Part 14: Circumcision

And Rebekah went in unto her husband after they were married and did say unto him, "What the hell?  Why art thou so mangled?"

And Isaac turned and said unto her, "Behold, it is a long story."

God had been up in heaven, talking with anyone who would pretend to listen, trying to get a good idea of a ritual that would forever bind his people to him in an irreversible way.

He walked into Jesus' room and asked him what would be a good idea for such a ritual, something that would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that man cared for his god.

"Have them cut their dicks off," Jesus said, being in a spiteful mood and hoping to shock god into bothering someone else.

"That wouldn't work because then they couldn't have any children," god patiently explained, failing entirely to take the hint.

"But you're god and you can impregnate them magically, can't you?" asked Jesus.

God suffered a pang of anxiety because he kept forgetting to do that very thing with Sarah.  This is a flashback you remember.

God started pacing to clear his head and, with an act of will, put the whole Rebekah thing out of his mind.  "I don't really know if they'd do it, though," he said.

"Look, lots of close followers of various gods do it," Jesus said.  "That Rah guy talked people into doing it and he's certainly not as great as you, is he?"  Jesus was now needling god for his own personal entertainment.

"That would mean the patriarch line would end in a very symbolic way as any child would be by me and not by his father, and the whole patriarch line is important to the narrative I'm building," god said.

"Well, that's not working anyway, is it?" Jesus shot back.  "Abram, excuse me, Abraham and Sarai don't have any kids despite trying with great ardor."

God fumed and paced some more.  Suddenly, he turned and snapped his fingers.  "You've nearly got a good idea!" he enthused.  "What is needed is to get them to cut off only part of their dicks!"

God practically ran out of the room to set up the requirement with Abraham that all the males should cut off their foreskins.  Remember, there were no painkillers or even sharp knives at this point in history, so this idea was met with a large amount of consternation by the males of the line of promise, but, remembering the judgements handed down from the most high for the simplest of transgressions, they obliged.  On his way out, he remembered that he was supposed to be clearing up Sarah's pipes.

Jesus, for his part, fell farther into a dark mood as he realized what his offhand comment had caused.  Riddled with guilt, he took up drinking in earnest.

We rejoin Rebekah's and Isaac's conversation still in progress.

"You have to be kidding, right?  Why would god care what your dick looks like?  What purpose could it serve?" Rebekah asked, aghast.

Isaac looked around the room as if expecting an angel to pop out of thin air.  "Hey, be careful what you say.  We do what god says and he blesses us, but if we don't do what he says, he creates the most inventive and terrible punishments.  We have to do what he says!" Isaac said, his voice tinged with hysteria.  Looking as kindly as he could into her eyes, he said "God has given us all this wealth.  God has promised us we will own the earth.  God says we cut part of our dicks off, we do it!"

"God hasn't given me a child," Rebekah muttered, immediately regretting it when she saw the look of concern on Isaac's face.

Part 13: Sadness

So Sarah died.  The mother of promise, the lone anchor of happiness in Abraham's life, dead.  After his broken heart mended enough to get up and about, Abraham went around asking for burial sites.

Sepulcher is a common word used for this sort of site, but it is really a cave.  Abraham wanted a certain one, and so great was the respect for him from the locals that they tried to give it to him, but Abraham wanted to pay for it in tribute to his dead wife.  He buried her then.

Abraham was worried in his old age.  Isaac did not have a wife.  God had not provided a wife and did not seem likely to do so.  Such was his love for Sarah that he hoped to provide for his son that he made his servant swear to find a wife for Isaac.

The servant departed at once with a collection of gifts to pay a dowry and impress a future bride.  Determining which girl was to be the bride was another matter entirely.  The servant fell to contemplating this.

There isn't any way to know before hand how good a person might be, how compatible the person might be with Isaac, or whether the person would be willing to accept the strictures commonly assigned by Jehovah.  What was needed was a clever plan.

The whole trip, the servant worried about the problem.  All his camel had to do was follow the one in front of it, so he didn't have to even think about the trip.  As he swayed on his camel, his mind ran in circles.  There did not seem to be any way to solve this problem.

As the destination neared, the servant was no closer to solving this problem.  His anxiety increased with each step his camel took.  Were he to not select the correct wife, Abraham would be angry, sure, but Jehovah would be livid.

He'd asked repeatedly in prayer for guidance, but none was forthcoming.  The switchboard was only monitoring patriarchs at the time, not monitoring general prayer.  Abraham had not prayed over this, it seems, an action that Jehovah was to later consider a failing, as it could not be possible that Jehovah had erred by not listening to a mere servant, and Abraham should have kept Jehovah apprised of all his schemes, no matter how inconsequential.

Anyway, the servant swayed into town with no plan.  Finally, he realized that the only way he was going to escape being blamed is to make the decision a result of random chance.  So, he decided that what he'd do is ask for a drink.  If the girl gave him a drink and offered to water his camels as well, she'd be the one.  If none of them did that, well, he'd worry about that later.

And so it came to pass (hey, this is about the Bible at the moment) that a fair young damsel came to the well.  The servant asked her for a drink, and, wouldn't you know it, she gave him a drink and then watered his camels.  She was just a nice person, it seems, and that should mean something, so the servant decided to proceed with his plan.

He gave her gold bracelets and jewels and asked to see her father.  Her father was a man named Laban.  The girl's name was Rebekah.  You've probably heard of her, or dated someone with the same name.

Anyway, when Laban saw her coming with all the gold and jewels, he was impressed.  When the servant told his tale of how he selected her, Laban thought this was an excellent angle to get his daughter married to a powerful family and turned to Rebekah and said that it was surely a sign from god that she should go with the man.  Then he turned expectantly to the servant, who obliged and gave him and his sons much swag.

Rebekah climbed aboard a camel willingly, being very religious, and followed the servant back to his master.  Being selected to be a princess for a foreign prince is kind of every young girl's dream, isn't it?  And, if that prince is also a close personal friend of god, then that is a bonus, isn't it?

Anyway, the camel train pulled into the outskirts of the property occupied by Abraham's family.  Isaac was kind of a loner and possessed a character that passed for deep.  He was out in a field thinking about things in general.  He looked up and saw the camel train coming.

Rebekah looked out at the guy in the field and thought him cute.  He simply radiated the sort of depth that women find charming as well.  Daring to hope, she asked the servant who he was, and the servant confirmed he was, indeed, Isaac.  Rebekah was ecstatic, but, remembering her upbringing, donned a veil before dismounting and sprinting to the young man and introducing herself as his new wife.

The wedding passed, and, much to Isaac's surprise, given that he thought Jehovah had had a hand in choosing his wife, Rebekah turned out to be beautiful when he lifted her veil.  Abraham was brought to tears when she moved into Sarah's tent, and he felt a great contentment that his son had such a great wife.  He loved her like a daughter, and his sadness lifted by the day as she brightened the whole camp.

It is at this point that Ishtar enters the story.  She had been watching.  She had heard the prayers of the servant.  She had seen his plan form.  And she had worked on Rebekah to do the things that would show her to be the bride of promise.

Ishtar was the goddess of fertility.  Rebekah, in her innocence, had been begging Ishtar daily to be given a future that did not involve being the bride of a smelly herder, which, given her status, seemed her destiny.  Ishtar had a sweet spot in her heart for Rebekah, but, more, Ishtar wanted some influence on earth.  Unfortunately, the scribes did not write the story that way, and Jehovah got the credit as Laban and the servant set the narrative.

This is a repeating pattern in the history of this world.  It is an adage that the victors write the history.  Lucifer, hearing the story, and feeling it to be less than truthful, sought out Ishtar and explained to her what happened, adding another minor deity to his growing list of friends.