I here quote Oxford University Press’s The Jewish Study Bible, 2nd edition, relative to Genesis 22. “This magnificently told story, known in Judaism as the ‘Akeda,’ (“binding”), is one of the gems of biblical narrative. It also comes to occupy a central role in rabbinic theology and eventually to be incorporated into the daily liturgy. Jewish tradition regards the ‘Akedah as the tenth and climactic test of Abraham, the first Jew.”
As we recall, Abraham’s wife Sarah was childless in an era when people were scarce and needed to be MORE.
That is not the case now. In fact, just the opposite.
God had promised Abraham that he would become the source of “a great nation,” so plentiful that his descendants would be like the stars of the sky. Yet here he was, with a dud of a wife.
Who, by some accounts, was his half-sister and sterile.
For some reason.
The peer pressure to produce offspring was so great in that era that women with rich husbands could employ a down-home surrogacy involving a slave woman becoming pregnant by the husband through conventional means then bringing forth in a birth position that enabled the child entering the world to pass symbolically through the thighs of the other woman.
The ancient practice of birthing involved a birth stool and, for well-heeled Egyptians, usually a special area in the house where the birth stool and associated paraphernalia were kept. I don’t know if this was universal throughout this region and culture, but it would be easier in some ways to conceptualize Hagar seated leaning against Sarah throughout the latter part of the birthing process and Sarah very involved in it, both magically and physically so that the child was “touched” by the energy working in what we would call a very real way.
At the same time, this woman is an Egyptian servant expected to remain in servitude her entire life because she didn’t have anywhere else to go.
She didn’t have a husband of her own but was expected to remain celibate and under Sarah’s control.
And practice their religion.
Was she asked for the favor of the surrogacy? The text is very oblique on this matter. Sarah simply says to Abraham, “Look, the Lord has kept me from bearing. Consort with my maid; perhaps I shall have a son through her.”
When Hagar became pregnant, she exhibited the primary narcisicism that is part of the biological package of pregnancy and impels a pregnant person to take very good care of herself. “. . . And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was lowered in her esteem.”
Sarah complained to Abraham, and he said, “Your maid is in your hands. Deal with her as you think right.”
“Then Sarai treated her harshly, and she ran away from her.” Out into the desert, where she was likely to die of exposure. An Angel told her to go back home and submit to the normal pecking order of the household.
A bit later, when Sarah had a child of her own, “Sarah saw the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham playing. She said to Abraham, ‘Cast out that slave-woman and her son, for the son of that slave shall not share the inheritance with my son Isaac. The matter distressed Abraham greatly, for it concerned a son of his. But God said to Abraham, ‘Do not be distressed over the boy or your slave; whatever Sarah tells you to do, do as she says, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be continued for you. As for the son of the slave-woman, I will make a nation of him, too, for he is your seed.” (Genesis 21:9-12).
Hagar and Ishmael are sent out into the desert, presumably to die of exposure, and, as we are assured, some Angel came and saved them.
That is the report around here in the SHOW ME state.
For some reasons, many Christians hold their nose at the Old Testament, because it is messy.
Coming soon — an exposé of Jesus!
And make no mistake about it, I am, indeed, a veteran of bundles of Christianity MAR-MONISM, Judaism, brujería, the Masons Rosicrucians, and whatever else fits the bill. As we have noticed before, THE ONE TRUE CHURCH ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH needs to be dealt with suavely, and with great ingenuity.
So here we go.
Just a bit later, God tells Abraham, “Take your son, your favored one, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the heights that I shall point out to you.”
Here we are faced with the concept of PAPAL FALLIBILITY and how it leads on to piles of theology, commentary, and plain ole can’t touch this. Those of us conversant with MAR-MON history are familiar with how Joseph Smith worked yet we can stand before the congregation on Fast Sunday and solemnly declare, “I know the Church is true.”
Which I did for many years, while the real meaning for me NOW is, “I know the Church is POWER.”
SUSTAINED!
We know from the story that Isaac is saved from being sacrificed at the last minute by the Angel of the Lord, who stayed Abraham’s hand, and caused the substitute of the ram in the thicket.
Here we must refrain from not being SUMPTUOUS enough for the Club. It is in the Bible of my childhood that I offer this OPINION: “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. And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen. (Genesis 22:11-14)
The first question one must ask is, Why does God contract himself with all this child-sacrificing nonsense?
The element of culture in human sacrifice is a big sendup of ancient Mesopotamian practices. WE ARE BETTER THAN THAT.
The miraculous saves of the squabbling women and a man who is TRYING TO LOVE TWO WOMEN has a certain entertainment factor that should not be overlooked. One of the payments the ruling class has to make to retain everyone else as a serf is a certain amount of FACEPALM. Here we see Fergie very publically having her toes sucked by an American! (While exactly WHAT was going on at the Palace? INQUIRING MINDS want to know!)
My opinion of the prevalence of duelling is that the aristocrats had to publically slash each other to pieces once in a while ogled by the local peasants as a SACRIFICE for the opulence of Versailles.
No doubt God has a reason for all of the scurrilous behavior practices of the first Jew.
FACEPALM IN SYNAGOGUE.
It helps to have TREATIES, pup.
Those of us conversant with the astral deception of THE GAME must speculate that when Abraham allowed his wife to run off her rival over an inheritance and presumably cause both mother and child to be murdered might have had CAUSE for a tricky vengeance in trancing that proud idiot to be taken by the fairies such that he sacrificed his own son, and now there is a requirement of many linguistic puzzles to cover up the goings-on of the rich.
The story of Oedipus bears examination here. When it was prophesied that the child would kill his father and marry his mother, the father had him bound by the feet and exposed in the wilderness by a shepherd. As it turned out, the shepherd had too good a heart to murder that child and raised him as his own. In the end, the child did, in fact, kill his father and marry his mother — because he did not know who they were.
Could it be that Abraham or his household made real arrangements for Hagar and Ishmael and that the Angel who saved the boy by a spring was water was, in fact, the foreman who took the side chick and the casa chica — oh, somewhere else — with or without the knowledge of Sarah — or even Abraham.
In Sarah’s defense, let us say, Accidents happen.
Ishmael was older. If he was seen playing, it was probably playing with weapons. Perhaps he was very good at weapons and could PUSH THINGS by killing Isaac then claiming the throne for himself, given that ancestry was much-touted as foremost in this Cult.
No matter how many social workers are sent ‘round, some boys just fall into a slatternly violence that cannot be educated away. It is simply SLUM. We can’t belittle Sarah entirely for her paranoia concerning the long-awaited and presumably only begotten son. Her only begotten.
The failings of ancestral rulership are the reason the Emperors of Rome passed on the succession by adopting persons of particular excellence and creating what was, in effect, the first real Presidency instead of hindering the real WEAL of the nation by a mandatory birth succession of possible idiots and ne’er do wells, as we will see five minutes later for thousand years in Europe.
In any case, it was all a big pile of neat symbolism, and the whole business of the voices, the spirits, the miraculous saves — it can’t be replicated exactly — while also not — so it needs to be dealt with by Apologies by the men of the cloth and blind faith in the populace. We have a great civilization — don’t look too hard.
Christ — as described in a neat and close religion that arose from a carefully scripted literature of SORCERY — tidied this all up. We don’t need the atavistic Mythos of the patriarchs. It’s all been cleaned up, cherishingly packaged, and is now available as many very good habits in the body politick.
Read between the lines is the requirement in the Jewish Pack who have to own the failings of Abraham to mitigate the many real blessings in his SORCERY.
The entire episode of Ishmael is a savage business. To use a slave woman for reproductive trickery is fraught.
Abraham lets Sarah fulfill her basest animal behavior and doesn’t intervene even in the case of murder.
So it was JUST for him to have the comeuppance of dead son for dead son.
And a great tribal deity with all the chops, who is trying to move this culture to the next level, has to make an example of even his Darling — while also not.
Savagery is not acceptable.
GLOSSARY
I am only part-Jewish, but as many part-Jews will attest, especially when exposed to a weirdly large amount of Qabalah, Judaism is a jealous mistress. Heed her not and she wreaks. Cosset her, and she will break the bank.
MAR-MON.
So, yes, I occupy a position that Dr. Jodi Magness calls “Yahwistic inclusive,” which is to say, enjoy Judaism, instead of the all-or-nothing BUSINESS of “Yahwistic exclusive.”
SUAVELY, AND WITH GREAT INGENUITY: from “The Emerald Tablet of Hermes,” a text familiar to all Hermetists: Tabula Smaragdina
FAST SUNDAY: Every first Sunday of the month, an “active” Latter-day Saint adult will fast for 24 hours (usually breakfast and lunch on Sunday) and donate the proceeds of what would have been spent on food to a special fund for feeding the poor. On that day, instead of conventional services with speeches given by members, each person will have a chance to discuss their spiritual feelings, called “bearing their testimony.” There are some stock phrases, including “I know the Church is true.”
TRYING TO LOVE TWO WOMEN: an old country music song. Your parents’ polyamory
Building the Underworld 