interesting punishment

holy shit

WHAT

"You guys don't deserve to see God's handwriting!" (finger-writing?)

Serious mixed messages from Yahweh.

What the fuck Aaron?! Is Yahweh a calf now?

So God's finger can burn stone

How can they ask that? He's giving them magic bread every goddamn day!

Yahweh is invested in public health. But also this magic bread doesn't seem to keep very well. Surely Yahweh could have changed that. But also it's all part of a test...

"obey me or else". Maybe it wasn't just the Egyptians that Yahweh needed to show himself to, but the Israelites as well.

Gods!

In The Year of Biblical Living I learned that this verse has meant that Orthodox Jews often wear scrolls/text on their hands and/or foreheads. It's bizarre (to me, someone not in that tradition) but also kind of moving, to have the text with you always, inscribed or resting on your skin.

Is Yahweh actually Rumpelstiltskin?

... or it was unleavened because Yahweh made it super clear that they weren't supposed to eat leavened bread?

Can Yahweh not just see inside the houses, or feel the presence of the Israelites?! Does Yahweh not have X-ray vision?

Calendar vibes!!

You'd think they would be trying to make the lice go away, no?

???

This phrase repeated. What does it mean?

Wait a minute. So. Jochebed is Amram's AUNT, so Moses' father is also his first cousin. And Moses' mother is also is great-aunt. OK.

WHAT

Honestly, it's true!!

we get it

I'm reminded too of the Babel story, where bricks were similarly very important. (Plus Wittgenstein, of course!)

This is turning into a labour revenge story and I'm here for it!

Can't help reading this in Marxist terms. The Israelites really needed some technological innovation. Maybe that's what Yahweh will provide.

This is...kind of hilarious.

WHAT

what

OK, is Aaron actually Pharaoh's brother? What is the deal with Moses? Was he actually raised Egyptian "as Pharaoh's daughter" or not?

Is this what the saying "blood is thicker than water" comes from?

So we've got three signs: (1) staff to snake; (2) hand leprous to normal; (3) water to blood.

The sign marked on the body is more powerful... kind of like circumcision as a sign on the body.

If God is so powerful, why doesn't he just change Pharaoh's mind? This is a huge question I have about Exodus. The whole hardening-heart thing.

YHWH

So God is basically saying that the Israelites are not "of" this land, but "will" be of it? It's still unclear to me why the Israelites get it and these other groups don't.

this part always makes me hungry

Same thing Abraham kept saying to God, and then Jacob.

Did God...forget???

How much does Moses know about his parentage? Did Pharaoh's daughter tell him of his origins?

oh my god! Wow I haven't read Exodus in so long. Definitely do NOT remember that the first thing Moses does is commit murder.

God's ultimate reward to the faithful: the FAMILY, procreation, reproduction, multitudes... seems pretty evolutionary.

More baby-killing! I'm sure the medieval commentators had a field day with this one re. Herod's ruling that all male infants should be killed (when he was looking for baby Jesus).

So already there is this sense that the Egyptians don't want the Israelites to leave. Reminds me of Alter's notes on Joseph's attendance at Jacob's death/funeral, when the Pharaoh sent a large retinue with him so that he would be sure to return to Egypt.

Such an interesting way of expressing ancestry, to "come out of [someone's] body"...

Wonder why the names are in a different order here.

Another one!

Best excuse ever

This is just NOT how genetics works, but I am also fascinated

Jacob wrestles God in his dreams, but Rachel wrestles her sister via the womb

So... basically the Handmaid's Tale. (This is the chapter they quote in the weird Ceremony)

so he literally just starts making out with his cousin

To dust you shall return...

Alter notes that some post-Holocaust Jewish readers interpreted this as a negative thing.

We've been given two reasons that Jacob goes to the land of Laban - first, in Gen. 27, Rebekah tells him to flee because Esau is going to murder him. Then, in this chapter, Isaac conveniently also decides that Jacob should go there to take a wife (again, at Rebekah's urging!).

"Didn't you put my blessing on layaway?"

So Isaac doubts...

Is this the first time that Yahweh speaks to a woman?

Wait are they dead already?

@Mephi remember when we almost went to Rehoboth Beach?!

Abimelech is still tottering around! How old must he be by now?

Some later editor swoops in and is like, "wait wait there are just too many famines to be believable"

Cain and Abel all over again! Hunter, "man of the field" vs. nomadic herder.

LOL

What does this mean?

Both Jacob and Ishmael have twelve sons. Twelve disciples, twelve tribes of Israel...

ISHMAEL IS BACK?!

So much for his promise that humans would live only 120 years?

Wait, so is Keturah Abraham's "wife" (25:1) or his "concubine" (25:6)? Is this just another example of God playing favorites?

Literally no one ever talks about her...

Literally so repetitive i'm going to die

So weirdly specific!

Aram → Aramaic

Again this totalizing thing - the contrast between a very specific people of Abraham's offspring, and then the generalization to "All the nations of the earth" - though in this case it seems that the offspring are doing the blessing.

Jesus aka lamb of God

I'm pretty sure that it doesn't specify Isaac in the Hebrew -? In Islamic tradition, the "son, whom you love" is Ishmael, who was believed to be the father of the Arab tribes (the "nation" God promises to make of him).

This is another example of the tripartite structure of general-to-specific.

Ironic that so much of Abraham's life is spent living as a foreigner — maybe that's part of the idea, of why the promise that God makes to him is so compelling.

Such a weird contrast between Hagar dying of thirst in the desert, and then Abimelech's infrastructure problems.

Depending how you read this, worth noting that Ishmael is probably 14 or 15 according to the chronology. It's not like he's an infant. Or is he?

OK... fanfic idea... Isaac's dad is actually Yahweh!

Seriously though, definitely prefigures (in a Christian perspective) the impregnation of the Virgin Mary. God's biggest miracle (and, as above, His biggest potential punishment) is tinkering with reproductive systems.

Infertility = the biggest punishment Yahweh can dole out.

OK but also... isn't Sarah NINETY-NINE? not to age-shame but is she really a hot piece of ass right now?

Again the similarities with the Joseph narrative are so striking to me this time around! The plagues, the importance of dreams...

Basically the Israelites giving their enemies/rivals an incestuous history. As if Democrats were like, "Well actually the Republicans are descended from people who had sex with their own fathers..."

literally so weird

Didn't they have anything to say about him just offering their fiancées up to the mob?

SO FUCKED UP

Yahweh-God is so... EMBODIED.

Also, why not keep going, Abraham? Why not make the case that an entire city shouldn't be destroyed for the sake of ONE person?! What about a baby...! Cmon man.

You tell Him, Abraham!

This is one of my favorite parts of all of Genesis. It's just hilarious. God being like, "Did Sarah just LAUGH AT ME?!"

Sarah needs OMGYES.com!

Was circumcision a practice that anyone would have been doing? Did God have to like, explain in detail exactly what was required? "OK, grab that piece of skin. Now pull it really taut..."

Apparently this is really beautiful as a lookout spot.

"Strange women lying in ponds is no basis for a system of government!"

Interesting view of the male role in reproduction. Once again (as in last week's discussion) the man is seen as the central figure, woman as merely a chalice or... oven...

These are the words that were highlighted in my children's Bible.

This chapter is totally wacko and doesn't fit with anything! Apparently it's a later addition... but even so...

Alter has a note about "movement" and "journeys" being very related to tent-poles, "pulling up stakes" etc. The material way that Abram was experiencing movement and spatial change...

OK, but doesn't he not know Yahweh's name yet? (plot hole) (this is silly)

Here, the parallel of the plagues in Egypt!

Maybe there was a big plague season in Egypt and the Moses plagues and these plagues are retroactive attempts to justify them?

Just saying, apparently we find out later that Sarai is Abraham's half-sister...

(gross)

According to John Barton's History of the Bible, the Abraham story might have actually been happening at the same time as the Moses story — there could have been two groups of immigrants arriving in the Promised Land around the same time, whose stories were then mixed. To me that's really compelling, and this little anecdote about Abram going to Egypt seems to mirror that.

In the Christian sense, it also seems to foreshadow the childhood of Jesus spent in Egypt. Like, "all the cool kids have to go to Egypt for a while."

I'm sorry but how does this not get discussed more in conservative circles? Abra(ha)m is literally an immigrant... how do the Jewish people have a rightful claim to modern-day Israel in any secular sense? Is the Jewish claim to that land literally...this passage?

Am I being really dumb?

What's the value in everyone being so fucking old?

This is really curious to me from a Judaic perspective. Why bless all the families of the earth when this is the story of one particular family, who is being told that it's the best one, basically?

It makes total sense from the Christian side — all of the "families of the earth" will be blessed through Jesus, who will (allegedly) come from Abraham's line, through Isaac/Jacob/Judah/.../David/...Joseph.

The first of several tripartite constructions, each of which goes from the general (country) to the more specific (relatives → father's house).

Alter translates "relatives" as "birthplace"

Apparently these verses have inspired tons of apocryphal literature - including the Book of Enoch, which is where a lot of the names of devils (Azazel, etc.) comes from.

The same number of years as the solar year has days. Some connection with time?

JARED

Again...Kenan!! lol

It's always really funny to come across a name that's now very common in the English-speaking world. Like, Jubal and Tubal-Cain and Lamech and then... Seth

Interesting that a sister is named here; most of these "begat" lists are men only.

Alter notes that Naamah may have originally been the founder of something (Tubal-Cain gets smithing, Jubal gets music etc.) but it has been lost from the "original epic roll call." LOL.

WHO THE FUCK is this?!?

OK sorry but it's hard to take this seriously when there's a children's gear company called Land of Nod. (Upon further research it looks like it's gone out of business... https://www.retaildive.com/news/land-of-nod-closes-all-stores/516918/)

Yahweh was so against Adam and Eve living forever, but he actually curses their son with immortality (?) here.

"Cain" = "smith"; "Abel" = "air" (potentially)

So - the division of labour actually does bring about familial, and then societal, strife.

Was Marx right all along?!?

Alter comments that Eve is actually making a pun — qanah (to get or make) sounds like "Cain." He writes: "Eve, upon bringing forth the third human being, imagines herself as a kind of partner of God in man-making." (p. 19)

Is it the tree of life, or the tree of death?

Parallels in many other cultures, e.g., Ancient Greece, Ancient Scandinavia, to trees with magical fruits that render the consumer immortal.

Does this imply that before this, Eve didn't desire her husband?

Or is desiring a husband (or a man) part of the curse? Was Eve originally a lesbian? Because... there's a lot of places we could go with this.

Again language is what mediates power here. Language seems to stand for something non-linguistic, something visceral and material. If someone had "told" Adam he was naked -- would that have even meant anything? The word "naked" is simply a word until it means something (a Word?).

Naked and Afraid, 12 seasons and running!

Clearly a Yaweh-God moment. You can't hide from the Elohim-God.

Reminds me of this article, which talks about the way that the omniscience of God was the panoptic surveillance of the Middle Ages: https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/spies/under-watchful-eyes

Whyyyy does God not want humans to know good and evil? True to my Apocryphpersona, I really don't get it.

or... does this imply that God dies as well? Could God have died a while ago? Would we ever know? Unless God is like one of those clone leaders and when He is killed all of his clones (Creations) die also.

OK, obviously this is not supposed to have the same connotation as "subtle" nowadays, but it's still hilarious. (KJV has "subtil," which in the 17th century had more of a negative, "sly" connotation. Other versions have "clever" or "crafty" (NSRV))

Reading this time, it seems pretty obvious that "knowing good and evil" could mean - knowing about death, knowing about sex (the thing we do so that when we die, we aren't completely gone)

It's not super fun to just point out inconsistencies, but just saying: do this man and woman HAVE parents?!

Yahweh, the OG anesthesiologist

Unlike God's word, the word of the man is independent of material creation.

This is the World English Bible, one of the only Bible translations to be completely out of copyright and in the public domain.

In retrospect, the warning here is pretty clear. The punishment of eating of the tree is death—but perhaps man will die anyway, just not know about it...?

the breath of life

Interesting hydration practice.

work as in labour? Does God labour?

Note that humans don't eat meat—yet!

God... or our big brains?

What does this actually mean?

aka dinosaurs. Just saying!

Interesting to keep it as greater light and lesser light rather than "sun" and "moon."

Very curious about the literal Hebrew translation here. Is there a possibility that it wouldn't be "good"? What would have happened then?

Naming is an important theme. What is the language of God, that it can both describe what already exists and by so doing bring it into existence? (Contrast with what Adam does later, naming all of the animals.)

The Word!

Note that evening precedes morning—in Jewish tradition, the day begins at sunset rather than sunrise.

Interesting that from a scientific perspective, life did arise out of "the waters." Another interpretation: "the waters" = the embryonic sac

The beginning of what??!?

Testing Testing 123