Genesis 16-18

In the spirit of this being a rest day, today's text is fairly straight forward so this will be brief (nope, sorry, I tried to keep it short but failed). In Genesis 16-19 we see Abram and Sarai take matters into their own hands when the son God promised them doesn't materialise as fast as they'd like, we see God fulfilling His promise to them despite their actions, and we see Abraham (name now changed) pleading with God to spare the people of Sodom and Gomorragh if He can find ten righteous people there out of the many sinners.

There isn't anything in these chapters that causes me any serious questions. However, there are some bits that give me pause for thought as they seem rather bizarre.

I'm not going to even go into the morality of Sarai offering her husband one of her slave girls for him to sleep with so that they can have the son they longed for. Aside from Sarai being so devious, and aside from Abram accepting her suggestion without much protestation: "Um, ok, if you insist!", there's also no mention of how Hagai herself felt about being forced into what is essentially sexual slavery. So I'm just going to take a deep breath and mutter 'descriptive, not prescriptive' to myself like a loon and move on.

I will say that I can empathise with their getting impatient for God to deliver on His promises. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that God waited so long as a test of their faith and to display, through their becoming parents in extreme old age, that nothing is impossible for God. It sets a model for us as Christians to persevere in trusting God for His promises, and not to discount those promises even when it seems like the time for them has long since past. I get it on a faith level.

However, my heart goes out to Abram and Sarai when it comes to what they actually wanted for their lives. Maybe they didn't want to suffer for so long just so God could make a point with their lives! Maybe Abram wanted to do the ancient world equivalent of teaching his son to ride a bike or catch a ball whilst he was still young enough to do so without making an "OOF" sound every time he bent his knees. We have to accept the sometimes difficult lesson that faith is something God values in us, and for us, more than our getting what we want. This is where trusting in God's good character becomes crucial, but most difficult.

The next part of the text might make any normal person ask "Say what now?", when God requests of Abraham that all males be circumcised.  I can't argue that this isn't a strange request, but some basic research does throw some light on the issue. Removing the foreskin is apparently symbolic of the covenant between God and Abraham regarding Abraham becoming the father of nations. In a similar fashion to tithing, in recognition that children are a blessing from God circumcision is a sacrificial offering of part of the body responsible for procreation. I do smile at the thought of Abraham having to have that particular conversation with all the men in his camp: "You want me to cut off what?"

These chapters end with Abraham receiving three visitors of some kind of divine origin. The identity of the visitors is a hotly debated topic that I'm not going to go into here - partly because, whilst interesting, it doesn't throw doubts on the reliability of the Bible, and partly because there isn't the space. Anyone interested in the subject can find more information here.