Before anything else burned to the ground, Abraham decided to clear out of Mamre.  He headed for the Negev Desert, because how’s anyone going to burn down a desert?  Following some bad maps, he headed to a spot between Kadesh and Shur, a nice little community called Gerar.  Still, Abraham didn’t much trust the locals, and felt safer telling them that Sarah was his sister and not his wife.  King Abimelech of Gerar asked to have Sarah brought to him, because kings can do that with unmarried women, so this little white lie of Abraham’s was going to lead to trouble, even though no one really understood why he’d feel the need to lie about this in the first place.  Yahweh turned up in Abimelech’s dream some time after this and told him, “You’re going to die, ‘cause that new piece of chattal you took is a married woman.  Big mistake!”  Abimelech didn’t think this was fair, because he hadn’t yet laid a hand on her.  “Lord, what’s the deal?  Why would You kill someone for something he didn’t

We all know the ominous expression “the writing on the wall”.  Its meaning is clear, even if we don’t know its origin.  The origin of the expression is old, rooted in a mystical story that reaches back over more than two millennia.  If you’re interested, keep reading as I babble on. The expression comes from a story from the Bible, in the Book of Daniel, chapters 5-6.  This is the famous Feast of Belshazzar.  Belshazzar was king of a people the Bible calls the Chaldeans, but who are better known as the Babylonians.  He was a descendant of Nebuchadnezzar, one of Babylon’s (or Chaldea’s, if you prefer,) greatest kings.  In the story, Belshazzar is giving a great feast for about a thousand nobles, all of whom have gathered to eat, drink and be merry.  The party really gets underway when they bring out the good goblets, the gold and silver ones that had been stolen from the temple of God in Jerusalem.  Once they started into the wine, they commenced with worshiping idols, which i