I’m curious what everyone made of the story of Abram, Sarai, and Hagar that we read this week. If I’d been thinking ahead a little more, I might have included a couple more passages about what happens to Ishmael later on, but we’ll read them aloud now. The important punchline of the story of Ishmael can be read in chapter twenty-five of Genesis, which we’ll read together now:

This is the account of the family line of Abraham’s son Ishmael, whom Sarah’s slave, Hagar the Egyptian, bore to Abraham.

These are the names of the sons of Ishmael, listed in the order of their birth: Nebaioth the firstborn of Ishmael, Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish and Kedemah. These were the sons of Ishmael, and these are the names of the twelve tribal rulers according to their settlements and camps. Ishmael lived a hundred and thirty-seven years. He breathed his last and died, and he was gathered to his people. His descendants settled in the area from Havilah to Shur, near the eastern border of Egypt, as you go toward Ashur. And they lived in hostility toward all the tribes related to them.

Don’t you love that little dig there at the end? Note that this is yet another story that’s an etiology, that would be something like saying, “And that is why the people who live there are in a land called Mary, or Maryland.”

To me, one of the most interesting parts of this whole story of Abram, is that while he’s counted as a virtuous forefather of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the stories in the Bible actually don’t paint him in a very favorable light to modern sensibilities. I want to zero in on this part of the story where Hagar is found by an angel near a well. Note that this is a story in which the Lord is present, and there’s a bit there in the middle that seems almost like a throwaway line: “The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur.”

We’re not going to read the whole middle part of Ishmael’s story, but after Sarah has a son born to her, there’s another story in which they send Hagar and Ishmael away. And in this story, we’re hearing about God instead of the Lord, and I almost wonder if it might be just a different version of the same story.

Let’s pause for a moment and read that one:

Early the next morning Abraham took some food and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar. He set them on her shoulders and then sent her off with the boy. She went on her way and wandered in the Desert of Beersheba.

When the water in the skin was gone, she put the boy under one of the bushes. Then she went off and sat down about a bowshot away, for she thought, “I cannot watch the boy die.” And as she sat there, she began to sob.

God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.”

Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.

In Islamic tradition, this well is called Zamzam, and is located in the Sacred Mosque in Mecca. The area in the Bible that Ishmael’s descendants are said to have occupied is in the northern part of Saudi Arabia where borders Jordan, which is right next to modern day Israel.

I’m curious if there were any other parts of the story that struck you guys as especially important? In case you missed it in the footnotes of the story, Hagar names her son Ishmael, and this means The God Who Hears or God Hears.

As the story progresses, Abraham and Sarah have a son together, and his name is Isaac. The very next story we’re going to read is about Isaac, and it’s in Genesis chapter 22, the first nineteen verses. I want to warn you guys that this story we’re going to read next is a difficult one, and I don’t think I really understand it, despite having read it over a hundred times and read lots of things about it. None of the explanations satisfy me very much.

In today’s story, the thing that struck me the most, well, this version and the other version, but the thing that struck me the most was the finding of water when we’re thirsty. What a feeling of salvation that would be, and I’m not even in the desert!

I love you all so very much. Let’s light our candles and reflect on it together, well, together and apart.

It was really fun to start our discussions on the Old Testament when everyone was home, and now we’re moving back to being spread abroad. I posted our last few weeks of meetings on Substack, and we’re going back to recordings at least while Tom is abroad.

This week’s reading was a little bit longer, four chapters, but all concerning one story, the story of The Flood, capital-t-capital-f, The Flood. I’m so interested to hear everyone’s take on it. I’m going to turn on comments in case anyone decides they want to comment on the Internet, and to remind everyone who’s following along but not here in person, the reading for this week was Genesis chapters 6, 7, and 8, and chapter 9 through verse 17. I reminded people to take particular note of how many animals were taken onto the ark, and how many days the flood covered. Everyone was also keeping an eye out for which parts of the story are interactions with God-slash-Elohim, and which are interactions with The-Lord-slash-Yahweh.

But before we dive into that, just a quick review of the story.

Right there at the start, we have the Nephilim, who are pretty enigmatic characters in some ways, but if we take the whole thing at face value, God has sons, those sons take human wives, and their sons are heroes. But there in verse five things take a turn and the Lord decides to destroy all the humans, so it goes.

Then for the rest of chapter 6, God tells Noah to build an ark and load the animals by twosies, twosies, elephants, and kanga-roosies, roosies, children of the lord. Oh, but it’s not children of the Lord at this point, they’re God’s people in chapter six, and then the Lord actually gives slightly different instructions in chapter 7, which Noah also follows, and then there’s a flood.

The numbers of days of things kind of vary throughout the story, it’s something like forty days of rain, plus 150 days of flood, plus forty more days on the top of Mt Ararat, plus a couple more weeks of waiting, but it’s also interesting to note that what we appear to have here is a couple distinct stories that were woven together into a whole, and some parts of the original stories were left as they were when whoever was weaving them together found them. So there are a couple different times that forty days, or fourteen days, or a hundred and fifty days get mentioned, but regardless there’s a long flood, then the flood is over, and then one of two things happens.

At the end of chapter 8, Noah has a barbecue and the Lord really loves the barbecue. Then at the end of chapter nine, there’s an alternate ending where God makes a covenant and ties it up nice with a bow. You all please don’t murder each other, and I will also never murder all of you again.

Okay, so that’s the sketch of the story, now I’d be interested in hearing what you all think of the story, and about how the story is woven together.

I’ve read at least one translation of the Book of Genesis where they actually pull the two stories back apart, and just present them as two different, but loosely related stories. It’s fun to think that maybe there were two flood myths that had been passed along, and then someone took the time and care to merge them back into a single story.

But it’s also fun to think about the fact that there are lots and lots of fun flood stories from all over the world.

For everyone who’s following along on the podcast or on substack, we’ve been spending more of our meeting time in discussion, which partly accounts for the shorter podcast this week. Next week, we’re only reading a very short section of chapter 11, verses one through eight. It’s the account of the Tower of Babel, which is a fun story.

For this week, let’s light our candles together or in our hearts, and consider what the flood story has to tell us. I love you all so much.