Sex wars and striped sheep

The Biblical views on sex are confusing and hard to figure out. So much of what happens in the Old Testament is either blamed on or credited to God so that people look to the Scriptures for clues as to how they should behave. And yet, all through the Old Testament we find stories of God approving of, encouraging or otherwise not dissuading actions and behaviors that we would never tolerate today.
Genesis 30 is replete with examples of bizarre sexual behavior as the sisters Rachel and Leah get into a competition to see who can produce the most sons for their “family.”
Leah already has a headstart with four sons due to God feeling sympathy for her being the unloved first wife of Jacob. Plus she has the advantage that her sister’s womb was closed by God for reasons we can’t begin to fathom.
So we get a replay of the Sarah-Hagar conflict with the barren Rachel jealous of her older sister’s success in the child-rearing department. She complains to Jacob who angrily tells her it’s God’s fault and not his.
She then decides to make one of her maid servants, Bilhah, have sex with Jacob to produce a son for her. And unlike the Sarah-Hagar story, Rachel does not get jealous of Bilhah who promptly conceives and bears two sons. The Biblical authors don’t seem the slightest bit preturbed at the idea of slaves being forced to have sex with their masters (I think we might call that rape today) and then having to give up their children to their mistresses.
Instead, they just pile it on with Leah matching Rachel maidservant for maidservant and Jacob just hopping from one bed to the next having sex with everybody.
In the midst of all this begetting, we suddenly brake for a story about Reuben - Leah’s first born - collecting mandrake plants during the wheat harvest and then Leah using them to “hire” Jacob to have sex with her again. This is really odd because why would she have to do that? She is still one of Jacob’s wives. Why does she have to bribe Rachel in order to get Jacob to have sex with her?
Nevertheless, the ploy works and Leah becomes pregnant again and again and again.
And then, God suddenly remembers Rachel and arbitrarily decides to open her womb so that she gives birth to the next major figure in the story - Joseph.

Now Genesis 30 completely shifts gears and starts talking about sheep and goats. Jacob asks his uncle to send him back to his homeland with his wives and children. Why he needs Laban’s permission if he has completed the second seven years they had agreed to is not clear. But none-the-less, Laban resists and tells Jacob that if he stays he will give him all the spotted and striped sheep and goats in his flocks. He then tries to doublecross Jacob by having his sons cull out all the colored sheep and put them in their flocks.
But Jacob has the last laugh because he apparently knows some ancient secret as to how to get sheep and goats to bear striped and spotted offspring simply by placing in their water troughs fresh-cut poplar branches with the bark stripped off to make stripes. What is really interesting is that the authors don’t even attribute this particular miracle to God. They just act like it is Jacob being clever or something. Weird.

Love at first sight

Jacob’s introduction to Rachel in Genesis 29 is preceded by a strange encounter with a group of shepherds. We get a detailed description of a well with a large stone covering it and then a dialogue between Jacob and the shepherds that goes on for six verses before Rachel shows up in much the same way that his mother Rebeka showed up next to a well for Abraham’s nameless servant in Genesis 24.
It is almost a doublet, which is how they refer to repeated stories in the Bible, except that instead of the girl fetching the water for the boy, this time it is the other way around. After seeming to argue with the shepherds and instructing them on how to raise their sheep, Jacob suddenly jumps up and in what would seem to be a bid to impress the pretty Rachel, moves the large stone on the well and water’s his uncle’s sheep.
He then kisses her and weeps aloud. How odd must that have been for Rachel to have a stranger kiss her and start crying? But maybe that sort of thing happened all the time back then. There certainly is a lot of rending of garments and crying throughout the Old Testament.

Jacob’s uncle Laban is more than happy to see him and after about a month offers to pay wages for the work that Jacob is apparently doing for him. Jacob clearly wants his daughter’s hand in marriage, but rather than just saying so he promises to work seven years for his uncle first. Seven years!?! That’s a long courtship! Why not seven months or something more reasonable?
Then, after the seven years, which is said to have passed like it was just a few days because of his love for Rachel, Jacob the trickster gets a dose of his own medicine. His uncle tricks him into marrying his oldest daughter Leah, instead of Rachel. Damn those veils!!
So now, Jacob has to work seven more years for his uncle to get Rachel, but at least this time he doesn’t have to wait seven more years before he can jump in the sack with her. But now God intervenes and determines that because Jacob loves Rachel more than Leah he will allow the unloved one to have children while the other remains barren.
Leah then gives birth to four sons who will play big roles later on - Rueben, Simeon, Levi and Judah.

Stairway to Heaven

Having just been blessed in place of his brother Esau, Jacob is now instructed by his father to NOT marry a Canaanite woman. Rather, he is told to go to his uncle and marry one of his cousins.
So we have yet another example of the Bible encouraging behavior that we reject today. Marrying one’s cousin is considered boderline incest today. Just recall the public reaction back when rock-n-roller Jerry Lee Lewis married his cousin. People were apalled and disgusted. Yet, this is common everyday practice in the Old Testament.
When poor, rejected Esau hears of this, he immediately runs out and marries one of his cousins too in a seeming bid to curry favor from his father. We don’t find out if this works or not, but the passage does not that the new wife is “in addition to the wives he already had.”

On his trip to find a suitable wife, Jacob has his famous ladder dream. The ladder, or stairway to heaven, has been a popular image ever since, but the story itself is kind of disappointing. Other than the basic description of a ladder reaching to heaven with angels ascending and descending, there is no other explanation. I mean, why do angels with wings need a ladder or stairway?
Basically, it is simply a setup for God to issue the same promise to Jacob that he has already made to Abraham and Isaac.
The next morning Jacob decides to consecrate the stone he slept on with oil and then make a vow to God. It is an interesting vow because of all the conditions he puts on it. Jacob promises to worship the Lord as his God, but only if God watches over him on his journey, makes sure he has food to eat and clothes to wear, and assures that he gets home safely in the end.
Wouldn’t we all like to make vows like that?

Lie, Cheat, Steal and Be Rewarded

I don't know how anyone could read Genesis 27 and not feel sympathy for Esau who has his birthright taken away by his conniving little brother.
I guess one could say that Esau's claim to the title of elder brother was tenuous at best since he and Jacob were twins and he just happened to come out of the womb first by a few minutes.
Still, it is hard to understand why Rebekah is so intent on pushing one child over the other. I'm not sure what the lesson is that we are supposed to take away from this story if any. But I guess it makes for a good story.
A very strange story, though. What is the deal with these "blessings" and "curses." How are they enforced? Why can Isaac only give out one blessing to his children and why can't he take the blessing back when it became clear that he had been tricked into bestowing it on the wrong person?
Perhaps the only purpose is to explain why the Israelis, who trace their heritage back to Jacob, should be more blessed than the people whose roots go back to Esau.
Surely, it can't be to say that people who lie, cheat and steal will be rewarded by God.

Third Times the Charm

Here we go again! It's the Biblical version of "Take my wife, Please!" told for the THIRD time. Yes, that's right, three times we get to hear the same story - Genesis 12, 20 and now 26. Methinks the scribes and editors got a little mixed up and added this story more than once by accident.
The only difference is that this time instead of Abraham and Sara as the main characters, we have Isaac and Rebecca. But all the bit players are still the same! We still have King Abimelech from Genesis 20 back for an encore to play the role of the duped almost-adulterer, and his personal advisor Phicol revising his role as the only other person in the story with a name.
I don't think there is a clearer example than this to demonstrate that there were multiple authors of the Bible compiling tales passed down through an oral tradition.

Birth of Jacob and Esau

Abraham finally dies in Genesis 25, but not before he gets another wife and has a whole mess of kids. Just to drive home the point that the lack of kids had been all Sarah's fault, Abraham's second wife Keturah is said to have born him six more sons. If there were any daughters mixed in they were apparently not important enough to mention.
Like Sarah, Abraham blew past the 120 limit set by God and died at the ripe old age of 175.
Then we get a quick rundown of Ishmael's descendents - 12 sons and 0 daughters naturally - before getting back to he main storyline that now runs through Isaac.
Isaac's wife Rebekah becomes pregnant with twin boys who we know as Jacob and Esau. But before they are born she seeks out God to find out why they are kicking so much in the womb. God tells her that there are two nations struggling inside her and that the older one will serve the younger. I'm assuming that this revelation has a lot to do with the favoritism that Rebekah shows toward Jacob later in the story.
We get all kinds of foreshadowing in the birth story with Esau born first, but Jacob coming out grasping his brother's heel.
We will soon learn that the two boys are as different as night and day. Esau is the bold and athletic hunter, though not too bright; while Jacob is the quiet, wimpy, stay-at-home Mommy's boy who also turns out to be a schemer and a backstabber.
Almost right away we have a story of Jacob scheming to steal away Esau's birthright by bribing him with food and drink.
Personally, I think that when it comes to twins there is no such thing as an older or younger sibling. They were both born on the same day and this business about which one came out of the womb first is silly nonsense.
But then that kind of attitude wouldn't make for as good a story.

Could you repeat that again?

The Bible can be difficult to read and Genesis 24 is a good example.
It tells the story of how Rebekah was chosen to be Isaac’s wife and it is a cute story at its core, but it is told in such a convoluted and repetitive fashion that it makes one’s eyes glaze over trying to read it.
First, we are introduced to the main character of the story who doesn’t even merit a name because he is simply a slave, which is almost as bad as being a woman in the Bible.
It seems that Abraham is getting old and is concerned that his son might wind up marrying one of those despised Canaanites that he lives among. You know - those nice people who called Abraham a “prince” and tried to give him land for free to bury Sarah but were turned down flat.
Well, Abraham calls his chief servant and tells him to go back to the homeland and find Isaac a proper wife among his own people. I guess since Abraham married his half-sister, then the least Isaac can do is marry one of his cousins.
The servant swears an oath to do just that and takes 10 camels and a whole bunch of treasure (remember Abraham sent Hagar out with nothing more than a water skin) and heads off to Nahor. Once there he prays to God for guidance and determines that the first of the local townsgirls who will offer him a drink of water will be the right bride for Isaac.
Sure enough, the first girl to happen along is Rebekah and she immediately satisfies this requirement by not only offering water to the servant but also to all his camels.
That’s pretty much it, except that we get this same story in three versions told nearly back to back. First when the servant prays to God that this is what he wants to happen, secondly when it actually does happen, and third when he goes and describes everything that happened all over again to Rebekah’s father Bethuel.
Then the servant gives everyone fancy gifts including a nose-ring for Rebekah and heads back to Abraham with his prize where he no doubt relays the story for a fourth time. Fortunately, we are spared that last repetition in the text.