Burnt Offerings (Now Made With 100% Real Children)

Pictured: Isaac (almost)

Proving yet again that Abraham is a wonderful person and God is wise and just (/sarcasm), we have the story of Isaac's sacrifice.  I debated including this story because it's so well known, but hey, just because a story is famous shouldn't let if off the hook for being batshit, now should it?  Of course not!  Let's get started!

It all begins when God floats down from Heaven one day and orders Abraham to straight-up murder his only child, Isaac.  Why?  I guess there was nothing on TV that day, or maybe Lucifer ate the last Twinkie and didn't even bother to buy any more, and it put God in a bad mood.  Whatever the reason, God tells Abraham:

"Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of." - Genesis 22:2.

Now, every child is precious to their parents (except Abraham's other son Ishmael, apparently), but Isaac is literally Abraham's gift from God.  The Big Man Himself promised Abraham and Sarah babies, and it cost them decades, every scrap of one Egyptian woman's dignity and one neglected teenager who rebels so hard he inadvertently founds a new religion before they finally got just one.  This is the golden boy, the child that Abraham and Sarah have spent their lives waiting for.  And God just told Abraham, who is now so old he's legally considered an antique and is therefore not having any more babies, to offer him up as a human sacrifice.  Holy crap, God!  Been schmoozing with the Aztec gods up in Heaven lately?

So let's put ourselves in Abraham's shoes for a moment.  How would you feel if God ordered you to strap your own child down and murder him like your normally would a cow?  Pretty confused and betrayed, and probably even crappier if he was also your magical holy child that God gave you to begin with after decades of procrastinating.  I wouldn't be surprised if most people just renounced their faiths altogether in the event of this happening and went on a crazy hedonistic sin-binge, running over elderly churchgoers on their way to their nightly pan-species orgies.  Because hey, if you go to hell, at least you're away from your lunatic god!

Here's how Abraham reacts:

"And Abraham rose up early in the morning and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him." - Genesis 22:3

In other words, he doesn't.  He just kinda says, "Oh, okay.  Cool," saddles his ass, grabs his young men and films a kinky porno rides off to burn his only child alive.  Jesus, Abraham.  You really want to be rid of your family members, don't you?  First you try to pawn your wife off on multiple kings, then when God says, "hey, kill your son!" you're just all over that shit like the Aztecs in drought season.

So Abraham abandons his men at the bottom of the mountain, runs over his human sacrifice checklist (Firewood?  Knife?  Son?) and hauls ass to the summit, though I use "haul ass" in the lightest way possible.  Abraham climbs the mountain, but he's not particularly weighed down because he has Isaac carry the wood that will feed the fire of his own sacrifice:

"And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together." - Genesis 22:6.

Nice, Abraham.  Keep it classy.

Then, to make it even worse, Isaac turns to his dad and asks:

"Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" - Genesis 22:7

Oh shit.  He's onto you, Abraham!  What do you do?

"And Abraham said, My son.  God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering." - Genesis 22:8

Uh ... a little sinister there, Abraham?  Telling Isaac that God will provide a lamb for slaughter - i.e. you, whom he provided to keep his promise to Abraham and Sarah?  That's a line that should be spoken in a menacing Vincent Price voice, while Abraham tents his spindly fingers and smiles in anticipation.  But little Isaac, proving that he is trusting if not particularly bright, accepts the paradox of God providing Abraham the means for his own sacrifice and continues merrily on his way.

At the summit of the mountain, Abraham sets up an altar and gets all set to slaughter his child and then burn the remains.  He ties Isaac down, grabs his knife, raises it ... And then gets faked out.

God, proving himself yet again to be the biggest jerk this side of the New Testament, stops Abraham in the absolute nick of time.  He had Abraham pack up his stuff, haul his ancient butt to the top of a mountain, tie down his own son and almost slit his throat, and why?

So he could prove his faith to God.  Yeah.  God wanted to test Abraham, a man whose life is pretty much behind him at this point.  I mean, I get testing a young man's faith if you want him to, say, go out and obliterate other nations or something.  But a guy who's a century old?  Really?  What does that get you, God, other than shits and giggles?

God, I hate to repeat myself but ... you're a jerk.

Hagar's Horrible Story

Meet Hagar:

The girl, not the kid.

She gets the award for "Most Unfortunate Genesis Character," which is impressive when you consider that the snake from Eden got its limbs ripped off and Lot had his angel-raping city destroyed by fire from the sky.  But while most characters suffer one or two misfortunes, poor Hagar'slife is just one big unfortunate mess.  When she was born, God apparently shone down upon the shiny new bundle of joy and said, "Yup, fuck that chick."  Then, as if that weren't bad enough, her parents gave her the same name as an incompetent viking in a mediocre comic strip.  So yeah, life pretty much sucked for her from the get-go.

 When we meet her, Hagar is the handmaiden of Sarai, whom you may remember as the evil harpy woman Abram was desperately trying to get rid of in an earlier post.  Through the story of Hagar, we learn that Sarai is even more of a keeper than we originally thought her to be.  See, by this point Sarai is seventy-six years old and she's finally accepted that she's not going to be having any babies any time soon.  The problem is, God has promised them so many kids they'll found their own nation, and they're getting a little up there in their years without any luck in the baby-making department.  So Sarai (again, seventy-six) turns to her husband one day, presumably while knitting and watching the ancient equivalent of Wheel of Fortune (which is like a stoning or something, I guess), and says:

"Behold now, the LORD hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her." - Genesis 16:2

So yeah, she gives him permission to bone her maid so they can have them some babies.  Keep in mind that Abram is eighty-six years old at this point.  Then notice how there's no reference to anybody asking Hagar if she'd like to get knocked up by a man who is so old he's partially fossilized.  Commence screaming.

Have you gotten it out of your system?  Okay, good.  Abram forcably takes Hagar to be his second wife and inevitably she becomes pregnant.  The Bible pretty much judges the worth of a woman by her ability to breed, and so she gets a bit of an ego from it, eventually believing her status to be equal to Sarai's.  Sarai, being the heartless kindly old matron she is ... puts the girl in her place by doing something so awful she runs away.

"And when Sarai dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face." - Genesis 16:6

Poor Hagar, having dared to believe she was something more than a serving wench only to be torn down by Abram's screeching shrew of a wife, runs off into the wilderness.  No doubt she's cursing the awful people who did this to her and regretting ever leaving her family in Egypt to try and persue that circus career, or whatever leads a young Egyptian girl like Hagar to become a handmaid for some obscure, dusty old biddy in the desert.  Then this happens:

"And the angel of the LORD found her by a fountain of water in the wildnerness, by the fountain on the way to Shur.  And he said, Hagar, Sarai's maid, whence camest thou?  and whither wilt thou go?  And she said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai." - Genesis 16:8

Really, God?  You're going to play the angel card?  You're going to convince this poor girl to return to a home where her husband considers her lower than dirt so she can give the self-important jerk a son?  Ha!  I'd like to see you convince her!

"And the angel of the LORD said unto her, Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands.  And the angel of the LORD said unto her, I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude."

Babies, babies - it's always babies!  I'll give you tonnes and tonnes of babies if you agree to go back!  I'll give you tonnes of babies if you worship me!  It's like you think women enjoy being pregnant or something, God.  You're such a man.

For some reason it actually does work (I suspect fear of being smote was involved, and that tends to go a long way) and Hagar does return to Abram.  She has her baby and names him Ishmael, as God directs.

If you're thinking that that wasn't so bad, that there have been worse stories of individual misfortune thus far, well, that's because it's not done.  Oh, it begins and ends at Genesis 16 and then moves on to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, tricking you into thinking you read something that wasn't really all that terrible in comparison to what's around it.  But it's just faked you out.  Yes, the freaking Bible has faked you out.  Hagar's story picks up again in Genesis 21, after Sodom is smitten for being rape-happy, Lot sexes up his daughters and Abram and Sarai have undergone their name changes to Abraham and Sarah.  And then it gets awful.


The second part of the story, like so many tales of the Bible, begins with God being a jerk:

"And the LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did unto Sarah as he had spoken.  For Sarah conceived and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him." - Genesis 21:1-2

God decides all of a sudden that Sarah, now so old that if she lived in the modern world she'd constantly have to swat away archaeologists, is going to have a baby and so he "opens her womb," meaning that he makes it possible to conceive.  Let the implications of that sink in for a moment.  God has promised Abraham and Sarah a lot of babies, but for some reason he hasn't allowed Sarah to conceive.  Sarah and Abraham, getting antsy, decide to knock Hagar up to try and get the ball rolling.  God, knowing full well that they're doing it because he hasn't made a move to fulfill his promise yet, lets it happen.  If he wants Abraham and Sarah to wait until they were antiques before having their first baby, he could close Hagar's womb and prevent her from conceiving at all.  But he doesn't.  He lets this happen.

Keep this in mind.

Sarah has a son as well, Isaac, and naturally that makes things a little awkward in the family circle.  After all, Isaac is the son God promised Abraham and Sarah, whilst Ishmael is their attempt to get that promise fulfilled early.  It's exactly what happens when the elder sibling feels usurped by the younger, who sudden becomes everybody's darling, except worse because that younger sibling is also the fulfillment of a literal divine promise.  Ishmael, being a teenager now, reacts with the strongest weapon in a teenager's arsenal: passive-aggressiveness.

"And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which had been born unto Abraham, mocking." - Genesis 21:9.

So, all offended that this teenager dare sass her precious little holy baby, Sarah goes to her husband and tells him to straight-up banish Hagar and Ishmael, the child that - and I can't stress this enough - she suggested they have in the first place.  She's like the archetypal evil stepmother on a literally Biblical scale.  God, proving again that he's a jerk on a massive scale, approves the banishment:

"And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called." - Genesis 21:12

With that, Abraham loads Hagar up with some bread and a bottle of water and sends her on her way.  Remember - and I can't stress this enough either - that this whole thing would have been perfectly preventable if God hadn't been such a procrastinator and had given Abraham and Sarah a son at a reasonable age!

What comes next is positively heartbreaking (and I'm not a mushy person).  Hagar leaves the home of this awful family for the second time with hardly enough food to sustain herself and her child.  Eventually, she runs out of water:

"And the water was spent in the bottle, and she cast the child under one of the shrubs.  And she went, and sat her down over against him a good way off, as it were a bowshot; for she said, Let me not see the death of the child.  And she sat over against him, and lift up her voice, and wept." - Genesis 21:15-16

She puts her son (whom she is carrying despite him being 14, but we'll overlook that) in a shrub and goes to sit far away so she doesn't have to watch him starve to death. Then she cries her eyes out.  This whole situation is actually so sad it moves God.  God actually gets his holy butt off of his cloud and floats down to offer aid.  Aww, there's going to be a happy ending after all!

"And God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar?  fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is. Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a great nation." - Genesis 21:17-18

... What is with you and giving people a shit tonne of babies, God?  Do Hagar and Ishmael get a home?  A place to belong?  You know - food?

"And God was with the lad; and he grew, and dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer." - Genesis 21:20.

So, no.  But hey, at least he gets babies.

After reading this story, I was left wondering what the point of it was.  Ishmael doesn't really serve any purpose to the narrative beyond getting booted out of his father's inheritance to make way for Isaac, so how does this tale remain relevant in the modern world? 

The answer, as with Canaan's story, is racism.  Think of the world today, particularly what's going on in the Middle East.  Now guess who, according to legend, is a descendent of Ishmael?  I'll give you a hint: Ishmael and Isaac never got along.  Now, if Isaac represents the Jews, Ishmael represents ...

Muslims!  Yeah, according to Islam, Muhammad was a direct descendent of Ishmael, who, according to the Qu'ran, was God's promised child, not Isaac.  I probably don't need to explain any more, but you can bet idiots quote this story all the damn time as an excuse for why Muslims (often misidentified as Arabs) and Jews (and, by extension, Christians) are allowed to hate on each other.

Good thing religion preaches so much peace and love in between all these terrible racism-varifying stories or we might be a bunch of intolerant bigots on our hands, huh?  Oh, wait ...

Lies, Smiting and Pawning Off Wives

Believe it or not, hiding in Genesis between the instances of mass murder and questionable sexual exploits is the plot to a somewhat twisted romantic comedy.  It involves a young Abraham, his wife, the Egyptian Pharaoh, and a series of hilarious misunderstandings that dramatically escalate until they are happily resolved.  It's actually a pretty funny story that actually teaches a decent lesson about lying, which is presumably why Genesis feels the need to repeat it three times with various names changed.  What, did you think "rom-com hilarity" was weird enough to make it into this blog?  Nonsense!  We have room only for the biggest examples of what-the-fuckery the Bible has to offer!

Back when Abraham was an energetic young man of 75 (yeah, really), he had yet to earn the extra syllable in his name and was simply known as Abram.  He lived in Canaan with his wife, Sarai, until one day famine struck and they were forced to pack up and move to Egypt.  As the couple entered the land of the Pyramids, Abram turned to Sarai and said:

"Behold now, I know that thou art a fair woman to look upon: Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, "This is his wife: and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive.  Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister: that it may be well with me for thy sake; and my soul shall live because of thee." - Genesis 12:11-13

Concerned that those crazy, heathen Egyptians would find Sarai so damn fine that they'd actually kill Abram to get a piece of her, Abram asks his wife to pose as his sister.  Because that can't go wrong at all.  Upon arriving in Egypt, the Egyptians take about 2 seconds to grab the Hebrew hottie and bring her to Pharaoh to be his ... pet sexy Hebrew chick.  Good call there, Abram.  Clearly telling everyone that your smokin' wife is really your sister works splendidly.

Pharaoh heaps gifts on Abram, who apparently accepts them without saying anything.  Wait a minute!  I see what you did there, Abram.  You're tired of your old lady, always nagging you to patch up the tent and repair the camel (it's been making funny sounds for weeks!), so you pass her off onto some guy who will give you mountains of stuff for her!  Then you can spend every day of the week at the driving range and nobody can criticize you!  You sly devil, you!  Unfortunately for Abram, though, God (feeling omnipresent that day, apparently) notices what's going on:

"And the LORD plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai Abram's wife.  And Pharaoh called Abram, and said, What is this that thou hast done unto me?  why did thou not tell me that she was thy wife?  Why saidst thou, She is my sister?  so I might have taken her to me to wife: now therefore behold thy wife, take her, and go thy way." - Genesis 12:17-19

Somehow, from a few of his family members dropping dead from plague, Pharaoh clues in to the fact that Sarai is Abram's wife, not sister.  He ships her back to her husband, asking him why the hell he would do such a thing in the first place.  Meanwhile, Abram's dreams of becoming a new bachelor are thoroughly squashed.  So really, it's a bit of a strange story, but it's not a bad story.  It's kind of funny, actually, with Abram's lie about Sarai being his sister getting him into all sorts of trouble.  In fact, it almost teaches us a good lesson: one little white lie can grow into an unmanageable mess quicker than you might think.  But Genesis is so proud of the fact that it almost told a good, entertaining story with a decent moral that it repeats it two more times.  The second time this story shows up, it's with our lucky couple ... Abram and Sarai?  Someone's either a little slow on the uptake here or he really does want to get rid of his old lady.

By this point, Abram has earned his "ham" and Sarai has had her name changed to Sarah.  Again, he does it because he's afraid people will kill him to have the hot piece of 65-year-old ass that is his wife.  (No, really, this man is obviously desperate to escape this evil harpy woman's clutches.)

"And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, She is my sister: and Abimelech king of Gerar sent, and took Sarah." - Genesis 20:2

This time, God's up on Abraham's wife-ditching ways.  He's been watching, and clearly it's time to sit Abraham down and have a good, long talk about how lying is wrong and trying to dump your wife on other men is even more wrong.

Nah!  He just threatens the dude who took her with death.  And you thought for a second that there was a point to this!

"But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, Behold, thou art but a dead man, for the woman which thou has taken; for she is a man's wife." - Genesis 20:3

So Abimelech and God have a good chat about how Abimelech won't be smote as long as he returns Sarah to her actual husband.  He does so, and then asks Abraham the same question Pharaoh and the rest of us have all been wondering: why the hell would he do such a thing, especially knowing that he'd be bringing the wrath of God down on whoever unknowingly married another man's wife?  Well, Abraham?

"And Abraham said, Because I thought, Surely the fear of God is not in this place, and they will slay me for my wife's sake.  And yet, she is indeed my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife." - Genesis 20:11-12.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, back up!  So he wasn't lying because Sarah actually is his half-sister?  That's more than a little twisted, Bible.  I mean, I know a lot of old stories involve siblings getting married, but this is the guy that three major religions - two of them accounting for half the world's spiritual beliefs (Christianity and Islam) - are based on.  And he married his sister.  I'm beginning to see why religion inspires so much insanity.

Anyway, Abimelech gives Sarah back to poor, desperate Abraham and they go on their way.  By the time this happens a third time, we all have wonder if someone shouldn't just invent divorce so these guys don't have to keep pawning their wives off on random kings.  This time, the couple are Isaac, Abraham's son, and Rebekah.  The king is ... Abimelech.  Oh, really God?  You're gonna do this to this poor guy again?

So by this point you know the drill.  There's a famine, so Isaac and Rebekah move to a place with food (Gerar, in this case).  He's afraid that the Godless heathens of Gerar will kill him to get Rebekah, so he calls her his sister.  This time, however, there's a twist: Abimelech isn't falling for it again.  He spots Rebekah from his window and just knows that this is a woman who's obviously posing as her husband's sister.  He calls to Isaac and asks him:

"What is this thou hast done unto us?  one of the people might lightly have lain with thy wife, and thou shouldest have brought guiltiness upon us." - Genesis 26:10

Instead of waiting for a response (possibly because he's afraid of getting one as creepy as the reason Abraham gave), he lays down a law that says anyone who so much as touches Rebekah will be put to death, because he'll be damned if God's gonna threaten him with death and destruction again for something he has absolutely no control over.  Normally, I would assume that these are all simply different versions of the same story, with various retellings changing the details of who was involved and where it happened, but there are no contradictions in the Bible, so I guess we're just going to have to accept that God loves watching people misinterpret relationships and get caught up in their own poorly spun webs of lies.  In other words, God's a romantic comedy fan after all.  Who knew?