No Bullshit Bible Lesson #10: Abraham and Abimelech

Genesis, Chapters 20-21:

Now that God had destoryed Sodom and Gomorrah, it was time to focus His energy back on Abraham.

Abraham, apparently missing the wild swinging days of his youth, traveled south with his wife Sarah and told the Abimelech, the king of that land, that Sarah was his sister. Despite the fact that she was now 90 years old, Abimelech took her.

That night, God appeared to Abimelech and said,
        “You’re a dead man.”
        “What? Why?”
        “That woman is married.”
        “Really? Okay, first, I never touched her. Second, That dude said she was his sister. And so did she! So, you can’t blame me, I was lied to.”
        “I know. That’s why I held you back from jumping her bones. Now giver her back and her husband, who is a prophet, will pray for you. If you don’t, you’ll die.”

So Abimelech went to Abraham and said,
        “Uh, what the hell, man? What did I ever do to you that you’d try to get me to have sex with your wife so that God would kill me?”
        “Eh. I figured you guys probably weren’t scared enough of Big G. Oh, and I didn’t actually lie. She is my sister. Well, half-sister. That’s just how we roll in my family.”

So Abimelech gave Abraham sheep, oxen, and both male and female slaves and gave them to Abraham, along with returning Sarah.
        “Well, sir,” Abimelech said, not messing around with a fried of God’s, “you can live anywhere on my land you want. Oh, and Sarah, I gave your ‘brother’ a thousand pieces of silver, so let’s pretend this never happened.” And she was cool with that.

So Abraham prayed to God, who healed Abimelech and his wife and his lady-slaves, and they had babies. Because, oh, yeah, God had sealed up all their wombs when Abimelech took Sarah, apparently.

So, back home, God decided it was time to keep his promise: thus was Sarah knocked up. She had the baby and she named him Isaac, because when God picks your baby’s name out for you, you don’t name him Mario. And, of course, when Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him.

So, after a while, Sarah happened to see Ishmael and was reminded that she frikken hated his mother, Hagar. So she went to Abraham,
        “Abe,” she said, “Now that you have a real kid, you need to send that bitch packing and tell her to take her bastard kid with her. He’s not going to inherit shit now that we have Isaac.”

Abraham was a bit conflicted because he didn’t want to send his son away, but neither did he want to sleep on the couch forever. God sensed this and came to him.
        “Do what your wife says, man! I’ll take care of the kid. Because he’s your son, he’ll get his own country.”

So Abraham packed up a hobo sack and sent Hagar and Ishmael off. After journeying for a while, they ran out of water, so Hagar pushed the kid under a shrub and went a few hundred yards away so she wouldn’t have to watch him die. As she sat there crying, and angel came to her,
        “Hey...chill out, lady. God heard your kid. Look over there.”

And when she opened her eyes, there was totally a well like, right there. So she filled up the bottle and gave some to Ishmael, who ended up growing big and strong, became an archer and married a nice Egyptian girl that his mommy picked out for him.

Around this time, Abimelech went to Abraham and said,
        “Abraham, I know you’re real tight with God. So I want to ask you straight-up: swear to me here, in front of God, that you won’t dick me over. Or any of my descendants. I did right by you, you do right by me.”
        “Sure, I swear. But, by the way, you’re in trouble because your people violently took away a well.”
        “Dude, I don’t know anything about that. Including how someone can forcibly remove a hole from the ground.”

Abraham then gave a bunch of sheep and oxen to Abimelech, and set seven lambs free to run wild.
        “Why’d you let those lambs go?” asked Abimelech.
        “Because we’re making a deal. Those are yours now, in return for you acknowledging that I dug this well.”
        “Right-O. See ya.” and Abimelech and his people took off back to the land of the Philistines. And Abraham planted a grove on that spot and hung out there for many days.