Genesis 2 - Genesis 24

Covered lots of famous and hugely important stories today in a mere 24 pages, from Adam and Eve to Cain and Abel to Noah to the Tower of Babel to Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot, Isaac, Rebekah and Ishmael. As such, I suspect this entry will be longer than most days' readings. I'll break down my thoughts as they arose, citing scripture (in italics) when necessary to provide context for my thoughts. Naturally, all quotes come from Genesis, so I'll just denote Chapter:Verse.

2:3 - "Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done." It's kind of amazing to think that this one sentence has formed the calendar and workweek as we know it for centuries. I noted that it doesn't yet include instructions, however. Perhaps that's coming (like in the ten commandments), but as of yet just because God rested on the seventh day doesn't mean we have to. After all, the work we're doing is a lot less tiring than the work he was doing!

3:1 - "Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?" - Today, this isn't the case - scientifically, snakes are no more intelligent than other animals. Dogs, pigs, and dolphins are thought to be among the most intelligent, if memory serves. But then again, crafty isn't quite synonymous with intelligent, and the text implies that it was really the Devil working through the serpent anyway, so I don't see much of a contradiction here. As for the snake actually speaking, very often in the Bible I interpret "speaking" to just mean "communicated" - you can speak to others and get your point across without necessarily using verbal language. The snake could have just tempted Eve by reminding her of the tree in some way; what was "said" could just be her inner monologue, which was inspired when the snake somehow jogged her memory. Or, maybe the snake just literally spoke to her - it's God's world, he can have talking snakes if he wants them!

3:8 - "Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden." - I don't think this necessarily means a humanoid God actually taking a stroll through the forest; it could just be a simile for his presence, and the fact that Adam and Even tried (in vain) to hide from that all-knowing presence.

3:16 - "And your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." - That's the origin of women being subservient to men, I suppose, although there are plenty of other instances of that in the book. I do not believe women should be subservient to men, or that men should rule over men. But I would note that this, also, is not phrased as a commandment. Man is not commanded to rule over woman. Rather, it is phrased as a prediction, or the reading of a verdict stating what will happen. God tells us what shall be, not necessarily what should be. That is a critical difference for those who would interpret this passage to mean that women must be subservient to men just because of original sin.

3:19 - "you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return." - This reminded me of Buddhism, regarding the cyclical nature of life and how things return to the state they used to be. Overlap among religions is something I will be talking about a lot on this blog.

1:26 - "Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness,'"

3:22 - "And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."

11:7 - " Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” - I took note of the repeated use of the first person plural pronouns of "us" and "our" here, as if to suggest that the God which was speaking was only one of many Gods in whose likeness and image mankind was being made. Indeed, the footnotes tell me that for the first quote, the Hebrew word Elohim was employed, which was in the plural form. I'm not sure what this means. Christianity is supposed to be monotheistic, but here it is suggesting multiple Gods. Why? Also, I thought God's (or the Gods'...) fear that man would become too much "like us" by living forever tied in nicely with the binary of divine immortal perfection and  humble mortal fallibility I described in my "Core Essence of Religion" post the other day.

4:7 - "if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it." - I just found this to be another example where figurative language is clearly used in Genesis. Obviously, it is not to be understood that sin was actually crouching, in the literal sense of the verb, at his door. It just means that it was tempting him and nearby, trying to get him.

4:9 - " Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?”“I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” - I almost laughed at this, because what I see here is the first kid who ever talked back to his parents! "Am I my brother's keeper?" is clearly a rhetorical question; he's not genuinely wondering if he his, he's trying to illustrate that it's not his job to protect his brother or know of his whereabouts. He's giving God some Biblical backsass!

4:17 - "Cain made love to his wife..." - whoa whoa whoa, where did she come from? So far we've only been introduced to four characters: Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel. It never said that Eve had a daughter. If she did, then Cain must have married his sister, and if she didn't, than Cain must have married his mother! Either way, it supports the notion of incest as acceptable (although, understandably more acceptable when there are no other options and an entire race of people needs to form from you!)

5:3 - "Adam had lived 130 years" - Let the string of incredibly long lifespans begin. People who live for 900 years may make modern audiences raise a doubtful eyebrow, but I say why not? Technically, there's nothing impossible about it. Biologists don't recognize "old age" as a cause of death - it's always just that your age weakens your immune system so that you get sick, or that certain body parts just give out and you die from organ failure or something. But thousands of years ago, we have no idea how the human body functioned, what it could endure, what people ate or what ecosystems could sustain. If humanity's average height can increase in just a century, I don't see why big changes in lifespan couldn't happen alongside it. And besides, it was only temporary, because...

6:3 - "Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with[a] humans forever, for they are mortal[b]; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.” - That's almost exactly the maximum observed age of living humans today, so this is an impressively accurate restriction for a document that's thousands of years old. However, then it says in Genesis 11:11 that Shem lived to be 500 after that decree, and eventually Abraham would live to 175, so that might be a contradiction. Maybe He was just referring to the days of most people, but he made exceptions for people who were either grandfathered in to the old lifespans or who were really important like Abraham? I dunno.

6:19 - "You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you." - Seems to contradict with...

7:2 - "Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate" - So which is it, 1 pair or 7 pairs? Also, this is the first time I recognized the recurrence of the number 7:

1. It was on the 7th day that God rested. (Genesis 2:3)
2. God commands that Noah take 7 pairs of every kind of animal, and 7 pairs of every kind of bird (Genesis 7:2)
3. God tells Noah that the rains will come 7 days from now (Genesis 7:4)
4. The floods ended on the 17th day of the 7th month of Noah's 600th year (Genesis 8:4)
5. After the first time, Noah waited 7 more days before sending out the dove a second time. (Genesis 8:10)
6. When the dove returned with the olive leaf, Noah waited 7 more days before sending it out again. (Genesis 8:12)
7. When Abraham is forming the Treaty at Beersheba with Abimelek, he sets aside 7 ewe lambs from the flock. (Genesis 21:28)

I'll add to this list as more instances of the number 7 arise. I'll do the same for the number 40, which is another significant Biblical figure

1. It rains for 40 days and 40 nights during the great flood. (Genesis 7:4)

9:2-3 - "The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. 3 Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything." - This, along with Genesis 1:26-30, are often cited as the reason it is okay humans kill and eat animals. Which is perfectly fine with a meat lover like me!

9:4 - “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it." - We can't eat things alive. Got it.

9:5-6 - "And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being. Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind." - A political nerd like me noted that this seems to be the first instance of the right to life being enumerated. People are accountable for not taking the life of other people. And the last bit reminded me of Islam, with the whole "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" thing.

9:13-17 - "I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. 16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth. 17 So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.” - Sometimes, God needs twice as many reminders. Thank God for that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSNhk5ICTI

10:21 - Apparently, the sons of Noah's son Shem were referred to as "Semites." Is that the origin of the term? If so, I never knew that, and found it interesting.

14:23 - "I will accept nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or the strap of a sandal, so that you will never be able to say, ‘I made Abram rich.’" - Origin of Republican adversity to welfare, perhaps? lol. But seriously, the virtue of self reliance does seem to be stressed here.

18:23-33 - This is too long to copy and paste, but it's basically the whole back and forth between Abraham and God involving the countdown from 50 righteous people to 10 righteous people, where Abraham asks God to spare the good people in Sodom and not to give them the same fate as all the rest, and God complies. Early evidence that despite his harsh Old Testament reputation, God was just and sympathetic all the while.

Chapters 18 and 19 - both of these chapters stress hospitality as a virtue, both by Abraham and Lot. This would be passed down for millennium, especially in the Islam world.

19:5-8 - "They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them. 6 Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him 7 and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. 8 Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.” - Since this happened in Sodom (the root word of Sodomy) and is the first mention of gay sex, I presume this is the origin of the Christian objection to homosexuality. If so, and if this is the only instance, I'm unpersuaded by that argument, because it never says that homosexuality itself is what was wicked. In context, Lot had just allowed three strangers into his home, and now a crowd of locals was gathering to rape them! The rape is what was wicked, far more wicked than the homosexuality of it. He asks them to not do anything to these men, not because they are men, but because "they have come under the protection of my roof", so he has a responsibility has a host to protect his guests.

19:26 - "But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt." - I've always found this to be one of the most odd, obscure, and actually kind of funny Old Testament punishments. I understand that she was punished for disobeying God's orders to not look back, but why a pillar of salt? The only reason I can come up with is that Sodom was located in the "Valley of Siddim (or the Salt Sea)", which is what they called the Dead Sea since it has so much salt in it. The element Sodium also sounds like Sodom, so there must be some connection in Hebrew between Sodom and salt.

20:3 - "But God came to Abimelek in a dream one night and said to him, “You are as good as dead because of the woman you have taken; she is a married woman.” - This is the first official confirmation in the Bible that taking another's wife is immoral (although it was hinted by the Pharaoh in Genesis 12).

23:8-16 - Again this is too long to post, but this back-and-forth negotiating of the price that Abraham would or wouldn't pay for Sarah's tomb reminded me of the generosity dance that we often do with our friends over who pays for something, just to be polite and make the offer.

Chapter 24 told the story of Rebekah and the water jars. Honestly, I don't think that's a bad method for anybody to find a wife! See who's kindest when they're not expecting anything in return!

24:22 - "When the camels had finished drinking, the man took out a gold nose ring weighing a beka" - a nose ring, huh? I had no idea the tattooed cashier at my local shopping mall was making a religious statement rather than a fashion one.