Give us each day... Our Moldy Bread
Genesis: Chapter Twenty-Six
Isaac doesn’t learn from his dad’s mistakes, which is why he sucks at real estate-
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-------Isaac and Abimelek
- Now there was a famine in the land—besides the previous famine in Abraham’s time, because we sure don’t want our famines getting blurred together—and Isaac went to Abimelek king of the Philistines in Gerar who dealt the best nickel bags in all of Philistineland.
- The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, “Do not go down to Egypt without bringing water, because you sure don’t wanna drink theirs; live in the land where I tell you to live. And no complaining if it’s a fixer-upper. You can make serious bank flipping lands.
- Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. But step out for even a second and I’ll smite you to pieces, cuz that’s how I roll. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham.
- I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed (those peoples whom I have you invade and murder notwithstanding)
- because Abraham obeyed me and did everything I required of him, keeping my commands, my decrees and my instructions.” But if he had been a disobedient prick they would’ve all been confined to West Virginia.
- So Isaac stayed in Gerar and took up tae bo.
- When the men of that place asked him about his wife, he said, “She is my sister,” because he was afraid to say, “She is my wife.” He thought, “The men of this place might kill me on account of Rebekah, because she is beautiful.” Now we know what you’re saying. Didn’t his dad do the same thing several times, always ending in disaster? And you would be correct. But you have a brain, which is why you’re overqualified to write the Holy Bible.
- When Isaac had been there a long time, Abimelek king of the Philistines looked down from a window and saw Isaac caressing his wife Rebekah. He quickly grabbed his binoculars and some hand lotion.
- So Abimelek summoned Isaac and said, “She is really your wife! Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’? Or were you actually doing your sister? Because that’s totally fine with us.”
Isaac answered him, “Because I thought I might lose my life on account of her. And look at her. She’s totally not worth it.”
- Then Abimelek said, “What is this you have done to us? One of the men might well have slept with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.” But that’s usually how drama queen Mormons act, so Isaac ignored him and went back to his tae bo.
- So Abimelek gave orders to all the people: “Anyone who harms this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.” And when kings keep ending this drama saying this, it’s not really giving them any incentive to stop lying like that.
- Isaac planted crops in that land and the same year reaped a hundredfold, because the Lord blessed him. It had to be the Lord because MiracleGro didn’t exist yet.
- The man became rich, and his wealth continued to grow until he became very wealthy. And then he grew very tall, and his height continued to grow until he became quite towering. And then sentences about him became very redundant, and the redundancy continued to grow until it became very redundant.
- He had so many flocks and herds and servants that the Philistines envied him. But they did not want his chopped up penis, so that kind of envy was out of the question.
- So all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the time of his father Abraham, the Philistines stopped up, filling them with earth. And they filled his cows full of tofu.
- Then Abimelek said to Isaac, “Move away from us; you have become too powerful for us.” This worked about as well as it did when people today say the same thing to a Super Wal-Mart.
- So Isaac moved away from there because unlike Wal-Mart he had a conscience, and encamped in the Valley of Gerar, where he settled and destroyed their way of life instead.
- Isaac reopened the wells that had been dug in the time of his father Abraham, which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham died (which tells you everything you need to know about why you should avoid a Philistine diet), and he gave them the same names his father had given them because he seriously lacked creativity.
- Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and discovered a well of fresh water there. They named this well what they figured Abraham would’ve named it, which was Sheer Beba, to compliment Beersheba, even though Sheerbeba ended up meaning invisible beba, and nobody could figure out what a beba was.
- But the herders of Gerar quarreled with those of Isaac and said, “The water is ours!” So he named the well Esek which means bunch of whiny-ass bitches, because they disputed with him.
- Then they dug another well, but they quarreled over that one also; so he named it Sitnah which means, do these people ever stop bitching?
- He moved on from there and dug another well, and no one quarreled over it. He named it Rehoboth which means I thought they’d never shut up, saying, “Now the Lord has given us room and we will flourish in the land.” Then he looked around and realized the room the Lord had given him was in a really bad neighborhood, which is why they didn’t quarrel about it, and he felt totally jipped.
- From there he went up to Beersheba to drink and forget about it all.
- That night the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am the God of your father Abraham. And you are totally drunk. Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bless you and will increase the number of your descendants for the sake of my servant Abraham. Now go throw up and get back to bed.”
- Isaac built an altar there and called on the name of the Lord. The Lord was confused about why the altar was penis-shaped, but remembered he hadn’t sobered up yet, so he let it go. There he pitched his tent, and there his servants dug a well. And this well was called Blorft because when they asked Isaac what he wanted to call it, they didn’t realize he was throwing up his beer.
- Meanwhile, Abimelek had come to him from Gerar, with Ahuzzath his personal adviser and Phicol the commander of his forces.
- Isaac asked them, “Where in the world do you come up with names like that? And why have you come to me, since you were hostile to me and sent me away? And where are my pants?”
- They answered, “We saw clearly that the Lord was with you and that you really know how to party; so we said, ‘There ought to be a sworn agreement between us’—between us and you. Let us make a treaty with you
- that you will do us no harm, just as we did not harm you but always treated you well and sent you away peacefully despite you just now claiming we were hostile to you, you silly drunk. And now you are blessed by the Lord. Let’s break open a keg!”
- Isaac then made a feast for them, and they ate and drank and drank and drank and drank.
- Early the next morning the men, in their severe hungover state, swore an oath to each other. Mostly it involved not trying to buttrape each other’s night time traveling guests, as was so apparently popular at the time, and to stop propositioning each other no matter how drunk they got. Then Isaac sent them on their way, and they went away peacefully, although they couldn’t decide if he’d sent them away with or without hostility.
- That day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well they had dug. They said, “We’ve found water!”
- He called it Shibah, meaning great, but please speak in a low tone because my head hurts, and to this day the name of the town has been Beersheba because why fix what isn’t broken, ya know?
Jacob Takes Esau’s Blessing - When Esau was forty years old, he married Judith daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and also Basemath daughter of Elon the Hittite. Of course he almost sold both of them for chicken nuggets, because you know how he gets when he’s hungry.*
- They were a source of grief to Isaac and Rebekah who felt he should’ve held out at least for a family combo and fed the rest of them.
NOTES:
34 – See how he sold his kingdom for soup in the previous chapter.
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