Skip to main content

Genesis 16: An Interesting Job for the Maid

Image
By
Image result for hagar the horrible

Abram and his wife, Sarai, wanted kids but couldn’t have them.  Since there were no fertility clinics anywhere nearby, Sarai decided the only way to save the marriage was to do what would destroy a lesser marriage: Abram was to have sex with the maid.  The maid’s name was Hagar, a lovely name by ancient Egyptian standards, and proved to be much more fertile than Sarai.  Hagar got pregnant quickly and started to get uppity with Sarai.  Sarai blamed Abram, who was in a great position.  He told Sarai, “You told me to sleep with her.  This is all your fault.  I’m blameless.  Now go get me another beer.”  Thus the problem was resolved.

Sarai’s problem was not resolved, though, so she dealt with it the best way she knew how: she started heaping abuse on Hagar, who eventually got so fed up with the situation, she ran off.  While running off, a messenger of God appeared before her and told her to go back to work and all the abuse that work entails.  “When my Boss is in a bad mood,” said the messenger, “He’s not much better.  But if you quit, you lose your benefits, which will come in useful, what with your being pregnant and all.”

“Why should I go back to that tedious, degrading job, though?” asked Hagar.

“Well, I suppose I shouldn’t tell you this, but you’re going to have a son who’s a real jerk and no one’s going to like him, and everyone in his family and community are going to loathe him.  You will call him Ishmael.  And through him, you’ll have more descendents than you can count.”

“Why would I want to put up with that?” asked Hagar.

“You won’t,” said the messenger of the Lord.  “You’re having this kid for Sarai, remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Hagar.  “That would serve that bitch right.”  So she turned around and went back to work.
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 fruit is the bitter orange, best known in the west for
5 comments
Read more

Origins of the Word Hoser, eh?

By
Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as cultural icons Bob and Doug McKenzie These days we often hear Canadians referred to as “Hosers”.  It’s a strange word, and it sounds a little insulting, but it’s sometimes used more with affection than malice.  Any such word is difficult to use correctly, especially if you don’t belong to the group the word describes.   I can’t say I feel comfortable throwing the word around, myself, but I can offer a little information about it that might shed some light on what it means. First off: is it an insult?  Yes… and no.   The word hoser can be used as an insult or as a term of endearment; the variation hosehead , is certainly an insult.  It’s a mild insult, meaning something like jerk or idiot or loser .  Its origin is unclear, and there are several debatable etymologies of the word.  One claims that it comes from the days before the zamboni was invented, when the losing team of an outdoor ice hockey game would have to hose down the rink in or
Post a Comment
Read more

The Whoopie Cap

By
What can you do with your father’s old hats?  If you were born after, say, 1955, the answer is probably “Not much.”  Men were still wearing fedoras in the 1970s and 1980s, but by 1990, fashion had turned to the point where unless you were Indiana Jones, the hat didn’t look right.  Some blame Jack Kennedy for starting it all, strutting around perfectly coiffed and bare-headed in the early 1960s.  In 1953, Harry Truman, a haberdasher by trade, stepped out of office, and just eight years later we had a president who didn’t care for hats?  The times, they were a-changin’. If you set the WABAC machine to the 1920s or 1930s (when Indiana Jones was supposed to have lived), you would see the fedora was still very much in style.  Men just didn’t leave the house without a hat of some kind, and for what remained of the middle class, the fedora was the topper of choice.  But like any other piece of clothing, hats wear out, too.  When that happened, you’d just throw it away.  Though if there were
Post a Comment
Read more