it's been almost a month

and i'm only a few more chapters into genesis. right now we're getting to abraham. i just got through reading the 80,000 names of people that were born in between noah and abraham, and have always been a little curious as to why some people's names made the list and not others?

also, some thoughts on the tower of babel. it's funny reading this story as an adult, because it's only about 3 graphs long. in effect it just seems to be another example of god punishing man for working for his own purpose versus god's purpose. but really, what would we ever end up accomplishing that was great enough to compare to god's creation of the universe? *shrugs* but maybe i'm missing the point. the corrective action wasn't to prevent competition, it was to redirect the ambitions of man.

but there are some weird things about that story. for instance it talks about how god redistrubuted people. so did he just pick them up and move them? or did he start creating famines, etc. to send people in search of new lands. also, how did the division of languages work? did it go by bloodline? or at some point you just didn't speak the same language as your brother?

fast forward to abraham. our first introduction to him is interesting. god asks him to move. and when he gets to where god tells him to move there's a famine. wah, wah. so he goes to egypt and then tells his wife to lie and say she's his sister so they won't kill him to get to her. when he gets to egypt, pharoah is hot for sara and gives abraham a bunch of goats. but then *cue shakespeare* a plague falls on pharoah's house.

a few things. so, in less than twenty chapters, we've seen man's fall from grace, the earth destroyed by flood, and then the tower of babel. then all of a sudden, egypt just appears! with this all-powerful leader, the pharoah. and there's no explanation! it's just very weird. i mean, theoretically, noah and his folks repopulated the earth, right? so why wasn't there any mention of the fact that his descendants went on to form a ruling dynasty in egypt?

i suppose that stuff isn't pertinent because the pharaoh isn't an example of one of god's servants, and the bible is primarily made up of people who served the lord or who directly defied him. but still. there are a ton of questions there. these are the types of things that chip away at faith. it's the details. maybe they shouldn't. but sometimes i wish there was more detail or explanation. i suppose that's the conflict.

anyway, pharoah is punished (with the plague) for abraham's lie, which i also find upsetting. granted, not sure where god comes down on the whole harem thing, so maybe there's some logic from that point of view. were people allowed to have multiple wives back then? seems like they were. (marriage ‡ man + man or woman + woman, but could = man + woman + woman + woman? though the women would not be married to one another. which is weird.) but then again (we haven't gotten there yet) abraham takes a second wife later and things don't end very well...

to be continued....