Genesis - The Story of a Nomadic Tribe that Lived in Fear

Abraham moved with his dad into a major city called Ur.  When his father died, God told Abraham to continue to move on to a land He would show him.  When Abraham came into the land God promised him, it was filled with people and was going through drought; in other words, it didn't look like much of a "promised land".  Because the land was going through drought, he moved on to Egypt where he passed his wife off as his sister (remember, she was his half sister), because she was beautiful and he was afraid the people there would kill him and steal his wife.  Abraham thought it was better for someone to just go ahead and have her, pay Abraham dowry and he could move on with his life.  See Genesis 20.

His fears were not unfounded.  Although her beauty attracted the most powerful in Egypt and Canaan, his judgment of the Egyptians' morality and his fear of outsiders were not based in reality.

Eventually, Abraham moved back to his promised land and wandered around the entire area, as a Nomad, which means he didn't settle down.

Nomads didn't plant because they were too much on the move to plant.  Because Abraham was a Nomad he and his group could not settle down long enough to own land and to plant in it, so they were shepherds who wandered from place to place, making a living with their flocks by trading and selling in whatever area they happened to be in. 

Genesis provides us with a partial inside look into his nomadic life and his relationships with people outside of his clan.

Xenophobia (Fear of the outsider)

Abraham feared and distrusted people outside of his clan. In other words, he probably felt discomfort everywhere he went.  He built trading relationships with the people in the country, but we never see him building up any solid relationships outside of his own group or his own family.

Genesis give two examples of Abraham passing his wife off as his sister because of his fears of those with whom he came into contact.   Abraham continued with this practice even after Egyptian rulers rebuked him for his immoral behavior.  After God protected Sarah from becoming another man's wife, the leaders of Egypt scolded Abraham who responded by telling them that he was afraid of them and assumed they would treat him with violence.

This episode shows us that along with his fear of outsiders, Abraham believed that people outside of his clan (or clans related to him, such as his brother's) were immoral.  In reality, the people outside of his clan (in both Egypt and in Gerar) were more moral and rebuked Abraham and his scam, because they felt like Abraham set them up for immoral disaster.

Fear of the outsider presupposes the belief that the outsider is capable of evil far worse than the insider.  And this fear can make the insider far more evil than the outsider...all in the name of protection. 

On the side, Egyptians despised shepherds.  We learn this from Joseph's discussion with his brothers when they came to Egypt.  Joseph lived many years after Abraham, but Egypt had not changed all that much in those years.

For years Rabbis wondered why God called Abraham to become the father of many nations and the father of Israel.  Some assumed it was because of something good that was in him, a good that we could see later in his life - some good that set him apart from the rest of the world.  But this is not born out in Genesis.  Through Abraham, we learn that God chose on the basis of His own purposes, and those choices were not made because of some goodness that we have done or are capable of doing.  God chose Abraham for reasons we will never know.

Abraham's son Isaac continued the same practice that his father did with his own wife.  I am convinced that Isaac only did this to copy his father.  It was a practice that Isaac saw in his father Abraham and Isaac continued doing the same, not necessarily because of fear, but because dad did it.

Dinah Ventures Out

One example from Genesis that we do see of anyone bonding with the outside community is when Abraham's granddaughter (Dinah) hung out with girls from a local city. One of their friends was a man (a prince) from the same city. He had sex with Dinah and that didn't go well with Dinah's brothers. 

There seems to be some discussion about Dinah's relationship with this young man.  While some English Bibles tell us that Dinah was raped, the Hebrew does not tell us that it was in fact rape.  It  is very possible that Dinah willingly bonded with a man who was outside of the clan, and the brothers were outraged that someone outside of the group was making inroads into the clan.  So the brothers schemed to kill every man in that city. 

Why did they slaughter the men in that city? 

Whether she was raped or whether she willingly gave in, she was dishonored in her own group, among her brothers.  Remember, that the Law of Moses commanded that if a man raped a woman, if she was single, he must marry that woman to protect her from dishonor.  In other words, dishonor was worse than rape, and even though rape dishonored a woman, consensual sex dishonored her even more.

The brothers were left with two options.  They could have let the prince and his city blend with the clan - thus saving their sister from dishonor, or they could take vengeance.  They decided to take vengeance, leaving no inroads into the clan or for the clan to melt into the local population.  Vengeance also may have saved their sister from dishonor, because her suiter was killed.

For 3 generations, Dinah was the only one mentioned who broke out of the clan and actually made friends with outsiders.  The consequence, however, was disaster for the friends she made, and caused her father Jacob to be more afraid of the people outside of the clan.  After the slaughter, Jacob feared that the surrounding cities would take vengeance on him and on his clan.  But the opposite happened.  The outsiders feared him and his clan more.

Esau

Another example of someone who bonded with outsiders was Esau who married to local Hittite women.  After he was married, he found out that his mother didn't like his wives, and that she wanted his brother to marry a girl from another nomadic clan headed up by her brother.  Trying to please his parents, Esau married a cousin from still another clan headed up by his father's relative.  The story of Esau gives us a window into the world as seen by a nomadic tribe.

CONCLUSIONS

Abraham and his family are normal human beings with normal fears.  They were no worse than the rest of the world or any other group who act and react in fear and in the need to survive. 

Xenophobia is an interesting phenomena, because while we fear other people and other groups, judging them to be less moral, in reality, our own xenophobia creates its own violence and lack of morals that can outweigh that of the outsider.  I often think of the illustration that the most vicious animal or bird is the one protecting her family.  Self protection can be and has been an instigator of many evils.  Fear of the outsider feeds an unrealistic need to protect when there is no need. 

This nomadic tribe struggled to keep the outside from coming in and from its own group melting into the outside world.  They distrusted the outsiders they did business with and they feared the people who lived in the big cities that gave them shelter from time to time.