The long and the short of it is, I’ve been away. On a unexpected little trip. And I never even had to leave the farm! No, I haven’t been to Oz in a dream (and you were there, and you were there), nor did a drop a lot of acid, nor did I even smoke a lot of dope.

But, I did do lot, lot, lot of drugs. Some fun, some not so fun. I took took a little trip over to the isle of misfit ovaries Ovarian cancer, that is.

Damn, how many mixed pop culture references did I think I need in the first two paragraphs?

No worries though, I’m all good now, fixed up, shiny new. No girl parts left to bother me much.

I say all this not to elicit an “I’m soooo sorry” furrow of the brow that you (if you don’t already know all of this) are undoubtedly wearing right now.

I say it, firstly, to let you know I might have a little different take on the bible these days. I may not, but then again I may. I seem to have a little different take on life, I’m not quite sure what, but it’s different. So, it would just kinda follow that what spews out of me here may be a bit different too.

But then again, maybe not.

And secondly I say all this, to explain away such a long absence. I haven’t been “sick” this whole time, but my life has been in quite a twirl and it’s taken awhile to get back around here.

And lastly, that I missed my blog while I was gone, and I’m glad to be back at it.

Oh, and, P. S.ly, thanks to Cindy S., for the email asking me to start the blog again.

Enough of that, you didn’t come here to hear me blather on about girlie-bits, on with the biblie-bits.

So, just to recap, the world got made, Adam & Eve sinned, Cain killed Abel, everyone but Noah and his family died in the flood, Noah’s daughter’s got him drunk and slept with him (for the good of all mankind), Sodom & Gomorrah got smited like crazy, we met Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Esau, oh, hell, I don’t remember all of it…

Anyway, when last we left our crazy kids, Leah & Rachel had a pile of babies and Jacob was getting rich off his father-in-law, Laban’s (I swear I can’t read that without thinking labia) cattle.

Jacob worked for Laban as a general, all around cow/sheep/goat herder sort of guy. For this work, Laban gave Jacob, first, his daughters (mmmm, bible dowry) and then parts of the heard.
But only the imperfect parts.

Sometimes Jacob got the striped cattle, but when there seemed to be lots of striped guys, then Laban changed it to the speckled ones, and then back again.

Seemed to Laban whichever ones he gave to Jacob, there were lots of them. Jacob chalked this up to God’s favor, which I could get on board with in the sense that God made genetics and if you put a bunch of striped cattle together and they breed you are gonna get more stripes than solids.

Jacob’s advantage – Laban never had the benefit of that 7th grade fruit fly experiment we all did.

Remember? where you cross-bread for different eye color or wing size or something. Whatever!

The long and the sort of it: Jacob was getting rich, and Laban was getting pissed. Oh, did I just bust a rhyme?

Finally, when things were a little beyond uncomfortable round the old Laban place, God told Jacob it was time to take his wives, his gazillion kids, all his speckley, stripy cattle and head back home to the land of his father’s.

I like the understatement of the text.

Chapter 31:2
“And Jacob noticed that Laban’s attitude toward him was not what it had been.”

How many times has that happened to you? You are hanging out and you think, “Damn, So-and-So seems a little stand off-ish. Wonder what’s up with that?”

Jacob knows it’s time to hit the road, so he splits without telling Laban.

Now here’s the part of the story I love. Before they go, Rachel sneaks into her father’s house, steals all the household gods and stashes them in her camel saddle. There’s something totally sweet and sad about that.

You’ve got to wonder why she did it. Maybe her husband’s god is not her god. Maybe she’s afraid of the unknown, leaving her home and everything she’s ever known to go to the land of Canaan. Way far away.

When Laban comes looking for his missing idols, Leah plays the period card.

Classic.

“Oh Daddy, I don’t know anything about any silly missing gods. But, I’ve got my period, and I”m all crampie, so I’m just gonna sit here on top of my camel saddle while you look around.”

You know, Leah might even be pissed at her Dad for treating her husband so badly he feels like he needs to pack up his whole kit and caboodle and two wives and a million kids and get out of dodge while the gettin’ is still good.

Or maybe she’s still a little pissed about the whole wedding night switch-a-roo business. Who knows?

What I do know is that I find the idea of household gods, tucked away, packed for safe travel to a new and unknown home, kinda comforting.

(Goat to the left, apropos of nothing.)

Wish I had some gods in my camel saddle.
Wish I had a camel saddle.

Camel Saddle. Does that sound dirty, or is it just me?

So, I think that’s it. I hope it was worth the wait. It won’t be two years until the next one.
Thanks for reading.

Yes, I know, it’s been a while, but cut me some slack, yo! Biblelicious has been out getting her little lesbian heart broken, and although that didn’t take too very long, it’s taken a while to get my humor back on…so, don’t get you hopes up too high about this one, it may be a dud.

Jacob and Leah and Rachel and Leah’s maid and Rachael’s maid, now, here’s a story you can sink your teeth into! A baby making contest between two sisters married to the same guy. You should have seen the fundamentalist commentary try and weasel their way around this one. It was not unlike Pat Robertson endorsing Giuliani for president, while overlooking his views on gay rights, abortion and gun control, oh and his odd but always amusing penchant for cross-dressing.

Speaking of, you’d think the press would make a little more of that than they have. I mean, if Hillary Clinton had a thing for going out in drag, do you not think that would be on the news, somewhere, everyday from now until, well, until we’re all dead or something. I mean really, how many times in the last week have you seen some early ninety’s footage of Monica Lewinsky?

Sorry, just couldn’t bear to put up one of those old tired ML pictures, so how about one of Bill and Hilary when they were young hippies? I know I should make some “he didn’t inhale” joke here, but I’m just not up to it.

There I go, totally off message, how’d I get from Leah and Rachel to Monica, to Bill and Hilary with really, really bad hair? Cripes, good thing I’m not running for anything. You guys better go read the chapters and I’ll get with my advisors on today’s talking points.

OK, good, everyone up to speed?

First off, what’s with all this mistaken identity business? Jacob pretends to be Esau, now Leah gets all dressed up as Rachel. I’m not buying it. I never bought it in those Shakespeare comedies and I’m not buying it here. You can’t tell me that when Jacob got behind closed doors with his new wife, he didn’t notice it wasn’t the girl he was expecting?

Creationist boy explains it away thusly:

Sounds like Creationist Boy is saying he jumped her bones so quick he didn’t get a good look at her. Now, I don’t know about you, but has creationist boy ever seen two sisters? Alike sort of, yes, but not so much that a guy, who BTY, is supposed to be madly in love with one sister, so much so that he works for seven years, FOR FREE, just to marry her, is not going to notice it’s the sister giving it up to him in the newlywed suite. I mean, really. Biblelicious has jumped in bed with her fair share of girls, in the dark and a little drunk, and not once did I make that much of a mistake, least I don’t think so.

Call me crazy, I’m just not seeing that it happened quite like that. More like, after seven years, he gets there, in the nuptial chamber and in walks, the woman he married, oops, it’s the sister, but he married her and so he says, “WTF?” “Oh well, too late to turn back now. I best get busy with the one I’m with. I’ll take things up with the lying bastard father in the morning. Right now, I’ve been waiting for seven years to get a little, I best get me some.” Although, I doubt Jacob was chaste those seven years, plenty of servant girls who’s job is was to give happy endings to poor unmarried slumps.

You know, Biblelicious’s nieces are named Leah and Rachel. You’ve got to wonder if Biblelicious’s sister looked the story up before she named that second one.

Here’s what creationist boy had to say about Jacob and the two wives:

Then the baby making starts, Leah starts popping them out while Rachael, even though she’s getting most of Jacobs good lovin’ can’t seem to squeeze out not one little ankle biter. So, she does the next best thing, tells her husband to sleep with the maid. Now, remember, we’ve seen this one before, Sarah and Abraham and Hagar and that pesky Ishmael, a troublesome arrangement, at best. So, maybe we score one for Creationist Boy, but then again, he’s probably never seen Big Love, not that I’ve actually seen either, but I hear tell it puts a nice happy modern face on polygamy.

And, anyway, if this were a novel, or any book was coherent or sensible, we would remember that Ishmael debacle and be prepared for something similar to happen here. Not so, Rachel’s girl pops out, how many, like two? Three? I don’t remember exactly and then Leah thinks “That’s a pretty good idea, Jacob, come over here and put it in my maid and make more babies.”

You’ve got to wonder what Jacob was thinking. And, holy crap, you’d think he’d of gotten tired after awhile. But no, he keeps boinking all four of them and they keep poppin’ out the pups until there are thirteen boys and one girl. And really, think about it, fourteen babies? That would make me never ever want to have sex ever again. But then, I’m sort of a lesbian, so sex doesn’t really bring babies much to mind. And, I’m guessing Jacob wasn’t getting up for the three am feedings, so he probably wasn’t too bothered.

Babies, babies. 14 of them. Man oh man, what yowling mass of infant humanity.

The more coherent commentary, not creationist boy, note that these 13 boys represent the thirteen tribes of Israel. So, if you are into the more metaphorical reading, it makes a little more sense, but then again, Leah and Rachel could have popped out thirteen between them, plenty of women have had thirteen all on their own, but it’s hard on a girl, you know. Tends to kill you after, oh I don’t know, eight or so. That is, before modern medicine and all. Now, heck, thirteen is nothing, just ask Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar (Yes, I just said Jim Bob) they’ve got 17. And, bonus, they are from Biblelicious’s home town, or right outside of it. I have to admit, I’m a little obsessed with these folks and their gazillion kids and Pentecostalism faith and no debt. Yes, no debt. A 7000 square foot house and no debt. Kind of makes me wonder if I’m wrong, but then again, kinda makes me wonder how many of the 17 will be preachers and how many of them will spend the vast majority of their adulthood in therapy. I have to say, the discovery channel documentaries are riveting, at least if you are me. And little ol’ Michelle Duggar didn’t need her man to sleep with the maid, how come there’s no gospel about her?

Jacob has a dream that there are some anjelic hostie kinda folks walking up and down a ladder from heaven.

Here’s the quote:

Then he had a dream: a stairway rested on the ground, with its top reaching to the heavens; and God’s messengers were going up and down on it.

That’s it, that’s all there is to it.

Jacob had a dream about a stariway to heaven (Come on, you expected me not to use that joke? It’s the freakin’ title of the post) with some angels or something going up and down from earth up into heaven.

I knew about Jacob’s Ladder, well, because everyone does, and we sang that song in church when I was a kid, about how we were climbing Jacob’s Ladder, soldiers of the cross.

I guess I was expecting a little more from the story, maybe some exposition or flowery detail, or, I don’t know, a second sentance.

Nope.

And, after the soldiers of the cross song, I couldn’t come up with much of anything else about Jacob’s little anjelic dream. Well, except for that really freaking disterbing Tim Robbins movie from like 1990. Who, by the way, is still married to the most beautiful woman ever, ever, ever in the world. OK, gratatuis Susan Sarandon, but we could all do with a little more Susan Sarandon, don’t you think?

At a loss for anything else to say, I turn to google.

Google never diappoints.

Come to find out, there are gazillions of things named after Jacob’s little ladder to the sky.

It’s a pretty little purple flower

and a fern kind of a thing.
And a kitting and a nifty quilting pattern.

It’s an early 70’s band with waaaay too much boy hair going on. But I’m digging the floral pants.

Some kind of homebrew electromagnetic thingie-hooter that every geek with an outlet and a digital camera seems to have made.

It’s this toy that if you grew up in rural america, you had some crusty old cooter of an uncle that made them. Fun, mmmm, just like video games.

And, you know, I’ve got about a billion other pics of things called Jacob’s ladder, but I’ve been jacking round with this post long enough. You get the point.

What more can I say about a weasel like Jacob? Yet again, he tricks his brother out of a blessing. This time with the help of his mother, Rebecca.

Isaac is old and blind and tells Esau to go and hunt down some tasty venison, cook it up the special way he likes it and bring it in to him. Then, he will give Esau his special “I’m gonna die soon blessing.”

Rebecca overhears and tells Jacob to hoodwink Isaac into giving him the blessing instead of his brother Esau.

Dosen’t that picture of Issac look kinda like a really freaked out Christopher Walkin?

But, yet again, I digress.

There’s so much wrong here. But the thing that bothers me the most is that no matter what Jacob does, no matter what manner of man he is, he’s God’s chosen one.

God picked him, so he’s the one that will carry the name, be the father of the Israelites. Not strong, brave, albeit a bit dim, Esau. Nope, it will be Jacob, birthright stealing, blessing robbing, mamma’s boy, Jacob. He’s the one God chooses to be the father of his people.

One of the commentaries I read, my early 18th century puritan friend, talked quite a lot about this. He talked about the ends and the means. The end was good but the means were evil. He worked pretty hard to make this all OK, but he never was quite able to convince me that the ends can justify the means. Nope, no more than Machiavelli ever did, try as he might.

A good and just end can never justify deceitful or evil means. Not that I’m saying the old testament god is kinda like Machiavelli. No, no, I’d never say that.

Let’s take this ends and means stuff and jump right into the 21st century. Let’s say, oh I don’t know, you are a US Senator, say, on a layover in an airport in, I don’t know, Minneapolis, and you get arrested for soliciting gay sex in the men’s room.

And, let’s say you really do have a “wide stance” and you really were just taking a big ol’ dump while tapping your foot and running your hand repeatedly under the stall. That you really, really, weren’t asking that undercover cop in the next stall for sex, but that the cop was a little overzealous and misunderstood and you didn’t want to cause a fuss so you went along with it.

OK, so you are innocent, but you are a senator and this is a pesky, nasty, dirty little charge and the best thing to do is just lie and plead guilty and hope it all goes away.

So, the end, keeping your job, is good. Particularly if you are a lawmaker in the United States Senate. You make decisions and pass laws that effect the entire world and you think that you are the best man for that job. So, a little lie and a little harmless misdemeanor on your record is small potatoes compared to the greater harm caused by telling the truth and loosing your job.

Now, if you’ve been anywhere other than under a rock for the past couple of weeks, you know how that little lie is working out.

Not so good.

And, on the whole, much worse for the greater good (if you believe keeping republicans in power is actually a good) of the republican party.

Or, oh, I don’t know, say that you are the leader of the free world, and you see that your country and the countries of your allies are all dependent on gazillions of barrels of cheap middle eastern oil. And, let’s say, you decide that best way to make sure that your country and the countries of your allies don’t fall into anarchy because some Saudi dictator makes it difficult for the West to get cheap oil, to avoid the pandemonium, the general cultural breakdown that would occur if oil prices started to rise out of your control, is establish a permanent presence (government) in that area so that you can be assured that the cheap oil will continue to flow. And, say, you decide that the best way to maintain the high standard of living for the lives of your people and the people of you allies is to, without provocation, invade a strategically placed middle eastern country, topple the government and install your own government.

The end here? Peace and continued prosperity in your country and the countries of your allies. The means, the deaths of thousands of your people and the people of your allies and the deaths of hundreds of thousands middle-eastern people.

Again, the desired end is good, but the means are bad. The actual end? I don’t think we are quite there yet, but it’s not looking so good. We still have prosperity, but at a huge cost and oil is way less cheap and the economy is teetering on recession/depression for those aforementioned people and people of our allies.

Now, let’s hop back to Jacob and Esau. The end, Jacob gets the blessing he needs to be prosperous and have lots of kids and fulfill God’s promise to Rebecca that Jacob will be father to His chosen people. The means, trickery and lies.

Jacob gets the desired end, but the reverberations, the ramifications, one could argue, have followed the children of Israel to this day. They are one of the most maligned, systematically persecuted people in the history of peoples. And I’m not saying that all the terrible things that have been heaped upon the Jewish people can all be laid at the feet of Jacob, no, but I am saying that no matter how noble your end, the means must be noble too.

Something tells me I should pay attention.

Hummm…could it be that this is the THIRD time I’ve been told that when you are married to a babealicious babe and you have to go foraging in a foreign land, say that she’s your sister. Otherwise, you’ll probably be killed and they’ll take your her as their wife or concubine or newest harem addition or sex slave. But then those last two are pretty much the same, aren’t they?
But, if you say that she’s your sister, you get to stay alive and your wife isn’t stolen away and raped by the locals. Well, OK, she’s not always stolen away and raped by the locals — only sometimes.

Oh, and God rewards you with lots of booty (not the back that bitch up kind, rather, the silver and gold and slaves and camels kind).

So, what’s up with this?

Once again, I read a pile of commentary. Basically these guys (cause they are pretty much all guys) say, sins of the father repeated by the son. I didn’t find much else. I didn’t find anything that looked any deeper, that looked at the issues of sex and incest and rape and respect. All things here that seem to be bonking me over the head.

So, in lieu of any informed commentary, I’m gonna wing this one.

Hold on, it may be a bumpy ride…

A few thoughts on the literal, then we’ll move on to the mythical.

If I say she’s my wife, then she’s fair game. They can kill me and rape her. If I say she’s my sister, then they’ll have to ask me before they rape her, but they won’t kill me.

What’s the difference here?

In the former, the people in question have had sex.

In the latter, they should by no means have had sex.

So, if you’ve played the double-backed monster game, you are fair game. If you haven’t, then you you still get a little respect.

Funny how much that sounds like a lot rape trials. But, lets not go there. Lest I lose all focus and rant endlessly…

So, it’s sex. All crazy wound up, who gets to have it with who. I may be simplifying a bit, but if you are a woman, and you’ve given it up at least once, then you’re not worth what you were before. You are worth way more while that little bit of skin remains unbroken.

If you’ve already done the deed, what does it matter how many more times you do it, or who you do it with. Or, even, if you don’t want to, what’s the harm in making you do it anyway?

And, for the hapless husband? He should know better than to bring such a luscious wife into a foreign land. We’re gonna get us some of that, and we know you won’t give it to us, so we’ll just kill you and take it.

Now, on the other hand, if you haven’t given it up yet, if you are still intact, as they used to say, then you get a little respect. And so does your, um, brother. Neither of you are defiled already, therefore it’s much more of a taboo to go there.

You run into the whole sister/wife thing in almost every ancient civilization’s religion. Mayan, Inca, Japanese, Grecian, Roman, and Egyptian. Hera and Zeus had the brother sister husband wife thing going on.

Remember Isis and Osiris? Them too.

You don’t remember? Oh, well then, I’ll tell you a little story.

Isis and Osiris were very, very powerful and good and just gods in ancient Egypt. They loved their people and they loved each other very much. When Osiris’s evil brother killed Osiris and then let dogs tear apart his body and scatter it along the countryside, Isis was very, very upset. She searched high and low, finding all the bits of Osiris’ body, except one.

The one little part she couldn’t find?

His penis.

It had been swallowed by a fish.

Pecker eaten up by a fish, there’s some juicy symbolism…

Needless to say, Isis was very sad about that little missing part of her brother-husband, so she made one out of gold, brought him back to life, had one last romantic evening, then sent him off to be god of the underworld.

Isis continued to be a great goddess and was worshiped far and wide, well into the first century A.D.

It’s amazing how many accounts I found on the web that just gloss right over the missing penis, eaten up by a fish, replaced by a golden dildo part of the story.

So, I’ve got to wonder if this thrice-told story of sister-wife, but not really sister-wife like the nasty pagans had real sister-wives, is some sort of backlash against the prevailing religions of the time. That when the ancient Israelites heard this story, they immediately saw how their stories, their ancestors, their God was different, superior, from the other gods.

This God, their God, the one God, the sexless, personality-less, all powerful, wrathful, not always terribly wise or just, with absolutely no sense of humor God, would never be party to such a thing as sex with his sister, nor would the patriarchs of his people.

This God doesn’t have a sister, or a wife. Kind of begs the question about how He manages to produce a Son. But if He made Adam out of clay, I’m sure He can whip up a Son out of clouds or heavenly nectar or something. But I digress…

We find ourselves with this ancient mythical theme, turned all inside out. The pagan gods did well by sleeping with their siblings. The Israelites are a different sort, their God rewards them for not sleeping with their siblings and doing what they can to protect their wives.

Makes some sense, I guess, if you think of it that way.

But still, the old gods were way more fun.

I’m really not sure what to take from this chapter. Jacob, weak, whiney, mamma’s boy gets his hairy he-man brother to give up his birthright for a bowl of lentil soup.

There’s a whole bunch of who begat who at the beginning of this chapter that we are going to skip right over.

Here’s the important part:

This is the family history of Isaac, son of Abraham; Abraham had begotten Isaac.

Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebecca, the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan-aram and the sister of Laban the Aramean.

Isaac entreated the LORD on behalf of his wife, since she was sterile. The LORD heard his entreaty, and Rebecca became pregnant.

But the children in her womb jostled each other so much that she exclaimed, “If this is to be so, what good will it do me!” She went to consult the LORD, and he answered her: “Two nations are in your womb, two peoples are quarreling while still within you; But one shall surpass the other, and the older shall serve the younger.”

When the time of her delivery came, there were twins in her womb. The first to emerge was reddish, and his whole body was like a hairy mantle; so they named him Esau.

His brother came out next, gripping Esau’s heel; so they named him Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when they were born.

As the boys grew up, Esau became a skillful hunter, a man who lived in the open; whereas Jacob was a simple man, who kept to his tents.

Isaac preferred Esau, because he was fond of game; but Rebecca preferred Jacob.

Once, when Jacob was cooking a stew, Esau came in from the open, famished.

He said to Jacob, “Let me gulp down some of that red stuff; I’m starving.” (That is why he was called Edom.)

But Jacob replied, “First give me your birthright in exchange for it.”

“Look,” said Esau, “I’m on the point of dying. What good will any birthright do me?”

But Jacob insisted, “Swear to me first!” So he sold Jacob his birthright under oath.

Jacob then gave him some bread and the lentil stew; and Esau ate, drank, got up, and went his way. Esau cared little for his birthright.

Now, I’m as big a lintel fan as the next guy, and have been known to make some killer soup, but trading away your birthright is no small thing.

Feakin’ soup nazi.

Back then, in the way back times, the first born son got the lion’s share of pretty much everything in the family. The second son, not so much. He got some, but way less than number one son. This booty was not just financial, there were legal and spiritual aspects to the birthright too.

If you care, read about it here.

If not, suffice to say, your birthright was a really big fucking deal and you didn’t just give it away. At least most folks didn’t.

But, Esau does.

I read, like I always do, a bunch of commentary on the subject, but none of them really satisfied me. There was a lot of talk about the two nations and how Jacob is the father Israel and Esau is the father of Edom and how those nations were always at odd with one another.

Sure, there’s that. I mean, God says right there in the first paragraph, Rebecca, you’ve got two nations in your belly and they jostling you around because they don’t like each other so much.

But I think there’s more to this than allegory. And, since I’ve read ahead, I know that Jacob is a conniving, sniveling, suck-up, Alberto Gonzales-esk, sort of a guy. One for getting what he wants, no matter the means.

So, you’ve got to wonder, if, in that moment, Esau had simply had enough of his brother, simpering around, whining to his mother, “Esau got this, Esau got that, whah-whah-whah.” And he just said, “Fuck it, OK, whatever. If you love birthright so much, why don’t you marry it? Just give me a bowl of soup, can’t you see I’m starving here?”

Maybe it just didn’t matter to Esau, maybe the damn birthright was more trouble than it was worth. Jacob was a wimp and Esau was a brute of a man. Esau could have easily elbowed him out of the way and made off with the whole pot. Or he could a called a servant and gotten something else to eat. I can’t imagine there wasn’t any other food around. They are in Isaac, son of Abraham’s, household. It’s not like they were poor.

So, I’m just guessing here, and sometimes I’m a little slow on the uptake, but I’m thinking that this is not about the soup at all.

On a basic level, it’s about power. Beyond that, it’s about who is the better man.

I vote for Esau. Esau is the better man. Which doesn’t bode well for the father of the Israelites, but what’ya gonna do? You can’t pick your parents.

In this story, even though none of the commentaries pointed it out, I think we get our first real example of “Christian Virtue”. Even though we are not to the Christian part yet. Oh, and the Jews, and I think possibly the Muslim’s have this story too. So maybe it’s more of a general religious virtue than maybe just a strictly Christian one.

But what, you ask, is the virtue here. Letting some schmuck shyster you out of all your money?

Not exactly.

Esau knew he was being taken for a ride, I mean, how could he not. Give me your birthright for a bowl of soup? He’d not fallen off the turnip truck just yesterday. (Ok, they didn’t actually have trucks, or probably turnips, but you get the gist.)

He was a grown man, he knew what his birthright was worth. But, perhaps it wasn’t worth the frustration and tension it caused in the household. Jacob was envious, he was greedym and Rebecca favored him. Isaac favored Esau. It doesn’t sound like the happiest of families to me.

Perhaps harmony was worth more than a birthright.

This is going to be sort of sappy and buddha-esk, but perhaps being kind and generous and trying to make your world more livable is what this story is about.

That’s what I want it to be about.

So call me Al Gore if you want, I think we should all try to live in harmony and make our worlds more livable.

Now, I could spend a lot of time going on about this chapter, go get my son a wife, blah blah blah, women here aren’t good enough, blah blah, go get a good one from my home land, blah blah blah. Oh look there’s the perfect one, God told me so, blah blah. I’m gonna put this ring in your nose, come home with me, marry some other stranger, blah blah blah…go read the chapter so we can move on to what’s really important.

OK, good, now that we are all up to speed.

Put your hand under my thigh?

WTF?

I was almost afraid to google it. But, because you come here and read all this crap, I braved it. Just for you. You see how I am?

Surprisingly, there was very little porn. Although, I did get this really sexy pic of Jennifer Anniston. (That was gratuitous, I know, but what’s a girl to do?)

When you google “put your hand under my thigh”, you get about a bazillion pages on just that bible verse. Who’da thought that?

So, what’s up with this? Well, it’s not put your hand under the outside of my thigh. No, no, no, it’s put your hand under the inside of my thigh. Or, not to put too fine a point on it, put your hand under my balls and swear on them.

Again, I’m not making this up.

According the twenty or so random pages I perused, this “Testicle Oath”, or “Penis Oath”, as it is sometimes called, was common practice in ancient Mesopotamia.

Remember that Friends episode where Joey comes in wearing the elf costume and Chandler says, “Too…many…jokes. Must…mock…Joey.”? It’s like that in my head right now. Except replace Joey with Ancient Misogynist Patriarch.

I could stop right here and feel like I’ve done right by you all. I mean, once you get to Penis Oath, there’s really no where else to go.

So, which sounds better? Testicle Oath or Penis Oath? Testicle, I think testicle. Sounds much more serious. Penis is silly. And really, shouldn’t it be Testicular Oath?

Ok, enough jackin’ around (that was a pun, did ya get it?). According to the internets, the ancient Testicle Oath was quite common. Why the testicles? Power. Those neither regions are the source of power, the source of life.

When you get done giggling because I keep saying testicle, and think for a minute, it really makes sense. It’s mystical. In the cojones of Abraham lie the essence of life and before science made it reasonable, made it understandable, it truly a mystery. Humans have this ability to give, and take, life. It’s the most powerful thing we’ve got.

When you really, really mean it, not just pinky swear mean it or on you mother’s grave mean it, making someone swear on your stones, on your power to give life and I’m extrapolating here, but by the same token your ability to take it, then that’s one hell of a binding oath.

It’s interesting that he doesn’t make his servant to sear on God, his external source of power, but rather on his personal power. Also, asking some guy to grab your balls and swear by them, you’ve really got to have some confidence in you power over the guy with his hand on your nut sack. One quick squeeze and there’s a dramatic shift in that power dynamic.

So, what I’m wondering, where along the line did the power of the penis overtake the power of the vulva? In ancient times, way more ancient than Abraham, back before the patriarchy, where the civilizations were ruled by the matriarchy, the vulva, the womb was a mystery. Frightening and powerful and sacred.

I googled a while to see if I could come up with a analogous oath, a vulva oath, or a womb oath, but I didn’t come up with anything.

Maybe some things are too sacred to swear upon.

But there you go, I mean, how long did you expect her to live, anyway?

This picture totally looks like something out of one of my Sunday School readers. These little magazines we got for our Sunday school lessons. Over dramatized artist’s rendering.

I kind of would have expected this chapter so say something about Sarah, or her life, or her faith, or her place as the mother of the Israelites, but it doesn’t. Rather, it’s about burying her. The mechanics of getting her in the ground, or into a tomb (as was the custom then). Abraham grieves for his dead wife, but then he has to get up and go buy some land to bury her in.

He has to go make “the arrangements”, as they say. He has to leave his greiving and negotiate a real estate deal. That’s what it’s like when someone dies. You have to go pay for them to be dead. You have to do these transactions, make these decisions, important decisions, expensive decisions when time and life and the ground under your feet seems to have disappeared.

So he does what he needs to do, he pays 400 sheckles of silver for a cave and the surrounding land. And he burys her, and he’s buried there and so are his kids and their wives.

Strangely, as nuts and bolts, as mundane as this record of an ancient real estate transaction is, it’s so infused with what it’s really like, what it feels like to lose someone, to bury someone.

Or, maybe it’s just me.

So that’s what happened. Now, on to what’s happened since.

But, before we go there, I want to talk for a minute about impermanence. Let’s say, Impermanence is the word of the day.

Impermanence: When a thing is not permanent. When it changes, when it goes away.

When you think about it, that’s pretty much everything.

I mean this in the Buddhist sense. Where impermanence is good. Where holding on to things from the past, not wanting things to change, is bad. Bad, like it’s the very core of human suffering, bad.

Why, you may ask, in a sad little chapter about burying your dead wife, do I bring up Buddhism? Well, because, this chapter and the last, are set in real, identifiable places. Places that have been turned into churches and mosques and shrines. Places that have caused folks to fight over them since, well, sence Abraham did the faux-child sacrifice and then he buried his wife.

The first place is Temple Mount, most holy place for Judaism, third most holy place for Muslims. Supposed site of almost Issac sacrifice. The Dome of the Rock is part of temple mount. Supposed rock from which all the world was made. And, we’ll get to this later, but in Revelation, it says that “The dome of the rock must fall” prior to the beginning of the end of the world. So, a fairly important hunk of land for those watching for the end of the world.

I know about the whole Dome of the Rock thing, because when I was about 13 or 14, I was in the youth choir at church and we did a “Cantata” about the Book of Revelation. One of the lines from one of the songs was “The Dome of the Rock must fall, the Dome of the Rock must fall, the Dome of the Rock must fall.” All the altos (me) singing this over and over in a minor key while the sopranos sang some other equally frightening chant in a fundamentalist Christian musical fugue thingie.

We went on the road, traveling the south for a couple of weeks, going from church to church, singing, staying in stranger’s homes. We all had matching yellow dresses that our moms made for us. The guys had yellow dress shirts and khaki pants. I’m not making this up. The dresses had white lace right under the boob part. Why I remember the dress? My mom was no seamstress, so I was not the best lookin’ one out there. But then, an ill fitting dress was the least of my worries as a 6 ft tall, 110lb clumsy puppy of a girl.

We went to OpryLand in Nashville. We also went to 6 Flags.

Back then, I didn’t know what or where the Dome of the Rock was. All I knew was that it had to fall before Jesus could come back and rapture us all into heaven and then reign supreme for a thousand years.

Now I know all about it. It’s in the middle east and it’s very, very holy and everyone wants no one other than themselves to go there. And some don’t even want themselves to go there.

For many Jews it’s forbidden to go up to the temple mount. It’s just too holy and the ritual purification, bathing in the ashes of a sacrificed red heffer, really, that’s the ritual cleansing, is just to difficult to get right, so better just not to go there.

The second place is the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the second holiest sight in Judaism. Where Abraham buries Sara, and eventually gets buried himself, along with the rest of his kinfolk. Muslims and Jews and Christians have been fighting over this hunk of land since Sarah got buried there. Muslims had control for quite a while in like 400 to say 1000 A.D., then the crusaders came along and snagged it back for the Christians, but then Saladin took it back for the Muslims round 1200. Jews weren’t allowed any closer than the 5th step, but later they were allowed to ascend two steps closer to the 7th step. I’m not sure if the Christians were allowed near it at all, seeing as how the crucaiders came in swords blazing, knocking down walls and such.

It was a really huge deal, getting to go to the 7th step. I don’t quite get it.

So, my point in the spotty, convoluted, and possibly wildly inaccurate history of these two holy sites, the two most holy for both Muslims and Jews, is, what makes them so damn holy? Why is it that a place, where legend tells us a thing happened, can make that place worth fighting for? And then when you’ve fought for it and it’s yours, you aren’t even allowed to go there. What good is it? What good is a holy place?

I mean, I think that there are places in the world that are inherently holy, where something in the universe collides to make one place more susceptible to the divine that other places. I think there were many more such places where there was less asphalt and more meadow in the world, but regardless, there are those places, and I would have to suppose that there is something inherent in the middle east, something going on there that is different from the rest of the world. Three of the worlds largest religions, two of the worlds most violent religions, stem from the very same places. But then again, all come from the same stories, the same original myths. But I’ve got to wonder if what’s going on there is holy, is divine.

I mean if you look at it from inside the Christian tradition, the stuff that has gone on in the middle east since Abraham and Sarah, doesn’t really coincide with Love they Neighbor as Thyself. It’s destructive and divisive in the name of three religions that purport they are religions of peace. Somethings going on in the very air, the very water, the very earth of the Middle East, but I don’t believe it’s divine. Seems dark and sinister and angry and hopeless to me. Doesn’t seem to be much holy going on there.

Which brings me back round to impermanence. You’d never see a Buddhist fighting a war over the site of the bodhi tree under which Buddha sat and found enlightenment. For that matter, you’d never see a Buddhist fighting a war at all. You’d see a Buddhist emulating the life of Buddha, retelling the story of the tree, recognizing that the story and the tree and you and me are all interconnected in the universe. But, not so much would you see an armed Buddhist monk defending the site of enlightenment.

When you think about it like that, it seems kinda silly.

Genesis Chapter 22

Stories like this make me wonder what it would be like if it happened today.

It’d probably end up as a made-for-TV movie on Lifetime or something. You’d be channel surfing some insomniac night and (LTMN) Abraham & Isaac: Religious fanatic attempts to sacrifice son to Almighty God. Based on a true story. (CC) (R) (TV13) would pop up in your Tivo guide.

If you were me, you flip right past and settle in on a nice rerun of What Not to Wear. You know, a show that you can actually relate to. Although, if you are me, your Tivo might record it for you. Tivo’s creepy like that.

Click the link and read the chapter. I’ll wait.

I remember Brother Rowell preaching on this one when I was a kid. I don’t really remember the substance of the sermon, probably something about being steadfast in your faith and all. What I do remember is thinking about the reality of what it would have been like to be Abraham, or worse, Isaac.

I thought about how it would feel to walk up that mountain knowing that you were going to kill someone. Walking up that mountain, acting like everything was just fine, everything was normal and happy. But you knew, you knew, for three whole days, you knew.

Three long days.

Each step, each minute, each hour, closer to the sacrifice.

Then it wouldn’t be days anymore, it would be hours, and then only minutes. In just half an hour you would have to kill him. Then, in 20 minutes, you were going to grab him, overpower him, tie him down and kill him. In just 10 more minutes you were going to grab him, overpower him, tie him down and slit his throat. In just 5 minutes, 2 minutes, 1 minute. Going over and over in your mind, exactly how you would do it, exactly what would happen, trying to anticipate the struggle, wondering if there would even be one.

And then, I remember thinking about it from Isaac’s side, being overtaken, overpowered, being stunned and confused, frightened. In a flash, the reality of what was happening dawning on him. Then there would be sadness. Overwhelming sadness. That’s what I imagine Isaac felt. Not anger, not disbelief, just sadness. Sadness at the betrayal, sadness knowing he was less important, that his life was not important enough for Abraham to argue with God about. Not important enough for his father to disobey God.

Sadness because this was all he got.

OK, well, I’m not sure I thought all that as an 8 year old. Most probably, I was having a little nap in the pew, or drawing pictures on the bulletin. But some of it, I’m sure I thought about some of it. And the rest? Well, I read a passel of Dostoevsky in college. He seeps into your brain and you never quite shake it.

In Crime and Punishment, Raskalnikov carries that ax around under his coat, and you follow along with him all the winding way to the old pawnbroker’s house where he kills her with three swift whacks. Right on the skull. You’re in his mind, his steps, thoughts.

And then there’s the beginning of The Idiot where you follow the thoughts of condemned man on his way to the gallows.

Read this bit of The Idiot and you will be convinced that state executions are cruel and unusual punishment.
Dostoevsky knew what he was talking about, it’s not like he was just blowin’ smoke up our collective asses. During WWI, he was sent to the gallows, had the velvet hood over his head, the noose around his neck when the reprieve came. Ol’ Fyodor D. knew.

But I digress. Back to the slaughtering of innocents at hand.

A number of things come to mind here. First, why would Abraham hazard arguing for the life of his nephew Lot, when God was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, but he doesn’t make a peep when the self-same God tells him to kill his own child. And not just any child, the one, the only one, the promised one, the fruit of their steadfast faith one. The father of great nations, one.

Perhaps that’s it, right there. Issac was God’s, promised and given but still God’s. Perhaps Abraham felt it was God’s prerogative to take him back. Seems pretty harsh, but almost harsher still that he didn’t make him go through with it.

I don’t know, you may disagree, but it almost seems it would have been better if God had made him go through with it and then had miraculously brought Isaac back from the dead, or made it so that the knife wouldn’t cut, or that as soon as the knife came down, God did a little switch-a-roo with Isaac and the ram. I mean, even Sabrina could have pulled that one off, just a twitch of the nose and Tabitha would have found herself in the bushes instead of tied to a rock.

But the way the story goes, it’s like this God’s got a sick little sense of humor. That, or Abraham just couldn’t do it. I prefer the latter.

Creationist boy comes through again with some metaphorical insight. God couldn’t let Abraham sacrifice Isaac, he could not let him be the sacrificial lamb, because there is only one Lamb of God, only one human sacrifice necessary, and Isaac isn’t the one.

Can anyone guess who is? I’ll give you a hint: His initials are J.C.

And, if you are reading the Old Testament as a precursor to the coming of Christ, as preparation for Christianity (which many Christians do, but not so much with the Jews) then it’s a nice little bit of foreshadowing. If you almost sacrifice someone in the beginning of a book, when you really do it in the end, not so unbelievable for the reader.

Another source I read, I can’t remember which. It might have been Isaac Asimov’s bible commentary. I know, I didn’t know he wrote one either. It’s pretty good. Or, maybe one of the sources my Episcopal Monk friend gave me. (Shouuuuuuttttt Ouuuutttt to my main Monk Man for the theological hook up.)

Anyway, whatever the source was, said that child sacrifice was pretty common during that time. This child-ram substation distinguished the Israelites from all other traditions because they did not practice human sacrifice.

Very plausible and, bonus, good PR for getting your new religion off the ground.

Come, join us for worship! The other guys might sacrifice you, but we never will.*

* Circumcision Required

So I’m just going to get it out on the table, right here, up front. Sarah is kind of a bitch.

Actually, come to think of it, not even kind of, she’s totally a bitch.

Gen 21:1-13

The LORD took note of Sarah as he had said he would; he did for her as he had promised.

Sarah became pregnant and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time that God had stated.

Abraham gave the name Isaac to this son of his whom Sarah bore him.

When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, as God had commanded.

Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.

Sarah then said, “God has given me cause to laugh, and all who hear of it will laugh with me.

Who would have told Abraham,” she added, “that Sarah would nurse children! Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”

Isaac grew, and on the day of the child’s weaning, Abraham held a great feast.

Sarah noticed the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham playing with her son Isaac; so she demanded of Abraham: “Drive out that slave and her son! No son of that slave is going to share the inheritance with my son Isaac!”

Abraham was greatly distressed, especially on account of his son Ishmael.

But God said to Abraham: “Do not be distressed about the boy or about your slave woman. Heed the demands of Sarah, no matter what she is asking of you; for it is through Isaac that descendants shall bear your name.

As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a great nation of him also, since he too is your offspring.”

Now, a little refresher, because it’s been a while.

Sarah and Abraham want a child and God promises them one, but it doesn’t seem very likely He’s gonna make good, seeing that Sarah’s like 90 years old. So, she takes matters into her own hands, and tells Abraham to go sleep with her slave girl, Hagar.

He says, “Whatever you say, dear.” And, tout de suite, Hagar’s got a bouncing baby boy that God told her to name Ishmael. Sarah gets jealous, and sends Hagar and Ishmael off into the desert.

God says, “Whoa Nellie! You get on back to the house of Abraham, suck it up and take whatever abuse Sarah can dish out.”

So, they go back and Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, and Ishmael all live happily together. Kind of like the Brady Bunch, only if Greg’s mom was really Alice and not some woman that maybe died, or maybe never existed because they never, ever, ever talked about her.

Oh, and if Carol was a total bitch.

Ok, not so much like the Brady Bunch, maybe more like The Handmaid’s Tale.

Did you know that Carol and Greg were totally doing it for most of the run of the show?

But that’s neither here nor there.

Finally, in Chapter 21, God’s gotten around to getting Sarah pregnant.

Enter Isaac.

Exit Ishmael.

Yet again, Sarah is a jealous bitch, this time over Ishmael teasing his half-brother Isaac. I really, really want Abraham to strap on a pair and say, “You made this mess, now you go fuckin’ clean it up!” But he doesn’t. God tells him “Just let them go, little buddy. I’ll look after ‘em.”

Hagar and Ishmael wander off into the desert. Isaac becomes heir to the Israelite nation.

My oh my, there’s a bushel of stuff going on here, folks.

You got your literal, imperfect humans dealing with an imperfect situation, trying to please an imperfect and immature God. There’s no good here. There’s no living happily ever after when you’ve told your husband to go get nasty with nubile young slave girl, and he does, and you are a weathered leathery 90 year old.

What did she think would happen?

Of course he liked it, of course it was good, and of course he loves that kid.

Of course she’s jealous, of course she’s bitter, of course she resents that kid. No amount of Dr. Phil face-time will cure what ails this famly.

Although, it sure would make for some juicy reality TV.

Then you’ve got your metaphorical. Creationist boy actually had some interesting insight into this one. Ishmael is the outcome of human actions, while Isaac is the outcome of divine ones. Ishmael is the embodiment of faithlessness while Isaac signifies absolute faith. It’s interesting to look at Sarah through these two lenses. No wonder she wants to get rid of Ishmael, he’s the living embodiment of disloyalty to her God and the God of her husband, the God of her people. Isaac is the fruit of her faith. Which would you rather have around?

Finally, you’ve got your cultural. Many of you Judao-Christians out there might not know this, I didn’t, but Jews, Christians, and Muslims all trace the ancestry of their religion back to Abraham. Jews and Christians follow the line through Isaac on up to Papa Abe. Muslims go the way of Ishmael. We’ll get to this a little more next time, but from what I could tell by randomly googling “Isaac and Ishmael”, the question of who is actually Abraham’s true and only son is quite the bone of contention between Muslim and Jewish scholars.

Holy Smokes! We’ve got a lot of work to do if we are going to heal this rift. It’s been there from the beginning, written right into the fabric of what we believe. And, we’ve only made it worse in the couple millennia since. Can you say Crusades? And more recently, propping up the state of Israel at the expense of the life and liberty of the Palestinians? I know, I know, the Palestinians aren’t blameless either.

I could go on, but I’ll stop here. Somehow I think we might run across this again.