Genesis, "Hamilton" and Repetition
How does a bastard, orphan, resident of Canaan keep making the same mistake?
This is the first of a three-part series comparing the musical “Hamilton” with some curious features of Old Testament narrative. If this one doesn’t take your fancy, the next one will be on something different, so read it anyway!
I.
In the book of Genesis there is a story, or perhaps we should say there are three versions of one story, telling us that a patriarch (twice Abram, once Isaac his son) upped and left the land of Canaan and headed down the coast to a foreign country (once Egypt, twice Gerar of the Philistines). In all three stories the wily husband realises that his wife’s beauty puts him in mortal danger from these jealous, uncivilised locals, and spreads a lie that the woman is not his wife but his sister. Each time, the woman’s beauty is noted so that she is taken to live in the house of the ruler, resulting in wealth and comfort for Abram and subsequently Isaac also, and each time the deception is revealed and the patriarch leaves the situation laden with trophies.
Receptions of this story– as we might expect– differ. To some, the triplication is a sign of stiff competition in the history of the text’s development, with rival factions each trying to insert their own preferred authoritative version but not quite succeeding in drowning out the others. For others, it shows the emergence of three different traditions stemming from a single event, with all three being considered legitimate in their own way by whoever compiled the book of Genesis. For others still, notably Robert Alter, the repetition demonstrates the existence of a “type-scene”. In this scheme, Alter uses the analogy of a Western: white hats vs black hats, the heroic sheriff with a preternatural ability to draw his gun faster than any villain etc., all following an established trope within the genre of 'Westerns’. Abram and Isaac’s returns to the south and their parallel experiences signal– according to the type-scene scheme– the existence of a recurring trope within this genre of literature in Ancient Israel. In other words, patriarchs going to Egypt and lying about their domestic arrangements were as common to ancient Hebrew stories as are walk-ten-paces-and-shoot duels in 20th century Westerns.
In the musical ‘Hamilton’, we are shown a fourth possibility.
Three times a song is begun with the same musical cue. The first two occurrences (‘Alexander Hamilton’ & ‘A Winter’s Ball’) also share their opening line, “How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore…”, establishing a connection between these words and this musical cue. In both songs, the gist of these lines is an expression of Aaron Burr’s amazement at the meteoric rise of Alexander Hamilton from low beginnings to extreme heights. The effect of this repetition is strong enough to allow composer Lin-Manuel Miranda to switch the subject from Hamilton to the frail US army the next time the motif appears: “Guns and Ships”. “Guns and Ships” keeps the same musical cue as the first two songs and retains Burr as the speaking voice, but switches the words to “How does a ragtag volunteer army in need of a shower…”. Despite the switch, the association of this musical cue and verbal rhythm (‘how does a bastard, orphan’/‘how does a ragtag, volunteer’) with the theme of rags-to-riches means the audience immediately accept the analogy between the character/fate of Alexander Hamilton and the character/fate of the burgeoning USA. This is genius. The association is so strong that Miranda can throw in an echo of the motif in Hamilton’s own voice: ‘You’ve never seen a bastard orphan more in need of a break…’ in “Say No To This”, turning the original meaning upside-down by having his main character refer to the rags-to-riches motif just as he is about to commit the sin that will destroy his life– preserving continuity with previous repetitions yet still adapting it to the new setting.
The motif appears six times, always spoken by Aaron Burr (appropriately, since the story turns on Burr’s ultimate opposition to Hamilton precisely as a result of his stunning success), but never perfectly copying the significance of a previous version. In ‘Alexander Hamilton’ it is Burr introducing the lowly origins of the protagonist, ‘A Winter’s Ball’ shows the two men already in opposition, ‘Guns and Ships’ as we said changes from Hamilton to the US Army, ‘What’d I Miss’ returns to Hamilton’s rise but instead of ‘anonymity to prominence’ it is ‘prominence to infamy’, in ‘The Adams Administration’ it signals the beginning of the end and at the opening of ‘Your Obedient Servant’ it sets the stage for Hamilton’s tragic death.
There are at least ten other examples in “Hamilton” of this technique that could be considered but which we will pass over for another time, because the point is this: Is there a trope in contemporary musicals in which this musical cue is heard, or these words are repeated, outside of “Hamilton” itself? Clearly not. Being a self-contained piece of work, “Hamilton” is free to create patterns through repetition and can trust the audience to follow without any knowledge of the world outside of itself. Would we, sophisticated listeners of this contemporary musical, think that the story is incoherent, muddled or cobbled-together because it repeats these things so uniformly? No, we recognise the function of the repetition in the telling of the tale, and can even appreciate the depth and variety of meanings that are produced by what appears at first to be copy-and-paste. In fact it is more likely that we simply don’t notice ourselves interpreting these new meanings as they appear: the technical elements are passed over in our minds and we simply enjoy their effect.
II.
Let me set aside for just now the question of whether it is historically plausible to make a comparison between “Hamilton” (2h22 in length, including musical interludes etc.) and Genesis (3h50 according to one album on Spotify, with seemingly none of the same aids to the listener as are found in musicals. Seemingly…). Was Genesis memorised and recited/performed like a musical? Who knows. Did it exist in its current form prior to the 5th, 4th, 3rd century BCE? Who knows. Will we ever know? Who knows…
Instead, can we– as an experiment – treat Genesis as if it were “Hamilton”? If we admit it’s plausible that the three wife/sister stories were incorporated into the book of Genesis when the author/compiler/redactor already had some idea of the final form of the book and how each story would contribute to that whole… what kinds of meanings can we discover?
First things first; What is established in Story 1, Genesis 12?
Disobedience: In verse 1 God tells Abram to “go to the land that I will show you” i.e. Canaan. In v4 the narrator reminds us that Abe went “just as the LORD told him…”. In v7 the LORD appears to Abram in person and declares that the land under Abram’s feet will belong to his descendants. Despite all this, by verse 10 our patriarch has arrived in Egypt with famine hot on his heels. Famine may be a good reason to up-sticks, but motivations aside, the story of Abram’s Egyptian sojourn is framed by the question of how closely he will stick to the promptings and promises of God– especially as they relate to the land of Israel.
Deception: Famously, Abram convinces Sarai to lie on his behalf and for his benefit, keeping up the subterfuge long enough for Pharaoh to be pleased with her and to gift Abram with animals and servants. Pharaoh’s apparent disgust on discovering the truth is reflected in the way he asks questions without waiting for answers and commands his underlings to escort Abram off the premises ASAP: ‘Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? (we can probably assume this implies sexual intercourse) Now then, here is your wife; take her, and go.” And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had.’ Gen 12:19-20.
Divine Protection: Despite of Abram abandoning Canaan immediately after being told to stay for eternity and in despite surrendering his wife up to Pharaoh out of cowardice without even being threatened, God shows himself to be firmly on Abram’s side. Because of what Pharaoh is doing with Sarai, God lets loose plagues on the Egyptians, and although it’s not clear how Pharaoh made the link between punishment and crime, it’s enough to know that he did. Abram may be a coward, and he may not be worthy in our eyes of protection, but clearly our eyes are seeing something other than God sees.
If these three things are the basics, corresponding to the first “How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore…” in “Alexander Hamilton”, how does (do?) the writer (writers?) continue yet also manipulate these themes in later iterations? Let us look in some detail at the first repetition: Genesis 20
Story 2: Abraham in Gerar
Disobedience: This time things are out-of order. Once again Abraham is wandering away from Canaan, but his real disobedience comes after the deception is revealed and Pharaoh gives him the pick of the land for his own. The narrator provides no explicit guidance for the narrator, but seen in context it becomes clear that this is a problem. In ch20 Abraham settles in the land of the Philistines, and in ch21 Abimelech seeks out Abraham and demands the two of them make a covenant to secure prosperity for them both into the future. A short primer may be helpful here. Philistines: ALWAYS BAD, Jews: CHOSEN PEOPLE, Priorities of God for his chosen people: DO NOT EVER MAKE COVENANTS WITH PHILISTINES (or anyone else, really). Even if there is no word from the narrator to say “this was a bad idea”, the simple fact of Abraham arriving in the proximity of Abimelech is akin to the arrival of the Millennium Falcon in the death star. No-one here is a friend, everything is bad and dangerous, get out ASAP. How does this develop from Story 1? First, there is no famine motivation, Abraham simply goes a-wandering out of sheer insolence. Second, it plants the seed that will grow up into a covenant with an evil nation.
Deception: Abraham’s lies are far worse in Story 2 than Story 1. In the first version, he simply asks Sarai to lie for him and then quietly reaps the benefits. In this second version, Abraham himself actively tells four separate lies: “She is my sister”, “I thought you were godless criminals”, “She is technically my sister”, and “God drove me away from my home and put me in this position”. His character is developed negatively from Story 1, with only these slight modifications to the tale.
Divine Protection: God kicks his involvement up a gear, warning Abimelech directly in dreams about the precise nature of the danger he is in but giving him a get-out clause since he knows Abimelech has not yet crossed any unforgivable line. This develops from Story 1 in two ways: first, it increases what will become strong parallels between this story and the story of the Exodus (full of dreams, innocence and deceptive Israelites), and second, it prepares the reader for what comes next: God’s acknowledgement that Abimelech is innocent and doesn’t deserve to die in ch20:4-6 picks up on God’s promise to Abraham in ch18 that he would preserve Sodom and Gomorrah if he found 5 innocent men there, and ties the thread of that promise to the thread of Isaac, the innocent sacrificial victim in chapter 22. Abraham is the other common denominator between these three, and in each case the fate of these innocent victims is decided by God’s faithfulness to his chosen patriarch.
III.
This is obviously a superficial take on Genesis 12 and 20, and we have not even considered the Isaac version of the story, let alone the way Joseph goes through his own upside-down version of it, or how all these miniature narratives prefigure and pave the way for Israel’s great formative sufferings in and exodus from Egypt. Hopefully, however, I have done enough to open for you the possibility that something as complex and extended as this repetition/mutation of scenes and stories is possible in the world of the Hebrew Bible. What struck me in writing this is how easy it is to notice and interpret this technique when it appears in “Hamilton” and how tricky to understand (let alone explain) it is when it appears in bible. My intuition is that this is a result of how much we learn the tools of art unconsciously, that the beauty we are able to appreciate is conditioned by the beauty we are already surrounded by. In two thousand years, after the loss of the internet and the destruction of civilisations, what would survivors (or aliens?) make of the redundant, repetitive lyrics of “Alexander Hamilton”, “A Winter’s Ball”, and “Guns & Ships”? Would they be baffled by the (unknown to them) sophisticated techniques at play, and form academic schools to unravel the history of the composition of “Hamilton”? I sure hope so.
I’m keeping this ‘stack free for the moment, it seems silly to charge friends and family for my thoughts. Will revisit in the event of staggering success.