Genesis 10.1 – 18.33

After the breathless excitement of the last chapter, Gen 10 is another mind-numbingly dull family tree. We don’t really get much of a sense of scale, mind you, all seems rather local and how any of these descendents got to Papua New Guinea is beyond me. Maybe that’s just my lack of faith speaking. I’d never have guessed.

God’s being a git again. Men decided to build a tower, and in what can only be called a fit of jealousy (11.6 “… only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be possible”) he scatters humanity and mixes up the languages. It’s almost like our great deity wants mankind to live in eternal strife. Now, if I was going to start making moral judgements on the behaviour of ‘him upstairs’ I would find it somewhat lacking and I’m only 8 pages into the book. I much prefer the Greek way of looking at their gods – they knew that they were a bunch of capricious maniacs and spent their time hoping that they wouldn’t have to deal with them!

11.27 gives us the first sniff of Abram, who’s already stuck with a barren wife. In an ominous hint of things to come, 12.7 is where god promises the land of Canaan to Abram’s descendents. The obligatory altar is erected and god appears rather then just speaks. We don’t have any falling on faces but we can assume that happened.

From 12.11 there’s a very odd story about A’s missus masquerading as his sister, and ending up in the Pharaoh’s house – implication that ‘house’ means ‘bed’. Good work. Just as well she can’t have kids, innit? This obviously pisses god off who instead of taking it out on Abram who’s idea it was, sticks it to the Egyptians instead. This is depressing. The scene is already set for blatant hypocrisy with the innocent party getting screwed over whilst god’s mate walks off with the cash (and flocks, herds, tents & etc).

Again, just to rub salt in the wound (ahem), Abe & Lot have so many possessions that Lot has to bugger off to Sodom (ahem 2). We get a bunch of confusing information about a war, and the fact that the plain on which the cities were built had bitumen, ending with Abraham leading 318 of his men on an assault against the raiders and the recovery of Lot. The possessions of Sodom and Gomorrah are also returned which is nice of god as they’ve already been branded as sinners…

Gen 15 sees Abe a little irritated that he hasn’t had kids, but instead of being smited he gets promised a load of them and has a nice little sacrifice to celebrate. We also get promises of oppression, and that the land between Egypt and the Euphrates will be Abe’s descendents. That’s fine, apart from the fact that there are a variety of such claimants and the whole region went to shit millennia ago. Anyway. At this point (16) we get the servant been given as surrogate, followed by the birth of Ishmael, which should give us some sense of incompatibility between what’s written here and how we view life today.

Gen 17 has god on his weird order path again. First he change’s Abe’s name to Abraham, promises to be the god of Abe’s descendents, and for the honour requires circumcision – down to and including male slaves. There’s also more divisive mutterings with Abe’s son & son to be – they will be treated differently by the sounds of it and we know how well that went for Cain & Abel.

The scene is now set for fire & brimstone. We’ve not been told why god doesn’t like the cities of Sod & Gom, or have actually had ‘sin’ defined in any way, shape or form. The bet is made, and if 10 good men aren’t found in the cities then they’ll be the target of a fair old battering.

I’m leaving it here tonight. This is all more long winded then I thought it would be. As far as it goes I’m getting the idea that the god of the desert is not a very pleasant entity. Arbitrary is hardly the word for some of his actions, we have the acceptance of slavery (well, that all started with naked Noah), and god seems to be both scared and jealous of his creation. The destruction of the tower was very telling.

The morality behind the sister/wife/Egypt episode is disturbing. You are lied to by god’s favourite and you suffer the consequences. The impregnation of servants is slightly less so (as long as you accept slavery, that is) but what I find rather intriguing is the sentence “and I will be their God” statement in 17.8. We know that this is a monotheistic statement, but I can’t help pondering the alternative – are other men entirely godless or are there other gods that they worship that are beyond the scope of the book? “their god” is not necessarily the same as “the god” is it? I will return to this question in the future.

More when I can see the screen properly again…