Ten major themes (4): continuity, dreams, the locals

Sterility and continuity

Throughout the Genesis story we find frequent expression of both the importance and the precariousness of continuing the bloodline. Men and women need each other to procreate, but even then offspring does not always ensue, or not immediately, and the fear of a wife turning out to be barren or sterile, having a "closed womb", of reaching old age without having begotten or menopause without producing children caused anguish to many of the Genesis protagonists.

The themes of continuity and discontinuity, as a human concern in general or as it affects the need to transmit the inheritance of God's covenant with Abraham in particular, have some sort of bearing on several other themes of Genesis that we have identified. In a society where it was taken for granted that men might have several wives at the same time (by the way, our own society also lets people choose to have several spouses, you're just supposed to finish with one before starting on the next to make it kosher), and where fertility was at a premium, it follows that women were very anxious to improve their standing by being fruitful and multiplying, if possible faster than their fellow wives; nowhere is this played out more graphically than in chapters 29-30 on the birth of Jacob's first eleven sons and one daughter. This rivalry among wives rubs off on the ensuing roost in which issues of inheritance rights, seniority and all the rest of it come to the fore, the big question being who is going to carry the family forward, be its legitimate heir and run the show in the next generation. In Genesis, all this is virtually inseparable from God's covenants, which are not just with the individual recipient of the promise but chiefly with that person's descendants, whether the promise is being made to Abram and Sarai, Jacob or Hagar. Arguably, the greatest test to which God subjects Abraham, the command to sacrifice the young Isaac, was probably not originally such a big deal only because of the human pathos of a child's life hanging in the balance and depending on the action of his own loving father, but rather on account of the dynastic challenge it entailed: Abraham was being asked to truncate his own hope of having a legitimate heir!! The very future of God's covenant was on the line: what could be worse than that?


Let's go back to the original covenant God had made with Abram early in his story (ch. 15). Abram has moved with his family from Haran to Canaan (lekh l'kha, ch. 12), he and Lot have parted ways (ch. 13), and one night God appears to Abram, saying: al tira avram 'Don't be afraid, Abram'. To which Abram actually answers back, saying in effect: How do you want me to not be afraid if I still don't have any children, so nu (he doesn't actually say nu), ma titten li? 'What can you possibly give me?' since hen li lo natátta zára‛ 'here I am and you haven't given me an heir!' Stop worrying so much, the Lord tells Abram, and just listen to me and go outside, look at the sky and count the stars: if you can count them, the number of heirs you will have can also be counted. So relax.

The dramatic and rhetorical power of this scene hinges on the whole idea that the worst thing that could happen to Abram would be to die childless and have to bequeath the wealth he had acquired to his faithful servant Eliezer, who is not one of us, God forbid. We need to realise that this was so important that it had early audiences on the edge of their seats as they listened to this.

Sarai was worried too, so worried in fact that she offers Abram a solution (ch. 16): bo na el shifxati 'go and sleep with my maid', ulay ibbane mimménna 'and maybe I will be built from her'. This ibbane mimménna is a tough nut to translate both linguistically and culturally, so here I have tried to be absolutely literal: mimménna is 'from her' (i.e. by means of, or through, the maid Hagar), and ibbane is the first-person-singular passive imperfect of b-n-h 'to build', although to someone thinking in Hebrew it can suggest a double-entendre by seeming to echo the word ben (root b-n) 'son', as if she is almost saying 'I will be sonned by her'. What Sarai is talking about here is an arrangement that existed there back then, which we might wish to compare to a particular form of adoption (the husband has a child through another woman and for legal purposes adopts it as his own heir, and nominally Sarai's too, given that she provides the mother), but a closer analogy that comes to mind would be that of a surrogate mother of sorts (Hagar is Sarai's servant and in that capacity she provides her body to give the couple, Abram and Sarai, a child that will be legally theirs). It can be seen that this was a real custom because both of Jacob's wives, Leah and Rachel, later resort to it too. When the bickering starts between Sarai and Hagar, it seems to be over a difference of opinion regarding the status of Hagar's child. This raises two big questions that matter a lot in the big picture of the whole story: (1) Is Hagar's son, Ishmael, Abram's heir or not? (2) Is it actually Sarai or Hagar who is the wife and the mother of Abram's heir? Abram himself gets drawn into the fray: his interpretation seems to be (1) yes, Ishmael is his heir, and (2) Sarai is the wife and official mother, which may have been the original deal but doesn't seem to be working out too well. God steps in and sets things straight (ch. 17): he tells Abram to let Hagar go if that's what Sarai wants, and to forget about Ishmael. And not to worry about not having an heir, because he'll sort something out. And lo and behold, God smiles upon Sarah, and she conceives at her advanced age and gives Abraham their very own son, Isaac (ch. 18). It's a miracle!

All sorts of circumstances can pose a threat to perpetuation of the race or the family, and Genesis is replete with such dangers and solutions to the problems posed. What happens when your children kill each other (Cain and Abel)? Have more children, I guess... Another inconvenience is when God decides to wipe out all life (the Flood), but luckily he lets one family live so they can restart the process of populating the earth... A barren wife can be a problem, but Lot faces a different set of obstacles: what do you do if your sons didn't listen to you and got wiped out together with the whole town when God destroyed it, and your wife has turned into a pillar of salt which isn't much good, and all that's left is you and your two daughters? You let your daughters figure it out (ch. 19)...

Another situation that makes it awkward to be fruitful and multiply is when you are dead. This was not a joke: death without offspring was a calamity not just for the interested party but for his widow, who had got herself into something of an occupational dead-end since she had dedicated her life to providing children to someone who can't help her provide them, and for the family of the deceased who were looking to the latter to keep the family flag flying. For this there was a special legal provision: it was the obligation of one of the dead man's brothers to take over where the late husband had left off and get on with the job, providing the widow with children who would then become legal heirs of the dead brother, thereby ensuring a continuity of sorts. This custom, called the levirate, was taken so seriously that Tamar, a Canaanite woman who had married Judah's son, went to quite unusual lengths to make sure she did not get sold short (ch. 38).

Jacob's favourite wife Rachel, who was also barren and must have felt humiliated on account of it, tries another approach. One day Leah's son Reuben comes across some mysterious roots in the field that are called dudaim, whose exact identity and properties are not very clear to us, but one way or another they seem to have been associated with helping a woman to conceive. He takes them home to his mother. But Leah already has four sons, and Rachel has none; that hardly seems fair. Rachel goes to have a talk with Leah, and says, I'll make you an offer: give me some dudaim and I'll send our husband over to your tent tonight, how would you like that? Leah says: Deal! The upshot is that everyone wins, if the prize is having babies, because by ending the estrangement between Leah and Jacob which we must read into this anecdote, Leah ends up having three more children (including their only daughter, Dina), and Rachel, presumably by using her duda, finally manages to get pregnant and so Joseph is born (ch. 30).

Dreams and their interpretation

Abraham went to Gerar (ch. 20). The king of Gerar, Abimelech, took great interest in Abraham's beautiful sister, Sarah, and had her brought to his court with the intention, if you will pardon the expression, of courting her. Everything seemed to be going fine... until, that is, Abimelech had a bad dream. A terrible dream. In the beginning he dreamt they were having a celebration of some kind. And in the middle of the dream, in walks God. He goes straight up to the king and says hinn'kha met ‛al haissha asher laqáxta w'hi b'‛ulat bá‛al which means: "If you marry that woman Sarah, you're dead, she's already married!" "But he told me she was his sister!" Abimelech protests. "How was I to know? I didn't mean any harm. It isn't my fault!" "I know that," says God (after all, God knows everything). "Why do you think something got you distracted each time you were about to lay hands on her? That was me, protecting you from sinning, and so far so good, but you can't have her and that's final." "What am I going to do?" the king asks God, who of course already has a plan figured out: "Just do exactly as I say: take Sarah back to Abraham, act embarrassed and explain that there has been a mixup but the package hasn't been opened yet. Tell him it was my idea to return her, and I'll have a word with Abe myself and sort the matter out. But hurry!"

Early next morning, Abimelech called his servants and told them all that had happened; and the men were greatly frightened. Then Abimelech summoned Abraham and said to him, "What have you done to us? What wrong have I done that you should bring so great a guilt upon me and my kingdom? You have done to me things that ought not to be done. What, then," Abimelech demanded of Abraham, "was your purpose in doing this thing?" "I thought," said Abraham... (20:8-11, JPS)

Another time when a dream was instrumental in facilitating critical information or communicating important ideas is referred to by Jacob when he decides to have a serious talk with his two wives about some issues Jacob was having with their side of the family (ch. 31). After going back over the story of the striped and spotted goats and sheep which everybody already knows, here comes the clincher: I had this dream, he tells them, and there was an angel, and he called my name: "Jacob!!!!" So I said: "Yes?" And what did the angel say, they ask? He said. "I've noticed what your father-in-law is up to!" Ohhh; and then what happened? Well, said Jacob, all of a sudden it was God who was talking to me, and he said: "It's me, God. It's time for you to leave this place and go back to Canaan." His wives agreed that if God had taken the trouble to come all the way to Padan-Aram to tell them about this, all they could say was that it must be all for the best and couldn't possibly be any better. Or to quote the actual words used in Genesis:

Then Rachel and Leah answered him, saying, "Have we still a share in the inheritance of our father's house? Surely, he regards us as outsiders, now that he has sold us and has used up our purchase price. Truly, all the wealth that God has taken away from our father belongs to us and to our children. Now then, do just as God has told you." (31:14-6)

Let us recall that Jacob had seen God in dreams before, of course. Remember the stairway to heaven! But if dreams are important, so is a person who has enough understanding to tell you what it is that your dreams mean, and that was the key to the success of the last great hero of Genesis, Joseph. He started out having some pretty nifty dreams himself, or so he thought as a young man at any rate, although his brothers did not share in the amusement at being told that they were the stalks bowing down to Joseph's straight stalk and the stars curtsying to Joseph's star. In an Egyptian prison, Joseph made known his talent for interpreting other people's dreams by foretelling the fate of Pharaoh's cup bearer and baker, and that eventually led to his coming to the attention of Pharaoh himself, thanks to whose unsettling dreams Egypt was saved from starvation and Joseph rose meteorically to power.

However, when Pharaoh summons Joseph (ch. 41), and tells him: "I have had a dream, but no one can interpret it. Now I have heard it said of you that for you to hear a dream is to tell its meaning," Joseph replies to Pharaoh bil‛aday! elohim ya‛ane et sh'lom par‛o 'Not I! God will see to Pharaoh's welfare.' In other words, only God knows the interpretation of dreams, Joseph is merely acting as his messenger. That Pharaoh takes careful note of Joseph's remark is clear from his words after hearing Joseph's explanation of the meaning of his dreams: "Since God has made all this known to you, there is none so discerning and wise as you" (41:39). Maybe the original reason for the text's insistence on this point was to distinguish between the pagan Egyptians, who thought that certain human beings possessed a magic power to divine the meaning of dreams, and the Israelites who didn't believe in magic, only in the power of the one God. If so, that in itself tells us something about how the authors of Genesis thought about dreams!

Not messing with the locals

I talked in a recent post about the account of Abram's war involvement in chapter 14. There I noted that the episode concludes with conversations Abram had with the king of Sodom and with Melchizedek, who was then the king of Salem. The tenor of the short conversation with Melchizedek is put in a nutshell by E.A. Speiser:

The patriarch's success is hailed not only by the king of Sodom, leader of the local coalition, but also by Melchizedek of Salem, a place not otherwise involved in the hostilities. It is this exploit by Abraham, in the otherwise unfamiliar role of a warrior, that evidently led to the inclusion of the chapter with the regular patriarchal material in Genesis.

What Speiser is getting at is that the reason why this chapter is in Genesis at all is not that it forms part of the Genesis story but simply that it is about Abram, though presumably from a different original source. Anyway, the actual conversation with Melchizedek, in all its brevity and simplicity, goes like this (14:18-20. JPS):

And King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was a priest of God Most High. He blessed him, saying,

"Blessed be Abram of God Most High,
Creator of heaven and earth.
And blessed be God Most High,
Who has delivered your foes into your hand."

And [Abram] gave him a tenth of everything.

The conversation reported with the king of Sodom is longer and Abram takes a more active role in it (14:21-4):

Then the king of Sodom said to Abram, "Give me the persons, and take the possessions for yourself." But Abram said to the king of Sodom, "I swear to the Lord, God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth: I will not take so much as a thread or a sandal strap of what is yours; you shall not say, 'It is I who made Abram rich.' For me, nothing but what my servants have used up; as for the share of the men who went with me - Aner, Eshkol, and Mamre - let them take their share." 

The content of these exchanges can be analysed elsewhere if necessary. My reason for mentioning them now is that they are interesting, as possibly independent reports of the actions and words of the man Abram the Hebrew, as glimpses of what that man might have been like when he was talking to people who were not members of his own "Hebrew" community. Here he was talking to "the neighbours", or what Tevye called the others - "they make a much bigger circle; we don't bother them and so far they don't bother us, and among ourselves we always get along perfectly well". I am in no position to assess whether there is any point whatsoever in comparing the living conditions of the patriarchs' people to a prehistoric ur-shtetl, all I am trying to do is form some notion of what the relationship might have been between them and the "much bigger circle" of the "locals" amidst whom they sojourned. Maybe we can't really picture it, but what's the harm in trying! Would Abraham the herder, I wonder, have agreed with Tevye the milkman that "we don't bother them and so far they don't bother us"? In any case, I believe there are enough clues in Genesis to suggest that minding their own business and not messing around with the locals more than was strictly necessary formed a part of their practical approach to daily life, and also provided them with something to worry about at times.

The position of Lot in Sodom (ch. 19) gives an idea of what the atmosphere might have been like when things were not going too well. Lot appears to be living in an urban milieu among neighbours who are locals that regard him as not one of them. Lot tries to engage with them politely, but when push comes to shove (quite literally) they turn on him and threaten him and his family with violence, while denying him the right to be treated civilly because who is he to tell us what's what (19:4-9):

They had not yet lain down, when the townspeople, the men of Sodom, young and old—all the people to the last man—gathered about the house. And they shouted to Lot and said to him, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may be intimate with them." So Lot went out to them to the entrance, shut the door behind him, and said, "I beg you, my friends, do not commit such a wrong. Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them as you please; but do not do anything to these men, since they have come under the shelter of my roof." But they said, "Stand back! The fellow," they said, "came here as an alien, and already he acts the ruler! Now we will deal worse with you than with them." And they pressed hard against the person of Lot, and moved forward to break the door.

Here Lot is under duress and is attempting, unsuccessfully, to talk his way out of a threatening situation. One senses that in his day-to-day comings and goings, in more relaxed circumstances, he would have done what most of us would: tried to be moderately friendly while minding his own business (we don't bother them and so far they don't bother us). It's a strategy that works 99% of the time. True, then there is the other 1%, as in Sodom.

The matter of intermarriage is another element of the situation which Genesis touches upon more than once. Two things may be noted: that the main protagonists (Abraham, Rebecca) disapprove of it, and that it happens anyway. Abraham sends Eliezer to Padan-Aram to find his son a bride from his own people because he doesn't want him to marry a Canaanite (ch. 24). Rebecca is unhappy about Esau's marriage to local women and sends Jacob back to Laban on that pretext, expressing herself with characteristic vehemence and hyperbole: "Rebekah said to Isaac, "I am disgusted with my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob marries a Hittite woman like these, from among the native women, what good will life be to me?" (27:46).

Dina's story (ch. 34) puts the issues in a much more sinister and melodramatic setting, both with regard to the manner of behaviour of the locals (Dina's suitor abducts and rapes her first, then asks for her hand; whatever the view of that in the context of the locals' customs, it clearly doesn't cut it with Jacob's family), and with regard to the patriarchal family's response, which still seems wildly excessive. As a story, it is a different kind of expression of the same underlying tension, and underlines the complicated place occupied by Jacob's family as a "foreign body" inserted into a local landscape.

The theme of social and cultural barriers and the keeping of a cautious distance between groups of different ethnic and social backgrounds is also touched on more than once in the course of the Joseph story. When the brothers return to Egypt, Joseph has them come to his house for a meal, but we are told (43:32) that the Egyptians and the Hebrews sat at different tables "for the Egyptians could not dine with the Hebrews, since that would be abhorrent to the Egyptians." That is something not too difficult to imagine being the case, but I find it most interesting that it is a detail that the authors saw fit to include in the narrative. And when the whole of Joseph's family move to Egypt from Canaan they are given a place in Goshen to settle "for all shepherds are abhorrent to Egyptians" (46:34). It's interesting that this detail should have been clarified in the text at all. Anyway, the children of Israel don't seem to have any problem with that, in fact they might have been relieved to be able to keep their distance and carry on minding their own business.