Dark History of the Bible

by Michael Kerrigan

  We’re never told what specific sins were committed in the Cities of the Plain – still less is there anything in scripture explicitly to justify the general assumption that the ‘Sin of Sodom’ was anal sex. There is arguably some circumstantial evidence that homosexuality was involved, though. According to Genesis Chapter 19, God sent a pair of angels to the city as his emissaries: scrupulously hospitable, Lot received them in his house. Overnight, however, a crowd of townsmen gathered, surrounding and besieging the house, clamouring for the visitors to be given up to them – that they might ‘know’ them. Lot, at his wits’ end, begged them ‘brethren, do not so wickedly’ (19, 7):

  I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing, for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof.

  Unmoved, the mob threatened to murder Lot if he continued to resist them. The angels pulled him back inside, and blinded those who hammered on the door.

  Next morning, urged on by the angels, Lot took his wife and daughters and fled the city. God warned him: ‘Escape for thy life; look not behind thee … lest thou be consumed’ (19, 17):

  Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.

  Forgetting God’s awful warning, however, Lot’s wife looked back over her shoulder to see what was happening behind them: immediately, ‘she became a pillar of salt’ (19, 26).

  And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son (22, 14).

  Sarah died soon after, and Abraham saw this as his cue to find a wife for Isaac, so that his lineage might be continued. Travelling to his native Mesopotamia, he stopped at the city of Nahor where he found a fair young virgin named Rebekah. His work done, Abraham could please himself. He took another wife, Keturah, as well as several concubines. Their sons were given gifts, then sent away.

  Lot and his daughters set out from Sodom for safety. Barely visible behind, the girls’ mother may be seen – pale, static-looking and almost white, as though her transformation into a pillar of salt is already under way as she turns back.

  God’s messengers show Lot the destruction brought on Sodom by the barbaric lusts of its men. This despite Lot’s offer that, rather than surrendering his guests for their ravishment, he could give the baying crowd his virgin daughters (Genesis 19).

  His hand stayed at the final moment, Abraham spares his son Isaac’s life after the angel orders him to slay a ram instead (22, 14). By passing this loyalty test, Abraham shows his suitability as patriarch and establishes the loyalty of the Jews.

  Terrible Twins

  Isaac remained in Canaan, happy with his wife. Like Sarah before her, however, Rebekah seemed cursed with barrenness – until, after 20 years, she conceived. It was a difficult pregnancy (25, 22):

  The children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? … And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.

  Brought back to Canaan by her future father-in-law, in this nineteenth-century painting by Vittorio Bianchini, Rebekah first sets eyes on her intended husband Isaac as he walks out to meet them. She likes what she sees, it would appear.

  As the boys grew, Esau, the firstborn, revealed himself to be ‘a cunning hunter, a man of the field’ (25, 27); Jacob ‘a plain man, dwelling in tents’. The former was Isaac’s favourite – he liked to eat the venison Esau brought home from hunting, but their mother from the first loved Jacob more.

  One day, we’re told, when Jacob had been boiling up a thick pottage or stew of lentils, ‘Esau came from the field, and he was faint’ (25, 29). He begged his brother: ‘Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage’.

  In Guarino da Solofra’s Esau Ceding his Birthright to Jacob (1642), the startled expression of the boy who serves him his ‘mess of pottage’ says it all: Esau’s reckless attitude allows him to be fleeced by his unscrupulous younger brother.

  And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright. And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me? And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bred and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way (25, 34).

  While a modern reader might wonder what sort of sibling loyalty or business ethics the ‘Good Book’ is encouraging here, the Bible’s writers clearly admired the resourceful Jacob over Esau, who ‘despised his birthright’.

  A Blessing Usurped

  Jacob’s manoeuvrings didn’t stop there: in his undeclared feud with Esau, he had the enthusiastic backing of his mother. Knowing that Isaac, near death, was about to bestow his blessing on his elder son, but had asked Esau first to go out hunting and bring home some of the venison he loved, Rebekah called Jacob, and told him to fetch two kids from his flock of goats. Isaac, old and almost blind, would never realize that this wasn’t venison, she reasoned – nor that the son kneeling before him was the wrong one.

  Jacob was unconvinced (27, 11):

  Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man; My father peradventure will feel me and I shall seem to him as a deceiver; and I shall bring his curse upon me, and not a blessing.

  His mother, unperturbed, replied: ‘Upon me be thy curse, my son: only obey my voice, and go fetch me them.’ Having prepared the kids’ meat so that it resembled venison, she used the skins to cover Jacob’s hands, and the back of his neck, so that when his father reached out to touch them they felt hairy.

  And he came unto his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I; who art thou, my son? And Jacob said unto his father, I am Esau thy firstborn; I have done according as thous badest me: arise, I pray thee, sit and eat of my venison, that thy soul may bless me.

  The aged, ingenuous Isaac is no match for his scheming wife Rebekah and his younger son Jacob, who has covered his neck and hands with goat-skin to resemble his hairy elder brother. Govert Flinck painted this famous scene in around 1638.

  Not content with playing fast and loose with the principles of filial piety, Jacob involved God himself in his deception, claiming his direct intervention on his behalf. When Isaac expressed surprise that, if this were truly Esau, he could have been back from his hunt so quickly, Isaac answered: ‘Because the Lord thy God brought it to me’ (27, 20). That little stumble successfully overcome, the plan continued – working beautifully:

  And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come near, I pray thee that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou be my very son Esau or not. And Jacob went hear unto Isaac his father; and he felt him, and said, The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau. And he discerned him not, because his hands were hairy, as his brother Esau’s hands; so he blessed him.

  ‘Cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee’.

  GENESIS 27, 27

  Asking his son to draw near so he could kiss him, Isaac found any remaining doubts dispelled by the smell of the kidskins in which the young man was draped (27, 27):

  See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed: Therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine: Let people serve thee, and nation
s bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee.

  Hardly had Jacob left than Esau came back with his venison and begged his father’s blessing. Knowing by his voice that it was Esau, Isaac realized what he had done. ‘Thy brother came with subtilty,’ he said (27, 35), ‘and hath taken away thy blessing … Behold, I have made him thy lord, and all his brethren have I given to him for servants; and with corn and wine have I sustained him.’ Not surprisingly, Esau swore a cruel vengeance against his brother.

  The Trickster Tricked

  Fearing for Jacob’s life, Rebekah persuaded Isaac to send his second son off to Mesopotamia, to Padan-aram, to stay with Rebekah’s brother, Laban, and to work for him. And, it was hoped, to wed one of his daughters. Esau already had two Canaanite wives but, realizing that his father didn’t approve of either of them, he went to the house of Isaac’s estranged half-brother Ishmael and married Mahalath, his cousin.

  Rebekah’s plan appeared to be working out. On his arrival in Padan-aram, Jacob saw a beautiful young woman tending sheep: to his delight, he learned that she was Rachel, Laban’s daughter. Introduced to her father – his own uncle, of course – Jacob swore to serve Laban for seven years without compensation, except for the promise that he might marry Rachel once his term was done.

  Esau’s despair on discovering Jacob’s treachery was vividly imagined by the English artist William Brassey Hole (1846–1917). All the animal wildness of this hairy, hunting son of nature is apparent as he twists and cries out in his rage.

  Loyally, uncomplainingly, night and day, Jacob worked for his uncle for seven long years until at last he was in a position to claim his prize. To his horror, his uncle led forward Rachel’s sister Leah and placed her hand in his. ‘It must not be so done in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn,’ he explained (27, 26). He could have Rachel, Laban said slyly, but that would involve a new and separate deal, and he would have to bind himself to a further seven years’ servitude.

  Jacob declares his love for Rachel, little guessing the length of the courtship he is embarking upon. Laban made him serve him for seven years – and then would only give him Leah; for Rachel he had to serve seven years more.

  The Tables Turned

  When that period came to an end, Jacob claimed his wife – the one he’d wanted, Rachel. He also asked his uncle for his wages. Desperate not to lose a herdsman who had managed his cattle and sheep so successfully – increasing them ‘unto a multitude’ – Laban asked his nephew to name his price. He didn’t want money, Jacob said – just any speckled or spotted animals from among Laban’s stock. Laban agreed, not realizing that Jacob had no intention of leaving things to genetic chance but had come up with a way of engineering things to his advantage (30, 37), employing the power of visual suggestion:

  And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chesnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods. And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink. And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted.

  Leah looks impassive as an angry Jacob reproaches Laban for giving him the girl, rather than her younger sister Rachel. She lurks in the background, the one that – for now – got away in this representation by Hendrick ter Brugghen (1627).

  Not only this, but, we are told (30, 41), Jacob picked out the strongest among Laban’s stock for this treatment – disregarding the weaker ones: an early example of selective breeding.

  It took Laban and his sons a while to see that, while not technically robbed, perhaps, they had certainly been taken advantage of in no uncertain terms. By the time they realized what had happened, Jacob had fled for his father’s home, back in Canaan, along with Rachel and Leah, and the latter’s sons. (So far, only the elder woman had borne him children.) And, of course, with abundant flocks and herds of (piebald) livestock.

  Laban did catch up with them, but was finally talked round – and even gave his son-in-law his blessing. Resuming his journey, Jacob had reached a place called Penuel or Peniel when he was accosted (32, 24) by a stranger – a man, or an angel – who challenged him to wrestle. All night they struggled and, just before the dawn, the angel broke off their bout and blessed him, telling him ‘Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.’

  Jacob wrestles with the angel. One of the odder episodes in the Bible, the story (Genesis 32, 24) seems to represent some sort of trial of strength and resolution which Jacob/Israel is deemed to have passed.

  The stranger disappeared as the sun came up: the next thing Jacob saw was Esau approaching with his men. The two brothers were once more reconciled. Jacob came back to Canaan and settled at Succoth, near the city of Shalem: he was home again once more, a man of substance.

  CHILDLESS MATRIARCHS

  SARAH, REBEKAH: BOTH had spent the first years – even decades – of their marriages in barrenness: it was becoming customary in the wives of the patriarchs. Leah, the apparent exception – yielding Jacob no fewer than six sons and a daughter – really just represented an underlining of the rule. Jacob, deceived into taking her as his wife, had only ever accepted her under protest: his real love was for Rachel, who – while being ‘beautiful and well favoured’ (29, 18) – for so many years could not conceive.

  There’s a divine perversity at work, it seems: ‘And when the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb,’ says Genesis 29, 31: ‘But Rachel was barren.’ Before too long, Rachel is desperate, complaining to her husband (30, 1): ‘Give me children, or else I die.’ Like Sarah before her, she ends up giving her husband her maidservant to marry – and, just like Hagar, Bilhal conceives at once.

  In biblical times – even more than now – the bearing of children was viewed as a vocation: the only real calling, indeed, for the true woman. This near-tradition of childlessness – with final fulfilment – among key women in the Bible amounts to an extended metaphor for the plight of the Jews as a people – always exiled, always awaiting their promised land.

  Jacob and Sons

  Jacob had six sons by Leah and a daughter, Dinah, as well – during the lengthy wait for Rachel to conceive – and another two each by Zilpah, who was Leah’s handmaiden, and Bilhah, who was Rachel’s. But the birth that really thrilled Jacob (now known as ‘Israel’) was that of Joseph, Rachel’s firstborn. He grew up the apple of his father’s eye. The Bible is frank about Jacob’s favouritism (37, 3):

  Joseph’s brothers listen, decidedly unimpressed, as their father’s favourite tells them about his dream – with its vision of a future in which they will all have to bow down and do him obeisance (Genesis 37, 5).

  ‘Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours.’

  Inevitably, this rankled:

  And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him.

  Joseph’s powers as a visionary only vexed them more – especially given that his visions underlined his pre-eminence among them (37, 5):

  And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren: and they hated him yet the more. And he said unto them, Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed: For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf. And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? Or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words.

  A second dream drove home the message of the first:

  ‘Behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars
made obeisance to me.’

  If the sun was obviously Joseph’s father, and the moon his mother, the 11 stars were the brothers – now incandescent with a jealous rage.

  Death to the Dreamer

  The brothers’ anger took a murderous turn when, tending their flocks in a distant pasture at Dothan, well away from home, they saw their younger brother approaching, sent out to by Israel to join them. ‘Behold, this dreamer cometh,’ they said (37, 20):

  Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say, Some evil beast hath devoured him; and we shall see what will become of his dreams.

  But Reuben, the eldest of Jacob’s sons, uncomfortable with this conspiracy, persuaded his brothers simply to abandon Joseph in the desert, so that his blood would not be on their hands. At his prompting, they stripped and threw him into the pit without bread or water. Reuben left, on the pretext of telling Jacob that Joseph had been lost: in fact, he was secretly hoping that, once his brothers had left the scene, he could come back, rescue Joseph and restore him to his father.

  But he returned to find an empty pit, for, while he was gone, a caravan of Ishmaelite slave-traders had approached the group: seeing them coming, Judah, the fourth of Jacob’s sons, had spoken up:

  RAPE, RECONCILIATION AND REVENGE

  WITH JACOB SETTLED at Succoth, his daughter Dinah set about visiting their new neighbours. She went to Shalem to introduce herself to the ladies of Prince Hamor’s household. The Prince’s son Shechem saw her there and was seized with desire: ‘he took her, and lay with her, and defiled her’ (34, 2). Rape, in the ancient world (as it was, indeed, well into modern times), was primarily a crime of property and secondarily of ‘honour’. The rights of the woman or girl came a distant third – if they were even recognized at all. Shechem had taken something that belonged to Jacob and his house.