Genesis 25-33: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob

Despite his advanced age, Abraham somehow manages to remarry after the death of Sarah, and fathers yet more children (as if the first two hadn't resulted in enough troubles). Fortunately - since there's quite enough internecine bloodshed in this book as it is - they seem to be happy enough to be sent away with 'gifts' on Abraham's death, as befits the sons of a mere concubine.
Ishmael also dies at a great age, bestowing on us the phrase "gave up the ghost" (Ch 25 v 17).
There is also a certain sense of repetition in many of the themes. Rebekah, like her mother-in-law, proves to be barren, necessitating more prayer from Isaac before the Lord relents and 'opens her womb' (interesting how the bodies of women are such potent tools of men's relationships with their God, despite the fact that many of the women concered don't even seem to believe in the same deity. In a similar manner to Robert Graves' interpretation of way in which different versions of the Greek Myths reflect the shift of power from women to men in Bronze and Iron Age societies, could all of this be a reflection of the declining power of female deities in the region and concomitantly of women in increasingly patriarchal societies?)



So, despite her initial barrenness, Rebekah conceives, accompanied by predictions of yet more familial strife:

"And the LORD said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger" (Ch 25 v23)

And this prediction is brought about by the younger - Jacob - very sneakily cheating his starving brother out of his birthright in exchange for "a pottage of lentiles" (actually I'm not convinced that this is such a bad deal, if you've got a really good lentil soup recipe).
In yet another sense of deja vue, Isaac imitates his father's weird shenanigans by telling poor old Abimelech, King of the Philistines, that Rebekah is his sister not his wife, again apparently in fear that having a good-looking wife will get you killed. This is despite the fact that Abimelech proved himself perfectly honourable last time, and does so again, although he must be getting pretty confused about hsi repeated bizarre guests who go around apparently getting jiggy with their sisters.
Unsurprisingly, relations with the Philistines start to deteriorate somewhat, although the whole weird sister/wife thing is just a sideline to the growing economic (read: sheep) power of Isaac. In yet another disturbing precursor to modern strife in the region, Isaac and the Philistines get aggro over water supplies, with some proper conflict (Ch 26 v16-22) and a bit of extra well-digging and negotiation, leading to the establishment of the modern city of Beersheba.
Having cheated him of his birthright, Jacob and Rebekah now collude to make sure that when Isaac is dying, Esau is also deprived of his father's blessing. This is achieved by Jacob dressing up in the skins of a couple of young goats, which just goes to show the amount of blood and killing that goes into keeping these internecine conflicts going, and even the poor livestock get hauled into it all.
And, just so that history can repeat itself yet again, Jacob gets sent away to marry "outside the land of Canaan" (more exogamy), as Rebekah and Isaac have already been angered by Esau marrying some local Hittite girls:

"34 And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the duaghter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite:
35 Which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah."

In order to find a wife from outside Canaan (but not very exogamous - he's gone to find his uncle Laban to marry one of his daughters), Jacob heads off to Haran, now in modern Turkey. He falls sufficiently madly in love with Rachel, Laban's second daughter, that he's prepared to work for seven years to earn her, and is therefore somewhat understandably miffed when he gets given Leah, Rachel's older sister, instead. As usual, Laban is calling the shots and the women aren't obviously getting much of a look-in here (however, as I'll be writing about later, we could put some of this down to the male authors, not entirely to events themselves, and there are some attractive literary alternative versions of this story.)
But to stick to official version for the moment, once Jacob has done two lots of seven years labour in return for Rachel, she turns out to be barren as well:

"And when the LORD saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb: but Rachel was barren."

I'm not sure if this is supposed to be the LORD giving Leah some kind of consolation for the fact that she's stuck with a husband who's doing nothing to hide the fact that his is profoundly dischuffed to be married to her, or if he's just playing more nasty games with women's bodies. I have my suspicions.
In an attempt to address the fact that Leah has stopped bearing children (after four, which seems reasonable enough) and that Rachel's not having any at all, Jacob now also gets to sleep with Bilhah and Zilpah, Rachel and Leah's handmaids respectively. So yes, once again, the slavegirls get shagged, presumably without anyone asking their opinion on the matter. And have we learnt from all the bitterness and jealousy and people getting slung out into the desert that we saw with Sarah and Hagar and Ishmael? No we haven't. And, as with Sarah, Rachel finally gets pregnant after all that anyway and produces two sons to get all jealous and internecine with Leah's six and the several that the slave women have had forced on them too.
After all that, you'd think that Laban might actually be quite glad of the peace and quiet of a smaller family, but Jacob feels compelled to sneak off with large numbers of sheep and goats which he has legitimately earned. A bigger deal seems to be the fact that Rachel secretes the household gods in with the packing too, pretending to be menstruating when Laban asks where they are, which implies that there is still little unanimity on the subject of the LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob but not apparently of their wives and other relatives.
However, on the way Jacob wrestles with a mysterious figure who might indeed be God himself and who renames Jacob Israel, just as he's about the cross over the Jordan River back into Canaan. This is a key moment in the consolidation of both a religious and ethnic identity amongst this branch of the descendants of Abraham. And, despite his general sneakiness a couple of decades before, Jacob finally comes home to Canaan to a warm and generous welcome from his brother Esau.

Genesis 27- 29: The Soap Opera continues.

Genesis 27

Isaac is counting the days, wants some venison, which is quite dear.

[What do you call Bambi with his eyes poked out? No idea. What do you call Bambi with his eyes poked out and his legs chopped off? Still no idea.]

Esau heads off to get some while his mum, Rebekkah, overhearing, decides to play favourites.

She gets Jacob into drag (he ain't hairy, he's Esau's brother) and he feeds Isaac, pretending to be Esau. Isaac supplies an apparently non-revocable and Once Only blessing on Jacob.

Esau was mighty sore he saw what Jacob had done.

Er, is this a repeat of the Cain and Abel thing, with the honest horny handed son of soil being shafted by the untrustworthy “knowledge worker”

Anyhow, this is another of those iconic stories that I used to hear in my youth, that used to be part of our collective heritage (I shan't say memepool ) that seems to be fading? Or was it ever thus? How would you prove it?

Rebekkah tells Jacob to get the fuck outa Compton

Verse43-4 “Now, therefore, my son, obey my voice: and arise, flee thou to Laban my brother to Haran. And tarry with him a few days, until thy borther's fury turns away.”

A few days?? I thought the pre-TV version of human was abel to hold a grudge a bit longer than that!

Chapter 28

At Rebekkah's inistence, Isaac tells Jacob that he can't have a wife from Canaan, and that he should head off to Padan-aram. Esau takes some wives also not from Canaan to keep on his dad's good side (Stockholm syndrome is my diagnosis).

Jacob has his dream, the one with the ladder.

Verses 13-14 “And behold, the LORD stood above it and said I am the LORD God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest to thee will I give it, and to thy see:
And thy seed shall be s the dust of the earth and though shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: an d in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.”

Oh dear. The hallucination of a Bearded Sky Man telling you everything you see is yours is no basis for territorial claims in the 21^st century. Grow up.

Jacob wakes up, presumably has the three eshes, then finds some sheep and a stone and a well.

Chapter 29

Jacob hooks up with his mum's family, and fancies Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother's brother. (So, er, his cousin)

Verse 11 “And Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice and wept.”

Jacob, who don't forget has had to leg it cos brother Esau Wants Him Dead, then sticks around for seven years in order to marry Rachel who was “beautiful and well favoured.” I am under strict instructions from t'wife not to speculate that well-favoured might be a euphemism for incapable-of-breaking-her-nose-if-she-fell-forwards...

But come the big day, seven years later, Laban does a bait and switch on Jacob.

Verse 23 "And it came to pass, that in the evening, that he took Leah his daughter, and brought her into him; and he went in unto her."

Jacob is peeved, Laban says

Verse 26 “...It must not be so done in our country, to give the younger before the first born.”

Gee, you think Laban would have explained that at some point in the last seven years, or found someone to take Leah off his hands. She probably had a lovely personality.

So another seven years until he can get his, er, hands, on Rachel. Who God makes barren.

As philosophy prof John Clark says “If you just keep in mind God was a Jewish comedian it all makes perfect sense.”

Anyhow, Leah pops out four of the little brats- Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah.

People ask me if I like children, and my standard response is “Yeah, but I couldn't eat a whole one.”

Genesis 22 to 24: death, marriage and sacrifice

Chapter 22, in which Isaac nearly gets sacrificed. Given this rather unpleasant and bloody scene (at least for the Ram, and probably fairly traumatic for the kid too), it seems somewhat appropriate that at least some Jewish and Muslim traditions place the situation of the near-sacrifice as the top of Mount Moriah in Jerusalem and therefore one of the sites within the much-disputed Temple Mount. It seems a fitting start for this extraordinarily beautiful and disturbed city.
Other scholars put the site of the sacrifice at Moreh, near Nablus (Biblical Shechem), another beautiful and bloody city where the Israeli army spends a fair amount of its time executing people and stifling the economy with checkpoints, when they're not committing mass butchery in Gaza.
A brief outline of the reasons behind the various theories can be found here.
Immediately following God's intervention in the sacrifice of Issac, Sarah dies. It's not made clear if the two incidents are related... but she is buried in Hebron, at what becomes the Tomb of the Patriarchs or the Cave of the Double Tombs. This is said to be the site of the burials of Adam and Eve (although some traditions put Adam in Jerusalem, under the site of Golgotha), Abraham alongside Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah and Jacob and Leah. It is, like so mnay of the ancient sites in Palestine, Israel and surrounding countries, tremendouly sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians, and has therefore of course been the object of innumerable battles for ownership, including capture by Saladin from the Crusaders and a massacre of 67 members of the local Jewish community in 1929. The current uneasy situation is that the building is divided into two, one section each for Jews and Muslims. All visitors, including the very, very occasional tourist, have to pass through a number of security gates and checks, staffed by Israeli military.



In February 1994 the Tomb was the site of a massacre by a right-wing Zionist settler from the (frankly rabid) community which has established itself in Hebron, where local Palestinians are regularly physically attacked and have rubbish and toilet water poured onto them and their market by settlers who have occupied the upper floors of their buildings. Baruch Goldstein, an off-duty Israeli army reservist from Brooklyn, entered the mosque side of the Tomb during Friday prayers and shot dead between 29 (from Israeli accounts) and 52 Palestinians, wounding 150 more. He is now venerated by some right-wing Israeli settler groups and political parties as a hero.
In chapter 25 Abraham orders Isaac to find a wife from outside the land of Canaan; this is ringing major bells from the compulsory course on kinship I had to do as part of my social anthropology degree. This is exogamy, marriage outside the group, a practice which is attributed to many needs from the genetic (bringing new genes to maintain diversity and prevent hereditary diseases) to the political (marrying into new families, dynasties etc to form alliances which might be useful in power struggles, times of economic need and so on. Early Twentieth century anthropologists used to spend entire careers drawing complicated diagrams and classifying entire societies according to who they allowed to marry whom.



In pleasant contrast to much of Genesis so far, the resulting bride, Rebekah, is selected on the basis of her kindness and generosity, qualities notably lacking in some of the family she's marrying into. Although maybe it's only the ladies who are supposed to be nice to people. In any case, much of Chapter 25 (perhaps verses 8-32 and 43-46), though repetitive, has a serenely poetic quality, talking about the camels which the messenger of Abraham brings with him and the water which Rebekah fetches for them - a reminder of the complete necessity of water to the desert and arid-country societies amongst which the Bible is set.
Interestingly, given the alarm which Muslim veiling seems to inspire in the modern age, Rebekah's response to seeing the man she is going to marry is:

"she took a vail, and covered herself."

There is something calm and dignified in Rebekah's choice and her stately generosity that is a welcome antidote to the bloodshed and bitterness of the Flood, Cain and Abel, Lot and the destruction of the Cities of the Plain, the Tower of Babel, and Abraham and Sarah's exploitation of Hagar.

Genesis 23 and 24- Sarah snuffs it, Isaac gets a wife

Chapter 23

Sarah is cruelly snatched in the first flush of youth, a mere 127.
Abraham insists on paying the local yokels for a decent burial site, haggling them upwards from nothing to 400 smackeroos.. Why she(ke)lling out was so important, symbolically, I dunno (or care).

Chapter 24

Abraham sends his top servant on a mission- to find a wife of suitable ethnicity for his son, Isaac. (the locals are OK, but you wouldn't want one for a daughter-in-law, apparently).

[Silly butler joke: “My sister has a butler who is missing his left arm. Serves her right.”]

It's not reported what sort of counselling Isaac received to help him over the trauma of his dad almost chopping his head off.

So the servant (un-named)

Verse 10 "...arose and went to Mesopotamia, unto the city of Nahor."

There he performs a Camel test.

Verse 14 "And let it come to pass, that the damsel to whom I shall say, Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink, and I will give they camels drink also; let the same be she that thou hast appointed for thy servant Isac: and thereby shall I know that thou hast shewed kindness unto my master."

Anyway, some wee virginal lass called Rebekah rocks up and blow me if she hasn't gone and

verse 18-9 "said, Drink, my lord: annd she hasted, and let down her pitcher upon her hand, and gave him drink. And when she had done giving him drink, she said, I will draw water for thy camels also, until they have done drinking."

Now, that's a big favour, cos camels can drink a LOT (check how much here)

So, this Rebekah bint; you can be sure the kids she spits out are yours. She is self-effacing and works hard to meet your desires. What more could a real man (not one of these namby-pamby Politically Correct eunuchs) want in a help-meet?

So there's some repetition, as per an oral poem written down. But basically the servant and Rebekah's brother, Laban, agree to her future. After she is asked "Wilt thou go with this man?" (it's unclear whether her answer matters or is just a formality) the servant and Rebekah and their retinues head off to where Isaac is waiting, presumably with a raging case of blue balls.

Verse 67 "And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent and took Rebekah and she became his wife and he loved her and Isac was comforted after his mother's death."

Relationships on the rebound rarely work out. As for Isaac, I reckon 'e'd 'a pulled any warm body, no need to send off to Egypt.

Oh, and "took"? Are we going to need a tag "euphemism for (forced) sex"?

Genesis 13 to 17- smiting, land grabs, inconceivable fertility

Chapter 13

Abram and his brother's kid Lot are big and rich

Ch 13 verse 6 And the land was not able to bear them, that they might dwell together: for their substance was great,so that they could not dwell together.

So, here we could talk about carrying capacity, and critiques of Hardin's tragedy of the commons. But we won't.

So Lot lights out for the territory (Sodom, where the men were wicked), which you can't do nowadays that the world ain't empty.

And Abram heads for Hebron. Sigh.

Chapter 14

Kings smiting each other. Or rather, kings getting their underlings to smite each other.
What's a bayonet- a weapon with a worker at both ends...

And Abram goes behind enemy lines to rescue his nephew Lot, and then refuses the booty the King of Sodom offers him.

Chapter 15

So God rewards Abram with a kind of whack fertility programme

verse 9 Take me a heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and turtledove, and a young pigeon. And some slugs, snails and puppy dogs' tails while you're at it.

Crikey, Abram nods off and then...

Verse 18 In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying. “Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates...

There may be trouble ahead... God's no better at real estate than he is at terra-forming...

Chapter 16

Sarai can't get up the duff. She gives Abe her Handmaid, Hagar, to knock up.

It works, but be careful what you wish for

Ch 16 verse 3 And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived: and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes.

Abram gives Sarai permission to be a cow to Hagar. Sarai is a cow, thus Hagar legs it. She gets skiptraced and brought back by one of gods angels acting as a bailbondsmanangel, who says the kid, “Ismael” is going to be a proper psycho. Which should be no hassle for an 86 year old dad to cope with, eh?

Chapter 17

Abram gets a deed poll from God as a 99^th birthday present- now “Abraham” and Sarai becomes “Sarah.”

And here's the deal. In exchange for the real estate previously mentioned ("all the land of Canaan”) then Abe's lot

Verse 10 Every man child among you shall be circumcised

So, what's the materialist anthropological take on this? Enquiring minds would like to know.
[Tacky joke- “What's the biggest drawback?” “An elephant's foreskin.”]

And Abraham actually laughs in the face of God

Verse 17 Then Abraham fell upon his face and laughed and said in his heart. Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? And shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?

God says 'yup, and he'll be called Isaac. And chill, Ishmael the psycho will not be forsaken.'

And Ismael will not be foreskinned either.

Abraham, Ishmael and all the blokes are then circumcised. These verses are basically repeated, which I'll be has made congregations through the ages wince and cross their legs repeatedly when they hear them.