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.
