We skipped seventeen chapters of Genesis to leap to the story of Abraham and the visit my the three men/angels/the Lord as Abe hung out by the oaks of Mamre. That's quite a jump. Let's fill in what we missed.
After the two creation stories we have Adam and Eve out in the world with their two sons, Cain, a farmer, and Abel, a rancher. At least that's how we see it in Texas. When they offer their sacrifices to God, it seems God prefers meat to veggies, so God accepts the lamb chops from Abel but turns down Cain's brussels sprouts. Cain is angry, and quite frankly I don't understand God's capriciousness. But that is no excuse for Cain to murder Abel. Cain is sentenced to wandering the earth, divorced from the field which he polluted with blood, but defended by God from any who would take vengeance.
Adam and Eve have another son, Seth, and Cain and Seth get married, though we don't know where they found wives, given that the only people in the world besides them were their own parents. There's a gap here. We'll keep going anyway. Now we get the first of many genealogies in the Bible. We tend to gloss over these long lists of names, most of them foreign and meaningless to us. But genealogy is important in the Bible for a couple of reasons. They mark the passage of time. They connect important characters. But most of all they lend legitimacy to characters. They answer the important question: who are your people? This is a tribal society, and genealogy defines one's tribe, and one's most important identity is the tribe. They are your roots. We might well notice that people lived a really, really long time. For instance, Adam was 930 years old when he died. We might not take this literally.
God is getting fed up with people living so long, and so he decides that 120 is going to be old enough from here on out. There was another race of beings on the earth, the Nephilim, who were apparently somewhat superhuman, so that when women married them, a mixed people were born, the heroes that were of old. The scripture is not clear except that God was not pleased in the least, and decided to wipe the slate clean and start over.
We all know the story of Noah and the Ark, or at least we think we do. It is a much darker story than what we should be telling to children at bedtime.One young mother, who had read this story to her young child, was disturbed when her child asked how God could kill all the little babies, who hadn't done anything wrong. It's a valid question. The God portrayed in these early chapters of the Old Testament is a God perceived through the lens of a tribal society. Their experience of God is as one who is learning how to be God through trial and error. This is a God capable of grief, anger, regret, and reevaluation, not the impassive and immutable god of other cultures. This God will soon evolve into a God who invests fully in intimate relationships with individual human beings and who chooses a single people to become the sign to all peoples of God's love for all creation. After the destruction of all life on earth, this God expresses regret and promises never to extinguish all life again. This God is fully on board with Plan B.
After the two creation stories we have Adam and Eve out in the world with their two sons, Cain, a farmer, and Abel, a rancher. At least that's how we see it in Texas. When they offer their sacrifices to God, it seems God prefers meat to veggies, so God accepts the lamb chops from Abel but turns down Cain's brussels sprouts. Cain is angry, and quite frankly I don't understand God's capriciousness. But that is no excuse for Cain to murder Abel. Cain is sentenced to wandering the earth, divorced from the field which he polluted with blood, but defended by God from any who would take vengeance.
Adam and Eve have another son, Seth, and Cain and Seth get married, though we don't know where they found wives, given that the only people in the world besides them were their own parents. There's a gap here. We'll keep going anyway. Now we get the first of many genealogies in the Bible. We tend to gloss over these long lists of names, most of them foreign and meaningless to us. But genealogy is important in the Bible for a couple of reasons. They mark the passage of time. They connect important characters. But most of all they lend legitimacy to characters. They answer the important question: who are your people? This is a tribal society, and genealogy defines one's tribe, and one's most important identity is the tribe. They are your roots. We might well notice that people lived a really, really long time. For instance, Adam was 930 years old when he died. We might not take this literally.
God is getting fed up with people living so long, and so he decides that 120 is going to be old enough from here on out. There was another race of beings on the earth, the Nephilim, who were apparently somewhat superhuman, so that when women married them, a mixed people were born, the heroes that were of old. The scripture is not clear except that God was not pleased in the least, and decided to wipe the slate clean and start over.
We all know the story of Noah and the Ark, or at least we think we do. It is a much darker story than what we should be telling to children at bedtime.One young mother, who had read this story to her young child, was disturbed when her child asked how God could kill all the little babies, who hadn't done anything wrong. It's a valid question. The God portrayed in these early chapters of the Old Testament is a God perceived through the lens of a tribal society. Their experience of God is as one who is learning how to be God through trial and error. This is a God capable of grief, anger, regret, and reevaluation, not the impassive and immutable god of other cultures. This God will soon evolve into a God who invests fully in intimate relationships with individual human beings and who chooses a single people to become the sign to all peoples of God's love for all creation. After the destruction of all life on earth, this God expresses regret and promises never to extinguish all life again. This God is fully on board with Plan B.
Chapters 10 and 11 are more genealogy with an interlude for the brief story of the Tower of Babel. It seems that if you get enough people on earth and they all speak the same language so they can plot and plan, they will once more get about the business of taking on for themselves the role of God. This time by physically climbing into heaven. God has a more creative solution this time and simply scatters them and makes them unintelligible to each other. The second part of the genealogy is the bridge that connects Shem with Abraham.
Out of nowhere and with almost no introduction God calls to Abram and Sarai to leave everything behind and head off into the desert towards promises that sound too good to be true: innumerable offspring even though they are already senior citizens; God's blessing so that they will bless the world; and a land to call their own. So the wandering begins. There is a famine, so they go to Egypt for food, and Abram passes Sarai off as his sister, exposing her to the dangers of Pharaoh's harem. For this God punishes Pharaoh, who had no idea what was going on. To top it all off, Pharaoh had already given Abram all sorts of riches in exchange for Sarai, so they take off enriched by his risky duplicity. Abram doesn't look so good here. Abram's nephew, Lot, was with them as well, and had so many grazing animals that the two men separated, Lot taking the land of Jordan and Abram the land of Canaan, near the oaks of Mamre, at Hebron. Lot is kidnapped, and Abram rescues him.
What happens next is unclear. Abram is met by the king of Salem (from which the name Jerusalem is derived) Melchizedek, and blessed by him, the high priest of God Most High. Abram gives him one-tenth of everything, which becomes the standard for the biblical tithe. There is only one other oblique mention of Melchizedek in the OT and no extra-biblical mention of him, so he remains a mystery.
In chapter 15 Abram takes up the issue of the unfulfilled promise of a son, suggesting that he name his servant Eliezer as his heir. God tells him no, that he will have his own son. The Lord makes a covenant with Abram, who has sacrificed a number of animals to him.
In order to have a son, Sarai suggests that Abram try with her Egyptian slave, Hagar, and Hagar gives birth to Ishmael. But strife builds between Hagar and Sarai. God repeats the promises to Abram, who is now 99 years old, and spells out the covenant that will be marked by circumcision. Abram and Sarai's names are changed to Abraham and Sarah as indication of their acceptance of this covenant.
This is where the three men/angels/the Lord stroll up to Abraham as he is lolling around under the oaks of Mamre.
This is where the three men/angels/the Lord stroll up to Abraham as he is lolling around under the oaks of Mamre.
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