Genesis - Chapter 19 { LISTEN ONLY THIS CHAPTER - PLAY HERE }
1 When the two angels reached Sodom in the evening, Lot was sitting at the gate of Sodom. As soon as Lot saw them, he stood up to greet them, and bowed to the ground.
2 'My lords,' he said, 'please come down to your servant's house to stay the night and wash your feet. Then you can make an early start on your journey.' 'No,' they said, 'we shall spend the night in the square.'
3 But he pressed them so much that they went home with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking unleavened bread, and they had supper.
4 They had not gone to bed when the house was surrounded by the townspeople, the men of Sodom both young and old, all the people without exception.
5 Calling out to Lot they said, 'Where are the men who came to you tonight? Send them out to us so that we can have intercourse with them.'
6 Lot came out to them at the door and, having shut the door behind him,
7 said, 'Please, brothers, do not be wicked.
8 Look, I have two daughters who are virgins. I am ready to send them out to you, for you to treat as you please, but do nothing to these men since they are now under the protection of my roof.'
9 But they retorted, 'Stand back! This fellow came here as a foreigner, and now he wants to play the judge. Now we shall treat you worse than them.' Then they forced Lot back and moved forward to break down the door.
10 But the men reached out, pulled Lot back into the house with them, and shut the door.
11 And they dazzled those who were at the door of the house, one and all, with a blinding light, so that they could not find the doorway.
12 The men said to Lot, 'Have you anyone else here? Your sons, your daughters and all your people in the city, take them away,
13 for we are about to destroy this place, since the outcry to Yahweh against those in it has grown so loud that Yahweh has sent us to destroy it.'
14 So Lot went off and spoke to his future sons-in-law who were to marry his daughters. 'On your feet!' he said, 'Leave this place, for Yahweh is about to destroy the city.' But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.
15 When dawn broke the angels urged Lot on, 'To your feet! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away in the punishment of the city.'
16 And as he hesitated, the men seized his hand and the hands of his wife and his two daughters -- Yahweh being merciful to him -- and led him out and left him outside the city.
17 When they had brought him outside, he was told, 'Flee for your life. Do not look behind you or stop anywhere on the plain. Flee to the hills or you will be swept away.'
18 'Oh no, my lord!' Lot said to them,
19 'You have already been very good to your servant and shown me even greater love by saving my life, but I cannot flee to the hills, or disaster will overtake me and I shall die.
20 That town over there is near enough to flee to, and is small. Let me flee there-after all it is only a small place -- and so survive.'
21 He replied, 'I grant you this favour too, and will not overthrow the town you speak of.
22 Hurry, flee to that one, for I cannot do anything until you reach it.' That is why the town is named Zoar.
23 The sun rose over the horizon just as Lot was entering Zoar.
24 Then Yahweh rained down on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire of his own sending.
25 He overthrew those cities and the whole plain, with all the people living in the cities and everything that grew there.
26 But Lot's wife looked back, and was turned into a pillar of salt.
27 Next morning, Abraham hurried to the place where he had stood before Yahweh,
28 and looking towards Sodom and Gomorrah and the whole area of the plain, he saw the smoke rising from the ground like smoke from a furnace.
29 Thus it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he did not forget Abraham and he rescued Lot from the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities where Lot was living.
30 After leaving Zoar Lot settled in the hill country with his two daughters, for he dared not stay at Zoar. He lived in a cave, he and his two daughters.
31 The elder said to the younger, 'Our father is an old man, and there is no one here to marry us in the normal way of the world.
32 Come on, let us ply our father with wine and sleep with him. In this way we can preserve the race by our father.'
33 That night they made their father drunk, and the elder slept with her father though he was unaware of her coming to bed or of her leaving.
34 The next day the elder said to the younger, 'Last night, I was the one who slept with our father. Let us make him drunk again tonight, and you go and sleep with him. In this way we can preserve the race by our father.'
35 They made their father drunk that night too, and the younger went and slept with him, though he was unaware of her coming to bed or of her leaving.
36 Both Lot's daughters thus became pregnant by their father.
37 The elder gave birth to a son whom she named Moab; and he is the ancestor of the Moabites of our own times.
38 The younger also gave birth to a son whom she named Ben-Ammi; and he is the ancestor of the Bene-Ammon of our own times.
Genesis - Chapter 20 { LISTEN ONLY THIS CHAPTER - PLAY HERE }
1 Abraham left there for the region of the Negeb, and settled between Kadesh and Shur. While staying in Gerar,
2 Abraham said of his wife Sarah, 'She is my sister,' and Abimelech the king of Gerar had Sarah brought to him.
3 But God visited Abimelech in a dream one night. 'You are to die,' he told him, 'because of the woman you have taken, for she is a married woman.'
4 Abimelech, however, had not gone near her; so he said, 'Lord, would you kill someone even if he is upright?
5 Did he not tell me himself, "She is my sister"? And she herself said, "He is my brother." I did this with a clear conscience and clean hands.'
6 'Yes, I know,' God replied in the dream, 'that you did this with a clear conscience and I myself prevented you from sinning against me. That was why I did not let you touch her.
7 Now send the man's wife back; for he is a prophet and can intercede on your behalf for your life. But understand that if you do not send her back, this means death for you and all yours.'
8 Early next morning, Abimelech summoned his full court and told them the whole story, at which the people were very much afraid.
9 Then summoning Abraham, Abimelech said to him, 'What have you done to us? What wrong have I done you, for you to bring such guilt on me and on my kingdom? You had no right to treat me like this.'
10 Abimelech then said to Abraham, 'What possessed you to do such a thing?'
11 'Because', Abraham replied, 'I thought there would be no fear of God here and that I should be killed for the sake of my wife.
12 Anyway, she really is my sister, my father's daughter though not my mother's, besides being my wife.
13 So when God made me wander far from my father's home I said to her, "There is an act of love you can do me: everywhere we go, say of me that I am your brother." '
14 Abimelech took sheep, cattle, men and women slaves, and presented them to Abraham, and gave him back his wife Sarah.
15 And Abimelech said, 'Look, my land is open to you. Settle wherever you please.'
16 To Sarah he said, 'Look, I am giving your brother a thousand pieces of silver. This will allay suspicions about you, as far as all the people round you are concerned; you have been completely vindicated.'
17 Abraham then interceded with God, and God healed Abimelech, his wife and his slave-girls, so that they could have children,
18 for Yahweh had made all the women of Abimelech's household barren on account of Sarah, Abraham's wife.
Genesis - Chapter 21 { LISTEN ONLY THIS CHAPTER - PLAY HERE }
1 Yahweh treated Sarah as he had said, and did what he had promised her.
2 Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time God had promised.
3 Abraham named the son born to him Isaac, the son to whom Sarah had given birth.
4 Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him.
5 Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
6 Sarah said: God has given me cause to laugh! All who hear about this will laugh with me!
7 She added: Whoever would have told Abraham that Sarah would nurse children! Yet I have borne a son in his old age.
8 The child grew and was weaned, and Abraham gave a great banquet on the day Isaac was weaned.
9 Now Sarah watched the son that Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac.
10 'Drive away that slave-girl and her son,' she said to Abraham, 'this slave-girl's son is not to share the inheritance with my son Isaac.'
11 This greatly distressed Abraham, because the slave-girl's child too was his son,
12 but God said to him, 'Do not distress yourself on account of the boy and your slave-girl. Do whatever Sarah says, for Isaac is the one through whom your name will be carried on.
13 But the slave-girl's son I shall also make into a great nation, for he too is your child.'
14 Early next morning, Abraham took some bread and a skin of water and, giving them to Hagar, put the child on her shoulder and sent her away. She wandered off into the desert of Beersheba.
15 When the skin of water was finished she abandoned the child under a bush.
16 Then she went and sat down at a distance, about a bowshot away, thinking, 'I cannot bear to see the child die.' Sitting at a distance, she began to sob.
17 God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven. 'What is wrong, Hagar?' he asked. 'Do not be afraid, for God has heard the boy's cry in his plight.
18 Go and pick the boy up and hold him safe, for I shall make him into a great nation.'
19 Then God opened Hagar's eyes and she saw a well, so she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.
20 God was with the boy. He grew up and made his home in the desert, and he became an archer.
21 He made his home in the desert of Paran, and his mother got him a wife from Egypt.
22 About then, Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, said to Abraham, 'Since God is with you in everything you do,
23 swear to me by God, here and now, that you will not act treacherously towards me or my kith and kin, but behave with the same faithful love to me and the land of which you are a guest as I have behaved to you.'
24 'Yes,' Abraham replied, 'I swear it.'
25 Abraham then reproached Abimelech about a well that Abimelech's servants had seized.
26 'I do not know who has done this,' Abimelech said. 'You yourself have never mentioned it to me and, for myself, I heard nothing of it till today.'
27 Abraham then took sheep and cattle and presented them to Abimelech, and the two of them made a covenant.
28 Abraham put seven lambs of the flock on one side.
29 'Why have you put these seven lambs on one side?' Abimelech asked Abraham.
30 He replied, 'You must accept these seven lambs from me as evidence that I have dug this well.'
31 This was why the place was called Beersheba: because there the two of them swore an oath.
32 After they had made a covenant at Beersheba, Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, left and went back to Philistine territory.
33 And Abraham planted a tamarisk at Beersheba and there he invoked the name of Yahweh.
34 Abraham stayed for a long while in Philistine territory.
No comments:
Post a Comment