishmael as the ancestor of the Arabic peoples. This story reveals something about the grim conditions for women in the ancient Near East and how common it was for even the people we think of as the good guys to use and discard them. It's another story of God's faithfulness contrasted with human selfishness and cruelty.

Previously, God had promised Abraham and Sarah that they would have a child and this would lead to a huge number of descendants. Actually, God had promised it several times, though the elderly couple had their doubts. Sarah had doubted it so much that she'd come up with a plan B, just in case God's plan didn't work out. She'd sent her Egyptian slave-girl, Hagar, to Abraham with instructions to get her pregnant.

Abraham had gone along with the plan and the result had been a son named Ishmael. That had seemed to solve things, until Hagar realized that producing an heir made her more important to Abraham than Sarah was. Sarah realized it too and a deep hatred grew up between the women.

Then God's promise came true. Against all possibility, Sarah became pregnant. The idea was so absurd that it made her laugh and so, when the child was born, they named him Isaac, which means "laughter." But what was joyful for Sarah was bad news for Hagar and her son. Sarah realized that they didn't need this uppity slave and her son around any longer. She told Abraham to abandon the two of them in the desert and he didn't object to that any more than he had to getting the girl pregnant.

Abraham and Sarah don't come across very well in this story. They aren't just, or even kind, in their dealings with Hagar and her son. As far as they're concerned, she is just a means to an end, someone to be used and discarded. She's just a slave as far as they're concerned, a foreign woman, who can be treated as less than human. Abraham and Sarah aren't role models in this story, they aren't even decent human beings.

Fortunately, Abraham and Sarah aren't the heroes of the story, God is. While Hagar is our in the desert, waiting to die, God speaks to her and tells her that she and her son will live. God reveals a water well, which saves their lives, and makes then a promise that Ishmael will survive and will also become the ancestor of a great nation.

The contrast between God's character and that of the human characters is the heart of the story. In God's eyes, Hagar is much more than a foreigner or a slave. She is someone who has been oppressed by her culture and its people. As we will see over and over throughout scripture, God has a special concern for people like Hagar and Ishmael. While it would have been nice to see God give Abraham and Sarah a real dressing down, the story does reveal something about God's character that we'll see over and over. God acts to protect the helpless, comfort the afflicted, and embrace the despised and rejected. God cares about the down and out and that's the moral lesson I take away from this story.

God cares for the people who are ignored and stepped on. If we want to be followers of God, we should do the same.

Genesis 20 (Abraham's up to his old tricks)

Chapter 19 is the last we see of Lot and his unhappy family. In chapter 20 the story switches back to Abraham and Sarah. You can read it here in the New Revised Standard Version or here in The Message paraphrase version.

What happens with Abimelech in this chapter is very similar to variation of what happened with Pharaoh in Genesis 12:10-20. Abraham comes across like a con-man with God as his semi-willing partner in a scam to collect lots of good stuff.

The details aren't spelled out as explicitly here as in Genesis 12, but the pattern is close enough: 1) Abraham and Sarah come into a new land. 2) The ruler of the land wants so sleep with Sarah. 3) Abraham fears the ruler will kill him to take his wife so… 4) Abraham passes Sarah off as his sister. 5) The ruler takes Sarah into his home. 6) God speaks to the ruler, warning him away from Sarah. 7) Terrified, the ruler gives Sarah back to Abraham and also gives him a rich bribe to avoid the wrath of God.

So, what is the point of this odd story? That, if you've got God on your side you can get away with just about anything? While I don't doubt there are some who would interpret it that way, that's not the real point; it's just part of the background of how the story was written.

I've said before on this blog that not all biblical authors have the same understanding of God. In some stories, God only cares about Abraham and his descendants, the people of Israel. Foreigners are treated as unimportant, or even with a sense of contempt. In other stories (like Ruth and Jonah) foreigners are treated with respect and it is clear that God also cares for them.

This story obviously belongs to the first category. As far as the writer is concerned, foreigners like Abimelech don’t really matter so he sees no problem in showing God treating him unfairly, but I think this is the writer's issue and not God's. The story isn't rally about Abimelech, after all. It's about God and Abraham and their relationship, a relationship that is characterized time and again by Abraham's lack of trust in spite of God's trustworthiness.

Abraham has been promised life and abundance by God several times now, but in spite of this, he still has a lot of doubt. His scheme to pass Sarah off as his sister comes out of the (as it turns out unjustified) fear that the local ruler is going to have him killed in order to steal his wife. Rather than trusting in God to protect him, or showing some integrity as a husband, he throws his wife to the wolves. Abraham's priority is saving his own skin. He's not a faithful man in this story, not to Sarah and not to God.

But God is faithful to Abraham. The patriarch doesn't deserve to be saved but God saves him anyway. God has made Abraham a promise and will go to any length to keep that promise… even when Abraham has done nothing to be worthy of the promised blessing.

And that's the message in a nutshell: God keeps faith with people, even when people don't keep faith with God. It's a message of hope that when we give up, or alter, or make mistakes, or even do what we know is the wrong thing, God is still faithful to us. That's a massage of grace that is so much a part of God's character that it shows up even in a primitive, narrow-minded, intolerant of foreigners story like this.

Sodom and Gomorrah (the real story)

Sorry to have such a long break in postings; it's been a heck of a year.

The story of Sodom and the Cities of the Plain in chapter 19 of Genesis is one of the most infamous in the Hebrew Scriptures, mostly because of its association in modern debates about homosexuality. Frankly, though this is a popular reading of the text, it is a misreading. The only way to make this a story about homosexuality is to start with the conclusion then use convoluted logic to try to justify yourself.

As with any text, the best thing to do is to strip away any preconceived ideas you have about the story before reading it with a clear mind. Here is the story in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible and here it is in The Message paraphrase version.

The story opens as a pair of mysterious wanderers enters the city of Sodom. In the last chapter there were three of them, and when Abraham spoke to them, the text says he was speaking to the Lord. There isn't any explanation in the text about why there are now two men instead of three. A traditional explanation is that the three were God in human form with two angels, but the story itself doesn't offer any such explanation. While it irritates us modern people not to have a simple, logical answer, it's good to remember that any explanation like this we come up with is out own invention and not really a part of the story.

The travelers are now identified as "angels." The Hebrew word is malakim and literally means "messengers." There's nothing here to suggest these guys fit our traditional image of wings, white robes and a halo. As far we can tell, they look like anyone else and it doesn't seem to be the case that Lot (or anyone else in the city) suspects their true nature.

As I mentioned in chapter 18, the peoples we're dealing with in Genesis shared a tradition of hospitality. When a stranger showed up, you were supposed to offer them hospitality and protection. This was a matter of kindness but--even more important to the people of the time--it was a matter of honor (reputation). To give a guest lavish hospitality was to establish a reputation as a wealthy and generous person, which gave you a lot of standing in the community. To fail to do so was to gain the dishonorable reputation of being poor or stingy.

The angels say they are fine with sleeping in the plaza, but Lot insists. He might be doing this because he knows the plaza in Sodom isn't a safe place for strangers or he might be doing it because entertaining strangers is a good way to build up an honorable reputation. He could even be doing it from a mixture of motives. It's impossible to say for sure. In any case, the angels accept his offer and become his guests.

Then bad things begin to happen. The men and youths of the city learn that Lot is entertaining two strangers. They show up at his door, demanding that he send the strangers out. The men want to "know" them, and in the context it's pretty clear this means they want to gang rape them.

Let's stop there for a moment because this is the point where a lot of commentators claim the story is "obviously" about homosexuality. If a group of men wants to rape other men, they have to be gay, right?

Actually, that's pretty clearly not the case. If you look at gang rapes of men by men you find that most of the rapists are heterosexuals. Studies of the psychology of gang rape show that it's a crime of violence rather than of sexual desire. It's also a mob mentality sort of crime. Most of the perpetrators in a gang rape would normally never consider raping anyone but, caught up in the excitement, camaraderie and anonymity of the mob do it anyway.

The target of a gang rape isn't someone the mob members would normally want to have sex with either; it's just a convenient victim. In this case, the strangers were likely chosen because they had no social connections in the city and wouldn't be staying there. In other words, there weren't going to be any consequences from this crime. It's very similar to the story of the rape of the Levite's concubine in Judges 19 where the victim was a woman. In neither case did sexual orientation have anything to do with it; the mob just wanted a victim.

Lot decides he needs to protect his guests. This might be his compassion at work, but it's more likely his sense of honor. The obligation of a host is to protect his guests because doing so gives you the honorable reputation as a strong and brave man. Failing to do so gives you the reputation of being weak and cowardly. In a culture like this, where an honorable reputation is everything, people are willing to make terrible sacrifices to keep their honor intact.

That's probably why Lot (who has got to be one of the all-time worst fathers) does what he does next and offers his two virgin daughters to the crowd. He surely doesn't want to see his daughters gang raped and possibly killed but, in his culture, it was preferable to seeing his honorable reputation ruined. This is the same sort of honor-based thinking that led to fighting duels over insults and still leads to honor killings in many parts of the world. (As you can probably guess, I don't think this is a good thing, in Lot's age or ours.)

The mob insists on its chosen victims but the angels have their own card to play. They cause the men in the mob to go blind. This seems like poetic justice because the men were already blind in a sense. They were blind to the nature of the strangers, blind to the consequences of their actions, and pretty much blind to everything except for the excitement of being part of a mob.

There's an odd scene after the angels rescue Lot and his wife and daughters. They tell him to head for the hills but he doesn't like that plan and bargains with them to spare a small city (Zoar) so he can go there. (Arguing/bargaining with God is really a lot more common in the Hebrew Scriptures than we often assume.) The angels relent (winning arguments/bargaining sessions with God is also more common in the Hebrew Scriptures that we imagine) and spare the town.

Lot tries to persuade his daughters' fiancés to come with them but (as in the story of Noah) the people you try to rescue often don't listen. He runs with his family to Zoar as the cities are destroyed. His wife looks back and gets turned into salt. Then Lot hides out in the hills where his daughters get him drunk and seduce him (ick!) It's a pretty dramatic ending and leaves us with a lot of unanswered questions. Some of which are:

1) What made the cities so bad that God felt the need to destroy them?

Genesis tells us that they were really, really bad, though the writers don't feel it's necessary to be any more specific than this. Sodom is mentioned in a number of other places in the Bible, and they all say the people there were bad, but don't get specific either. The two exceptions are Ezekiel 16:46--which says it was social and economic injustice--and Jude 1:7 which says it was sexual immorality. You can see both ideas having some validity in a town that thinks it's okay to gang-rape or otherwise victimize helpless people like strangers. But the problem is pretty clearly the dehumanization and exploitation of others, not sexual orientation.

2) What's the deal with the fire and brimstone? And what's up with the pillar of salt?

I remember my 6th grade science teacher (who was a big Von Daniken http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_D%C3%A4niken fan) explaining to us this was clearly a reference to an atomic bomb, which must have been created by aliens from another world. I've heard others say that this must clearly be lightning, or meteors, or a volcano, or the supernatural power of God. Since there's no evidence that this story is in any way historical, I think it's just a picturesque way of talking about God's power and not meant to be taken too literally. Same thing with Lot's wife. The message seems to be "when God tells you not to look back, don’t look back." It may be that there was a pillar of salt out in the desert and the story was used to explain its presence, but this is another example of a tale from the Hebrew Scriptures that falls apart when you try to be too literal about it.

3) Doesn't this story make God out to be a ruthless mass-murderer?

The story of Sodom is like the story of Noah. Both show God as violent and judgmental, which might be a little easier to take if we had a better idea of what the "wicked great sinners" had done to deserve it. They are both ancient stories and reflect a primitive understanding of God which is gradually overshadowed by a more sophisticated view that focuses on God's compassion.

4) What's the point of the incest between Lot and his daughters?

It's probably added to the story as a taunt. The Israelites had a lot of problems with the Moabites and the Ammonites. They lived in the same territory and were often bloody enemies. Even when they were getting along, there was a lot of tension. This detail was probably made up as a way to insult the Moabites and Ammonites by saying it was an act of drunken incest that gave rise to their cultures.

5) What's the moral lesson here?

There's not always one in Bible stories, and there really isn't any kind of role model here. Even God doesn't come off very well in this story. The only lesson I see is: Don't victimize others like the people of Sodom did. When people are treated as objects to be abused or ignored, God doesn't like that.