It came to pass that there came a time when man was, if not evil, at least slightly ambitious, and they decided to build a tower to reach heaven. They had no intention of offending God; they just needed to fill the time between sleeping, eating, being fruitful, and tending their sheep; in future generations, this time would be better filled by watching reruns of pseudo-comical sitcoms, but for now, men had to be content with the construction of colossal architectural masterpieces.
At first, God enjoyed watching his people work, because the huge tower broke up the monotony of the endless dusty plains. Then he began to get jealous; he had never built such magnificent towers. Who did these humans think they were anyway?
The people constantly cried out to God. "Hey, see what we're doing?" "Look at us God! See how skilled we've become?" "Look God! Look!"
God grew very irritated with everyone. He only had two ears and whining and selfish humans were constantly talking them off, and when God gets a headache, not even Extra-Strength Excedrin can help. He came down to the tower, started screaming for silence, kicked over the wondrous work of architecture in a divine temper tantrum seldom seen outside of Greek mythology, and thus caused everyone to run fleeing into the wilderness. To top it all off, God made each scattering group speak another language, not to confuse them as much as to make it easier on him. Now, at least, God wouldn't have to understand all the self-centered pleadings, because just being God didn't make him multilingual, and everything would then sound like so much babble to him.
God eventually grew bored with eternal life and decided to do something to spice up his days. If it had been Sweeps Week on the soaps, the course of history might have been forever changed, but things were relatively dull on General Hospital. God opened up the Planet Earth Telephone Directory to a page at random, closed his eyes, and placed one divine finger on the page. The lucky man chosen was Abram.
"Abram," God called. "This is God calling."
"God?" Abram asked nonchalantly, barely glancing up from his needlework.
"Yes God. Now listen to me. You've caught my fancy Abram, so I will make a great nation out of thee, and I will make thy name great. Get thee therefore out of thy country and makest thy way to the land that I will show unto thee."
"Huh? Would you mind repeating that in English guv'nor?"
"Hightail it to Egypt and I'll make you famous."
"Why didn't you just say so?"
"My words were as much to history as to you. They'll expect a sense of formality."
"Ah."
So Abram gathered up all his family, all his friends, and all his flocks, and went down to Egypt. While there, the Pharaoh fell in love with the beauty of Sarai, who was Abram's wife. The Lord of Egypt made Abram a good deal, camels, asses, servants, servants who acted like asses, all for Sarai, but Abram had a bad feeling about such a trade and refused. Pharaoh was not used to being rejected, and he took Sarai anyway. To get Sarai returned, God plagued Pharaoh and his house, which was fun and set another one of those interesting precedents.
Then Abram gathered up all his family, all his friends, and all his flocks, and went up from Egypt. Years passed, and no child was born to them, although they had been promised one. He hadn't fathered an heir yet much less a great nation. Abram was about to write a letter to Pharaoh saying he had reconsidered when Sarai decided to give to her husband her handmaiden.
"Let me get this straight dear," Abram considered. "You, my aging wife of many years, will give to me, and allow me to take to bed, your young Egyptian handmaiden?"
"Yes."
"Your young beautiful Egyptian handmaiden?"
"Yes."
"And she will bear us our son?"
"Yes. That is it."
Abram had no objections to that, did willingly as he was instructed, and Hagar, the handmaiden in question, bore a son named Ishmael to Abram.
Meanwhile, back in Heaven, God received reports about Abram's progress. He was discussing one of there with his good pal Zeus one day when the supreme Grecian deity burst into laughter.
"Abram? What a stupid name!" Zeus mocked. "Whatever happened to a good old-fashioned Agamemnon? Or Oedipus? Now that was a patriarch! Why he..."
God was embarrassed beyond belief. "Ah excuse me for a minute," he mumbled, and quickly sped down to Earth.
God went up to Abram. "Abraham!" No response. "Yoo-hoo, Abraham!" Still no response. "Yo buddy!" God yelled into Abram's ear.
Abram looked up. "Oh, were you talking to me? I thought you were speaking at some bloke named Abraham."
"That's your new name, and Sarai will be Sarah, and she will bear you a child."
Abram spit out his tea in laughter. "She? Sarai? My Sarai? My 90-year-old Sarai?" Abram/Abraham clutched his stomach as he rolled on the ground in laughter.
"Do not laugh at God!" Furious, God then instructed Abraham to circumcise the flesh of his foreskin and that of every male of his people, now and forever more.
"The flesh of my what?" Abraham choked, going pale. Suddenly, whatever the joke had been didn't seem so funny.
"You heard. And let that be a lesson to you, to never laugh in the face of God."
Time passed, as it had a tendency to do, and God destroyed a couple of cities with fire and brimstone, excepting, of course, Lot, who was the nephew of Abraham, and his family. Lot's wife became a pillar of salt because she disobeyed God's command not to look back at the cities in the throes of destruction, but that wasn't an altogether bad thing because food had been somewhat flavorless to that point. Why had God destroyed these cities? It wasn't so much because of the wild debauchery and depravity the people indulged in as it was because they never invited him.