Kicking Ass, No Thanks to YHWH (aka Genesis 14)
Kicking Ass, No Thanks to YHWH (aka Genesis 14)
“Yahweh’s always telling me what a loser and weakling this El god is…and how he'd smack him around if he ever caught him trespassing on his turf. Where was Yahweh now?"
Yasha’s Old Testament adventure continues with…Genesis 14! Abraham goes into beast mode and Yahweh hides in fear. What kind of god is this anyway?
—Yasha
Genesis 14
Abraham was doing his thing in Canaan, now the Promised Land…his promised land. What was he doing? Well the usual nomad herdsman thing: managing his flock, meting out justice in camp, making sure the slaves behaved. In short, he was taking care of business and he was doing well. Then, suddenly, he got some bad news. It was about Lot. His idiot nephew got caught in a local beef and got himself and all his people enslaved.
The situation was like this: To the east of the Promised Land where Abraham dwelled was the Jordan Valley. There were a bunch of local fiefdoms there run by a bunch of smaller local kings. They were vassals to a bigger king named Chedorlaomer, who was running the show out of Elam, which is apparently how they called Persia back then. These local kings had been dominated by Chedorlaomer for thirteen years long years. They weren’t happy about it and on year fourteen they rebelled. Chedorlaomer, obviously, didn’t stand for this kind of thing. He had a rep and an empire to protect. So he gathered some of his boys and rode on the Jordan Valley with all his might. He defeated the rebel kings, who fled with their lives as best they could. Two of them — including the Bora, the king of Sodom, and Birsha, the king of Gomorrah — jumped into some tar pits to escape. Really these guys had no honor. No wonder they got beat. Anyway, after routing his uppity vassals, Chedorlaomer looted their towns and took all their food and everyone there as slaves. One of those towns was, of course, Sodom, where Lot had chosen to live. And so Lot, the idiot nephew, was now a slave a Persian king.
Abraham sat there listening to the news, which was brought to him by one of Lot’s buddies, who had managed to escape. He didn’t like it one bit. He was Abraham, after all. Not some little herder anymore…but a big man around the pastures with lots of wealth and lots of sheep and lot of slaves. He had a rep to maintain. And there was something else, too. Abraham was now over a hundred years old. A century he’s been alive. And all this time he and his wife Sarai still hadn’t managed to produce a single kid. “Oh, sure, yeah Yahweh had promised me lots and lots of children,” Abraham thought to himself. “What did that braggart say to me years ago? That my offspring will be as numerous as dust? Right. There’s so much dust here in my tent…it’s in my food, in my water…I got dust coming out of my ears! And how many kids I have? Not a single one! ZERO! And to think of the obscene number of goats that Yahweh’s tricked me into sacrificing for him…” Abraham groaned. He didn’t like feeling like a fool. But what could he do? When a god — even a useless blusterer god like Yahweh — attaches himself to you…jabbers in your ear day and night…there’s no recourse. Who you gonna complain to? There’s no god oversight board, no customer service department. You just have to take it. That's how it is. The world is cruel and mean and you had to survive in it somehow…and chances are you wouldn’t survive long anyway…lots of things to die from — famine, getting disemboweled in a fight, pricking your finger and dying of staph, getting raped to death or stung by a scorpion, lighting your tunic on fire while sacrificing a goat…the list went on and on. So yeah god talks my ear off like some coke head and gives me constant migraines…but things could be worse. It’s important to always see things in their context, thought Abe.
Still the fact is that he didn’t have a single kid to his name. And it worried him. Lot, idiot he may be…but he was still family…and the only family Abe’s got. He couldn’t just let him be abducted like that, turned into some slave shoveling a shit pit in the middle of the desert. So Abraham resolved to make things right.
He gathered the fighting men of his camp — three hundred and eighteen in all — and set off in pursuit of Chedorlaomer’s army. A few hundred miles they rode. All the way Dan, a city that they say is in the upper Galilee. Abraham, the sly old patriarch, didn’t battle the enemy straight on. His people crept up stealthily and waited until the enemy camp went to sleep at night. Then they fell upon their foes and started massacring them.
Chedorlaomer’s army fled in panic and Abraham’s people chased them all the way to Hobah, a city north of Damascus. In the end, Abe recovered all the loot and rescued Lot and all of Lot’s wealth and flocks and all his women and slaves. He was victorious!
Meanwhile Bora, the king of Sodom, climbed out of the tar pit where he had hid. And he heard about how Abraham had routed Chedorlaomer’s army. He was delighted. This Hebrew guy was like an avenging angel! Came to his rescue without even being asked. A real swell guy this Abraham was! He wanted to thank Abraham but first he had unfinished business. Bora gathered all the other defeated vassal kings and rode north and massacred Chedorlaomer and his allies. After that they came back to pay Abraham their respects.
King Melchizedek stepped forward. He ruled a city called Salem, one of the ones that got looted, and was also priest to El Elyon, the Canaanite sky god. He broke out some bread and wine and made an offering to Abraham.
“Let El Elyon, possessor of heaven and earth, bless Abraham,” he said. “And let us also bless El Elyon who led you to victory against your foes.”
Not clear how old Abe (on the right) ended up a Christian dressed in Middle Age gear in the Netherlands. But here he is getting some bread and wine after his victory. He’s also must have a great anti-aging regiment going because the man’s over 100 years old here. What’s he on? HGH? T?
Abraham got a little nervous here. Here was a priest king invoking El Elyon to come down and bless Abraham. Kinda cool, right? Yeah, very cool. But Abraham knew how much Yahweh hated this El character…how jealous he was that he was everyone’s favorite god, how he got invoked all the time, and how he got nice sizzling goat fat from thousands and thousands patrons everyday of the week. Meanwhile no one knew who Yahweh was. Abraham had asked around. And no one knew. Literally no one. It was just Abraham. Yahweh had no one else.