Genesis 14-15: Completely Empty Land for Abram to Settle In

The bustling town of Sodom.

After God gave Abram this land, peace reigned, except for the dozen or so kings who were at war with each other. To fund their wars, Sodom was pillaged, and Lot land was cleaned out of its livestock and its women, leaving only a vacant… a vacant… well, I just can’t think of the right word here, but basically, he was broke. When Uncle Abram found out about this, he raised a militia and went to get it back. He did get it, too, except for the percentages he doled out to everyone he met who worshiped the same God he did. When the king of Sodom asked not for goods but for people, Abram turned him down flat.

God liked the way Abram snubbed the king of Sodom. “I keep telling you, Abram,” said God, “this nation thing is going to work out. I’m going to come down hard of the king of Sodom, but you, you’re getting all this land, which is completely empty except for ten nations of people who are already living there—but who’s counting?”

Comments

How the Lemon was Invented

Lemons How do you make a lemon? Silly question, isn’t it? You just take the seeds out of one and plant them, and wait for the tree to come up, right? That’s true, but it hasn’t always been that easy. Lemons today are a widely cultivated citrus fruit, with a flavor used in cuisines of countries where no lemon tree would ever grow. You might think that it was just a matter of ancient peoples finding the trees, enjoying their fruit and growing more of them, but that’s not true. The lemon is a human invention that’s maybe only a few thousand years old. The first lemons came from East Asia, possibly southern China or Burma. (These days, some prefer to refer to Burma as Myanmar . I’ll try to stay out of that controversy here and stick to fruit.) The exact date of the lemon’s first cultivation is not known, but scientists figure it’s been around for more than 4,000 years. The lemon is a cross breed of several fruits. One f...

Origins of the Word Hoser, eh?

Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as cultural icons Bob and Doug McKenzie These days we often hear Canadians referred to as “Hosers”. It’s a strange word, and it sounds a little insulting, but it’s sometimes used more with affection than malice. Any such word is difficult to use correctly, especially if you don’t belong to the group the word describes. I can’t say I feel comfortable throwing the word around, myself, but I can offer a little information about it that might shed some light on what it means. First off: is it an insult? Yes… and no. The word hoser can be used as an insult or as a term of endearment; the variation hosehead , is certainly an insult. It’s a mild insult, meaning something like jerk or idiot or loser . Its origin is unclear, and there are several debatable etymologies of the word. One claims that it comes from the days before the zamboni was invented, when the losing team of an outdoor ice hockey game...

Haberdashers and Milliners

The haberdashery is something you don’t see anymore. It used to be a common sight in Western countries, when it was expected for a man to wear a hat when he left the house. There was enough of a demand for them that they remained a staple in American shopping districts until the 1960s, when fashions began to change. But you could at one time make a good living at it; it’s what Harry Truman did before he entered politics. Some say that it was another president, Jack Kennedy, who was partly responsible for hats going out of fashion in America, since he seldom wore them. (And with a head of hair that good, why would he?) Of course, there’s no way to measure this, but the disappearance of hats from men’s (and women’s) heads seems to coincide with the Kennedy administration (though I remember my father and other men wearing hats to work until the early 1980s). A ladies’ hat shop was called a milliner’s, and those have also largely vanished....

Search This Blog