In December 2019, we started writing notes on Genesis 1 and posting them to Twitter in the hope of engaging with others and learning from the many biblical scholars who use that platform. We have continued, slowly, to work our way through the narrative portions of the books of the Bible that lead up to Caleb’s story, where he is first mentioned in Numbers 13. As we transition to Leviticus in August 2022, we want to share these notes with you in a more accessible form.
Twitter’s limitations force changes, so there are differences between these, which we took as we read and studied, and what we tweeted out. Because they were written for Twitter, they contain artifacts that make less sense in a webpage format. We hope you will bear with some of the awkwardness to see the process we’re using to understand and re-tell a richly informed version of Caleb’s story.
To find the tweet thread as we posted it, you can go to Twitter and search for ‘@kalevcreative’ plus a hashtag in the title or keywords from the body of the section you’re interested in.
Please read, share, and comment or engage with us on Twitter or via email. We will do our best to respond. In the end, we hope to understand where Caleb’s story fits in the larger narrative, what role he plays in God’s plan for Israel and the nations, and what we can learn from him.
#Bible #Genesis 1
Genesis 1 if ancient Hebrews had PowerPoint [@NET_Bible, @ESVBible_ , and some creative license]
In addition to the structure evident in the image above, @timmackie of @thebibleproject said in a recent presentation that in the Hebrew, the opening phrase of Genesis 1 contains 7 words, the second phrase contains 2x7 words, and the closing phrase of the narrative contains 3x7 words.
The 6-day creation story is divided into two triads and three diads, as each day in the first triad corresponds via theme to a day in the second triad. Light/darkness – Hosts of the heavens | Waters above/below – Hosts of the sky and sea | Waters/land – Hosts of the land
The 1st and 3rd days of each triad receive special emphasis Light and the land are called good (though the middle day’s sky and sea are not) | Sun and moon are rulers in the heavens - Man is a ruler of the sky, sea, and land
God says things he has created are ‘good’ 7 times.
For centuries, commentators have assessed that God is calling ‘good’ those things that are suitable for humans and enable human existence: Light, Land, Plants, Sun-Moon-Stars, Air and Sea Animals, Land Animals, Man himself
As opposed to: Darkness, Sea, Sky where we can't live
In the Bible, the number 3 is associated with God himself or places he is – Eden, the Ark, the Tabernacle, the Temple, the Trinity
7 or 70 are associated with completeness/totality – creation, the number of the nations, Abraham’s family -> Egypt, disciples -> all the nations.
Genesis 1 – early2 establishes that man rules in the sky, land, and sea, while there are other rulers in the heavens. This hints at a spiritual realm with its own rulers, who appear later.
It firmly establishes God as creator, the definer and maker of what is good
The symmetry, the use of the numbers 3 and 7, and the dichotomy of heavens and land all implicitly suggest the story of God making a place for man that is ordered, good and complete, where the divine and man can meet.
Putting all these things together, we find an intricately ordered, highly detailed, exceptionally dense text, pregnant with meaning that we are unlikely, even with long study, to plumb the depths of.
Yet so many today draw lessons from Genesis 1 that are not in the text, using it to further our own agendas rather than seeking the meaning it contains. The text does not address the age of the universe. It does not specify how God “let the land produce” living things.
The honest answer to questions like those, given only the information in the biblical text is, “I don’t know.” I wish more of us were willing to say, “I don’t know.” The truth has unique virtue, and the admission of ignorance drives us to discover.
bonus number: 3+7=10
In Genesis 1, God speaks 10x
In Hebrew, the 10 Commandments are not called commandments, they're just called the 10 'words,’ as in God spoke 10x, words to define how Israel should act.
In Gen1, he speaks 10x to define the world in which his people will live.
The narrative structure is:
3x7 words (1x7 + 2x7)
10 "God said"s
3x7 words
The structure of the text mirrors that of creation:
Heavens
Waters above/Waters below
Land
This sophisticated, intentional form reinforces the meaning of the text and foreshadows future texts
*Significant oversight in the Twitter thread: the Sabbath, which may be the pinnacle of the Creation story. God rests and sets the standard for humans to rest. If the Genesis 1 story is the formation of a temple, the Sabbath is God inhabiting it with man as his image. The Sabbath as rest for humans and animals shows us the character of God - He is opposite earthly rulers who use up their subjects for their own benefit. God wishes to rest and have us rest in relationship with him.
#Bible #Genesis 2
Verses 1-4, in my opinion, are the end of the Genesis 1 narrative.
Beginning with verse 5, we find a description of a land with no shrubs or plants “of the field.”
Water wells up to irrigate the land. The impression I get is of an extensive mudflat. There is dirt and water but no evident life. Genesis 1 began with the formless ocean. Genesis 2 begins with a barren land.
The phrase “for God had not caused rain to fall on the [land] and there was no man to till the soil” appears to indicate that the reason there is no life is that man is not yet there –man is an integral part of the system and, in some sense, the life that will come is there for man. From this moist dirt, God makes man. Then God breathes his own breath into man to animate him, to give him life.
God plants a garden “in Eden, to the east” and places the man in it.
“…a river runs out of Eden to water the garden and from there splits off in to four streams.”
The four rivers named are the Tigris and Euphrates (whose location is known), the Gihon that flows through the land of Cush (Cush was an ancient nation), and the Pishon that flows through Havilah, whose location is not known.
This is a perplexing passage that does not appear to be reasonably interpreted as literally true. The Tigris and Euphrates have headwaters in modern Turkey, and the land of Cush was in modern Ethiopia and Sudan, the location of the headwaters of the Nile. The headwaters of these rivers are on separate continents, roughly 1800 miles apart.
Yet, there is good reason to think that the Nile and Euphrates as boundaries of the land are intended and significant – they return as boundaries of the land promised to Abraham “from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates” (Genesis 15:18), again in modified form for the conquest-era Israelites (Exodus 23:15), and in Solomon’s time as the borders/area of influence during the apex of Israel’s power. Solomon marries the daughter of the pharaoh and has alliances with Egypt, while his northern border extends to the Euphrates (1 Kings 3:1, 4:21). Isaiah prophesies God will restore his people there (Isaiah 27:12).
There is a possibility hinted at in many other passages in Genesis and the prophets that interpret it: there is more than one level of meaning in the text – physical and spiritual. When the physical description becomes untenable, the reader should be cued to transition to a spiritual interpretation. As an example, I look to Ezekiel 28. In it, God tells the prophet to sing a lament for the king of Tyre, yet as he sings, it becomes clear the king of Tyre cannot be only an earthly king contemporary to the prophet. Although some of the judgments in Ezekiel’s song were likely applicable to the physical king of Tyre of the day, it is apparent the song is also directed at the spiritual counterpart of the king – a being who was in Eden and clothed with precious stones.
Precious metals and stones are associated with spiritual beings throughout scripture. When God meets the people at Sinai, there is a pavement of precious stones under his feet. The Tabernacle and Temple, where God meets with his people are adorned with precious metals and stones. Ezekiel’s four living creatures sparkle like burnished bronze and ride chariots of precious materials. Ezekiel’s king of Tyre in Eden was clothed with precious stones. Jesus’ skin appears like bronze. The New Jerusalem of Revelation is constructed of precious metals and stones. When we read about these materials, our minds should go to the possibility the subject is spirit. So when we read that Havilah contains precious metals and stones, it can be read literally but can also be received in the context of the impossible river cue – there is something extra-physical going on.
Where then is the Pishon? John Sailhamer, in his book Genesis Unbound, suggests that the only remaining major river in view in the Books of Moses is the Jordan. From Genesis to the Gospels, the Jordan River is a place where God meets his people – Jacob wrestles at the Jabbok, a tributary of the Jordan, Joshua meets the commander of the Lord’s army after Israel’s miraculous crossing of the Jordan, Naaman is healed after washing there, and Jesus is baptized and receives the Spirit in it. If we accept the Pishon as the Jordan and as a boundary of Eden, it is on the east side of this river-defined territory, as is the garden in which God placed man. In this interpretation of the passage, a river that flows through a land of precious metals and stones is also the locus of spiritual activity. The headwaters of the Jordan include Mount Hermon, and it flows into the Dead Sea.
The four rivers surround a territory that is the hinge point of global geography, the connector of Africa, Asia, and Europe. It is the key terrain for the entire ancient world. The most ancient civilizations appeared here.
In that land in the east, God places a garden where he will meet with his people, where apparently other spiritual beings also appeared, a place where the heavens meet the land.
Genesis 2 gives us the most thorough description of Eden we find in scripture. It is an important, foundational moment because, in a sense, all the characters in all of the Genesis-Revelation narrative are trying to return there. It is God’s original, perfect intent for his people, though it appears there was much left he hoped for them to experience when they chose another future. The prophets also give us some insight into Eden’s reality (ie Ezekiel 28, 31), though none are very specific about what happened there, how long it lasted, or who participated in it. It is the paradigm for all the places God meets with his people - Noah’s Ark, the Tabernacle, the Temple, the land of Israel itself, and in a strange way even ourselves - as, in the Christian era, we are to be temples of the Holy Spirit.
#Bible #Genesis 2 cont.
After comments on the location and attributes of Eden, the focus shifts to man’s experience there. God gives him guidance, “From every tree of the garden you may…eat. But from the tree of knowledge, good and evil, you shall not eat, for on the day you eat from it, you are doomed to die.” (Alter)
He is alone. God forms animals from the same ground he had formed man and shows them to man to be named. No animal is found to be a good partner for him, so God causes Adam to sleep and removes part of him to construct a woman. This seems at first glance to be an unnecessary exercise – why go to all this trouble?
Here in Genesis 2, God is introducing his narrative strategy for the entire Hebrew Bible. In it, we meet faithful people, warriors, priests, kings, and prophets, all of whom fall short of achieving God’s promise. As we encounter story after story, there is increasing frustration, even despair that no matter how many interventions God makes, his people cannot get there – until, in the Gospels, we meet the Savior.
“This one at last, bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh,
“This one shall be called Woman,
for from man was this one taken.”
Therefore does a man leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife and they become one flesh. (Alter)
Modern commentators commonly condescend to biblical sexuality, alleging it to be backward, ignorant, insufficiently enlightened, and therefore worthy of rejection. In fact, the biblical authors were surrounded by diverse forms of sexuality and were undoubtedly conscious of the revolutionary nature of the biblical approach. Judaism emerged in ancient Egyptian, Canaanite, and Babylonian contexts, Christianity in an ancient Roman one. This text consciously rejects observed and well-understood libertine sexual practices to embrace the one form that produces and most effectively protects and sustains life, all in service of God’s soon-to-be repeatedly stated intent – that his people be fruitful and multiply and fill the land.
#Bible #Genesis 3
The initial setting for Genesis 1 was an ocean waste, for Genesis 2 a barren land, and the implied setting for Genesis 3 is a well-watered garden with plants, trees, animals and a man and woman in relationship, an idyllic setting. But the focus immediately goes to the snake.
Commentators debate the nature of the serpent – some claiming it is necessarily a creature, some that it is a spiritual being, some that it is a creature avatar of a spiritual being. God’s curse of it and prophecy of a lasting conflict between the serpent’s and woman’s seed help to clarify the certainty that, regardless of the significance of its form, there is a malevolent spiritual force behind its actions, one who will be the accuser and enemy of humans until the end of the scriptural narrative.
The snake speaks twice. The woman we’ve just met speaks once. Each statement differs from God’s.
God: “You may freely eat fruit from every tree of the orchard...”
Snake: “Is it really true that God said, ‘You must not eat from any tree of the orchard’?”
God: “You may freely eat fruit from every tree of the orchard, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will surely die.”
Woman: “We may eat of the fruit from the trees of the orchard; but concerning the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the orchard God said, ‘You must not eat from it, and you must not touch it, or else you will die.’”
God: “…but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will surely die.”
Snake: “Surely you will not die, for God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will open and you will be like Elohim (God or spiritual beings), knowing good and evil.”
The snake simultaneously disputes that God knows what is good and promises that if she eats, Eve will know what is good and evil as spiritual beings do. He tells her God has hidden knowledge from her but that she can get it anyway if she believes the snake.
“And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.” ESV
“The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow from the soil, every tree that was pleasing to look at and good for food.” NET
“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate…” ESV
“When the woman saw that the tree produced fruit that was good for food, was attractive to the eye, and was desirable for making one wise, she took some of its fruit and ate it. She also gave some of it to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.” NET
The woman rightly perceives that God has made the tree good to look at and good for food (Gen 2:9), but her perception now includes the snake’s lie that it will make her wise like a god, perhaps even God himself.
Christians are told to “believe…and you will be saved.” Abraham believed and God counted it to him as righteousness. Belief in God is the atomic core of a right relationship with him and a major theme of the scriptural narrative. Here, Eve chooses to believe the snake rather than God, and it results in sin, expulsion, and death.
“She also gave some of it to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.”
Many stories in scripture build upon the ones that have come before. Later in Genesis, Abraham uses his wife to protect himself from local kings, Isaac does the same, and Jacob sends his wives and children ahead when he fears meeting Esau. Adam’s failure to confront evil, rather allowing his wife to encounter and be taken with it, is the kernel of his descendants similar failings.
Fig leaves have a sandpaper-like feel that is irritating to the skin. A reader familiar with this attribute will perceive the latent meaning of Adam and Eve’s discomfort and evident incompetence at making their own way in the world as well as God’s mercy on them, providing a more suitable solution to cover their nakedness despite their rebellion.
#Bible #Genesis 3 cont
God questions both the man and the woman. Each tells of the actions of another and then acknowledges their own. This is often portrayed as deflection, but it does not have to be read that way. Their accounts appear factually and chronologically accurate. In this narrative, God does not question the snake.
Interestingly, God often pronounces judgment as a poem or song.
To the snake first:
“Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
At this point, it is apparent that God is not declaring an enduring conflict between legless reptiles and men. He is addressing a spiritual force. Ezekiel 28:12-19 also gives us a picture of a corrupt spiritual force that was once radiantly clothed in Eden. The snake is cast out of heaven and the garden to wallow in the dust. When Jesus meets the devil in the Gospel accounts, he finds him in the desert, the dry lowland, the opposite of the mountain garden.
The snake was more cunning than all the beasts, now is more cursed than all the beasts. He is an enemy of the woman; his offspring the enemies of hers. If we accept the snake as an avatar of a spiritual force, here in Genesis 3, we have a twisted echo of the end state of Genesis 1, when man and woman were rulers in the land with counterparts as rulers in the heavens. Here, man is expelled from the garden and must work the cursed ground to eat. The snake is also expelled, condemned to live in and eat the dust. This spiritual force has fallen from the heavens and will have offspring of influence over humans both faithful and corrupt.
#Bible #Genesis 3 cont
To the woman he said,
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be contrary to your husband,
but he shall rule over you.”
Keeping in mind that this judgment or curse is the result of sin, it is not a description of the ideal. This passage appears parallel to God’s Gen 1 command to ‘be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it”. Now, fruitfulness will come with pain, and even in her own marriage, there will be conflict.
This passage also parallels God’s Gen 4 warning to Cain that sin’s desire is for him but he must master it. The narrative echo suggests the meaning of the phrase may include temptation and the conflict to resist it. Perhaps this is a kernel reference to the sexual sin that begins to emerge as a corrupting force in the coming chapters.
#Bible #Genesis 3 cont
And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
The garden had been a place of blessing, now the land will be cursed and will not produce without hard labor. In Noah’s time, God lifts the curse, but for now, food will come with difficulty. Now that Adam and Eve have become corrupt, they are expelled from the land. Death comes with expulsion because they can no longer access the tree of life. What utter devastation they must have felt – deceived, found to be incompetent at caring for themselves, separated from the presence of God, expelled from paradise into a cursed land, forced to work for what had come easily, pushed out into a world that would rapidly become corrupt around them. What a stark message about the devastation caused by sin.
#Bible #Genesis 3 cont
The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. The Lord God made garments from skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them. And the Lord God said, “Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not be allowed to stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God expelled him from the orchard in Eden to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken. When he drove the man out, he placed on the eastern side of the orchard in Eden angelic sentries who used the flame of a whirling sword to guard the way to the tree of life. (NET)
The garments of skin suggest the death of animals, though they are not explicitly described. This idea may be the kernel of the sacrifices we see with Abel and, later, Noah.
When combined with the waters receding to reveal dry land in Gen 1, the nascent ideas of passing through water to bring forth life and substitutionary deaths to cover the man and woman’s inadequacy resonate in the stories of scripture from Genesis to Revelation.
In the garden, God had made a place where man could interact with the divine. When he is cast out, divine guardians bar the way back in, and his new responsibility is to work in the dirt from which he was formed.
We yearn for the divine because we have lost it. Rebellious characters in the stories to come try to build their way back up to the heavens in their own strength, while God comes down to meet his chosen people where they are.
#Bible #Genesis 4
Now the man was intimate with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. Then she said, “I have created a man just as the Lord did!” Then she gave birth to his brother Abel. Abel took care of the flocks, while Cain cultivated the ground. (NET)
Eve’s statement is a great example of the Bible’s use of ambiguity. Is she rejoicing in the amazing gift God has given her to bring forth life? Or is she elevating herself in her own eyes to be like God as she attempted in the garden? There is no elaboration, so we are left to hold both ideas in our minds as we read.
At the designated time Cain brought some of the fruit of the ground for an offering to the Lord. But Abel brought some of the firstborn of his flock—even the fattest of them. And the Lord was pleased with Abel and his offering, but with Cain and his offering he was not pleased. So Cain became very angry, and his expression was downcast. (NET)
Again, there is ambiguity here. Why is Cain’s offering not pleasing to God? There are hints that Abel gave his best and Cain just ‘brought some’, but God’s decision is not explained. Cain was angry at God’s displeasure, but we don’t know much more either about his motives or God’s. How different is this than our own experience? How well do we know God’s thoughts or even fully understand our own? Significantly, we don’t see Cain asking God for clarification.
Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why is your expression downcast? Is it not true that if you do what is right, you will be fine? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door. It desires to dominate you, but you must subdue it.”
Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. (NET)
In this echo of Eve’s temptation, it is God that questions Cain rather than the snake. This variation gives us a comparison: Eve was questioned and guided by the snake. Cain was questioned and guided by God. Both chose sin. We sin, whether after temptation or God’s assistance. This certainly matches my own experience. In chapters to come, we will see that, both the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent fail to subdue sin – there is an additional element at play that leads to salvation.
God questions Cain about his motives, but we don’t know his answer or how much he resisted sin. This passage is a clear parallel to God’s judgment of Eve in the previous chapter. The juxtaposition of ideas – that the woman’s desire is for her husband and sin’s desire is for Cain – is also ambiguous and undoubtedly intended to be an object of long meditation. The parallel suggests a predatory desire rather than a vulnerable, submissive one.
Cain fails to subdue sin. He has not only substituted his will for God’s as Eve did, he has destroyed another person, taken away all his brother’s opportunities. This is a significant escalation along the path of the seed of the serpent and part of an emerging pattern.
Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” And he replied, “I don’t know! Am I my brother’s guardian?” But the Lord said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! So now you are banished from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you try to cultivate the ground it will no longer yield its best for you. You will be a homeless wanderer on the earth.”
Cain’s story echoes Adam and Eve’s. After they sinned, God asked, “Where are you?” He now asks Cain, “Where is your brother?” Each tries to deceive God – Adam by hiding, Cain by claiming ignorance. Both are banished from the land to the east, and the ground is cursed for them.
Then Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is too great to endure! Look, you are driving me off the land today, and I must hide from your presence. I will be a homeless wanderer on the earth; whoever finds me will kill me!” But the Lord said to him, “All right then, if anyone kills Cain, Cain will be avenged seven times as much.” Then the Lord put a special mark on Cain so that no one who found him would strike him down. So Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden. (NET)
This curse is on Cain is a marker to be picked up later. The mark of Cain has been debated for malign purposes in the past, ironically used to justify the very actions God is condemning. “So Cain went out from the presence of the Lord” is a soul crushing statement. There is a similar one in the life of Samson: “But he did not know that the Lord had left him.” (Judges 16, ESV) In the biblical narrative being separated from God’s presence, will, and blessing, using one’s own judgment and strength, these are tragedies that lead to a curse and death.
#Bible #Genesis 4 cont
Cain has several generations of descendants culminating in Lamech, who, it appears, consciously embraces and magnifies the curse associated with Cain. @peterjwilliams has an excellent thread on Lamech’s significance.
https://twitter.com/DrPJWilliams/status/1056688801232371712
The pattern of the seed of the serpent emerges through comparison of Cain’s and Lamech’s attributes:
-Violence
-City building
-Curse
-Notoriety/fame/’name’/reputation
Lamech adds the element of sexual immorality, here via bigamy.
All these elements will return in successive stories and be clues to the nature of the characters in them.
In the footnotes of his Hebrew Bible translation, Robert Alter cites Genesis’ “anti-urban bias.” It is certainly true that a lot of bad things happen in cities in Genesis and that movement toward or into a city is an indicator of peril in some stories. Why is this?
Gen 1-2 tell the story of God creating a good, ordered land and being in relationship with humans in it. God wants humans to be in relationship with him and pursue his wise, good purpose. Gen 3 tells of humans’ rejection of God’s good to pursue what is right in their own eyes. In Genesis, cities represent humans’ attempt to be in relationship with humans to pursue what is right in humans’ eyes.
Adam and Eve have another son. One has been murdered, the other has been exiled, so this new son Seth is the seed of the woman in his generation. Eve’s statements after bearing Cain and Seth contrast:
regarding Cain: “I have created a man just as the Lord did!”
regarding Seth: “God has given me another child...”
While ambiguous, they may show an evolution from self-focus to God-focus – Eve, seeing the consequences of Cain’s choice, now has a different perspective.
Genesis 4-5 presents two genealogies that appear to correlate with the seed of the serpent and seed of the woman of Gen 3.
Cain's rebellious descendants pursue violence, notoriety, city dwelling, and illicit sex.
Seth's descendants ‘call on the name of the Lord.’
Lamech, who embraced violence, has children who learn essentials of civilization:
Jabal - lived in tents and kept livestock.
Jubal - played the harp and the flute
Tubal-Cain- heated metal and shaped all kinds of tools made of bronze and iron
Perhaps this is an early commentary on the inadequacy of technology to save. In the next major story, Noah also uses impressive technology for the time, but his story emphasizes his reliance on God.
#Bible #Genesis 6 #Nephilim
When humankind began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humankind were beautiful. Thus they took wives for themselves from any they chose. So the Lord said, “My Spirit will not remain in humankind indefinitely, since they are mortal. They will remain for 120 more years.”
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days (and also after this) when the sons of God would sleep with the daughters of humankind, who gave birth to their children. They were the mighty heroes of old, the famous men. (NET)
This passage may be the single most mysterious, debated, fantasized about, sourced for fiction, sourced for conspiracy theory, and disturbing passage in the biblical narrative.
In several passages where “sons of God” appears, the meaning is disputed, but in Job, the term is clearly used for members of what some scholars call the “Divine Council.” @msheiser has written extensively on this topic. http://thedivinecouncil.com
@timmackie of @thebibleproject recently presented on parallels in Genesis 3 and 6. Gen 3 says: WHEN the woman SAW that the tree produced fruit that was good for food, WAS ATTRACTIVE to the eye, and was desirable for making one wise, SHE TOOK some of its fruit and ate it. (NET)
Gen 6: WHEN man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God SAW that the daughters of man WERE ATTRACTIVE. And THEY TOOK as their wives any they chose. (ESV) Mackie concludes these are stories of human and spiritual rebellion.
Mackie views Genesis 6:4 as symmetrical:
A The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward,
B when the sons of God came
C into the daughters of man
C’ and they bore children
B’ to them.
A’ These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.
This structure clarifies the meaning of a notoriously difficult text. A’ refers to A, the Nephilim were the “mighty men…of old,” children of the sons of God.
@thebibleproject has a great series on spiritual beings-this topic is under Satan and Demons https://bit.ly/2RFVhEt
This story of the Nephilim has parallels in future stories – beginning after the Flood at Babel. Some of those parallels depend on accepting the sons of God as divine beings. @msheiser and @thebibleproject make that case, so I won't here. Lots for most of us to think about...
#Bible #Genesis 6 #Noah
The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. (ESV)
In his book The Genesis of Good and Evil, Mark S. Smith identifies several parallels between this passage and earlier ones in Genesis. The Lord’s grief over man’s corruption of the earth, Smith points out, is conveyed with the same Hebrew word used to describe the woman’s pain in childbirth and Adam’s difficulty in working the cursed ground in Gen 3. Sin has brought pain, struggle, and grief to the woman, to Adam, and to God.
Noah’s name means ‘rest’ and is related to the word ‘comfort.’ In his story to come, there will be a lot of wordplay with his name, but here, John Sailhamer points out an impacting conclusion: Even God finds comfort in Noah. God is deeply grieved over the corruption caused by rejecting his good will, yet he saw Noah in the midst of it all. Although we are not worthy of it, may it be our deep desire to be pleasing to God even as he looks at so many things that grieve him.
#Bible #Genesis 6 cont - The ark and the #Flood
Noah walked with God as Adam and Eve had in Gen 2
In contrast to Gen 1, where God saw his creation was very good, the land is now ruined, filled with the violence Cain began and Lamech promoted. God has decided the living creatures on the earth must die because of their pervasive violence.
God calls on Noah to build an ark. Its dimensions are larger than any known vessel in the ancient world - a project of immense magnitude requiring tremendous faith, commitment, and physical exertion to complete.
In addition to building the ark, Noah must also store up “every kind of food that is eaten” for his family and the animals during a stay on the ark that will last a year. God defined food in Genesis 1:29-30, “…I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food…to…everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.”
Noah’s task appears to include bringing on board “every living thing of all flesh” and “every green plant” in the land.
#Bible #Genesis 7 – Noah, the ark, and the #Flood
Noah’s story is full of narrative elements that echo what comes before and are echoed by what comes after:
-The land is once again covered in water
-In Gen 1, the Spirit hovers over the surface of the water, in Gen 7 Noah floats on the water in a boat of three levels with the potential of the land stored inside
-Although the numbers of days in Noah’s story aren’t often discussed, they do appear to provide hooks for connections with other narratives: 150 days may relate to the 5 months in Revelation 9, for instance.
-The water recedes to reveal dry land.
-The animals disembark in reverse Creation order
-Noah sacrifices animals, recalling God’s covering of Adam and Eve’s nakedness with skins and Abel’s sacrifice
-Noah plants a vineyard, an ordered garden, consumes fruit and becomes naked
-Ham’s sin and many other aspects of the Noah story are echoed in that of Abraham’s nephew Lot
Perhaps the most significant realization we can glean from the narrative is that Noah, who had found favor in God’s eyes, “did all that the Lord had commanded him.” Noah obeyed God’s good will, did not do what was right in his own eyes.
In contrast, Ham’s sin, which hints at sexuality, restarts the seed of the serpent following the Flood. Cursed Canaan’s descendants will occupy the land God will promise to Abraham. Ham’s brothers honor God by covering Noah’s nakedness just as God had covered Adam and Eve’s.
Noah, like Adam and Eve, has three sons – one who is cursed, one who is blessed, and one who is part of the bloodline of future Israel, David, and the Messiah.
#Bible #Genesis 9 cont. #Noah
Noah, a man of the soil, began to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of the wine, he got drunk and uncovered himself inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers who were outside. Shem and Japheth took the garment and placed it on their shoulders. Then they walked in backwards and covered up their father’s nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so they did not see their father’s nakedness.
When Noah awoke from his drunken stupor he learned what his youngest son had done to him. So he said,
“Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
he will be to his brothers.”
“Worthy of praise is the Lord, the God of Shem!
May Canaan be the slave of Shem!
May God enlarge Japheth’s territory and numbers!
May he live in the tents of Shem
and may Canaan be the slave of Japheth!”
After the flood Noah lived 350 years.
The entire lifetime of Noah was 950 years, and then he died. (NET)
What is this? No surprise, commentators have different opinions.
Dr. Robert Chisholm, Old Testament Studies Chair at Dallas Seminary (DTS) states on DTS’ The Table Podcast that he believes the language of the text supports a straightforward reading – that Noah became naked and his son saw him and talked about it. Why consider any other view?
Well, why is Canaan cursed for Ham’s sin? And why such a severe consequence for just looking?
Another view derives from the comparison of Gen 10 with Leviticus 18, the Israelite law on sexual immorality.
Gen 10 - Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness
Lev 18 - You must not expose your father’s nakedness by having sexual relations with your mother.
What? It likely made more sense to ancient readers, but it would explain why Canaan receives the curse. If Canaan were the offspring of an illicit union, his line would be deeply offensive to Noah. A son sleeping with his father’s wife was a political act, a profoundly disrespectful usurpation of his father’s position. Reuben does this to Jacob, and Absalom to David. (Gen 35, 2 Samuel 16).
Why dwell on this disturbing story? It is part of a set of parallel stories; considering the commonalities and differences between them reveal meaning in God’s word. In one parallel, Lot survives a terrible tragedy, becomes drunk and, with his daughters produces 2 offspring – Moab and Ammon. Ham’s son Canaan and Lot’s sons Moab and Ammon, apparent offspring of illicit unions, become the enemies of the Israelites at the time of the conquest of Canaan. In a tangible way, the fruit of sexual immorality brings a curse and death to the land God’s people will seek to inhabit.
#Bible #Genesis 10 #TableOfNations
Noah’s sons spread out into the land and begin to populate it.
Ham’s descendants Canaan and Cush are especially significant for future narratives. Canaan fathers many of the peoples who will live in the land of promise during the time of Abraham and of the Israelites during the conquest. Their borders fall within the territory bounded by the four rivers we noted in Gen 2, although the language used to describe them is very different:
“Eventually the families of the Canaanites were scattered and the borders of Canaan extended from Sidon all the way to Gerar as far as Gaza, and all the way to Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboyim, as far as Lasha.” (NET)
Unlike most of the names in this passage, many of Canaan’s descendants’ names remain familiar to Bible readers today. Their territory extends from modern Lebanon south to Gaza, across to Sodom and Gomorrah in the vicinity of the Dead Sea.
Cush’s son Nimrod has similar qualities to those of the corrupt pre-Flood peoples – famous name, violence, founds cities – following the judgment of the Flood, he seems to have done even more than those that came before him. The first of the cities he founds in this short narrative segment is Babel.
#Bible #Genesis 11 #Babel
The whole earth had a common language and a common vocabulary. When the people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. Then they said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” (They had brick instead of stone and tar instead of mortar.) Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we will be scattered across the face of the entire earth.”
But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people had started building. And the Lord said, “If as one people all sharing a common language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be beyond them. Come, let’s go down and confuse their language so they won’t be able to understand each other.”
So the Lord scattered them from there across the face of the entire earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why its name was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the entire world, and from there the Lord scattered them across the face of the entire earth. (NET)
There is a lot going on in this passage. It refers back to earlier stories and is echoed, referenced, and interpreted later in Scripture.
In Gen 6, the sons of God and daughters of men produce offspring who are “men of renown.” They share traits with Cain and Lamech’s line – apparent sexual immorality, violence which leads to fame. In their time, the curse comes to full fruition: the land is thoroughly corrupt.
Out of this corruption, God calls Noah to build an ark of wood covered in pitch. It is larger than any wooden vessel known from the ancient world, a unique technological achievement, used to fulfill God’s purpose of preserving life. Noah survives a harrowing year in the ark, then plants and lives in a vineyard, an ordered garden.
Though there is more than one way to receive this Babel story, it appears (though I hold to this loosely) to be best understood as an attempt by the people of Babel to re-establish the corrupt pre-Flood order, to re-connect with the sons of God by building up to heaven, to produce more offspring who would be as the pre-Flood Nephilim. Their motive resembles Eve’s – to be like God/gods. They attempt it by building another massive, technologically impressive structure made of fired brick and bitumen (similar to asphalt, a kind of pitch). While the ark was made in accordance with God’s good purpose - to preserve life, this structure is made to pursue what appears good to man - the pursuit of fame. As in Gen 5 with Lamech and his children, they gather in a city and pursue new technology, but when they seek what is right in their own eyes, rather than pursuing God’s good will, it brings destruction and exile rather than life and blessing.
They do not successfully build up to the sons of God. Instead, God himself comes down, sees the intent of the builders, and appears to decide they are at risk of corrupting the whole earth once again. Per Deuteronomy 32:7-9, God “divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.” (ESV) Seemingly, the people are scattered to become nations under the authority of subordinate principalities and powers (this concept appears again in the enigmatic Daniel 10:20), while God himself purposes to begin his own nation to receive his inheritance and through which he will bless all peoples.
Through these stories, we can begin to understand God’s purpose. He is the Creator and seer of what is good. He wants men to know him and recognize his will as the source of life and blessing.
We can also see the work of the seed of the serpent. It is opposite God’s. While it also desires to be known, it pursues fame through human ingenuity and strength: technology and violence in pursuit of human goals, resulting in exile and death.
#Bible #Genesis 1-11
In an earlier thread, we looked at the structure of Gen 1. In it, we could see extraordinary complexity in the structure of the text. The biblical authors did not stop there. Throughout the entire biblical narrative, they employ repetition and symmetry.
Why is it important to notice the structure of the text? The structure itself contains meaning. It can link concepts that would otherwise appear unrelated, compare/contrast characters' actions in similar circumstances, and show us patterns in God's dealings with his people.
One such structure is chiasm. It involves both symmetry and repetition. The middle concept in the structure is often a key point of emphasis, and the end state's similarity or difference from the original state often provides important insight as well.
Chiasms can be delineated by the author's choice of words, the location of the characters in the story, the mental state of the characters including God, and many other factors.
These chiasms in Gen 2-3 overlap with each other. There is often interplay of structure in the text.
Why chiasm? Humans perceive symmetry as beautiful and comprehensible. It also aids in memorization. Stories in this form build tension to a central climax and then resolve it by stepping back through the same concepts to a new end state that incorporates the climactic reality.
Genesis 11 incorporates what appears to me to be 2 interlocking narrative structures - chiasm and repetition. Each structure communicates a slightly different meaning. The repetition culminates in a summary describing God thwarting the purpose of a rebellious people.
God brings confusion and scatters them, the opposite of the people's stated goals. In a sense, confusion is the opposite of fame: if we see a famous person, we know who she is. Instead, we remember none of their names. They are dispersed, the opposite of their initial state.
In this final image, we can see repetition across major narratives, and in the repetition both similarities and differences that tell us something about the character of both God and men. Man's sin nature remains and God continues to judge once complete corruption is imminent.
In the narratives to come, we will again see echoes of the concepts in these passages: God calling his people, his people's failures and the depravity of people who don't know him, increasing corruption until it is pervasive, and finally God's judgment to preserve his purpose.
In this repetition, I submit, we do not see an angry, vindictive God, rather one who allows his people to pursue what is right in their own eyes until his ultimate purpose of saving them is threatened. When judgment does come, it is to preserve his relationship with his people.
#Bible #Genesis 1-11 Trajectory
God creates, sees what is good - makes rulers in the heavens for signs, rulers in the land in his image
In a land of four rivers, places man in a garden, where God meets with man - the paradigm that emerges throughout the scriptural narrative is of an ordered mountain garden
Serpent tempts woman, who, along with man eats the fruit of the forbidden tree in the middle of the garden
Woman (and man) doing what is right in their own eyes results in curse, expulsion to the east, and ultimately death. God declares enmity between seed of the serpent and seed of the woman.
The woman Eve bears sons, the first, Cain, encounters God who warns against sin (an anti-temptation), yet Cain murders his brother, receives both a curse and notoriety, is further expelled to the east, and founds a city. The third son, Seth carries on the line of faithful followers of God.
In Cain’s line, the apparent pattern of the seed of the serpent emerges: Lamech marries 2 wives, embraces violence, claims notoriety, and magnifies Cain’s curse for himself. His children embrace new technologies. The sons of God marry the daughters of men and the whole land becomes corrupt - every thought of every man.
In the midst of corruption, God calls Noah through whom he will preserve his people and purpose in the midst of judgment. The judgment echoes pre-creation – water covers the land, and Noah’s emergence from the ark echoes creation and the fall.
Noah and his son Ham sin, but Ham’s son Canaan is cursed. Noah’s son Shem carries on the line of promise.
Ham’s descendant through Cush, Nimrod, picks up the pattern of Cain and Lamech: violence, pursuit of fame, and building cities. They attempt to build to heaven, possibly to re-establish contact with the sons of God and restore the pre-Flood order.
Instead, God thwarts their purpose, denying them contact with heaven, fame, and unity of purpose. Deuteronomy 32 tells us:
When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
when he divided mankind,
he fixed the borders of the peoples
according to the number of the sons of God.
But the Lord's portion is his people,
Jacob his allotted heritage.
(ESV, based on Dead Sea Scrolls material)
In response to their desire to commune with the sons of God, he put the nations under their authority, yet purposed to set aside a people for himself.
In the coming narratives, he will call Abraham as the father of that people and send him into the land where the descendants of cursed Canaan lived, possibly the same land of four rivers we learned about in Genesis 2.
#Bible #Genesis 12-13 #Abraham
After God calls Abram, he travels with his wife Sarai and nephew Lot progressively south in Canaan through its hill country, stopping to build altars to God at Shechem and an unnamed place between Bethel and Ai.
He continues south to the Negev, the wilderness southwest of the Dead Sea, then on to Egypt in the west to escape a famine.
Agriculture in Canaan was reliant on rainfall. In a lasting drought, water supplies were quickly depleted, so nomadic peoples would migrate to Egypt, where the Nile River provided an uninterrupted water supply and fertile land for grazing.
In Abram’s estimation, the pharaoh of Egypt was a tyrant who could take what he wanted and kill who he wanted, recalling the attributes of the line of Cain, the seed of the serpent.
In the first of a series of similar narratives, Abram sends a woman, his wife, to mitigate the risk to himself. The narrator does not give reasons for or make a moral judgment about Abram’s actions, leaving the reasonable reader to be repulsed by Abram’s cowardice and shocked that he would put the legitimacy of his own line at risk after God’s extraordinary promises to him.
Even more amazingly, despite Abram’s repugnant choices, God blesses him. For his deceit, Abram is exiled from Eden-like Egypt to the east, toward the wilderness of the Negev, yet God has preserved and enriched him. Despite Abram’s glaring flaws, God fulfills his promises to Abram, causing his house to be fruitful and multiply in the land, though he has no children himself.
Abram and his family continue back north between Bethel and Ai, where, many commentators have pointed out, there is a high place suitable for viewing the land in every direction. Abram and his nephew Lot agree to separate, so their increasing herds and flocks will not have to compete for resources. They view the land, and Lot chooses to go across the Jordan toward Sodom, a fertile area the text compares to both Egypt and (presumably) Eden. This connection between the fertile river-fed regions of the Jordan River valley, Egypt, and Eden is significant. Each is viewed as a kind of paradise. In future narratives in Genesis and throughout the Bible, the protagonist will be rewarded there for faithfulness and expelled during judgment. Like Egypt and Eden, though, Sodom is under the influence of the serpent.
While Lot leaves for his chosen home, God renews his promise to give the land to Abram’s descendants, and Abram decamps for his own new location, Hebron, where he builds an altar to the Lord.
#Bible #Genesis 14 #War
Biblical accounts of war are sparse yet contain details that enable us to make reasonable inferences from them. No doubt the original author and audience had significant shared knowledge about ancient warfare, land navigation, logistics, and individual weapons and equipment.
The Stele of Vultures (2450BC) (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Stele_of_Vultures_detail_01-transparent.png) portrays warfare in Mesopotamia a couple of hundred years before Abraham. In it, we find soldiers with helmets, shields, spears, and axes, apparently fighting in formation. Undoubtedly, they also had specialized units of archers and slingers. Long lines of soldiers were used to prevent the enemy from flanking the formation in open terrain. These same tactics, effective on the plains, were significantly less so in mountainous terrain with narrow passes and uneven roads. The weight of large weapons and size of formations appropriate for fighting other city states were a liability when attacked by lightly equipped raiders in the mountains.
Robert Alter, in reference to this passage in his Hebrew Bible translation, tells us that the kings’ names are authentic to the region and time. The action takes place in identifiable locations, and the numbers are specific and realistic. Here, we first learn details of a larger world – nations warring against each other, and the presence of Rephaim in the land east of Canaan.
Archaeologist and historian Clyde Billington reviewed references to the Rephaim in ancient Ugaritic/Canaanite texts and concludes that the term refers to an “aristocratic warrior guild” with “special military skills, abilities, positions, powers, gifts, and/or unusual size.” (Artifax, Winter and Spring 2017)
Though they don’t seem especially significant here, the Rephaim return in Deuteronomy 2, where they and the other tribes mentioned here are identified as giants. They apparently are giant warriors who occupy the highlands east of the Jordan River, Dead Sea, and modern Aravah valley, territory that will later be occupied by Abram’s descendants Moab, Ammon, and Esau/Edom.
These events correlate with the pattern we’ve observed so far: a corrupt, violent people in a fertile land coming under judgment. Recalling past and foreshadowing future events, kings from the area of Babylon execute that judgment for breaking a treaty. Their association with Abram here prefigures the conquest and future conflicts between God’s people and Babylon. God uses Babylon to judge the nations, but Abram’s men chase them from the land of promise.
#Bible #Genesis 14 #War continued
Four kings from the vicinity of Babel, along the Euphrates river, come down to fight five kings from the vicinity of Sodom to enforce a treaty violation. Along the way, the four also attack giant clans in the hill country south to the Red Sea and circle back up to Kadesh to defeat the Amalekites and Amorites. This route is opposite that of the Israelites during the conquest as they left Kadesh to approach the land from the east, and, setting aside the giant clans that are defeated by Abram’s other descendants, the four kings fight the same peoples the Israelites later fight during their movement to the conquest of Canaan.
Abram is living among the Amorites, later powerful enemies of Abram’s descendants, and we find he now has hundreds of trained fighting men. In a short but very dense passage, we learn he and his men chase a powerful army north to Dan, ~125 miles north through mountainous terrain, where they split up and attack it, then pursue it in an apparent rout an additional ~35 miles to the vicinity of Damascus.
318 trained men traveling at speed over mountainous terrain for ~160 miles while retaining combat effectiveness necessary to defeat the combined armies of several city states demonstrate an extraordinary level of proficiency in a variety of skills – land navigation, living off the land, rapid movement to contact, tactical movement, unit combat skills, individual combat skills, logistics, knowledge of the land and the peoples in it. A couple of sentences represent 100,000s of man-hours in combat-related training and experience, yet this force is never mentioned again. Why dwell on it? This demonstrated proficiency has implications later in Abram’s story.
#Bible #Genesis 14 #Melchizedek
After Abram’s military victory, a spiritual and political leader comes out to meet him, indicating the battle was not merely the recovery of household goods and family members, it was of geo-political-religious significance. In the midst of polytheistic peoples, this priest-king knows and worships the Most High God. He acts as a third-party witness, communicating God’s blessing to Abram and giving God praise for Abram’s victory. He is king of a city named ‘peace’, the pre-cursor to Jerusalem. He brings bread and wine. His name/title-Melchizedek-is ambiguous but communicates the idea of a righteous king.
#Bible #Genesis 15 #Covenant
In this passage, we are confronted with several concepts that remind us Genesis is a Bronze Age book and assumes some knowledge modern readers have lost. The Bible is a book for all peoples, and, while we may be more familiar with iPads than clean animals, we are unique in human history in that regard. It is good for us then to reflect on passages like this, to try to regain a sense of the ancient meaning.
There are other covenants. The first was with Noah, where he sacrificed clean animals following the Flood. Perhaps this incident recalls that sacrifice and Abel’s. There will be a covenant following this one, with Abram’s descendants at Sinai, where the imagery here is in some ways echoed and expanded.
The animals here are not exactly sacrificed. There is a similar passage to this in Jeremiah 34, “the men who…did not keep the terms of the covenant that they made before me, I will make them like the calf that they cut in two and passed between its parts.” The divided animal serves as a warning of the consequences of breaking the covenant.
Abram experiences darkness and terror, which God relates to the suffering of his descendants. God tells Abram of a future salvation through judgment for those descendants, that they will return to inherit this land.
God appears as smoke and fire and passes between the divided animals, while Abram does not. God is holding himself to the covenant. Earlier, we saw Abram behave in a repulsive manner, yet God still blessed him. In my view, the purpose of the episodes of Abram’s bad behavior and God’s continued blessing is not to communicate God’s approval of bad behavior, it is God acting out the terms of this covenant-even though Abram fails, God does not fail to bless.
God promises Abram this land as an inheritance and defines it in terms that may recall Gen 2. (The Nile River with headwaters in ancient Cush also flows through Egypt, while the Euphrates is the northern boundary). He also defines it in future terms as the land of the peoples Abram’s descendants will encounter during the Conquest.
#Bible #Genesis 16 #Hagar #Ishmael
This is the first of a series of stories about Abram’s line in which a woman does what is right in her own eyes and her male relative plays along, leading to exile and the threat of death. Their actions echo Eve’s in the garden. It is disturbing.
Sarai compels her servant to sleep with Abram, so she can take possession of the child. Unsurprisingly, her servant Hagar isn't happy to comply. Once she is pregnant, Hager perceives herself as superior to her mistress, and Sarai torments her until she flees into the wilderness.
Again we see Abram using a woman to solve his own problems, seemingly with no concern for her. I don’t believe we are to receive this as acceptable. Sarai and Abram's choices, the conflict, exile, and threat of death that result for Hagar and the child should be disturbing to us.
We should see Abram and Sarai’s behavior as disturbingly selfish and callous. When they abandon God’s plan, they rapidly become depraved.
The locations Hagar flees to correspond with ones we will see the Israelites travel through while in the wilderness.
The Angel of the Lord appears, calls Hagar out of the wilderness back into the land and tells her to submit to Sarai. Hagar sees him and perceives that God sees her. I can’t imagine Hagar felt good about returning to serve Sarai while pregnant and afraid enough to risk death.
Afterward Abram does seem to have a change of heart though, especially toward their son Ishmael, which means ‘God hears.’
Hagar perceives that God sees, Abram that God hears. Hagar displays a faith in God that Sarai lacks. And God continues to bless this dysfunctional family.
#Bible #Genesis 17 #Abraham #Covenant
God appears to Abram and changes his name to Abraham, calling him the father of a multitude of nations, recalling the corrupt desires of Babel. God repeats the terms of the covenant with Abraham but this time requires action from Abraham.
The sign of the Noahic covenant was light shining through water – the rainbow. The sign of the Abrahamic covenant will be circumcision of Abram’s own flesh and that of his male descendants.
God changes Sarai’s name to Sarah and promises that she will be the mother of a son.
They are to call him Isaac.
There are several patterns that emerge across the generations of Abraham’s family. God’s promise to overcome the inability to have children is one. Sarah is too old to have a child. Abraham doubts God and pleads for Ishmael to receive an inheritance.
Finally, Abraham circumcises all the males in his household including Ishmael.
Noah showed faith through a terrible trial of endurance. Abraham’s was over much more quickly but must also have required real faith. You try convincing several hundred men to cut their genitals…
#Bible #Genesis 18
This passage contains two significant plot developments. In one, Abraham welcomes God and two angels, treating them with deference and respect, and diligently attending their needs. God responds by promising Abraham and Sarah a son. God directly confronts Sarah’s lack of faith when taking advantage of Hagar and again here when she laughs at his promise.
Then, God tells Abraham what he is doing at Sodom. This isn’t just a declaration of the fate of a city. This extended meditation on God’s will reaches back into previous stories and echoes down through future ones as an expression of God’s intent when he judges corrupt peoples. I believe we are intended to receive it as applicable across parallel narratives, and there is an upcoming narrative with extensive parallelism with Noah’s story.
God first declares his purpose for passing through Abraham’s territory in a short verse. He is going to verify the truth of the cries he hears from Sodom. What kind of cries are they? We find later they are likely the cries of victims of sexual immorality, violence, rape, and murder. God is going to judge people who have been brutal oppressors. Through conversation with Abraham, we learn God will have mercy unless there is none left who is righteous. Though he doesn’t say it, God’s plan is to rescue the few righteous who remain.
It is hard, especially in the West, for many modern people to understand God’s use of violence in judgment. It is a reason many cite for their unwillingness to believe. Yet, even today, police must use limited violence to arrest people who are a danger to others, and in extreme cases, militaries use extreme violence to end man’s worst atrocities as the American army did to end the system of slavery the Confederacy insisted on maintaining and the Allies did to stop the Nazi regime. A reasonable person can see that even today organized peoples given over to evil are not stopped through exclusively peaceful means. This is a controversial conclusion, but it has been repeatedly demonstrated in the real world. The stories of the Flood, Babel, and now Sodom all suggest organized evil leading to total depravity, which God judges while preserving a remnant faithful to him.
#Bible #Genesis 19 #Lot
In an @BibleProject podcast, @TimMackie points out that when God called Abram, he told him to leave his family, but he brought Lot. Later, Lot and Abram were in conflict, so Lot chose to leave the land of promise for fertile land in the east, near Sodom.
At the end of the story, Lot ends up in a cave in the wilderness where evil things happen. This progression from paradise through a city to the dust recalls elements of the pre-Flood stories and shows Lot, though still a believer in God, on the path of the seed of the serpent.
His incestuous offspring later become corrupt enemies of Israel. Lot’s story contains many elements that recall previous stories and foreshadow future ones. Unlike Abraham’s story, these elements cluster around evil.
How then do the New Testament authors view him as righteous?
@georgeathas has a noteworthy take on Lot’s story that tends to exonerate him, but the parallelisms suggest to me Lot’s righteousness comes primarily through faith, not works.
When the angels arrive, Lot meets them in the gate.
The first time we read about Lot, he was headed toward the fertile land.
Then he was captured by the 5 kings while he was in the city.
Now he is in the gate, the political and economic center of Sodom.
His trajectory seems bad right at the beginning of this narrative, but he welcomes and serves the angels as Abraham had.
Interestingly, he serves them unleavened bread immediately before he flees a terrible judgment, prefiguring the Passover meal in Exodus 12.
Lot attempts to defend the angels from the men of the city, but they are so depraved the angels have to rescue Lot. From then on, Lot fails to fully obey or even comprehend what the angels tell him.
Eventually, his family meets a disturbing end that resonates for generations.
#Bible #Genesis 20 Story Structure
Today, though we may not be conscious of it, we have an expectation of how stories should unfold. It dates back to the 17th century, The Classical Period, when artists consciously revived ancient Greek ideas of beauty. Composers and authors began to place the climax of their works at the Golden Mean, a ratio that appears often in nature as an element of structural design.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio#/media/File:Golden_ratio_line.svg
Similarly, the biblical authors had an established form for story telling. They used chiasm as a standard for beauty and compelling narrative. Chiasm is formed through symmetry, aids memory in an oral tradition, and feels compelling because it resolves by stepping through similar events in reverse order.
Why is this important in Genesis 20? Because there are many clues in this narrative that it may be out of chronological sequence. The previous story emphasized Sarah’s age and withered state, yet here she is so attractive that Abraham is once again afraid he will be mistreated because of her. What is going on? To an ancient reader, it may have been obvious that this was a flashback in order to preserve the expected narrative form, to remind the reader of Abraham’s lack of faith immediately prior to the fulfillment of God’s promise, or other reasons more compelling to the author than telling the story in the order it happened.
It is not impossible that the story is told chronologically, but in this case, there are good reasons to think it’s not.
The identification of the elements of chiasm and parallelism is not a straightforward task, but doing both at the same time may allow one to support the other. Consider Noah’s story and Abraham’s. At the center of each, at least in one interpretation, God executes judgment, but he remembers the man with whom he makes a covenant.
One might expect the story of Abraham once again sending his wife to a foreign leader to be paired with the first such story, but, at least in this formulation, it isn’t. It’s paired with the corruption of Sodom. The structure suggests several things one might not conclude from a purely linear reading:
Abraham’s sending of Sara is emphasized as disastrously immoral.
The plea of the foreign king is honored because he is innocent, where Abraham’s plea for Sodom was not honored because they weren’t. God is not capricious or corrupt. He acts justly.
#Bible #Genesis 20 cont #Abimelech
Abraham settles between Kadesh and Shur; in this area, there will be a future rebellion leading to the Israelites’ wandering for 40 years in the desert. There the Israelites wish to return to Egyptian enslavement; here Abraham seeks the favor of a foreign king by sending his own wife Sarah into his service.
Similar to Gen 12, he sends Sarah to the king of Gerar as a wife. It is possible he did this to win favor from the local authority as he moved into a new area; he claims it is because he assumed no one there would fear God. Abraham’s excuse seems especially bizarre when we remember that earlier in the narrative, his household army chased down and defeated five powerful kings to rescue his nephew and was honored by the priest/king of a city. Whether this story appears in chronological order or not, surely a man commanding such a force would not need to fear a local ruler.
Ironically, the foreign king appears to honor God more than Abraham; he certainly is more obedient. Even as Abraham is jeopardizing God’s promise to give him a son, to make a nation, to bless all nations through him, Abimelech actually believes and obeys God.
This narrative appears, at least thematically, to invert the story of Sodom. Here, it is Abraham who sins while God appears to the righteous foreigner. Abimelech repents from his unknowing error and is saved, escaping the destruction Sodom experienced. “Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, as well as his wife and female slaves so that they were able to have children.” In the very next story, God visits Sarah, so she also may have children.
Once again, paradoxically, Abraham and Sarah leave richer despite his ghastly behavior.
#Bible #Genesis 21 Birth of #Isaac
In this passage, the decades long hope of Abraham and Sarah is miraculously fulfilled, old mistakes are dredged up, and Abraham is confirmed as honored and blessed by God.
Ishmael (only recognized here as Hagar’s son) laughs at Isaac whose name means laughter, apparently both mocking and threatening to thwart God’s promise that Isaac will inherit. As in Eden, before the Flood, and at Babel, when God’s purpose is threatened in the land, he exiles the threat. Sarah’s response seems harsh. Abraham objects because he loves Ishmael, but God sides with Sarah.
Hagar and Ishmael exile to the wilderness of Paran. This is the location that the ‘spies,’ more accurately scouts or key military leaders of Israel, will leave from and return to prior to the Conquest. Two of them see the land with God’s perspective as a great gift to Israel, while the rest see with their own eyes and rebel against God. Now Hagar, who knows God’s sight, hears from God that he will provide, though it appears to her initially to be an uninhabitable wilderness. Like the Israelites after her, God provides for her family here and blesses even in the midst of injustice, loss, and rebellion.
In the previous chapter, Abraham played a role recalling Melchizedek’s to Abimelech. Here Abimelech returns the favor by testifying that he is blessed by God.
#Bible #Genesis 22 #Isaac Sacrifice
“Some time after these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, ‘Abraham!’ ‘Here I am!’ Abraham replied. God said, ‘Take your son—your only son, whom you love, Isaac—and go to the land of Moriah! Offer him up there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I will indicate to you.’
Early in the morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took two of his young servants with him, along with his son Isaac. When he had cut the wood for the burnt offering, he started out for the place God had spoken to him about.” (NET)
Here God does something so shocking, it completely unsettles the reader. He orders Abraham to do exactly the thing he elsewhere rails against as abominable and deserving of death - the sacrifice of Abraham’s son. And we know this son has been long desired by Abraham and Sarah and was promised to them by God. What is going on?
And what does Abraham do? He quickly and completely obeys without discussing it. This is the same Abraham who had engaged in an extensive negotiation with God about the future of Sodom, but he says nothing about his own son? What is going on?
This is a good place to deploy what should be an ever-ready “I don’t know.”
Some events are so shocking and overwhelming that we do not have time or ability to respond well or even at all. Abraham, without recorded reaction, performs mundane tasks that now have ominous significance and begins to walk.
“On the third day Abraham caught sight of the place in the distance. So he said to his servants, ‘You two stay here with the donkey while the boy and I go up there. We will worship and then return to you.’’’ (NET)
If we accept Mount Moriah as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem as suggested by 2 Chronicles 3:1, it is roughly a 3 day walk from Beersheba. It is a re-tracing of Abraham’s earlier steps past Hebron to the vicinity of Melchizedek’s city, where God is worshiped. Given the task, the details make sense. And the details - John Sailhamer points out that the biblical authors do not provide meaningless detail, yet here they appear to do so-saddling a donkey, taking servants, cutting wood, starting out. The author dwells on details and slows down the approach, 3 days of walking toward a wrenching horror. Continuing with an unusual level of detail:
“Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and put it on his son Isaac. Then he took the fire and the knife in his hand, and the two of them walked on together. Isaac said to his father Abraham, ‘My father?’ ‘What is it, my son?’ he replied. ‘Here is the fire and the wood,’ Isaac said, ‘but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?’ ‘God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son,’ Abraham replied. The two of them continued on together.
When they came to the place God had told him about, Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood on it. Next he tied up his son Isaac and placed him on the altar on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand, took the knife, and prepared to slaughter his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, ‘Abraham! Abraham!’ ‘Here I am!’ he answered. ‘Do not harm the boy!’ the angel said. ‘Do not do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God because you did not withhold your son, your only son, from me.’” (NET)
God does not require the sacrifice he told Abraham he would. Abraham’s statements that he and the boy would return and that God would provide are vindicated. The narrative dwells on the statement “The Lord provides.” As he did for Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness, God now provides for Abraham and Isaac to preserve life.
Hagar and Ishmael lived in the wilderness of Paran and took a wife for Ishmael from Egypt. Now Abraham and Isaac return to Beersheba and we learn of Abraham’s family from whom will come Isaac’s wife.
The parallels between the exile of Hagar and Ishmael and the Isaac sacrifice/substitution narratives suggest conclusions and relationships with other narratives that are not immediately obvious in a linear reading of the text. In each, God first commands Abraham to do something shocking: exile one son and kill another. He allows Hagar and Abraham time to meditate on their plight. Through location and action, the characters prefigure future narratives, especially the Israelites’ wilderness wandering and conquest of the land.
Hagar despairs for her son’s life - whatever he felt inside, Abraham betrays no doubt in God’s plan.
Hagar and Ishmael live in the wilderness and seek a wife for him in Egypt - Abraham and Isaac live in the land and seek a wife for Isaac among Abraham’s family.
Rebellion and allegiance to Egypt in exile - Faithfulness and restoration in the land.
“The Lord provides” salvation for Ishmael and Isaac with water and blood.
#Bible #Genesis 23-24 Death of #Sarah, #Hebron, marriage of Isaac and #Rebekah
Following a narrative from which she was excluded, we find the account of Sarah’s death. She successfully raised a son to carry on the line of promise and in death births its first ownership of the land of promise – the cave of Machpelah near Hebron.
Gordon Wenham notes that the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all conclude with a similar sequence: promise (22:15–18; 35:9–14; 48:4), journey (22:19; 35:16; 48:7), birth of children (22:20–24; 35:17–18; 48:5–6), and death and burial of patriarch’s wife (chap. 23; 35:18–20; 48:7). It is here at the cave of Machpelah that each wife is buried (the sole exception is Rachel, buried near Bethlehem).
Next comes the first in another sequence – a story of meeting a woman at the well. We meet Abraham’s family, key figures in the coming narratives, and see hints of duplicitousness, selfishness, and perilous negotiations, yet their poetic blessing of Rebekah echoes God’s promises to Abraham.
We see hints of Rebekah’s assertiveness and ability to influence her own destiny, while Isaac, as in his earlier and later narratives, appears passively resigned to his.
#Bible #Genesis 25-26 Death and the birth of #Jacob and #Esau
We learn that Abraham had another wife named Keturah and had other sons including Midian, whose descendants will be significant in many future stories.
Abraham dies. Isaac and Ishmael bury him alongside Sarah near Hebron.
God has blessed him. Despite Abraham’s many failings, God is faithful and merciful. He fulfills his promises.
Isaac lives at Beer Lahai Roi, where Hagar learned God sees her.
We learn Ishmael has twelve sons and of his death; God has fulfilled his promises about Ishmael.
Part of the pattern of the Patriarchs, Rebekah has difficulty conceiving. Like Abraham, Isaac prays, and God hears.
Rebekah calls on God because there is a struggle inside her. God tells her in a poem that she is carrying two nations and that the older will serve the younger.
The older is red-haired Esau; the younger Jacob. Esau is a hunter. At this point in the narrative, hunters have all been allied with the seed of the serpent. Hunting is associated with violence and pursuit of power. Jacob is a quiet man who lives in tents. Esau the active son loved by passive Isaac of the field, Jacob the passive son by active, hospitable Rebekah. Conflict.
The account of Esau selling his birthright identifies him as the father of Edom, a nation that will return many times in the Hebrew Bible, usually in opposition to God and Israel. It also shows him to be rash, hinting at his alignment with the seed of the serpent rather than God’s good.
The account of Isaac’s life echoes Abraham’s:
-God admonishes him to dwell in the land and promises to bless him
-Initially barren wife bears sons
-Lives in the territory of a foreign king
-Claims his wife is his sister for self-preservation to the Philistines and their king named/titled Abimelech
-Despite his lie about his wife, he is enriched in the land of the foreign king
-He retraces Abraham’s steps and reopens his wells
-God appears to him and promises to bless him
-Abimelech seeks a treaty with and testifies to God’s blessing of him
Rebekah’s story also echoes Abraham’s:
-She shows hospitality and runs to serve her guest
-Receives a call into the land and promise of blessing with many similarities to Abraham’s
-Like Sarah and Abraham, uses deception in attempt to take what God had promised to give
#Bible #Genesis 27-28
After inciting Esau to murderous rage, Jacob flees. The episode simultaneously suggests exile from the land to the east after rebellion and salvation from the seed of the serpent’s aggression. Esau the hunter has married multiple wives and, in jealous anger of his brothers’ receipt of the blessing, threatens to murder Jacob, firmly connecting him with the spiritual line of Cain and Lamech (Gen 4).
Jacob, in an appalling act of predatory dishonor of his father and brother, lies to blind Isaac and denies him his choice to bless Esau. The reason the blessing sticks despite the lie is unclear, but it is clearly affirmed by Isaac’s word, “Yes, and he shall be blessed.” (ESV) “Now blessed he stays.” (Alter) The line of promise now culminates in two brothers, one a despicable thief, the other a prospective murderer.
Recalling God’s covenant with Abraham in which the fire and smoke pass between divided animals but Abraham does not (Gen 15), despite Jacob’s despicable behavior, God meets Jacob.
“…he fell asleep in that place and had a dream. He saw a stairway erected on the earth with its top reaching to the heavens. The angels of God were going up and coming down it and the Lord stood at its top. He said, ‘I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham and the God of your father Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the ground you are lying on. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west, east, north, and south. And so all the families of the earth may receive blessings through you and through your descendants. I am with you! I will protect you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you!’
Then Jacob woke up and thought, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place, but I did not realize it!’ He was afraid and said, ‘What an awesome place this is! This is nothing else than the house of God! This is the gate of heaven!’” (Gen 28:12-17, NET)
Many commentators have noticed the resemblance of the imagery both in this passage and the Gen 11 description of the Babel ‘tower’ to Mesopotamian ziggurats, which were built for the explicit purpose of reaching the heavens to meet the gods. This passage and Gen 11 contain mirror image elements:
-The people of Babel sought to stay in the land and make a name for themselves - Jacob is fleeing his family
-Babel founded a city and, with great effort, built a structure made of earth to the heavens - Jacob “came upon a place”, rested on a stone, and dreamed a stairway to the heavens
-The parallels between the Babel story and Genesis 6 sons of God suggest an attempt to reestablish human/divine relationships – God stands at the top of the stair and angels move up and down
-Babel wishes to avoid being scattered over the earth, yet is anyway – God promises Jacob’s descendants will live in the land and spread out in every direction
Although Jacob has sinned against his own family, God honors his commitment to Jacob’s family, reaffirming his covenant with Abraham through Jacob. In the dream, God promises to deliver an even greater outcome than the seed of the serpent sought to achieve in its own strength at Babel.
Reconstructed ziggurat stairway to heaven
image reference: https://sadieyfineportfolio.weebly.com/complex-organizations.html
#Bible #Genesis #29-30 #Jacob ‘s family
In the second of the woman at the well type-scenes, Jacob meets his future wife and wrestles another rock to water her sheep. Rachel repeats the actions of Rebekah – running to Laban, who also runs back as he did for Abraham’s servant.
https://twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1240252992122769408
Jacob strikes a deal with Laban to marry Rachel, but just as Jacob deceived Isaac, Laban deceives Jacob blinded by the darkness in his tent. Rather than Rachel, who he loves, Jacob is married to her sister Leah and must work for a total of 14 years to eventually marry both women.
The patterns begun early in Genesis hold – multiple wives bring trouble, the disfavored one finds favor with God, and Rachel struggles to conceive. Rachel demands Jacob “give [her] children or [she]’ll die”, possibly recalling earlier expressions of judgment (Gen 2:1, 6:13, 19:19).
As with Noah (8:1), Abraham (19:29), and the Israelites to come (Exodus 2:24), “God remembered Rachel” (30:22) and she becomes pregnant. In the midst of judgment, God remembers his people. Joseph-the future salvation of family, Egypt, and the nations-emerges from Rachel’s agony.
Now that he has 11 sons, two wives, and two concubines, Jacob’s thoughts turn toward home. He negotiates with Laban and, this time, prevails. Jacob is deceiving his extended family and has neglected and apparently misused the women in his life.
Yet, as with his glaringly imperfect fathers, God honors his promise to bless them, and Jacob “became extremely prosperous” even in land that was not his.
What’s all the business about speckled animals mating in front of rods? I don’t know.
#Bible #Genesis 31 #Jacob returns
Gordon Wenham notes that as Jacob fled his brother’s wrath and the land of Canaan, God met him at Bethel in a scene (Gen 28:13-14) with many direct parallels to God’s promise to Abraham at Bethel (Gen 13:14-16), reaffirming that, though he was leaving the land in fear and shame, God knew his circumstances and would honor the covenant with his family through him.
Like Abraham and Isaac before him, as God blessed him, Jacob wore out his welcome. “The Lord said to Jacob, ‘Return to the land of your fathers and to your relatives. I will be with you.’” Gen 31:3 (NET)
After conferring with his wives, they secretly, hurriedly leave, traveling for ten days until Laban finds out and chases them down.
As Jacob had lied to Isaac to steal the family inheritance, so Rachel now lies to Laban to steal his family’s wealth in the form of their household idols. Surely this displeases God on so many levels, but we find no moralizing, merely God’s continued favor on Jacob’s family.
I’ve attached this image to provide some sense of the scale and difficulty of the terrain. This speculative route of nearly 400 hilly miles suggests long, hard days of travel with children, herds, and flocks, a brutal pace on foot, though the story indicates they had camels.
Although the parallels are not completely clear to me, there are many elements of Jacob’s story that foreshadow Moses–after a crime, fleeing his family across a river to the east, meeting a woman at a well, marrying into her family, raising herds and flocks, encountering God,...
...God’s promise to bless and order to return. As with Moses, God is restoring Jacob’s family to the land he promised them.
Twenty years of exile and hard service, an arduous journey, and now Jacob approaches the land of his birth, his father, and his inheritance.
#Bible #Genesis 32 #Jacob wrestles
Before leaving the land, Jacob saw God in the heavens at the top of a stairway with angels moving up and down. Now, as he prepares to return to the land, Jacob meets encamped angels, and God wrestles him in the dirt. Again and again, God reaffirms to Jacob that he is with him and will fulfill his promise to Jacob’s family.
In his book Genesis Unbound, John Sailhamer notes that after Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden to the east, cherubim guarded the way back in. Here, approaching the land of promise, Jacob encounters angels as he returns from the east. When Jacob’s descendants enter the land from the east, Joshua too will encounter an angel.
I sustained injuries in military training. I still struggle with them and am constantly reminded how I got them. When God touches Jacob’s hip, he physically changes him in a manner he will likely remember the rest of his life. He also gives him a new name by which his descendants are remembered even today. As Jacob fled the land, he was vigorous, almost superhumanly strong. He returns broken and with many responsibilities, the first, to reconcile with the brother he robbed.
#Bible #Genesis 33 #Jacob reunites with #Esau
In the Garden, Eve encountered the snake with Adam somewhere in the background
At least one reading of Ham’s sin involves Noah’s wife compromised by his drunkenness
Abraham sent Sarah to Pharaoh and Abimelech
Isaac sent Rebekah to Abimelech
As his forefathers did, Jacob initially appears to send his family ahead to encounter danger before he does, but when he actually meets Esau, he goes out in front of them all to prostrate himself. Perhaps it’s a stretch, but I read this as an act of courage his ancestors didn’t have.
There is no moral evaluation in the text. We are left to make our own assessment.
We now learn God has blessed Esau too. He has become a nation, Edom, and travels in force to meet Jacob’s family. The brothers embrace. Jacob, having just seen the face of God, tells Esau that seeing his face is like seeing God’s. The brothers say all the right things, though they never appear to reconcile fully. Interestingly, Jacob claims he cannot accompany Esau because it would be too much for the children and animals. He has run from one relative with tremendous effort and now does not want to exert himself further to follow another.
This passage lays down two interesting markers. Jacob builds shelters for his animals at Sukkoth, which is later the name of a feast remembering his descendants’ time in shelters in the wilderness. Also, like Abraham, Jacob buys land in the land of promise, this time near Shechem, a site associated with future political events and much violence. As Jacob will be buried on Abraham’s land at Hebron, Joseph will be buried on Jacob’s land at Shechem. Jacob’s exile from and restoration to the land appear to foreshadow his descendants’ travels at many points.
#Bible #Genesis 33 #Dinah
The prince of the city, both named Shechem, violently sexually assaults Jacob’s daughter Dinah, whose name means judge or judgment. Shechem’s attributes and actions demonstrate he is allied with the seed of the serpent – fame, power, violence, sexual immorality – and, in lust over Dinah, he then wants to bind himself to Jacob’s family. We learn nothing of her reaction; the focus remains on Jacob.
Though he had apparently shown more courage than his ancestors in the previous narrative, here, Jacob mimics his father’s passivity. Jacob wisely waits until his sons return to act, but his sons’ momentum overwhelms Jacob’s intentions, whatever they were. Jacob’s sons show themselves even more depraved than Shechem, lying, killing, enslaving, and enriching themselves with the spoil. The threat that the seed of the serpent might be wed to Jacob’s family is violently overthrown by the serpent’s influence within Jacob’s own sons.
Jacob realizes he cannot live among the peoples in the land because of his sons’ sin. In the next chapter, God will order that he leave the vicinity of the city, where the seed of the serpent had influence, and return to Bethel, where he had seen a vision of God.
Jacob's sons Simeon and Levi have destroyed not only their enemies but also their own place of inheritance in the family.
Robert Alter notes that Shechem “sees” and “takes” Dinah, linking him to a long line beginning with Eve, Cain, the sons of God, and many others who see what is good in their own eyes and take their desire, participation in the seed of the serpent’s purpose, resulting in judgment.
Meir Sternberg points out that the brothers’ rescue of Dinah is an inflection point for readers:
We suddenly realize the negotiations were conducted while she was captive, and the brothers staged a hostage rescue, therefore the men of the city were likely combatants.
While this does not justify the brothers’ worst acts, it changes the moral calculus of the decision to attack the city vs. leaving their vulnerable relative with a powerful enemy attempting to force his desired outcome.
Like Jacob’s descendants in Egypt, Dinah is enslaved.
#Bible #Genesis 35 #Bethel #Benjamin #Rachel
God tells Isaac to return to Bethel and make an altar. After Rachel’s near death experience hiding idols under a saddle, Jacob buries them under a tree. He orders that his family purify themselves for travel to the place he had a vision of God “who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone.”
“And as they journeyed, a terror from God fell upon the cities that were around them, so that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob. And Jacob came to Luz (that is, Bethel), which is in the land of Canaan, he and all the people who were with him, and there he built an altar and called the place El-bethel, because there God had revealed himself to him when he fled from his brother.”
“God appeared to Jacob again, when he came from Paddan-aram, and blessed him. And God said to him, “Your name is Jacob; no longer shall your name be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name.” So he called his name Israel. And God said to him, “I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come from your own body. The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you, and I will give the land to your offspring after you.” Then God went up from him in the place where he had spoken with him. And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he had spoken with him, a pillar of stone. He poured out a drink offering on it and poured oil on it.”
God once again affirms his blessing on Jacob, and, once more, he wrestles a stone.
Rachel dies giving birth to Benjamin. So many times in Jacob’s life, death and destruction accompany blessing. He sets up another stone.
Reuben sleeps with Jacob’s concubine. As Ham may have done with Noah’s wife and Absalom will do with David’s, a son dishonors and usurps his father’s position. Rather than prevailing over his father, he later loses his inheritance over it.
Jacob now has twelve sons. He arrives in Hebron, his father Isaac dies, and Esau and Jacob bury Isaac.
#Bible #Genesis 36-37:1 #Esau and #Jacob
Esau’s family merits an extensive genealogical digression informing us of the origins of Edom, a frequent foe of Jacob’s descendants, and the first mention of a name with ominous significance – Amalek.
I’ve attached an outline of Jacob’s main story. The concept of chiasm is stretched pretty far here. This structure (open for interpretation and debate) is built on concepts visible in English translation, though much more detail and complexity of form is evident in the Hebrew word patterns.
Once an artist has established conventions, she will begin to challenge them. It appears the biblical authors have already begun to do so here. These stories, though written, were made to be read aloud. It’s no coincidence they resemble musical forms – introduction of themes, development, and restatement of the developed themes in resolution.
Jacob’s story, though more complex, retains a similar form to earlier narratives: a chiastic structure telling the story of a faithful, yet imperfect follower of God whose family God remembers, rescues in the midst of judgment, and leaves with a lasting promise of fruitfulness and blessing in the land.
#Bible #Genesis #Esau #Rephaim
While Jacob’s family wrestles with faithfulness to God, the seed of the serpent is also slithering through history.
@msheiser proposed that the purpose of the Israelite Conquest of Canaan was the eradication of the giant clans from the land of promise. https://bit.ly/3cX9Lte
When viewed in the light of future events during the Conquest, Esau’s genealogy gives us significant foundation stones for Heiser’s view and the idea that a malevolent spiritual force was behind human opposition to God’s plan for Israel.
Deuteronomy 2 gives us tantalizing details about the approach to the land of promise: there is a history of peoples like the giant Anakim (powerful enemies of the Conquest era Israelites) being driven from the surrounding lands.
“The Emim formerly lived there, a people great and many, and tall as the Anakim. Like the Anakim they are also counted as Rephaim, but the Moabites call them Emim. The Horites also lived in Seir formerly, but the people of Esau dispossessed them and destroyed them from before them and settled in their place, as Israel did to the land of their possession, which the Lord gave to them.” (2:10-12, ESV)
“[Ammon] is also counted as a land of Rephaim. Rephaim formerly lived there—but the Ammonites call them Zamzummim— a people great and many, and tall as the Anakim; but the Lord destroyed them before the Ammonites, and they dispossessed them and settled in their place, as he did for the people of Esau, who live in Seir, when he destroyed the Horites before them and they dispossessed them and settled in their place even to this day...” (2:20-23, ESV)
The text twice associates the Horites with the Anakim. Beyond proximity in the text, the relationship is not clear, but certainly the biblical author intends us to see them as connected.
Abraham and Isaac both insisted that their sons who would receive the blessing not intermarry with the surrounding peoples. Later, when the Israelites approach Canaan during the Conquest, God repeatedly warns them not to intermarry with the peoples in the land. Solomon’s intermarriage with an Egyptian and women of many other foreign backgrounds led him to worship other gods. The Hebrew Bible both explicitly prohibits and describes disastrous outcomes of marriage and children with nations who do not honor God.
Esau lived alongside, married, and fathered children with neighboring tribes (Gen 26:34, 36:1). Esau’s son Eliphaz had a son with an apparent Horite woman, Timna. His name: Amalek. (Gen 36:10-12, 22)
The biblical authors appear to prefer ambiguity or even silence regarding the progression of the seed of the serpent, but in the genealogies of the sons that don’t receive the blessing, we do find evidence that the enemy is working to thwart God’s purpose. It is important to accept what the text gives us without trying to invent connections to support a preferred conclusion, but Esau’s genealogy does make some significant conceptual connections for Jacob’s family’s future.
#Isaac (never posted to Twitter)
In contrast to Abraham, who chased down his enemies over 150 miles and vigorously argued with God, Isaac appears to merely receive the actions of others: his father’s near sacrifice, the delivery of his wife, wells stolen from and restored, expulsion from Abimelech’s territory and Abimelech’s treaty, Esau’s provision of food, Rebekah and Jacob’s deception, and, most significantly, God’s blessing.
We do learn that Isaac prayed for Rebekah to have children, and God listened.
In contrast to Abraham’s travel to Egypt to escape famine, God tells Isaac to stay in the land and enriches him when he does so. God shows his faithfulness despite Isaac’s apparent lack of honesty, initiative, and action.
#Bible #Genesis #Joseph (posted without being written up here)
https://twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1262780371550326784
https://twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1279414516367982594
Jacob calls God the one “who answered me in the day of my distress and who has been with me wherever I have gone” Gen 34
Once again, Jacob’s experience anticipates that of his descendants when they conquered the land (Exod 23:27; Deut 7:20–24; Josh 2:9–11; cf. Exod 34:24). Confronting Jacob and Joshua, the Canaanites were paralyzed with fear.
Joseph 2s
one of 2 sons born to the same mother
brother of sons of 2 sets of 2 wives
brought a bad report of the sons of 2 of his father’s wives (37:2)
2 dreams - (37:5-11, 40:5, 41:1-7)
2 scenes with his brothers in the field (37:2, 12-17)
imprisoned 2x (37:22, 39:20)
2 coats taken away (37:31, 39:12)
2 brothers intended to save his life (37:21, 26)
2 peoples took him (37:25-28)
2 Egyptian masters (39:1, 21)
2 Potipher(a)s (39:1, 41:45)
2 scenes of sexual temptation in a larger narrative arc (38, 39:11-15)
2 witnesses of Joseph’s dream interpretation for good and evil outcomes (40:5-23)
2d over all Egypt (41:40)
rides in the pharaoh’s 2d chariot (41:43)
has 2 sons (41:50)
2 sets of seven years (41:53-54)
lived 110 years (50:22)
The story of Joseph is one of resolution of the conflicts that have emerged throughout the book of Genesis. The divided become united as Joseph acts in faith according to God’s purpose, and God makes his family whole, fruitful, and blessed in the land. But not the land of promise, not yet.
https://twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1199552337259319296?s=20
Bible #Genesis 37 #Joseph #slavery
Joseph’s name hints at the idea of increase, of fruitfulness, which is the command of God to mankind with Adam and promise of God to Abraham’s descendants. Maybe in Joseph, the promise will be fulfilled.
Joseph is a shepherd apprentice. He dreams of wheat and stars. And power. The symbology of his dreams is prophetic. He will provide grain as sustenance for the nations. Stars in the Hebrew Bible are often associated with spiritual powers, which in turn had human rulers as counterparts. The exact relationship is not clear to me, but clearly the celestial imagery contributes to a heavens/earth dichotomy in the two dreams. That God’s ultimate purpose as expressed in Eden and fulfilled in Revelation is for heaven and earth to be connected in a place he dwells with us is surely part of what’s happening. God will use Joseph to accomplish his purpose. Even as the family objects, Jacob silently takes note, as Mary will later do of Jesus’ extraordinary early days.
Power, its abuse and wise application, immediately is evident as a theme in Joseph’s story. Jacob, like Isaac, has often been a passive observer to his sons’ actions. Joseph appears happy to pursue his father’s easy approval even as his brothers resent him. His brothers’ building anger leads to a sudden reversal - the favored son is nearly killed, instead enslaved, has lost everything.
Jacob deceived Isaac by slaughtering a goat and with Esau’s clothes and took everything that had been promised to Esau. Now his sons deceive him by slaughtering a goat and with Joseph’s clothes and deny Joseph his inheritance in their family. As Isaac’s purpose for his favored son was thwarted by the other, so Jacob’s for his favored son is by the others. The strife Laban introduced through his deceit now manifests fully in the apparent destruction of Jacob’s favorite. The seed of the serpent is again evident in Jacob’s family-violence in pursuit of power and inheritance. Leah’s sons had embraced the serpent’s purpose at Shechem. Now Bilhah’s and Zilpah’s sons have reason to hate Joseph, son of Rachel.
Yet God has not abandoned Joseph. He is sold to a captain in the rough equivalent of the modern Israeli Shin Bet or American Secret Service, near to the pharaoh and also to prison.
#Bible #Genesis 38 #Judah #Tamar
The story of Judah, Tamar, and their children appears on the surface to be an abrupt departure from Joseph’s story that surrounds it, but Gen 37:2 has told us this will be the story of Jacob’s family, not just Joseph.
Gen 38 is thoroughly interwoven with references to earlier stories and provides key details for the future of Judah and the nation of Israel.
In his Hebrew Bible commentary, Robert Alter identifies several references to earlier narratives, especially from the line of Abraham:
a possible woman at the well type scene in the place name Enaim, which may mean "two wells", as the location Judah takes Tamar
like Jacob with Isaac, and Jacob’s sons regarding Joseph, Tamar deceives Judah with her clothing in a transaction involving a goat and family authority and like Isaac, Judah has twin sons, the oldest identified with red.
@jamesbejon has an excellent, insightful thread and article on this passage that traces Judah’s line into the future.
Like Esau, Zerah, identified with red, has descendants allied with the seed of the serpent
https://bit.ly/2XPbJp8
Judah too engages in sexual immorality and threatens brutal violence. He appears destined to be judged and his line eliminated by his own unknowing decree, but Tamar’s cleverness saves them all.
Tamar’s plight recalls that of generations of women before her in the line of promise and foreshadows some to come. Denied children and her desired place in the line, she resorts to extreme, even immoral behavior that puts the line of promise at risk, yet Judah sees she is right.
Judah’s harsh directness gives way to repentance when he is confronted with his sin, perhaps foreshadowing his coming, pivotal response to Joseph. Although God does not overtly intervene, the pattern that he will rescue his purpose when it is threatened has been established.
It is safe to accept that God’s silent work helps to explain Judah’s willingness to show mercy. John Sailhamer assesses that the patterns established to this point in Genesis inform a knowledgeable reader to fill in observances like those above, enabling brevity in the account.
Learning and retaining the patterns established early in Genesis will inform our interpretation of God’s interaction with his people and his enemies. Our knowledge of them enables brief key points here without bogging down the larger narrative. Introduction, theme, and variation
Like a sudoku puzzle, once the reader understands the standard form of the pattern, when the author leaves gaps in a future iteration, it is possible to mentally fill in what is not explicit in the text.
For some difficult passages, this is a powerful interpretive tool.
#Bible #Genesis 39-40 #Potiphar #dreams
In his dissertation “Between Eden and Egypt: Echoes of the Garden Narrative in the Story of Joseph…” @briansigmon identifies parallels between the early stories of Genesis and those of Joseph. Joseph’s narrative echoes not only the Garden, but themes that run through all of Genesis.
In his youthful dreams, we see fruitful land and the signs in the heavens of Genesis 1. As Joseph rises in Potiphar’s house, we recall God’s blessing of Jacob with Laban, Isaac with Abimelech. Others witness God’s favor on his faithful followers. Both Potiphar’s wife and Joseph himself appear to have everything they could want except each other.
Robert Alter notes that Joseph is described as “comely in features and comely to look at”, the exact terms used for his mother Rachel. This hyperlink may serve to import key ideas from Rachel’s life: that she thought she would die (30:1-2) and that God remembered her (30:22).
Potiphar’s wife sees and attempts to take Joseph. Unlike Adam and Eve (or many of his other ancestors when tempted), Joseph successfully resists and flees, yet as Adam and Eve, he is naked and expelled.
Once again, Joseph, the favored one, his garment taken, is denied everything he had. Yet once imprisoned, God’s favor is evident in his new circumstances, and he rises again. Two prisoners approach him with dreams that hint both at recalling Noah and foreshadowing his own future.
In an article considering the Jubilee, @jamesbejon connects the two goats in the day of Atonement ritual to the raven and the dove released by Noah during the Flood. The birds fly away – one to chaos, the other to a newly fruitful land. Following the Flood, Noah settles in a vineyard, a fruitful symbol of God’s blessing, an approximation of Eden. In the Gen 40 baker’s dream, birds eating from a basket symbolize death, while in the cupbearer’s, vineyard imagery signals restoration.
The dream of bread and death may also prefigure the coming famine, while the dream of a vineyard, the settling of Joseph’s family in lush land of Goshen. These concepts are not explicitly delineated, but elements of the prisoner’s dreams evoke prior and future iterations of an established pattern recently examined by @DrJimHamilton - God reveals his glory in salvation through judgment.
During previous periods of judgment – in the Flood, God remembered Noah; after Sodom, God remembered Abraham; in anguish prior to the birth of Joseph, God remembered Rachel.
At the end of this passage, the cupbearer, to whom Joseph has plead for salvation, forgets him.
#Bible #Genesis 41 #pharaoh #dreams
The pharaoh’s dreams of the Nile, cows, and wheat predict the coming failure of Egyptian fruitfulness, the pharaoh himself, and even the gods of Egypt. Many commentators have noted the existence of extensive Egyptian dream interpretation texts from Joseph’s time, yet Joseph clearly credits God as the source of interpretation. God uses the pharaoh to fulfill his promises Joseph’s ancestors in Joseph’s time.
In earlier threads we considered how Joseph’s story echoes the earlier stories of Genesis – Creation, temptation of Eve, the Flood. Joseph’s ascension to leadership in Egypt appears to parallel the story of Babel. Egypt is in many ways the world power the people of Babel aspired to be. The pharaoh makes the claims of equality and contact with the gods that the people of Babel wished to achieve. At Babel, they pursued political power, communication with God or the gods (via building to heaven), and a name. They wished to avoid being dispersed.
Pharaoh gives Joseph political power, a name, attributes to him communication with God, and positions him so that “all the earth came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain.”
John Sailhamer, in his Genesis commentary, proposes that Joseph is a new Adam, that the attributes and responsibilities God intended for Adam in Eden are now given to Joseph by the pharaoh in Egypt:
-Adam is…dependent on God for his knowledge of “good and bad,” so [is] Joseph
-Adam is made God’s “vicegerent” to rule over all the land, so [is] Joseph…Pharaoh’s “vicegerent” over all of his land
-Adam was made in God’s image to rule over all the land, so the king…gives Joseph his “signet ring” and…royal garments
- God provided a wife for Adam…and gave humankind all the land…, so the king gives a wife to Joseph and puts him over all the land
Joseph is the substantial fulfillment of God’s promises to his fathers to give them a name, to bless them, and to make them fruitful. Two things remain – Joseph is separated from the family God made those promises to, and all his accolades are outside the promised land.
#Bible #Genesis 42-45 #Joseph and his #brothers
The story of Joseph’s brothers traveling to Egypt in search of food during a famine, of Joseph finding and testing them, and of the restoration of the family of Jacob is one of the most emotionally and spiritually powerful in all of the Bible. It is intricately designed, displaying nested symmetry and repetition, pregnant with references to earlier stories in Genesis, and exemplifies God’s pattern of the judgment, salvation, and restoration of his people.
These events could only occur through God’s foreknowledge, Joseph’s faithfulness to God in the midst of trial, and God’s faithfulness to reveal to Joseph, the young brother, the slave, the prisoner, God’s own good wisdom and purpose for the future.
In Gen 30, Rachel in apparent anguish demands “children or [she would] die.” “God remembered Rachel” and gives her Joseph. For the rest of the story of Jacob’s family, we find pervasive fear the death of Rachel and her children and mourning of their loss. When Laban pursues Jacob’s family, Jacob tells him that whoever has the household idols will die, even as Rachel is sitting on them. When Jacob encounters Esau, he divides his family, afraid his children will be killed, placing Rachel and Joseph last. Rachel dies in childbirth, and Jacob deeply, enduringly grieves her loss. Joseph’s brothers deceive their father, showing him fabricated evidence Joseph is dead, and Jacob never ceases to mourn him. Jacob resists sending Benjamin to Egypt, believing he will die. When Joseph’s servants pursue his brothers for Joseph’s missing cup, the brothers propose that whoever has it will die, then discover it in Benjamin’s sack. Joseph breaks down and cries three times at the sight of his brothers, culminating in Benjamin and Joseph weeping as they are reunited. The threat of death is ever present, evoking a progressively intensifying sense of unease. This is a story of ultimate stakes and finally of God’s mercy to deliver the people he loves.
There is clear symmetry in the structure of the text; there is also conceptual symmetry - justice comes to people who deserve it. The brothers who enslaved Joseph for silver repeatedly bring him increasing amounts of silver and finally are caught in an apparent disastrous trap with Joseph’s silver cup.
“Don’t you know that a man like me can find out things like this by divination?”
“What can we say to my lord? …God has exposed the sin of your servants!” (Gen 44:14-16, NET)
Joseph’s relationship with dreams and ability to hear from God culminate in the full revelation of his brothers’ sin; the imminent threat of the most-feared outcome, Benjamin’s death; and finally, mercifully Joseph’s revealed identity and intent not to destroy but to save.
In his Genesis commentary, Gordon Wenham points out that Judah’s speech to Joseph, the climax of the story, is a negative image of his role in the enslavement of Joseph. In it, he takes responsibility for Benjamin’s care, recognizes and regrets his role in his father’s agony, and finally offers himself as a slave in Benjamin’s place.
While the account of Judah’s sons in Gen 38 is often viewed as an intrusion into Joseph’s story, here its essential function becomes evident. Judah, who is now clearly acting as the firstborn son (though he’s actually the fourth), displays a radically transformed character, thoughts and actions opposite his in Gen 37. What drove the change? Gen 38 shows his harrowing experience with his own sons, one who died because of his lack of respect for life, and his treatment of Tamar, which nearly led to him rashly wiping out his own line.
After Tamar convicts him, he has apparently remained chastened by the experience and is now deeply sympathetic with his father’s loss of sons. Tamar, it turns out, is responsible for preserving Jacob’s family whole, not just her own. Had Judah shown himself an unworthy protector of Benjamin, Joseph likely would have responded very differently to the brothers who had once enslaved him.
In previous threads, we considered elements of Joseph’s story as related to earlier stories in Genesis –it appears that this part of his story correlates with God’s special relationship with Abraham’s family, not only as a fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham, but also as reconciliation among family members. In previous generations, the older brother did not inherit the promise, often became alienated from the family, and even allied himself closely with the seed of the serpent. Cain, Ham, Lot, Ishmael, and Esau all fathered peoples who would oppose God’s people. In Joseph’s generation however, despite Reuben’s incestuous adultery, Simeon and Levi’s murderous revenge, and the brothers’ betrayal of Joseph – all serious efforts at allying with the seed of the serpent – through Joseph, they are redeemed and reunited. None is lost. The gifts Joseph sends back with them reinforce this idea – silver and clothing. Joseph had been sold for silver and repeatedly had his clothing taken in successive personal tragedies, yet he gives his brothers an abundance of the things he had lost.
For many years, one of the most heart-wrenching stories in the modern consciousness has been the ongoing ordeal of the parents of kidnapped and still missing Madeleine McCann. They have undoubtedly endured unimaginable torment, desiring what cannot be grasped, denied justice and reunification with their lost daughter. Jacob too has his son stolen from him by, though he did not know it, his own sons. He grieves unabated apparently for decades.
Finally, we learn here of the revelation to Jacob that Joseph lives, that he has been elevated to power and prestige, and that he will be the source of their salvation. An engaged reader cannot help but be moved by these powerful scenes of realization, restoration, and hope.
#Bible #Genesis 46-47 #Jacob ’s family
Jacob, now aware of Joseph in Egypt, travels to meet him. Jacob stops in Beersheba, where Abraham and Isaac had planted a tree, dug a well (hints of Eden, where man meets God), and God met with them. In Gen 15, God tells Abraham that his descendants will be enslaved in a foreign land. Perhaps Jacob fears leaving Canaan for this reason. God appears to Jacob at Beersheba too, saying he will bless Jacob’s family in Egypt and bring Jacob back.
In Gen 28, Jacob set out from Beersheba for Haran in exile from his family. Now he sets out from there to Egypt to be restored as a family.
There is a geographical pattern in the movement of the Patriarchs between Shechem, Hebron, and Beersheba. Jacob arrives at Beersheba on the way out of Egypt. When the Israelites return, we might expect them to pass through there. Instead, following their rebellion and wandering, they circle all the way around and encounter Shechem first, the tribe of Judah fights the Anakim based in Hebron, and Beersheba is largely ignored in the Conquest narrative.
Like Noah in Gen 10, Jacob has 70 descendants.
Jacob sends Judah ahead, now his chosen representative.
When Jacob and Joseph meet, Joseph weeps and Jacob talks of death, another instance of the pattern of Rachel and her children. https://twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1271967368403734528?s=20
Continuing with the pattern of 2s in his story, we find a scene where Joseph tells his brothers what to say to pharaoh and a second scene in which they say it.
Pharaoh shows Joseph’s family favor, allowing them to live in the best of the land and continue their ancestral occupation. In contrast, Pharaoh treats Jacob with deference, and Jacob responds with unceremonious honesty and humility. He recognizes that his fathers honored God and were blessed, while he had often failed and therefore lived a difficult and relatively short time. Yet Jacob is of the line of promise, has God’s blessing, and, like his father and grandfather, he blesses the foreign king.
With pharaoh’s blessing, Joseph’s family settles in the fertile best of the well watered land, recalling Eden.
Joseph was purchased as a slave by the Egyptians for silver. Now he takes all the Egyptians’ silver, their animals, their land, and finally enslaves them. It should be noted that the meaning of ‘slave’ in this context is to work the pharaoh’s land and pay 20% of their crop. The word/s translated ‘slave’ in the Bible appear to have significantly different meanings depending on the time and place they are applied. The Egyptians enslaved Joseph. Joseph enslaves the Egyptians, and soon, we will see that Egyptians enslave Jacob’s descendants in this foreign land.
For now, Jacob’s family under Joseph’s protection will prosper in the land of Goshen even as the world suffers from famine, and Joseph swears to return Jacob’s body to lie with his fathers near Hebron when he dies.
#Bible #Genesis 48-50 #death and #blessing
Jacob recalls God’s blessing: “I am going to make you fruitful and will multiply you. I will make you into a group of nations, and I will give this land to your descendants as an everlasting possession.” (Gen 48:4, NET) Genesis begins and ends with God’s desire to bless his people in the land. He also remembers Joseph’s mother Rachel, death, and sorrow.
After citing his experience at Luz, his blessing of Joseph echoes the language of his dream and his wrestling – God, the angel, a name, a multitude in the land. The blessing of Ephraim in Manasseh recalls the stories of each previous generation in the line of promise in which the younger son is recognized rather than the older. Jacob’s “like Reuben and Simeon” suggests the addition of sons to receive the blessing his rebellious eldest sons will be denied.
Many commentators have speculated about Jacob’s claim to have taken from the Amorites with his sword and bow. There is no previous episode in his story that fits this description well. My own grandfather, at the end of his life but not often before, wanted me to know about the battles he fought in during World War II. It seemed that though he did not want to dwell on them in life, he wanted someone to remember them and their significance. Here, Jacob makes a claim on territory he won and passes it on to Joseph. Arguably, Joseph later honors it by being buried there.
“Gather together so I can tell you what will happen to you in future days.” Jacob explicitly tells his sons his blessing will foretell their futures, and we do see at least some of his words fulfilled in future stories.
When Reuben slept with Jacob’s wife, Jacob remained silent. When he offered to ensure Benjamin’s safety, Jacob ignored him. Now Jacob tells Reuben that though he was first, he will not be foremost.
Simeon and Levi violently rescued their sister from Shechem and took everything in the city. Now they will be scattered, denied an inheritance. Levi becomes the tribe of priests, who shed the blood of the sacrifices and do not inherit land. Simeon lives in Judah and fades into obscurity.
Here we also learn that, despite Joseph’s prominence, Judah will be the one to carry on the line of promise, father kings, rule the nations, and live in an abundance of grapes. In the generation that leaves Egypt, a faithful leader of Judah will return with grapes and receive an extraordinary blessing. Jacob declares an association that will resonate across generations: Judah is a lion.
Ships, a burdened donkey, a snake attacking a horse, marauders, rich food, and a running doe
Joseph, like Judah is compared to fruit. He is a skillful warrior. In the Exodus generation, a warrior of Ephraim will return with fruit and lead Israel in the conquest.
“Benjamin is a ravenous wolf…” Unlike Judah’s lion, it is hard to read Benjamin as a blessing. @jamesbejon has a moving and deeply insightful threat considering his future:
https://twitter.com/JamesBejon/status/1237094362070335489?s=20
In previous threads, we considered parallels between Jacob’s life and his descendants’ experiences in the Exodus and Conquest. Gordon Wenham points out numerous parallels in the final chapters of Genesis including the phrases “To ‘go up’”, “servants of Pharaoh,” “young children,” “flocks,” “herds,” “chariots,” “horsemen,” “encampment,” and “very powerful,” all of which occur repeatedly in the Exodus account. There is also a striking geographical parallel. Jacob’s funeral procession enters the land of promise by crossing the Jordan from the east, ~150 miles off of the ~250 mile direct route from Egypt. It both recalls Jacob’s return from Haran and prefigures his descendants’ wandering in the wilderness prior to a distant, miraculous entrance into the land. Jacob is buried in the cave Abraham purchased with his family at Hebron, key terrain for his descendants during the Conquest and during the time of David.
After Jacob’s death, Joseph’s brothers fear that he has been concealing a desire for vengeance, but Joseph again demonstrates his integrity. His forgiveness of them and trust in God is real and abiding. Joseph too, upon his death, asks for his bones to be carried back with his people.
#Bible #Genesis #Joseph as recapitulation (not uploaded to Twitter)
In earlier threads focused on the final chapters of Genesis, we looked at elements of Joseph’s story as related to earlier stories. Here, let’s put them all together and consider the book-long narrative strategy.
In Gen 37, the young Joseph dreams of a fruitful land and of stars, the sun, and the moon. The two dreams evoke the heavens and land dichotomy of Gen 1. There are rulers in the heavens and rulers in the land. In the dream they all bow to Joseph. His family is understandably offended because the immature boy Joseph is not who they are to bow to. There is a future Joseph, filled with the spirit of God, who seeks God’s good guidance. He will be the image of God in the land and fulfill the dreams.
The strife between Joseph and his brothers recalls that of Cain and Abel, Ham and his brothers, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob. All the brothers in the line of promise were at odds, and in each generation, one of them pursued the goals of the seed of the serpent. By this point in the larger narrative, a few of Joseph’s brothers appear to be on the same path.
Sold into Potiphar’s house, Joseph rises to prominence and power. He appears to have everything he could want there in Egypt. In a temptation scene recalling Adam and Eve’s in Gen 3, Joseph, unlike so many of his ancestors, successfully resists. There is a glimmer of hope that he is different, yet like Adam and Eve, he is naked and expelled, this time to a prison.
There, like Noah, Joseph stands out as righteous and blessed by God in the midst of corruption. The prisoners’ two dreams pick up themes we saw in Noah’s story – birds and death, a vineyard and new life.
In Gen 11, after the Flood, Noah’s descendants follow the strongman Nimrod, build a city and attempt (what was probably) a ziggurat with a stairway to the heavens to achieve power, make a name, and ensure they are not scattered, apparently in attempt to reconstitute the pre-Flood corrupt order. God thwarts their purpose but calls Abraham and promises to give him a name, a people, and a blessing, to fill the land with his descendants. God then appears to Jacob in a vision that may be a godly implementation of what was attempted at Babel – a stairway to heaven with God at the top, a name, a promise of descendants, and a blessing. In Gen 41, in pharaoh’s dreams, we learn that the Nile, the source of life in Egypt, will be compromised. Cattle, which may suggest gods of the Egyptians, and the fruitful land will fail. The Egyptians’ water, land, gods, and religious rituals to interpret dreams all appear compromised, but Joseph knows God to whom all belong. Through his reliance on God, Joseph acts in the image of God, the ideal of Gen 1. And God begins to fulfill his promise to Abraham and Israel: Pharaoh gives Joseph a new name, abundant blessing, and an elevated position of the kind the people at Babel sought. Joseph uses them to gather all nations to himself to provide for them, showing God’s character, acting in his image - the corrupt goals of Gen 11 Babel overcome by God’s good purpose as in Gen 1-2 Eden and in partial fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
As Joseph ascends to power in Egypt, we see him act as an image-bearer of God. He is associated with fruitful land and is a source of life not only for Egypt and eventually his family, but also for the nations. In his interactions with Judah, Joseph echoes God’s disturbing test of Abraham and Isaac. The apparent parallel may suggest the importance of Isaac’s response - though the Gen 22 account does not emphasize it, Isaac submitted to be bound. He was a willing sacrifice. Here also, Judah submits his own life as a substitutionary sacrifice for Benjamin. In doing so, despite his previous failures, Judah shows the faithful, self-sacrificial character that may now be viewed as emblematic of the line of promise.
Like God has tested Abraham and Isaac, so Joseph tests Judah, finds him faithful, and counts it to him as righteousness. He is a trustworthy protector of Benjamin. Joseph can reconcile with his brothers without fear that they will use it as an opportunity for further abuse. This realization prepares us to receive Jacob’s prophetic blessing that Judah will inherit the line of promise.
Through Judah’s repentance and Joseph’s merciful generosity, Jacob’s family reunites. Even the brothers on the path of the seed of the serpent return to the fold. The whole family dwells together in the Eden-like Goshen. Joseph has the attributes God intended for Adam in Eden. All is well, save one key detail that will propel the plot forward: they are not in the promised land.
#Bible #Genesis #Joseph Narrative #structure
Like almost all the other major narratives in Genesis, the story of Joseph/Jacob’s family has a chiastic structure. David A. Dorsey, in his book The Literary Structure of the Old Testament, identifies symmetry/chiasm in Joseph’s sale into slavery (37:12-35); Judah and Tamar (38); Joseph and master’s wife (39); Jacob’s family travel to Egypt (45:16-47:12), Jacob’s blessings on his sons (47:27-49:33); the first half (37-42); the last half (43-50); and the entire narrative (37:2-50:26).
Gordon Wenham, in his Genesis commentary, identifies ~60 references to earlier narratives in the closing chapters of Genesis. There appears to be an extreme degree of organization in the text, with Joseph’s story as a pinnacle of both organizational complexity and thematic density. The author has packed every major theme from the earlier stories in Genesis into an intricately designed structure.
By considering the relationships between events in Joseph’s story rather than merely reading it straight through, we can gain further insight.
Joseph as recapitulation of Genesis
Like Adam should have, Joseph fruitfully ruled in the image of God
Like Noah, Joseph rescued his people through a disaster. Greater than Noah, all were saved.
Like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Joseph faithfully followed God. Greater than his fathers, he helped ensure all his brothers were included in Israel.
The central event in a chiasm is likely one of the most important. In my take, as with so many other elements of Joseph’s story, there are two – 1. Joseph remembers his dreams, God’s vision for his life and 2. Joseph sees his beloved brother Benjamin. Later, Judah’s repentant, self-sacrificial actions enable Joseph to reconcile with his whole family.
In the earlier narratives in Genesis, I found that ‘God remembered’ was the center of the structure. Here, Joseph, ruling in the image of God, remembers the vision God gave him and, in a second central event, sees Benjamin and proof of his brothers’ repentance and rehabilitation.
Does reducing the story to bullet points really help us understand? Doesn’t it take the life out of the narrative?
Friends, when I considered B and B’, C and C’, E and E’ together
-That Joseph’s brothers hated him
-but that Jacob’s last words to him were to check on their welfare
-that Jacob mourned inconsolably over Joseph with nothing to hold but his bloody clothes
And then
-that as Jacob died, Joseph hugged him, wept over him, and kissed him
-that Joseph, remembering his father’s final request through decades of slavery, imprisonment, then elevation to high office, promised to care for his brothers and their little children
-and that rather than repaying their hatred, Joseph consoled his brothers as his father would not be consoled for him
I went to another room and wept
#Bible #Genesis Narrative #structure
Identifying the underlying structure of stories is an imprecise task, open to interpretation and debate. Narrative is art. The author uses words as a medium to establish patterns, then varies those patterns to share insight, evoke emotion, and create narrative tension and resolution. Though we may be distant from the author and struggle to comprehend some of his ideas, we can observe the framework he has constructed and live within it as we read.
It appears that Genesis is structured in a manner similar to a musical composition. That is likely not a coincidence since it has been spoken or chanted in front of audiences for millennia.
Genesis 1 introduces themes that will resonate throughout the entire biblical narrative. The major and minor stories that follow develop those themes as God’s faithful followers frequently fail, others actively resist him, and God continually rescues his people and purpose. Finally in 37-50, the story of Jacob’s sons is a recapitulation and profound resolution of the major themes, with a few loose ends left to carry us forward to the next book.
Each of the major narratives appears to be structured as a chiasm (though there are many sub-structures of different forms) at the center of each, God remembers his chosen. In the story of Jacob’s sons, both Joseph and Judah appear to have central events that define their relationship with God and their family.
https://twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1199552330762350593
#Bible #Genesis #patterns
In the narratives of Genesis, we’ve looked at apparent patterns. As we consider narrative patterns, some commonalities appear.
Characteristics of God
Creates; Separates and names; Makes sun, moon, and stars for signs and to rule in the heavens. Populates the waters above and below and the land. Makes humans in his image to rule in the land. Prepares a land to meet with humans. Sees and knows what is good. Desires fruitfulness, multiplication, that humans rule in the land in his image. Rest on the seventh day. 3, 7, 10
Characteristics of the serpent and his allies
Deceit, violence, pursuit of fame, pursuit of political power, sexual immorality
Very often they ‘see’ and ‘take’ what is good, desirable (in their own eyes, not by God’s standard)
What are the characteristics of God’s people?
Like God in Genesis 1, they ‘see’ and ‘know’ what it is good (by God’s standard)
They ‘see’ in visions, dreams, God’s covenants and promises, and his guidance (as in how to build the ark)
They ‘know’ by believing what God tells and shows them.
That faith is essential is apparent in the stories of Genesis. Obedience, apparently, is not. God’s people very often disobey him or behave shamefully, yet God shows his own character by remaining faithful to them and rescuing his people and his purpose.
God rescues his people and purpose as a pattern
Serpent vs Woman as a pattern
Creation/Fall/Judgement/Restoration to the land as a pattern
Covenant with his people as a pattern – his people become the woman, as in Ezekiel 16
#Bible #Genesis #Form #Sonata
~300 years ago, a musical form rose to prominence, became the foundation of most large musical compositions, and resonates through music history to the present – the Sonata. Its major components:
Exposition-statement of themes
Development-experimentation and interaction of themes
Recapitulation-revelatory restatement of original and developed themes
Genesis, a ~3000 year old book, is composed in a similar form.
Genesis 1-2 as Exposition – the original, perfect themes include God creating, separating, and seeing what is good; rulers in the heavens for signs and in the land in God’s image; man as God’s image with responsibility for the land; rest on the seventh day.
https://mobile.twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1201622212815589376
Genesis 3-11, 12-36 as Development – as man and the ‘sons of God’ do what is right in their own eyes, Genesis shows us resulting corruption and consequences but also God’s intervention to rescue and restore. I have attempted to trace several patterns as they develop in the book, but there are certainly more.
Major/covenant characters
https://mobile.twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1281250332870430722
Serpent vs Woman
https://mobile.twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1281285607717773312
Relationship, Rebellion, Exile, and Restoration Cycle
https://mobile.twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1283269236648026112
Character characteristics
https://mobile.twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1294115679034105863
Genesis 37-50 as Recapitulation – the story of Joseph restates many themes from those of his ancestors, yet in Joseph, we see fulfillment of Gen 1’s command/blessing-fruitfulness, multiplication, ruling in the land, blessing, and restoration for the nations and his family.
https://mobile.twitter.com/kalevcreative/status/1279414520809742336
Because Genesis is a beginning, it also hints at what is to come - descendants of Ham, Lot, and Esau as future enemies of Israel; Joseph’s success the foundation of an oppressive Egyptian regime; and the people of promise, though prospering, not yet in the promised land.
If you’ve found this helpful and would like to continue on, you can find Exodus notes here:
https://www.kalevcreative.com/exodus-notes