Genesis XVII

1 When Abram was 99 years old God came to him. He said; “Get off your rear and come walk with me”

2 “I’ve got a new idea and you’re going to be my test case to see how it goes.”

3 Abram tripped and fell flat on his face. God looked down at him for a moment then nudged him with his foot. God said

4 “Get up, you’re going to be the father of nations, no sleeping on the job.”

5 “I came up with a new name for you to go with your new role in history. What do you think of - Abraham! – way better than Abram don’t you think?”

6 “Now that you’ve gotten started with the children thing I’ll be giving you many more, whole nations of them! You’re up to all the extra sex right? What do you think of being the father of Kings eh?”

7 “But first, my idea. Now I don’t do things half way right, so – this is forever. All your children will worship me as their God and I’ll look out for them.”

8 “I know you still haven’t gotten around to conquering the whole world with your army, but it will come, trust me.”

9 “All you have to do, is keep on doing what I’m about to tell you to do – that’s it, that’s the deal”

10 “So this is it – every male among you must be circumcised.” Abraham looked confused; “What is circumcised?”

11 And God said; “I think it would be cool to cut off the extra skin from your penis. You aren’t using it anyway and it’s kind of just hanging out there. Abraham said; “You want to cut off my what!!”

12 “It’s for your own good, and it’ll probably stop you guys from spanking it yourselves. You have to have more children, I don’t know how many times I have to say it. I think it’ll look cool too - so every man older than eight will be circumcised.

13 Any male born into your house as well as all the slaves must be circumcised. In this way your body with have the mark of my covenant on it.”

14 “So what you want to be able to admire everyone’s shlong? What about just the slaves, just them?” God replied; “I’ll give you a week to get it done, any male not circumcised will have broken my deal and I order them banished.”

15 God said to Abraham; “I came up with a new name for your wife too, her name will now be – Sarah!”

16 “I’ll be going to see her too, since you aren’t taking care of business I’ll warm her up for you. But you still need to have a son, at least one, with your real wife.”

17 Abraham tripped and fell again, landing flat on his face. He laughed at God; “She’s too old for children, I’m 90, she is 100”

18 “Ishmael is man enough anyway isn’t he?”

19 God said; “I heard Ishmael is quite … manly. I think I’ll circumcise him myself to get an idea of what it really looks like. But you still need to have a son with your real wife.”

20 “Don’t worry about Ishmael, from what I hear he’s already the father of a bunch of children.”

21 “And by this time next year you’d better have a son with Sarah, or the whole deal is off and I’ll just cause all your pickles to rot off instead since you aren’t using them properly.”

22 And God left to go circumcise Ishmael before Abraham could argue any further

23 With the threat of rotting off hanging over his head Abraham circumcised every male in the surrounding countryside.

24 Abraham was 99 years old

25 Ishmael was 13

26 There was much yelling and screaming that day

27 And there was more than one unsatisfied woman for the next month or so



Commentary:

This was painful to write about – anything in that sensitive area always has that kind of gut clench reaction. Of course I really don’t get the idea behind it – I think on this particular day God was eating or smoking something that messed with his mind. I mean, all on the same day he just randomly decided to rename the two of them, and in addition to just hack off some (debateably) non critical part of them. I mean, why did he create it in the first place, if he didn’t like it he could have just got rid of it with his Godly powers.

Maybe it’s all about control; he wanted to see if they’d actually do it. Yeah, that’s probably what it is. I mean if I appeared in to your house as a burning bush or something and was like …

“Hi, I’ve decided to name you Bob and her Mary. Now, go cut off the last digit of your pinky Bob. You and every male you know or own will cut off the last digit of their pinkies. If they do that I’ll give you a bunch of land and bless you with lots of kids, and forever and I’ll look after your children as long as they keep cutting off their pinkies.”

Would you do it? Yeah I didn’t think so.