“Your mother’s right about those Hittites, Jacobaleh,” Isaac told his son.  “You can do better.  But none of these Canaanites, either!  I mean, you can date them, but you wouldn’t want to marry one, you know what I mean?  We have standards in this family.  Now I want you to head off to Paddan-Aram and marry one of your uncle’s girls.  Keep it in the family, right, boy?  Heh, heh.”  Jacob headed off to find the cousin of his dreams, wondering if maybe his brother Esau hadn’t gotten the better end of the deal. Esau still hoped to make a good impression on his father.  Snooping on Jacob, he learned how his parents felt about the Canaanite women, so in order to impress them, he took a third wife, only this time taking care to marry one of Ishmael’s daughters.  Ishmael was only his father’s half-brother, so it’s like they weren’t even related. Jacob walked on to the town of Haran, in Paddan-Aram, where Uncle Laban and all those s...

Genesis 24: when family meets with family to form family. Abraham was now a widower in his 120s and very much feeling his age.   He was obviously pretty thin-skinned for feeling so old, since others like Noah and Adam lived well past age 800.   Abraham was still pretty young, by Genesis standards.   Still, it was time to start planning for what came next.   What came next, of course, was his son Isaac’s future bride, whoever she might be.   Since Abraham was so concerned, he took the reasonable course of action and talked to his household’s chief servant about this. “Place your hand under my thigh,” Abraham told the servant. “Er… beg pardon, sir?” “Place your hand under my thigh.” “Sir, I don’t suppose I need to tell you that this is not an orthodox demand to make of one’s own butler.   I may be your servant, but I am still an individual with rights and dignity, and…” “Enough!” interrupted Abraham.   “This is so you can swear...

God said to Abram, “Down on your knees, boy!” so Abram dropped.  “I want to talk to you about something.  I got big things in mind.” “What’s that, my Lord?” asked Abram. “What I’m thinking is that I want to put you in charge of everyone in Canaan, so sooner or later you’re going to have to drive all the locals out, I guess.  I want to make you fertile and have a whopping number of children.  You’re going to be the ancestor of kings and nations and the like.  Sound good?” “Sounds good so far, yes.” “All I ask is that you get circumcised…” “I knew there was a catch in there somewhere—“ “Quiet!  Now I’m asking you to get circumcised, and get all your friends to get circumcised, and that you make sure every male who’s eight days old get circumcised.  Otherwise, they’re out.  Get it?” “Sure.  But do You really think the guys are going to go for this circumcision?” “Tell them that I said to do it, and they’ll do anything.  You’d be surpris...