Jen Reads the Bible

Genesis 15: Another Promise For Abram

It's time for Abram to chat with God again!

This time, God tells Abram that he will shield him from danger and give him a great reward.

Abram is a bit impatient with God, saying, "Sovereign Lord, what good will your reward do me since I have no children? My only heir is Eliezar of Damascus [his slave]. You have given me no children, and one of my slaves will inherit my property." (Genesis 15:2-3)

God's like, "I keep telling you that you'll have a ton of descendants. Believe me already!"

Abram decides to trust God, which pleases him. So, God continues to promise Abram the land he lives in.

Abram decides he needs some proof. God says, "Bring me a cow, a goat, and a ram, each of them three years old, and a dove and a pigeon."

Abram brings said animals to God, cuts them in half and places the halves into two rows. When night fall comes, God says, "Your descendants will be strangers in a foreign land; they will be slaves there and will be treated cruelly for four hundred years. But I will punish the nation that enslaves them, and when they leave that foreign land, they will take great wealth with them. You yourself will live to a ripe old age, die in peace, and be buried." (Genesis 15:13-15)

Uh, thanks?

Then a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch appear between the two rows of animal halves and God makes a covenant with Abram that his descendants will get all the land from Egypt to the Euphrates River... you know, after the 400 years of slavery and stuff.

There is no instant gratification where God is concerned.

Genesis 14: War in the Valley

A whole bunch of kings in the greater Dead Sea vicinity get pissed off at the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah and their neighbors, so war breaks out. They fight in the Siddim Valley, which is full of tar pits - making battle tough for the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The kings fall into the tar pits and the other kings (there are so many different kings in this chapter that it's really tough to keep track) take everything from Sodom and Gomorah, including Lot and Lot's stuff.

When Abram gets the news, he heads out to rescue Lot. He uses some primo military strategy, dividing his army and attacking the "bad" kings at night, and kicks some butt. "He chased them as far as Hobah, north of Damascus, and got back all the loot that had been taken. He also brought back his nephew Lot and his possessions, together with the women and the other prisoners." (Genesis 14:15-16)

When Abram brings the loot, ladies and prisoners back to Sodom, the king of Sodom tells Abram, "Keep the loot, but give me back all my people." (Genesis 14:21) Abram does the king of Sodom one better by giving back both the loot and the peeps. What a stand-up guy he is.

Genesis 13: See Ya, Lot!

After the incident in Egypt, Abram, Lot and the rest of the crew settle in southern Canaan (I suppose the famine was over). But Abram and Lot had so many animals that they started running out of land for them to graze upon.

So Lot takes off for the Jordan Valley and camps near Sodom, "whose people were wicked and sinned against the Lord." (Genesis 13:13) Foreshadowing, much?

Abram stayed in southern Canaan and God visits him and tells him how awesome he is and how he's going to have a bunch of descendants and other nice stuff. Abram knows God likes his altars, so he builds one for him.

Genesis 12: Meet Abram

Many years after the Tower of Babel incident, our story find Abram (a distant descendant of Noah's son Shem) chillin' in the town of Haran outside of Canaan. God has a meet and greet with him and tells him to leave his country and follow God to a new land where he'll build a great nation.

Abram thinks that sounds like a good deal, so he packs up his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot and all their slaves and head to Canaan (building a few altars to God along the way). God tells Abram that Canaan is going to be where Abram's nation is built.

But, Canaan isn't as nice as it seemed in the brochures - it's been hit by a pretty major famine. Abram decides to wait out the famine elsewhere and heads to Egypt.

When the group is about to cross the border into Egypt, Abram realizes that the hotness of his wife Sarai may be too much for the Egyptians to handle, so he hatches one of the stupider plans in the Bible so far: "You are a beautiful woman. When the Egyptians see you, they will assume that you are my wife, and so they will kill me and let you live. Tell them that you are my sister; then because of you they will let me live and treat me well." (Genesis 12:11-13)

Inexplicably, Abram's plan works.

Sarai is taken to the palace to live with the king of Egypt. (They didn't have divorce back then, so you had to come up with a wacky plan like this if you wanted to get rid of your wife... nowadays, this sort of thing only works in 80s sitcom reruns.) In turn, Abram gets all the sheep, goats, donkeys and slaves a man could possibly want. Score!

But, God did not approve of this "divorce loophole," if you will, and sends some diseases to the Egyptians. The king is no fool and figures out that it's all Abram's fault. As a result, Abram and his peeps (including lovely, passed-around Sarai) are tossed out the door and Abram learns a valuable lesson: don't trade your wife to a king in exchange for donkeys - God always finds out. (I should have incorporated that into my wedding vows!)

Genesis 11: The Tower of Babel

In the beginning, everyone spoke the same language and they settled in Babylon. It was all very convenient.  Then they built a big tower (Tower of Babel - have you heard of it?).

This was just a little to easy for God. Clearly it was time to put mankind in its place again.

"...[God] said, ' Now then, these are all one people and they speak one language; this is just the beginning of what they are going to do. Soon they will be able to do anything they want! Let us go down and mix up their language so that they will not understand each other." (Genesis 11:6-7)

And thus everyone was scattered around the earth and their languages were jumbled.

So much for world peace.

Genesis 10: Nimrod the Conqueror!

Noah listens to God and has a crap load of kids who, in turn, also have a crap load of kids. Turn to Genesis 10 for a full listing.

Noah's descendants spread around the Earth and provide the Bible's explanation for the different races. Of course, Noah's descendants Libya, Egypt, Spain, Cyprus, etc. are the ancestors of the people who have those names. It almost makes sense!

Most fun in this chapter is the description of Noah's great-grandson, Nimrod, who became the world's first conqueror. "By the lord's help he was a great hunter, and that is why people say, 'May the Lord make you as great a hunter as Nimrod!' " (Genesis 10:9) I wonder if that really was a saying back then? How did it come to mean a stupid person?

Genesis 9: The Real Reason Rainbows Are Awesome

God, newly remorseful after killing all life on earth that wasn't "ark-bound," makes a covenant with Noah. The long and short of it:

1. All animals, birds, etc. will live in fear of mankind
2. Don't eat meat with blood still in it (not sure if that extends to a nice, rare steak)
3. If anyone kills a human, they'll be killed too
4. Noah must have many, many children to repopulate the earth - yup, that means we're all related to Noah and that person you're sleeping with is at least a very distant cousin. Try not to think about that too much.

"As a sign of this everlasting covenant which I am making with you and with all living beings, I am putting my bow in the clouds. It will be the sign of my covenant with the world. Whenever I cover the sky with clouds and the rainbow appears, I will remember my promise to you and to all the animals that a flood will never again destroy all living beings." (Genesis 9:12-15)

Fire, on the other hand, is fair game.

Later in this chapter, Noah becomes the first man to get drunk and wind up naked on the floor of his tent. When his son Ham sees him, he runs out to his brothers to deliver the juicy gossip. Brothers Shem and Japheth don't find it as humorous and cover their poor dad up. The next day, Noah curses Ham's son, Canaan, to slavery.

Seems like a bit of an overreaction, but I suppose by Biblical standards it really isn't.

Genesis 8: Hooray, No More Rain!

"God had not forgotten Noah and all the animals with him in the boat; he caused a wind to blow, and the water started going down." - Genesis 8:1

150 days later, the water was gone. Noah is 601 years old. (He's the only one left that can live beyond God's previous "ye shall only live to be 120" decree from a few chapters ago.)

God is also nice enough to realize that it's hard to release one's sexual tension when you're stuck on a boat with your kids and a bunch of smelly animals (of both clean and unclean varieties, of course). He says to Noah, "Go out of the boat with your wife, your sons, and their wives. Take all the birds and animals out with you, so that they may reproduce and spread out over all the earth." (Genesis 8:15-17)

God doesn't have to tell Noah twice!

Thankful to be off the damn boat, Noah ends this chapter by offering a sacrifice to God. He takes "one of each kind of ritually clean animal and bird, and burned them whole as a sacrifice on the altar." Seems like a waste to let them take up space on the ark if you're just going to burn them alive when the flood is done, but who am I to question the ways of the Bible?

Lucky for human-kind, God likes the burning flesh. "The odor of the sacrifice pleased the Lord, and he said to himself, 'Never again will I put the earth under a curse because of what man does; I know that from the time he is young his thoughts are evil. Never again will I destroy all living beings, as I have done this time." (Genesis 8:21)

Talk about a resolution everyone can get behind!

Genesis 7: Something About An Ark

It's not just Noah and his family on the ark, Noah also gets to bring "seven pairs of each kind of ritually clean animal, but only one pair of each kind of unclean animal". Sounds like there will be some smelly nights on the ark.

Flood comes, forty days, forty nights... la, la. Even I know this part!

What I didn't know was that the water didn't go down for a hundred and fifty days. What were Noah and his family eating to stay alive so long? Did God provide MREs for everyone?

Religion and 9/11

It's September 11 - a day that we'll all remember forever.  We all have a story about this day... what we were doing, how we found out, loved ones lost, etc.  And each of these stories sort of fade together into a singular experience.

We were all in it together on that day. We didn't think about how we were different, we thought about all the ways we were the same - the values we shared... what it meant to be an American.

As I start my journey through the Bible, I've been thinking about people use religion as a way to validate themselves... as a way of being part of a group.  It was something I always felt was lacking in my life since I didn't grow up with organized religion.  I wasn't part of any of those groups.  

But, as time went on, I felt the need to be part of those groups less and less.  It just seemed like there was no way to bridge those gaps.  I didn't have that foundational belief in god or allah or buddha or whoever.  And, as I started creating my own values and beliefs outside of religion, the idea of religion made less and less sense.

And it made even less sense on September 11, 2001 as I rushed across the D.C. with no idea what was going on other than that it was really, really bad and scary and the only thing we could all do is run and hope that whatever craziness was happening would somehow stop.

I finally made it back home to Baltimore that night and started to process what had happened to this country... to the only group I ever felt like I belonged to... to America.  And I realized that it was probably too late for me and god.  I couldn't imagine a god who'd let something like that happen and I certainly couldn't pray to a god who let that happen.  So, the only answer, in my mind, was that there wasn't a god.  

I won't say I became an atheist that night, because that isn't true.  It was a long process that didn't have an "aha" moment. Rather, it was sort of a gradual consciousness that the concept of god didn't add up in my head.  Maybe reading the bible will change my mind.  

But, the one thing I did realize that night, was that I was damn proud to be an American.  I was proud to be part of a nation that, for the most part, thinks it's okay for me to think these blasphemous thoughts.  I was proud to be one of the melting pot of misfits that built America on the belief that we were all created equal.  In a way, I solidified my membership in the church of America.