Genesis 20: Abraham is his own brother-in-law!

Before anything else burned to the ground, Abraham decided to clear out of Mamre. He headed for the Negev Desert, because how’s anyone going to burn down a desert? Following some bad maps, he headed to a spot between Kadesh and Shur, a nice little community called Gerar. Still, Abraham didn’t much trust the locals, and felt safer telling them that Sarah was his sister and not his wife. King Abimelech of Gerar asked to have Sarah brought to him, because kings can do that with unmarried women, so this little white lie of Abraham’s was going to lead to trouble, even though no one really understood why he’d feel the need to lie about this in the first place. Yahweh turned up in Abimelech’s dream some time after this and told him, “You’re going to die, ‘cause that new piece of chattal you took is a married woman. Big mistake!” Abimelech didn’t think this was fair, because he hadn’t yet laid a hand on her. “Lord, what’s the deal? Why would You kill someone for something he didn’t even do? He said she was his sister, and she said he was her brother. I don’t understand their little game, but when I seized that woman as my own personal property, I didn’t do anything unethical.” “Yes, I know,” said Yahweh, who of course knows everything. “I know you only meant to take her as your own object, and I know they did nothing to stop you, which is probably a sin on their part. I don’t know; I should look into that. Anyway, you never touched her, which I’m sure of, since I watch this kind of stuff all the time, and it’s not weird, I swear. But you need to send the woman back. He’s a prophet, and he can do stuff for you. But if you don’t send her back, you and everyone you know are going to die. I’m serious, too. Did you hear about Sodom? Gomorrah? That was My doing. And I’m still feeling kind of testy lately. Think about it.”

Early the next morning, Abimelech told his court the whole story, which scared the crap out of them. He summoned Abraham and asked, “What’s your weird little role playing about? What did I ever do to you? You’re making me look like the unethical kind of king who seizes women for his personal use, and not the ethical kind who does that. What the hell were you even thinking?” Abraham was ready for this. “It’s because I thought you guys were of a different religion and that you’d kill me for my wife, rather than just seizing her. Anyway, she really is my sister, my father’s daughter, but not my mother’s. And she’s my wife. So it’s not weird or anything. When we started traveling, we figured we could go everywhere and tell people we were brother and sister instead of husband and wife, and we wouldn’t be lying. And you fell for it!”

Despite having been taken in by this prank, Abimelech was a mensch. He gathered up sheep, cattle, and slaves, both male and female, and gave them to Abraham. In addition, he also gave him Sarah. “We don’t do adultery here,” said Abimelech, “but incest and slavery are just fine, so consider yourself welcome. Settle wherever you like in my lands.” To Sarah, Abimelech said, “Look, I am giving your brother a thousand pieces of silver. Since he’ll be rich, people won’t think you did anything wrong when you were at my place, because rich people don’t do anything wrong.” Abraham then returned the favor, asking God to help Abimelech out, and God did, fixing Abimelech, his wife and his slave girls so that they could have children, because Yahweh had made all the women in Abimelech’s house barren on account of Sarah having been there. This was the beginning of tensions between God and Yahweh.

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...

The Whoopie Cap

What can you do with your father’s old hats? If you were born after, say, 1955, the answer is probably “Not much.” Men were still wearing fedoras in the 1970s and 1980s, but by 1990, fashion had turned to the point where unless you were Indiana Jones, the hat didn’t look right. Some blame Jack Kennedy for starting it all, strutting around perfectly coiffed and bare-headed in the early 1960s. In 1953, Harry Truman, a haberdasher by trade, stepped out of office, and just eight years later we had a president who didn’t care for hats? The times, they were a-changin’. If you set the WABAC machine to the 1920s or 1930s (when Indiana Jones was supposed to have lived), you would see the fedora was still very much in style. Men just didn’t leave the house without a hat of some kind, and for what remained of the middle class, the fedora was the topper of choice. But like any other piece of clothing, hats wear out, too. When that happened, you’d ju...

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