Many things happened from Genesis 10 to 16. Starting with a large confusing list of sons and generations and founders of places.There where so many things that my mind simple wasn`t able to organize them. I understood the following: Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and they had children, and those children had more children, and so on. They all formed different clans, if you can call them so, and established in many different places around.
And then came the story of the Babel tower. I had seen a movie about it before. One I found quite hard to understand, it was all about confusing languages and misunderstandings. Well I finally got it right. Everybody talked in the same language and everything seemed to be much easier. So, they where building a city and a tower, and God came by to look at what was going on. He decided he would mix up everything by making different languages and all of a sudden the people where not able to do it with such ease. Why would he do that and complicate life so much? Well I have a theory based on the following lines, “Got to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven” (Genesis 11- 4). I think god was afraid they wanted to be like him and reach him, so, to avoid it, he made things more difficult to the people. I wonder what life would be like today if we all spoke the same language. We would probably have technology that is beyond our imagination, or maybe we would have finished screwing this world up. I was reminded of the pyramids because they where as well built to reach the gods.
Then followed many generations and then the story of the journey of Abraham which I am familiar with, followed. Many wars have been happening because of this story over the ‘promised land’. I don`t find a reason why, but God made a covenant with him and promised he would give him a land and multiply his seed, as to he would reproduce and leave his mark in greater scale, I think. He left Ur and went with his wife Sarai, Lot, and some of his people following God’s commands. He traveled and got to Egypt in the middle of a famine. He let his wife pass as his sister and let her go to the pharaoh, I don’t understand well why he had to do that, why the Egyptians would kill him if he didn’t, and where the Egyptians come from. Are the Egyptians descendants of Noah too, or what? Then they where sent away when the Pharaoh realized that Sarai wasn’t exactly Abraham’s sister. Lot’s and Abraham’s people fight so Abraham asks him to separate; “And Abraham said unto Lot, let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdsmen and thy herdsmen; for we be brethren” (Genesis 13-8). Later on Lot is kidnapped in a confusing war and Abraham has to go and save him. In the journey Abraham comes to doubt, but God always repeats his words and assures him that his future is bright.
Since Sarai is not able to have children, she sends her handmaid with her own husband to give him a child for her. How could she bare her husband being with her maid? It is insane. Full of resentment towards her mistress, Hagar escapes pregnant and is asked to return by god’s angel. He tells her that her child will be named Ishmael and a threat to men, or something like that. Poor Hagar, can something like what happened to her be approved by God?
This part of the genesis, I considered to be a little heavy.
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