Genesis 23-25: Put your hand under my thigh

Sarah dies at 127. Abraham spends about 1/2 of a sentence mourning his dead wife, and the entire rest of chapter 23 haggling for the price of burying her. To summarize, they try to let him bury her for free, but he begs to pay.

Next comes my new favorite bible verse, Genesis 24:2: "He said to the chief servant in his household, the one in charge of all that he had, 'Put your hand under my thigh.'" Yes, apparently the way you swear something in the bible is by putting your hand under someone's thigh. Hilarous.

Abraham asks the servant to go to his (Abraham's) family to find a wife for Isaac. Seriously, why with the rampant inbreeding, bible? Adam and Eve, Cain and whoever, Lot and his daughters, Sarah is Abraham's half sister (chapter 20), and now this.

Anyway, the servant sets off (with some other people...more servants possibly) for Abraham's family. He sits by a spring and makes this promise with himself (or God, I suppose) that the first marriageable girl who waters all of his camels will be the one who is supposed to be Isaac's wife.

So along comes Rebekah (Isaac's 2nd cousin...oh the rampant biblical inbreeding), and she waters the camels, and she's a virgin!!! The servant asks to stay at her house, and gives her a nose ring (what?).

They get to Rebekah's house, do a bunch of stuff like feed the camels and wash their feet, then when they try to give them food, Abraham's servant is like (paraphrasing), "There's no time for food! I have important stuff to say!" Why didn't he say it before they did all that other stuff, who knows.

So he explains his mission, and his little deal with God at the spring, and how Rebekah is therefore meant to marry Isaac. And he explains it in excruciating detail...it's like reading the entire chapter again.

Rebekah's family agrees that she should marry Isaac (Rebekah has shockingly little say in this, other than to agree to go right away instead of 10 days later), and she and the servants go back. As soon as they get back, she and Isaac apparently do it in his dead mother's tent. Err...kinky? No, that is just weird. So far the bible seems to really be all for (what some might consider) "sexual deviancy"...the inbreeding, the daughters basically raping Lot, now this bit of weirdness.

Abraham remarried after Sarah's death, and had 6 more kids. But Isaac is still the favorite...Abraham sent the other 6 away (with gifts!), and he left everything to Isaac when he died. Isaac is still God's favorite too, he's the only one who gets "blessed." The bible also refers to Hagar and this new wife as "concubines," which is just weird. I guess it just illustrates even further that Isaac is the favorite.

Anyway, Abraham dies and is buried with Sarah.

There is also a little blurb about Ishmael. It lists his 12 children, and says they are each tribe leaders (The 12 tribes of Israel? I've heard that phrase before, but I still don't know what it means).

There's considerably more about Isaac (he's the favorite!). Rebekah is barren...of course she is, I swear every woman in the bible is barren. Maybe if they'd knock off the inbreeding. Isaac prays to God, and lo and behold, a miracle! Rebekah gets pregnant with twins.

Apparently the kids were fighting in her uterus (ouch...), and God told her basically that they were going to fight all their lives. That just sounds strange, and unpleasant.

Anyway, the slightly older one was a hairy baby (Literally, hairy all over...WTF. Knock off that inbreeding, seriously, then maybe you won't have barren goat babies.) named Esau, and the younger one was Jacob (not hairy). Isaac liked Esau best (because Esau could hunt and Isaac liked meat...OK...), Rebekah liked Jacob best.

Then there's a random little story about how Esau "sold" Jacob his birthright for bean stew. I really don't know why these random, inconsequential moments are given such weight in the bible.

Genesis 18-19: The destruction of Sodom

Something, which is either 3 men, 3 angels, or God, appears to Abraham near his tent. He begs them to stay and rest, they agree. Abraham runs off and tells Sarah to get 20 quarts of flour and make bread. That is a lot of bread... Abraham then runs off to kill a calf, and he brings it to the men and they all eat. Then God says that Sarah will have a son in a year. Sarah heard this from inside the tent and laughs; she doesn't quite believe it. Then there was this bit of pedantry:

God: Why'd you laugh?
Sarah: Nuh-uh, I didn't laugh!
God: Yuh-uh you did!

The men walk off toward Sodom, and God tells Abraham that Sodom's "sin is grievous," so he's going to go there and see what's what. (Really, all-knowing God has to go to Sodom to see how bad it is? He can't just know?) Abraham then has this weird haggling session with God:

Abraham: Will you spare the city if there are 50 good people in it?
God: Yeah, OK
Abraham: How bout 45?
God: Fine
Abraham: 40?
God: OK
Abraham: 30?
God: Yeah, fine
Abraham: 20?
God: K
Abraham: 10?
God: K

Then he stops. How about not destroying a even single good person, God? Really?

I've heard this sort of ethical question before (mostly on star trek)...how many innocent people is it OK to wipe out? Now we know the answer, the bible says it's 10. See, I am learning things.

The next chapter starts with "The 2 angels arrived at Sodom." I thought it was 3 that set off from Abraham's tent. But, whatever.

They find Lot at the gate of the city, and he basically badgers them into staying with him. Later that evening, the house was surrounded with men demanding that Lot send the 2 angels out so they can have sex with them. So obviously, Lot offers the mob his 2 virgin daughters instead. Really, Lot, really? That's a despicable act if I ever heard one. The angels pull Lot inside and make all the men outside blind.

The angels tell Lot to gather up his family and go to the mountains, because they are going to destroy the city (and apparently all the other nearby cities). Lot asks if they could just go to that other city instead, and the angels promise to spare that one city. So Lot runs away with his wife and daughters.

I want to know why Lot gets to live. The story is the people of Sodom are horrible and need to be destroyed...and I guess if the angel-raping mob is representative of the city as a whole, I could sort of see that. But is Lot really any better? He offers his virgin daughters to the mob. I don't care what anybody says, that is disgusting and he deserves to die with the would-be angel-rapers.

This is all assuming, of course, that God is vengeful and cruel, and doesn't much care about actually doing anything to make people better. Seriously, God's big solution to everything is to just destroy everything when things get tough, surely he could do better.

Anyway, Lot and family are running away, and his wife looks back and turns into a pillar of salt. OK... As usual, I don't get it. I guess it must be symbolic of something. But as literal truth, that makes no sense.

Lot and his 2 daughters end up holed up in a mountain cave, where the daughters hatch this brilliant scheme: let's have sex with our father! Brilliant. So one night, they get him super drunk, and the one sleeps with him...and the next night they get him super drunk, and the other sleeps with him. The bible is very clear that Lot doesn't know what's going on. And they both get pregnant and have sons. What a charming story.

So I was kind of interested in this story, because it's one of those that get trotted out by the anti-gay wingnuts, in that, "the bible says it's wrong and this story proves it," way. Really, I don't see it. God destroyed Sodom because the people there were so bad, and I guess the rapist mob was an example of that. And I would agree, that would be bad. But it says nothing about consensual homosexual relationships, which is what these wingnuts fight so hard against.

In this story, there was a mob of men who wanted to rape men (I assume the angels looked like men). And what the wingnuts claim is that it was the men having sex with men part that was so wrong. But would it have been OK if that mob wanted to rape women instead? That would be heterosexual, so I guess it would be OK. Really? Ugh. Maybe that would be OK with God and right-wing nutcases, but it's not OK with me...

If anything, I could see where this story says that God frowns on rapist mobs, and as usual overreacts by destroying everything. I don't see where it has anything to do with gay marriage, or homosexuality in general, like the wingnuts claim.