Genesis 12
Abram and Lot start travelling to Canaan. Abram lies. God punishes Pharoh for a crime he didn't know he was committing.
12:1-3 God commands Abram to leave his father's country and says he will show him where to go. He promises Abram a great nation and many blessings, and tells him he will curse any one who curses Abram. God's been long dead (Genesis 6:3), so Abram is being commanded by a ghost (God's spirit?)
12:4-5 Abram (aged 75) leaves Haran (the place of his brother). He takes his wife, his nephew Lot, "and the souls they had gotten in Haran", and they go to the land of Canaan. I assume by "souls" they mean slaves or servants.
12:6 Abram passes through Sichem and Moreh where the Canaanites lived.
12:7 God appears to Abram and tells him he will give the land of Canaan to Abram's offspring, so Abram builds an alter to God. This is the first reference of God "appearing" to some one.
12:8 Noah goes onto a mountain East of Bethel, west of Hai, then builds another alter to God and called out to him. Summons him? Weird.
12:9-10 Abram keeps heading South, where the land was struck by famine. Abram goes to Egypt to live temporarily and wait out the famine.
12:11-13 Abram tells Sarai she is beautiful as they enter Egypt. He's worried the Egyptians will kill him so they can have her, and asks her to lie and say she's his sister.
12:14-16 Pharoh's sons see Sarai and she is taken to Pharoh's house. Pharoh tries to buy Sarai with livestock and servants.
12: 17 God plagues Pharoh for taking Abram's wife. Pharoh asks Abram why he didn't tell him Sarai was his wife, but led him to believe Pharoh could marry her. Pharoh orders Abram and Sarai leave his home. So God condoned Abram lying about Sarai being his sister? Why punish Pharoh? He didn't knowingly do anything wrong.
Genesis 13
Abram and Lot go their separate ways.
13:1-5 Abram, Sarai, and Lot bring everything they have further south. They're very rich, and continue travelling, winding up back where they originally started on the mountainside between Bethel and Hai. He returns to the alter he built there and calls upon God.
13:6-9 Between Abram's livestock and servants and Lot's livestock and servants, the land couldn't sustain them. Abram's shepherds and Lot's shepherd's fight. Abram wants peace and asks Lot to leave and take his herds and servants with him, claiming he will go the opposite direction to whatever Lot chooses.
13:10-12 Lot decides to go East and settles in Jordan near Sodom.
13: 13-15 Sodom's population was wicked and sinful. God tells Abram to go anywhere but towards Sodom and promises him and his descendants all the land to the North, West, and South. If the East and Sodom were so bad, why did God only tell Abram not to go there - why let Lot go?
13:16-18 God promises Abram uncountable offpsring. Abram leaves the mountainside and goes to Mamre in Hebron, where he built another alter.
Genesis 14
There's a big war among a lot of kings near Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot is taken prisoner but Abram rescues him. Tithing is introduced.
14:1-9 The kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim and Zoar served Chedorlaomer for twelve years, then rebelled in the thirteenth year. The next year (year 14) Chedorlaomer brought four kings with him and went to war against the original four in the valley of Siddim.
14:10-12 The valley where the war was being fought was full of slimepits. The kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fell, and every one else ransacked the cities of all their goods and food and fled to a mountain, taking Lot with them (unwillingly). Slimepits mean it was muddy? Originally I thought "fell" meant died, but it may just mean they lost, as the king of Sodom is mentioned later.
14:13-16 One of the prisoners taken with Lot escaped and word got to Abram that Lot had been taken captive. Abram armed 318 servants and pursued the captors. They came in the night and killed the captors, then returned the goods and the captives to Sodom and Gomorrah.
14:17-20 The king of Sodom came to meet Abram. He brought the king of Sallem (a priest of God) and blessed Abram and gave him bread and wine. A tithe (1/10) was portioned for God. This is the first time mentioning giving a portion of your "earning" (the reward Abram received for saving the people of Sodom and Gomorrah) to God.
14:21-24 The king of Sodom told Abram he could take the goods, but that he wanted to keep the people. Abram refused because he didn't want to be indebted to the king (or for the king to be able to claim he was the reason for Abram's success.
Genesis 15
Abram does a ritual and has some type of hallucination.
15:1-7 Abram complains to God that he still has no children, and that his steward will be his heir. God promises again that Abram will have a multitude of descendants, and reminds him that he has given him all the land he can see.
15:8-12 Abram asks God how he'll know for sure he'll own all the land. God told him to take a 3 year old cow, a 3 year old nanny goat, a 3 year old ram, a dove, and a pigeon, and to divide them up (slaughter and section them). Abram laid all the animal parts out as directed, kept the carrion birds off them, and then fell into a deep sleep, where he has a nightmare. So this is some type of ritual-based trance?
15:13-17 In his sleep God tells Abram that his descendants will be strangers to the lands where they live, and that they'll be servants for 400 years. God promises to judge the people who make Abram's descendants serve, and promises when they're released from service they will be blessed. He also promises that Abram will live til a very old age and die peacefully. Abram sees a furnace and a lamp between the animal pieces. Is this all some type of vision of the future and/or hallucination?
15:18 God makes a promise to give Abram's descendants the land between the River of Egypt to the Euphrates river, and lists all the people who live in that area. It's unclear if he's promising Abram that his descendants will rule over these people, or if he's using them as a representation of the geographic area.
Genesis 16
Abram takes a second wife and has Ishmael.
16:1-6 Sarai can't have children, so she asks Abram to get her handmaid Hagar pregnant so they can have children. Abram marries Hagar; she gets pregnant straight away and despises Sarai. Sarai complains to Abram that the maid despises her, and Abram tells Sarai to do whatever she wants with Hagar. Sarai "deals harshly" with Hagar, so Hagar runs away. Did Hagar despise Sarai for forcing her to bear children in her stead, or because she thought she was better than Sarai, who was barren?
16:7-14 An angel found Hagar by a well and asks where she came from. Hagar confesses that she's run away from her mistress, and the angel commands her to go back to Sarai, telling her he will give her more children. He then tells her she is pregnant with a son, and that she is to name him Ishmael. The angel tells her Ishmael will be a wild (independant) and that he will be against every one and every one will be against him, even though he lives near them.
16:15-16 Hagar has Ishmael when Abram is 86 years old.
Genesis 17
Abram becomes Abraham; Sarai becomes Sarah. More babies to come. God wants foreskins.
17:1-9 God asks Abram to walk with him, again promises him that he will have many descendants. He tells him to change his name to Abraham, telling him his descendants will father many nations and will be kings, and that they will rule in everlasting possesion of Canaan (the land of Canaan).
17:10-14 God tells Abraham that as a symbol of his promise to Abraham, all his descendants are to be circumcised at 8 days old, regardless of whether he's born into the family or purchased as a servant. Any one who is not circumcised will have broken the agreement made between Abraham and God and will have his soul cut off from his people. What's this got to do with anything? Why would God even want this?
17:15-16 God tells Abraham to change Sarai's name to Sarah, and promises to bless her and make her a mother of nations and of kings.
17:17-22 Abraham laughs and says he and Sarah are too old to have babies. God insists that Sarah will bear a son named Isaac within a year, and tells Abraham that his son Ishmael will have many descendants, including twelve princes.
17:23-27 Abraham circumcised himself, Ishmael, all the males of his family, and all their male servants.
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