Ethics-from-Hell Stories.
- suitable for the education of criminal dynasties, vampire families,
etc. -
Contents:
Lot, Abraham, Jacob, Judah, Joseph, Moses
1. Lot
Lot is sitting by the gate of the city of Sodom, when
two angels arrive. He offers them hospitality for the night and they enjoy a
meal together. But then the whole city of Sodom, ‘all the people to the last
man’ surround the house, and call out for Lot to bring out the visitors ‘that
we may know them.’ (Genesis 19:5)
Word has evidently gone out about the angels having
arrived, and a huge crowd gathers clamouring to see them. Did they have space
helmets or wings, or how were they distinguished? It turns out that they were
angels sent by the Lord to announce the destruction of the whole city on
account of its wickedness (N.B. We’re not told what that wickedness was). Had
the inhabitants maybe gathered some hint of this? At any rate, they called out
for the angels.
But Lot alas had a depraved and filthy mind, and he
replied to them: ‘I beg you my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Behold I have
two daughters who have not known man; let me bring them out to you, and do to
them as you please.’ He was offering his two daughters to be gang-raped! He
must have been quite dim, if he thought that he could somehow offer his two
daughters to an entire city. And this is notwithstanding, as we learn shortly,
that both of his daughters had partners, to whom they were engaged.
Some time after, when the two prospective husbands
have been lost, the two daughters are living in a cave with their aged father.
They contrive to get him so drunk that he can inseminate them both without
realising who they are. Lot must have been quite dim, not to realise that he
had just impregnated his own daughter. This incest-while-too-drunk-to-remember
story produces two children, from whom descended the Ammonite and Moabite
tribes.
The atheist Richard Dawkins had a pertinent ethical
judgement: ‘If this dysfunctional family was the best Sodom had to offer by way
of morals, some might begin to feel a certain sympathy with God and his
judicial brimstone.’ (The God Delusion p.272)
2. Abraham
a merry tale of incest, deception and grabbing the
loot
On two occasions, Abraham pimps out his wife/sister
Sarah to a foreign king. He has a god who colludes with him, who each time
makes the king feel guilty, for taking another’s wife. Thereby Sarah is
returned to Abraham – loaded up with a thousand pieces of silver, sheep and
oxen, male and female slaves, from King Abimelech (Genesis Ch 20).
Earlier (Chapter 12), Abraham received a huge
wedding-dowry in return for giving his ‘sister’ to the pharaoh: camels, sheep
oxen menservants, maidservants etc. The ‘god’ colludes with the plot and makes
the pharaoh feel guilty, so that Sarah is returned. The trick is played twice,
each time using the ‘she’s only my sister’ ploy.
3. Jacob
Isaac, the father of Jacob and Esau, is nearly blind
in his old age. His dying wish is to give his blessing to his elder son, Esau.
But while the latter is out hunting, Jacob pretends to be Esau and contrives to
receive the blessing. It’s a totally materialistic affair, that wealth will
come to him, and that others will serve him, that his enemies will all be
cursed, etc. Both Isaac and Esau are distraught when the deception is
discovered, but the Father says he can do nothing – ‘your brother came with
guile, and he has taken away your blessing.’ (Genesis 27:35)
Jacob has a daughter called Dinah. She gets raped by
a non-Israelite, who then sincerely tries to make amends, by offering to marry
her: ‘And his soul was drawn to Dinah the daughter of Jacob; he loved the
maiden and spoke tenderly to her’ (Genesis 34:3). To this end the Israelites
are offered full trading rights with his tribe, the Hivites, plus land
ownership rights, and even the availability of the Hivite daughters for
marriage. The sons of Jacob agree and accept the offer, on one condition: the
whole tribe has to get circumcised! The Hivites agree, and do this extremely
painful thing (for adults its very painful) – and then three days later, while
the Hivite men are still ‘sore’ and recovering, a couple of Jacob’s sons went
and found the Hivite men ‘unawares’ and killed all of them., plundered the
village, took the women and children - and retrieved their
sister.
Jacob expresses concern about possible reprisals from
neighbouring tribes, but does not seem at all bothered about the dreadful
treachery, mass murder etc.
A suitable father, surely, for the twelve
tribes of Israel.
4. Judah (Genesis Chapter 38)
Judah’s firstborn son was called Er. He married Tamar,
but he ‘was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord slew him.’ Uh-huh.
Judah had a second son, Onan, and instructed him to
lie with the lonely Tamar. Onan endeavoured to do so , however he had scruples
about entering into the partner of his newly-dead brother, and ended up
spilling ‘his seed on the ground.’ So the Lord slew him also. Uh-huh.
Judah, walking down a road, espies the lonely Tamar.
‘He thought her to be a harlot, for she had covered her face’ and said, ‘Can I
f*** you?’ She replied, how much is it worth? He said, ‘A sheep’ and she
replied, that is fine, but I notice you haven’t got a sheep, so give me a token
for now. He gave her a signet, cord and his walking-stick.
At this point in the narrative the listener
could well infer (a) Tamar must have known it was her father in law, but was
too traumatised by recent events to object; and (b) while on top of Tamar, her
identity must have dawned on Judah.
Three months later Judah was told, your
daughter-in-law Tamar has ‘played the harlot and is pregnant’. He replied, OK
take her out and burn her. But then Tamar sends to Judah the ring, cord
and stick she was given, to indicate by whom she was pregnant. She is spared,
but he ‘did not lie with her again.’
Summarising, Joseph had sex with the partner of
his two sons, who both die obscurely in consequence of this, treats her as a
mere prostitute, and then proposes to exact a punishment of burning by fire
upon her for thus being a prostitute – and only recants upon hearing she was
bearing his child.
5. Joseph
Joseph was put in charge of Egypt’s finances
(Genesis, Chapter 47). During a famine, he managed to gather up all the money
that was in Egypt. The citizens implore him, ‘Give us food: why should we die
before your eyes, for our money is gone.’ Joseph demands their cattle, and
offers them food in return. The next year they were again hungry, but they had
lost all their herds and flocks of animals - because Joseph had taken them - so
this time they offered him their land: ‘Buy us and our land for food, and we
with our land will be slaves to Pharaoh.’ Joseph has also come to own the seed:
‘Give us seed, that we may live and not die’ – farmers beg a foreigner to be
allowed their own seed! Thereby the Pharaoh via Joseph came to own all of the
land, except that owned by the priests. All of the people of Egypt are
enslaved! A stranger, a non-Egyptian by financial juggling took over the seed,
land and animals of the Egyptian people.
That was Planet Earth’s first introduction to
the ‘Protocols of Zion’ tactics.
6. Moses
* Moses slays an Egyptian in a quarrel: ‘After looking in all directions to make sure no one
was watching, Moses killed the Egyptian and
hid the body in the sand.’ (Exodus 2:12) That’s
cold-blooded murder followed by a cover-up.
*
On descending from Mount Sinai, with the proverbial tablets of stone, Moses
becomes wrath with the Israelites for doing something which was about to be
forbidden - little did they know - in the 2nd Commandment: making a
graven image. He appealed to the Levites, who seem to be the only ones
who had swords: ‘Put every man his sword by his side,
and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his
brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour. And
the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the
people that day about three thousand men.’
NB, Moses had previously smashed the tablets so
that the ‘Thou shalt not kill’ commandment had not then been given, thereby
allowing the Levites to exterminate their family members, etc.
· * Numbers 25:17 ‘Vex the Midianites, and smite them.’ We do not
gather what the Midianites had done wrong. Moses orders the twelve tribes
to go forth into battle, and (in storyland) they kill every man, burn the
cities, plunder the women etc., the usual stuff. On returning home Moses
rebukes his army, with words which echo in eternity for the depth of their
horror: ‘And did you let the women live? … Now kill
all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for
yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man. (Numbers 31:18)
A schizoid character, Moses first married a
Midianite (Exodus 2:21) then ordered the extermination of all mature Midianite
women.
Child-killer!
No
more wicked character …
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