Sex slaves don't get any pity from the Hebrew god (aka Genesis 16)

“Yahweh is sending me back to be beaten and overworked and abused and raped and tortured and…for what? What did I ever do to anyone?

Happy Shabbat! Yasha’s Old Testament continues…with Genesis 16. A depressing story about a sex slave who gives birth to Abraham’s first son, Ishmael, and gets nothing but grief. What’s the moral here? No moral other than maybe this one: Yahweh likes to enforce property relations.

—Yasha

PS: Read other Old Testament portions here…

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Note: I’ve been reading a lot of the Torah lately while I work on my novel Two Pigeons. I haven’t been very happy with any of the translations-interpretations out there….so much good material that gets glossed over…so much wasted potential. And so I decided to work on my own interpretation of the Old Testament. Let’s see how long I can keep it going…

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Genesis 16

So despite Yahweh’s promises old Abe’s wife Sarah still hadn’t borne him any children. She was getting desperate. The whole camp was mocking her husband behind his back, word was starting to spread around the valley. She had to do something.

Sarah had an Egyptian slave, a slavegirl named Hagar. She brought the slave to Abe and said to him: “Your little god Yahweh has kept me from having children. Here take my slavegirl to bed and maybe I will finally have a son through her.” Abraham didn’t think it would work. He had been bedding slavegirls left and right for decades and none of them got pregnant. It was that little demon Yahweh, he thought. He was always promising one thing but delivering the exact opposite — and then getting angry if you ever pointed this out. It was like he was having a laugh at my expense, messing with me just for fun. But that was life. What could I do? He’s a god that can buzz into my ear at any moment and mess in my affairs. And anyway regarding this Hagar slavegirl business, what did he have to lose…actually he had been eying Hagar for a while now but had been restraining his lust to not anger Sarah. So he played it cool. “If you’re sure you think it best, honey, of course I’ll do it. You know I always heed your wisdom.”

So Sarah brought the Hagar into his tent and gave the slavegirl to Abraham to be his wife. This all happened, by the way, about ten years after Abraham had moved to the land of Canaan.

Hagar brings to goods. PS: Those old master types hadn’t gotten infected by the woke mind virus and thus rendered old Abe and his family in Northern European skin tones.

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Abraham and Hagar the Egyptian slave got along nicely. They were a good pair. And soon Hagar was pregnant. When Sarah learned of this, she was pissed — pissed and jealous. Right away she knew she screwed up bad. Sure she was still Abraham’s main wife and master of the household and all that. But all seemed different now. Abraham didn’t pay attention to her like before. His eyes were all on Hagar, that young fertile bitch. He showered her with gifts, gave her all his attention. And Hagar…she walked around like a prima donna, looking down on Sarah…all powdered up and pretty and with that pregnancy glow to her skin. And it wasn’t just her. Sarah’s other slaves have started getting uppity, too. Her power and prestige was on the slide.

And so Sarah said to Abraham: “This is all your fault, you old fart! You’re the one that got us mixed up with that Yahweh. I tried to fix things so people stopped mocking you so I sent my slavegirl to your bed. Now that my slave’s pregnant she’s disrespecting me and making me look bad. I’m not gonna take this. You better have your useless good Yahweh judge between us. I’ve been wronged!”

“Baby come on now don’t get upset. Please! Sssssh! Sshhhhh!” he said, putting this finger to his lips and looking up at heaven, wincing in anticipation of Yahweh appearing. “Please don’t say their name so loudly. I don’t want them to hear us and get involved in this. Every time they come down, things go badly and I get a huge migraine that lasts for days and days.” Then he thought to himself, I don’t want to deal with this shit. She tells me to impregnate her slave, I do what she asks, and she still gets angry. I bet if I wasn’t able to impregnate Hagar, Sarah would still get upset and berate me for being a gelded cuck! She’s always spoiling for a fight this Sarah. Maybe she’s still pissed that I pimped her out to the pharaoh that one time? Nah can’t be that. We got seriously rich off that deal. Why would she complain? “Here’s what we’ll do,” he said to Sarah. “I’ll send Hagar back to your tent and you can deal with her how you think is fair. Ok, honey? Is that good?”