by God
18 But they were spared this fate; for the angels afflicted the rabble with blindness, and assisted the family’s escape; and as soon as they had left, Sodom and Gomorrah were utterly obliterated: fire and brimstone rained down upon them, and their buildings were reduced to rubble, and their people consumed in flame.
19 It was a shocking event, and for decades afterward everyone in the Jordan River valley could remember exactly what they were doing when they heard the news.
20 “Verily,” one might recall, “I had just finished butchering ten ewes, and was in my slaves’ quarters assaulting my wife’s Zimranite wet nurse Blimshur, when Shazran the drovesman ran in with rent loincloth, and assailed me with the first reports of the woeful tidings;
21 And I broke down and wept; for I had lost what I only now knew had been my most treasured possession . . . my innocence.”
22 Of course, thou knowest what became of Trish; the angels gave strict instructions that none of Lot’s family look back upon the destruction, but she could not resist the temptation; she peered back, and turned into a pillar of salt.
23 Within two minutes of which, Lot had licked her more than he had in their previous 28 years of marriage.
CHAPTER 16
1Abraham was a worthy patriarch; upright and courageous, and brave, and kind; a great man; and more than that, a humble man; a nice man; just a really, really good guy; Abraham = total sweetheart.
2 But he could be quick-witted and argumentative; and I remember many a lively discussion between us wherein he would express his disagreement over a point of protocol or dogma; which I graciously allowed him to do, smite-free.
3 For example, after I commanded him regarding the new ritual of circumcision, and how it was to be mandatory for his descendants, he said, “LORD, distinguishing the Chosen People from all other tribes through a physical modification denoting our special covenant, is most wise.
4 My only thought is: what if, instead of circumcision for eight-day-old boys;
5 What if we made it breast augmentation for 17-year-old girls?”
6 We debated this point for the better part of two weeks; the argument swung one way, then the other; circumcision, breast augmentation; breast augmentation, circumcision; each had much to recommend it.
7 For he conceded that circumcision would be a meaningful cultural tradition bridging generations; and I conceded that breast augmentation would be helpful in both recruiting new members, and creating them.
8 But at the end of the debate I clung to my original choice; and lo, 3,600 years later, the Jewish people not only still practice circumcision, it remains central to their sense of identity.
9 Male Jews: you’re welcome.
10 Another time I came to Abraham in a dream, and told him of his people’s future: how before they became a great nation, they would serve as slaves in Egypt for 400 years.
11 “God,” he said, “I must ask: if thou knowest this in advance, why canst thou not keep it from happening, thereby sparing my descendants four centuries of affliction?
12 Moreover, if thou hast power over what hath not yet come, canst thou not unspool the future with a gentler thread; one weaving a tapestry whereby righteousness is always rewarded, and evil always punished; so that mankind may behold with perfect clarity thine infinite justice?”
13 “Interesting; interesting,” I said. “Yet I think I would prefer to work in mysterious ways.”
14 “But consider,” Abraham responded, “how much more reverence humanity would give thee, if it knew it lived in a universe in which the good and the wicked received condign reward and punishment in proportion to their conduct.”
15 “Nah,” I replied. “I hear what thou sayest, but I’m still going with mysterious ways.”
16 “Verily, it is thy world, I just live here,” Abraham continued; “I simply think, a little transparency may prove a useful bulwark for those plagued by anger or doubt; and furthermore—”
17“Mysteeeeeeerious waaaaaays!” I shouted, attaining a tone of spookiness by using a thick Girgashite accent (Girgashia being the Transylvania of its time), and deploying thunder and lightning effects, and throwing a plastic spider upon him;
18 All of which he took very earnestly, for recall this was all happening as he slept; and so he awoke in his tent screaming, breathing deeply, and with sweat soaking his brow; until at last his passion cooled, and he regained himself, and said with relief, “Oh! It was all a dream”;
19 Whereupon he looked beside him on the floor, and beheld the plastic spider, and screamed “Or was it?!?”; and I filled the tent once more with evil laughter, and thunder, and more plastic spiders.
20 Yea; Abraham put up with a whole lot of crap from me.
CHAPTER 17
1But nothing compared to the ordeal I put him through 20 years later.
2 I had told Abraham that a great nation would one day spring from his loins; but he and Sarah were old, and she was barren; so she allowed him to be with her handmaiden, Hagar, who had replaced her previous handmaiden, Lee Roth.
3 And Abraham and Hagar lay together; and at some point during their lying together, they had sex.
4 And Hagar gave birth to a son, whom she called Ishmael, because she wanted him to grow up to narrate a novel everyone pretended to read.
5 Fourteen years passed; and by now Abraham was 100, and Sarah was 90; and though thy modern men of medicine can make nonagenarian women squeeze out triplets like unto softballs from a pitching machine, it was not so back then.
6 But I was finally ready to make good on my covenant; so I enabled Sarah to conceive and give birth to a son, Isaac; whereupon she demanded that Hagar and Ishmael be sent away; for she had grown weary of Hagar, whose handmaidening frankly was not what it used to be.
7 So Abraham did as Sarah asked, and exiled Ishmael; who nonetheless went on to become the progenitor of his own great people—the Arabs.
8 (Who are still working through their issues about the sending-away-Ishmael thing.)
9 Abraham dearly loved little Isaac; but one day when Isaac was a small child, I told Abraham to sacrifice him as a burnt offering to me, to prove once and for all that he was loyal enough to deserve to become the first patriarch.
10 So I watched Abraham rise at dawn, and cleave the wood for the burnt offering, and saddle his ass, and mount it with his young son; and I thought, “So far, so good.”
11 And I watched him spend three long days clinging to Isaac on his ass, and three long nights clinging to him in his tent, until he reached the base of Mt. Moriah; whereupon he told his servants to wait for him while he and Isaac climbed; and I thought, “Impressive.”
12 And I watched them ascend, and heard Isaac naively ask his father where the lamb for the offering was, and saw Abraham choke back his tears, and mutter through his heartache, “God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering”; and I thought, “Nice one.”
13 And I watched them arrive at the place of the sacrifice; and beheld Abraham build an altar, and lay the wood upon it, and in a state of the most piercing anguish bind his own struggling son and lay him upon the wood; and I thought, “I think he’s gonna do it!”
14 And I watched Abraham, sunk in grief beyond measure, stretch forth his hand with the knife and see for the last time alive the beautiful son I had promised him, yet was now bidding him slay with his own hand; and I thought, “Incredible! He’s actually gonna—”
15 “My LORD!” interrupted Michael, my angel. “I mean not to be rude, but dost thou really mean to let Abraham go through with the sacrifice?”
16 “No; no I do not, and it is good that thou interruptedst me,” I said; “for truly, watching Abraham these last three days has filled me with . . . I myself am unsure; but witnessing someone close to me prepare to kill the thing he holds most dear in life solely to gain my approval . . . his suffering . . . I found it almost—”
17 “My LORD!” yelled Michael again, and pointed at Abraham, who was now swinging the knife; and I no
dded my head, and Michael appeared unto Abraham at the last possible instant and stayed his hand, and looked over the hillside for a substitute; until his eyes fell upon a wayward ram, which was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
18 And Michael congratulated Abraham, and comforted him, and promised on my behalf yet again that his descendants through Isaac would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the shore.
19 But I remained alone, staying aloof for a time from the affairs of men, to contemplate the truth about myself I had discovered while observing Abraham.
20 For lo, I had destroyed the world in a Flood; I had razed the Tower of Babel; I had leveled Sodom and Gomorrah; all manner of catastrophe had I already visited upon you, in the name of righteousness;
21 Yet it was only then—after finding myself enthralled by the slow, silent agony of one I greatly loved;
22 I say, it was only then, that I first began to consider the possibility, that there was something seriously wrong with me.
CHAPTER 18
1Things between Abraham and me were never the same after that.
2 Sarah died a few years later, leaving him disconsolate; feeling guilty, I gave unto him another wife, Keturah; she was 19 years old, and he was 139; it was a classic January–December romance.
3 And Abraham found for his son a wife; she was Rebekah, the daughter of Isaac’s cousin; not ideal, but alas Isaac had no available half-sisters or nieces.
4 And Abraham passed away at the ripe old age of 175, and was laid to rest alongside Sarah in the burial cave of Machpelah, near Mamre, toward the back, in the Jewish section.
5 And Isaac proved even more steadfast and upright than Abraham; I saw no need to test him as I did his father; and of the three patriarchs he gets by far the least play; for his life was not nearly as interesting as Abraham’s had been, or Jacob’s would be.
6 Yea; he remindeth me somewhat of John Scott Harrison: the only man to have been the son of one US president, and the father of another.
7 (Never challenge me to a trivia contest; epic shall be thy ass-whooping.)
8 Isaac built on his father’s wealth, for he bought all the wells in the valley of Gerar, profiting greatly thereby; even more so, after an adorable two-year-old Beersheban girl, Baby Milkah, accidentally fell into one.
9 Everyone within a 500-cubit radius came to assist in her rescue; the incident brought renown to the well, and honor to Isaac and all those involved;
10 Though sad to say Milkah herself grew up jaded by fame, and died of an incense overdose at age 16.
11 Isaac is best known for his two children, the twins Jacob and Esau: Esau emerged first from the womb, red and hairy; and impishly clasping his heel was Jacob;
12 And with his arrival the biblical narrative becomes more engaging; for from infancy it quickly became apparent to everyone, that Jacob was one tricky little bastard.
13 Fooling Esau into selling his birthright for a bowl of lentils; deceiving his own dying father into giving him the coveted blessing of the firstborn—these are but two of the hundreds of tricky little bastard things that tricky little bastard did;
14 I excluded them from the Bible, only so that the book of Genesis did not turn into the book of That Tricky Little Bastard.
15 Jacob was naughty, roguish, and full of mischief; a conniver; Dennis the Menace and Bart Simpson rolled into one little Semitic Iron Age package.
16 He even had his own catchphrase: “Thou gotst jaked!”
17 A visiting merchant slips on wet sand and falls into a dungpile: “Thou gotst jaked!”
18 A dim-witted neighbor is cozened into using his own precious silks to wipe himself in the dark: “Thou gotst jaked!”
19 Uncle Laban unwittingly cedes him possession of all his speckled and spotted cattle: “Dee-amn, thou gotst jaked!”
20 Jacob was as wily a trickster as I have ever seen; on occasion an unscrupulous cutthroat; one of those people whose success others resent, considering them personally unworthy of such earthly achievement; and rightly so.
21 I loved Jacob.
CHAPTER 19
1It was Esau who most frequently and painfully received unto himself the business end of Jacob’s artfully wielded shaft; most significantly in regards to the two incidents I reference above, in Againesis 18:13.
2 (Truly it is a worthy thing, to have every sentence of one’s literary output citable by chapter and verse; not only is it convenient, but it bestows upon one’s every utterance the heft of unimpeachable authority.
3 In fact, here is a little boon I shall grant my readers:
4If thou wert sent here to read this verse, thou art an asshole.
5 There; now, the next time thou findest thyself splitting hairs with a pedant on a finer point of scripture, say, “Ah, but art thou not forgetting Againesis 19:4?”; and send him scurrying here, to read my personal message.
6 The more ambitious among you may even attend a sporting event, and hold up a banner reading AGAINESIS 19:4; that thousands of boorish sophists may scurry to their Last Testaments and discover for themselves the epic majesty of both my words, and their fail.)
7 It did not help Esau’s cause that he was an unusually stiff, by-the-scroll kind of fellow; for this made him the perfect butt for his younger brother’s pranks.
8 Countless were the times in their childhood I would check in on them, to find Jacob giggling and running away; and Esau with his leg stuck in a pot, or his head dripping with porridge, or his tunic covered in camel droppings, shaking his fist and yelling, “Ja-cooooooooobbbb!”
9 Verily, compared to most of Jacob’s mischief the birthright exchange was a simple affair, taking all of five seconds: Esau came back from a long day of hunting, saw Jacob eating a bowl of lentils, and said, “I swear to God I’d trade my birthright for some of that right now”; to which Jacob replied, “Done!” and that was that.
10 For heed me: whenever my name is invoked as a surety for an earthly pledge; whenever I become, as it were, spiritual collateral; I note it, and hold the speaker to his or her end of the bargain, with no exceptions.
11 This is true for all humanity; all humanity.
12 (I am looking at thee, Susan Moskowitz of Great Neck, New York.
13 For just now in the girls’ locker room I heard thee speak thusly unto your BFF, Marissa: “I swear to God if Joey asks Paulette to Beth’s party I’m going to kill her!”
14 Lo, I will hold thee to that, Susan.
15 If Joey asks Paulette to Beth’s party . . . thou must kill her.)
16 As for Jacob’s other great ruse, the switching of the blessing of the firstborn, that is a long story; it takes up all of Genesis 27, though I must admit any astute reader can see where it’s going from verse 4.
17 The comically senile Isaac sends Esau out to prepare the food for the blessing; while he is away Rebekah prepares the food herself, and dresses her beloved son Jacob up in goatskin to simulate Esau’s hairiness; Isaac gets suspicious, and almost figures it out, but then feels his son’s “beard” . . .
18 The whole thing playeth like an episode of Three’s Company; and not a good one, either; a later one, from the post–Suzanne Somers era.
19 Esau was furious with Jacob; so Jacob ran away and made for the dwelling of his Uncle Laban; and one night on the road thereto, I sent him the famous vision of Jacob’s ladder.
20 He dreamt of a ladder reaching to heaven, with angels ascending and descending, and me at the top; and, as I had his grandfather, I promised to bequeath to his descendants the Promised Land; and, as I had his grandfather, I promised to make his seed as numerous as the dust of the earth;
21 And, as I had his grandfather, I ended the dream with that plastic spider bit.
22 But it did not work on Jacob; he was far too savvy; in fact in all his 147 years I never “gotst” Jacob; not one time.
23 Yea, Jacob took no crap from me.
CHAPTER 20
1Jacob eventually made it to his Uncle Laban’s ho
use, where, I am pleased to report, there were two young, nubile first cousins waiting for him to marry.
2 Laban was a colorful character; in Genesis, I write of how he held Jacob in indentured servitude for 20 years, and how Jacob ultimately swindled him out of most of his cattle; but I left out how he was constantly—and I mean constantly—begging me to let him be a patriarch.
3 For Laban knew of my covenant with Jacob, and was keenly jealous; and hardly a day passed when he would not sneak away, look up at the sky to where he presumed I was, and say, “Hey, God, make me a patriarch.
4 Patriarch me up, buddy.
5 C’mon.