The Others Of Sodom And Gomorrah

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                   

                             Men of Sodom

                  Lot and his Uncle Abraham splitting up

Sodom  is the Chief of the 5 cities of the Jordan Plain.  The others are Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, and Zoar.  Lot, the nephew of Abraham, and his family settled in Sodom but escaped its destruction caused by the wickedness of its inhabitants as told in Genesis 19.  The site of the 5 cities of the plain has been disputed.  Some scholars  have assigned them to the northern end of the Dead Sea, while tradition expressed by the location of Jebel Usdum (Mountain  of Sodom) and the vicinity of Zoar (where Lot and his daughters took refuge) suggests the South.  This latter region  was once dry land and might have been overwhelmed by a catastrophe within human memory.  The potash works in Israel has taken the name of Sodom at the southern end of the Dead Sea.  

Two beings, thought by Lot to be angels,  came one night to Lot at his house in Sodom, and evidently he thought enough of them to bow;  and he offered them shelter, but they refused, saying they'd rather stay in the square.  However, he urged them otherwise, and so they stayed and Lot made them a dinner and even baked matzos, and they ate.  Lot didn't seem to be surprised that they spoke his language.                                    

Meanwhile, the Sodomites converged upon the house the whole population came-which must not have numbered a lot in numbers happening today.  They had come, wanting to see 2 strangers.  They had come to get to "KNOW" them, that meant that they wanted to sodomize them, and Rashi understood this.  Rashi is the great biblical interpreter that I am related to.  To sodomize a man means to perform anal sex or anal penetration on him. Depending on the context, the phrase carries distinct legal, linguistic, and historical implications.  Legal Context: Historically, "sodomy laws" criminalized non-procreative sexual acts. In modern jurisprudence, if the act is committed by force, without consent, or with someone unable to consent, it is classified as a felony offense equivalent to rape.  I believe that the idea was to use the newcomer as a sport, while being attacked, the crowd would watch, sort of the start of such sport in Greece and Rome much later on.  These people were dying for a show to watch!!!

Lot knew of the danger he had put himself and his family in by taking in strangers in this neighborhood. He had learned much from Abraham so had remained a righteous person.   Why he continued living with such people who held this disgusting act as a welcome new neighbor is beyond me.  

Lot went outside, shutting the door behind him, and spoke to the crowd, telling them not to  act wickedly.  Lot had 2 daughters and offered them to the crowd in place of the angels.  The daughters were virgins and he told the crowd that they could do anything to them as they pleased, but they were to leave the angels alone as they were there under his shelter.  

The crowd shouted that Lot was simply a sojourn amongst them and was now acting like a Judge, making them angry. They pushed him and tried to break down the door.  Then they took Lot into his own house.  

The men of the crowd at the entrance suddenly were struck by blindness and they couldn't find the entrance.  The angels told Lot to get out of the city and take his relatives with him as they, the angels were about to destroy the place.  Hashem (G-d) had sent them to destroy it. 

Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law and the betrothed of his daughters and told them the message, but they thought he was kidding, acting like a jester, so when it was dawn, the Angels told Lot to get up with his wife and 2 daughters or you will be swept away because of the sin of the city.   We know the rest of the story.  Being told not to look at the destruction taking place, the wife looked and turned to stone.  It sounded like an A bomb had hit the city.  

The War Of The Kings With Lt. Col. Abram Shaping Our Destiny

 Nadene Goldfoot                                               

Starting off, Abram came from Ur of the Chaldees.  It has been excavated lately, and was found to be

quite a large city where they did believe in polytheism and human sacrifice, most likely since Abram accepted the command to sacrifice his beloved son.  Abram was born in about 1948 BCE/ the 2nd millennium BCE.  

                                          Dan (brown) is the most northern tribe of the 12.  Abram/

Abraham came to the aid of his nephew,  Lot when Lot and the residents of Sodom were captured by an alliance of four Mesopotamian kings. Learning of the kidnapping, Abraham gathered a private force of 318 trained men, ambushed the army near Dan, and successfully rescued his nephew and the recovered goods. (Genesis)  Here's how it happened:

The king of Sodom had gone with 4 other kings; of Gomorrah, Admah, Zebolim, and Bela-Zoar and fought them in battle in the Valley of Siddim against the king of 1. Chedorlaomer-king of Elam, 2.Tidal-king of Golim, 3. Amraphel-king of Shinar,  and 4. Arioch-king of Eliasar---4 kings against 5.   

The Valley of Siddim was full of bitumen wells.  The kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled and fell into them while the rest fled to a mountain.  They took all the wealth of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their food and they left.  And then they captured Lot and his possessions---Abram's nephew-----and they left;  for he was living in Sodom.  

A fugative came and told 1. Abram, the  Ivri-meaning the other side (Hebrew) who lived in the plains of Mamres,  2, the Amorite, 3, the brother of Eshcol and the brother of 4. Aner who were Abram's allies.   

When Abram heard that his kinsman was taken captive, he armed his disciples, men who were born in his house---318 men---and they pursued them as far as the state of Dan.  And he, with his servants deployed against them at night and struck them;  he pursued them as far as Hobah which is to the north of Damascus (today's Lebanon).  He brought back all the possessions.  He also brought back his kinsman, Lot, with his possessions, as well as the women and the people. A soldier commanding 318 men would typically hold the rank of Lieutenant Colonel (O-5). This size group of troops usually makes up a military unit called a battalion.  Abram had 318 men under him;  making him today's  Lieutenant Colonel, but not a general.    

The king of Sodom went out to meet him after his return from defeating Chedorlaomer and the kings that were with him, to the Valley of Shaveh which is the king's valley. 

 But Malchizek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine;  he was a priest of G-d, the Most High.  He blessed him saying, "Blessed is Abram of G-d, the Most High, Maker of heaven and earth, and blessed be G-d, the Most High, Who has delivered your foes into your hand."  and he gave him a 10th of everything.  

The king of Sodom said to Abram:  "give me the people and take the possessions for yourself." Abram said to the king of Sodom:  "I lift up my hand to Hashem, A G-d, the Most High, maker of heaven and earth, if so much as a thread to a shoestrap; or if I shall take from anything of yours!  So you shall not say, "It is I who made Abram rich.  Far from me!  only what the young men have eaten, and the share of the men who accompanied me:  Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre---they will take their portion."  

       Genesis 15:18-21  

Hashem said to Abram, "Know with certainty that your offspring shall be aliens in a land not their own---and they will serve them, and they will oppress them---400 years,   but also the nation that they will serve, I shall judge and afterwards they will leave with great wealth.  As for you: you shall come to your ancestors in peace;  you shall be buried in a good old age.  And the 4th generation shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite shall not yet be full until then.  

On that day Hashem (G-d) made a covenant with Abram:  "To your descendants have I given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates River:  the Kennite, the Kenizzite, and the Kadmonite;  the Hittite, the Perizzite, and the Rephaim;  the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Gingashite, and the Jebusite.  

 

Cowboys and Shepherds Battled In Middle East

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                

In the Genesis story, Jacob, also known as Israel, and his family, including their livestock (cattle and sheep), arrive in Egypt due to a famine in Canaan. Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt, asks about their occupation, and they identify themselves as shepherds. 

Pharaoh himself said to Joseph to tell his father Jacob to load up his

animals and go to Canaan.  Pharaoh gave him the best of the land

of Egypt and they will eat the fat of the land.  Take for yourselves from the land of Egypt wagons for your small children and for your wives;  transport your father and come;  for the best of all the land of Egypt---it is yours!  They took their livestock and their wealth which they had amassed in the land of Canaan and they came to Egypt--Jacob and all his offspring with him,  His sons and grandsons with him, his daughters and granddaughters and all his offspring he brought with him to Egypt;70

people in all went to Egypt.  

They are granted land in Goshen.  However, Pharaoh asks Jacob to watch   over his cattle as well, and Jacob agrees.  

The land of Goshen (Hebrew: אֶרֶץ גֹּשֶׁן, ʾEreṣ Gōšen) is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as the area in Egypt that was allotted to the Hebrews by the Pharaoh during the time of Joseph (Book of Genesis, Genesis 45:9–10). They dwelt in Goshen up until the time of the Exodus, when they left Egypt. It is believed to have been located in the eastern Nile Delta, lower Egypt; perhaps at or near Avaris, the seat of power of the Hyksos kings.

Avaris, identified with the modern site of Tell el-Dab'a in the Nile Delta, is often linked to the biblical city of Rameses. The Israelites are believed to have lived and worked in Rameses, and the biblical text mentions Rameses as a place where they were enslaved and later left during the Exodus. Some scholars believe Avaris, the Hyksos capital, could be the same as the biblical Rameses.  The open range, while vast, was still limited, and both cattle and sheep needed grazing land. 

        Did the Pharaoh not know what he was asking of Jacob?  Cattle and sheep cannot exist on the same land!   We know that in the USA today.  The "Sheep Wars" were a series of conflicts in the American West, particularly in states like Colorado, Wyoming, and Oregon, stemming from competition over limited grazing lands between cattle ranchers and sheep herders.      

These wars, which occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, saw violence ranging from threats and property damage to mass killings of sheep and, in some cases, even violence against herders.                      

Jacob was set up to fail and then the Pharaoh could take back his land.  Jacob had afew cattle, but not a herd at this point, nor did he ever being he was a shepherdwith sheep and goats.                         

Joseph said to Pharaoh that his father and brothers, their flocks, their cattle, and everything they owned had arrived. from the land of Canaan and were in Goshen.These cattle are behind a fence.  That's the only way.  Sheep eat the grass down to the roots.  They graze by nibbling on plants, often closer to the ground than cattle. Sheep are less selective than cattle and will eat various forbs, legumes, and grasses. They also tend to graze more actively in the morning and late afternoon.  Sheep will eat more of the weeds in a pasture than cattle and can be used, in some situations, to control noxious weeds. Goats, for the most part, prefer to browse on woody plants, where they eat the young leaves and stems.  

While cattle use their tongues to pull and tear, sheep use their teeth to nibble, grazing much closer and getting into parts of the pasture that cattle either ignore or can't reach. This can increase grass tillering and sward productivity – meaning animals will, long-term, gain more weight.

In the Bible, specifically in Genesis, the story of Abraham and Lot's separation is rooted in a disagreement between their shepherds, ultimately leading to the division of their families and resources. This conflict, a result of increased livestock and limited land, necessitates a parting of ways for the two families. Abraham was born

about 1948 BCE, 4,000 years ago.  

Fear of others can be a powerful source of unity. In Exodus 1,The next Pharaoh singles out the rapidly expanding Hebrew minority as an emerging threat. What Genesis describes as God’s faithfulness in blessing the Israelites through many descendants (Genesis 12:1-3; 15:1-6; 28:1-4; Exodus 1:7), Pharaoh describes as a terroristic threat that may endanger Egypt’s security and way of life. There is no hint in the biblical narrative that the Israelites are anything but good, faithful citizens of the empire. Yet the delusional Pharaoh imagines that the growing but still small Israelite minority in Egypt is more numerous and more powerful than we. He warns the Egyptians that in the event of war the Israelites might join our enemies and fight against us. Pharaoh’s responds by trying three different (but ultimately unsuccessful) strategies to stem the growth of the Israelite people: a) Exodus 1:11-14, Pharaoh enslaves the Israelites, b) Exodus 1:15-21, Pharaoh commands midwives to kill Hebrew boys at birth, and c) Exodus 1:22-2:10, Pharaoh commands all Egyptians to throw Hebrew boys into the Nile River.

Reference:

Tanakh, the Stone Edition (Old Testament)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_and_Lot%27s_conflict#:~:text=Abraham%20and%20Lot's%20conflict%20(Hebrew,a%20fight%20among%20their%20shepherds.

https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-21/commentary-on-exodus-18-22-21-10-3

Our DNA From Abraham, Ruth, Lot and the Moabites

 Nadene Goldfoot                                         

Abram, later called Abraham, was born in the city of Ur of the Chaldees, a Babylonian city,   near the Euphrates River and the Persian Gulf.  He was said to be related to the Moabites.  Ur has become very well excavated land  by Sir Leonard Woolley who found it had a highly-civilized nature of the city in Abraham's time.  

Ruth, a Moabite, married into his family line.  She had married the son of Naomi, a woman who was married to Elimelech, son of Nahshon, son of Amminadab, son of Ram or "Aram, "son of Hezron, son of Perez, son of Judah!  

                Ruth and Naomi gleaning in the fields to have food

The son of Naomi  was Mahlon.  She had another son named Chilion.  Mahlon, Chilion, Naomi and Ruth were living in Moab and Mahlon was killed. 

 Naomi decided to return to her land and Ruth insisted on accompanying her.  The two women cared for each other and really didn't want to part.  Naomi was in need of the help Ruth was giving her.  

They returned and eventually Naomi realized that Ruth was still young and could benefit from another marriage.  She had a cousin that was not married;  Boaz.  Naomi made a shidduch and Boaz married Ruth.

Boaz and Ruth had a son, Oved/Obed.  He married a lady and their son was Jesse.  Jesse married a daughter of Ithra and they had 8 children.                                        

 The 8th was David, who grew up to become David, King of Israel.  Here David's ancestor was a Moabite, people he wound up fighting against later in his life.  

Moab was a country in Southern Transjordan, and  that area was populated by Arabs; taken over by Prince Abdullah of Arabia who brought in his contingent of his own followers to live with him in his new land of Transjordan, renamed later to Jordan.  Today, Moab is part of southern Jordan.  The existence of the Kingdom of Moab is attested to by numerous archaeological findings, most notably the Mesha Stele, which describes the Moabite victory over an unnamed son of King Omri of Israel, an episode also noted in 2 Kings 3. The Moabite capital was Dibon. According to the Hebrew Bible, Moab was often in conflict with its Israelite neighbours to the west. (Amazing that the same thing has continued into this day and age.)

Rashi explains the word Mo'ab to mean "from the father", since ab in Hebrew and Arabic and the rest of the Semitic languages means "father". He writes that as a result of the immodesty of Moab's name, God did not command the Israelites to refrain from inflicting pain upon the Moabites in the manner in which he did with regard to the Ammonites. Fritz Hommel regards Moab as an abbreviation of Immo-ab =  Immoab="his mother is his father." Oh yes, The story is that Lot got drunk and fathered his 2 daughters' sons, Ammon and Moab. Their DNA should reflect this somehow but now? We're already carrying some DNA from Moabites, for sure.   

The Moabites first inhabited the rich highlands at the eastern side of the chasm of the Dead Sea, extending as far as Wadi Mujib to Wadi Hasa, from which country they expelled the Emim, the original inhabitants (Deuteronomy 2:11), but they themselves were afterward driven southward by warlike tribes of Amorites, who had crossed the river Jordan. These Amorites, described in the Bible as being ruled by King Sihon, confined the Moabites to the country south of the river Arnon, which formed their northern boundary (Numbers 21:13; Judges 11:18).

The Ammonites presented a serious problem to the Pharisees because many marriages between Israelite men and Ammonite (and Moabite) women had taken place in the days of Nehemiah. The men had married women of the various nations without conversion, which made the children not Jewish. So we have intermarried with both Arab lines.  

David's relatives thus were Arabs as well as Jews of today. Originally, the Moabites were kindred to the Israelites, so they  had shared genes from the same origin, and that origin was Lot, Abraham's nephew.  Both the Moabites and the Ammonites came from Lot, so were related. Lot's father was Haran, brother of Abraham.  

Haran, brother of Abram and father of Lot, lived and died at Ur of the Chaldees (Gen.11:26-31).  It was said to be a trading town of NW Mesopotamia, center of a moon cult. Assyrian inscriptions from this period mention a Habiru settlement in the vicinity which some scholars link with Terah's residence there.  Terah was Abraham and Haran's father.  

Of course, our family line goes WAY back in time.  Abraham was born in the 2nd millennium BCE, in about 1948 BCE.  That was about 3,971 years ago, or rounded out, more like 4,000 years ago.

I love the fact that this information comes to me through the Torah (5 Books of Moses who is said to have written it) which is also a part of the Tanakh (Bible).  The explanation of the family line of people, our Homo Sapiens,  is fantastic considering how far back it was created.  They saw that the male line was not only special socially, but guessed at its importance through DNA.  We can trace the male line through their Y haplogroup.  The same can be done with the female line, the Mt haplogroup, but I find it is a lot harder with us since often women's names were not written down.  

According to a 2010 study by Behar et al. titled "The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people", Palestinians tested clustered genetically close to Bedouins, Jordanians and Saudi Arabians which was described as "consistent with a common origin in the Arabian Peninsula".

 In the same year a study by Atzmon and Harry Ostrer concluded that the Palestinians were, together with Bedouins, Druze and southern European groups, the closest genetic neighbors to most Jewish populations.

There are about 4 generations every 100 years (1 generation=25 years).  There are 40 100's in the past 4,000 years from now to Abraham.  40 x 4 generations=160.  Arabs could be our 160th cousins;  you know, like 1st cousins; 2nd cousins, etc.  We go way back to have Lot as our common shared ancestor.  (hope I solved this correctly as my back is hurting and I can't sit here any longer).  

Reference:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Palestinians#:~:text=One%20DNA%20study%20by%20Nebel,in%20the%20seventh%20century%20AD%22.

Those Antagonistic Relatives, Ammonites and Moabites Could Be Our Relatives

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

 "G-d invited Moses up to Mount Nebo where He showed His beloved prophet the Promised Land before his death. Deuteronomy 34:4–5 records, “Then the Lord said to him, ‘This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when I said, “I will give it to your descendants.” I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it.’ And Moses the servant of the Lord died there in Moab, as the Lord had said.”

Jordan River runs from Mt. Hermon to the Dead Sea of about 87 miles directly but has to wind around for 200 miles. Tributaries from Transjordan are Rivers Yarmuk, Jabboak, Heshbon

Abraham had a nephew named Lot.  Lot traveled from Aram-Naharaim with his Uncle Abe to Canaan with him on his contingent.  Lot's father was Haran who was Abraham's brother, both sons of Terah of Ur of the Chaldees.  Each traveled with their own sheep and sheepherders to their new site for this was to be a permanent move.

The sheepherders had a quarrel over pasture-land and invading each other's choice spots.  They parted company with Lot settling in the city of Sodom.  This was a poor choice of people, as he was captured by 5 kings (like mayors of their towns) who had just attacked the country.  Abraham rescued Lot. He had all the sheepherders with him.  It was quite the escape, with Sodom on fire and Lot's wife looking back at it and turning into salt, quite a hot fire at that.  At a later  point, his daughters produced 2 sons Lot had sired when drunk, Ammon and Moab.  From them came the Ammonites and the Moabites.  

    1.   Ammonites, one of the Bull worshippers;   didn't listen to the lecture from Lot's Uncle Abraham about what  G-d was not.  

Ammonites were found in Transjordan and of course were Semitic, related to Abraham. Remember that this was in the days of human sacrificing.  

 They were known best  from the 13th to 18th centuries BCE, then declined, and were absorbed into Arab tribes. They kept attacking the Israelites after Israelites had occupied Canaan.  The Ammonites were defeated at the hands of Jephtah, the Israelite judge who lived in Gilead and King Saul.   Jephtah even defeated the Ephraimites, his cousins,  who  opposed his leadership. The Bible repeats the story  Jephtah said that before fighting the Ammonites, he vowed to sacrifice whatever came first from his home, should he return safely;  he was met by his daughter and,, with her consent, performed his vow.  (Judg: 11).  (I notice that she and Abraham's son, Isaac, also went along with being human sacrifices).  Back then, they may have taken that ritual to be the norm, hard to believe, though.

Abraham's DNA, I figure, would be the same as Moses and his brother, Aaron;  and Aaron had to be in today's DNA lingo, a J1 haplotype as they were from the tribe of Levi, one of the 12 tribes of Jacob.  Of course, the DNA does mutate somewhat through 4,000 years so would be carrying that knowledge, too.  All of the males born with Abraham as the origin should be of J1. J1 is known as the Cohen gene-meaning from the direct line of Aaron.  All other Levites may have an altered line of J1.   

They were changed with new titles from Israelites to Jews much later after Solomon's death in 920 BCE, to past 135 CE when the Romans killed Bar Kokhba who held Jerusalem for 3 years and then was killed.  Those remnants in Judah became known as Jews.

 Great question! The Hebrew Bible doesn’t have a whole lot to say about individual Moabite men, and those texts that do talk about Moabite men (like Num 22-24) don’t talk about them in relationship to Moabite women.

This is probably because the Moabites, who were Israel’s close neighbors, were primarily of concern to the Israelites when it came to war or Moab’s political alliances with Israel’s enemies or to intermarriage. So what Moabite men and women did amongst themselves wasn’t really important to the biblical authors. It only mattered when they interacted with the Israelites in some way.

The alleged sexual promiscuity of the Moabite women was primarily a concern to biblical authors who believed that these women would lead Israelite men into worshiping Moabite gods (see Num 25:1-5 and 1Kgs 11:1-8). The idea that the foreign woman is a dangerous temptress is a very common theme in the Bible; it is probably a literary device rather than a reflection of historical reality—that is, these are ancient “yo’ mama” slanders, not historical facts. The role of Moabite men in influencing Moabite women’s behavior doesn’t really come into the picture, because the stories aren’t about actual relationships and actual people. Yo, yea of little faith, our DNA might give us an idea through Mt haplotypes,, and remember, this was back in the days of human sacrificing.  Sex offenses, hmmm, a whole town was slaughtered because of a rape.    

   2. Moabites were living in Transjordan which is bounded by the Heshbon River in the North, and the  Zered River in  the South, the Jordan River and the Dead Sea to the West, and the Syrian Desert on the East.                                        

 They were the brothers of the Ammonites.  They spoke a biblical Hebrew.  Moabites took the land from the Rephaim (Emim), an  even more ancient people in Transjordania in the time of Abraham who apparently settled near Jerusalem in the "Valley of Rephaim."                            

During the 40 years of the Exodus (c.1579-1500 BCE) part of the Moab land came under the rule of the Amorite monarch, Sihon.  After his defeat by the Israelites, it was occupied by the Israelites, giving all three reason to fight over it.  Moabites originally were divided into family tribes, then united into a single kingdom, and it was their 2nd ruler, King Balak who summoned Balaam (Heathen prophet who was divinely inspired) to curse the Israelites.   Of course, the curse was turned into a blessing on the Israelites. 

                                                Baal Peor
 It was on Balaam's advise that the Midianites invited the Israelites to worship Baal Peor and Balaam was killed by the Israelites on the battlefield.  Balaam had the characteristics of a Mesopotamian priest and soothsayer but also appears as a faithful servant of G-d.  The rabbis listed him as one of the 7 prophets who spoke to heathen nations.  the biblical report of Balaam's reproof by his ass (donkey) is interpreted by Maimonides as a vision.  

Resource:

The new Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.bibleodyssey.org/articles/moabite-men/