An Atheist Explores the Bible Part Six: In which the family of Abraham devise various schemes and cons (Genesis 26-30)

Genesis 26-30

In which the family of Abraham devise various schemes and cons.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Genesis 26

“For all the wells which his father's servants had digged in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped them, and filled them with earth.”

Oh no. This chapter starts with Isaac and Rebekah continuing the antics of Abraham and Sarah, by visiting King Abimelech and pretending that Rebekah is Isaac’s sister, not his wife. This time, however, Abimelech spots them smooching in the gardens and then asks them why they did this, as someone could have got into trouble for attempting to woo another man’s wife. What I’d liked him to have said was “What is it with your family? Why do you keep trying to pull this crap with me?”. But he doesn’t. Instead he sends Isaac’s people away because they are becoming too numerous.

There then follows some ongoing strife between Isaac’s people and Abimelech’s Philistines over wells, with Isaac digging them and the Philistines keep blocking them up, until Isaac and Abimelech come to an arrangement (Abimelech sees that God is with Isaac and so decides his cause is righteous, basically). This, I would presume, is an echo of what would have been real conflict between desert peoples at one time, and I daresay the reality of any truce would have been based on wealth, politics and military strength more than anything but, hey, spin it how you like. I must say Abimelech is coming across as very forbearing in his dealings with Abraham and sons, despite the name of his people becoming a byword for uneducated barbarians.

There’s a little onomastic myth concerning the well of Beersheba, which keeps getting mentioned (it was also where Hagar and Ishmael ended up), and Esau gets married to, it would appear two Hittite women and this causes grief to his parents, although the exact reason for this is unclear.

Genesis 27

“And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man”

To recap the sibling rivalry here: Esau is the older twin and favoured by his father Isaac, Jacob the younger and favoured by his mother. Jacob has already conned his brother out of his inheritance for some lentil stew, now the conniving little bugger goes one further, with the help of his mother.

Isaac, now old and blind, has a craving for some “savoury meat”, so he sends Esau the hunter out to fetch some venison. Meanwhile, Jacob, the farmer, kills a sheep and pretends to be Esau. Because Esau is hairy and he is not, he puts on a goatskin so that his blind father thinks he is Esau by touch (shades of Odysseus outwitting Polyphemus here). Isaac mistakes Jacob for Esau and gives him his blessing. Esau comes back and the ruse is discovered, and Esau is naturally angry about having been cheated again, so Isaac’s blessing to him is that he will one day overthrow his brother. Rebekah hears of this and sends Jacob away to be safe.

I can’t help but feel sorry for Esau here, and you get a good picture of this angry, hairy, redhead, like Fat Bastard from the Austin Powers films being outwitted by his younger twin all the time. And also somewhere out there is Isaac’s illegitimate half-brother Ishmael. It’s all getting very Game of Thrones!

Genesis 28

“And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.”

This is the chapter featuring Jacob’s Ladder, from which we get the name of a plant, a film and a static electricity device beloved by mad scientists, amongst other things. Like many other biblical episodes so far, for something that has generated such a cultural effect its treatment is very brief (the verse quoted above is the sum of its description).

What basically happens in this episode is that Jacob heads off to his uncle Laban’s land to find a wife, because for some reason the Canaanites are not considered worthy – there’s an ongoing theme of Abraham/Isaac/Jacob’s people avoiding the Canaanites, all because Canaan’s uncles saw his grandfather drunk and naked, let us remember. And on the way he has this dream of the ladder to heaven, wherein God once again makes promises that say that Jacob’s people will be numerous and prosperous – the same ones He made to Jacob’s grandfather and father. And to honour this, Jacob erects a memorial pillar and calls the place Bethel, although apparently it was once the city of Luz (although the previous texts indicate more of a wilderness than a city, so I’m confused).

The other incident that happens is that Esau continues to be jealous of Jacob, and marries the daughter of his half-uncle Ishmael (ah-ha, I knew he’d be back!) as his third wife. So now the kin-strife is becoming hardened into two houses, but somehow I can’t see it ending well for Ishmael and Esau because they don’t have God On Their Side.

Genesis 29

“And it came to pass, that in the morning, behold, it was Leah: and he said to Laban, What is this thou hast done unto me? did not I serve with thee for Rachel? wherefore then hast thou beguiled me?”

Okay… another one of those kinds of chapters. And dear me, but the family of Abraham is becoming complicated. Isaac arrives in the land of his uncle Laban, where he meets one of Laban’s daughters (i.e. his cousin), Rachel, by a well. And it turns out that Laban is happy to offer Rachel’s hand in marriage in return for seven years of service but, ooh the trickster, on the wedding night it’s his eldest daughter Leah who goes to Isaac, because of course you can’t marry off the youngest daughter first, oh no.

Isaac doesn’t want Leah, he wants Rachel, and so he serves another seven years and then marries her as well, but to compensate for the fact that Isaac loves Rachel and not Leah, God rather puckishly makes Leah super-fertile and Rachel barren, so Leah ends up with four sons (Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah) and Rachel none. And so there’s now another layer of resentful children, siblings and wives in Abraham’s whole sorry dynasty. God may well have blessed them with number, but they’re not doing themselves any favours here with all the favouritism and jealousy that’s being sown.

Genesis 30

“And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die.”

Oh Jacob, you randy sod. This is another one of those chapters of two parts, and the first deals with Isaac’s ridiculously complex love life. Following on from the last chapter, where Leah as four sons and Rachel has none, Rachel is predictably jealous of Leah and contrives a strange little scheme whereby Jacob impregnates her maid, who then gives birth in her lap, essentially, so that it is kinda sorta her son with Jacob. And then again. But then Jacob knocks up Leah’s handmaid twice, and Leah three times more as well until finally Rachel has a son as well – Joseph. Honestly Jacob, keep it in your pants man. Even if you are being bribed with mandrake roots. (Mind you, isn’t that meant to be an aphrodisiac? That would explain a lot…)

The second part is more like a treatise on animal husbandry, whereby Laban and Jacob divide the cattle between them, and Jacob wants the spotted cattle and goats and brown sheep (which is kind of ironic as a Jacob Sheep is piebald, but that’s the only kind of animal he takes that isn’t spotted in this story). And then we spend several verses discussing animal breeding, but the upshot is that Jacob becomes a wealthy man, which is just as well given his sprawling brood of children.