Family Values, Biblical Style pt. 3
When we left off, Terach's family was a great big ball of confusing, and I made a diagram to show who was married to whom.
Terach takes Abram, Sarai, and his grandson, Lot, up to Haran--the place, named after the person, and settles there. They were living in Ur before. If that matters, which it really doesn't. What does matter is they go and live in Haran.
Abram is 75 when he decides to leave his father's house. Terach was 70 when Abram was born, so he's not dead yet.
There's a midrash, a story, that happens here. It is NOT Biblical, but it's SO ingrained in Jewish children and studies, that finding out it's not in Torah is kind of like finding out about Santa. (Okay, maybe not, IDK. It's pretty weird the first time you actually sit down and read Torah all the way through and go, "Wait, where's THIS story?" or "THIS one?") Anyhow, I'm going to share this one with you, because I don't know if it's ever shared outside of Judaism. And it is SUCH a human story, and I like it.
So the story goes that Terach owned an idol shop. He left one afternoon leaving Abram in charge of the idols. Abram took a large club and smashed all but the biggest idol, he then put the club in the biggest idol's hand. His father came home and said, "What did you do?"
Abram replied, "He did it!" and pointed at the idol.
Terach, knowing that idols couldn't actually move, said that was ridiculous, and Abram said, "Then why do you think they created the world..." etc. Then he took Sarai and Lot and G-d told him the next part of the actual BIBLICAL stuff.
Anyhow, it's the "He did it!" part that just SCREAMS true to me. *BANG* *CRASH* in the kitchen. "What was that?" "The toaster did it!"
It may not be a story about the truth of idols vs. one true G-d, but it is the truth about children and placing blame. Except Abram is 75.
Back to what's actually IN the Bible, G-d tells Abram to leave his father's house.
Bereishit/Genesis 12:1
וַיֹּאמֶר יְ־הֹוָ־ה אֶל אַבְרָם לֶךְ לְךָ מֵאַרְצְךָ וּמִמּוֹלַדְתְּךָ וּמִבֵּית אָבִיךָ אֶל הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר אַרְאֶךָּ:
The L-rd said to Abram, "Go for yourself from your land, from your relatives, and from your father's house to the land that I will show you..."
(Note, I'm switching to Art Scroll for my translation, mostly because I can definitively say, "This is Art Scroll." I cannot for the life of me figure out who did the translation on the Tenach on my phone. Art Scroll uses HaShem for the Tetragrammaton. I'm putting in The L-rd because most non-Jews are familiar with that.)
Abram takes Sarai, Lot, and a bunch of money and a bunch of other people that have no names -- and they leave and go to Canaan.
Next paragraph down, after he'd settled there, there's a famine, they go to Egypt, Abram realizes that Sarai is beautiful. He says, "Say you're my sister, so that when they kill me, they'll let you live." And it works. Pharaoh calls him out on this later, but still lets him off on it and he gets a bunch of gold and silver and livestock for (possibly?) lying. At the very least, he got a bunch of it because Sarai was pretty.
Lot was still with him when they left Egypt, they get back to Canaan, but they have SO much stuff, that the land couldn't support it, so Abram says to Lot, "Y'know, I love you, but we're gonna have to split up. Where do you wanna go?"
Lot goes east towards Sodom and Gemorrah, and we'll hear about that later.
Now women in the narrative so far have had very little purpose. Chava was there to eat something/get tricked. Noah's wife is hardly mentioned at all. Noah's kids' wives are on the boat. I've already mentioned the only two women that actually appear in lineage lists so far. (I think. I don't feel like going back to look at Cain's, but I'm pretty sure his only lists men.)
Women serve to have babies. Men plant seed. (Although women have seed, too. It's just not mentioned as much.) Women are basically pots for the seed to grow. If the pot has a crack, the woman is useless.
Sarai has a crack. She cannot have a baby, so she knows she's useless. But she has the next best thing in Torah -- a HANDMAID.
Bereishit 16:2
וַתֹּאמֶר שָׂרַי אֶל אַבְרָם הִנֵּה נָא עֲצָרַנִי יְ־הֹוָ־ה מִלֶּדֶת בֹּא נָא אֶל שִׁפְחָתִי אוּלַי אִבָּנֶה מִמֶּנָּה וַיִּשְׁמַע אַבְרָם לְקוֹל שָׂרָי:
And Sarai said to Abram, "See, now, The L-rd has restrained me from bearing; consort, now, with my maidservant, perhaps I will be built up through her."
If at first you don't succeed, maybe you should try having a baby before you're 80 get someone else to do it. After Hagar gets pregnant, Sarai gets MAD about it, and starts abusing Hagar to the point where Hagar flees into the desert to get away from her. So an angel comes to Hagar, and tells her:
Bereishit 16:9
. וַיֹּאמֶר לָהּ מַלְאַךְ יְ־הֹוָ־ה שׁוּבִי אֶל גְּבִרְתֵּךְ וְהִתְעַנִּי תַּחַת יָדֶיהָ:
And an angel of The L-rd said to her, "Return to your mistress and submit yourself to her domination."
I don't like this translation, it's really more like, "Submit yourself to be afflicted by her hands."
The angel tells a pregnant woman to go back and let herself be beaten. But it'll be okay, because her son, Ishmael, will be a great man. Well, a wild-ass of a man, anyhow. (I think every translation has this one wrong, I think mountain man is the right connotation, but every translation I see says wild-ass of a man.) Oh, and everyone will hate him. What a promise.
Abram is 86 when Ishmael is born. At 99, G-d tells Abram to circumcise himself. And he does. And Abram actually seems to care about Ishmael, but he keeps having to keep him away from Sarai, because she's a bit, um, 'afflicting of the hands'. So part of this deal with the circumcising is that Sarai, at 90 will have a baby, too. And she gets to change her name to Sarah.
Ishmael will be a great nation, and he will beget a dozen princes and be blessed exceedingly in the process.
Next time, Sarah laughs at some Angels, Abraham forgets about one of his kids, tries to kill the other one, and has a bunch more that everyone else forgets about.