Exodus 5 - 12:30: Plague, a Doozy!

Note: I had better clarify that the title of this post is a lame play on the name of the great early 90s Lawrence, Kansas band Plague of Daisies, of which I was the guitarist and lead long-haired dude (as shown here, at right). Sometimes you just have to be your own pop culture reference.

The Plagues of Egypt! It's a story of how a country's leadership, determined to pursue an increasingly untenable policy despite rapidly accumulating evidence of a situation in which it can not possibly prevail, exposes citizens to hardships, injury, and death and puts ruinous long-term burdens on the national economy. This is the kind of thing that sometimes transpired in ancient times; fortunately, nothing like that could ever happen now.

Exodus is turning out to be classic Bible. It is laying out one of the most familiar and important of the Old Testament tales, with a narrative density that is.... just about what you'd expect! There is none of the hypercompression of the earlier episodes in Genesis, nor the sprawling detail of the Joseph story, but about the volume of text you might see in, say, some hypothetical Big Book of Bible Stories. And if the action is occasionally interupted for some quick laying out of family trees, that is just part of what you expect from a good Bible reading, right?

It doesn't hurt, either, that the action of today's reading follows the rhythms of our most primal literatures, such as children's storys, many song forms, and most jokes: a repeated cycle of action where each instance is a little more exagerated or severe until you finally build to a climax or resolution. The little pigs build three houses before they find a building material that's up to code. The rope gets kicked out of the bar several times before it thinks to become a frayed knot. Stan writes to Eminem three times before he drives off the bridge with his girlfriend in the trunk. And God sends ten plagues to Egypt before the Israelites are able to start their long, long hike back to the promised land.

Let's take a look.

Plagues -- the Rough Guide

I find two things really interesting about the Plagues: the reaction of the Egyptian court magicians to them (an aspect of the story that isn't generally emphasized, I'm thinking) and how Pharaoh's reactions to them are described. But before we talk about that, lets take a quick plague-by-plague survey.

Plague #1

The Unpleasantness: The Nile and all other bodies of water turn to blood.

The Magicians Respond: We can do that, too.

Damage Report: Massive fish dieoff. Water crisis requires emergency welldigging program.

Pharaonic Response: Irritation. Will not engage in dialogue.

Plague #2
The Unpleasantness: A massive infestation of frogs.

The Magicians Respond: We can do that, too.
Damage Report: Unclear. The frogs seem more of an annoyance than anything else. (Ironically, when God lifts the plague, Egypt is stuck with huge piles of rotting frogs, which almost seems worse than the plague itself.)
Pharaonic Response: Agrees to Moses' demands (that the Hebrews to be allowed several days' leave for a major religious observance out in the desert), but reneges once the frogs die.

Plagues #3&4
The Unpleasantness: Great clouds of gnats and flies.
The Magicians Respond: Whoa. Frogs we can do, but flying bugs are out of our league. Be careful, Pharaoh, this Moses guy has big guns on his side.
Damage Report: Nobody likes being swarmed by bugs. Oh, and those gnats might actually be lice, depending on who's doing the translating.
Pharaonic Response: Negotiates partial agreement to Moses' demands, but reneges again once the crisis is past.

Plague #5
The Unpleasantness: All of the livestock animals in Egypt drop dead.
The Magicians Respond: The magicians, apparently laying low after their inability to produce results during the bug crisis, do not weigh in.
Damage Report: Presumably, a near-lethal blow to the domestic economy and food supply, both directly and through loss of animal power in the fields.
Pharaonic Response: An unwavering commitment to his policy of no time off for Hebrew slaves.

Plague #6
The Unpleasant -ness: Boils. Everyone has festering boils. (As do all of the animals, which is a little weird because, hey, didn't they all die in the last plague?)
The Magicians Respond: They could not stand before Moses because of the boils that were on them... (9:11).
Damage Report: Ew.
Pharaonic Response: The Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart and he would not listen to Moses. (9:12) Which is interesting! In previous plagues, it was the Pharoah himself being stubborn. This time, God is making him stubborn. Curious.

Plague #7
The Unpleasantness: Pelting hail rages down throughout Egypt.

The Magicians Respond: Not mentioned.
Damage Report: Widespread injuries to humans and livestock (although, again, I thought the livestock was all.... oh, never mind). Destruction of the flax and barley crops. Major damage to orchards. Wheat and spelt crops relatively intact.
Pharaonic Response: Abject capitulation, followed by another reneging after the weather returns to normal.

Plague #8
The Unpleasantness: Swarms of Locusts
The Magicians Respond: All of Pharaoh's officials are ready to cave at this point.
Damage Report: Massive damage to all crops left standing after the hail.

Pharaonic Response: the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let the Israelites go. (10:20)

Plague #9
The Unpleasant -ness: Three days of total darkness.
The Magicians Respond: None.
Damage Report: Not discussed. But, you can imagine everyone was pretty freaked out.
Pharaonic Response: Initial agreement to allow the religious celebration shot down when the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he was not willing to let them go. (10:28)

Plague #10

The Unpleasantness: All firstborn sons of Egypt die.

The Magicians Respond: Presumably by weeping over their dead sons, like everyone else.

Damage Report: Significant blow to current and future labor force and pool of potential business, political, and religious leaders. Further loss of morale.

Pharaonic Response: the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let the Isralites go out of his country. (10:28)

Magicians

The business about the magicians is interesting because they are able to keep pace with God for a while. Before the plagues start, they match Moses' trick with the staff that turns into the snake, and then they are able to duplicate the first couple of plagues. In so doing, they provide Pharaoh with some very bad intel, causing him to badly underestimate the national security risks of taking on God.

It's no surprise that God eventually outclasses the magicians. What's surprising is that there are even representatives of an alternative supernatural force involved in the first place. There's something subtly polytheistic about this, it seems to me. If God is providing the supernatural power that backs up Moses, who's backing up the magicians? It would almost have to be... like.... some other god. Wouldn't it?

God vs. the People of Egypt

I mentioned last week how peculiar I find it that God sends Moses to make demands of the Pharaoh, but also possesses Pharaoh to refuse to grant those demands. Looking at the breakdown above, you can see that Pharaoh was willing to say "uncle" after the boils (wouldn't you?), and then again after the locusts, darkness, and deaths of the firstborn -- but God won't let him. Despite the fortuitous composition of fats in the Mediterranian diet, God keeps hardening Pharaoh's heart, to the endless woe of Egyptians of all classes and occupations.

Why would God do this? Well, he actually tells Moses why, in chapter 11, verse 9: Pharaoh will refuse to listen to you -- so that my wonders may be multiplied in Egypt. God wants as big a showdown as possible, it seems, so that he can demonstrate his power and the word will get out.

This begs two questions, I think. One is, why does the demonstration of power have to be a demonstration of destructive power? Couldn't God make his point by, say, making the crops superabundant, while special cows that yielded ice cream suddenly appeared throughout the land? Or if that is too over the top, don't you think he could have got impressive results through a simple program of detailed skywriting?

The other questions is, why does God want the Egyptians to be impressed with him? Is he after new worshippers? That doesn't seem likely; you wouldn't normally try to draw people into your sphere by destroying their food supply and whacking their kids. No, this seems to be more about exposing the humiliating helplessness of the Egyptians. Which kind of implies -- this might be a stretch -- a humiliation of the gods whom the Egyptians relied on for protection. Which gets us back to that whole polytheism thing again. Curious and curiouser.

Next week: Let's Go! Sinai.

Exodus 1 - 4: Meet Mr. Moses!

When we last saw the Israelites, at the end of Genesis, I was a little confused by how well they seemed to be doing. With Joseph basically running Egypt for the Pharoah, his kinsmen looked to be in pretty good shape. With their flocks happily grazing on the lush fields of Goshen, they were living well, multiplying fruitfully and the whole bit. You certainly didn't get the impression that they needed to led away from oppression and subjegation in a biblical epic starring Charlton Heston.

As Exodus opens, however, a generation has passed, and we are told that in the meantime things have not gone well for Jacob's descendants. A new administration has come to power, and shows no interest whatsoever in courting the Israelite vote. Consolidating his power by exploiting anti-immigrant sentiment -- a strategy that has proved sadly durable -- the new Pharaoh encourages the enslavement of the group that is now called the "Hebrews."

In a particularly grim piece of public policy, the new Pharaoh further decrees that all male Hebrew babies must be killed by being thrown in the Nile. One Hebrew woman interprets this loosely, throwing her baby into the nile in a waterproofed papyrus basket, whereupon he is found a way downstream by Pharaoh's daughter, and... well.... you know how this goes, right?

Moses

There is nothing written about Moses' upbringing in the royal family. We meet him as a young man, when he kills an Egyptian who is beating a Hebrew. The episode seems incomplete, in that Egyptians were by this point apparently beating Hebrews pretty ubiquitously, but no matter. Moses dodges the rap by getting out of town. He goes and lives in the Sinai, where he marries a nice local girl, Zipporah, and settles down to work in his father-in-law's business, which is of course herding.

It is at work, tending herd, that Moses sees the famous burning bush, from which God speaks to him. Moses and God have a long conversation, in which Moses is charged with the responsibility of going to Egypt and leading the Hebrews to the land that they have been promised so often. [This property, interestingly, is referred to twice (3:8, 3:17) as the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. That God is giving the Hebrews a territory which already belongs to six other nationalities, none of whom are privy to the deal, is ominous foreshadowing of certain troubles that will crop up over the next 4000 years.]

God has an answer to both of Moses' main objections. Because he worrys that he will not be believed by the Hebrews, God provides him with a magical staff that can, among other things, turn into a snake. And because Moses is not especially articulate, God fetches his brother Aaron, who will function as the mouthpiece and press secretary. So, Moses and Aaron return to Egypt, and rally the Hebrews.

Wonder of Wonder, Miracle of Miracles

It's interesting that God, who I was always taught pretty much demands faith up front, is going to offer the Hebrews miracles to extablish Moses' credentials. It kind of begs the question, why can't we get some miracles to reassure us of God's existance?

Now there are of course people about who claim to have experienced miracles, but it is important to emphasize -- with all due respect to their experience and belief -- that they are dead wrong. They were, in whatever circumstances they wish to report, merely very lucky. A miracle is not required to enjoy good luck. To call one's own good luck a miracle is to claim God's favor relative to those suffering bad luck, which is really, when you think about it, self-serving at best and potentially quite odious. So cut it out, y'all, with claiming miracles.

Unless, that is, you want to say something along the lines of "every [sunrise / waterfall / look at my baby's face / container of Ben and Jerry's Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream] is a miracle." I recognize this kind of thing as a fine and healthy sentiment. It does rather dilute the concept of "miracle," however.

A miracle, a true miracle, needs to be a twist in the laws of physics or of the line between life and death. And really, it makes perfect sense that God wouldn't want to hand them out like candycorn. If everyone got to witness a miracle every time their faith was a little shaky, they would be so common that they would no longer be a violation of the basic laws of the universe. (and you know how we are. We'd just want one little miracle -- but then, a year later, we'd want some kind of confirmation that what we'd seen was real, or that God still existed -- and before long, we'd be wanting them as a regular part of the Sunday service. We're annoying that way, we humans.) They would become merely one of those things that happens sometimes, something encompassed by rather than outside of the basic constants that dictate how the world works.

So if you buy all of that, we can assume that God would be pretty sparing in playing the miracle card. His use of it here suggests that this is a pretty important point in his overall plan, but it doesn't show a lot of confidence in Moses' ability to get the team fired up with his natural leadership skills.

Solitaire on an Epic Scale

We naturally think of the coming conversations between Moses and Pharaoh as being a dialogue carried out between the leaders of two communities, each acting with their personal and political agendas at heart. But if you were to strictly follow the text, it's something closer to a puppet show.

Moses, preparing for his journey, is heavily coached by God, who tells him not to worry, I will help you speak and will tell you what to say. (4:12) He is told that he must tell Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go. But, says God, I will harden [Pharaoh's] heart so that he will not let the people go. (4:21) So, God is controlling not only the message, but the reaction to the message, which would seem to really reduce any active role that they humans are playing in all this. It's a bit like God is playing ping-pong with himself.

Trippy Passage of the Week

Then, there's Exodus 4:24-26, for my money the oddest passage since Jacob wrestled with God back in Genesis 32. If any of you gentle readers can give me some idea of what this is all about, you will be officially ordained as a MRTB Biblical Scholar, with a certificate suitable for framing.

Ready? Here goes. Moses and his family are on the road back to Egypt. But before they get there,

24 At a lodging place on the way, the LORD met Moses and was about to kill him. 25 But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son's foreskin and touched Moses' feet with it. "Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me," she said. 26 So the LORD let him alone. (At that time she said "bridegroom of blood," referring to circumcision.)

I hope somebody can clear this up for me. Speculations, or for that matter wild guesses, are encouraged.

See ya next week.

Gen 46 - 50: The End of the Beginning

And we come to the end of the book of Genesis. When I started this project, in July, I estimated that the project as a whole would take "at least a year." And I was right! It will definitely take at least a year!

When I tell people about this project, they often suggest -- in the cheerful, easygoing way that one suggests to someone training for a marathon that they might as well do an ultramarathon -- that I should "do the Koran." Well, the thought has crossed my mind. But for crying out loud, people! Let's make sure I'm going to live that long first!

In terms of page count, I am now 4.4% of the way into the Bible. That took me, lessee, 8 1/2 months. So, at this pace, we're looking at 16 years and change (although considerably less if I can avoid having more lamentable slumps like the one this winter.)

The End of Jacob & the End of Joseph

But I suppose that before I start dancing in the end zone, I ought to actually comment on this week's reading. The text continues in the relatively sprawling storytelling vein that I talked about last week, getting even a little maudlin in a pair of patriarch-blessing-his-sons-from-his-deathbed scenes. I will condense.

Gen 47: The entire household of Jacob -- 66 direct descendents, plus spouses, servants, hangers-on, and livestock, trundle down to the famous "land of Goshen," a chunk of pastureland in Egypt that Joseph secures for them through his buddy, the Pharaoh.

Meanwhile, Joseph continues managing Egypt's food supply in the face of ongoing famine. As the people run out of money, he trades food for their livestock. When they run out of livestock, he trades food for their land. Then, he trades food for their servitude, specifically their agreement to provide Pharaoh with 20% of their crops in perpetuity. Is he saving the people of Egypt by finding ways to keep food distribution going in a time of tremendous hardship? Or is he the most despicable kind of profiteer, taking advantage of a food crisis to strip a starving and terrified nation of its property and freedom? The people of Egypt are said to lean towards the first interpretation: "You have saved our lives," they said. "May we find favor in the eyes of our lord; we will be in bondage to Pharaoh." (25)

[supplementary observation: "Pharaoh" is a really difficult word to spell.]

Gen 48: Joseph brings his boys, Manasseh and Ephraim, to Jacob's deathbed. Jacob gives Ephraim the better blessing, even though Manasseh was born first. Joseph gets a little huffy about this, which is kind of unsporting from a man who has lorded it over his 10 older brothers all his life. Since Jacob, too, was a younger brother -- remember his various tricks on his own big brother, Esau, back in the day -- this is the third generation in a row in which the primary inheritance goes to the "wrong" son.

Gen 49: All twelve of Jacob's sons gather around his deathbed, and he gives them all individual blessings that reflect their personalities or predict their futures. They are an interesting set of blessings. A few seem a lot more like curses, for one thing. You don't want your dad's final message to you to be:

5 "Simeon and Levi are brothers — their swords are weapons of violence.
6 Let me not enter their council, let me not join their assembly, for they have killed men in their anger and hamstrung oxen as they pleased.
7 Cursed be their anger, so fierce, and their fury, so cruel! I will scatter them in Jacob and disperse them in Israel.

Many are highly specific, some to the point of being surreal:

11 [Judah] will tether his donkey to a vine, his colt to the choicest branch; he will wash his garments in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes.
12 His eyes will be darker than wine, his teeth whiter than milk.

That seems like a passage that would mean something really specific to the original audience, but it's kind of lost on us.

Dying, Jacob says that he wants to be buried with Abraham and Isaac, in the cave originally bought as Sarah's tomb back in Genesis 23. Remember how, in that chapter, there seemed to be a real determination to underscore as often as possible that the cave was purchased fair and square? Well, lest we forget, Jacob -- on his deathbed in Egypt -- revisits the point with his final recorded words: "the field and the cave in it were bought from the Hittites." (32)

Gen 50: And in Genesis 50, Joseph lives happily ever after. He lives to 110, and gets to play with his great-great grandchildren. But Genesis ends with some foreshadowing, as Joseph reminds the family that God has promised them a large chunk of real estate up to the northeast. God will lead you back there soon, he says.

Genesis

So there you have it. Genesis took us through the creation and the flood, and traced the adventures of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. The level of detail continued to increase as the chapter went on, so that we are told (for instance) far more about Joseph's relationship with his brothers than we are about God's creation of the Earth.

After the Flood, God is in fact surprisingly absent from the text, for the most part just checking in periodically to reaffirm his commitment to bless this odd and unruly family. Except for this, he is only present to occasionally dispatch those whose behavior he finds disagreeable, either individually (Er, Onan) or in the aggregate (Sodom, Gomorrah).

Regarding this smiting -- it is frustrating to be told so little about what has set God off. Stuff like this would be good to know. But we aren't told, for instance, what everybody was doing before the flood that made God so angry that he killed everyone -- except the family of Noah, the single righteous man. Noah, you will recall, celebrates his deliverance by getting drunk and knocking up his daughters. This was the most righteous man God could find? (I found it very interesting, too, that the near universal interpretation of what angered God before one of the major smitings, the Tower of Babel, is contradicted by what is actually in the text).

Finally, let's look at what Genesis had to say about my four initial questions:

1. Is God a Republican? Genesis is suprisingly free of prescriptive language. We are given very little guidance in what is or is not appropriate behavior. So, it is hard to pin a philosophy on God at this juncture.

2. Is God Good? This is the most disturbing of the questions, of course, and Genesis lends itself to disturbing answers. God curses his creation, kills on a global scale in the flood, and kills on a regional scale at Babel, Sodom, and Gomorrah. It is hard not to see this as, at best, throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

3. Is there an afterlife? Genesis -- which, significantly, includes the authorized account of the creation of all things -- makes not a single mention of an afterlife.

4. What are God's Family Values? If we are to extrapolate from the behavior of those who find his special favor, a confusing picture emerges. Sleeping with your kids (Noah) is OK, but seeing your father naked (Ham) is anathema. Pimping your wife for safe passage and profit (Abraham) is OK, but not wanting to get your brother's widow pregnant (Onan) is grounds for death. It's a confusing world in the Old Testiment.

The sacrifice of Isaac stands out as a telling moment. The message of that story could have been "stand by your family, no matter what." But instead, the message is "do what you are told, no matter what." This is not anti-family, precisely, but at a point where a strong statement in support of family values might have been made, it was not.


Next week, we put Genesis, and Egypt, behind us. Please join me and special guest Moses next Sunday evening, as Michael Reads the Bible begins the book of Exodus.

Gen 36 - 45: Joseph Makes Good

You know the story. A hard-working farm boy from the sticks goes to the big, cosmopolitan city in the desert where palm trees grow and things are laid back but sophisticated. He has a hard time at first; he's naive about women, and runs into trouble with the law. But eventually he gets discovered, and through a combination of luck, hard work, and natural charisma, eventually joins the ranks of the rich and famous and finds himself attending parties that the likes of you and I can only dream of.

That, friends, is the story of Joseph.

Genesis 36

But first, it's time out for Genesis 36, the first full chapter of family trees we've seen since Genesis 10. A sample verse (36:24): The sons of Zibeon: Aiah and Anah. This is the Anah who discovered the hot springs in the desert while he was grazing the donkeys of his father Zibeon. Oh Yeah! THAT Anah!

Joseph

Joseph is not Jacob's firstborn -- he is the 12th child and 11th son, if I count 'em right -- but he is the first of the two sons that Jacob has by Rachel, the wife he actually likes, and so Joseph is special. Jacob is none too subtle about playing favorites, dressing little Joseph up in what the New International Version rather disappointingly calls a richly ornamented robe but which you and I know is really a coat of many colors. This, along with the tyke's habits of having dreams that are thinly-veiled predictions of how he is going to rule over all of his brothers, does not endear him to the older boys. So, they sell him to some slave traders, and show Dad the coat of many colors with considerably more red on it than it used to have.

(At this point, there is a break in the story for Genesis 38, a completely unrelated chapter which I think is interesting and will return to. But let's indulge our modern sense of narrative flow and keep going with Joseph for now.)

Speaking of narrative flow, actually, it should be noted that the story of Joseph has a different feel than everything that has gone before. At Genesis 12, I noted that the hypercompressed storytelling of the first chapters broadened out into a more coherent, sustained narrative. At Genesis 37, the style broadens out yet further. The story of Joseph is a full, fleshed-out story with lots of detail and even something resembling character development. It's even a bit long-winded, honestly, and one wonders why there is so much more of it than there is of, say, creation, or explanation of what God really wants and requires from his human creations. That would have been handy.

Anyhoo, Joseph has various wacky misadventures in Egypt. A slave, he nevertheless rises to chief of staff in the household of the captain of the guard. Sexually harassed by the boss's wife (as shown here, at right), he's accused of attempted rape and ends up in jail. Pharoh hears about his ability to interpret dreams, frees him, and appoints him as, basically, Secretary of the Agriculture.

So, Joseph is a real bigshot by the time his brothers come to Egypt to buy grain during a famine. They don't recognize him, but he recognizes them. So, he messes with their heads, makes them jump through hoops, occasionally imprisons one or more of them, and puts them in situations where they have reason to believe they'll be executed, all for the better part of a year before he finally says "hey, it's me, your little brother!" Doubtless they are delighted. At the end of Genesis 45, he sends them home to fetch Dad and bring him back to Egypt, where he can set them up with some good land while they wait out the famine.

And that's the story of Joseph. I think kids like this story, and actually it has all of the elements of childrens' fantasy literature. The boy-hero gets separated from his family, has adventures, becomes important and powerful, and gets to stick it to his siblings in the end. It's a pretty unbeatable formula, when you are eleven. As an adult, I find myself more wondering about the relevance of the tale than anything else.

Genesis 38

Now smack dab in the middle of the Joseph story, as I mentioned, is this quirky little chapter about another of Jacob's sons, Judah. This is yet another chapter that highlights the freakshow family values of one of the great patriarchs. For a religious tradition that is so often held up as forbidding any but the very narrowest range of sexual behavior, JudeoChristianity certainly has a lot of creepy sexuality going on here in its sacred writings.

Judah starts off wholesomely enough. He marries a local girl, the daughter of a man called Shua, whose name we are not told. She is called "the daughter of Shua." Judah lies with her in the customary fashion, no doubt crying out "I love you, daughter of Shua" in the heat of passion, and pretty soon they have three sons, Er, Onan, and Shelah.

Years pass, and Er gets married to a woman who is blessed with an actual name, "Tamir." Unfortunately, Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the LORD's sight; so the LORD put him to death. (7) Yikes! that's bad! And naturally we are curious as to what exactly made Er wicked in the sight of the Lord, so we can avoid making the same mistakes. But this is not revealed.

Following the standard practice of the day, but making the modern reader rather queasy, Judah sends in the second team: Then Judah said to Onan, "Lie with your brother's wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to produce offspring for your brother. (8) Onan is not down with this plan:

9 But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so whenever he lay with his brother's wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from producing offspring for his brother. 10 What he did was wicked in the LORD's sight; so he put him to death also.

Well, at least this time we know Onan did wrong. Or do we? There is a tradition that this little tale shows that God hates masturbation -- because spilling semen on the ground is wicked. There is a tradition that it shows God hates birth control -- because deliberately failing to produce offspring while, um, laying, is wicked. But on the face of it, it seems to me that this passage is really about the moral imperative of getting your sister-in-law pregnant if your brother dies without an heir. And yet you never hear anyone going on about getting back to THAT traditional family value!

It goes on. Judah's first two sons having croaked on her, Tamir becomes peaved when the third one, Shelah, isn't sent her way to take care of business once he comes of age. To take her revenge on Judah, she poses as a prostitute (as shown here, at right -- it is very easy to find images for the Bible stories that involve sex) and sleeps with him, taking his staff and seal on consignment. She gets pregnant, and the townspeople tell Judah that his daughter-in-law has been foolin' around. "Bring her out and have her burned to death," cries this stalwart believer in the God of justice and mercy. Then we come to the punchline:

25 As she was being brought out, she sent a message to her father-in-law. "I am pregnant by the man who owns these," she said. And she added, "See if you recognize whose seal and cord and staff these are."
26 Judah recognized them and said, "She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn't give her to my son Shelah." And he did not sleep with her again.

Moral tale? Soap opera? First written dirty joke? I dunno. I'm just reminded of this quotation: "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." The people of Genesis certainly seem to approach life with a different set of first principles than most of my friends.

Gentle readers, we are only four chapters from the Genesis/Exodus border. What a long, strange trip it has been, so far.

Gen 31 - 35: Jacob -- the Middle Years

Genesis 31

Last week, we were looking at the various shams and shenanigans of Jacob, and I have to admit that it never occured to me to think of him as a classic mythological trickster. This is why I need smart readers like yourself, and like the two commenters who suggested the idea. Thanks, commenters.

Having said that, in this week's chapters Jacob seems less inclined to pull fast ones on others than to cry foul about the way that the others are treating him. As chapter 31 opens, Jacob is nervous. His brothers-in-law are grumbling openly that Jacob has cheated their father, Laban, and gathered a great deal of wealth -- herd animals, in this society -- at Laban's expense.

Now, according to what we read in Genesis 30, this grumbling is entirely correct. Jacob did rig a system, using magic decorated tree branches -- really! -- to skim the best animals out of Laban's herds. In Genesis 31, however, the story is told a little differently. His own hard work is stressed:

6 You know that I've worked for your father with all my strength, 7 yet your father has cheated me by changing my wages ten times. However, God has not allowed him to harm me. 8 If he said, 'The speckled ones will be your wages,' then all the flocks gave birth to speckled young; and if he said, 'The streaked ones will be your wages,' then all the flocks bore streaked young. 9 So God has taken away your father's livestock and has given them to me.

The Jacob of Genesis 30 is actively working the system, making sure that the livestock comes out with the proper coloration. The Jacob of Genesis 31 is innocent as a lamb -- streaked, speckled, or whatever. If God makes the flocks speckled than gosh, what can he do about it? It's an interesting about-face.

Anyway, Jacob decides it's time to get out of Dodge, and sneaks off with the wives, the wives' maidservants, the children, the livestock, and the various household functionaries and hangers-on while Laban is busy with the shearing season. They are not exactly travelling light, however -- I get the impression that Jacob's household is a pretty good sized travelling town at this point -- so there is a slow-motion chase scene as Laban comes after them. He catches them after eight days, but it's pretty much an anticlimax. They agree to let bygones be bygones, and to stay in touch.

Part of the reason Laban gives chase is that, at the same time Jacob snuck off, his household gods went missing. Jacob is hurt by the implied accusation, and tells Laban to go ahead and search the whole camp. Rachel, unbeknownst to Jacob, is the one who swiped the gods, and they are right there in her saddlebags. Thinking fast, she stays seated when her father searches her tent, apologizing for not being able to get up because she is having her period. I mention this episode only because I remember seeing it when I was maybe eleven years old, and thinking it was pretty steamy stuff.

Genesis 32 and 33

The next two chapters are about Jacob's return to his brother Esau. Whether out of contrition for his earlier exploits, or because Esau seems to have become a powerful local figure since last they met, Jacob is nervous about the reunion. He choreographs their meeting right down to the minute details, and the exact numbers of goats and cows and donkeys, the order of their presentation, the little speech of presentation that the herdsmen were supposed to make, and the marching order of the sprawling family are all laid out in loving detail. (Esau, as likeable a character as Genesis has yet given us, seems bewildered by all of the fuss and just happy to see his brother again.)

This narrative is interupted at Gen 32:22-32, though, by an episode I find very strange indeed. (And I'm consistant. Both teenage Michael and grad school Michael left notes in the margin here noting their puzzlement. If I remember rightly, this is as far as grad school Michael got in HIS attempt to read the Bible. The big loser.)

Let's take a look:

22 That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. 24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak." But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."
27 The man asked him, "What is your name?" "Jacob," he answered.
28 Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."

OK, what just happened? Anybody? I know from, uh, U2 that "Jacob wrestled an angel, and the angel was overcome," but why? And what does it mean? There seems to be a very alien logic at work here, and Verse 24 is such a sudden transition into the weirdness -- such a non sequitor, really -- that it kind of cracks me up. Or freaks me out. Take your pick.

A few verses later, we learn that to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob's hip was touched near the tendon. (32) And again, I say unto you: How does that follow? The word "because" is supposed to indicate some sort of causal logic, but to my mind there are quite a few missing steps in this particular "because."

Genesis 34: The Unkindest Cuts of All

So Jacob and the family settle in near Esau's place, but things go wrong right away. The son of the local Caananite bigwig rapes Jacob's daughter, Dinah. Or does he? I'm not sure:

2 When Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, the ruler of that area, saw her, he took her and violated her. 3 His heart was drawn to Dinah daughter of Jacob, and he loved the girl and spoke tenderly to her. 4 And Shechem said to his father Hamor, "Get me this girl as my wife."

I've looked at this passage in a number of translations, and really wish we could get Dinah's testimony on the incident. Jacob and his sons are more than a little upset, but I can't tell why. Three possibilities:

• Dinah and Shechem liked each other, and did some consensual foolin' around. The boys regard her loss of virginity as a defilement.
• Shechem really did rape Dinah, and the boys regard her loss of virginity as a defilement.
• Shechem really did rape Dinah, and her family is outraged and horrified that their loved one has been hurt and disrespected.

It is not at all clear to me whether the first or second possibility is the accurate one. The third possibility seems vanishingly unlikely.

The exact nature of the Canaanite prince's offense would be nice to know, as he and his entire community are going to pay for it. Hamor, the king, suggests that Shechem and Dinah just get married, and offers to pay any bride price that Jacob wants to set. Jacob's sons say this is fine -- with one little catch:

15 We will give our consent to you on one condition only: that you become like us by circumcising all your males. 16 Then we will give you our daughters and take your daughters for ourselves. We'll settle among you and become one people with you. 17 But if you will not agree to be circumcised, we'll take our sister and go."

Hamor, who is a KING and does not have to stand for re-election, agrees and institutes mandatory circumcision. Once this has been done, and all of the men in town are feeling, well, sore -- two of Jacob's sons come to town and kill everyone. All the males, anyway. The women and children they seize and carry off, along with the flocks, herds, donkeys, and wealth.

And again I ask: Are these guys supposed to be setting a good example for how we are supposed to behave in the world?

Genesis 35

Understandably concerned about what the neighbors might be thinking about them, Jacob's clan sets off again. At a place called Bethel, God appears to Jacob and promises yet again that this family is going to produce nations and kings, and that it is their destiny to rule over much of the Middle East. I have not gone back to count, but I believe it's the seventh time God has made this covenant with this family in three generations.

Have a good week!

p.s.

In looking for this week's illustrations, I came across something called The Brick Testament. It is truly strange and brilliant. Check it out.

Gen 25:12 - 30 -- Patriarchal Attitudes

Isaac

After Abraham, the action in Genesis follows his son Isaac only very briefly before moving on to his grandson, Jacob. Isaac's role seems mostly to be a prop in other people's stories. At the beginning of his life, he is the beloved son that Abraham almost, but not quite, has to kill. At the end of his life, he is going to be deceived by his slippery son. The romantic journey in search of his wife is conducted, as we saw last week, not by him but by his nameless servant.

Everything else about Isaac is covered in Genesis 26, and it is the now recognizable business-as-usual for a local leader in this time and place. Neighbors are befriended or antagonized, stakes are pulled up and moved when the neighborhood gets unfriendly, and an occasional conversation is held with God in which he promises anew that he intends for this family to become very large indeed, and to hold title to truly impressive land tracts. There are also some interesting squabbles over wells that remind us that all of this is taking place in a desert, where water rights are critical.

And, not surprisingly, there is an episode where Isaac makes Rebekah, his wife, claim to be his sister. In this case, however, she does not get farmed out to the local king, and in fact they eventually get found out due to an indiscreet Public Display of Affection. So in his marriage, as in other aspects of his life, Isaac seems perhaps a little happier than his dad or his son. Maybe being the obscure one isn't so bad.

I haven't been able to find a good image of Isaac where he isn't either a boy trussed up for slaughter, which I've already used, or an old man about to be deceived on his deathbed, which I'm about to use. So, here's a picture of the pioneering science fiction author Isaac Asimov.

Jacob

Jacob is another major Old Testament character who gives me issues. Are we expected to think well of these guys? Are they supposed to be moral exemplars? Because Jacob is definitely not the kind of guy you would want to buy a car from. He is tricky and deceitful, pulling off three major scams during the section of his life covered by this week's reading.

The first is the famous "birthright for a mess of pottage" episode. Jacob's twin brother Esau, who is elder by a few seconds, comes home from a long hike in the bush. He is extremely hungry -- he says he is about to die (25:32) -- and asks if he can share the lentil stew that Jacob is making. Jacob makes a deal: he'll share his lunch, on the condition that Esau give up his birthright. Esau gives in, and there is a suggestion that he is the bad guy of the story, a fool who has shown contempt for his station in life. We are perhaps supposed to admire Jacob's shrewdness, but it's tough for a naive reader like myself not to think badly on a man who won't lift his finger to feed his hungry brother without exacting an enormous price.

The years pass. As Isaac is on his deathbed, Jacob takes the opportunity to punk Esau again. (He's egged on by his mom, who is scandalized that Esau married a local girl instead hooking up with one of his first cousins like a respectible person). He impersonates his brother before their dying father, who is tricked and bestows his blessing on the wrong son. Once given, this kind of blessing apparently just can't be taken back, and even though Isaac and Esau figure out Jacob's duplicity almost immediately there is nothing to be done for it. Jacob ends up having stolen not only Esau's birthright, but his destiny as well. He'll get riches, nations, and people bowing down to him, while Esau only gets to live by the sword and serve [his] brother. (27:40)

In the third episode, Jacob moves on to swindle his father-in-law, Laban. Having arranged that he will be given all of the striped or mottled lifestock in Laban's herds, he makes charms out of tree limbs, stripping away bark so that they look striped and mottled. He has the best of the beasts mate in the presence of these charms, and their offspring come out striped and mottled. Eventually, he ends up walking away with all of Laban's best animals. I'm not sure if I could make this trick work, myself. Nor does it make me feel like Jacob is a patriarch I'd want to do much business with.

Good Old-Fashioned Family Values

To be fair, Jacob has a legitimate grudge against Laban, who is not only his father-in-law but also his father-in-law. And, of course, his uncle. Let me explain. Rather than marry outside of the family like his uncouth brother, Jacob goes off to seek a bride at the compound of uncle (great uncle, really) Laban. There, he falls in love with the lovely in form (29:17) Rachel, and agrees to put in seven years of labor in exchange for her hand in marriage. But after seven years, Laban pulls a bait-and-switch of his own and offers the near-sighted (and apparently less lovely in form) Leah, Rachel's big sister. "If you take this one and put in another seven years, though, you can have them both" offers Laban, so in the fullness of time Jacob has both of the two sisters as wives.

Family life in Jacob's household has its share of complications. Jacob doesn't like Leah, but she gets pregnant first. "Surely my husband will love me now," she says when her first son is born(29:32), but like many an unhappy young mother soon finds out otherwise. Nevertheless, she bears him three more sons, giving each of them names that are basically Hebrew puns for "I wish my husband thought of me as more than a contemptable vessel for his progeny."

Meanwhile, Rachel has not produced any bundles of joy and is getting jealous. She has an idea: "Here is Bilhah, my maidservant. Sleep with her so that she can bear children for me and that through her I too can build a family." (30:3) So, Jacob goes along with this, and another son (Dan) is born. And Jacob goes along with this again, and another son is born. Rachel (unlike her great-aunt Sarah in similar circumstances) is delighted, and thumbs her nose gleefully at her big sister. Bilhah's feelings about the arrangement are not recorded.

Now it's Leah's turn to be jealous, so she thrusts HER maidservant at Jacob with a knowing look, and two more sons are cranked out.

Then, Leah's son brings her some mandrakes. Rachel wants some of them.

15 But [Leah] said to her, "Wasn't it enough that you took away my husband? Will you take my son's mandrakes too?" "Very well," Rachel said, "he can sleep with you tonight in return for your son's mandrakes."
16 So when Jacob came in from the fields that evening, Leah went out to meet him. "You must sleep with me," she said. "I have hired you with my son's mandrakes." So he slept with her that night.

Another son results. You really have to feel for poor, deluded, squinty Leah. This time, she says, my husband will treat me with honor, because I have borne him six sons. (30:20) Yeah, sure he will.

Eventually, even Rachel manages to produce a son, at which point by my count the household consists of one man, two wives, two very special handmaids, eleven sons, and a daughter.

Discussion questions:

• Who all is covered by Jacob's work-based health plan? What if he lives in Masschusetts?
• Your maid has, according to your instructions, borne two children by your husband. What is an appropriate tip?
• If your partner traded your sexual services for some mandrake plants, would this have any impact on your self esteem? Explain.
• When inviting this family to a formal occasion, should you provide seating for 3 adults plus children, or 5 adults plus children?

Heaven.... I'm in Heaven....

One last detail. At Genesis 28:12, Jacob has a vision of heaven -- in fact, a stairway to heaven. It is described as a habitation of God and angels. However, there is no mention of it being a place of the afterlife, which means that 30 chapters into the Bible, there has still been no mention of the idea of life after death.

Gen 22- 25:11 -- Finishing Up With Abraham

Abraham is definitely the star of the show so far. By the time we finish up tonight, the chapters of Genesis thus far will be apportioned like so:

Creation: 2 chapters
Fall of Man: 3 chapters
Noah and the Flood: 4 chapters
Begetting: 2 chapters
Abraham: 13 chapters!

So, counting by sheer real estate on the page, tonight we're looking at the golden years of the man who is 6 1/2 times more important than creation! We'll proceed chapter by chapter, starting with what many people think of as one of the most disturbing episodes in the Bible.

Gen. 22: Abraham and Isaac

Abraham is apparently just going about his daily business when God gets his attention and gives him some tough instructions: Take your son, your only son, Isaac, who you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about (2). So Abraham prepares to do just that, hiking three days with his boy to the designated spot. Isaac is a perceptive lad, and asks a question that I imagine is one of the first recorded instances of dramatic irony: "The fire and wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" (7) Which is a great line, because the "lamb" is..... ah, never mind. It's not funny if I have to explain it.

Abraham trusses up Isaac and puts him on the alter, and actually picks up the knife to kill him before God tells him to hold up: Do not lay a hand on the boy.... Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son. (12) At this point, they notice an unfortunate ram has stumbled upon the scene, and it becomes the replacement sacrifice animal as Isaac rubs his wrists, laughs nervously, and says "great joke, Dad, you really had me going."

The point of this story is of course to illustrate Abraham's total devotion to God, and the virtue of his willingness to sacrifice the one thing in life most dear to him in subjegation to God. It is, indeed, one of the first episodes in the Bible with a clear moral lesson to it, which is: Do Like Abraham! Whatever God Says, Do It Immediately and With No Questions.

There are two things that make this story so uncomfortable to We Moderns, I think, and the first one is of course that for God to command someone to kill their child just seems pretty messed up. Really, really messed up, in fact. Like, comprehensively messed up. This may be a cultural thing in part; we've been long blessed with an extremely low infant mortality rate, and we are likely as protective of children as any society anywhere, ever. But still.

Secondly, the idea of testing someone without their knowledge seems awfully disempowering and passive-aggressive (God would never have got this one by the Human Subjects Committee). OK, he's God, so he doesn't have to be polite. But there's a certain arbitrary nature to the test that is disturbing. Abraham wins the day by exhibiting the virtue of complete obediance to God. But, you can easily imagine an alternative story where Abraham exhibits the virtue of dedication to family and posterity by refusing to sacrifice Isaac, and God saying "Yep, you were right to refuse, for no man who murders his offspring is fit to live." In a sense, Abraham succeeds by guessing correctly what God really wants him to do, which is not an easy trick given that God is asking him to perform an abomination. And that -- the sense that Abraham really just makes a lucky guess -- kind of undercuts the moral message of the episode. But maybe that's just me.

Gen. 23: Let's Buy a Cave!

From one of the most emotionally fraught of the Bible stories, we move on to one of the most obscure. Sarah dies at 127, and Abraham went to mourn for Sarah and to weep over her. (2)

After this florid display of emotion, which I have reprinted in its entirety, we get to the important stuff: how to acquire the rights to a good place to bury her? Abraham talks to the Hittites, and they don't think there will be a problem finding a good spot for sale. Abraham asks them if they'll talk to a local strongman, Ephron, about it. They say "sure, no problem." Then, Abraham goes to town and meets Ephron, who says "you know what, I'll just give you the spot you want." "No no no," says Abraham, "I do want that spot, but I want to pay for it." And Ephron is all, like, "OK, if that makes you feel better, how about four hundred shekels?" And Abraham is, like, "that sounds good."

This story goes on and on, occupying as much text as the sacrifice of Isaac (or a good three times as much text as the Tower of Babel), and you can not but wonder why we need to know this much about Abraham's real estate hagglings. From the historical perspective, one notes that the story is quite specific about the fact that the land was legally transferred. The parcel, it's noted very preciselyin both verses 17-18 and then again in verse 20, "was deeded to Abraham." In terms of a religious or moral lesson, however, I'm hard pressed to take anything from this except perhaps the benefits of pre-need funeral planning.

Genesis 24: Romance Amongst the Ancients

Back to a coherent story line for the longest book of the Bible so far, in which we go on a long journey with Abraham's most senior and trusted servant. He is called "the servant," and is charged by Abraham with finding a wife for Isaac. But, the local girls in Canaan are right out. What Abraham wants is for Isaac to marry a nice girl from among his cousins back in Nahor. [Involuntary modern interjection: Icky! We are glad to note, though, that those nice second cousins, the daughters of Lot, aren't ever nominated as possibilities.]

The servant takes the long trip to Nahor, parks by the village well, and tells God that he'll regard the first girl to offer water to his camels as The One for Isaac. Happily, the first girl along offers water to the camels, and it turns out that she is very desirable bride material indeed, being Rebekah, another of Isaac's second cousins. The servant goes to her parent's home, and, in a passage which I have to say leaves a bit to be desired literarily, tells them about his mission, trip, and encounter with Rebekah in almost the exact language in which the events themselves were originally described. Is there an echo in here?

The parents, desparate perhaps to shut their long-winded visitor up, say "she can leave in ten days!" but the servant says, "nope, gotta leave now," and since Rebekah is a real sport about it -- I will go (58), she says, in a nicely understated way -- they send her off with their blessing.

After the long trip back to Canaan, they meet Isaac. Then the servant told Isaac all he had done (66), but we are fortunately spared yet another blow-by-blow. Isaac and Rebekah move into Sarah's old tent -- she became his wife, and he loved her. (67) So that's how it worked, apparently, before online dating and all that.

Gen 25: The Death of Abraham

Abraham eventually lives until 175 years until, as the King James version puts it, he gave up the ghost. (8) He is buried with Sarah, which has the advantage of not requiring another round of real estate wrangling. We're not told, though, how his second wife felt about it. The second wife is Keturah, whose name appears only twice and in conjunction with the six sons she bore Abraham and their various illustrious decendants. Whether or not she ever had to go through the "tell them you're my sister!" routine is not mentioned either. In any event, it seems like she gets very short shrift indeed next to Sarah, which is why I encourage any of you reading who might have a daughter on the way to consider naming her "Keturah." It's pretty enough, and way underused.

Thanks for reading, my friends. See you next week.