Sister wives

I would say that God was the master of mixed messaging. I’m gonna kill you if you don’t let her go. I didn’t do anything. I know because I stopped you.

Yeah, a bit of a narcissist.

Just keep stopping me then. I don’t. What are you doing?

Hey, Everybody, I’m Dan McClellan.

And I’m Dan Beecher.

And you’re listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and we combat the spread of misinformation. About the same. How are things today, Dan?

Things are good. Things are good. It’s. It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood and we are going to be looking at some very weird stuff in the Bible and I’m excited about it.

Awesome.

In the first half, we’re going to be talking about it. It’s a. What is. No, it’s. We’re taking issue. In the first one. The taking issue is specifically about lying about who’s. About your wife being your sister. Question mark. I don’t know. It’s a weird one.

It seems to be a habit on the part of some folks.

Yeah. There’s a whole family. It’s a family tradition by the time we get through things. And then in the second half of the show, we’re going with. What is that? And we’re talking about something that your text to me autocorrected as Seraphim. But it’s not that. It’s Teraphim.

Yes. Isn’t that a light chicken gravy that you.

Oh, it’s delicious.

That’s a callback to Three Amigos, by the way.

But moving on. Yeah. Teraphim.

I’m excited about that. So let’s start this off with taking issue. All right. And as we said before, we’re taking issue with lying and saying that your wife is your sister.

It happens multiple times and it’s very confusing to me. So let’s start in Genesis 12 . And. And now this is. This is Abram, or Abram and Sarai. We’re not yet. Abraham and Sarah. Yeah.

Yeah. Sarai. So there’s a. There’s a famine in the land. As. As is the wont of that particular land. Sure. So they head down.

Famine prone.

Yes. They head down to Egypt to. To gur. To sojourn. To reside there. The famine was very severe in the land when they’re. They’re about to get to Egypt and Abram pulls over and he’s like, look, sweetie. And the NRSVUE has him say, I know well that you are a woman, beautiful in appearance.

And when the Egyptians see you, they will say, this is his wife. Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you and that my life may be spared on your account. We don’t get anything by way of response from Sarai. She’s not really an independent agent in this narrative. But that’s exactly what happened.

Which is weird, because this has big implications for her.

It’s not like, this is just, “Hey, tell a quick white lie and we’ll all be good.”

This becomes very meaningful in her life.

Yeah. Yeah. You. You would. You would think she would have been like, well, wait a minute. Doesn’t that mean they’re going to all be pursuing me?

Can this be a discussion? Because I feel like you’re just dictating something that maybe I need to be a part of. It’s. And what a weird thing. Is there any explanation or any reason. Do we have a reason to believe that people would be fine with him having a hot sister, but, like, murder him if he has a hot wife? Like, what’s going on here?

Yeah, well, I. I think it’s the. You know, it’s something that a lot of men, particularly members of the male loneliness epidemic these days. If a lot of them fantasize about being able to get with some celebrity or another, and then if they find out she’s married, all of a sudden, they’re, like, disappointed, as if this actually ruined some plans they had for the future. And. And certainly they develop resentment for the spouse of this person that they, you know, really had the hots for. And so you can. You can imagine that anciently, if a guy comes into town with a. With a hot wife, that there would be people who would be like, wow, she’s really hot. Let’s just get rid of her husband.

It might be worth killing him.

So we can have her.

Whereas if there’s brother and sister, they’re like, oh, he’s not a threat, and they don’t have to kill him.

But. But it turns out that it’s not just that. Because the Pharaoh apparently finds out about this new, exceedingly beautiful woman. Like, you must have been like. Like, if this went all the way to the Pharaoh. That’s a. That is a crazy beautiful woman.

And Pharaoh decides, oh, I need her. I will take her as my wife. And Abraham seems to go along with it. Question mark.

Yeah, he, I, I don’t know what’s like, like polygamy is normative in this time period, but for two different men to be sharing the same wife is problematic. Abraham seems to be like, well, let’s just see where this goes.

Look, I’m not going to say, I’m not gon say he’s wrong now. Yeah. I’ve already been saying you’re my sister. This is.

Yeah. Like if they were gonna kill me before, they’re gonna kill me like twice as much.

They’ll kill me extra now.

Yeah. So the Pharaoh says, and, and the Pharaoh is very nice to Abram for her sake. He dealt well with Abram. And he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female slaves, female donkeys and camels.

Literally. When I read that, I did a wait, we’re not done with donkeys. I, it was just so weird. Why are we separating male and female donkeys with male and like male donkeys, male and female slaves, and then also female donkeys?

Wanted to, we needed to circle back to this cuz I almost forgot about the female donkeys. It’s like, we got those too.

Yeah, but I, but I mean, one sympathizes at that point. You had to write everything longhand and frankly, if you skipped a thing, you’re not going to go back and edit. It’s not. You don’t have Microsoft Word at your disposal.

Yeah, you, I could see them being like, damn track changes. I cannot figure this out.

Where is find and replace on this papyrus or whatever.

And then verse 17 says, the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. Which is odd because presumably God knows that Abraham is lying to them.

Right?

So Pharaoh doesn’t know what’s going on. And, and Pharaoh calls Abram and said, what is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? And we’ve got no explanation of how he discovered this.

Right.

It’s just that suddenly, you know, the, the dice started rolling against Pharaoh and he’s like, wait a minute, this is his wife? And then goes, and, and instead of actually just, yeah, you know, sword in the chest, right, he’s like, what are you doing to me, man? Why did you say she is my sister so that I took her for my wife, now then, here is your wife. Take her and be gone. So I think you’re right that the…

That, that killing Abraham would have been the, the easier path on all of this. I mean, Abraham’s the liar. Pharaoh didn’t do anything wrong. But God seems to be punishing Pharaoh for a, a sin he didn’t even know. Like this is a very Oedipal moment. Like you’re committing a sin you don’t even know you’re committing. And, and yet you’re going to be the one that’s punished. I think that, that is, that’s a sketchy, a sketchy take.

Yeah. Almost Kafkaesque. It’s like, I didn’t, I didn’t ask to wake up in these circumstances. What is, what is going on here? And, and, and maybe Pharaoh is like, well, God is like breathing down my neck, so maybe I’m just going to be a little hands off with this dude. I’m not going to run him through as probably was his wont in that time period for folks who deceived him and caused trouble. But Pharaoh gives his men orders concerning him and they set him on the way with his wife and all that he had. So. So Abram got kicked out of Egypt.

For apparently this is a scam that actually works great for them because they walk away with all those sheep and oxen and male and female donkeys and slaves. They’re, they rolled, you know, they, they really, they made out like bandits.

On this front.

And they come up and, and they’re, they come into the, the land of Canaan and this is what leads us into, you know, somebody kidnaps Lot and he’s got to go to war with these five kings. And then we get the Melchizedek episode. And, and it keeps repeating that Abraham is, is a wealthy dude. And it does seem like Abram’s enriched somewhat by his time in, in Egypt.

And yeah, you don’t ask. You just say, okay, we’re going. And then you take all, you just tell your slaves to gather up all of your, your donkeys and yeah, I need this.

I’m taking this.

That’s all I need.

And apparently the scam works. So now it is interesting. Like you just made me think that maybe I feel like there’s a lot of etiologies contained in these stories, a lot of explanations of. Of. So I, so now what you just said made me think that maybe this story is the etiology for why Abraham is suddenly wealthy. Why the story has now become that he is a rich person. And it’s just the trip to Egypt was, was the origin story of his wealth.

It could be because we’ve got in Genesis, toward the end of Genesis 11 , verse 31, Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot, son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife. And they went out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, and they settled there. And then we have the Lord visiting Abram, saying, leave your father’s house. I’ll make of you a great nation. It doesn’t mention Abram’s wealth. It mentions that he was 75 years old when he departed from Haran. So presumably he, he’s got Social Security that’s covering at least, you know, his, his necessaries. And it says Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran, and that’s a reference to enslaved folks, and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan, blah, blah, blah. And so it sounds like they already had possessions.

Okay, it doesn’t say that, you know, they were just bricked up with money, but it does suggest that they had, they had acquisitions. But then, yeah, they go down to Egypt to reside there as, as a sojourner, a ger, as it were. And yeah, now I’m going to look again at the passage that says he caused it to be well with Abram and manservants, and there were to him flocks. And so it sounds like these are things that, that the Pharaoh is giving to Abram as a part of his treating him well because of his sister. It’s not just that. It’s like Pharaoh was nice to him. Oh, by the way, Abram also had lots of male donkeys, male and female slaves as well as female donkeys. So it sounds like that is trying to account for his acquisition of wealth, at least to some degree. It’s, it’s not like they were impoverished beforehand and they left rich.

But this is kind of similar to what happens with Jacob later on as well.

Yeah, but you mentioned, by the way, I’m just going to briefly touch on the fact that you mentioned that back in chapter 11, Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot, son of Haran and his daughter-in-law, Sarai, and that’s all it calls her. And I bring that up. I don’t know why I’m bringing up that it only calls her his daughter-in-law. But maybe chapter 20 will, will expose something about that. Because I think that that’s an interesting point because chapter 20, Abraham, he’s now Abraham.

Takes his wife and they go again, they go away.

Well, and here’s something interesting before we get to that. Okay. There’s this classic thing where in this ancient literature, people’s names keep getting changed kind of arbitrarily.

And there are a lot of scholars who think that these are editorial seams, that these are different versions of these stories where the character’s name was different in the other version of the story. And so maybe these are just different traditions that are being brought together. And at some point they were like, you gotta. He’s Abram over here, he’s Abraham over there. And. And they’re like, well, come up with a reason for his name. God changed his name to Abraham. There we go. We’re good. So, yeah, these are ways that they. They might be stitching these different traditions together. And it is the consensus view that the stories of Abraham, the stories of Isaac, the stories of Jacob, all circulated independently of each other before being stitched together into the single lineage. They initially were not so related to each other.

So that makes a lot of sense to me. And what also makes sense is that like, the same story could just take on some different things and then be listed as two different stories. Yeah. And why am I bringing that up?

Where Abraham and Sarah, not Abram and Sarai, are now instead of going to Egypt, they are going to the region of the. Yes. In the region of the Negev between Kadesh and Shur. Just in case you wanted to know sort of specifically where Gerar is. But this is. So Gerar is what? Gerar is a.

Where is that? What is that?

Well, actually, I’m. I think of. Of Gerar as being. Oh, it’s. It’s in the. So the Negev is. Is the southern desert.

And Gerar looks like it is an ancient city in the Negev. Yeah. Associated with Abraham and Isaac. So it’s a little northwest of Beersheba, which is Beersheba. And.

But it’s not Egypt. We’re nowhere near Egypt.

No, no, no, we’re not in Egypt. You. You’ve got the Sinai Peninsula in between Egypt and. And this region. It’s. Yeah. I have to have like, at least driven by that, if not through it. The last time I was in Israel and Palestine. But it looks like it’s identified as a Philistine town, so. Yeah, but. And, and that’s going to come up in the third iteration of this story.

Yes, indeed.

But, you know, we might have. We might have a story where Abram and Sarai go to Egypt and they have another story where Abraham and Sarah go to Gerar. And they’re like, keep them both. We’ll just. We’ll make it work.

Keep. Keep it all in.

So what we have is Abraham and Sarah. Sarah go to Gerar. Abraham said of his wife Sarah, she is my sister and to King Abimelech.

Which is. Which would be. My father is. Is king.

Oh, okay. King. My father is king. Yeah, He. He basically is. It basically follows the same structure.

Yes. Only here it’s explained how he finds out.

Right.

That’s because God comes to Abimelech in a dream. I’m al. I also want to point out something interesting here. It’s only. It’s going to be God, not Adonai, not the Lord. Who’s. Who’s the. The deity throughout this entire chapter until the very last verse. And I. And I think that’s interesting. We’ll get that back to that. But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, you are about to die because of the woman you have taken, for she is a married woman. Dun, dun, dun.

And then Abimelech is like, I didn’t touch her. Yeah.

That. That’s another distinction from chapter 12. Because there is no sense there. There’s no. There’s no mention of Pharaoh not touching her. It does seem very much like Pharaoh did whatever he did. What? Took her in the. In a wifely fashion.

Yeah. And my. My wife and I watched the episode of Firefly last night where they. Where Kaylee. Kaylee is like, Wash, tell me I’m pretty. And she goes, if I were. If I were unwed, I would take you in a manly fashion. Because I’m pretty. Because you’re pretty. So, yeah. You. And. And we have this weird statement. Abimelech says, Lord, will you destroy an innocent people? So we got taught. We. He’s talking back to God And. And the innocent people. Is odd, because he seems to think God is going to destroy his whole nation.

Yeah. Or. Or at very least many sort of proximate humans.

About.

Yeah. You’re gonna have a lot of collateral damage here if. If you try to waste me. Did he not himself say to me, she is my sister? And she herself said, he is my brother. I did this in the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands.

And. And then God is like, yes, I know you did this in the integrity of your heart. Furthermore, twas I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore, I did not let you touch her. So God is like, I gonna kill you. And he’s like, I didn’t do anything wrong. And he’s like, exactly.

I know.

I was the one who made sure you didn’t do anything wrong.

God, you’re welcome.

Yes, there’s. I think we’ve got a bit of a complex going on.

There are mixed messages. I would say that God was the master of mixed messaging. I’m gonna kill you if you don’t let her go. I didn’t do anything. I know because I stopped you.

Yeah, a bit of a narcissist.

Just keep stopping me, then. I don’t. What are you doing?

And then God says, now then return the man’s wife, for he is a prophet and he will pray for you, and you shall live. But if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die. You and all that are yours. So maybe that’s the threat to the rest of the nation. So Abimelech rose early in the morning and called all his servants and told them all these things. And the men were very much afraid. Then Abimelech. So you’ve got. What do we got here? It starts in verse three. God came to Abimelech in verse three, verse eight. So we got a good six verses explaining how Abimelech finds out. In chapter 12, it just skips from, he took, you know, he wanted her as a wife. And then he. God is trying to kill him. And. And then he knows. Then Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, what have you done to us? How have I sinned against you that you have brought such great guilt on me and my kingdom? You have done things to me that ought not to be done.

And he says, what were you thinking? Why did you. That you did this? We. We. We want an explanation. Again, it would be easier to just take the sword and run him through. But here Abimelech is like, I just. I just got to know, man.

Well, there was a dream. I mean, at least in this case, we have the explanation of God saying to Abimelech, you gotta treat him right. You gotta. You gotta, you know, do nice things or whatever, because there’s no explanation for Pharaoh being nice.

Yeah, yeah. But here it sounds like Abimelech’s like, all right, you gotta. I’m supposed to be nice to you because God said so. And. And Abraham’s excuse is, I did it because I thought, surely there is no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife. And when God caused me to wander from. Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother. And she became my wife. So yeah, I got a half sister situation.

Here we have. This is why I highlighted the fact that chapter 11 actually says daughter in law and not daughter of the same. Because woof. You know, this to me reads as an etiology for why or. Or an explanation as to why he’s not lying. You know, to make him not a liar, to make Abraham not a liar. But I feel like we made it worse, not better. You know what I mean? Like, that doesn’t. At least by today’s standards. I don’t know what like half sister business would have been, how that would have been received in ancient times, but yikes.

Yeah, it does. You. You do wonder what his browser history looks like. But, but anciently there was a desire there. There was a sense in which you wanted to keep things in the family, just not too close in the family, so. Because what that meant was that, you know, I. That the property was staying within the family, that it was not going to be appropriated by. By people from other families. And so there was a, a proximity. There was a genealogical proximity that was ideal. But the, you know, we share the same dad. That feels a little too close.

It’s a little rough. Yeah, it’s a little rough. And also, like, why didn’t we hear the same thing back in chapter 12? It seems. That seems like a pertinent piece of information.

Yeah. And. And this might be. And the chapter 12 might be the earlier version of this story because it moves in. In fits and starts. It’s quicker. You don’t have all the detail and the explanation. And, and that’s how stories tend to grow. They tend to accrete to them more explanations. And then Abimelech took sheep and oxen and male and female slaves and gave them to Abraham and restored his wife Sarah to him. And Abimelech says, my land is before you settle where it pleases you. Which is Abraham’s making out like a bandit.

Yeah, this is what I’m saying. Like, he just keeps collecting like this is a scam he needs to run. At every kingdom in the, in the, in the surrounding area, we’re gonna have.

Abraham’s 12 where they go every time they’re. They organize a new scam to, to fool the leader into further enriching them.

By almost marrying or marrying his wife. And then. Yeah, and then. Ha. She’s not my sister.

And you. You think God would get a little tired of this, right? Like, we. We’ve done this many times already. Abraham, I’m. I’m not doing your dirty work for you anymore.

So even if the “she’s actually my sister” thing works for him, makes him not a liar, which, come on, guys, then we can jump to…

Well, hang on. I want to—I want to finish this chapter. I don’t want to jump, move on just yet.

And then Abimelech says to Sarah, “Look, I’ve given your brother a thousand pieces of silver. It is your exoneration before all who are with you; you are completely vindicated.” And then we have this—this weird thing. The second to last verse, the penultimate verse, if you’re nasty: “Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children.”

Oh, yeah, that was a weird one.

Now if—if we’ve been reading along, nobody has said anything about any of this. This is something that’s coming along here at the end. And Abraham prays to God again. And God healed Abimelech. And this—this is a detail that seems out of nowhere. And then we get to the last verse, which is the only verse in the entire chapter where the divine name occurs. And here’s—here’s the interesting thing about the book of Genesis . You have the divine name all over the place. You do not have a single person who is named who has the theophoric elements Yod He Vav He or any variation of it in their name.

Nobody has a name that has the Tetragrammaton in it. That is the most common theophoric element in names in every other part of the Hebrew Bible, entirely absent from the entire book of Genesis . Which leads some people to conclude these stories don’t seem to come from a time and a place where anyone knew who Adonai was.

Everybody seems to just be Elohim, Eloah, Elyon, or something else. And so this is why in here, we’ve got no knowledge of Adonai until the very end: “For Adonai had closed fast all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.” So we’ve tacked on to the end of this story a—a resolution to this odd verse where it’s like, so Abraham prayed to God to—to fix this other thing that we didn’t talk about. And then somebody—and then, like you can imagine on the manuscripts in the margins, somebody was like, “Because God had closed the wombs of the…” Only it uses this other name for God. So I—I think this is just a—an interesting—another example bubbling to the surface of clearly some editorial seams in…

In verse 17, what is the word that is used for God?

Elohim.

Elohim. And then in verse 18, it’s the Tetragrammaton.

It’s the Tetragrammaton. Yeah. So, right. It’s Elohim throughout all of chapter 20.

Starting in verse three, when God came to Abimelech. Yeah. So—so I—I think this is a secondary addition to the text from a later author who’s writing in a period when now suddenly we know who Adonai is. So… but I, we… I digress.

Makes sense to me.

But we get the birth of Isaac now.

Yes. Now we move on. And by the way, I do want to mention that Sarah must have been incredibly hot, because by the time we get to chapter 20, she is old. She is…

Well, yeah. Abram—Abraham’s already 75 when he sets out. So, yeah, I don’t—I don’t know what…

So, I mean, we know a little…

Bit more about Abraham’s browser.

I’m just saying she kept—she kept her hotness deep into her—under her age. And I love it.

Makes you wonder how old the—the Pharaoh and Abimelech were as well.

Right. Played by Helen Mirren. Here we go. All right.

They were.

So now we jump to Genesis 26 . And—and it’s a whole new story. Nothing like anything we’ve read before. Because it’s Isaac now.

Yeah. Funny enough, though. Funny enough. The very first verse says there was a famine in the land. Not the famine from the first time with Abraham. Definitely different famine.

Yeah. Don’t think this is the same. This is a totally different famine.

And now Isaac…

We’re good. Now let us proceed to tell the exact same story.

Right. Isaac went to Gerar to King Abimelech of the Philistines.

So. And now we have another different detail. Suddenly Abimelech is king of the Philistines.

Right, right. Because we’ve added even more details to the story.

And by the way, this is supposed to be, what, like 1900 BCE, something like that. Depending on where you date Abraham, the Philistines don’t exist yet. The Philistines don’t arrive until after the invasion of the Sea Peoples, where we have these folks from different parts of the Central Mediterranean who are basically migrating to the coastline here. That is where the Philistines probably ethnically come from. If we take the existence of Mycenaean pottery popping up in the 12th century BCE as an indication of the cultural origins of the Philistines. So the Philistines do not exist when Isaac is alive.

Dirty mouth. They exist because they’re right here.

Yeah, so Gerar was known as a Philistine territory at certain parts of Israelite history.

And so when they’re sharing this story, they’re like, Isaac came to Gerar. Oh, where the Philistines are. Yeah, yeah. Which is.

Which is interesting because presumably when we know about Philistines, they have a different god than these people—it’s too early to call them Israelites—than these Abrahamites or whatever. So but in this case, no, Abimelech, the god that talks to him is presumably the same God that we—we’re just using one God for everybody.

Yeah, yeah. It’s kind of like how when Jonah goes to Nineveh and preaches and they’re like, “Gotta pray to God.”

It’s like, wait, but you have a different god. So but Abimelech is a—would be a Hebrew name which would not be a Philistine name. And you know, Hebrew doesn’t exist in this time period either. So. Okay, so there are a couple of chronological wrinkles.

Just a few. I like that. In Chapter 26, the Lord appeared to Isaac and said—first of all, the Lord appeared to Isaac. That’s so confusing. Anyway, and said, “Do not go down to Egypt.” Just making it clear this did not take place in Egypt.

“Settle in the land that I shall show you.” It does feel like he’s just running the family scam now.

Well, and the narrator is working very hard to convince you that this is not the same story.

Right.

Because it’s like, different famine, different famine. And they didn’t go to Egypt. God said, “Don’t go to Egypt. You got to go here instead. But they’re residing in the land as an alien. I will be with you. I will bless you, for to you and to your descendants, I will give all these lands and I will fulfill the oath that I swore to your father, Abraham.” So it’s getting pretty wordy here.

Yeah. And didn’t Abraham—we just had back in Chapter 20, we just had Abraham settling on a nice plot of land in that land already. So apparently Abraham left and now Isaac’s got to go and get it again. But Isaac has a wife now named Rebekah.

And you imagine she’s got to be super hot too, just because you know that righteousness means you got a hot wife in the Hebrew Bible.

Because Isaac like immediately jumps to the same shtick: “She’s my sister,” so “Don’t kill me because she’s my sister.” So that’s cool.

And he doesn’t—they don’t seem to plan this beforehand because verse seven says, “When the men of the place asked him about his wife, he said, ‘She is my sister,’ for he was afraid to say ‘my wife,’ thinking, ‘or else the men of the place might kill me for the sake of Rebekah because she is attractive in appearance.’” So if you have a good-looking—

Wife, you just can’t travel.

Yeah, this is, it’s a blessing and a curse because you’re just always under threat of death. And when Isaac had been there a long time, King Abimelech of the Philistines looked out a window and saw him. And here’s where it gets a little weird because we’ve got this verb. It’s a participle from the verbal root which might mean “to laugh.” And this is where Yitzchak, Isaac, the name comes from. But we also have—and is this a Piel? Yes, it’s a Piel participle. We also have this sense to joke, to dally with, or to fondle. So we’ve got the translation in the NRSVue says, “King Abimelech of the Philistines looked out a window and saw him fondling his wife Rebekah.” Yeah. So that’s exactly what he said.

Yeah. And. And so here he does not. And, and I think this is an even later version because in the other two, the kings immediately is like, wife her. And here Abimelech is just like, man, I what? So Abimelech called for Isaac and said, so she is your wife. Why then did you say she is my sister?

And Isaac was apparently not recognizing that this is the same shtick he dealt with just a few years ago with Isaac’s dad.

Yeah, he, this is, he’s got a very short term memory. But. Or, you know, why didn’t he think, ew, these are some weirdos who are coming from. Yeah, yeah.

Why did he jump to that instead of like, oh, this guy is fondling his sister. That’s. Yeah, that’s.

No, that’s not his sister. That’s his wife. I mean, at least with Abraham, he’s like, she’s kind of my sister. So a lot of unanswered questions.

Regarding the progression of this narrative. But. And. And there’s no mention of Abimelech being cursed, of any wombs being shut right in his land. There’s no mention of a dream.

Well, there’s no mention of Abimelech taking her, right, as his wife this time.

Yeah. So there’s no.

He’s learned that lesson.

No, no, nobody. Yeah. Nobody has done anything wrong. And so there has been. No. No. No problems have arisen as a result. But Abimelech says, what is this you have done to us? One of the people might easily have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us. So the. The guilt is actually just a hypothetical that set off into the future because nobody. I guess maybe they’re. They’re a little more prudish, and they’re like, we can’t tell the story where somebody actually comes at Rebecca lustfully or even proposes to her or anything like that. So Abimelech warned all the people, saying, whoever touches this man or his wife shall be put to death. Which. Which is kind of odd, I mean, because previously he was like, ooh, if. You know, if.

If God weren’t breathing down my neck, I would just hurt you. And here.

And here it’s. There’s no threats, but he’s like, nobody lay a finger on Isaac. So Isaac falls under a weird kind of protective order because he has screwed over, or at least potentially screwed over Abimelech and his people. And then we have the mention that Isaac sowed seed in that land and in the same year reaped a hundredfold. The Lord.

And that’s how he becomes rich, because Abimelech, he. Isaac, doesn’t manage to get a cartload of donkeys. And female donkeys. And slaves. And female slaves and whatever. Anyway, so. So he has to. He has to get rich off of reaping a hundredfold, which is a.

That’s a.

That’s a good reaping.

Yeah. As a. As a consequence of lying. Yeah. So, yeah, there.

The lesson here is if you want to get rich, lie and manipulate and scheme.

Yeah. I. I have definitely seen a few Christians take that lesson to heart.

Oh, yeah, yeah. That’s the prosperity gospel.

Yeah, exactly. All right, well, there’s that story. It’s… I don’t know. I don’t know what to do with that.

Yeah, we. We’ve obviously have. This was evidently some kind of popular story in the ancient world. Gather around the. The campfire, children, and let me tell you the tale of. Of when we got rich by lying to a king.

And it gets repeated three different times, twice with the same characters and then once with. With their children. And so I. I think it’s clear that this is something that was in circulation with. With different tellings of very similar stories. And rather than an editor be like, you can’t tell the same story three times. They just were like, we’re keeping it all.

And this is. This is why we have editors, but apparently we don’t have them back then. All right, well, we need to jump ahead. We need to.

We’re running long, so we’re going to leave that as the muddy, weird series of stories that they are and move on to what is that? And this week’s what is that? Comes to us from a few different stories. The one that you pointed out to me first was 1st Samuel 19. And it’s a story of David and how David escapes from Saul, who. Saul runs hot and cold on David, like, violently.

So, like, I’m—somebody probably wanted him to be diagnosed with bipolar.

Right.

And this was—this was something that is a bizarre feature of these stories. But…

But that’s not what we’re talking about today. No, what we’re talking about today is a word that your autocorrect had you send me a wrong text about it, which was your autocorrect thought you were trying to say seraphim.

Yes, yes, I get the autocorrect. I don’t know how many times people are like, “What do you mean? What the duck?” when they get texts from me. The autocorrect is—is mostly a curse, very rarely a blessing. But yeah, here it changed—I don’t know how many times I’ve turned in a paper. When I was an undergrad, when people were like, “You have periscope here. I think you probably wrote pericope,” which is just a fancy way to say a story, but then autocorrect changed it. So it was teraphim or teraphim, which is a fancy word that is sometimes translated—sometimes people transliterate it. You’ll find teraphim in the—in the texts, usually they will translate it like idol or something like that, or maybe household idol or image or something like that. It is—it is basically a divine image which—and we’re not sure exactly where the word comes from. Some people think it derives from the root rapha, which means to heal.

And so it would be a divine image that was used to facilitate healing or something like that. So if somebody was sick, you would set these up and—and these would have been probably anthropomorphic-ish. So they would have looked kind of human—statuettes that looked kind of human. And you would set them up to facilitate the transmission of some kind of divine agency or power that would—and heal the individual. And I mean, when we have this…

Kind of thing today, we have, you know, a lot of Catholics have candles that have the image of a saint on them or something like that. So I mean, I—yeah, and that’s a little, a little humanoid sort of doll or—or—or statuary or something. Makes sense. They—they appear in several stories. The—the David story in—why don’t we just quickly cover the 1 Samuel David story? Yeah, because it’s a—it’s a—it’s an interesting trick and it kind of…

Indicates that this might have been a pretty big one.

Yeah, that’s. The other thing is that like the different stories have very clearly different sized teraphim.

Yeah, we’re gonna get to one where they’re very clearly small. Yeah. And—but this one, Michal is the—is the wife of David and Saul’s henchmen are after David and he’s got to escape. And so 1 Samuel 19:13 , “And Michal took a teraphim, an idol, and laid it on the bed. She put a net of goat’s hair on its head and covered it with the clothes.” And so we’ve got a Ferris Bueller’s Day Off situation, right? Yeah, yeah. With a teraphim that is close to life size and gets a wig thrown on it. And they—they throw the clothes over it and everything. And the—the messengers came in and the—the idol or teraphim was in the bed with the covering of goat’s hair on its head. And, and you know, Michal is like, “He’s sleeping and he was sick.”

I like…

And verse 14 says, “And she did play the sounds of snoring on the stereo.”

And—and so this is a—this is a way to at least stall the folks coming after David, giving him a—giving him a little window that he can escape through. So. And this raises an interesting question. Why does the ostensibly pious and righteous king of Israel, David, who’s, you know, whose heart was after the Lord—why does he have an idol in his room?

Right.

Because it doesn’t—it doesn’t say like, Michal ran off to the, you know, to Skid Row to go purchase one of these things. It just says she put an idol in—in the bed. And scholars think the idol…

Matter of fact, it says “the idol” or “an idol.” It does. It makes it very much seem like this is just the normal thing that you have about the house. Yeah, everybody—everybody’s got, you know, a teraphim or two. Yeah, you’d be dumb not to.

Well, and—and this is something that—that is interesting. When we look at like, Exodus 21 and Exodus 22 , you have these rituals that people go through. One of them is if—if a debt slave decides they want to stay with their master for life, then he takes him to the elohim.

And it says, whomever the gods convict is the guilty party. And, and people are like, what does this mean? Bring them to the gods. What is this all about? And this is where you get the idea that, oh, gods must mean judges. And no, that’s not what’s going on here. It’s that there were divine images that represented gods that would have been accessible either in someone’s house or in like, the, the city gate, or there would have been some kind of cultic setup somewhere that you could go. So anytime you needed to swear an oath or, or performing a ritual or an ordeal or something, you just went to Ha Elohim, the gods, and then that was where you did it. So maybe these were the gods that. Or that were in the palace to facilitate anything that you would do that needed divine guidance or oversight or something like that.

Well, let’s continue along that track and just talk about the story in Genesis 31 of Jacob and Rachel escaping from Laban.

Yeah, so. So the Jacob has had to serve Laban for 14 years now, right? Where he was like, give me. Give me, Rachel. I’ll serve you seven years. And then on the wedding night, Laban’s like, Leah. Yeah. And then Jacob’s like, what the. Hey, dude. And Laban says, okay, tell you what, I’ll give you the actual Rachel. I have the real actual Rachel here if you just serve me another seven years. And rather than be like, that’s not how this works, old man, Jacob’s like, cool, seven years.

All right, seven more years.

And then he. He basically lies to Laban and takes advantage of him and is able to get very rich. Like, all of the patriarchal narratives are about how the patriarchs got phenomenally rich by deceiving people. And they’re leaving, and it says Laban had gone to shear his sheep. This is Genesis 31:19 . And Rachel stole her father’s teraphim. So Rachel. And it doesn’t explain why, but Rachel just seems to be like, you know, I grew up with these. I’m the only one who plays with these. I’m taking them with me.

And these are my favorite gods. Yeah, I’m taking them.

And they ride off, and Laban comes chasing after them, like, hey, you took my gods. And in verse 34, it says, Now Rachel had taken the teraphim, the household gods, and put them in the camel’s saddle and sat on them. Laban felt all about in the tent but did not find them. And she tells her father, hey, don’t get angry with me. I’m. Because I’m not getting up because the way of women is upon me.

Yeah, I’m still sitting on my camel. Don’t bother that. I’m on my period. Yeah, don’t worry about it. I’m on my period, so go away.

Yeah, I’m just sitting right here. Don’t want to cause any problems. So he searched, but did not find the household gods. And then you have the. The story where Jacob is. Is like, I swear, old man, I didn’t take your gods. And. And they do a little ritual, and. And they swear by their gods, and everybody leaves happy.

Presumably Rachel’s just sitting on a camel the entire time, throughout the entire ordeal. Yeah, she’s just chilling on the camel,.

Sitting on top of these teraphim, which. Yeah, yeah. The. Their size and shape seems by this story to be understood as. As rather small. Not the kind of teraphim you would put in somebody’s bed to make it seem like an adult man was sleeping there. But the kind that you would be able to.

David and Michal’s was clearly like a full size. A full, like, human sized. Yeah.

This is the Costco version of the. Of the teraphim, while Rachel is. That’s the. The dollar store version.

But there are multiple of them. So.

Yeah, they got the little guys. They got a whole bunch of them.

Yeah. And then we have a really cool story about teraphim. I think. I think it’s a really cool story in Judges 17 and 18 where we got a dude named Micah. And the. This. The chapter is just kind of like. So there was this dude named Micah, and he is represented as. As a devotee of Adonai. And the story is kind of weird. It starts off, he said to his mother, the 1100 pieces of silver that were taken from you, about which you uttered a curse and even spoke it in my hearing. That silver is in my possession. I took it, but now I will return it to you. And his mother said, may my son be blessed by Adonai. So odd dynamic they have here. But he returns the 1100 pieces of silver to his mother, and his mother said, I consecrate the silver to Adonai from my hand for my son to make an idol of cast metal. And here it is pesel, which generally means a divine image, which would mean a molten image.

And there is a. There is a conjunction there. So it sounds like she’s saying a divine image and a molten image. So scholars are actually split on whether this is two images that are being made or one that is just being further described. But. But she makes this. This divine image. And it was in the house of Micah. And Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and teraphim and installed one of his sons who became his priest. So this is kind of. This is the folk religion of the Judges period, where this is going on without direct supervision from authorized priests. Where you got a guy who’s like, this is my. My shrine and here.

And my kid is now a priest.

Yeah. And the ephod would be a. A divinatory tool. This would be a way to contact God and all that kind of stuff. And the teraphim would be. You know, they would be there to facilitate whatever kind of interactions that you need.

Can I point out that we have now had several stories that seem to be in direct conflict with top 10 commandments, like, top one commandments bearing false witness. And then I. Like a. A graven image.

Top two commandments yeah, literally, like, we’re. We’re. We’ve got an idol, a graven image thing happening here, and it doesn’t seem to be a problem.

Well, and all of. Well, the Genesis stories are pre-law, of course, this one is. Is not. And. And scholars would suggest that this is. You know, the. The stories in Judges are. Are bizarre. They’re. They’re not exactly examples of how the. The Mosaic Law is a success. Right. You know, you have. We talked about Jephthah and human sacrifice, and here we’ve got private cult installations and. And people installing their. Their sons as. As priests and everything. And. And this in the middle of Judges 17 , there was a young man of Bethlehem of Judah, of the clan of Judah. He was a Levite residing there. So this is a legitimate candidate for the priesthood. And he is wandering around because he wants to find another place to live. And, you know, Zillow is still a few thousand years away from being invented, but it was still inaccurate in all of its estimates anyway, even back then.

And he stumbles across Micah, and Micah’s like, hey, where are you from? He’s like, oh, I’m a Levite from Bethlehem in Judah. I’m gonna. I’m looking for a place to live. And Micah’s like, stay with me and be my. Be to me, a father and a priest, and I will give you 10 pieces of silver a year, and a set of clothes, and your living. So he’s like, room and board. Just be my priest. Since. Since you’re legit.

My son is not doing a good job. I need a much better priest.

So. So Micah installs the Levite and he becomes his priest. And then he says, I now I know that Adonai will prosper me because the Levite has become my priest. Earlier he was kind of, you know, on the fence about me.

He’s doing his best. He’s got his son. He’s like, I need a priest. I don’t know you. Come here, kid.

And then the tribe of. There were some Danites that were also looking for a place to live. Evidently, this was a buyer’s market, and.

Danites are people who listen to the data over dogma. Is that correct? Is that who a Danite is?

Yes. Members of the Tribe of Dan, not to be confused with the. The mercenary group of early Mormons who. Who went by.

That was a very different set of Danites. By the way, patrons of the show chime in as to whether you would like to be referred to as the Tribe of Dan, because that’s a possibility. We can, I’m just throwing it out there. You can be a member of the tribe of Dan. We can start branding that way if we want to. You, we can do whatever we want.

Yeah. And then they—so the Danites send some people, five valiant men to spy out a territory for them to live in. Again, Zillow inaccurate, but not nonexistent.

And they also show up at Micah’s house because all roads lead to Micah’s house, evidently. And it says while they were—this is Judges 18:3 —while they were at Micah’s house, they recognized the voice of the young Levite. So they went over and asked him, “Who brought you here? What are you doing in this place? What is your business here?” And he’s like, “Oh yeah, this dude’s paying me to be a priest.” And they say, “Inquire of God that we may know whether the mission we are undertaking will succeed.” They’re looking for territory for the Danites, the tribe of Dan, to settle. The priest replied, “Go in peace. The mission you are on is under the eye of Adonai.” Doesn’t tell us he—he was like, “Excuse me a minute,” and ran off and donned his ephod or—or did whatever he needed to do before his—his graven image or his teraphim or whatever. But it says, “Yes, God will prosper your mission.” And then they come to Laish.

They observe the people who are living there securely after the manner of the Sidonians, quiet and unsuspecting, lacking nothing on earth and possessing wealth. Furthermore, they were far from the Sidonians and had no dealings with Aram. And so the Danites are like, “Nice looking place.” And they said, “Let’s go invade and conquer. Take the land.” Yeah, “Let’s get a five-finger discount.” And so they set out. They—they—they camp in Kiriath Jearim in Judah. From there they passed on to the hill country of Ephraim. And again, because all roads lead to Micah’s house, they stop in and they said, “Do you know that in these buildings there are an ephod, teraphim and an idol of cast metal? Now therefore, consider what you will do.” So they came to the house of the young Levite and—and Micah and they greet him and they basically said, “We’re taking your priest and all your stuff.”

And they’re like, “Be to us a father and a priest.” So evidently priests were just a hot commodity back then.

Yeah, you got to get yourself a priest, man. It’s—it’s the best. It’s—it’s the new Cabbage Patch doll.

And you know you’ve got a good priest when a bunch of people—mercenaries basically—show up at the door and be like, “We’re taking all your stuff. Do you want to come with us?” And the priest is like, “Yeah, cool, let’s do it.”

Sounds great.

That is a priest full of integrity. So he—he took the ephod, the teraphim and the idol and went along with the people. And then when they’re some distance away, the men who were in the houses near Micah’s house were called out and they overtook the Danites. They shouted to the Danites, who turned around and said to Micah, “What is the matter that you come with such a company?” Meaning something like, “We stole your stuff. Why are you here?” He replied, “You take my gods that I made and the priest and go away. And what have I left? How then can you ask me, ‘What is the matter?’” So just like the reader, Micah is confused. “Why would you—why would you wonder what I’m doing here?” And the Danites said to him, “You had better not let your voice be heard among us, or else hot-tempered fellows will attack you and you will lose your life and the lives of your household.” Then the Danites went their way. When Micah saw that they were too strong for him, he turned and went back to his home. And—and the Danites go on and—

And they settle in Laish and they rename it Dan. And to this day you can go visit—well, probably not this day, but up until recently you could go visit the territory of Dan up in the north. A very nice nature reserve that they have up there, lovely area. But an odd story about how they came upon this—this priest. And they’re like, “Priest, come with us.” And the priest’s like, “Okay.” And Micah’s like, “How dare you!” And they’re like, “You know, you better shut your mouth, little man, or you’re gonna find yourself at the wrong end of a sword.” And he’s like, “Okay, yep.”

Yeah, well, that’s not a very nice Tribe of Dan. No, our Tribe of Dan is much nicer than that.

We have—we have T-shirts.

But the other thing is we should make Tribe of Dan T-shirts. That would be actually kind of fun. So one of the points, though, that I think is fascinating is that in all of this, the teraphim that we were talking about are never condemned by God or by the Bible or by anything. It just seems like it’s a normal thing, like even a good thing. Like these Danites are like, “Yeah, I want—I want to get me some of that.”

Yeah, yeah. Oh, everybody needs a good priest. Yeah. Just, just a peculiarity of some of these early Hebrew Bible narratives that in elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible they never kind of go back and be like, hey, this is why they were doing that thing back there. You just gotta try to negotiate with it yourself. But yeah, it seems very clear that for the patriarchs and others in the early history of Israel, there was really not a problem with these divine images.

There you go. There, that’s. It’s a fascinating fact of the ancient world and I love it. If you friends would like to become a part of making this show happen, if you’d like to join the Tribe of Dan—we’re patent pending—please feel free to join us at patreon.com/dataoverdogma where you can give just a bit of your money. You choose how much, which can get you access to an early and ad-free version of every episode. Also potentially you can get the afterparty, which is a thing which is bonus content. We do it every week and yeah, that we really appreciate our patrons deeply. If you want to contact us, it’s contact@dataoverdogma.com. Thanks so much to Ryan Goudy for editing the show and we’ll talk to you again next week.

Bye everybody.

Sister wives

Segments

The Transcript

Scripture Index

Terminology