Skip to main content

Genesis 17: Circumcision for All You Boys

Image
By

Image result for scissors

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 surprised.  Also: you and the missus are going to have to change your names.  Abraham and Sarah just sounds better, don’t you think?”

“Anything You say, Lord.”

“Cool.  This Sarah’s going to have a son, too.  By you.  I’ll see to that.  Call him Isaac.”

“Why do You keep insisting on naming and renaming everyone?  With all due respect, Lord, this kind of sounds like a cult…”

“Watch it, Abram… I mean Abraham,” said God.  “Or I’ll ask for more than just the foreskins…”

So Abraham went out and told Ishmael and all the free men and all the slaves that they had to get circumcised, and they all did it, including the slaves who, up until that point, didn’t think life could get any worse.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How the Lemon was Invented

By
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...
6 comments
Read more

The Massachusetts Codfish License Plate Fiasco of 1928

By
A 1928 Massachusetts license plate with a bad omen! 1928 was a bad year for the Massachusetts codfish yield.  Whose fault was it?  The Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles', of course—or you might think so, to listen to some of the irate fishermen that year. The problem started with the new license plate design.  At the time, it was common for states to issue brand new license plates every year, and Massachusetts was no exception.  The new plates for 1928 featured something revolutionary, too: it was the first time any state put a picture of anything on the plate.  Since Massachusetts was known for cod, the picture the RMV chose was, logically, a codfish.  It appeared at the bottom of the plate.  In the bottom left-hand corner was the year, 1928.  In the bottom right-hand corner was the state, written “Mass.”  And in the middle was the codfish—the first picture of anything that ever appeared on an American license plate...
10 comments
Read more

From Holy Water to the Automat: Great Strides in Self-Service

By
  One of the greatest inventors of the ancient world was Heron Alexandrinus, aka Hero of Alexandria, who racked up an incredible 80 inventions throughout his lifetime in the first century CE.  One of Heron’s remarkable inventions was an early (and possibly the first) steam engine.  But one that we moderns might least expect is one that we seldom associate with the ancient world: the vending machine. Heron’s vending machine sold one thing: holy water.  He invented it in order to stop the theft of holy water from the temples.  The way it worked was you’d put a 5 drachma coin in a slot.  The coin would land on one end of a lever which, when depressed, would allow holy water to trickle out of a spout.  As long as the coin was balanced on the end of the lever, the water would keep coming.  The coin would remain balanced for a short while.  When it dropped off the lever, a counterweight was released, closing the spout and preventing anyone from tak...
1 comment
Read more