Mistakes of Moses Expanded Universe: Genesis 19

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Mistakes of Moses Expanded Universe: Genesis 17 & 18

In this installment: Abe is asked to put some skin in the game, everyone gets a laugh about having kids when you're old, Yahweh has to talk himself into telling the patriarch about his plans for Sodom and Abe teaches the deity about fairness, justice and mercy and schools him in negotiation.

Genesis 17:1
In this verse God appears to Abram and identifies himself as El Shaddai. Early translations from the Hebrew like the Greek Septuagint rendered this something like “God Almighty” because a similar word shadad means to overpower or destroy and this seems to fit when the name is employed in Numbers, Job and Ezekiel without the El element.

However, when it’s used in Genesis with El it’s almost always in the context of reproductive fertility (see 28:3, 35:11 & 49:25). Interestingly the Hebrew word shad means “breast” and the ending ai means “my own.” It’s very possible that Shaddai started out as a large-breasted Semitic fertility goddess whose “fruitfulness” attributes were eventually subsumed into Yahweh’s attributes, minus the accentuated breasts, of course.