Location, Location, Location (Genesis 12-14)

At this part in the Bible, Abraham takes centre stage as the lead actor and God's class pet. Abraham decides to take his family on a journey and settle in a new land. Since it's a long journey he has to stop numerous times and "pitch[ed] his tent," which makes made me giggle every time I read it. Because of a drought Abraham takes a sojourn in Egypt (isn't Egypt all sand?). He's really paranoid that everyone there will think his wife, Sarah, is super-hot and kill him so they can have sex with her so he tells her to say that she's his sister. Sure. Sarah's pretty old and I doubt she looks like next month's cover of Maxim but I guess this would have been a palpable threat in those days.

After this vacay in Egypt, Abraham settles in Canaan and his nephew Lot heads off in another direction and settles in Sodom and Gomorrah. Later Lot will discover that this was a poor choice of real estate. There's a lot of confict around Sodom and Gomorrah. A bunch of different kings are fighting for it. One of them, Chedorlaomar, forms a gang and takes some people and stuff. Abraham is like, "Not on my watch," and gets three hundred and eighteen people together to form what we can assume to be a decent-sized army for the time. Then he kicks Chedorlaomar out and gives back all the stuff that was taken. I guess these events are the beginnings of the eye-for-an-eye mentality which the Old Testament is known for. It's not quite eye-for-an-eye but at the very least it's decidedly NOT the roll-over-and-take it mentality of the New Testament.