The first book of The Bible. Known in Hebrew as Bereshith ("In the beginning") after its opening word, it's more widely known by the Greek word Genesis means "becoming" or "origin". Both are apt, seeing as literally everything begins here.

Genesis starts with a narrative of God's creation of the Earth, its plants and animals, and finally humanity. Adam and his wife Eve, the first humans in existence, become the main focus of the narrative as they dwell in the Garden of Eden, infamously disobey God's instructions, and get punished with exile. Their children are no better at staying out of trouble; their eldest son, Cain, kills his younger brother Abel and so becomes humanity's first murderer. Generations pass, but the human race is still a treacherous trainwreck in the eyes of God. He resolves to drown them all in a great flood, sparing only the righteous Noah, his family, and the animals they brought along. After this great cleansing, they disembark from their ark to begin anew under the auspice of God's covenant. From Noah and his family came all subsequent peoples of the world, including Abraham.

Many years after the Flood, the elderly and childless Abraham (then known as Abram) is called upon by God to be His servant, and promises that his descendants would be as numerous the stars. As part of the covenant, the infertile Sarah gave birth to the beloved Isaac. Isaac himself would have the sons Jacob and Esau, who would hate each other in youth and only after years of deception and fighting come to love each other. In this peace, Jacob had twelve sons, favoring Joseph most of all. Jealous, Joseph's brothers decieved him and sold him into slavery, but by God's grace and Joseph's gift of dream interpretation, Joseph rose to become the right-hand man of the Pharaoh. Rich and at peace, Joseph would invite his family in Canaan to enjoy the bounties of Egypt, where Jacob and Joseph would die while the latter's sons would live without hating each other.

Genesis and the other books of the Hexatuch are one of the later additions to a long tradition of ancient Near-Eastern epic literature, playing with the tropes of anteceding Mesopotamian Mythology and other Creation Myths. Its most distinguishing feature is the singular, supreme, and intelligent nature of its principal God, who is referred to in the original text by the tetragram "YHWH"^note We will probably never know for sure, but the original pronunciation reconstructed by scholars is "Yahweh" (for English speakers: pronounced "YAW-WAY") among other epithets, all rendered in most later Christian translations as "the LORD". ^note  "the LORD" is typically rendered with the "ORD" in a smaller font, but still capitalized for uses of YHWH, and refer to God. When "the Lord" or "Lord" are used it can refer to God, or to humans, depending on context. When titles/names for God are used together we might see "the LORD God".

There are also many parallels with the book's "sequel," the Book of Exodus. As with most of the Hexatuch, Genesis was written to pass down ethnoreligious tradition as opposed to history, and some scholars and believers consider it to be primarily mythological (though fundamentalists and others continue to regard the whole text literally). Even so, the book offers a glimpse into the worldview and self-perception of the ancient Levantine peoples that is virtually unparalleled in detail by any other document of the time.

The pseudopigraphical Book Of Jubilees and Book Of Jasher recount the same events in Genesis, but they put their own spin on things or add details that are not present in the original narrative. Genesis is also the inspiration for works such as the Books Of Enoch, the Books Of Adam And Eve, the Ladder Of Jacob, Joseph And Asenath, the Testament Of Abraham, the Testament Of Isaac, and the Testament Of Jacob.

Structure of the book:

• Creation of the world (Genesis 1:1-2:3)
• Creation of Man (Genesis 2:4-25)
• Fall of Man (Genesis chapter 3)
• Cain, Abel and the first murder (Genesis chapter 4)
• From Adam to Noah (Genesis chapter 5)
• The story of Noah and the Flood (Genesis chapters 6 to 9)
• The children of Shem, Ham, and Japheth (Genesis chapter 10)
• The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-8)
• From Shem to Abraham (Genesis 11:9-32)
• The story of Abraham (Genesis chapters 12 to 18 and 20 to 25)
• The story of Lot (Genesis chapters 11 to 14, and 18 to 19)
• The stories of Isaac and Jacob (Genesis chapters 25 to 35)
• The descendants of Esau (Genesis chapter 36)
• The story of Joseph (Genesis chapters 37 and 39 to 50)
• The story of Judah and Tamar (Genesis chapter 38)

Genesis contains the following tropes:

• Absurdly Elderly Mother:
  • Sarah, who was in her nineties and way past menopause, is told by God's visiting angels that she's going to have the promised child from her husband Abraham. Sarah laughs at this, thinking the whole thing to be impossible, but God gets the last laugh when He fulfills this promise and she bears her first and only son Isaac.
  • For that matter, Eve is 130 years old when her son Seth is born (she is only one day younger than Adam, whose age is given). The text even implies that the majority of her children were born after that! That said, human lifespans before the Flood approached nearly 1000 years (Adam was listed as having lived for 930 years, and Methuselah tops the list by living until the age of 969), so it is oft assumed that her presumed menopause onset scaled according to her lifespan.
• Accidental Good Outcome: Joseph's brothers, out of jealousy for their father's clear favoritism, throw Joseph down a well and then sell him to Egyptian slavers. Joseph endures further trials in Egypt, including imprisonment after a False Rape Accusation—but this unexpectedly puts him in the position to interpret a prophetic dream from the Pharaoh himself. Impressed by Joseph's wisdom, Pharaoh promotes him to be his right-hand man, and Joseph's leadership helps save Egypt and its neighbors (including Joseph's old family) from a seven-year famine. When Joseph reunites with his brothers, and they fear that he holds a justified grudge against them, Joseph reassures them of his forgiveness by pointing out God used to put him in the position to save an entire nation, despite what they intended. ^note  First seen in Gen. 45:4-8, then after the death of Jacob in Genesis 50:20; "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today."
• Adam and Eve Plot:
  • The Trope Namer. God's instructions to the first people are: "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it." Over the years, some Bible-readers who went by the King James Version's use of the word "replenish" instead of "fill" came to the conclusion that the first humans God created were to replace the ones that existed before them in a "gap period" between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, giving rise to numerous esoteric traditions that referenced these "Pre-Adamite" peoples.^note The original Hebrew verb is "u'mil֥u" (fill up, populate) as opposed to "milúi" (refill), indicating that this is likely an artifact of the King James translation as opposed to the original intended meaning
  • Later on, when Noah and his family were the only human survivors on the earth after the Flood, God echoes His earlier instructions to "be fertile and increase, and fill the earth". It is implied in subsequent passages that the family very much rose to the occassion and begat all other peoples of the world.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Noah plants a vineyard, makes wine from the grapes, and gets so plastered that he ends up sleeping in his tent naked.
• Alcoholic Parent: After the flood, Noah plants the first vineyard and gets so drunk he winds up passing out naked. His son Ham happens upon him and calls his brothers over to see (perhaps thinking that this is hilarious). They respectfully cover him with a blanket, walking backwards so they won't have to see their dad's nudity. For his disrespect, Noah curses Ham's son Canaan to be a "servant of servants" among his relatives. Why Canaan and not Ham himself? Nobody's quite sure.^note Unfortunately, Noah's curse — which isn't even a real curse, because it's a hung-over father cussing out his idiot son rather than God imposing punishment — came to be called the "Curse of Ham" and was historically used to justify the enslavement of Africans, because of yet more questionable conjecture that Ham is the ancestor of Ethiopians and therefore all black people — ignoring that the curse was specifically narrowed to Ham's decidedly non-African son, with his other three sons free of the curse.
• Altar Diplomacy: In Chapter 34, after Shechem raped Dinah and then offered to pay her family as much dowry as they desired in order to have her as a wife, her brothers Simeon and Levi told him that they can't give Dinah to him unless he and the men of the city would become one people with the clan of Jacob by becoming circumcised. Of course, this was all a ruse in order to incapacitate the men of Shechem so that Jacob's clan could have revenge for Dinah being raped, but Shechem and his men were willing to go along with it, and so that sealed their fate.
• Ancestral Name: Terah's father's name was Nahor. One of Terah's sons is also named Nahor.
• And Man Grew Proud: The Tower of Babel story in Chapter 11 is one of the more famous instances of this trope; Man built a tower intended to reach Heaven. God was rather annoyed by this, and cleverly sabotaged its construction by fragmenting the builders' common language into unintelligible tongues, preventing them from coordinating any further construction. At least it made linguists' jobs more interesting.
• And Now You Must Marry Me: Dinah is raped by Shechem, a Canaanite prince who decides after the fact that he wants to marry her. He keeps her in his tent and goes to ask Jacob's permission to marry her and offers him a hefty bride price. Jacob doesn't really object to this, but his sons (Dinah's Knight Templar Big Brothers) do. They agree to the marriage On One Condition: namely, that all the men of Shechem get circumcised. The Shechemites agree, reasoning that the marriage will unite their tribes and make them wealthier and better off. While they're recovering, Dinah's brothers come in, slaughter all the adult males, take the women and children as plunder, and rescue Dinah.
• Angel Unaware: Lot didn't know that his two guests were angels until after he took them in for the night, when the citizens of Sodom pound on the door and demand that Lot bring them out so they can "know" them, and after trying and failing to protect his angelic guests, they blow their cover by blinding Lot's assailants and getting Lot, his wife, and his two daughters out of the city before its destruction.
• Apocalypse How: The Great Flood kills the human race and all other life on Earth, save for the inhabitants of Noah's ark. Anywhere from Class 3 to 5, depending on one's interpretation of the flood's totality.
• Arranged Marriage: When it's time for Abraham's son Isaac to get married, Abraham sends his servant back to the old country to find a nice girl for him. Isaac and Rebecca agree to the match without meeting each other. Jacob also arranged Rachel and got a couple of other wives (one of them being Rachel's big sister Leah) in the process.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: When Joseph invites his brothers into his palace for a meal, while he's still unrecognizable to them, they're afraid he will attack them, seize them as slaves, and... take their donkeys?
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: In the section describing the lineage of Adam's son Seth, each patriarch's mini-biography ends with "... and he died." Except for Enoch, whose description instead ends with "Enoch walked with God, and he was no longer here, for God took him." Later writers, such as the author of the Book of Enoch and Book of Hebrews took this to mean Enoch was literally whisked away to a realm of heaven where he did not know death.
• Asshole Victim: Sodom and Gomorrah were cities bepopulate with these, Sodom being notable for the mob who wanted to sexually assault Lot's visitors and then vow to do harm to Lot and his family when they were refused. Lot's angelic visitors got him and his family out of there before the two cities were destroyed by God.
• Awesome Moment of Crowning: Joseph's ascension into Pharaoh's Number Two, with the requisite regalia and parade. Pharaoh makes it clear that the only difference between them is that Pharaoh has the throne; otherwise, Joseph has full authority over the land of Egypt, and 'no one may lift hand or foot in all Egypt without (Joseph's)' word.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Played straight with the matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel. Not specifically mentioned concerning the patriarchs, with the exception of Joseph, whose physical beauty is mentioned.
• Bed Trick:
  • Jacob's wedding. He had worked for Laban for seven years in order to get permission to marry Laban's daughter Rachel, but Laban swapped Rachel out for her older sister Leah on the night of the wedding. Jacob didn't notice this until they were already married, so although he got to marry Rachel the next week, he had to work another seven years to earn (retroactively) his marriage to Rachel, the girl he actually loved.
  • Tamar, a widow of Judah's sons, was due a marriage to another man of the family under the rules of levirate marriage. When it seemed Judah was not going to go through with this, Tamar disguised herself as a prostitute and met him on the road, taking his staff and sigil as payment. She conceived twins and, when Judah realized what had happened and she explained her reasons, he was shamed into admitting his mistakes and, while he didn't marry her, he did acknowledge the twins as his children and heirs.
• Big Brother Bully: Abraham's firstborn son Ishmael, who sometime after his half-brother Isaac's birth, was mocking him during his party. This made Isaac's mother Sarah so upset when she saw it that her husband sent Ishmael and his mother Hagar away from them permanently, thus they will not share in the inheritance that was meant for Isaac. Abraham became worried about this, but God told him to do as Sarah told him, for He will bless Ishmael and make him into a great nation.
• Bilingual Backfire: After speaking to the high-ranking Egyptian via an interpreter, Joseph's brothers have a small conversation after the interpreter is gone. In ths conversation, they admit collective guilt for Joseph's sale, but Reuben explicitly claims that he was not involved. Unbeknownst to them, the Egyptian in question is Joseph, who understands every word. He soon chooses one of them to hold hostage when he sends the rest home to bring the youngest brother—and having heard that the oldest brother was not involved with his sale, the hostage is the second brother.
• Blame Game: Adam blames Eve (and God), and Eve blames the serpent for the eating of the Forbidden Fruit.
• Blessing: Isaac intends to bless his son Esau, but his younger brother Jacob, helped by his mother Rebecca, passes himself as his elder brother and receives his father's blessing.
• Blood Oath: God has Abraham sacrifice animals so to seal His covenant with Abraham, in which the land of Canaan would be given to him and his descendants forever. Later on, this blood oath would take the form of circumcision, which God commanded Abraham and his descendants to perform on all his male family members as well as any male slave they have purchased for themselves.
• Born as an Adult: Adam and Eve, the first two of God's human creations (the "Pre-Adamite" interpretations mentioned above notwithstanding), came into being as adults, with Adam formed from the soil of the ground, and Eve formed from Adam's rib. In fact, it is likely that all of God's first living creatures came into existence as adult forms.
• Breaking the Fellowship: Abraham and Lot journeyed together from Ur to Canaan, then to Egypt, then back to Canaan again. By Chapter 13 though, the two families had to part ways when their land proved to small for their respective herds of livestock. Abraham allowed Lot to choose which direction he wanted to go, and Lot decided to head towards Sodom, which is where he and his family ended settled. Abraham remained in Canaan, which God promised to Abraham and his descendants. Abraham and Lot eventually meet up again when Lot and the inhabitants of Sodom were abducted by the four evil kings and Abraham comes to Lot's rescue, but they remained separate from each other from that point onward.
• Breeding Slave:
  • Sarah's servant, Hagar, is called upon when Sarah realizes she's barren to lie with Abraham and have a child in Sarah's stead. Even though it was her idea, Sarah becomes jealous with Hagar and treats her terribly until she runs away, at which point God has to step in and assure Hagar that she and her son Ishmael will be protected.
  • Both of Jacob's wives eventually have their servants bear Jacob children on their behalf: Rachel does so because her chances of accomplishing the task herself appeared hopeless at that point, and Leah ... apparently just wanted to keep the tally lopsided in her own favor.
• Bride and Switch: Jacob works for his uncle Laban for seven years to marry his uncle's youngest daughter Rachel. Come wedding day, though, Laban swaps out Rachel for his oldest daughter Leah, and Jacob doesn't realize the swap took place until after the night of consummation. Laban makes an excuse that it isn't the custom of his people to give away the youngest daughter before the oldest, so Jacob has to work another seven years to have Rachel (although he did get her at the beginning, not the end, of the seven years this time).
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: After an infamous wrestling match, Jacob may have pinned the Angel of the Lord himself, but he walks with a permanent limp afterward.
• Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie:
  • Joseph makes his family swear to take his body with them when they leave Egypt. He was eventually reburied in Israel, meaning that they must have carried his coffin through the desert for forty years. This causes complications along the way, because the people carrying his coffin are therefore ritually impure and can't offer the Passover sacrifice. A "make-up" date for the sacrifice one month later is instituted due to this and other reasons, which means that complications as a result of a will are Older Than Feudalism.
  • Averted with Rachel, whose body Jacob is forced to leave behind in a roadside grave despite her status as his One True Love.
• But I Can't Be Pregnant!: More like "but I can't get pregnant" when Sarah, who was in her nineties and way past menopause, overhears from God that she's going to have her husband Abraham's child, which God previously promised would come through Abraham, but only after having her servant bear Ishmael did she hear it would be through her as well. Sarah laughs at the possibility, but God proves it by fulfilling the promise and gives her a good reason to laugh, giving the child the name of Isaac (said to mean "he laughs").
• But Liquor Is Quicker: Lot's daughters got their own father drunk to have sex with him. The attitude of Sodom's inhabitants toward consent may have rubbed off on them, unfortunately.
• Cain and Abel: The "Fall of Man" underscoring the first part of Genesis is framed through the rending of family, beginning with Cain murdering his brother Abel. The implied message being that man can only reconcile with God once he has reconciled with his brothers, both in the literal and metaphorical sense. For some examples:
  • The conflict of brothers starts with the first children of Adam and Eve, the farmer Cain and the herder Abel. God finds the animal sacrifices of Abel preferable to Cain's offerings, which leaves Cain envious. Some time later, Cain is confronted by God with the fact that he has slaughtered his own brother, a fact Cain denies while complaining that he's "not his brother's keeper." Indignant, God dismisses Cain's lie by describing how he can hear the blood of the first corpse screaming from the Earth, and then punishes Cain to wander the Earth without a place to call home.
  • Jacob and Esau, two children who are described as fighting even in the womb, both end up the favorite of a different parent, and so each of them works with that parent to conspire against each other for the right of inheritance. Ultimately, first-born Esau is cheated out of his rightful inheritance which now belongs to Jacob, a fact which nearly leads to Esau killing Jacob before the now rightful inheritor flees his home to make his own family. Although if Esau was more mindful of his future inheritance being anything of worth to him than the immediate satisfaction of his appetite, he wouldn't have sold off his birthright to his brother and thus open the door for himself to be cheated in the first place. Then again, it's unclear whether the material inheritance rights of the birthright and the spiritual benefits of the blessing are the same thing - when he realizes what happened Esau exclaims "He took my birthright, and now [emphasis added] he’s taken my blessing!"
  • Joseph, the favorite of Jacob's twelve sons, is so envied by his ten older brothers that they sell him into to slavery and tell their father that Joseph was eaten alive. The tables are turned years later, when the older brothers and the youngest (Benjamin) go to Egypt to request food and shelter for Israel from one of the Pharaoh's advisors: an older Joseph, having risen out of slavery by God's grace. Joseph demands that Benjamin be given to him as a slave in return for the provision of Israel, but the other brothers beg for Benjamin's freedom, not wanting to break their father's heart even further. Impressed by their compassion, Joseph reveals himself as their long-lost brother and allows the people of Israel to come to Egypt.
  • The last group of brothers are the two sons of Joseph, Manasseh and Ephraim. Despite the fact that Manasseh is the older one, Ephraim was the one who received a blessing from the patriarch Jacob. Manasseh quietly accepts the situation. Genesis doesn't blow trumpets for Manasseh, but unlike every other older brother who ends up less favored than the younger, he preserves his family over lashing out over his perception of injustice. Rabbi David Wolpe touches on this silent victory for brotherhood five minutes into this interview.
• Cargo Cult: The worship of gods through the use of idols, a critical taboo in the Abrahamic faiths, is first addressed in this book. Jacob's uncle Laban, in particular, had household gods, which his daughter Rachel stole and hid underneath her camel's saddle and sat upon, making an excuse that she was going through her period when her father came into her tent to look for his missing idols. Jacob also had his sons get rid of the idols they were worshiping, including the earrings they were wearing most likely as part of that worship, and buried them near a tree before they moved on from Shechem.
• Carpet of Virility: Goes beyond this for Esau, as the narrative says that even at birth he was "like a hairy garment", which is why he was given the name Esau ("hairy").
• Cassandra Truth: When Lot tells his family about God's imminent plan to destroy their town, his soon-to-be sons-in-law and other relatives (including possibly some sons and/or daughters and their spouses) laugh at him, thinking he's joking. On the other hand, this is averted with the story of Noah: although many later stories about Noah, (including a brief retelling of the story in the Epistle of Peter), depict him trying to tell others about the Flood and failing to convince them, this is absent in the original story.
• A Chat with Satan: In Chapter 3, the serpent of Eden, the most cunning of God's creations, convinces Eve to eat the fruit of the one tree God forbade from them, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, by appealing to their desire to emulate the power of God. Naturally, eating from the tree only manages to get the two expelled from Paradise and cursed with mortality and toil that will be passed to all their descendants. The serpent doesn't get away freely from this, as God reckons all the human descendants will have a bone to pick with him, and curses him to slither about for enternity. Contrary to popular belief, neither this story nor any other in the Torah identify the serpent with Satan; it is only later in Christian writings that the two are connected, specifically the Book of Revelation.
• Child by Rape: Moab and Ben-Ammi, the children of Lot's two daughters, whom they conceived when they raped their own father while he was drunk.
• Circumcision Angst:
  • Many men were left feeling sore the day Abraham applied the commanded custom.
  • Invoked by Simeon and Levi, who claim they will let Dinah marry the prince who raped her if every man from that village is circumcised. They agree, and for three days the village is defenseless, giving the bandits an incredibly easy opening to take revenge and fill their greedy pockets with the loot.
• Claimed by the Supernatural: Cain is marked by God for murdering his younger brother, but the mark is not a punishment; it is bestowed as a warning to anyone who would harm Cain in his exile that Cain's murder would be avenged seven times over.
• The Clan: The twelve tribes of Israel descended from Abraham and Isaac, who had their own clans. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are the three patriarchs of the Hebrew people. Ephraim and Manasseh, the two sons of Joseph, were reckoned as patriarchs of two of Israel's clans, although for the sake of territorial inheritance and other reasons Israel is still mentioned as having twelve clans. ^note This was likely to compensate for the descendants of Levi, who were designated priests and caretakers of the sacred buildings and were not given their own land inheritance.
• Cliffhanger: Will the Israelites permanently settle in Egypt or go back to their homeland? They went to the latter the hard way.
• Common Law Marriage: Adam and Eve. They received a blessing from God, but they had no formal wedding, and (being the only people on Earth), no marriage license, certificate, contract, or other legal stuff. However, Adam still refers to Eve as his wife.
• Completely Unnecessary Translator: The translator in Joseph's story. While there were probably many people for whom the translator proved indispensable, one case where he wasn't needed at all was when Joseph's own brothers showed up. He employed one anyway to conceal his relation to them.
• Crafted from Animals: In Chapter 3, after God deals with both Adam, Eve, and the serpent following the eating of the Forbidden Fruit, Adam and Eve were both given coats of skin to wear, implying that an animal sacrifice had to take place to atone for their sin.
• Creation Myth: The story of the creation of the world, as written in the Hebrew Bible, as the word of God.
• Cruel to Be Kind: A particularly subtle example is God kicking Adam & Eve out of Eden, so they can't eat from the tree of life and live forever. Not only would the planet be incredibly overpopulated if mankind^*"Adam" and "man" are used relatively interchangeably in early Genesis, and throughout the Bible. In particular, Jesus' title in The Four Gospels, "Son of Man", ben-'adam, literally means Son of Adam. was immortal on a cursed planet, and not only would many sicknesses be much worse if people were alive and in agony forever, but most importantly, Jesus would be unable to die.
• Curse of Babel: When all the people of the world come together to make names for themselves and reach the Heavens to find God, He forces humanity to separate by fragmenting their single language into many.
• Cycle of Revenge: Repeatedly defied.
  • After Cain kills Abel, he fears that others would come and kill him to avenge Abel, which would likely begin a cycle of murders. However, God put a mark on him to prevent anyone from murdering Cain. His descendant Lamech, however, tries to claim greater protection on himself for harming another person that struck him: "If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-seven fold."
  • Esau decides to forgive Jacob instead of seeking revenge for having stolen his blessings. (Having also prospered in the meantime seems to have helped him with this.)
  • One generation later, when Joseph understands that his brothers have come a long way since they sold him to slavery, he decides to reconcile with them instead of punishing them.
• Date Rape: Lot's daughters get their father drunk and have sex with him while he's unconscious in order to be impregnated and have children.
• Death by Childbirth: Rachel dies when she has Benjamin due to the pain of labor, something established in chapter three to be a result of the Fall of Man.
• Death by Despair: When Jacob's son Judah saw that his brother Benjamin was implicated in a theft he didn't commit (the whole thing being a frame-up by Joseph to test his brothers) and was subject to becoming Joseph's slave in Egypt, he feared that if he and his brothers didn't return to their home with Benjamin, their father would die of despair (since Benjamin was perceived to be the last surviving son of Jacob's beloved wife Rachel), and so he offered himself in the place of Benjamin so that he wouldn't have to see his father suffer that fate.
• Death Faked for You: After the brothers sell Joseph to Egypt, they "explain" Joseph's sudden disappearance to their dad by dipping his robe in blood and making it look like he was attacked by wild animals.
• Depraved Homosexual: In Chapter 19, a mob gathers outside Lot's house in Sodom and demands Lot release the two travellers who came into his house so they may rape them. Lot offers his two virgin daughters to the mob in exchange for keeping the visitors safe under his roof, but the men persist, even going so far as to threaten Lot for "acting as a judge". The two angels bring Lot into the house and struck the men with blindness so that they wearied themselves trying to find the door. Despite later historical readings of this trope into the episode as grounds for persecution of homosexuality, the concept of sexual orientation in the modern sense did not yet exist in the Near East, indicating that the story was probably intended as a general warning against assaulting foreign travellers. Either way, it is saying sexual assault is a serious offense.
• Did Not Think This Through: When Abraham offers Lot the choice of lands, Lot chooses the pastures near the Dead Sea, the home of Sodom and Gomorrah. After Abraham leads a mission to rescue Lot, he goes back home, and when the violent men of Sodom threaten his household, the angels come and urge him to leave the city without looking back. He escapes with his daughters, but his possessions are destroyed by the fire and brimstone, and when his wife looks back, she is turned into a pillar of salt.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Jacob wrestled an angel for a night (though many scholars believe Jacob was actually wrestling with God via theophany). The angel had to resort to cursing Jacob's hip in order to win, and Jacob still obtained a blessing (which remains in effect to this day) before he let the angel leave. To those of you who don't know, Jacob earned a nickname for that feat, which is translated as "Wrestles with God" ... The nickname is "Israel".
• Dining in the Buff: Probably the most famous example of this trope. Eve, and then Adam, eat the forbidden fruit while she and Adam are living naked in the Garden of Eden.
• Dishonored Dead: Not done on purpose, but because of circumstances and certain customs, Jacob's beloved wife Rachel gets a roadside burial when she dies during childbirth in comparison to his unloved wife Leah, who is buried in the cave of Machpelah alongside his grandparents and parents.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Several, with some notable examples being:
  • Noah curses his son, Ham, for failing to avert his eyes when Noah was drunk and naked (the curse inherited by only one son).
  • After Shechem's rape of their sister Dinah, Jacob's sons make every man in Shechem's tribe agree to undergo circumcision to have justice done. They agree to this, but the Disproportionate Retribution only begins when Jacob's sons Simeon and Levi take advantage of their weakness after the circumcision to lead a raid to kill them all and loot their towns for everything they owned in life. Jacob is furious, later revoking their birthright because of this action (The eldest son Reuben had his birthright revoked for sleeping with Bilhah), but Simeon and Levi question what else to do in the face of that insidious a crime.
  • Young Joseph may have been a bit of a bratty brother, with his habit of tattling on his older brothers and announcing his dreams of superiority, but trying to murder him and then selling him into slavery in response? Definitely over-the-top.
• Divine Date: One of the readings of Genesis 6:2 suggests that the "sons of God" that went into the "daughters of men" were angels that decided to interfere with God's pure gene pool of humanity, thus raising up the legendary Nephilim. (The other alternate reading is that the "sons of God" were the godly line of Seth and the "daughters of men" were the ungodly line of Cain, and thus their offspring were just people fallen into depraved sin. And yet another alternate reading is that the "sons of God" were local powerful rulers calling themselves as such, taking "daughters of men"—i.e., women of lower status—as wives or concubines.)
• A Dog Named "Dog": The word "Adam" (literally "Person") is used a few times as the name of the first person created.
• Don't Look Back: In the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, God warns Lot, his wife, and daughters to not look back as they flee the cities prior to the imminent destruction of the cities ("Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed" (Genesis 19:15-17)). Yet, Lot's wife does, and upon seeing the flaming ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah, is turned into a pillar of salt.
• Double Standard: Rape, Female on Male: Dinah's story is remembered as THE rape episode of Genesis, if not the Old Testament as a whole, and every man in the rapist's nation is sexually mutilated and murdered out of revenge. However, multiple female-on-male rapes occur both before and after Dinah's and in the same family which, at most, are implied to be an exasperating inconvenience to the victims and a regrettable thing for the rapists to have done.
• Doves Mean Peace: A dove not returning after Noah released it meant that the ship could now land and that Noah's family had a future.
• Driven by Envy: Notable examples include Cain and Joseph's brothers. Cain was envious because his brother Abel's sacrifices were considered acceptable to God compared to his own, while Joseph's brothers were envious because he was the favorite son that their father lavished all his attention on.
• The Drunken Sailor: Noah famously builds and sails the Ark, then after he lands he promptly proceeds to plant a vineyard and gets dead drunk. That just might make him the Ur-Example.
• Due to the Dead: Jacob commands his sons to bury him in a whole different country, in a cave belonging to his family, which is a journey of several weeks at least. Pharaoh hears about it and promptly tells Joseph to go ahead and provide the burial his father requested — after Jacob's body is first embalmed, in order to enable 70 days of mourning for him. The funeral procession draws so much attention along the way that a place is named after it, Abel-mizraim, "the mourning of the Egyptians."
• Eastward Endeavor: Adam and Eve travelled eastwards after being exiled from Eden for eating the forbidden fruit, gaining knowledge of good and evil. After the murder of his brother and his own banishment, Cain travelled further east towards the land of Nod. All this eventually culminated in the human race, now numerous, moving further and further east until they reached a plain called Shinar, where they built the Tower of Babel, an endeavor that resulted in the newly polyglot human race scattering to the four corners of the Earth. Whether one considers the eventual results of these developments to be for the better or for the worse is a very contentious matter, but in Abrahamic tradition, the journey from ignorance and innocence towards modern humanity began when Adam and Eve (and their eventual successors) journeyed east of Eden. Interestingly, however, Eden itself is also described as being planted in the East.^note This last bit would follow if Genesis, traditionally attributed to Moses, was written from an Israelite-centric point of view, as the site of many of the early events of Genesis is thought to have been in the area of Mesopotamia, which is indeed east of where the original (and present) nation of Israel eventually settled.
• The End of the Beginning: The conclusion to the story of Joseph. On one hand, the family of the patriarchs is now re-united, which is a refreshing development after generations of Sibling Rivalry. On the other hand, the Israelites are settled in a foreign land, which is not the promised land. See Cliffhanger above. How long will this last?
• Enemy to All Living Things: Due to eating from the Tree of Knowledge, Adam is cursed to no longer be able to work the Earth without toil.
• Everything's Better with Rainbows: After the massive flood, God promises not to drown all the creatures again and puts a rainbow in the sky as a symbol of His covenant with them.
• Exact Words:
  • Used by both God and the serpent in the Garden of Eden. God tells Adam and Eve that on "the day" they eat the fruit "they will surely die", without mentioning that said death would only come hundreds of years later. On the flip side, the serpent tells them that "they will become like God, knowing good and evil" without mentioning that that would not be a blessing, but part of a curse. Certain Bible students would interpret God's Words regarding "the day" they would die as being fulfilled in the manner of what Peter the apostle says in his second epistle, that "a day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day."
  • Originally God said to Abraham that he was going to have a child in his old age that was going to be his heir. Sarah, never hearing God ever saying it was going to be through her yet, offers up her handmaid Hagar to Abraham to be a surrogate mother to the supposed promised child, who turned out to be Ishmael. It's only later when God directly visits the couple that He even says in Sarah's hearing that she would be the one to bear the promised child.
  • God agrees that if He even finds ten righteous men in Sodom and Gomorrah He'll spare the entire cities on their behalf. While there are righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah, they number less than ten so the cities are destroyed though God makes sure Lot and his family escape.
• The Exile:
  • Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden of Eden as the final part of their punishment.
  • Cain was banished from the presence of the Lord when he killed his brother Abel, and he went to live in the land of Nod, fathering generations of people apart from those of his brother Seth's lineage.
• Fake Period Excuse: When Jacob and his wives flee Laban's home, Rachel steals her father's idols just before she and her husband's caravan leave. When her father catches up to Jacob and accuses him of stealing, Jacob lets him search his property, saying (not knowing who did it) that anyone who stole the idols will be put to death. Rachel keeps her father from finding them by sitting on top of the saddle where she hid them, while claiming she's on her period (thereby making anything she touches unclean) knowing full well her father wouldn't dare to move her in that condition. As a result, he never finds them.
• False Rape Accusation: When Joseph is the slave of the Egyptian Potiphar, a captain in the royal guard, Potiphar's wife wants him to sleep with her. Joseph runs away from her, but the wife tries to hold him back and tears off his garment. She immediately calls for help and claims that Joseph has assaulted her (as she now needs a cover-up that explains how she comes by Joseph's garment). Potiphar believes his wife and has Joseph thrown into prison.
• The Famine:
  • Abram and his wife Sara flee a starving Canaan to go to Egypt, and have to leave the Pharaoh's court after God curses them for Abram denying Sara was his wife.
  • Isaac used the same trick while fleeing the famine to Guerar, denying Rebecca was his wife, but that ends when Abimelech catches the two of them kissing each other outside his window and keeps his people from doing anything towards Isaac's wife.
  • While in Ancient Egypt, Joseph manages to predict that seven years of plenty will be followed by seven years of want, and stores food accordingly; his brothers, who sold him years previously, led their families in Egypt to buy grain.
• Famous Ancestor: Chapter 10 is called "The Table of Nations" and it traces the lineage of many Middle Eastern peoples back to Noah's sons.
• Fatal Flaw: Every person in the Book holds on to some characteristic that damages their relationship with God and makes clear that none of these humans, despite being made in God's image, are divine. Flaws include:
  • Adam's ignorance.
  • Eve's naïveté.
  • Cain's wrath.
  • Noah's drunkenness.
  • Abraham & Sarah's impatience for a child.
  • Lot's short-sightedness in choosing Sodom for its green pastures while being oblivious to the decadent, sinful lifestyle of the area.
  • Rebekah's favoritism, hypocrisy and impatience for making God's prophecies come true.
  • Esau's hunger.
  • Jacob's deceit and favoritism.
  • Joseph's spoiled vanity.
• Fetus Terrible: Esau and Jacob were this when they were still in Rebekah's womb, having a wrestling match with each other. God tells her in a prophecy that she is giving birth to two nations, that "one will be stronger than the other, and the elder will serve the younger." When they are born, Esau the hairy child comes out first, then Jacob, who grasps the heel of his brother, comes out second.
• Final Speech: Jacob spends a good chunk of chapter 49 giving his sons his final blessings before he passes away. Simeon and Levi, however, are cursed to be "divided" for their Rape and Revenge actions, with Levi becoming the priestly tribe that had no inheritance among the sons of Israel and Simeon becoming absorbed into Judah and losing their tribal identity. Reuben is also cursed for his sleeping with one of his father's concubines.
• Flaming Sword: There is a flaming, whirling (in some translations) sword placed at the entrance to the Garden of Eden to prevent Adam and Eve from getting back in. Most interpret the passage as referencing an angel wielding the sword, but some depictions paint the sword as a literal Living Weapon.
• Food as Bribe: Jacob was able to get his brother Esau to sell his birthright for a bowl of stew.
• Forbidden Fruit: God gives free rein to the first two humans over everything in the paradisal Garden of Eden, except for one tree, because eating of its fruits will cause them to die. Unfortunately, a wily serpent manages to tempt the two into eating the fruit out of their desire to be god-like, leading them to be expelled from the Garden and introduce humanity to pain and death. The exact species of fruit wasn't mentioned, and alternatives as pomegranate, fig, or grape have been suggested. Much like Four Is Death, it's portrayed as an apple because the Latin word for apple, malus, also means "evil".
  Genesis 2:16-17: And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
  • Alternately, a sectarian interpretation claims that the Forbidden Fruit that Eve supposedly ate of is actually a forbidden sexual act that occurred between the serpent (whom those who believe in this interpretation claim was not yet forced to "go about on his belly") and Eve, resulting in Cain, her firstborn son, being the first of the "serpent seed" that somehow survived and became the Jews, of whom Jesus (who was a Jew) in John chapter 8 had denounced as "children of the devil". This interpretation also somehow fosters the religious idea that Sex Is Evil.
• Forced Sleep: In Chapter 2, God puts Adam into a deep sleep to extract one of his ribs and then refashion it into a woman so Adam would have a suitable helper as his companion. In Chapter 15, Abraham is put into a deep sleep, where God communicates to him the promise of giving all the land of Canaan to him as part of the everlasting covenant.
• Forgiveness:
  • A minor instance of this is when Jacob and Esau reconcile after their struggle for the family inheritance. Nationally, though, it became a case of Forgiven, but Not Forgotten, as Esau's people Edom became a perpetual thorn in Israel's side, even to the point of cheering for Jerusalem's destruction and cutting off its people from escaping, if Psalm 137 and the Book of Obadiah are any indication.
  • Arguably the forgiveness story in the Genesis is that of Joseph and his brothers. The brothers, green with envy, sold Joseph into slavery and convinced their father his favorite son was dead. The brothers assume they'll never see Joseph again, but when they come to Egypt to beg for food, it turns out the Pharaoh's most trusted advisor is a grown-up Joseph. The brothers immediately fear for their lives, but instead of taking vengeance, Joseph not only spares his brothers, but invites them to come live in luxury in Egypt. Then the Hebrews never had to deal with slavery ever again... right?
• Foreshadowing:
  • Noah cursed Canaan soon after the flood, and the descendants of Canaan would come to be great enemies of God's chosen people, the Jews.
  • In a time of famine, Abraham is forced to go down to Egypt to wait it out and God eventually calls plague upon the Pharaoh for an injustice he did to Abraham's people. Obviously, this foreshadows the Hebrews' re-location to Egypt at the end of the Book and their conflict with the pharaoh in Exodus.
  • That Esau and Jacob struggle with each other while still in their mother's womb is an early harbinger of their Sibling Rivalry in the future and the conflict between the tribes descended of them.
  • Joseph's dreams that his brothers and parents will bow down before him signals his future role as the savior of the clan.
  • The blessings given by each patriarch to their sons/grandsons foreshadow the prominence that their respective tribes will gain.
  • The Egyptians ending up selling themselves into slavery to get food near the end of the famine; while the Hebrews are spared this fate for now, guess what's going to happen to them when later Pharaohs forget what Joseph and his people did for Egypt?
  • Christian teaching holds that Genesis is chock-full of prophecies and references to Jesus, indicating that from the very beginning of creation God already had a plan to fix His relationship with mankind after Adam and Eve screwed it up. To wit: He clothes Adam and Eve with animal skins (something died because of their sin); His curse to the serpent says that the serpent will "bruise the heel" of Eve's offspring, who will "crush his head" (Jesus' death was an apparent victory for Satan, but then backfired on him horribly); the promise to Abraham that all nations of the world will be blessed through him (Jesus was a descendant of Abraham); the business with Melchizedek (see below); the three strangers who may have been a representation of the Trinity; the almost-sacrifice of Isaac (a threefer - the father sacrificing his only son, the one commanded to die being saved by a substitution, and God Himself providing the sacrificial ram); and many more.
    • An especially big one that crosses over with Cruel to Be Kind is God kicking Adam and Eve out of Eden, so they can't eat from the tree of life. For Jesus to fix the relationship, He needed to die, which is kinda impossible if Adam^*Which means "man". can't die.
• Garden Garment: After they committed their first sin by eating the Forbidden Fruit, Adam and Eve try to cover their shame by creating loin coverings with leaves. God chose to replace it with animal skins, setting up the beginning of His redemptive plan for mankind.
• Garden of Eden: The original. Adam and Eve live in this paradise before they disobey God by eating the Forbidden Fruit.
• Genesis Effect: Chapter 1 alone has God speaking every detail of existence into being in the first six days of creation: the light, the sky, the seas, the land, the plants, the sun, moon, and stars, the birds and sea creatures, the various land creatures, and eventually man. When He was finished, He saw that it was "very good".
• Get Out!:
  • The Pharaoh boots Abraham out of Egypt for lying about his wife Sarah being "his sister" (technically his half-sister) and causing God to plague the Egyptians for that misinformation.
  • Abimelech, the king of the Philistines, tells Isaac to leave the region because he was getting too prosperous and the Philistines were envying him.
    • God demanded Adam and Eve stay away from the Garden of Eden because of their wickedness.
• Giving Them the Strip: This is how Joseph struggles free from Potiphar's wife after she tries to seduce him forcefully. It does make it difficult for him to explain why (a) she is claiming that he tried to rape her and (b) she has his clothes to prove it.
• Godhood Seeker: Adam and Eve are tempted by the Serpent who promises them that by eating the forbidden fruit they won't die and instead "will be like God".
• God Is Displeased:
  • After Adam and Eve ate the fruit via deception from the serpent, God punishes them by banishing them from the Garden of Eden as their disobedience has brought sin and suffering into the world.
  • God is not pleased when Cain took the life of his brother Abel and thus banished him from His presence.
  • This is why God sent the Flood, humanity having become too corrupted. So He told Noah to prepare the ark and basically just rebooted humanity.
  • Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because God had enough of all the bad things that the people of both cities were doing.
• God Is Good:
  • The first chapter sees God intelligently making the universe and everything in it inherently good.
  • The second chapter shows God more intimately involved in human affairs, breathing life into Adam and creating animals and Eve so that he will not be alone. God even walks in the garden with his human creations until they break his one law and try to hide from him. Even then, He clothes them as they go out of the Garden of Paradise into the now-cursed Earth and delays the punishment of death for them for several hundred years until that "day" (interpreted by certain Bible students as 1000 years, according to what Peter the apostle said in his second epistle) was near its end, showing in Scripture the first example of God's grace. More specifically, many think from Scripture that the soul or spirit "died" on the very first day they ate the fruit, but God allowed time on Earth so they would change.
  • When Cain, the first murderer, asks for mercy, God provides him a mark to keep others from killing him, even though God can hear the blood of Cain's victim screaming from the Earth. God mainly does this because Cain makes a valid point that someone killing him would only fuel a Cycle of Revenge.
  • God also intervenes to prevent the Pharaoh and Abimelech, both of whom are portrayed as good men but not believers in Him, from unknowingly committing adultery with Sarah.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: God saw just how wicked antediluvian-era mankind became, and was horrified by what He had made. Every inclination of the human heart's thoughts were evil perpetually. He grieved and regretted ever making them, before opting to Restart the World with The Great Flood.
• Good Is Not Soft:
  • In order to preserve the goodness of creation, God completely wipes out the then-wicked human race with a global flood that returns everything on Earth outside of Noah's ark to its original state.
  • In Genesis 12:3, God says to Abraham that He will bless those who bless him and curse those who curse him.
  • Upon seeing the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah, God wipes the cities out with fire and brimstone, and turns those who look back unto their destruction into pillars of salt.
• Greed:
  • Allowing themselves to be circumcised so that Shechem could marry Jacob's daughter Dinah was not the only reason the people of Shechem decided to go along with it. There was also the added benefit that, since the people would be allowed to also trade with the sons of Jacob, the belongings of that family would end up becoming theirs in the process.
  • Greed also played a factor in Onan's decision to commit coitus interruptus whenever he went into his sister-in-law Tamar, since he knew that the child he would father through levirate marriage would not inherit anything from him.
• Guile Hero: This seems to be something of a family trait for Abraham and his descendants.
  • Abraham tries to deceive the Egyptians about his relationship with Sarah, which leads to an Idiot Ball and a What the Hell, Hero? response from the Egyptians. Pattern repeat by his successor Isaac, except that instead of God foiling the attempt, it was Abimelech taking a look out of a window by chance to see Isaac "sporting" with Rebekah.
  • Rebecca is the Master Mind behind securing the greater blessing for her favourite son, Jacob.
  • Jacob thoroughly deserves his reputation as "The Deceiver" with respect to his treatment of Esau and Laban, the latter being a Manipulative Bastard himself.
  • Rachel (who is Rebecca's niece and Laban's daughter and therefore shares some of the same guileful gene pool as Jacob) outsmarts her father and successfully removes his household idols.
  • Joseph, being the son of Jacob and Rachel, tops the list by successfully carrying out an elaborate Xanatos Gambit to reunite the family (see below), and also saves a nation from a famine in the process.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Who the Nephilim are is never explicitly stated. Most textual evidence points to them being offspring of "sons of God" (one of many lingering references to regional demigod myths) who took human women as wives. They're described as "heroes of old" and may have corresponded to a common Old World belief that there used to be men who were nearly giants. Either way, the Nephilim still are not excepted from obedience to God despite their alleged semi-divine nature.
• Happiness in Slavery: Jacob makes a deal to work seven years of servitude for Laban in exchange for Rachel's hand in marriage, but we're informed it "seemed like no time at all" because he was so in love with her. On the other hand he minds it a bit more when Laban pulls a Bride and Switch in exchange for seven more years.
• Heaven Above: Nimrod and the rest of humanity believed they could reach God just by building a really big tower.
• Hereditary Curse: Because Adam and Eve ate the Forbidden Fruit in the Garden of Eden, both them and their offspring are now cursed with death, with specific curses for the man and woman being:
  • The man must now work the ground (which has been cursed) until he sweats to provide food for himself.
  • The woman must now experience pain in childbirth, as well as gender strife between herself and the man.
• Hero of Another Story:
  • Ishmael, Abraham's son with his Egyptian slave Hagar, becomes the ancestor of a numerous progeny, the Ishmaelites, which includes a great many other Semitic tribes apart from Israel, most notably the Arabs.
  • Whereas Genesis 37 - 50 focuses mainly on Joseph, Chapter 38 shows Judah with his own story to tell. It's Judah's descendants who go on to be the most memorable.
  • Various other nations (sometimes heroic, other times villainous) arise from Abraham and his nephew Lot. Abraham's wife Keturah (after Sarah died) goes on to give birth to Midian, patriarch of (who else?) the Midianites. Lot's sons and grandsons Ben-Ammi and Moab go on to found the Ammonites and the Moabites.
• Homewrecker Gets Wrecked: In chapter 35, Reuben ends up sleeping with his father's concubine, Bilhah while they are settled in Bethel. Jacob hears of this, and in chapter 49, he revokes Reuben's birthright, saying "you shall not excel, Because you went up to your father’s bed; Then you defiled it— He went up to my couch."
• Hope Spot:
  • After learning that God plans to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for their wickedness, Abraham is able to bargain God down to sparing them if there are at least ten righteous men there for the sake of Lot and his family. It isn't enough for the natives.
  • After Joseph interprets the Pharaoh's cupbearer's dream, that he will be restored to his position, the baker hopes that his fate will be just as good. Unfortunately, as the baker learns from his own dream being interpreted by Joseph, he is beheaded and his body is left on a tree for the birds to devour.
• Hope Sprouts Eternal: In Chapter 8, when Noah sends a dove out to see if the waters have receded from the earth, and it returns with a freshly-plucked olive branch in its mouth, Noah takes it as a good sign that the Flood is coming to an end.
• How We Got Here: Tradition holds that the narrator is Moses, and that Genesis was written during the Exodus to record Israel's history leading up to that time.
• Human Sacrifice: God in chapter 22 calls Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac on Mount Moriah, which he proceeds to do up until the point where Abraham is ready to slay his son and God says stop, realizing that Abraham would not withhold his own son from God, and thus provides a ram to sacrifice in Isaac's place instead.
• Idiot Ball: Adam and Eve ate fruit they weren't supposed to because of selfishness. If they were smarter, they would've done otherwise, and so the human race wouldn't be suffering today. The Fall of Man could never have occurred. In fairness, both had yet to learn that Snakes Are Sinister.
• If Only You Knew: Jacob sends ten of his sons to Egypt to buy food. They end up facing a deputy of Pharaoh who is their paternal half-brother Joseph, but they have no idea of this. In the conversation they have with him they say "we are all sons of one man", not realizing that this includes the person they're talking to.
• I Have No Son!: Adam and Eve's first son Cain is disowned after he kills his brother Abel. In fact, in the later books, no mention is ever made of Cain or his lineage, since it was most likely destroyed in the Flood.
• Immortality Field: The Garden of Eden is depicted as a place of everlasting joy without death and Adam and Eve's expulsion from it deprived them of those blessings. This is subverted in that it's falling out of God's favor, not the physical act of leaving the Garden, that made them lose their eternal life and experience physical death.
• Implausible Deniability: Cain is enough of a moron to think he can murder his brother and then lie about it to an omniscient and omnipotent God.
• Imposter Forgot One Detail: Jacob disguises himself as Esau by wearing Esau's clothes and having furry goatskins on the back of his hands and the back of his neck so that he could get the firstborn blessing from his father Isaac when he was near death. Because Isaac was blind at that point, the impersonation works except for one detail that Isaac noticed (although strangely it doesn't stop Isaac from going ahead with the blessing): Jacob didn't bother to disguise his voice, so Isaac recognized his voice as that of Jacob.
• Improbable Food Budget: With Joseph being promoted to governor of Egypt after correctly interpreting the Pharoah's two dreams about seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine, Egypt produces so much food during the first seven years that they are able to help the surrounding nations survive the second seven years.
• Improvised Clothes: The fig leaves Adam and Eve make into loincloths when they eat the fruit and realize they're naked and feel ashamed for it.
• Incest Standards Are Relative:
  • Jacob married the sister of his then-alive wife. Subsequent Israelite standards, codefied in the Book of Leviticus, forbid a man from marrying his wife's sister until the death of his wife. The Book of Numbers says that Amram, father of Moses, married his father's sister, which is also forbidden under the Leviticus code (which was given over 83 years after Amram's marriage).
  • At one point Abraham goes to the land of Gerar. While there, he lies, claiming that Sarah is his sister. When the lie is discovered, he claims that he didn't really lie—Sarah was both his wife and his paternal half-sister. So apparently he expected the king of Gerar to find it acceptable for paternal half-siblings to marry.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: When questioned as to why he was hiding in the Garden, Adam responds that it was because he was ashamed of his nudity. God then responds, "Who told you that you were naked?! You have eaten, then, of the tree that I have commanded you not to eat from."
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Well, couple. Adam and Eve are naked when they're first created, but they have no concept of "naked," and are unashamed. It's only after they eat the fruit that they become aware of their nudity, and start to feel... well, naked.
• Insists on Paying: In chapter 23, Abraham's wife Sarah dies, and Abraham talks to the people of Heth about giving him a place to bury his dead. The people of Heth insist on giving him the choicest of burial sites — the cave of Machpelah — for his wife without having to pay anything for it, since they consider him a prince among their people, but Abraham insists on purchasing the property. They finally settle on four hundred shekels of silver, which is what Abraham ended up paying, and it became the only site in the Promised Land permanently deeded to Abraham and his descendants, as Abraham, Isaac, Rebekah, Leah, and Jacob are eventually buried there as well.
• Irrevocable Order: When Isaac gave the firstborn blessing to Jacob disguised as Esau, and then later Esau comes for the blessing and finds out that it has already been given, Esau cries bitterly for the loss of the blessing that he believed was stolen from him, only to find that his father cannot revoke the blessing and instead gives Esau a lesser blessing (just how much worse it was is a question of translation - opinions differ as to whether Esau was also granted "the earth's richness and the dew of heaven," or explicitly denied it), embittering Esau's heart to seek revenge against his brother.
• It Is Beyond Saving:
  • The world at the time of Noah. God saw that mankind was so corrupt that He resolved to kill all that crept upon it until He found Noah, who was "blameless in his generations" and has him and his family build an ark in which they would be saved along with the creatures of the Earth.
  • Sodom and Gomorrah in the eyes of God. Abraham tries to bargain with God and see if he can't save the cities if there is at least ten righteous people living in them. God agrees to the bargain, but as He finds out through His angelic visitors, there were only less than ten righteous people (Lot and his immediate family) in Sodom, and thus they were delivered before fire and brimstone rained down and destroyed the cities.
• It's the Only Way to Be Sure: God glasses Sodom and Gomorrah when He can't find even ten people in their entire population who are not absolute monsters.
• Jacob and Esau: The prototypical example of this trope, at least in western culture, is probably Jacob and Esau from this very book. They are twins, but Esau, the elder brother, is favoured by his father, while Jacob is his mother's favourite. They are very different, too; Esau is a great hunter and sports a Carpet of Virility, and Jacob is good at cooking and stuff like that, and not hairy at all. The latter two even conspire successfully to cheat Esau out of his inheritance, even though it ends up fulfilling what God had said about the sons, that "the older [Esau] shall serve the younger [Jacob]". ^*Esau's alienation does not last forever; the two brothers made peace years later. Furthermore, Esau's descendants are the Edomites, and Jacob's descendants are the Israelites (including the Jews). During the Secunda period of Judaea, the Edomites become part of the Jewish people and share their inheritance again.
• Jaywalking Will Ruin Your Life: The first two people decide to have a bite of the wrong fruit, resulting in the fall of man and eternal punishment.
• Jews Love to Argue: Abraham, the mortal half of the Jewish covenant, makes the trope by haggling with God Himself in a bid to spare Sodom and Gomorrah for Lot's sake.
• Journey to the Sky: A unified, single-language civilization tries to build a tower in Shinar, the Tower of Babel, in order to reach Heaven and meet God. God Himself does not approve of this, so He makes it so the builders end up speaking different languages to make communication impossible, thus rendering them unable to proceed with the tower's construction.
• Jumped at the Call: When God told Abram to take himself and his family and all that he owned out of the land he was living in and go to the country where God was going to take him, Abram did just what the Lord had told him to do, though he also took his own nephew Lot with him. (In the extra-biblical accounts, Abram also destroyed his family idols before he left his homeland to move to the Promised Land.)
• "Just So" Story:
  • Creation, naturally. How did God do it? He just did.
  • The story of the Fall explains that, as a consequence, snakes lost their legs and have to crawl on their stomachs, men have to till the soil to produce food, women have troubles in childbirth and suffer under patriarchy, and corpses decompose back into the dust from which they're made.
  • The explanation given by the Tower of Babel story for all the world's different languages and dialects: God disrupted their communication so they wouldn't understand each other.
  • The Flood gives the origin of rainbows as a sign of God's promise not to drown the earth again.
• Karma Houdini: Even if God spoke severely to Lucifer for lying to the human race in Eden, he really got a slap on the wrist. God could've destroyed him immediately but did otherwise. Luckily, Lucifer's Karma Houdini Warranty expires in Revelation.
• Karmic Rape: Lot's daughters taking advantage of him while drunk is implied to be divine retribution for Lot selling the daughters out so he could protect his guests.
• Keep the Reward: In chapter 14, when Abraham and his men and allies rescue the people of Sodom, including his nephew Lot, from the evil kings that held them captive, the king of Sodom offers to reward Abraham by letting him keep the goods that he had recovered. Abraham refuses to take even a single thread or sandal strap for the sake of not giving somebody the reputation of making Abraham rich, and instead lets his allies have their share of the reward.
• Kicked Out of Heaven: Played With in the sense that the characters didn't die beforehand, but Adam and Eve, the first two human beings, were exiled from the Garden of Eden (which is practically Heaven) for going against God's word of not eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
  • Played Straight with Lucifer being the prettiest person in Heaven thinking he should be like God and a third of the angels that apparently agreed with him.
• Kneel Before Frodo: Joseph's brothers bow down before him four times. The first three times, they do not realize that he's Joseph. The fourth and final time, they bow before him fully aware of his identity and in reverence. Technically, only the fourth exemplifies the trope.
• Knight Templar Big Brother: Dinah's brothers (Simeon and Levi, anyway) avenge their sister by going back on their word — they kill the man who violated her and wipe out his clan while the clan is down and not feeling that well...!
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • God often will kill evil-doers after they continue in their vile habit for some time, like in the case of Onan. Onan is tasked with continuing his deceased brother's family by "knowing" his wife. However, "knowing the offspring would not be his," Onan had intercourse with his brother's wife but "wasted his seed on the ground" each time in spite of his due to his brother's widow. This offended God and he took Onan's life, though it doesn't say how.
  • Although Jacob was favored by God over his brother Esau, the former being tricked by his father-in-law Laban into long years of service and marrying Leah is often seen as retribution for Jacob tricking his father and brother out of the latter's birthright and blessing. Not that it stops Jacob from getting even with his uncle by slowly causing his uncle's flock to become his by having his uncle's flock mate in front of some peeled tree branches so that they become striped or speckled, which is what Jacob asked for his wages from his uncle.
  • After fleeing the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot's daughters, fearing there are no other men left in the world to reproduce with, get Lot drunk and rape him. This is sometimes seen as retribution for Lot having tried to appease the mob of Sodom, who'd demanded he hand over his two male guests (angels in human guise) so they could rape them, by offering them his daughters instead.
• Last-Minute Baby Naming: Jacob's sons are all given Meaningful Names, surrounding the circumstances of their birth, and The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry that their mothers were engaged in. The women were expecting to have a son that would be the promised "seed of the woman" God had spoken of to the first man and woman that would "bruise the head" of the serpent (later identified as Satan), which is why when Jacob's daughter Dinah was born, there wasn't given any sort of speech regarding her name.
• Law of Inverse Fertility: Sarah is infertile for most of her adult life, while her maidservant gets pregnant by sleeping with Abraham once. Rebekah does eventually conceive, but not without divine intervention... and it almost kills her. Leah pumps out six sons and a daughter, while her sister Rachel struggles to conceive, only to be killed by the second time.
• Liquid Darkness: Tehom is the "deep" primordial ocean that exists before God creates heaven and earth, identified as both darkness and water.
  And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
• Long-Lived: Everyone before The Great Flood, and a few soon thereafter. Adam lived to 930; Methuselah lived to 969. Post-flood, Shem lived to 602. Noah's descendants' lifespans get progressively shorter over the centuries. At the end of the book, Jacob's son Joseph ends up living 110 years, thus fulfilling God's declaration that "man's days shall be 120 years" back in Chapter 6.
• Love Father, Love Son:
  • Jacob's concubine Bilhah cheats on him with his son Reuben. This earns the latter to be cursed by his father on his deathbed.
  • Inverted with Tamar who winds up with Judah after having married his two sons.
• Love Interest Apotheosis: Lot and his family flee Sodom and Gomorrah to escape its destruction by God. When Lot's wife looks back at the city, she is turned into a pillar of salt.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: Esau's marriages to the Canaanite women, which became such a source of grief to both Isaac and Rebekah that they had to tell Jacob to go to his uncle Laban in Paddan-Aram to get himself a wife from there. Esau realized that his wives weren't pleasing to his parents and tried to fix the problem by marrying a woman from Ishmael's family line.
• Mandatory Motherhood:
  • In the case of Onan, the brother of Judah's first dead son Er and brother-in-law to Tamar, it's Mandatory Fatherhood. Onan provoked God into striking him dead by refusing to have a child with Tamar, his dead brother's wife, as per the laws of levirate marriage (in short, he was required to marry his brother's wife, and their first son would be his brother's to continue his brother's family line). He vowed that he would (thus avoiding public shaming and being cast out of his family) and then performed coitus interruptus to prevent it (i.e. probably in the course of having sex with her regularly nonetheless).
  • The reason Sarah, Rachel, and Leah give concubines to their husbands as a means to have children when they get slammed by the Law of Inverse Fertility: this was, in fact, commanded under the Code of Hammurabi, which was the law of the land at that point. (Marriage back then was seen as a way to strengthen sociopolitical alliances, increase socioeconomic status, and carry on one's lineage; love and companionship came later.)
• Manly Tears: Joseph is mentioned to be crying at several points during the Xanatos Gambit involving his brothers. When he reveals his identity to them, he cries so hard that the guards outside can hear him and report the incident to the Pharaoh. However, the narrative does not portray these events as any kind of weakness on his part.
• Marry Them All: Jacob works for Laban seven years to marry his beloved Rachel. When the ceremony rolls around, he finds he's married to Leah (her older sister) instead. Laban's solution: you get the other girl next week too, but then you have to work another seven years in retroactive payment. Not only that, but both women bring their handmaids into it as well: Rachel because she's barren (for a while), and Leah because, well, she's the less favored wife and has to keep up. So Jacob winds up having four wives and a total of thirteen children.
• Mate or Die: Rachel, being jealous of her sister Leah giving their husband Jacob four sons, cries out to Jacob, "Give me children [literally sons] or I will die." This starts the whole situation of Rachel and Leah both giving Jacob their handmaids for him to have children with through surrogacy. Still not satisfied, Rachel tries to use mandrakes to get herself pregnant by Jacob. It is only when God decides to give Rachel conception that she finally gives birth to her first child Joseph.
• Meaningful Echo: The phrase "Am I in the place of God?" is first uttered by Jacob out of frustration, when Rachel says she must have a child by him or she will die. One generation later, their son, Joseph, uses almost exactly the same phrase but under happier circumstances, while reassuring his brothers that he has forgiven them and that they have nothing to fear from him.
• Meaningful Rename:
  • Abram and Sarai are renamed Abraham and Sarah by divine advice.
  • Jacob becomes Israel after wrestling with an angel.
  • After interpreting Pharaoh's dreams and becoming second-in-command of Egypt, Joseph is renamed Zaphenapt-Paneah (The God speaks and He lives).
• Men Act, Women Are: The men are described in terms of their attributes. The women are typically described in terms of beauty.
• Misplaced Retribution: After Ham laughs at the sight of his father Noah naked. When the latter wakes up, he curses Ham's son Canaan.
• Moon Is the Night Sun: In the creation story, the passage on the fourth day of creation describes God creating "the two great lights", the greater one to rule the day and the lesser one to rule the night.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Judah in Chapter 38 has this kind of moment when, after hearing about his daughter-in-law Tamar being pregnant by prostitution and ordering for her to be burned, he realizes that he was the actual father of the children she conceived, and thus spares her in order to give birth.
• Mystical Pregnancy: The recurring theme of infertile women becoming pregnant against the odds, which is attributed to divine intervention. Special mention goes to Sarah, who was way past menopause (in her 90's) when Isaac was born.
• Nepharious Pharaoh: A pharaoh is furious at Abraham (then known as Abram) for lying about the relationship between him and Sarah (then known as Sarai) as the patriarch had presented her as his sister when she was in fact his wife, fearing that if the truth was known he'd be murdered and an Egyptian would marry his widow. Apparently hosting them and showering them with gifts under this misconception was enough for YHWH to send a plague to Egypt, so he orders his men to deport the couple.
• Nephilim: The first of the Bible's two mentions of them, born of mortal women (the "daughters of man") and the "sons of God." (However, see above for alternate interpretations.)
• Never My Fault:
  • Adam and Eve. God confronts Adam and Eve with the eating from the Tree Of Knowledge. Adam blames Eve (and God for creating her in the first place), and Eve blames the serpent.
  • Abraham and Sarah. When Hagar gets pregnant with Ishmael and ends up despising her mistress, Sarah blames Abraham for getting her handmaid pregnant in the first place, and Abraham in turn blames Sarah for giving him the handmaid to father a son through.
  • Rebekah instructs Jacob on how to deceive her husband/his father to take the blessing, and when he has qualms about the possible consequences she assures him she'll take them all on her own head. After the plan is successful and she's sending off Jacob to escape the consequences, she pushes all responsibility for the act onto him.
• No Doubt the Years Have Changed Me: Joseph's brothers are unable to recognize him after twenty years of separation. It's not surprising, considering that they last saw him as the Annoying Younger Sibling whom they sold to slavery, and now he's the Vizier of Egypt and Pharaoh's Number Two.
• No Endor Holocaust: Retellings of the Noah's Ark story often miss or elide how horrifying it is is as-described. Everyday people, including children and elderly, plus the "extra" animals die in the Great Flood, all because they were allegedly evil.
• No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: Joseph subjects his brothers to something rather like this. Joseph is a good guy who intends his brothers no harm, but the brothers, who had previously sold him into slavery, think this is what happened when they realize who he was. It's also extended in time, with the brothers dining and staying with Joseph twice before he tells them who he is.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Enoch "walking with God" before he could die. It is never explained in the canonical Torah, thereby leading to the Canon Fodder that is The Book of Enoch
  • God slays Er for being "displeasing to the LORD", though the book gives no explanation for how he was displeasing or why he decided to be a bad guy in the first place.
  • The Pharaoh's chief butler (who tasted the wine to make sure it wasn't poisoned) and the baker are put into prison. We're never told what crimes they committed to be sent there in the first place.
• Off with His Head!: In Chapter 40, when the cupbearer and the baker tell their dreams to Joseph in the hopes of understanding the interpretation of the dreams, Joseph tells the baker that his dream of him having three baskets on his head with birds eating baked goods from the topmost basket that the baker is going to have his head "lifted off" from him and that his body will be put on a pole for the birds to eat within three days. And on the third day, when the cupbearer and the baker were released from prison, the baker's dream came true, as the Pharaoh ordered the baker's head to be cut off and his body to be put on a pole for the birds to eat.
• Oh, Crap!: Isaac's reaction once the real Esau returns and he figures out he gave his blessing to an impostor.
  Isaac trembled violently and said, "Who was it, then, that hunted game and brought it to me?"
• Oh, My Gods!: The Angel of the Lord says this in Genesis 22:16-18:
  "By Myself I have sworn, says the LORD, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you and I will indeed multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens and as the sand that is on the seashore. Your descendants will possess the gate of their enemies. Through your offspring all the nations of the earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice."
• The Omnipotent: In Genesis chapter 18, when the angels of God declare in Abraham and Sarah's presence that Sarah is going to have a child, and she laughs at the idea, realizing she's an old woman past menopause and her husband is also old, God rebukes her disbelief by saying, "Is anything too difficult for the Lord?"
• One-Night-Stand Pregnancy: Tamar had one with her father-in-law Judah by disguising herself as a prostitute in order to have a child from him when Judah wouldn't give his surviving son Shelah to her as a husband. Tamar had Judah give over some signature items as collateral for payment of her services, and would later use them to prove that Judah was the father of her children when Judah heard that Tamar was pregnant through prostitution and demanded that she would be brought to be burned to death.
• One-Steve Limit:
  • Obviously averted in regards to the Pharaohs, since theirs is a title. Might also apply to Abimelech, king of the Philistines; there are two mentions of an Abimelech that take place decades apart, and it's not clear whether these are the same person or Abimelech Sr. and Jr.
  • Cain's and Seth's descendants have very similar names (like Irad and Jared, Methushael and Methuselah). Notably there are Enoch son of Cain and Enoch son of Jared as well as Lamech son of Methushael and Lamech son of Methuselah.
• Opposite-Sex Clone: God took Adam's rib (or "a piece of his side") and created Eve from it. Adam said when God brought her forth to him that she is now "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh."
• Our Ancestors Are Superheroes: The first humans are depicted as living for anywhere from 300 to 900 years, even the ones who were born after the exile from Paradise. There is implication that humans were originally created immortal with natural abilities that would now be considered superhuman, but greatly diminished after the Fall and have been further declining over time, healthcare and technology notwithstanding.
• Our Giants Are Bigger: Nephilim were generally translated as "giants" in older translations of the book, including the Latin Vulgate and the King James Bible. There are a variety of views on the meaning, with some saying it refers to demigods preserved from earlier traditions, like Gilgamesh and Enkidu, but it also serves to show that even these men towering over ordinary men are only creations subject to the Creator. Given the scarcity of mentions, and the contexts in which it is used in Genesis, and other books, there is unlikely to be agreement on the exact nature of the Nephilim, but few, if any, make the meaning into anything essential.
• Outliving One's Offspring:
  • Adam and Eve were both alive after their son Abel was murdered.
  • Reading through the genealogies and assuming all the numbers are meant literally (or even with slight round-off error) would give a few examples here.
  • Terach outlived his son Haran.
  • The text implies that Lot had married daughters, in addition to his two single daughters. None of those married daughters survived the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
  • Judah and his first wife lost two sons during their lifetime.
• Out-of-Character Moment: A perceived one, anyway. When God reveals His plan to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, which would destroy the wicked and the righteous alike, Abraham claims such ruthlessness is very much unlike God. In the following discussion, God makes a deal that He will spare the cities if there are at least 10 believers there. It turns out in short matter Abraham's objection was pointless, since Lot is the only just person in those two cities.
• Pals with Jesus:
  • Several characters are on speaking terms with God, but Enoch is probably one of the few who can claim to be a friend.
    Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.
  • "These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in all his generations, and Noah walked with God." (Genesis 6:9)
  • Abraham and God get along pretty well too.
• Parental Favoritism: A recurring theme, one that sets the stage for much of the drama.
  • Cain murdered his brother Abel because God, the Father of creation, accepted the latter's offering and rejected the former's.
  • The conflict between Esau and Jacob stems from how Isaac favored Esau and planned to cheat Jacob of his inheritance (Jacob had at this point bought Esau's birthright, and though his methods were unscrupulous, the first-born right should now go to Jacob and not Esau), while Rebecca favoured Jacob and conspired to trick the visually impaired Isaac to give the blessing to Jacob-disguised-as-Esau.
  • Then there's Isaac, who was born to Abraham and Sarah very late, and after Sarah (in despair at a total lack of children) had told Abraham to have a child by her maid Hagar. Once Isaac was born, Ishmael did something that upset Sarah, and she (with God's backing) told Abraham to send Ishmael and Hagar away.
  • Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery because Jacob obviously treat him better than the rest of his sons.
  • Jacob also favors Benjamin to the point that he is willing to let another son (Simeon) rot in an Egyptian prison and let the rest of the clan starve to avoid having to part with Benjamin.
• Parental Incest:
  • Lot's daughters have sex with him in Genesis 19:30-38. If you're disgusted by old man Lot, know that they raped him when he was drunk and unconscious.
  • The youngest son of Noah, Ham, is cursed for having "seen his father's nakedness". Since some biblical commentators doubt he would have punished him so severely just for that, saying this must therefore have been a euphemism for molestation or even full sexual relations.
• Parental Love Triangle:
  • Jacob's firstborn son Reuben sleeps with the former's concubine Bilhah. She had already given brith to Dan and Naphtali, two of Reuben's half-brothers. When Jacob hears about this, Reuben becomes disgraced among his family and had his traditional firstborn son's inheritance reduced.
  • Potiphar's wife tries and fails to seduce Joseph, a slave in her husband's household. Some traditions identify Potiphar with an Egyptian priest named Potiphera whose daughter gets married to Joseph. However there is no indication in the text this is the case.
• Perfectly Arranged Marriage: Isaac and his wife Rebekah. Abraham sent his servant to the land of his brother in Mesopotamia to get a wife for his son Isaac, and the servants prays to God that the first woman who comes along to the well to offer both him and his camels a drink would be the one God has chosen to be Isaac's wife. As it turns out, Rebekah was the first woman who offers the servant and his camels a drink, and so after the servant spends a night in her family's house and talks with her brother Laban about what happened, Laban gives his sister Rebekah his blessings and has her sent to the land of Canaan where Abraham and Isaac were staying, and both Isaac and Rebekah were married upon her arrival.
• Perpetual Storm: The Great Flood was caused in part by a storm which lasted for 40 days, followed by 150 days of flooding and 220 days of drying out.
• Person of Mass Construction: God is an exaggerated example of this. He created light, the heavens, the stars, the lands, the animals, and humanity all in only six days.
• Please Spare Him, My Liege!: Because it is Lost in Translation, most people don't realize that God of all people does this at one point. When Abraham is about to sacrifice his son Isaac, God implores him to let him go and sacrifice a ram instead. In Hebrew, there are two ways to formulate a negative sentence: one of them is known as the Prohibitive, the other the Vetative. The former is used when a person talks down to somebody, i.e. is in a superior position. The latter is used when somebody tries to persuade a superior. With one sole other exception every other negative sentence of God in the Tanakh is formulated as a Prohibitive (for example, the Ten Commandments are formulated in a way that makes it very clear that anybody who violates them will suffer a Fate Worse than Death), but when God asks (not orders, but asks) Abraham to put down the dagger, it reads the same way as a soldier pleading with his commanding officer.
• Plunder: When Simeon and Levi struck the city of Shechem with the sword and rescued their sister Dinah from Shechem, they plundered the city of all its goods before returning home. Jacob rebukes them for their actions, but Simeon and Levi said that their sister would not be treated like a prostitute.
• Polyamory: Several named characters are said to have more than one wife. It tends to cause problems.
  • Cain's descendant Lamech is the first recorded polygamy, having two wives — Adah and Zillah.
  • Abraham was legally married to Sarah, but also had 2 named concubines, Hagar and Keturah. Sarah gets jealous of how Abraham's son Ishmael (child of Hagar) is being treated and Ishmael and his mother are eventually sent away. Keturah becomes Abraham's second wife after Sarah passes away.
  • Jacob got to have two wives (Leah and Rachel) and two concubines (Bilhah and Zilpah) as per custom with Laban's people. Rachel was his favourite, which led to The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry and Jacob favouring her son Joseph over his half-brothers.
  • Esau is married to three Canaanite women: Adath, Basemath, and Oholibamah. His mother doesn't like them, mainly because they worship their gods and goddesses, instead of the Abrahamic God, and follow their traditions and customs instead of her and Isaac's.
• Posthumous Sibling:
  • Eve gives birth to Seth after the murder of Abel.
  • Judah begot twins Perez and Zerah after the death of his elder sons Er and Onan.
• Pregnancy Does Not Work That Way: Jacob and Zerah are both born hand-first (partially in Zerah's case) rather than headfirst or even feet first, which is symbolic but not the incipient medical emergency that such an unusual birth position would actually be.
• Priest King: Salem in Canaan had priest-king Melchizedek, noted for giving food and blessing (specifically, bread and wine) to Abraham and Sarah. He is also noted for acknowledging the Abrahamic God, although it's not clear whether Melchizedek was a true monotheist or henotheist (treating God as the principal deity of a pantheon). Either way, Abraham saw no issue to tithing to Melchizedek, God doesn't show up to rebuke Abraham about this afterward, and the New Testament goes even further to claim that Melchizedek was (either literally or metaphorically) Jesus Christ.
• Psychic Dreams for Everyone: In Joseph's story, Joseph, the Pharaoh, the pharaoh's baker and the pharaoh's chief butler all have prophetic dreams. God is stated to be sending those dreams, which is why Joseph (who is favored by God) is able to interpret them.
• Pungeon Master: The patriarch Jacob is prophesying what will occur to his descendants, and says to his grandson Ephraim, "And now, I assign to you one portion more than to your brothers". That doesn't seem like a pun in English. But in Hebrew the word for portion is שְׁכֶם, or "Shechem," which just so happens to be the name of the largest city in the land Ephraim inherited in Canaan. To a Judean or Israelite from 3000 years ago that would be instant chuckles right there.
• Rags to Royalty: Joseph is Made a Slave, then imprisoned on a False Rape Accusation, then appointed second-in-command of Egypt by Pharaoh.
• Refuge in the West: After revealing his true identity, Joseph invites his brothers to bring their father to Egypt to wait out the years of famine.
• Rape and Revenge:
  • Among the reasons God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, if the way Sodom's residents planned on treating Lot's guests is any indication.
  • The Canaanite prince Shechem violates Dinah, and her two brothers Levi and Simeon slaughter every man in the prince's village for it. (Jacob does not approve.)
• Rash Promise:
  • When Esau returns from a hunt and is famished, he foolishly oaths away his birthright as the eldest son in exchange for his younger brother Jacob cooking him soup.
  • After Jacob's wife Rachel steals her father Laban's household idols, Laban catches up to them and demands them back. Not knowing who stole them, Jacob vows that whoever is the thief is will be put to death. Fortunately for he and Rachel, Laban doesn't find them.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: When Joseph is put into prison, the warden sees that Joseph is a model prisoner, and makes him overseer of the other inmates.
• Reduced to Dust:
  • Just as God created Adam out of dust in Genesis 2, He foretells in Genesis 3 that Adam will be returned to dust due to his eating of the forbidden fruit. The disintegration imagery here is a cruel foretelling of humanity's newfound mortality that will result in decomposition.
  • An old and odd variation in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, where Lot's wife is reduced to salt particles after seeing the divine destruction of the cities.
• Replacement Goldfish:
  • Seth who was born after Abel's death. Eventually all humans share him as an ancestor though Noah.
  • Benjamin becomes one for Jacob after Joseph's disappearance.
• Revenge Before Reason:
  • Cain was marked to prevent anyone from murdering him in revenge for his murder of Abel.
  • Jacob's sons Simeon and Levi used deception to incapacitate and then slaughter all the men of a local clan in order to avenge the rape of their younger sister. An irate Jacob points out that now their surviving neighbors will probably band together to wipe them out, and the whole family has to up stakes and flee to Bethel with only divine intervention preventing Jacob's fears from being realized. This ultimately costs Simeon and Levi their right to claim the first-born inheritance after Reuben forfeited it, and Jacob's greatest blessing goes to the fourth son Judah.
• Right Way/Wrong Way Pair: God responds to Abram's hospitality and faithful obedience by blessing him and Sarah with a baby, then destroys Sodom and Gomorrah because people there failed to behave in the same manner by forcing sex upon the visitors.
• Rule of Three:
  • God appears to Abram in the form of three men. It is unclear if all three are angels, if all three are some appearance of God, or if they are a mix of entities.
  • Noah has three sons, who are the ancestors of all people that live after the Flood.
• Sacred Hospitality:
  • As far as Lot is concerned, the safety of his guests is more important to him than his own and that of his own daughters (fortunately for them, his guests intervened).
  • Abraham is shown displaying extraordinary hospitality towards three "strangers" who turn out to be God and two angels coming to promise Abraham a son and to discuss the issue of Sodom and Gomorrah.
• Sadistic Choice: One interpretation of Lot offering his two daughters to the mob to be raped is that he had to choose between honoring Sacred Hospitality or protecting his family, and he went with the former.
• Saved From Their Own Honor: "The Binding of Isaac" is a story in which Abraham is tasked by God to prove his loyalty by sacrificing his son. Abraham is about to fully go through with it, but is stopped by God at the last moment. Thus, God is benevolent for sparing his loyal servant's son, and Abraham is faithful for being committed to going through with it. (The details of the story vary with telling or belief. The Bible states that the one sacrificed is Isaac, while in The Qur'an, it's Ishmael.)
• Secret Test of Character:
  • Abraham is told to sacrifice his son Isaac in order to prove his faith.
  • Joseph pulls one of these on his brothers with Benjamin, framing the latter for theft to see if the older brothers will abandon their father's current favorite or defend him.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Jacob is the Sensitive Guy who tends to sheep while Esau is the Manly Man who hunts for his food.
• Sex Equals Love: When Adam realizes that Eve is "the flesh of my flesh," the narration notes that "the flesh of my flesh" is why it is good for a man to "cling to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." The next sentence even comments on how the first people were unabashed in nakedness, showing that their sexual expression was wholly uncorrupted. Therefore, it is one of the very few times in the Bible that this trope is played straight.
• Sexless Marriage: Implied to be the case with Abraham and Sarah after a long time of being unable to conceive children, when God's angels visit the couple in Chapter 18 and tell them that Sarah was going to have Abraham's child, and Sarah laughs, saying, "After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?"
• Sibling Rivalry: A running theme in the Genesis. It begins with Cain and Abel, continues through Jacob and Esau and ventures into the domain of The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry with Rachel and Leah. Joseph's relationship and his brothers headed down the same track, until Joseph broke with the trend and forgave his brothers, thereby reuniting the family.
• Signature Item Clue:
  • Potiphar's wife gets hold of Joseph's cloak as he runs away from her. She later shows Potiphar the cloak to support her claim that he tried to rape her.
  • Joseph's brothers distress his coat to use as concrete evidence in their claim that wild animals have eaten him.
  • Tamar takes Judah's staff and cloak as tribute for payment while disguised as a shrine prostitute, so that she can later produce them as proof that he's the father of her baby.
• Sleeping with the Boss's Wife: Defied by Joseph when he is a slave of Potiphar's. Potiphar's wife tries to seduce him, but he resists. However, out of spite Potiphar's wife accuses him of having raped her and Joseph finds himself wrongfully imprisoned.
• Snakes Are Sinister: In the garden of Eden, a regular snake (later identified as Satan) strikes up a conversation with Eve with the intent of getting her to doubt what God had said about His command to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He gets her to say that God has told her and Adam not to eat from the tree or even touch it (the last part of which God never said) or else they will die. Then he gets her to believe that God Himself was lying about the tree, and that if she ate from the tree, her eyes will be opened and she will be like God, "knowing good and evil". When both Adam and Eve eat from the tree together, and are confronted by God over what they have done, and Eve says that the snake deceived her into eating from the tree, God cursed the snake with crawling on his belly and eating dust all the days of his life, and that there will be enmity between his offspring and that of the woman, that "the seed of the woman" shall crush his head while he shall "bruise His heel".
• Soiled City on a Hill:
  • In the world before The Great Flood in general, people are said to be cruel and selfish to the point that "every thought" in their heart was "wicked continuously".
  • Sodom and Gomorrah is filled with brutal people bent on raping the city's newest visitors without any desire for compromise. Even Lot's family falls into evil despite not even being natives of the city, with his sons deriding their father, his wife disobeying God, and his daughters raping their own father.
• Stairway to Heaven:
  • Jacob dreams of one (or a ladder; translators disagree) that angels were going up and down upon when he was fleeing to his uncle Laban in Paddan-Aram.
  • The Tower of Babel being built in Genesis chapter 11 was intended to be this.
• Star Scraper: The Tower of Babel was envisioned as being tall enough to reach heaven, but God put a stop to it.
• Sterility Plague: God curses Abimelech and his people with sterility when Abimelech takes in Abraham's wife Sarah as part of his harem, although he was only told by Abraham was Sarah was his sister (which is technically true) rather than his wife. God prevents Abimelech from touching Sarah in any way that would violate the sanctity of her marriage with Abraham, then after Abimelech restores Sarah to Abraham and Abraham prays to God, the curse is lifted and Abimelech and his people are able to have children again.
• Taken for Granite: Lot's wife is turned into a pillar of salt when she turned back to look at Sodom which was burning from a storm of fire and brimstone.
• Team Rocket Wins: Satan sniggered after Adam and Eve ate fruit from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. 65 books later, still and all, God finally turns the tables on the serpent.
• Tempting Fate: The civilization at Babel sought glory so they would not be scattered throughout the Earth, but for their vainglory, God cursed them with languages that forced their separations.
  ..."Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." The LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And the LORD said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do now will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confused their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech."
• Then Let Me Be Evil: When Adam and Eve sinned, they lost their salvation. They had joined the Dark Side voluntarily by listening to Satan.
• These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: When Eve bites that forbidden fruit. It's clear that knowledge of right and wrong is something man should have been more careful about wanting to know.
• They Called Me Mad!: Averted. Though virtually every adaptation has this as an interpolation, the text does not actually mention the townspeople mocking Noah for building a boat in the middle of a desert, nor have any specific scene where the Flood then sweeps said taunters away.
• Thoughtcrime: In Chapter 6, the people of Noah's generation (excluding Noah and his family) were so wicked that even their thoughts and imaginations were focused on evil all the time, which is why God decided to destroy the world that existed at the time.
• Top Wife: Rachel was the wife Jacob loved above his first wife Leah, since he worked seven years for his right to marry her but was given Leah instead through a Bed Trick and had to work for his uncle Laban for another seven years for Rachel. Unfortunately Rachel was left barren while Leah pumped out seven children for Jacob, which made her upset and thus resorted to giving her handmaid to Jacob to create a surrogate child through. It was only by the divine appointment of God that she was able to bear two children, Joseph and Benjamin.
• Tzadikim Nistarim: "The Lord said, If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, then I will spare all the place for their sakes."
• The Unchosen One: Abraham's sons Ishmael and Midian, Isaac's son Esau, and each of Jacob's twelve other sons besides Joseph (along with Joseph's son Manasseh) did not get to be The Chosen One of their families. They all did pretty well for themselves nonetheless, with each of Abraham and Isaac's children founding whole nations and Jacob's other children producing the tribes of Israel. The hero Gideon arose from Manasseh. Judah's tribe, in particular, went on to produce King David's dynasty and eventually none other than Jesus Christ; and the very term "Jews" in our language derives from his tribe's ultimate ascendancy over Israel.
• The Underworld: All characters expect to "go down to Sheol" after death. The words "go down" suggests that Sheol is conceived of as a somewhat depressing afterlife^note Either that or simply "the grave", suggesting there's no afterlife and there's no difference mentioned concerning the fate of righteous and wicked people. Only gradually does the Old Testament go on to suggest there's more sorting to follow.
• The Un-Favourite:
  • Cain in comparison to his brother Abel, since Abel brought a sacrifice to God that pleased Him but Cain's offering wasn't pleasing.
  • Noah's grandson Canaan was the unfavorite, all because of what his father Ham did when he saw Noah lying in his tent naked from being drunk.
  • Jacob's first wife Leah, since she was given to him through a Bed Trick by her father Laban, turned out to be this in comparison to his second wife Rachel, whom he loved more. To that regard, God gave Leah more children to bear than Rachel.
  • Jacob's other sons in comparison to Joseph, whom he lavished so much attention upon that it made them jealous.
  • Jacob's grandson Manasseh, who was the firstborn of Joseph, who was passed over in the firstborn blessing in favor of Joseph's other son Ephraim.
• Unusual Euphemism:
  • Jacob calling Reuben "the beginning of my strength" was one for being his first biological son, the beginning of Jacob's procreative power as a man. (This is later mentioned in one of God's laws in the book of Deuteronomy.)
  • Abraham having his servant put his hand "under his thigh", as Jacob later had Joseph do in swearing an oath, is understood by certain Bible students to mean grabbing the genitals.
• Unwanted Spouse: Jacob's first wife Leah, who was given to him through a Bed Trick when his uncle Laban promised his daughter Rachel to Jacob but welshed on the deal and made an excuse that it wasn't the custom of his people of give away the younger daughter before the elder one. Despite this, Leah outlived Rachel and was given the honor of being buried in the cave of Machpelah alongside Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Rebekah.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • Adam and Eve's decision to eat the fruit led to the damnation of all humanity.
  • Joseph's prophecies saved Egypt and the surrounding nations who traveled to Egypt to get food. But this also led the Israelites to settle in Egypt and generations later become enslaved.
• Veganopia: Quite possibly the first several generations of man, from Adam to Noah, were vegetarians; animals were mostly raised for clothing and making sacrifices to God. It's after the Flood that God allows man to eat meat, although he must respectfully not eat meat with the blood still in it.
• Villainous Valor: In a particularly unsympathetic example of brazenness, the Sodomites, in contrast to the hospitable Abraham, who humbly begged God Himself for their lives, stubbornly refuse to change their ways even when blinded by one of God's messengers. They die trying to assault said messengers, as well as Lot and his family, even without their vision.
• Walking the Earth: The fate of Cain, after he had murdered his brother Abel. He did eventually settle and have children and descendants, although they would all perish in The Great Flood.
• We All Die Someday: This is part of the punishment for Adam and Eve eating fruit from the forbidden tree.
• Whatever Happened to the Mouse?: With all the stories going on at once, some of the characters tumble out of focus and fall through the cracks:
  • Genesis at one point traces Cain's family line down to Tubal-Cain, and then casually mentions he also had a sister named Naamah. Since daughters are usually only named in these genealogies when they've got some significant part in these stories, this suggests she was one of the women taken on the Ark with Noah and his sons. His wife, perhaps, or one of his daughters-in-law? Genesis says nothing more about her.
  • Some time after their escape from Sodom and Gomorrah's destruction, Lot and his daughters left Zoar "because he was afraid" of something, possibly his wife being turned into a pillar of salt when she turns back to Sodom and is consumed by the fire and brimstone. What became of the people in that town, and why didn't the daughters seek for husbands among them? We're not told.
  • No further mention is made of what became of Lot after his daughters make him drink wine and they lie with him to impregnate themselves while he's unconscious and unaware of their incestuous act, and they become the mothers of Moab and Ben-Ammi, ancestors of the Moabites and Ammonites.
  • After her ugly experience at Shechem, we hear nothing more about what became of Dinah.
  • Speaking of Shechem, Simeon and Levi put all the men to the sword there, but not the women and children; the account merely states they "carried them off" along with any valuables they could find. Did they enslave all of this bunch? (If so, how did they keep them in line and avoid their being an encumbrance to their flight from the area?) Did they release them somewhere along the way to speed up their journey? We simply don't know, and aren't told.
  • What became of Potiphar and his wife after Joseph got out of prison and promoted to Pharaoh's second-in-command? (Potiphar was an important official in Pharaoh's court, so Joseph would likely have met him there again at some point.) Yet again, we're not told.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • God flew off the handle when Cain murdered Abel.
  • The Pharaoh is shocked at Abram when he learns that the woman he's taken to his harem is actually Abram's wife and not just his sister, as he'd claimed.
  • Abimelech to Isaac, when the latter tries to play the same trick on the Philistines in relation to his wife Rebecca.
  • Esau to Jacob (although not face-to-face), for deceitfully taking the blessing their father had meant for Esau.
  • Jacob to a 17-year-old Joseph, for going around telling everyone about his dream that his brothers and parents will all bow down before him.
  • Jacob to his other sons when they slaughter a whole city-state to avenge the rape of their little sister, because he's worried that other tribes and nations around them will begin a Cycle of Revenge. Near the end, he also curses their "cruel wrath" further while dispensing his final words of wisdom about their heritage from his deathbed. The descendants of Levi and Shimeon, the two brothers who executed said revenge, are the only two tribes which didn´t earn a separate patch of land when they finally entered Canaan after the Exodus. The Levites were ordained priests and temple servants, while the tribe of Shimeon was assigned to military duties.
• What You Are in the Dark: In Chapter 39, when Potiphar's wife tries to seduce Joseph into having sex with her, to the effect of saying that nobody will know about it, Joseph refuses on the grounds that, as the head servant of Potiphar's household, nothing has been withheld from him except for Potiphar's wife, and that he cannot go against his master's wishes and thus sin against God, acknowledging that there is One greater than himself who knows what will happen or what has happened.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Nobody can agree on where the Garden of Eden is supposed to have been located except "somewhere in the Middle East"^note other than Mormons, who believe it was located in Jackson County, Missouri., as two of the rivers named as its borders have no modern equivalent, and the other two have drastically changed course throughout recorded history. That being said, what little definitive evidence there is suggests the slightly less vague locale of Sumer, referred to as the "Land of Shinar" by the text. Many theologians, regardless of where they think it is, say it can no longer be accessed by human means.
  • Archaeology may help: Homo erectus came from the vicinity of East Africa. Homo sapiens/neanderthalensis also originated in Eastern Africa, with the branch that would lead to modern humans staying in Africa while the branch that would lead to neanderthals migrating into Europe. Thus, in a Shout-Out to this very book, the common matrilinneal ancestor of all living humans (perhaps including you, reader) is nicknamed the "Mitochondrial Eve".
  • Though decidedly speculative, some theories hold that rather than corresponding to a literal place, Eden is meant to represent the hunter-gatherer lifestyle ancestral to humanity and still practiced by most of the world during the story's setting. The hard Neolithic transition to settled agriculture represents the curse of toil that Adam and Eve are sentenced to for their transgression, and their prior life in the Garden represents early farmers' idealized portrait of their nomadic ancestors and brethren.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Adam and Eve are banished from Eden, in part, so that they won't be able to eat from the Tree of Life, causing them to live forever with the curses they received for eating from the Tree of Knowledge.
• Withholding Their Name: After Jacob wrestles with the Angel of the Lord and is given a blessing and a Meaningful Rename to Israel, Jacob asks the Angel for His name, and the Angel refuses, saying “Why do you ask Me My name?”
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Potiphar's wife uses the garment that Joseph left behind while giving her the strip as evidence that he tried to rape her.
• Wretched Hive: Sodom and Gomorrah are so terrible that Lot struggles to find another single righteous man even among his own family in it, and the people of the towns immediately try to rape two angels that visit the cities. For all of their wickedness, God destroys them both along with the rest of the other unnamed "cities of the plain" other than a tiny out-of-the-way place called Zoar.
• Xanatos Gambit: Carried out by Joseph when he demands that the brothers give up Benjamin to be his slave and themselves return to Canaan safely. That way, he ensures that either he gets to keep Benjamin with him (if his brothers treat Benjamin like a dispensable family member, as they treated Joseph years ago), or his brothers show sufficient Character Development by refusing to leave Benjamin in Egypt, in which case he reconciles with all of them and brings his clan over to Egypt. Fortunately for all future Israelites, the latter plan eventuates.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Joseph's brothers make the dreams he has that he will rule over his brothers come true by their very efforts to put an end to them (along with him).
• You Can't Go Home Again:
  • The Garden of Eden is forever closed for Adam and Eve and their descendants after they have been expelled from it.
  • Cain is cursed to walk the earth forever after murdering his brother Abel.
  • Jacob never saw Rebekah again after stealing Esau's inheritance, since she died at some time while he was working for his uncle Laban in Syria. He does manage to return and see his father before Isaac dies.
• Youngest Child Wins: A recurring theme, though Ishmael, Esau, and Joseph's older brothers all got nice inheritances too. Also, Midian and Benjamin were each born later, eventually respectively bumping Isaac and Joseph into the second-youngest place.
  • Before Esau and Jacob are even born, Rebekah prays for an explanation for her difficult pregnancy and is told that "two nations are in your womb [...] and the older will serve the younger." Her knowledge of this prophecy may explain why she champions her younger son to the point of deceiving her own husband.
• Your Days Are Numbered: After several generations of man and seeing that mankind has fallen into depraved sin, God decides that number of years man shall live on the earth will be 120 years at the most.