Genesis 18 Revisited
And, so, on the fourth Thursday of November, Sarah went over the dinner menu one more time. The turkey roasted in the oven. The mashed potatoes, stuffing, and seared green beans waited patiently in the refrigerator, ready to be reheated after the turkey came out. Notes of cloves and orange peel wafted through the kitchen as the cranberry sauce simmered on the stove. On the counter sat a green salad, a fruit salad, two fresh loaves of sourdough bread, and three pies: pumpkin, chocolate cream, and lemon meringue. Her stepson, Ishmael, was at the liquor shop, purchasing the requisite alcohol products, which meant that all she had left to do was add the turkey drippings to the gravy and set the table.
And it came to pass that the front door opened, letting in a blast of cold air, and slammed shut announcing the arrival of her husband Abraham.
“God’s coming for Thanksgiving,” he said. “I ran into him at the hardware store.”
“What?” Sarah asked, mentally reconfiguring the guest list. Herself, Abraham, Ishmael, his mother Hagar, Lot’s family and his in-laws…and now, apparently, the Lord of Hostesses.
“Yeah, and three angels,” Abraham added. “I couldn’t not invite him, you know.”
“So, you’re telling me,” Sarah inquired, “that I’m supposed to feed thirteen people with a ten-pound turkey?”
Abraham pondered that, “Maybe the angels are vegetarian.”
Abraham told God that dinner would be ready at two. At ten ’til, Sarah surveyed the table, checking that the number of chairs matched the number of place settings and that the placemats were strategically arranged to cover the burn marks on the table.
“Remember, Abraham, no politics or religion during the meal,” she told him.
“Sarah, we’re feeding the Lord and His angels,” Abraham said. “The only way we could avoid talking about religion is if we drink them all under the table before we’re done eating the salad.”
“That sounds like a perfectly fine plan to me,” Sarah said.
They did not drink the Lord and His angels under the table, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Ishmael laid the table with three bottles of champagne, one of orange juice, and left a beer cooler on the floor in the corner. The meal began with a toast, followed by the requisite recitation of thankfulness, in which Lot’s eldest son declared “family and friends” and was promptly castigated by the other diners for listing two things he was thankful for instead of one, which meant they would have to think harder for their own thanks, to which Lot’s son said that surely they had more things than that to be thankful for, at which point Hagar pointed out that family and friends were gimmes anyway, and really, can’t we be a little introspective once a year?
After that there was less a toast than a gulping. As usual, the biscuits were gone before everyone got one and the green beans were hardly touched. They negotiated the fate of the leftover turkey. A tithe of everything belongs to the Lord, after all. Then again, eat the tithe in the presence of your Lord. But you just did that, that was dinner, and the angels have a long road to travel and they’ll need some turkey sandwiches to bring with them, Ishmael, so go get the aluminum foil.
So it was that everyone ate well and was satisfied. Full from dinner, the family and guests allowed their stomachs to settle before partaking of pumpkin pie with fresh whipped cream, as was tradition in the antediluvian era. This interlude required the women to do the dishes while the men settled in for a leisurely game of Texas Hold ‘Em.
“I’ve been hearing rumors,” God said, looking at Abraham as one of the angels dealt the cards, “of sin in the next two towns over.”
“Oh, yeah. Lots of sin around there. Great margaritas,” Ishmael chimed in. The assembled Chosen People gave him a collective death glare.
“I’m headed over there to smite them,” the Lord continued.
“Well, that’s one way to celebrate Black Friday,” Ishmael said, “Can’t imagine you’ll find cheaper discounts than when the proprietors are all in hell.”
No one laughed. In the silence, Abraham satdrinking his third mimosa, while Lot’s wife wondered why, every year, they were short a bottle of champagne.
“I thought you were the God of the righteous,” Abraham said finally, “That what you call righteous?”
“Of course,” said the Lord, “I’ll visit the cities first to make sure the denizens are truly sinful. I’m not going to destroy them on a whim.”
“So, you’ll raze two cities to the ground because their people don’t all behave well?” Abraham asked. He took a casual glance at his hand and raised his bet.
“More or less,” God said.
“And if fifty Sodomites lead just and righteous lives?” Abraham asked, arching an eyebrow, “You’ll still burn the whole city? Punish the innocent for the sins of the guilty?”
“No,” God conceded, “If I find fifty, I won’t destroy the city.”
And, so, it was in the days of Abraham that some men were conservative gamblers, who quit when they were ahead and had the sense not to push omnipotent opponents to their limits. And some men bet against God for the sake of humanity. For not only the sparing of the virtuous, but also the absolution of the guilty on behalf of the virtuous. For innocence by association.
“And if you find five less than that?” Abraham asked.
God was a reasonable man. Reasonable deity; whatever. He checked, “For forty-five I will not destroy the city,” he said.
Abraham raised the bet to forty innocent lives. Thirty. Twenty. And, finally, for ten.
And God bluffed.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Abraham,” the Lord said, “Enough with all the goddamned questions. I’m the Lord, I’m in charge, and you need to go back to tending your sheep, or whatever the hell it is you do around here. I’ve got two cities to burn to the ground, and you don’t get a damn thing to say about it.”
At least, that’s what God would have said if He were a better poker player. But the Lord is more of a blackjack guy, so, this is what happened:
“What if you find ten decent people in the cities?” Abraham asked. “Will you not leave the cities be on their account?”
And God answered,”For the sake of ten I will not destroy them.”
And God folded.
Maggie Libby is an undergraduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she studies Civil and Environmental Engineering and Literature. She is currently taking a pandemic-inspired leave of absence to work, surf, and write in her hometown of Corpus Christi, Texas. Her work has previously been published in Rune and is forthcoming in plain china.
