Abraham II: Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18-20)

[Gen. 18]

He's out in front of his tent in "the heat of the day" when three travelers appear - Abraham recognizes immediately that they're angels. He throws himself at their feet and sets his household to preparing them a lunch which must take three or four hours to put together (cakes are baked; a calf is slaughtered and cooked; curds and milk are offered on the side. Now, it's not like I expect Abraham to go pick up some Quiznos for his guests... I'm just saying they must have sat around his tent quite a long while waiting for lunch. This must have happened a lot out there. The rhythm of the desert, you know.).

While eating, the angels remark that Abraham's wife Sarah - after 25 years of god's promises to this effect - is going to have a child in the spring (maybe it's summer now?). Sarah, overhearing, laughs at this. She's... oh, you know, 90ish; and she's way menopausal. The angels are miffed at the mocking. So Sarah denies having laughed at them, and they call her out on it.

They're angels, man. You can't fool them.

These three angels, leaving now for the city of Sodom, turn out to be two angels, plus Yahweh. Because as they're departing, we're told that one of them - God - wonders aloud if he should tell Abraham how he's been mulling whether to destroy Sodom. And why not tell him, God figures: I'm building up Abraham to be the father of a mighty nation, so he should know how I roll.

And so God tells Abraham he's headed to Sodom for some sin-surveying reconnaissance to determine if an airstrike is required. You know, a Martin-Sheen-in-Apocalypse-Now sort of trip. Abraham is scandalized. "Will you destroy the whole town if 50 righteous people are there? Far be that from you, the judge of all earth!" No, I won't do it if 50 righteous people are there. "Would you destroy the whole town if 45 righteous people are there?" No, not if there are 45. "What if there are 40?" No, not 40. "30?" No, not 30. "20?" No. "10?"

No, Abraham, I will not destroy the town if there are 10 righteous people in it. Now leave me alone, you centenarian brat.

Or at least that's what you imagine God saying, because he abruptly leaves at that point.

No word on how Sodom will fare if it contains 9 or fewer righteous folks.

[Gen. 19]

Now the two angels turn up at Sodom (God had stayed behind playing 20 questions with Abraham, and he seems not to have rejoined them), where it so happens that Abraham's nephew Lot is tending the city gate. "Stay at my house," Lot says to the angels, "wash your feet there and kick back. I will bake you flatbread!"

"No," they say, "we would like to sleep in the street tonight."

Which sounds more than a little weird. But Lot also knows this is a terrible idea in a city named, after all, Sodom. So he begs the two angels into staying at his place.

Well, it isn't too late that night before every male resident of the city - down to the little boys - comes thronging up around Lot's house demanding loudly that his two handsome guests be sent outside for an anal gang-rape. Lot steps outside to try to calm the group down.

Lot's offer to this mob has to be the greatest masterpiece of demented, ignoble "nobility" in the recorded deeds of humanity:

"You can't have these two men; they're my guests! How about I send out my two virgin daughters instead?"

The mob isn't appeased even by this wretched degree of self-debasement. "How dare you come live in our town, Lot, and tell us how to do things!" they grunt. Because in these parts, anal coition with your guests is simply considered good hospitality. And tonight, comrades, the whole town is feeling real friendly-like.

The angels yank Lot back into the house, and magically blind the mob before it succeeds in breaking down the door. "Gather your family to get out of town," the angels say to him, "because we are now calling in an airstrike."

So Lot scurries into town to warn his sons-in-laws (two notes about this. One - yes, this would be a pair of young men who are in waiting to marry the same two girls Lot just finished offering up to the town for gang-rape. Two, we were clearly told that the would-be gang-rapists included every single male resident. Where were these two sons-in-law?). Lot tells them, "Hey, buddies, pack up your Norelcos; the Lord Yahweh is about to obliterate the city."

Naturally, they think this is a joke. Good grief. Did they not know about this mob/rape thing that the Bible says every man in town was a part of? Are they not at least worried that Lot's lost his mind, and that this could reflect poorly on the safefty of their betrotheds? Nah, it's bedtime.

The next morning (no kidding, everybody just went to bed after that last scene), the angels grab Lot and say, come on, pal, let's you and your wife and your two daughters get going. Well, Lot wants to have some french toast or something, I don't know what; but we're told that he "lingered". So the angels bodily grab him and the family and drag them straight out of town.

The angels say, Head for the hills, boys; and no matter what you do, don't look back.

"Listen, " Lot kvetches, "I think we'd really be a lot safer if we just ran over to that small town yonder." Sure, whatever, the angel says, but go quick.

So Lot's family goes to a little town called Zoar, but as you've probably heard, Lot's wife turns around for a last peek at Sodom; and as the fire and brimstone are raining down upon the city and its environs (evidently those guys in Gomorrah were up to some mischief as well) she is turned into salt. A large salt edifice, in fact, whose vaguely lady-like shape would later lead people to ask, "How'd that get there?" And so other people made up the story I have just summarized.

But wait!, this story's just getting good. Once the big disaster's done, Lot and the girls proceed from Zoar to seek refuge up in the hills. Naturally, as you will no doubt have suspected, these two virgin daughters of his are as horny as all get-out after narrowly missing a citywide gang-rape, having their hometown destroyed by god, and watching their mother die. I don't know about you, but that kind of stuff gets me crazy. Crazy-ready for some incest, if you know what I'm talking about.

Listen, I don't make up these stories; I'm just relaying them to you from The Lord.

But seriously, check this out. After everything these two girls have been though (oh yes, they also lost their fiances - I forgot that part), they decide what they really want to do that night... in a cave, of all erotic locales... is to get their dad drunk and both have sex with him.

And we all know that no matter how righteous may be a man, a husband, and a father: if you're drunk you will straightaway have sex with your daughter. That's just what wine does to you. And once you're finished having sex with one daughter, you will wait to cool down and then you will have sex with the other daughter. It's nothing to get worked up about. We've all been there.

(Side note: yes, the real story here is misogyny - a notion that women are so lascivious and meretricious-minded that their first thought after the ruination of their lives would be to seduce their freaking father. This feeling toward women has been a cherished principle of civilization since well before this book [ie, Bible] got written, and has perhaps reached its apotheosis in those cultures among us this very day who make women cover themselves head-to-foot in a walking badge of shame they call a burqa. [Question: who's being shamed? The woman, or the society? --Trick question. Both!]

(The reasoning, which I think we'll continue to see throughout the Bible, seems to go like this:

(1: Every time I see women I get horny! Therefore:

(2: Women are terrible temptresses spreading horniness! Therefore:

(3: Cover yourself, women, or I will cane you!

(Anyway, this passage with Lot and his daughters appears to be at about that level of sophistication. I won't say any more about this just now, because if I do I'll start getting irritated and then angry and then begin cursing a lot, and none of it will elevate the discussion particularly.)

...Well, the other purpose of this Lot/daughters story is to explain the origin of some neighbors of the Isrealites whom they never got along with. These would be the Moabites and the Ammonites: peoples which descended respectively from the pregnancies that began there in the cave.

One last ponderable before moving on. God saved this family from Sodom because they were righteous? The mom can't obey a simple instruction (don't look back), the dad was just offering up his daughters for the pleasure of an angry mob, and then the daughters themselves turn out to be incestuous maniacs.

[Gen. 20]

Jump-cut back to Abraham.

Okay, now come on. Somebody has been fooling with my Bible and replaced it with a funny-Bible. Some kind of whoopy-cushion version of a Bible.

Are you serious about this stuff?

Abraham moves, for no clear reason, to a spot called Gerar where he pulls the same silly trick with his wife ("Oh, uh, she's my sister") that he did a quarter-century earlier with the Pharaoh. So now Sarah ends up in the harem of Abimelech, King of Gerar. And this time you've got to wonder about Mr. Abimelech, snatching up 90-year-old ladies as they pass through his kingdom just because he hears they're available.

(Also: how do we reconcile this Abraham, who repeatedly gives up his wife to sexual servitude under the local bigwig, with that guy who led a team of 318 men to defeat a regional confederation or armies in a battle to spring his nephew Lot out of ransom?)

God comes down to Abimelech in a dream and says he's going to kill him if he touches Sarah, which he (Abimelech) luckily hasn't yet done. Abimelech takes the threat seriously, and in returning Sarah to Abraham the very next day, he says, "What the hell did you think you were doing, putting my kingdom in danger of the wrath of a strange, bronze-age Palestinian deity who just finished obliterating two towns!"

Lamely, Abraham says something like, "I was afraid of you guys because I thought you had no fear of god." Well, Abimelech has certainly proven that wrong, yes? And then Abraham drops a blockbuster: "Besides, my wife really is my sister - my half-sister on my mother's side."

Was I just saying something about incestuous maniacs? Yieee.

Bafflingly, Abimelech thinks himself in the wrong here; or maybe he's just scared of Yahweh. Either way, he loads Abraham up with sheep, oxen, male and female slaves, 1000 silver pieces (I like that; it's rather D&D-esque), and the right to live wherever he pleases on his lands.

(Again with the livestock getting listed before the people. It's so strange to me. Now - if you gave somebody a birthday present of two slaves and a puppy, wouldn't you say, "I gave a gift of two people - and a puppy!", not, "I gave a gift of a puppy - and two human beings!")

Yeah, I can't decide if that makes sense either. The slave-trading is just too bizarre.

And as Abraham leaves, God, who had apparently made all the wombs in Gerar barren, opens 'em back up.

I do love a happy ending.