The story of Abraham and Isaac is one of the most frustrating and fascinating stories in the bible. It’s frustrating because God gave Abraham an impossible task, and we’ll never know what would have happened if an angel had not interceded at the last minute. It’s fascinating for many, many reasons including the fact that artists nearly always depict the exact same moment of this complex story.
Abraham is the first common ancestor of the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims, and his stories in the bible are among the most fascinating and complex. In Genesis 21, the patriarch of three faiths finds himself caught between his wife, her maid, and their two sons. Abraham faced an unpleasant domestic dispute, and we are reminded daily of the dire consequences. What happened so long ago that we are still feeling the effects every day?
The less said about the story of Lot and his daughters the better because this is a super-creepy story. Of course, some painters managed to make this scene much creepier than it needed to be. So what’s the deal here? In Genesis 19, Lot and his daughters were saved by God from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and they ended up living in a cave. Lot’s daughters found a “brilliant” solution to the procreation problem since all of the eligible bachelors had been destroyed. They got their father drunk to preserve his ignorance, and they slept with him.
