Bible Study, Part 13

Creation of Light (אוֹר)
By Gustave Doré

Genesis, Chapter 13 |
Sunday – September 20, 2026

Due to some ongoing issues that have inadvertently affected my mental faculties, I am currently sluggish and generally feble. Because of this, I am likely to underperform while writing this post, which is just as well, as I am going to cover a short chapter in this post. Although, just because a chapter is short, this alone does not mean that the chapter is of less use or importance. This is of course going to be the 13th post in this series and the 13th chapter of Genesis (בְּרֵאשִׁית) in the Old Testament, the Tanakh (תָּנָ״ךְ), and more specifically the Torah (תּוֹרָה). Again, I am somewhat groggy today so bear with me.

    As usual, I should make some initial statements about this series and about my rules in this series, but I have decided that if you wish to know more about all that, you may just read any other post in this series. Here I will provide two links to two of my previous posts: part 1 and part 2; these should provide most information that you may need to read this post. If you choose to not read previous parts of this series, then this is on you, but be aware that each post in this series makes up a link in a chain, and without each link the chain would become weaker and less effective. If you do not choose to read each previous post, then you will miss out on a lot of context, but again I cannot control your decisions, so the risk is yours to take.

    Now, I suppose that I should still make some statements here initially. Yes, I do have some rules regarding quotation, that is how I approach the Bible and the parts of the Bible that I end up including in these posts, and for the most part that would only concern me substituting certain words and sometimes not quoting an entire chapter fully. For instance I have strict policy of always substituting the title "God" and "The Lord" for Yahweh (יהוה), because I hold that the Tanakh must be understood as a sacred covenant between Yahweh and the Jewish people, and it is only then quite right to refer to God with his name, Yahweh, as this was always the Judaic praxis, and yes to a certain extend this is and has always been a disputed point, but this is my blog and my series, and if you do not like it, then you can go somewhere else, the choice is yours.* I will indicate this substitution with the usage of two brackets, [Yahweh], and this is necessary in particular since I am still relying on a certain publication of the Bible that has forced my hand here, but I will return to this point later. I may also use three dots inside two brackets, [...], in order to indicate that I am not including some verses in my quotations, and this happens most of the time because some verses simply are not important enough for me to include. It is however my policy to attempt to include as much context as possible in these posts, but sometimes it is simply not useful or helpful to include all verses in my quotations. I also will sometimes, though not always, substitute the neologism "humankind" for "mankind", but this is not something that I will do every time, because neither term "mankind" or "humankind" have any connection to the Bible, at least not any direct connection, and instead I suppose that I could always opt for a Hebrew term. I simply do not appreciate the term humankind, but again there are no theological or doctrinal reasons for me to omit this term whenever it is being used in some publication of the Bible.

    On the point of different publications of the Bible: I am relying here on a certain publication of the Bible, namely the Catholic New Revised Standard (NRSV-CE), because I believe that this version of the Bible is the easiest to follow in English without all sorts of counter spiritual insertions made by men of a political and material mind, that is men who only rely on the Bible in order to make some material point, often in their own defence, read "The Problem with Protestantism".† Language and intention matter here, and the NRSV-CE does still hold a certain hierarchical weight compared with the complete and total weightlessness of most protestant publications of the Bible; they simply lack spiritual authority. Without spiritual authority, it would seem that the Bible may as well belong to any fantasy section of novels you wish, but it does not belong in the same section as sacred and divine scripture and the most monstrous example of this is perhaps the so-called Jefferson Bible, but I digress.

    Yet again, before we can proceed with the study at hand: if you have complaints about anything that I have written and asserted, then you are free to post them in the comment section below this post. I have received a few complaints so far on the official email attached to this page (etherealinsight@protonmail.com), but my policy is to only handle complaints in the comment section, as I have largely reserved other channels of communication for discussions of a more private nature, such as readers sending forward letters containing privileged information, etc. What this means is that I am unlikely to respond to an email complaint as I simply do not have time to handle them, nor do I have time to connect each complaint to each relevant post; simply using the comment section is the best and most straightforward option. This is not a hard rule, but it is a recommendation if you actually want me to respond; I also call on you to refrain from using offensive words in your comments. I should also mention again, that it is my intention of creating a separate page that will take care of all of the possible confusions and other important information to be considered in this study; that page is still not finished, and when it is finished I will simply link each post to that page in order that can skip having to reiterate all of this information in each of these posts, as I mentioned above.

✠ Abram and Lot Separate ✠
Genesis 13:1 – 7:

So Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife, and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the Negeb. Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold. He journeyed on by stages from the Negeb as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, to the place where he had made an altar at the first; and there Abram called on the name of [Yahweh]. Now Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, so that the land could not support both of them living together; for their possessions were so great that they could not live together, and there was strife between the herders of Abram’s livestock and the herders of Lot’s livestock. At that time the Canaanites and the Perizzites lived in the land.

Persian depiction
of Lūṭ (לוֹט)

Resources, strife and schism, a story as old as time, read "Genesis, Chapter 4", and here between Abram (אַבְרָם) and Lot (לוֹט), uncle and nephew, and perhaps we would be prudent in assuming nothing else in terms of human relations, and especially not today, 4000 years later, but the point of these interactions in the Bible is that the seed of politics had already been planted in the original sin, read "Genesis, Chapter 2", for behind every politician, in the modern world, behind every ideologue, behind every will to power, lies deceit and manipulation, the words of the serpent. I suppose as well, that this passage should stand as a warning, a warning from the distant past, about the danger of utopia, for here we are dealing with too much of the good, too much of the material, and the result is strife, not community, not brotherhood and harambe, not everlasting peace and optimism, read "Why Not Utopia?". Now, some would argue that the examples and the stories set in the Bible serve to tell us something about the human condition, and if anything is worthwhile taking away from the Bible, indeed taking away from this story, it must be that whatever happens today, there is always, for most people and for most men, another day, a new Monday, and this was certainly the case for Abram, later Abraham (אַבְרָהָם) as we know him, and if this was the case for Arbram, then you should at the very least attempt to reconsider your own position in life, for indeed, life under the sun is not a joke, but from a material point of view, you have far more than any previous generation ever could dream of, they you feel pity in your heart above all for yourself.

    Again I ask, what can be stated about the memory of Abraham, the memory of Abram? Are we better off because of suffering or despite suffering? This is perhaps one of the most enduring questions, and one that can be stated with decent confidence is quite outside the scope of materialism. Either we ourselves grow into cheats and charletains, thieves and criminals, or we simply reject evil, we object, but more on this at another time.

Genesis 13:8 – 13:

Then Abram said to Lot, 'Let there be no strife between you and me, and between your herders and my herders; for we are kindred. Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left.' Lot looked about him, and saw that the plain of the Jordan was well watered everywhere like the garden of [Yahweh], like the land of Egypt, in the direction of Zoar; this was before [Yahweh] had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. So Lot chose for himself all the plain of the Jordan, and Lot journeyed eastward; thus they separated from each other. Abram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled among the cities of the Plain and moved his tent as far as Sodom. Now the people of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against [Yahweh].

Here we will encounter the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (סְדֹם עֲמֹרָה), something that I will cover in greater detail later, and this will mark a turning point in the Bible, it will showcase that man must heel to the will of God or he will face the wrath, for justice, read "Justice", true justice, calls for severe and radical action, in order to restore the balance of the cosmological order, and no man stands above that law, above the sacred law, above the commands of Yahweh Elohim (יהוה אלוהים), but again more on this later.

    The schism between Abram and Lot called upon their separation, and so Lot left for the land of Jordan (יַרדֵן), while Abram settled in the land of Canaan (כְּנַעַן), and this was just as well, for they had trespassed on each other.‡ At this point the primordial body was coming apart, and the schism was beginning to settle in the hearts of men as something quote natural and inevitable, it was time for mother and son to separate, read "Genesis, Chapter 11". Degeneration, sin, disease, corruption, cancer, rot and dilapidation, mutation and decay, these things are all around us, but the seed of each dying flower, each disease, each individual suffering, and each pain was already planted in the times of Abram, and perhaps it would be true then to say e pluribus unum, but this can only be true in the reverse, read "My Views on Multiculturalism".

Genesis 12:14 – 18:

[Yahweh] said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, 'Raise your eyes now, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Rise up, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.' So Abram moved his tent, and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron; and there he built an altar to [Yahweh].

I keep returning to the point of division, but the Bible makes returning to this point quite necessary, for the children of Abram are still walking the earth, and the truth of his knowledge is still enduring, for it must endure, though diminished as it has become, for reasons that I have explained here. So, Yahweh ensured, as we can tell, that the offspring of Abram would amount to every particle of the dust, and today the global population has surpassed 8 billion, a number that may prompt some to suggest that the world may be overpopulated.§ Are there 8 billion particles in a dust storm? Hardly, but this is a profane consideration... Well, technically there may or may nor be more than 8 billion particles in such a storm, but the overall point still stands.

    Now, in the following chapters we will explore the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and of Abram, later Abraham, but for now this would be a good place to end this part. Before I end I will direct you to some other corners of the Bible dealing with similar topics, but as we are still only reading Genesis, I have decided to remain still in the Pentateuch (חוּמָשׁ); a good reading would be chapter 13 or Deuteronomy (דְּבָרִים).

    You have reached the end of this part of the Bible, or rather my examination of the Bible. For more on this series, follow the label "Bible Study series". If you are interested in me, read my "About me" page and my "Who Am I?" post.

Reginald Drax (AKA, M. C. Dutt) – September 20, 2026.

Footnote(s)

* For more on this point, disputed as it is, I direct you to my posts: "Yahweh Elohim" and "Proof of the Name of Yahweh". There is no room for this kind of quarrel within the scope of this post.

† Again, this point is also well outside the scope of this post, but I do still find the need to direct you to my posts: "My Views on Fundamentalism", "The Hypocrisy of the Pious", and "The Puritan Fallacy". I should also point you towards my post "Politicians", as this post will address the problem with religion and politics, temporal power really, in greater detail, and in a way that holds true across time.

‡ In this context I can only defer to my post "The Problem of Borders", at least in order to explain the matter of the usage of the word "trespass", but essentially we were dealing with two different tribes of the same kind, the same race. Read also, "Does Tribe Matter?".

§ This point is disputed and quite frankly this is not the place for me to take a position on this, but I would suggest that it may be a good idea to learn how to walk and listen, how to read and how to write, how to count and how to think, before you further life. Again, this point shall remain disputed. For more on this, read "My Views on Antinatalism" and "What is the Most Rational Thing to do?".