It's dominated by dudes. Judging by today's standards, many can only be described as assholes. The rules of accepted conduct change all the time. If things go bad, the only solution is to blow everything up and start over. And, best of all, men are sexually active well into their hundreds.
After a rocky start in Eden and that mess with Cain and Abel, Adam waited until he was 130 to try again and have Seth. Noah was 500 when his three sons were born. That may be great for the guys. But it probably made for some really tired wives.
But we don't really know. Genesis is great at packing a lot of information into sparse language, leaving the faithful, scholars and many millennia of manipulators -- both well-intentioned and maybe not so much -- to fill in the holes. Genesis spends more words, for instance, with God's instructions to Cain about his exile than it does the act that got him there. Talk about burying the lead. So it's up to us to imagine and fill in the blanks.It's a similar story with Abraham's entrance into Egypt with his hottie wife, Sarah. She is such a knockout that he keeps her in a chest and pretends to be her brother so men don't go bonkers for her. That probably wouldn't fly today. And it didn't end up well then, either. She becomes a member of the Pharaoh's harem. But Abraham seems cool because the Pharaoh hooked him up with camels, donkeys and female servants.
When plagues come to the Pharaoh's house, he asks Abraham why he made his wife pretend she was his sister, and boots them both. Today, we'd call a guy who trades his wife for livestock something else. Maybe a pimp?
It's clear that, early on, the notion of sin and right and wrong is a work in progress. Like the underworld, the deal is clear-cut: As soon as God establishes a covenant, you are a made man who can pretty much do you want as long as you obey God's commands. But like the Godfather, allegiances can change quickly and so can the rules.
In fairness to Abraham, he redeems himself later. The same can't be said for the final act of Noah. We almost named our son Noah. We didn't because it was becoming too popular, and we didn't want him cursed with endless "The Lord said to Noah, there's gonna be a floody-floody" preschool sing-a-longs. After reading Noah's treatment of his sons, we have another reason to be glad.
After building the ark, saving the animals, surviving the seas for 40 days and 40 nights, Noah is tired. And with good reason. He was 600 when the Earth wiped away. So he gets drunk and passes out naked. Ham, one of his three sons, walks in and tells his brothers, Shem and Japheth. The latter two take pity on drunk ol' Noah and throw a robe on him.
The only time I ever saw my father drunk, he woke me and my siblings up to feed ice cream, then lay in bed the next day moaning "I've been a bad dad. A bad dad." Not Noah. He wakes up in a frenzied stupor.
Is he embarrassed for being drunk and naked? Maybe. But like a lot of drunks, what follows of his rage doesn't make a lot of sense: He directs his ire at Ham, but instead of sending him to his room or shrinking his inheritance, he decides to enslave his grandson, Ham's son, Canaan. And all of Canaan's offspring.
Genesis doesn't say what happens when Noah sobers up. But history indicates he didn't have a change of heart, and the Old Testament is big on punishing sons for the sins of the father.
Some commentators have said the passage was included to justify the Hebrews' later enslavement of Canaanites. In the 19th century, the passage was cited as God's seal of approval of American slavery. Either way, it's a jerk move: One drunken night begets centuries of human bondage.
It's logic that probably makes perfect sense in a prisonyard, but just comes across as mean and crotchety lo these years later.
