Sarah's burial cave.  (The gate was added later.) Sarah died at 127 years of age, and it was hard on Abraham.    After mourning a while, he realized that, like a lot of people, he hadn’t given much thought to estate planning.   He asked the Hittites if they could help him out, and one among them said, “Sure, we can provide your wife’s lot.”   Abraham glowered at the one-liner. “Aren’t you the card?” he said saltily. “Oh, sorry… too soon?” Ignoring the matter, Abraham went on with his request.   “I like your cemetery, but really, what I had in mind was more of a cave, specifically the cave owned by Ephron, son of Zohar.   Any chance you guys could help me persuade him to give me that cave?” It turned out Ehron was there among the Hittites when Abraham asked, and he was only too happy to do it.   “Look, Abraham, the land and the cave retail at around 400 shekels, but you can have it gratis.   Go ahead and salt your wi...

 "The Banishment of Hagar and Ishmael" by Adriaen van der Werff Yahweh made good on His promise and Sarah had her son right on time, despite her age and the lack of in vitro facilities in the Negev.   Abraham got to name him, obviously, since only a man would come up with a name like Isaac.   Abraham, something of a micromanager, also decided it should be up to him to circumcise the boy, and at eight days, he did it.   No parent in their right mind would trust a hundred-year-old man to serve as a mohel, but Abraham was enough of a control freak that he wasn’t bothered by this in the least.   Sarah, who was around her brother/husband Abraham’s age, was over the moon, and told as many people as she could. Sarah nursed Isaac, and on the day Isaac was to start solid food exclusively, Abraham threw a banquet, and everyone had fun.   This was a problem, because one of the people who had fun was Ishmael, the son Abraham had had with Hagar the sl...

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 wou...

Sodom & Gomorrah: Urban renewal, Biblical style It's Thursday!  That means it's time for another chapter of the Bible, rewritten because, well... it just reads better this way!  Enjoy! Lot was hanging out by the gate of Sodom where he met two angels.  He promptly stood up and bowed down.  “Please stay over at my place so I can wash your feet and you can get an early start tomorrow on your trip.”  As tempting an offer as it is to have a strange man grovel in front of you and beg to wash your feet in his house, the angels said, “No, we’ll just sleep in the town square.”  Could the town square at night really be less dangerous than the house of a guy with a foot fetish?  In Sodom, your chances were about 50/50.  But Lot, knowing that the sure way to get what you want is to keep on wheedling, eventually got them to come over and made them dinner. They were still up when the house was surrounded by the locals, by every man in town.  “L...