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.

Arguing With God - Genesis 17-18

I haven't ever counted the number of times that God appears to tell Abraham about the Covenant. It happens quite a bit for a couple of reasons. First, anytime you find something repeated in scripture it's because that thing is important and the authors want you to pay attention. Second, the several variations of the covenant probably reflect the focus of the different writers and editors who put the story into its final form. There's some more information about that in this article.

There's a reiteration of the covenant in chapter 17 but not enough new for me to want to comment on. In chapter 18 though, something remarkible happens.

Abraham is at his camp when three strangers appear out of the desert. He offers them generous hospitality, which is not surprising. Ancient Hebrew cultre had a code of hospitality similar to the objigation of diyafa among the Bedouins. That's something worth noting, because the way these travellers are given or denied hospitality is very important through the rest of their story.

One of the strangers tells Abraham that, in one year's time, he will have the long awaited son that God has promised. This knowledge reveals that these are no ordinary travelers. On hearing the news, Sarah laughs, and thus the boy is to be names Isaac, which means (roughly) "laughter."

When the strangers (now explicitly identified in the text as God) start to go, they hesitate. God is heading to the Cities of the Plain, Sodom and Gomorrah. There is some great wickedness in these cities and God is going to destroy them. The nature of the wickedness is not revealed and has been the cause of much speculation. I'll get into that in some detail in my next posting. For now I'll just say it is not homosexuality.

Next comes the amazing part of the story. Having heard about God's plan, Abraham decdes to argue with the Almighty. He does it respectfully, to be sure, but he has a different idea about what should happen and isn't shy about saying so.

Abraham thinks that the cities should be spared for the sake of the good people in them. He reminds God that he is supposed to be the God of Justice and such an unjust action doesn't fit with that. He challenges God to act like God.

God agrees. If there are even 50 good people in the city, he will spare it for their sake. "What about 45?" Abraham asks, "Surely you're not going to let 5 people make the difference for the whole city. The negotiations go from there, Abraham acting more like a customer haggling with a merchant than a worshipped with his God. Eventually he gets God down to 10. If there are that many good people in the city, God will relent.

This story flies in the face of what we are used to. We do not expect a faithful man to argue with God. Many preachers will tell you that God is always right and we have no business questioning or challenging God. They will justify some of the ugliest stories in the Bible saying: "It's God's will, therefore it's automatically good and should not be questioned."

That kind of unthinking faith is not for Abraham. If he sees something that is cruel or unjust, he's going to challenge it, even if it means taking on God. This is something that we will see many times inth eOld Testament. We see Job questioning God, and we see it in the Psalms. True faith isn't the same as bline obedience. True faith is an honest relationship, and that means you're going to argue sometimes.

Another thing that strikes me about this passage is that God doesn't strike Abraham odwn, or even critize him for arguing. God seems comfortable with being challenged, as if that's a proper thing for the faithful to do.

I think we can learn a lot from this story.

Merry Christmas!

New Blog

I've got a new blog that goes through the New Testament chapter by chapter. Come and join me.

The Other Son: Genesis 16

We've seen great faith in Abraham in chapter 15 but in the very next chapter he's back to serious doubting again.

Up until now, the women in the story have played a background role but in chapter 16 of Genesis Abram's wife Sarai takes a hand. She doubts God and thinks this idea of a son by normal means is ridiculous so she comes up with a plan B. Sarai gives Abram one of her female slaves, an Egyptian named Hagar to sleep with. When Hagar becomes pregnant, it seems the problem is solved.

Except it isn't. In the ancient Middle East, a woman's status depended on her ability to produce a son. Sarai has just promoted Hagar from being her personal slave, to being the mother of the heir. She has created a dangerous rival.

We don't know what relationship these two women had before but, from this point on, it is poisonous. Hagar taunts Sarai mercilessly and Sarai retaliates with such brutality that Hagar flees into the desert to escape. This is Abram at his worst, he has the power in his household, but does nothing to help. Effectively he tells Sarai to do whatever she wants to the other woman and washes his hands of all responsibility.

With no kindness from any human being in her life, the pregnant slave flees into the wilderness. That's where she encounters the angel of God and something remarkable happens. The angel blesses her with the same sort of blessing that Abraham has received. He tells her what to name her son and what kind of man he will be and says that Ishmael's descendants, like Abram's, will be a huge multitude.

It's another story that shows God's compassion for someone who is powerless, despised, and vulnerable. Unfortunately this story also reflects the dark reality of ancient times. Rather than setting Hagar free from slavery, the angel tells her to go back to her abuser and put up with the situation.

So . . . what do we do with this story?

I've heard some people try to justify God's words in this.

"It's okay that God sent her back because God was going to bless Ishmael."

"It's okay that God sent her back because God had a greater plan for her."

"It's okay that God sent her back . . . just because. We aren't supposed to question things like this."

"It's not really an issue because this is not a literal story."

There are a lot more reasons like this that can be offered, but I don't think they serve us very well. If we try too hard to justify this story then we can use it (as many have) to justify terrible things. This passage, along with the New Testament Letter of Philemon were used by preachers in the old South as "proof" that runaway slaves should be returned to their masters. It is still used by some socially conservative churches to justify sending abused wives back to their abusers.

Part of what this chapter does is to remind us that God, and not the Bible, has to be the center of our faith. If we are going to be faithful to the teachings and example of Jesus we cannot accept a story like this uncritically as a moral example. We have come a long way from the culture of slave owners and women used as property and cannot afford to return to it.

Coming to Faith: Genesis 15

I have to confess, I don't enjoy the story of Abram/Abraham as much as I do most of the other Genesis stories. The story seems choppy to me and the main human characters are hard to like. Tradition makes a great deal of what a great guy Abraham was and the New Testament refers back ot him as a man of profound faith--a real role-model.

I can't see it. There are passages where Abram comes across as wise, kind, brave and faithful, but they're scattered in with a lot of bad behavior. His wife, Sarai, isn't much of a treasure either. Granted, as a woman, she has less choice about her life than her husband, but she is still less than likable. In fact there's nobody in this story it's easy to like.

In Chapter 15 we find Abram doubting God. He has the blessing but he doesn't have a son to leave everything to. In Abram's time, and really through the whole of the Old Testament, there is no real idea of an afterlife. There is heaven, shere God and other celestial beings live, but there's no belief that humans go there when they die. Humans, good, bad, and anything in-between, all go to Sheol. This Hebrew word is sometimes translated "Hell" but it's not a place of judgment, punishment, or reward. It was just conceived of as a place where all people lingered fter death. With no belief in an afterlife, the ancients thought that the only form of immortality open to them was having male heirs.

Theologan Walter Brueggemann in his commentary on Genesis says that this is perhaps the most important chapter in the Abraham story. God promises blessing, Abraham challenges the promise as impossible, God reassures Abram, and Abram believes. In this passage, he suggests, Abram learns to trust enough that he can have hope in a hopeless situation, and this is what faith really is.

This is what make makes Abraham a role model. It's not his courage, because he sometimes acts like a coward; it's not his wisdom, because he sometimes shows awful judgment; it's not his compassion, because he often treats others badly. But Abram has something wonderful in spite of his many flaws. He has faith and this allows him to keep hope, even in hopeless situations. This more than positive thinking because it is seen in his actions. Positive thinking is a good attitude to have, but having hope and basing your decisions on it, even in situations that seem hopeless, is even more important. It is a quality that helps us to be better people, doing the things that are compassionate, just, and true even when it would be much more practical not to. It pushes us beyond out limits as we choose to trust in God's limitless grace.

The Thrilling Adventures of Abram's Nephew, Lot: Genesis 13 and 14

Chapters 13 and 14 of Genesis move away from the central story of Abram and Sarai. The story of Lot is not as well known as the story of Abram and Sarai, and you might call it a less-successful spin-off. It's kind of the biblical equivalent of "Joannie Loves Chachi."

The story starts with Abram returning to the Negeb a rich man with lots of flocks and herds. The problem is, Abram's extended family had gotten so big and wealthy that the land can't support them any longer. There is limit to how big a group of nomadic herdsmen can get before they start to run out of water and grass. It soon becomes clear to Abram and his nephew Lot that they have to part company for the good of everyone involved. As the head of the family, Abram has the right to choose the best land for himself. In an act of generosity he lets Lot make the choice and trusts in God to survive. Lot settles on the plain by the cities of Sodom and Gamorrah and Abram moves to the Oaks of Mamre.

War breaks out and the complicated alliences call for Lot to fight on the side of Sodom and Gomorrah. Things go badly and Lot is taken prisoner, along with treasure and women. With the kings defeated, it's up to Abrtam to save the day. He and his servants defeat the enemies, and rescue Lot, the treasure, and the women. Abram humbly refuses any reward and the mysterious King Melchizedek of Salem shows up to bless Abram with bread and wine, and the story ends on a happy note. Abram, model of faith and courage that he is, has saved the day.

There are a number of questions that this story raises. I'll answer as many of them as well as I'm able.

1. What's Up With Abraham? You may have noticed that Abraham seems like a different person than he did in Chapter 12. There he was a coward and a swindler while here he is a strong and brave, the very model of faithful living. And this won't be the last time it happens; through the rest of his story Abraham switches from wise hero to paranoid con-man with alarming regularity. If this was a literal story we'd have to suspect mental illness.

What's actually going on is that there are several stories about Abraham that have been woven together. Just how many stories and who wrote them is a very difficult question because this section of Genesis is one of the most difficult for scholars to sort out. The result is that it's impossible to say what Abraham was really like. It's tempting for believers to pull out the nice passages and say he was a great guy, and it's tempting for non-believers to pull out the nasty passages and say he was a monster. Doing either of these things says a lot more about us than it does about Abraham.

2. Does God Love Country Folk Better than City Slickers? That's obviously not the case since God loves all people, but this story certainly puts city folk in a bad light. When Abram and Lot split, Abram keeps the life of a nomadic herdsman and settles near the Oaks of Mamre whole Lot throws in with the cities on the plain, Sodom and Gomorrah which are known for their (unspecified) wickedness. This is the first hint of something we'll see a lot in the Old Testament. The worship of god begins among the nomads but keeos drifting into the cities where the rich and powerful try to appropriate it for themseleves. That leass a number of the writers to have a healthy mistrust of cities and the people who live there.

3. what About Melchizedek? There is a mysterious priest/king called Melchizedek who blesses Abram with bread and wine. There are some interesting traditions about this man, but very little that we actually know. first he is the priest of El Elyon or "God Most High." This might be a reference to God but that name was also used for the high god of the Canaanite people. It's not clear whether "Melchizedek is a name or a title, and it's not clear what it literally means. He's said to be the king of
salem and there's a rabbinic tradition that Salem might be another name for Jerusalem, but it's not at all certain that this is correct.

The name Melchizedek shows up in other scriptures, but it's pretty mysterious there too. It appears in Psalm 100 and verse 4 of the Psalm is quoted in Hebrews 5 where Jesus is called a priest of the order of Melchizedek. The idea there is that, while Jesus is not a priest in the usual tradition of Israel (you have to inheirit the role from your father) he is still the kind of priest that Melc hizedek was: one appointed by God.

There are more questions than answers in this section of Genesis, which may be one reason we don't read it as often. :-)

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.

Noah and the Flood: Genesis 6:5-9:17

Read the story here in parallel versions of Genesis 6:5-22, Genesis 7, Genesis 8, and Genesis 9:1-17.

This is one of those stories that everyone knows, even if they don't know anything else about the Bible. Most of us read this as children, or saw a movie or cartoon version of it. These are so many meorable images, from the ark, to the pairs of animals coming on board, to the rainbow that they make this one of the best loved stories of the Bible.

We are still in the part of the Bible where stories are all story and no history, though there has been a lot of effort to find some historical evidence of this particular story. Partly, that's because there are so many legends of a great flood. The Greeks told the story of Deucalion and the flood, the Sumerians and Babylonians told the story of Ut-Napishtim who also built an ark, and there are many other stories from around the world about a great flood.

Geologists tell us that there have been a number of global floods but none of them happened at a time when there were people on the earth. The possible exception is a hypothetical flood created by the draining of the gigantic Lake Agassiz in North America in about 8400 BC. But, if the Genesis flood was historical, it was more likely limited to the Mediterranean region. There are a several interesting possibilities, notably, the hypothetical Black Sea flooding in 5600 BC or the tsunami created by the erruption of Thera in about 1630-1600 BC. The discussion on the flood is ongoing, as are the efforts of people to find Noah's Ark but this has not met with success. If any part of the story is historical, we can't prove it. Fortunately, the meaning of the story doesn't depend on whether it's historical or not.

The story begins with the Lord looking out over the world and despairing. Human beings have not turned out well and the Yahweh sees a need to wipe the slate clean and start over.

This is a frightening image. Knowing what we do about human nature, it's hard to believe that every single human being, except for Noah and his family, were so terrible that they deserved to be killed. That's at odds with our experience, and with many other stories in the Bible, that show that there is bad in the best of us and good in the worst. Killing everyone and starting over is a monstrous overreaction.

If you think that this doesn't sit well with the story of a just, loving, and infallible God, you're right. The people who first told this story didn't have any of those assumptions about God. They lived in the midst of a bunch of cultures whose religions taught of angry, unjust gods who considered humans as slaves or pawns. In fact, before they were called Hebrews, Israelites, or Jews, the people of the Old Testament were a part of these cultures and worshipped the same gods. Their expectations of a deity were pretty unsophisticated compared to ours.

Let's set aside our preconceptions about God for a moment and look at just what we see in the story. First, when the Lord sees that people are evil, he isn't wrathful as much as heart-broken, and regrets having created them. The word used in Genesis 6:6 is that the Lord "repents" of having made humans.

If we jump all the way to the end of the story, we see the Lord change his mind again. It seems that wiping out the human race with a flood wasn't such a good idea after all. When the Lord realizes this, he makes a pledge; a covenant with all the world, never to do this again.

When we look at the flood story, we can get a clear idea of what the people who first heard it believed about God.

1) They believed that God cared about the people he made and wanted them to live up to their potential. When this didn't happen, it caused God grief.

2) They believed that God sometimes made mistakes and sometimes changed his mind.

3) They believed that God was capable of making rash and foolish decisions, like wiping out the human race with a flood.

4) They believed that God was honest in admitting his mistakes faithful in learning from them.

If you take it literally, this is a story about God learning what it means to be God. He still has a number of flaws, but, like any first time parent, he's learning, growing, and getting better in the process.

It's a charming story that tells us more about the people who wrote it than it does about God. They were still getting rid of the baggage of the Near Eastern religions they had come from and getting used to the idea of the true God. We will see this a lot as we go through the Old Testament; some stories will have wonderfully insightful understandings of God, while others will slip back into the old understanding of a petty and angry God. In the story of Noah we get a clear picture of people taking a giant step forward in their understanding of God.

I've skimmed this story to pull out the meaning but don't worry; in the next blog, I'll go through and highlight the interesting details.

Giants and Demigods: Genesis 6:1-4a

Read the story in parallel versions here.

The beginning of chapter 6 brings us out of the genealogy and takes a quick detour into the land of the giants before moving on to the story of Noah.

Verse 2 reads: the sons of God noticed that the daughters of men were beautiful. They looked them over and picked out wives for themselves. A little later, verse 4 contiuues the idea with: This was back in the days (and also later) when there were giants in the land. The giants came from the union of the sons of God and the daughters of men. These were the mighty men of ancient lore, the famous ones.

The phrase "sons of God" is usually interpreted to mean angels, or at least some sort of heavenly beings. In this brief and mysterious passage we see the heavenly beings becoming attracted to human women and having children by them. The larger than life children of these unions are called "giants" in some translations and as the Nephilim--which literally means "the fallen ones"--in others.

This idea of divine beings (usually male) mating with humans (usually female) and having children with them is not limited to the Bible; in fact it is a widespread idea in different cultures across the world. The best known examples are probably what come to us from Greek mythology where the gods of Olympus seem to have had no self control at all. Stories of the gods (especially Zeus) impregnating human women are everywhere.

The Greek word for children like this is demigods which means "half-gods." They are human in many ways but are usually much stronger (like Heracles), much bigger (like Orion), much more beautiful (like Helen of Troy) or much cleverer (like Theseus) than normal humans. As half-gods, these characters could do all sorts of things that mere humans couldn't. They slew terrible monsters, crossed into the realm of the dead and returned, and dealt with the gods more-or-less as equals.

The ancient people of Israel would not have been familiar with the Greek legends, but they knew the stories of other peoples of the ancient Near East. During the time when they were living as captives in the Babylonian Empire they would have heard the story of a demigod called Gilgamesh. The pharaohs of Egypt claimed to be sons of the god Horus and thus to be demigods. For that matter, most of the great kings of the region, whether Assyrian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Persian, Philistine, etc. claimed to be descended from the gods and thus considered themselves better than ordinary mortals.

It's interesting that, as important as these larger than life heroes were in other cultures, they don't rate much more than a footnote in the Bible. It's true that Samson had super-strength but that was a blessing given by God rather than a result of having a divine parent. And the miracles that people like Moses and Elijah did were also by the grace of God. Even Jesus, who is called Son of God by Christians, is very different from a demigod (there will be more on this when we get to the New Testament).

The overwhelming number of heroes in the Bible are ordinary people. They aren't necessarily smarter or stronger, or more beautiful than anyone else around them. They make mistakes, they feel fear, and some of them are really awful people. The heroes of the Bible don't succeed because they are better than mere mortals, but by the grace of God. The Bible isn't an epic about great heroes; it's the story of a God who loves ordinary people, and who helps them succeed in spite of their weakness and mistakes. Even the kings in the Bible aren't seen as semi-divine figures to be obeyed, but as flawed humans who are given the responsibility to serve the people.

I think this short section is kind of a nod to the other religions. I suspect that when the Babylonians would taunt the Jews with the the idea that their ancient heroes were giants and their Great King was a demigod, the Jews could point to this story and say: "Yeah, we know all about that sort; we call then the Nephilim. They just aren't very important."

I think that's also what's behind the reference to God limiting human age (to a still-impressive 120 years) in verse 2. It's a signal that this isn't going to be a book about demigod heroes and near-immortals from long ago and far away. The Bible is a book about ordinary people written for ordinary people who want to form a relationship with our extraordinary God.

Fun With Genealogy: Genesis 5:1-32

When I say "fun" in this post, I'm being a little sarcastic. There are a lot of sections of the Bible filled with this sort of detail. In addition to who begat whom, there are lists of how many cubits long something should be, or how many omers it should hold, or how many shekels it should weigh. There are lists of what kind of structures you should build and what the building materials should be, and what the rituals of worship are, and what the priests should wear when conducting them.

There is a theory of who wrote the first five books of the Bible called the documentary hypothesis which suggests that these sections come from what scholars call P or the priestly source.

While these details were important for the priestly writers of ancient times, they are really tedious for modern readers and I'm going to skim over them in this study so we can focus on the major stories.

There are several points I'd like to pause and take a look at. The first is verses 1-2 which say . . .

This is the family tree of the human race: When God created the human race, he made it godlike, with a nature akin to God. He created both male and female and blessed them, the whole human race.

This reaffirms the idea we saw in Genesis 1, that all humans, male and female, are equally made in the image of God. It also reminds us that the blessings of God aren't just for one group of people, but for the whole human race.

Another interesting feature of this section is the amazing lifespans that the genealogy lists.

Adam - 930 years
Seth - 912 years
Enosh - 905 years
Kenan - 910 years
Mahalalel - 895 years
Jared - 962 years
Enoch - 365 years (then vanished into thin air)
Methuselah - 969 years
Lamech - 777 years

Looking as this list, it's natural to ask whether these men really lived so long. Biblical literalists says that they did, and come up with elaborate theories to explain how this is possible. A few have said that there must have been a mistranslation somewhere and that the word "years" should really read "months." This gives more realistic ages, but creates other problems, such as making Mahalalel only 5 years old when he became a father.

A more likely explanation can be found by looking at the ages listed for the kings of other ancient Near eastern people. The Persian epic poem Shahnameh lists kings who reigned for as long as 1000 years and the Sumerian King's List talks about men who ruled for as long as 72,000 years. Saying that a great ruler or ancestor lived for an impossibly long time was simply a way of showing respect in the ancient world. It seems to have been a custom that the writers of the Bible also followed.

Cain and Abel: Genesis 4:1-26

You can read the story in parallel versions here.

I've said several times that these early Genesis stories aren't meant to be taken literally. This chapter is no exception; in fact, it's where we find the strongest evidence that it is more like a parable. If we take the story we've seen in chapters 2-3 literally, then Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel would be the only four people on earth. Yet, when Cain is driven away he worries about the other people of the earth killing him, he finds a woman to marry, and builds a city for his son. None of this makes sense unless the world is already filled with people. That would be a terrible problem if this were a literal story but, since it isn't, we can proceed without letting that kind of question distract us.

Cain and Abel are brothers, one herds animals and the other farms plants. Both brothers offer a sacrifice, they best they have to offer. God prefers Abel's offering (an animal sacrifice) over Cain's (an offering of produce) and problems ensue. Cain gets jealous, jealousy leads to an argument, and the argument leads to murder.

It is easy to identify with Cain's feelings as he discovers that life can be unfair. Most of us have been there, and many have reacted the way he does, by getting angry and sulking. It happens with we get passed over for promotion, or the person we're interested in falls for someone else, or when someone else seems to receive a shower of blessings that should really go to us. Most of us don't resort to murder, like Cain, but we do know what he's feeling.

There's a test of character here. All of us experience unfairness and jealousy; what matters is how we deal with it. God's words to Cain suggest one way to cope. They are expressed especially well in The Message version . . .

"Why this tantrum? Why the sulking? If you do well, won't you be accepted? And if you don't do well, sin is lying in wait for you, ready to pounce; it's out to get you, you've got to master it."

This saying sounds simple at first, but the first part is controversial. Is God implying that Cain didn't do well and that's why his sacrifice wasn't rejected? There are some modern conservative Protestant commentators claim that Abel's blood-sacrifice was superior because it anticipated the atoning death of Christ on the cross. The problem with that is that it is a case of eisegesis, or of shoehorning our own ideas in and changing the meaning of the story. It's fine to believe in a doctrine, but we should be more concerned with what the text actually says than what we want it to say.

There is also an old Jewish midrash that says there must have been something wrong with Cain's sacrifice to explain God's rejection. While this is possible, there isn't much evidence to support it in the story. The only thing that is clear is that Cain is too worried about God's approval, and too quick to do something terrible when he doesn't get it. We can see the truth of God's second statement all too clearly. Cain is caught in the web of sin/jealosy. If he doesn't master his worst impulses, they are going to master him.

The same thing is happening here as in the story of the forbidden fruit. There is a chance for the brothers to live in harmony. God's preference of Abel would still sting, but if the brothers had a loving and trusting relationship, they could get past that. Instead, Cain kills his brother then tried to evade his guilt. When God asks him where Abel is, he knows the answer but tries to hide his guilt.

The deception is useless. Cain may not live in harmony with creation, but God does, and Cain's blood is screaming to be noticed. Like Adam and Eve before him, Cain discovers that there is no hiding from God.

Like the punishment of Adam and Eve, Cain's sentence reflects what he has done. He has rejected harmony with his family so now he becomes a man without family, wandering the earth. He has rejected harmony with creation by polluting the ground with his brother's blood, so now he will have to fight against the earth to farm. He has rejected harmony with God, and now he is banished from God's presence.

This exile is hard, but is is more merciful than we would expect. Usually murder calls for an execution, but God shows mercy by giving a lighter sentence. More than that, God places a mark on Cain. There has been a lot of speculation on what kind of mark this might have been, but the story doesn't say. We are only told that the mark is a form of God's protection and that it will keep the people he meets from killing him. Cain has turned away from God, but God has not entirely turned away from Cain.