An atheist riffs on the Bible (New International Version): Genesis 12

Regular paragraphs are the verses as written in the Bible.
Indented italicized paragraphs feature my comments on the previous paragraph.
Note that I might appear especially nitpicky and I know that some of these verses are not taken literally by everybody; I'm just having some fun basically.
Why the New International Version or NIV? Why not? The Bible has already been translated countless times before and I can't read or speak the original languages in which it was written, which is why it is stupid in the first place to assume that a divine being would communicate with us through a book.

New International Version

Genesis 12

The Call of Abram

¹ The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.

Is this a sect or what?

² "I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.

"I will make you into a great nation": Hey wait, I'm not that big!

³ I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you."

So basically, God is like my mother. She would always protect me from bullies at school. This became embarrassing at an advanced age though.

⁴ So Abram left, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran. ⁵ He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.

Oh yeah, right! I had nearly forgotten that Abram is the one with the "barren" wife Sarai lol. Great plan to start a new nation!

⁶ Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. ⁷ The LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring ^[a] I will give this land." So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.

"The LORD appeared to Abram and said, 'To your offspring I will give this land.'": wow I like God suddenly. He's this incredibly ironic bastard and I do like my movie villains once in a while.

⁸ From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD. ⁹ Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev.

"There he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD.": whatever that accomplished...

Abram in Egypt

¹⁰ Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. ¹¹ As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, "I know what a beautiful woman you are. ¹² When the Egyptians see you, they will say, 'This is his wife.' Then they will kill me but will let you live. ¹³ Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you."

"'I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, 'This is his wife.' Then they will kill me but will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.': incredibly confused now! So the Egyptians would kill this guy just to get his wife because she's so beautiful, but I thought he had protection from God or something (and she should be pretty old herself, like 80 years old or something). Also, saying that she's her sister doesn't mean she isn't his wife; people have been fucking between siblings for a while now in this book! Furthermore, if I understand correctly, God didn't keep his promise of making Abram's nation so great so far, with the famine and all. Because of this famine, Abram, the good man I guess, is ready to go to Egypt and give his wife to Pharaoh if you read between the lines. How can people adapt this book to our 2010 world? It has nearly nothing to do with our world and is closed in a barbaric era.

¹⁴ When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that she was a very beautiful woman. ¹⁵ And when Pharaoh's officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. ¹⁶ He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, menservants and maidservants, and camels.

Like I said, Abram is now Sarai's pimp. He's making money off of her sleeping with men she doesn't necessarily love. I'm not against sex with strangers myself (for other people since I'm mostly asexual), but you have to like doing it.

¹⁷ But the LORD inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram's wife Sarai. ¹⁸ So Pharaoh summoned Abram. "What have you done to me?" he said. "Why didn't you tell me she was your wife? ¹⁹ Why did you say, 'She is my sister,' so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!" ²⁰ Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had.

Lol, Sarai had venereal diseases! Maybe that's why she's supposedly barren! But anyway, Pharaoh is right. Abram lied to him and God isn't supposed to like lies from what I heard, though he lies plenty of times himself (right in the first few chapters of the first book of the Bible in fact). And now, because "God" sent diseases to Pharaoh, Abram is forced to go back to his "great nation" and live through a famine. Why didn't God just help him or tell him what to do instead of messing everything up?

Footnotes:

a. Genesis 12:7 Or seed