Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Mother's Day Special: Matriarchs and Patriarchs

            Recently in my Bible I’ve had a lot of fun reading the Patriarchal stories of Genesis: like Abraham, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Joseph in Egypt. Lots of badass bronze-age swashbuckling, like when Abe gets three hundred of his bros together and they rescue his wimpy nephew from the armies of four kings. It’s an interesting story. One of these monarchs is simply referred to as the king of “the Nations” (Heb.: Goyim). Just one is enough for most kings, but apparently not this dude. Also interesting is that two of the kingdoms, Shinar (i.e., Sumer) and Elam, were traditional enemies according to Mesopotamian records. This was an unprecedented military alliance between normally competing major powers—think of the US and the Russia teaming up. They are reinforced by some dude calling himself "King of the Nations". And some other dude--so, let's say, the Prince of Liechtenstein. This is no petty tribal dispute.

            So Abe and the boys roll in, knock some heads together, and rescue his wuss of a nephew from Liechtenstein and company--even though said nephew had betrayed him earlier. These guys were legit, sword-and-sandal Bronan the Brobarians, treading the jeweled kingdoms of old beneath their feet, seeing their enemies driven before them, and hearing the lamentations of said enemies’ women. One time my neighbor and I were reflecting on David and BATHsheba (geddit?). After a short pause in the conversation, we shook our heads and agreed, “Man…that is gangster.

            David might have been an OG, but these dudes are the O’est of OG’s. They were the tent-dwelling warlords of the desert, wielding swords of bronze, who rode camels into battle (probably a slight anachronism) and laid siege to cities. These unlettered steppe herdsmen forged mighty nations by the strength of their sword arms, such that their deeds were etched on tablets of stone and remembered in the halls of scribes and learned men; their sons were the fathers of kings. Their doings reverberate through the millennia to us today. It is exactly the legacy an ancient barbarian warlord would want.

            But one thing I keep noticing is that these guys—all of them—sin against their wives in terms of sexual fidelity. Whenever someone screws up in these stories, it’s usually a man screwing up in his relationship with a woman. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and his sons are deeply flawed men and these flaws deeply mar the job they did as patriarchs, i.e., the male heads of their households. Here is a quick list:

1.      Abraham sells his wife, who he’s pretending is his sister, to various kings as a sex slave. Also, Abe himself is a polygamist.
2.      Isaac, who did the same thing with his wife. Although he himself may not have been a polygamist, he certainly has no problems with everyone else doing it and at one point harasses his son to get a third wife.
3.      Jacob, whose shenanigans involving the birthright are well known. Also a polygamist.
4.      Judah, whose daughter-in-law blackmails him into paying her what he owes by disguising herself as a prostitute and having sex with him. He then tries to have her stoned for prostitution.

            These guys were not described by their contemporaries or by the writer(s) of Genesis as good dudes. God, the “Editor” of the Bible, wants us to be aware of the imperfection of these men. Perhaps most notably, each of them falls into serious sexual sin. The specific sin is frequently but not always polygamy, which seems to have been in the time of the patriarchs roughly equivalent to casual sex, divorce, pornography and the like in secular, post-sexual-revolution Western society today. It was a ubiquitous sexual sin that these men sometimes internally struggled with and sometimes openly committed, but they were all guilty of it to some degree.

            In committing the sin of polygamy, the Patriarchs were guilty of sinning not only agains God, but also against their wives the Matriarchs. The Patriarchs’ society permitted and even encouraged what was essentially the sexual ownership of multiple women by a single man. He had no commitments to them in terms of sexual fidelity. To this day this is still practiced in societies claiming descent from the (very) polygamous Patriarchs Ishmael and Esau. However, the writer(s) frequently and forcefully communicate that God’s ideal is uncompromised lifelong monogamy in a godly marriage and family. Even godly men in the ancient world struggled with this, just like how even otherwise godly men in the modern world sometimes struggle with pornography or Tinder hookups.

            The writer(s) communicate this ideal most clearly in the personages of Abraham and Sarah, who are in their nineties and God keeps telling them, has told them for decades, that she’ll have a kid. And she does. One of my favorite parts of the book of Genesis is the birth of Isaac. It’s told with such a matter-of-fact but at the same time somehow breathlessly astonished tone, letting the event speak for itself. One can almost imagine that it’s an eyewitness account handed down through centuries of oral tradition. Abraham had a child at 100, but that’s not the really impressive part. The impressive part is that Sarah had a child as a ninetysomething. Abraham’s willingness to enter a polygamous union for the sake of a child demonstrates a hopelessness that God’s promise would actually come true. But that’s not how God works. God doesn’t compromise for His people.

            As shown with what happens next in the story, the Patriarchs frequently and seriously failed at their job because of sexual sin. God will not accept Ishmael as firstborn because he is the illegitimate child of a polygamous union—Hagar is not Abraham’s wife in the eyes of God. But don’t feel too bad for Ishmael, much like that of all his other male relatives, he later has plenty of wives and concubines of his own. Imagine that, parents screwing up and their kids having to deal with the same problems.

            I hope I do not come off as misandrist if I assign a higher degree of job competency, in general, to the Matriarchs of Genesis than the Patriarchs. At any rate, they did not mess up as seriously and as frequently. I do not think they were necessarily better people than their husbands, but when they screwed up it didn’t make it into the Bible as often, and when they do make it in whatever happened was ultimately a man’s fault. It is true, for example, that Rebecca helped Jacob conspire against Esau, but ultimately the fault is Isaac’s for showing favoritism to Esau and fathering Jacob so poorly that he turned into such a Sneaky Little Shit:



            So I submit that the Matriarchs mostly did their job as “female head of household” better than the Patriarchs did their job of “male head of household”. I say “male” and “female head of household” deliberately. I don’t want to talk here about Biblical male headship and whether or not the jobs of Matriarch and Patriarch involve a subordinate power dynamic. It obviously did four thousand years ago. But much like polygamy and the stoning of prostitutes, just because something was done in the ancient world does not mean it has to be done now. The position I hold regarding the related concepts of polygamy and female subservience, incidentally, are two of the reasons I am Christian and not Muslim.

            The Patriarchal stories of Genesis are an extremely sobering warning to men, especially fathers and husbands, everywhere. The Matriarchs were often and maybe even usually better at their jobs and personal conduct than the Patriarchs. These stories also tell us that when the Patriarchs screwed up, the consequences are often and maybe even usually more severe than when the Matriarchs did. Be careful, gentlemen. Lust is a killer and it gets even otherwise godly and extraordinarily badass Old Testament desert warlords. Fortunately, God did not abandon Abe and the boys, and he will not abandon us in our own struggles. Each of these men ended his life walking with God and receiving His blessing. He invites us to do the same. Still, it is unavoidable: the Editor seems to be telling us the moms did a better job than the dads.

            That in mind, Happy Mother’s Day.

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