Genesis 12: God's first bad promise, Abraham be pimpin'; what happens in Egypt...

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Genesis: Chapter Twelve

God's first bad promise, Abram the pimp, and what happens in Egypt, stays in Egypt!

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The Call of Abram

1. The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. It will have fun rides and people in costumes, and will be fun. But it will drain you of every cent you have for admission, food, drinks... wait, that's the wrong land. Never mind.
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2. -------“I will make you into a great nation,
   --------- and I will bless you,
   --------- and not just when you sneeze;
   ------- I will make your name great,
   --------- and you will be a blessing.
   ------- Your name will be the source
   --------- of the most violent religions
   --------- ever to walk the earth.
   ------- And you'll have a president
   --------- named after you. Yay!
3. ------- I will bless those who bless you,
   --------- and whoever curses you I will curse;
   --------- and yet it will be up to your followers
   ------- to burn, stone, and murder them,
   --------- or to strap explosives onto themselves
   --------- and blow themselves up;
   ------- and all peoples on earth
   --------- will be blessed through you.
   --------- if you don't count all that other stuff.*”
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4. So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him because he was just a little too close with his uncle, if you know what I mean. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran, home of the world's largest dung beetle nest.
5. He took his wife Sarai (because leaving her behind would make him suspicious as an overly touching uncle), his nephew Lot (of course), all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran (because they were the ultimate hoarders so that they even collected people!), and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there and realized it was gonna be quite the fixer-upper.
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6. Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. Why was it such a great tree, you ask? Well, it's because it was extracted from Eden. It was the tree of the knowledge of the difference between Dick York and Dick Sargent. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. And so they clearly all had to die.
7. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him. He built it out of wood from the great tree of Moreh, so that the people there never could tell the difference between the two Darrens again.*
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8. From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel, where the wind comes sweeping from the plains, and pitched his tent (if you know what I mean, wink-wink, nudge-nudge, say no more!), with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. (Yes, Ai. They had Artificial Intelligence back then. They sure didn't have any real intelligence or they would've been more questionable about how close he was to his nephew.) There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. He called his Lord Billybob.
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9. Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev, booking a great hotel on Booking.com, where he totally booking nailed it!
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   Abram in Egypt 
10. Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. It was either that or Bangkok, and people were already asking too many questions about his boy-love as it was.
11. As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are. 
12. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. Because you know how those Egyptians are.*
13. Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.” He then said the same thing to Lot, which was awkward.
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14. When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarai was a very beautiful woman. But an alarming number of them were more into Lot as well.
15. And when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. 
16. He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels. It was like an ancient version of Indecent Proposal, except Pharaoh wasn't nearly as hot as Redford.
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17. But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai. So much for that promise from verse three.*  
18. So Pharaoh summoned Abram. “What have you done to me?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? 
19. Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!” And then Maury Povich had to come and sort out whose kids are whose. It still didn't set off suspicions when none of them proved to be Abram's.
20. Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had. Well, he kept their Bewitched DVDs, but he was never able to tell the difference between the Darrens, and never knew why.

NOTES:

2 thru 3 - There's a reason why the "Big Three" are called Abrahamic religions. Christianity, Judaism, and even Islam, all share origins of Abraham. Well, you're still dealing with Abram now. He's going to be renamed Abraham a little later. So when God says he's going to make his name great, he merely means he's going to add an h and a second a. So apparently it's great to trick someone into thinking their name is great now. That's why all he added was a "ha!" I know, bad joke. Don't blame me. Blame God. His sense of humor should be better for an all-knowing deity, don't you think?
6 thru 7 - The tree, to some scholars, is evidence that up to this point the bible's referring to an animistic religion worshiping trees, and that this great tree was believed to give great, divine inspiration. Or knowledge. Like the difference between the Darrens of Bewitched. Don't judge me. 
12 - The first prejudice. And it turned out to be inaccurate prejudice too. I guess he assumed they would be too horny to care about his human life, and it turns out not to be true. But does he learn his lesson? No! You'll notice he's going to make this same mistake over and over. Does it teach him to respect other peoples? Of course not. 
17 - In fact, the peoples of Abraham are going to go on to massacre entire peoples, rather than being blessed by their presence. So that promise died and stayed dead. If anything that promise is undead and wanders around hungry for brains.