A Brief History of Reality, The Summary of the Cliff Notes of the Abridged Version of Genesis

    Before I continue with the end of Genesis, I need to make mention of an important incident that I passed over in my rush to cover Abraham. I mentioned the LORD and two angels visiting Abraham and warning him about the coming destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Most people are familiar with the story of Lot and his family fleeing Sodom. Everyone has heard about his wife turning into a pillar of salt for looking back. The most important detail is what happens after that event. 

    Lot and his daughters are now living in a cave, and the daughters have written off any chance of their father finding them husbands. We know from the account that they were both betrothed prior to the destruction of their home (but had not yet been wed as they were still virgins), and the angels had given Lot a chance to persuade his sons-in-law to flee with them. But they had refused. So the girls took it upon themselves to ensure they had children. They each took a turn getting their father drunk and then sleeping with him. Both conceived and they gave birth to sons: Moab and Ben-Ammi. They become the fathers of the nations of Moab (the Moabites) and Ammon (the Ammonites). They settle each of the Jordan river and are thorns in the side of Israel for generations. But most importantly, we need to remember the origins of Moab when we get to Ruth because she's a "Moabitess" and she's also the great-grandmother of King David. This also puts her in the line of ancestry to Jesus.

    It's these little interconnected details that make me baffled as to how people can be disregarded now that we have the New Testament. No, the New Testament doesn't make sense without the Old Testament...

    Anyway, let's wrap Genesis.

    Israel (Jacob/his entire family) are now in Goshen in Egypt. They are guests of Pharaoh and blessed by God.

    As Jacob feels death is coming for him, he calls for Joseph to bring his sons: Ephraim and Manasseh. Jacob wants to bless them so Joseph places the boys in front of his father so that the older (Manasseh) is position to have Jacob's right hand on him to receive the greater blessing, but Jacob crosses his arms. Joseph argues with his father over this, but Jacob insists he knows what he is doing. He intentionally blesses Ephraim above Manasseh. It's impossible to escape the connection of this to Jacob's own position as the younger brother to Esau. Israel also makes an interesting statement to Joseph. He says that though the Ephraim and Manasseh will always be counted as Joseph's, they will also be Israel's just as any of Joseph's brothers. They will be their own tribes. 

    Israel then calls the rest of his sons to him and he pronounces "blessings" on them all. I put blessings in quotes because as with the "blessing" given to Esau, in some ways these seem as much a curse as a blessing.

    To Reuben, the firstborn, Israel finally reveals his thoughts on Reuben's sleeping with Jacob's concubine, Bilhah. He says that though Reuben should excel in prominence and power as the first fruits of Israel, he will not excel because of his actions in defiling his father's bed.

    Simeon and Levi are spoken of jointly. And again, Israel brings up things from the distant past. He remembers their vicious anger in response to the rape of Dinah, and he condemns them to be dispersed throughout Israel. 

    Judah is next, and he is given the highest blessing, essentially becoming like the first born. Israel compares him to a lion and promises that the ruling scepter of Israel will not depart from him. 

    To Zebulun, Israel promises him to be a harbor by the sea (literally). He promises him specific territory near Sidon.

    Israel compares Issachar to a strong donkey who has found a good place to rest, but he is also forced into labor.

    About Dan, Israel seems to say "yeah, I guess you can be a tribe too" before describing him like a viper striking at horses in the rode.

    Gad will be be attacked but will attack back.

    Israel says Asher's food will be rich, and he will produce delicacies.

    Naphtali is described as a doe producing beautiful fawns.

    Joseph gets the longest blessing. He's compared to a fruitful vine, and though he is attacked, he prevails. Israel wishes him high blessings than even those of his ancestors and calls him a prince among his brothers. 

    Benjamin is a wolf who devours his prey.

    With that Israel finished blessing his sons. He then charged Joseph with ensuring that he would be buried in the same cave in Canaan in which Abraham and Sarah, and Isaac and Rebekah were buried, the same cave where he had buried Leah. 

    Israel dies in Goshen at 147 years of age. He spent 17 years in Egypt. He was embalmed by the Egyptians and the entire nation mourned him for 70 days. Joseph then took such a procession out of Egypt to bury his father that the Canaanites thought it was some great Egyptian official.

   When they return from the burial, the brothers say "oh crap, what if Joseph has been harboring a grudge for the last 17 years?!" They send him a message claiming that their father had secretly told them to tell Joseph that he should forgive them. They then offer themselves as slaves. 

    Joseph's response best summarizes what Genesis is about: "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good." 

    Joseph dies (apparently preceding his brothers) at 110. His final request is that when God does bring Israel out of Egypt, they bring his bones with them.

To summarize the summary summarily

    Genesis is the beginning. And it's conclusion is still about looking forward. God created a perfect world, but it only took three chapters for man to sin. Every subsequent chapter has been about the story of redemption. A promise was made to Abraham. It was reiterated to Isaac. It became more concrete with Jacob/Israel, but now the people of the promise are separated from the land of the promise. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were the patriarchs, and the receivers of the promise, but they were never more than outsiders in the land of Canaan. The only property they own is the field with the cave in which they are buried. But they all die believing in a future realization of the promise. The covenant will be fulfilled. 

A Brief History of Reality, Episode 6 (Return of the Joseph)

     Okay, this time we really will finish with Genesis (this is a lie). Before we continue with Joseph, we have a side story with Judah.

   Judah marries a Canaanite woman named Shua (bad things come from marrying local girls: see Esau and Samson) and has three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah. Judah finds a wife for Er named Tamar. It turns out Er is enough of a dirt bag that "the LORD put him to death." We don't often find God directly killing people for being terrible. Er must have been pretty bad. 

    Anyway, it was now Onan's duty to sleep with Tamar and give her a child that would be considered Er's heir. Onan didn't like the idea of producing a kid that wouldn't count as his so every time he slept with Tamar, he practiced the "pull out" method of birth control (this is where the term "Onanism" originates).  God strikes down Onan for his treachery. 

    The duty to continue Er's line now falls on Shelah, but he's still young. Judah, afraid of losing another son to this apparently curses Tamar, uses Shelah's youth as an excuse for them to not be joined. To make matters worse, Shua (Judah's wife) has died so there will be no more sons who can take Tamar. It becomes apparent Judah never intends to have Shelah marry Tamar so Tamar takes the situation into her own hands.

    Tamar hears that Judah is going on a business trip and decks herself out as a prostitute (with a covered face) to sit along the road Judah will take. Judah sees this apparent prostitute and hires her services. The problem is he forgot his wallet at home, but Tamar takes alternative forms of payment. In this case, she keeps his signet ring, cord, and staff as a pledge that he'll come back with a goat (but when Judah does send a goat back for payment, she's gone). 

    It turns out Tamar is quite fertile, and in a few months, it becomes apparent she's going to be a parent. When Judah finds out that she's being prostituting herself, he condemns her to death, but before any harm befalls her, she sends him a present. When he sees his signet ring, cord, and staff, he's appropriately ashamed and recognizes that Tamar is "more in the right than I." Judah doesn't touch Tamar again. She however is carrying twins and gives birth to Perez and Zerah (this won't be the last time we see the name Perez. *hint* he's in the direct line to a certain King David and ultimately to a rather well known "Lion of Judah").

Meanwhile...

    Joseph is in Potiphar's house in Egypt. He quickly distinguishes himself as an outstanding asset to Potiphar, and he is placed in charge of the household. Unfortunately, the lady of the house is a bit of a cougar (presumably. We don't actually know how old she is). Lady Potiphar schemes to get in Joseph's robe, and when she finally gets him alone, he runs fleeing out of the house (leaving his robe in her grasp). She cries "RAPE!" Potiphar is naturally incensed and throws Joseph in prison.

    There in prison, Joseph achieves the same thing he had in Potiphar's household. He earns the trust of the Warden and is placed in charge of all the prisoners. There he meets the Pharaoh's cupbearer and baker. 

    One day Joseph notices that the baker and cupbearer are troubled and asks them what is going on. They reveal to him that they each have had dreams. Joseph tells them all interpretations are from the God and asks them to share their dreams. The cupbearer goes first. He dreamed of three branches that produced three bunches of grapes. He squeezed the grapes into a cup and presented it to Pharaoh. Joseph tells him the good knew: in three days, he will be restored to his position as the chief cupbearer. Joseph then asks him to tell Pharaoh about him when he returns to the palace.

    The baker is encouraged by the meaning of his friends dream so he tells Joseph his own dream. He had three baskets of baked goods on his head, but the birds were pecking at the baskets and eating the bread. Joseph informed him of the not so good news: in three days, Pharaoh would have the baker's head removed from his body. 

    It comes to pass as Joseph said, three days later the cupbearer was restored and the baker executed. Naturally, the cupbearer forgets Joseph and he languishes in prison for two more years. Then, Pharaoh has a dream. It upsets him greatly, but none of his advisers can interpret it for him. Finally, the cupbearer remembers Joseph and his ability with dreams. 

    Pharaoh has Joseph brought before him and asks if Joseph can interpret his dreams. Joseph clarifies that only God can give Pharaoh what he seeks. Pharaoh proceeds to share his dreams. 

    In the first dream, Pharaoh sees seven healthy cows grazing away, but seven skinny cows come up and swallow up the fat cows. This leaves the skinny cows no better off than before. The second dream is like it. Seven heads of healthy grain appears, but they are swallowed up by seven withered heads of grain. 

    Joseph tells Pharaoh these dreams are from God to warn of what he is going to do. There will be seven years of bountiful harvests followed by seven years of devastating famines. If Pharaoh and his people want to live, Joseph informs them, they need to set aside twenty percent of each of the next seven year's harvest to shore up against the coming calamity

    Pharaoh believes Joseph, and elevates him to second in command of the entire nation so he can oversee the preparation for famine. This is now the third time Joseph, having been brought as low as can be, is elevated to a position of authority. 

    The seven years pass. In the meantime, Joseph has two sons (Ephraim and Manasseh) from his wife Potiphera. Just as the LORD warned Pharaoh, famine comes. Egypt is well prepared, but the nations around it are not. They start coming to Egypt for food, and Joseph sells it to them. 

    In Canaan, Israel and his family are hungry. They hear of the food in Egypt and plan to set out, but Israel wants Benjamin, his youngest, to stay behind. So ten brothers head to Egypt, and when they arrive, Joseph recognizes them. He accuses them of being spies, but they protest that they are simply 12 brothers (one dead and one at home) in need of food for their family. Initially, Joseph tells them he's going to hold them all hostage until one of them returns with Benjamin. He locks them up for three days, then he releases them and says that instead, he is only taking Simeon hostage, and they can have him back if they return with the youngest brother to prove their story. He sends them back home but instructs his steward to put every man's money back in his bag with the food they are taking. 

    The brother's head back to Canaan and on the way, discover each man's money is in his bag. They are freaked out. They arrive home and tell their father the tale. He is crushed at the lost of Simeon, but he still doesn't want to send Benjamin to Egypt. Time passes, and they go through the food they've brought from Egypt. The famine is still raging, so the brothers go back to their father. This time Judah swears on his family that he'll bring Benjamin back safely. Israel drags his feet. He's lost Joseph. He's lost Simeon. He can't bear to lose another son. But things are desperate, and he finally agrees.

    When the brother's show up, Joseph has them ushered into his house to eat with him. The brothers tell Joseph's steward about the money in their bags from the last time, and he insists that they had paid for the food properly. Joseph brings Simeon out to them and seats them in order from eldest to youngest. He serves Benjamin twice as much food as everyone else. He sends them on their way again, but this time not only does he have his steward put the money back in their bags, but he also tells his steward to hide his personal goblet in Benjamin's bag. 

    The brother's are not far down the road when Joseph's men come chasing after them with accusations of theft. They insist on their innocence and are suitably dismayed when Joseph's cup is found in Benjamin's possession. Everyone is brought back before Joseph in understandable fear. Joseph offers freedom to everyone but Benjamin. He says only the one who stole the cup must stay and be his slave. Judah pleads for mercy. He offers himself in Benjamin's place. He will do anything to keep his father from losing his beloved son. 

    Judah's impassioned pleas push Joseph over the edge. He begins to weep. After sending out his own servants, he reveals himself to his brothers. They are flabbergasted (I'm just glad for an excuse to use this word in a sentence). They don't believe it. Ultimately after they are convinced, it is decided (with Pharaoh's blessing) that, because there are still more years of famine to come, the brothers will return to Canaan and bring Israel and everything that belongs to him back to Egypt to live. 

    Israel takes some convincing. It's honestly not clear if he ever gets the full story of how Joseph came to be in Egypt in the first place. But he gets up and leaves. At Beer-sheba, he stops to present sacrifices to God. That night the LORD appeared to him in a vision and assured him that he should not fear going down to Egypt. God would be with him there, and he would bring him back out of their too. And he promised that Israel's beloved Joseph would be the one to "close his eyes." when he dies. Israel continues on the way. 

    We are given a record of the numbers that went with Israel from Canaan to Egypt. This is another example of a list that is easy to skip over, but it emphasizes a beautiful point. 66 people left Canaan. Joseph, his wife, and children were already in Egypt. So the total number of people belonging to the nation of Israel at this time is 70 people. Keep that in mind, when Israel leaves Egypt.

    Joseph greets him on the way. Israel settles in the land of Goshen, separate from the Egyptians because of the Egyptians' are not fond of shepherds. Israel lives with his family in Egypt for the rest of his life. 

    As with his father Isaac, Israel has blessings to give his children. It is these blessings that serve as a good wrap up of Genesis, and they will get their own entry. 

    

    

    

A Brief History of Reality, Episode 5 (The Brothers Strike Back)

 Let's see if we can finish the beginning...that is Genesis

    I skipped a little (understatement) incident in the conclusion of my last post. At some point after Rachel's death, Reuben (probably in his early 20s at this point) sleeps with Bilhah (Rachel's handmaid/Israel's concubine). The natural modern day reaction is of course disgust at the idea of sleeping with your father's wife, which still applies here, but there is even more going on. Culturally speaking, this act it seems amounted to an attempted usurpation of his father's place. But that is recorded here is that "Israel heard about it." There's no further commentary. It's reminiscent of his apparent stoicism surrounding the rape of Dinah. But rest assured, these two events will not be forgotten.

    So here proto-Israel is in the land of promise. Jacob has 12 sons. It's the first glimpse of the countless children Abraham had been promised.  Best guess is there's a 14 year age gap between the oldest (Reuben) and the youngest (Benjamin). It could be a year or two more. It's not entirely clear how long it took Israel to leave Laban to the point where Rachel dies giving birth to Benjamin. 

    To the sons, it is abundantly obvious who the favorite is, and reading between the lines, Joseph knows it too. The eldest son of the favorite wife is of course the one Israel loves best. The story is among the most well known in the Bible. 

    When Joseph is 17, Israel sends him out to check on his brothers as they are tending the herds. Joseph comes back and gives his father a "bad report." Israel elevates Joseph further by gifting him a many-colored coat. This really is in elaborate gift for this time period. Most people only had one or two sets of clothing and dyed cloth was a luxury for royalty. Israel might as well have given Joseph a Rolls-Royce while his brother's were still driving around in granddad's old jalopy. I don't think the brother's missed the significance.

    Joseph has two dreams. In one he dreams that he and his family are gathering grain, and the sheaves stand up and the sheaves his brothers had collected bow down to his sheaf. In the second dream, the sun, moon, and 11 stars bow down to him. The Bible doesn't let us see into Joseph's mind here, but it's hard to imagine what possessed him to think it was a good idea to tell his brothers and his father about these dreams. Even Israel is offended, believing that Joseph expects "I and your mother and your brothers" to bow down to him.

    Sidebar: we're not explicitly told these dreams are prophetic, but the Bible isn't exactly in the habit of including meaningless dreams. The most interesting thing to me here is the second dream and specifically the "moon" in the second dream. We're given Israel's interpretation that it's Joseph's mother. The problem is Rachel (i.e. Joseph's mom) is dead (or at least her death is recorded two chapters earlier). This led me down a rabbit trail of research, and I don't have a definitive answers. But this is what I've found:

• Some argue that Joseph's mother here is Leah because she is the first wife and only free wife remaining (Zilpah and Bilhah are concubines). The thinking goes that Leah would have responsibility for Joseph and Benjamin as a sort of "head wife"
• Other's make a similar argument for Bilhah to be Joseph and Benjamin's surrogate mother. She was Rachel's handmaid so the thinking goes that the boys would default to her care
• Another proposed option is that Rachel was not yet dead. It's not clear what the age gap was between Joseph and Benjamin based on the text, but the argument goes that the story telling of Genesis 35-37 isn't necessarily chronological. Genesis 35 is seen as a summary of Israel's life up to and including Rachel's death, but chapter 37 is a switch of perspective to covering Joseph's life. The question this argument has to answer is what we are to make of the 11 stars if Benjamin isn't born yet.
• It's also been proposed that Jacob's interpretation of the dream isn't 100% accurate. Later on, when Joseph interprets other dreams, it always comes with a disclaimer that the interpretation is from the LORD. We aren't given this sort of statement here. So if  Jacob's take is inaccurate, what is the interpretation? In this scenario, one possibility is that the sun and moon are representative of Egypt and the stars of the sons of Israel. 
• The last explanation of which I am aware, and the one I think I lean towards: we don't need to explain it because it's not about Joseph's literal mother literally bowing down to him...literally. Rachel is dead, but she'll always be Joseph's mother. Jacob is offended because Joseph sees himself as greater than his ancestors, which is contrary to their ideas about the supremacy of those who came before.

    So Joseph is an arrogant little twit with an overinflated sense of self, or maybe, he really is just oblivious. In either case, his brothers are agreed: he has to go. And when they are out in the fields tending the herds and see him coming again, in his brightly colored robe, it eats at them deeply, and they hatch a plan. 

    

    The brother's want to kill Joseph, but Reuben intervenes. He suggests they simply throw Joseph in a pit for now. Reuben was planning on coming back and rescuing Joseph later. So the brother's take Joseph and toss him in a dry well. Over dinner, Judah convinces the other brothers that if they're going to get rid of Joseph, they might as well get a profit out of it. Spotting a group of Midianite/Ishmaelite traders, they sell Joseph into slavery. It's a win/win. Joseph is gone without them getting blood in their hands, and they pocket a little extra cash.

    Apparently, Reuben is not around when they make the decision to sell him, and he is distraught when he returns and finds out what happened. At this point, there's nothing for them to do but continue with their plan. They take Joseph's coat, bloody it up, and return it to their father. He's naturally devasted, presuming a wild animal has killed Joseph, and he goes into a deep and extended mourning. He refuses all comfort from his other children. 

    The Midianites/Ishmaelites sell Joseph to an Egyptian official named Potiphar. 

    I'm going to have to finish up Genesis in one more post, but before I go, a note on the Midianites/Ishmaelites. These names should be familiar. Ishmael was Abraham's son through Hagar, and Midian was Abraham's son from Keturah (Abraham married Keturah after Sarah died). So these traders may very well be distant relatives of the brothers. 

    

    

A Brief History of Reality, Episode 4 (A New Name)

    We left off with Jacob still with Laban and flush with children (11 boys and 1 girl) to four different wives. Jacob is serving out his second set of 7 years with Uncle Laban to pay off the debt for marrying Rachel. In this time, Jacob continues to be blessed by God, as promised, and Laban is reaping the benefits. 

    As the 14 years of service come to a close, Laban is concerned about losing his cash cow (and assuming he's not completely heartless, he also doesn't want to lose his daughters and grandchildren). He and Jacob strike a deal. Jacob will continue managing Laban's flocks, and as payment, he'll get to keep the brown and speckled sheep, while Laban will have the white sheep. 

    In a detail that seems bizarre to our modern understanding, Jacob attempts to influence what kind of lambs are born (whether spotted or white) by carving up some sticks and placing them where the sheep will mate over them. Whether this seemingly superstitious act achieves his goal or it's simply a matter of genetics and heredity, the Bible isn't actually clear, but the result is that Jacob's flock of "imperfect" sheep thrives while Laban's diminishes. 

     Laban and his men start grumbling against Jacob, and the LORD appears to Jacob and tells him it's time to go back home. So without saying goodbye to Laban, Jacob picks up and leaves. Unbeknownst to him, Rachel, in a last dig at her father, steals his household idols. Laban quickly realizes both his household idols and his daughters are gone, and he takes up the chase. Armed men can move faster than a caravan full of women, children, and animals, so it doesn't take long for him to catch up. When he accuses Jacob of stealing the idols, Jacob rashly promises that if anyone is found possessing them, his life is forfeit. Laban searches every tent, but when he comes to Rachel's tent, he finds her sitting down (obviously on the idols). She tells him she cannot rise because "Aunt Flo" is visiting. He does what every man would do and leaves her be. 

    Laban and Jacob make a covenant. They set up a marker at that spot and promise neither will cross that line to harm the other. Laban also makes Jacob vow to treat Rachel and Leah and the children right. Laban kisses his daughters and grandchildren, blesses them, and returns home.

    Jacob continues on his way and encounters some angels. He gives the place a new name, calling it God's camp. He knows he is approaching Esau, and he is scared. He sends out messengers to greet Esau, and when they return, their only report is that Esau is coming to meet him with four hundred men. Jacob divides his people into two camps, hoping that if one is attacked the other can escape. In a moment of reflection, Jacob prays to God, remarking that he had left, he had crossed the Jordan River (the boundary of the land of promise) carrying only his staff, and now he was returning twenty years later in numbers so great that he was now two camps. God indeed had blessed him on his way. 

    In a last ditch effort, Jacob sends three separate herds ahead as gifts of appeasement to Esau. He then camps for the night.

    As Genesis describes it, in the night a man appears and starts wrestling with Jacob. They struggle together the entire night until morning is about to break. At that point, the man seeing he could not defeat Jacob, reached out and dislocated Jacob's hip. He then tells Jacob to let him go, but Jacob refuses to let go until the man blesses him. The man asks Jacob his name, but when Jacob replies, the man tells him his name will no longer be Jacob but Israel "because you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed." Jacob/Israel asks the man's name, but he responded, "why do you ask my name?" And he blessed him. Israel calls the place Peniel, "for I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared."

    Oceans of ink have been spilled over this account. It's so strange. Clearly, the man Jacob wrestles with is identified as being synonymous with God. We're again probably looking at another Christophany. But Jacob wins....maybe? Jacob is injured, but he secures the blessing he demanded. And he is now Israel. So significant is this moment, that there is still a country in our modern world, 4000 years later, named Israel for this nomadic sheepherder who had his hip dislocated in hand to hand combat with the Almighty. 

    An aside here. If ever there was evidence of the existence of the God of the Bible, isn't it in the continued existence of ethnic Israel? No other people group has maintained this kind of identity for so long.

    Israel limps onward, and that day he meets his brother Esau. And it is not what he expected. Esau embraces him and refuses all the gifts Israel had sent ahead. He marvels at his brother's family and want so lead them back with him. Israel declines and rather than following Esau back, he turns his family aside and settles in Canaan. 

    Tragedy befalls. While in Canaan, a local young man named Shechem (the son of the local chieftan) sees the beautiful Dinah and rapes her. He then tells his dad about Israel's daughter and asks him to arrange a marriage. They approach Israel and his sons. In addition to the marriage, they promise friendship and trade and further intermarriage. Israel is saddened by the whole affair and says nothing. Apparently independently of Israel, his sons Simeon and Levi (Dinah's full brothers through Leah) Shechem and his father that they can't give their sister to an uncircumcised man and that they cannot do business with them unless they become circumcised. Shechem is smitten with Dinah and has no problem with this. He and his father are persuasive and important and convince the rest of the men in their town to get circumcised as well. Once all the men are circumcised and still in pain, Simeon and Levi take up swords and slaughter all the men and plundered the women and valuables. Israel is furious because they made him "odious to the inhabitants of the land." He's afraid the Canaanites will band together and attack them. 

    The LORD speaks to Jacob again and tells him to return to Bethel, the place where he had seen the stairway to Heaven. Jacob seems to remember the promise he made at Bethel 20 years earlier to serve God should God see him through, and he orders his family to gather up all "foreign gods" from among them. He buries these idols and orders the worship of the God "who answered me in the day of my distress. He has been with me everywhere I have gone." He then sets up an altar at Bethel.

    Another aside. Looking back at Jacob from the perspective of someone with a knowledge of the full Bible and things like the 10 Commandments, it's easy to forget the position Jacob is in. God has appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, but he has never had a name. Moses is still hundreds of years from being born. There is no Mosaic Law. The only prohibition on "graven images" comes from the manifest absurdity of praying to a hunk of wood you carved rather than a clearly divine being who has manifested himself to you and has a history of making promises which keep coming true.

    God appears to Jacob again and reiterates that he is now Israel. He promises that not just a nation but an assembly of nations will come from him. Kings will descend from him. Israel sets up an altar and pours out on offering.

    Israel and company set out again from Bethel toward Ephrath (what will later be called Bethlehem). Rachel goes into labor with the last of Israel's children, but it is a difficult birth. And after giving her son the name Ben-oni, she dies. Israel calls his youngest son Benjamin and sets up a marker for Rachel's grave. 

    Yet another aside. Jacob/Israel sets up a lot of altars/markers. The text notes concerning the marker for Rachel "it is the marker at Rachel's grave still today." I don't take this to mean that in the year A.D. 2023 there is an identifiable marker at Rachel's grave, but it was there 400 years later when Moses wrote the Pentateuch. The point is that with each of these markers Jacob placed (and this happens elsewhere in the OT) a lasting physical reminder was set as evidence of what had happened there. Israel returning to the Promised Land under Joshua could find those markers and see that these things had happened just as they had been told. In the same way that a person can go visit the history sites of Pearl Harbor or Gettysburg or Normandy, ancient Israel could visit those connections to their past.

    Israel makes it home to see his father Isaac at Mamre (Hebron) where Abraham had also stayed. Isaac dies at 180 years of age, and Jacob and Esau come together to bury their father. 

    Israel is now back in the land of promise with his 12 sons. Esau is living to the south with his people (the Edomites). Genesis gives a rundown of Esau's descendants. It's easy to skip over these genealogies, but if you read them, you start recognizing the names from the peoples that cause problems for Israel in the future. 

A Brief History of Reality, Part the Third

Let's try to speed things up a little bit    

    Abraham had his son, Isaac, the son of the promise, and he was living in the land of the promise, but he still didn't own any of it. This is beautifully highlighted when Sarah dies. Abraham is still a sojourner, and he needs a place to bury his wife. So he buys a field with a cave from the locals as a burial plot. This becomes an anchor point in the Promised Land. It's almost as though Abraham puts a deposit down on the promise. 

    After Sarah dies, Abraham sends his servant out to bring back a wife for Isaac. The servant travels to the land out of which Abraham had been called to find a wife from his relatives. He fortuitously meets Rebekah at a well, learns her identity, and promptly asks if she'll go marry Isaac. In the process, we meet her brother Laban, who seems very interested in capitalizing financially on his sister's nuptials.

    Abraham dies, and Isaac and Ishmael come together to bury their father side by side with Sarah in the cave Abraham had purchased. He dies in faith, far from his homeland, trusting that God will fulfill his promises that his offspring will outnumber the stars and that this land in which he is buried as a sojourner will be the homeland of his descendants. 

    After a period of childlessness only resolved with the miraculous intervention of the LORD, Isaac and Rebekah conceive. Due to the seeming violence going on in her womb, Rebekah calls on the LORD for an explanation. He responds that there are two nations warring within her and that the older will serve the younger. She gives birth to twins. Esau is born first with Jacob grasping at his heel. 

    It's not clear if Isaac was aware of what God told to Rebekah, but we do know that regardless, he preferred Esau because Isaac liked wild game and Esau was a great hunter. Rebekah favored Jacob. As the boys grew up, they grew apart. 

    Esau grew into a foolish and shortsighted man. On a particular occasion, upon returning from a hunt, he found Jacob making a stew. When he asked for some, Jacob asked for Esau's birthright in return. Esau thought so little of it, that he agreed. 

    A famine comes on the land and Isaac is ready to pack up and leave, but the LORD appears and tells him to stay. He reiterates the promises made to Abraham. He says Isaac's descendants will be as many as the stars in the sky. Isaac stays.

    Esau marries some local Canaanite women, and they are apparently cause endless grief for Isaac and Rebekah.

    Later, as Isaac was growing old and blind, he sought to give his patriarchal blessing to Esau so he sent Esau out to hunt game and prepare it for him. Rebekah, aware of her husband's plan, took it upon herself to ensure the LORD's promise to her came to be. She convinced Jacob to wear Esau's clothes and covered him in furs to trick Isaac. She prepared a meal for him to take to his father. And though Isaac was thrown off by the sound of Jacob's voice, the ruse was successful, and Isaac bestowed the blessing of the first born onto Jacob. When Esau returned and the trick was discovered, he begged for a blessing of his own, but the "blessing" Isaac was able to give him promised a life far less appealing than the one promised to Jacob. 

    Esau vows that once his father is dead, he will come for Jacob. Fearing Esau's rage, Rebekah encourages Jacob to leave and seek shelter with her brother Laban. She tells Isaac she wants Jacob to find a wife from her own family (not like those horrible wives Esau has). Isaac blesses Jacob again (this time with full knowledge of who he is blessing) and wishes upon him the blessing of Abraham. He tells him not to marry a local girl like Esau but to find a relative. Jacob leaves and doesn't see his family again for 20 years.

    One night while heading to Laban (but before leaving the land of promise), Jacob has a vision of a ladder to heaven. He sees angels ascending and descending and he has a vision of the LORD. The original language is a little fuzzy here and some translations say that the LORD stood at the stop of the staircase, and others say he stood next to Jacob at the bottom of the staircase. In the context, I think it makes more sense that the LORD (likely a Christophany) stood next to Jacob. Again, the language allows for this to be interpreted either way, but it feels more in line with the rest of the LORD's history with Abraham and Isaac that he would also condescend to come down to earth and stand beside Jacob as well. He tells him that he will bring Jacob back to this place and he will fulfill what he has promised. Jacob awakes in awe and erects a standing stone as a monument in this place. He calls it Bethel (it's no accident that this is not the last time we hear of Bethel) and promises that if God does all these things that have been promised, he will serve him and pay him 10% of everything (this gets glossed over a lot, but this is a different tone than Abraham and Isaac took. They acted in faith based on a promise. Jacob wants to see some results first before he commits). 

    Jacob makes his way east and stumbles into his cousin Rachel, tending her sheep. Jacob puts the moves on her by watering her sheep and then introduces himself. She takes him home to her father Laban, where Laban quickly makes use of him. Jacob is smitten with Rachel and promises Laban seven years of work in exchange for Rachel's hand. He agrees. Seven years of work go by, and Jacob gets married. But when he wakes up sober in the morning, it's Laban's older but less attractive daughter Leah that he has wed. He's understandably irate at his uncle's treachery. Laban's only response is that it's not custom for the younger daughter to get married before the older daughter, but if Jacob really likes Rachel that much, he can work for another seven years for her. 

    Here comes a point that I didn't catch in the first 30 years that I'd known this story. I always thought Jacob had to wait 14 years to marry Rachel, but instead, Laban tells Jacob he has to spend the full honeymoon (one week) with Leah and then he can have Rachel too (but he'll still have to serve Laban for another seven years). So within eight days, Jacob has married twice. The text also notes that along with Leah and Rachel came their maids, Zilpah and Bilhah. This probably wouldn't have been worth noting in the text were it not for how things play out. 

    Poor Leah must have felt awful after that first week. Jacob now has Rachel, the wife he wanted, and Leah might as well be chopped liver. The LORD  takes pity on Leah and she conceives and gives birth to Reuben (Leah says to herself, "surely my husband will love me now."). This doesn't win Jacobs affection, so she conceives again and gives birth to Simeon. This still doesn't win over Jacob, and Leah conceives again and gives birth to Judah (saying to herself "this time I will praise the LORD").

    Rachel is now bitter that Leah has been blessed with children, and since she can't conceive, she pulls a Sarah and gives her maid Bilhah to Jacob for a wife. Bilhah gives birth to Dan. Bilhah conceives again and gives birth to Naphtali. Rachel declares this a victory over her sister (I can't imagine being Jacob and dealing with the obvious nastiness between these two sisters). 

    Leah has now lost her advantage so it is her turn to do the Sarah/Rachel maneuver. Zilpah gave birth to Gad (Leah: "What good fortune!"). Zilpah then gave birth to Asher (Leah is thrilled thinking she has finally conquered her sister). 

    We get a weird little anecdote next about Reuben (Leah/Jacob's eldest) finding some mandrakes for his mother. Apparently these are seen as having some sort of power to help conceive because Rachel sees them and demands them. Leah agrees on the condition that she can sleep with Jacob. Leah get's pregnant again and has Issachar. She sees this as a reward for giving Zilpah to Jacob. Leah conceives yet again and gives birth to Zebulun (she says "this time my husband will honor me because I have borne six sons for him).  After this she has the only daughter of Jacob we are told about, Dinah. 

    Jacob has ten sons before God open's Rachel's womb. She gives birth to Joseph, expressing relief that maybe now her pain is taken away, but in the next breath, she hopes for a second son.

So where are we? Jacob now has 11 sons and a daughter. He's still living with Laban, but things are going to change soon. I'm really just tired of typing.

    

    

A Brief History of Reality, Part Deux (A slightly less brief look at Abraham)

  I can't believe I wrote all those words in the last post, and I wasn't even halfway through Genesis...But this is my continued effort to make chronological sense of the Bible. I have no idea how familiar most of these stories are to the average person, but I'm certain that most people don't have a good sense of how they fit together in the bigger picture of the Bible.

    As I said, God selecting Abram (Abraham) was the first big step toward actively redeeming humanity and it occurred at least 2,000 years after creation. His story takes up the largest portion of Genesis.

    God apparently speaks to Abram directly. How he knew it was God, I can't say for sure, but God communicated with Abram at least a couple different ways. He's described as having visions, the Lord appearing to him, and in one specific incident the LORD appears as a man to Abraham, in the company of what appeared to be two angels (these two angels being the same ones that proceed on to Sodom and Gomorrah and save Abraham's nephew Lot from the coming destruction). 

Note: When reading most modern printings of the Bible, if the word "Lord" is written in all caps (LORD), it is the translator/publisher telling you that the word used was the Tetragrammaton or YHWH, I am that I am, the holy name of God that he gave to Moses at the burning bush. If it is written as "Lord" without it being in all caps, it is probably the word "adonai" (lord or master) which is still a term of respect and may or may not refer to God, but it can also be used as a polite way to show deference to a person.

    God speaks to Abram/Abraham several times and with progressing clarity. He first calls Abram out of Ur of the Chaldeans and promises to make him a great nation in a land of promise. Abram is already 75 at this point, but he goes with his wife and his nephew Lot. And when he gets to the land of promise, God shows up again and reiterates that it is to Abram's descendants that He is giving this land. There's a famine. Abram takes his family to Egypt (drama ensues). Abram comes back to the land of promise rich but even older. He and Lot have grown so successful as herdsman that they're running out of space together and agree to separate. The LORD again appears to Abram and promises that everything he sees will belong to his descendants. 

    There's a strange little incident in Genesis 14 where, after rescuing Lot from some pillaging kings, Abram meets a man named Melchizedek. For the brief mention he gets in Genesis, Melchizedek could get his own essay, and gallons of ink have been spilled on him elsewhere. The highlights are this: Melchizedek is described as a king of Salem and a priest of God Most High. His name means "righteous king" and Salem means peace. Abram pays him a tithe. There are two other references to Melchizedek in the Bible (Psalm 110 and in Hebrews). Because of the treatment given to him in Hebrews, it is clear Melchizedek is not a normal dude and an argument could be made he is a pre-incarnation appearance of the Son of God. Even if Melchizedek is not an appearance of God, he is an important figure as a symbol of a priesthood that is (according to Biblical logic) higher than the priesthood that is established under Moses later on (Abraham came before Moses so he's greater than Moses and Abraham pays homage to Melchizedek therefore Melchizedek is a greater than the Israelite priests). 

    Genesis 15 is a crucial chapter. The LORD speaks to Abram again, promising him a great reward. For the first time, Abram seems to have some questions. God has been promising that he'll be a great nation for years now, and while he is rich, he has no one to pass his wealth on to except his servant. God makes his promise explicit. Abram will have a son of his own flesh, with his wife Sarai, and his descendants through this son will be as numerous as the stars in the sky. It will be through this son that all the world will be blessed. And Abram believes God, and we are told in a key line that this faith was "counted to him as righteousness." God then makes the covenant official. He has Abram divide the carcasses of dead animals in half to create a pathway, he makes an explicit promise that Abraham will have a son who becomes a great nation (and even details how that nation will spend 400 years enslaved before returning to the land of promise), and in a vision, God appears to Abram as a burning oven and flaming torch and passes between the divided pieces. 

    The idea of a covenant sealed by walking between the bifurcated bloody corpses of animals is certainly foreign to our Western sensibilities, but the meaning was clear to Abram. God was promising on the highest thing he could promise, himself, that he would fulfill his promise to Abram. If all these things that God has promised do not come to pass then God himself might as well be torn asunder like those animals. It was a bloody image of the severity of the covenant. 

    There's a fascinating line in the covenant that God makes. He says the reason that Abram's descendants will spend 400 years away from the promised land is because the "iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete." The Amorites were the current residents of the land God was promising Abram. So God is telling Abram that his family is going to replace the Amorites but only once the Amorites have spent another 400 years in sinful iniquity. It's important to note here, that God does not cause the Amorites to sin. He doesn't increase their sin. They do this all on their own, and God holds back for a set amount of time before coming in with judgement.

     More years pass. Abram and Sarai don't have a child. Sarai gets impatient and tells Abram to take her handmaid, Hagar, as a concubine to try to get a child via a surrogate (if you think this sounds like "The Handmaid's Tale" Ding Ding Ding. You got it.). But when Hagar gets pregnant, Sarai gets jealous. She treats Hagar so badly that Hagar runs away. God appears to Hagar and makes a promise to her as well. Her son will be the father of his own nation. It's not all good though. Ishmael will be a "wild donkey of a man" who will be against everyone and everyone will be against him. 

    Thirteen years pass. Abram is now 99. God appears to him again and finalizes what we know as the Abrahamic Covenant. He says Abram will have a son through Sarai who will be the son of promise. Abram doesn't like this. He's rather fond of Ishmael after all, but Ishmael is not the son God promised. God says he will still make Ishmael into his own nation just like he promised Hagar, but the covenant promise, the one made to Eve centuries earlier was going to carry on through the son he will have with Sarai. Abram laughs at the idea that at nearly 100 (Sarai is 90) he will have another son. It is here that God renames Abraham and Sarah and institutes the rite of circumcision. Abraham's descendants are to be set apart as different from those peoples around them. Isaac will be the carrier of the covenant promise. 

    Not long after, the LORD appears again to Abraham at the Oaks of Mamre. This time he's accompanied by what are apparently two angels, but they are all in the appearance of men. This instance is most commonly interpreted as a Christophany (a pre-incarnation appearance of the second person of the Trinity). The God the Son speaks again to Abraham and reiterates the promise. This time Sarah hears it, and she laughs like her husband. But the promise is sure. God then reveals to Abraham that he's about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for its wickedness. This concerns Abraham greatly because his nephew Lot is there. He seeks assurances that the cities won't be destroyed if even a handful of righteous people are found to be living there. The LORD gives him that assurance. For the sake of just 10 righteous people, the cities would be spared. Considering how famous the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is, it think it's fair to assume most people would recognize that there were not 10 righteous people to be found.

    Finally, when Abraham is 100 and Sarah 90, God miraculously intervenes and Sarah has a son. Isaac. The son of laughter. Now that Sarah has her son, she turns again on Hagar and Ishmael and causes them to be sent away. Hagar wanders in the desert with her teenage son until she gives up hope and waits for them both to die, but God holds true to his promise, opens her eyes and shows her a well. They survive, Ishmael marries, and the Ishmaelites are born.

    Now comes another of the most well known and challenging stories in the Bible. God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac to him. If gallons of ink have been spilled over Melchizedek, oceans have been spilled over God demanding Abraham sacrifice Isaac. As Genesis records it, Abraham after receiving God's command, rose early in the morning, took his soon, and trekked to an area called Moriah where God told him to go. He then laid the wood for the burnt offering on Isaac's shoulders and they climbed the mountain. Isaac even asks his father where the lamb will come for them to sacrifice to which Abraham replies, "the Lord will provide." When the altar was built, Abraham bound his son, the son of the promise, the long awaited son that had caused him to push away his other son, and placed him on the altar. He raises his knife, prepared to strike, and the Angel of the LORD called from Heaven,

 "Abraham, Abraham!" 

"Here I am," Abraham replied.

"Do not lay your hand  on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son from me."

The LORD provided a ram caught in a thicket for the sacrifice. And after completing the ritual, Abraham and his son returned to their home. 

    But of course there is so much more going on here than the spare account that Genesis provides. Did Abraham rise early in the morning because he was eager to march off and sacrifice his son? Surely not. He probably didn't sleep a wink. He probably didn't want to try to lie to his wife about where he was going, so he took off before she woke up. I am sure that Abraham doubted, all the way up to the altar until the point when his arm was prepared to strike, whether he had enough faith in God to land the fatal blow. Of course God knew. God didn't need Abraham to prove it for God's sake. There's another image here. A type. The sacrificial lamb. The only son of the promise. Miraculously conceived, and carrying his own means of sacrifice on his back. I hope you know your Bible well enough to see the echoes when Jesus picks up his cross. God held back Abraham's hand, but the Father went through with the sacrifice when the one on the altar was God the Son. 

    This is the thing about the Bible. This is the importance of the Old Testament to New Testament Christians. These parallels aren't accidental. Hebrews 11 fills us on what part of Abraham's reasoning. His faith in God was great enough that he knew that even if he did sacrifice his son, God's promise was so sure that God would surely resurrect Isaac from the dead. But Isaac wasn't the perfect sacrifice. He was the son of the promise to Abraham, and he was a continuation of the seed of the promise to Eve, but he was not the final son. 

       Again, that was more words than I intended to write, but at least, I think we can move on with Isaac next and see where the promise goes from here. 

    

    

A Brief History of Reality

 Note: The following is my attempt to organize Biblical history, mostly for my own edification. If you're reading this, it's important to understand something. I take the Bible to be infallible and inerrant. That does not mean that I am a Biblical literalist in the same way that some people use the Bible to insist the earth sits on literal pillars or that it is flat. I do my best to employ a grammatical-historical hermeneutic. In short, I take the Bible to mean what the writers of the Bible intended for their readers to take it to mean. If it's written as history, then that's how I take it. If it's poetry, then there's going to be metaphor. 

    The thing about most people's knowledge of the Bible is that it comes in the form of disconnected stories or the perception that it's simply a list of rules. There are certainly lists of rules and there are absolutely stories, but it all fits together into one big, all encompassing tale with an overarching plot. Christians tend to call these plot points "Creation, Fall, Redemption" and the Bible concludes by pointing to a future "Restoration (or Consummation)." 

    Within the plot points "Creation, Fall, Redemption," God acts through a series of covenants. These covenants (agreements between God and man) are critical to understanding the Bible and not understanding the covenants is a root cause of all the inane questions Christians get about "why are you against gay marriage but okay with eating bacon wrapped shrimp while wearing polyester blended fabrics?" 

    A critical note about how the Bible is structured: it is NOT (for huge portions of it) put together chronologically. Books are often grouped together more by type of book (e.g. Isaiah and Jeremiah go together because they are prophetic, Esther and Job are next to each other because they are narratives) than they go chronologically (e.g. Esther and Job were probably 1000s of years apart). 

    Most people are familiar with the basic two part subdivisions of the Bible, the Old and New Testament (these are in reference to two major covenants). Some people refer to the OT as the Jewish scriptures or Hebrew Bible which is true to an extent. There have been efforts by some in the Christian tradition who have discounted the need to study the OT. They view it as inferior to the NT and irrelevant to Christians. I'm going to argue that you can't fully understand the significance of Jesus and the NT without the OT. 

    Jews call their scriptures the Tanakh (they also have the Talmud, which is a collection of rabbinical commentary on the Tanakh). They see it as divided into three sections: the Torah (instruction), the Nevi'im (prophets), and the Ketuvim (writings). I think Western people are most familiar with the word Torah. Christians call this the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy). It's the first five books of the OT, and it sets the stage for understanding the whole of scripture. 

    We all know how Genesis starts. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth..." Genesis lays out the plot. God created everything (Genesis chapters 1 and 2). And it was good. He put Adam and Eve in a garden and communed with them unobstructed. This is where the first covenant was established: the Adamic Covenant (some people divide this into an Edenic Covenant [prior to the Fall] and the post-Fall Adamic [Covenant]). God created man. He gave them dominion over creation and told them to fill the earth and subdue it. But they could not eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

    But once again, we all know what happened. The serpent (understood to be Satan) came along and tempted Eve. He asked the first question in the Bible, "Did God really say?" And Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit. We're only into chapter 3 of the first book of the Bible, and we're already to the Fall. This means that the rest of the Bible is going to be about Redemption.

    The first act of redemption is act of mercy on God's part. The curse for eating of the forbidden fruit was supposed to be instant death, but God stayed His hand. But there were still consequences for breaking the initial covenant. Work was cursed. Marriage was cursed. The whole of creation now cursed. Death came into the world. But even in the first death, God used it for good. In the first sacrifice, God took the skins from animals to make clothing to cover Adam and Eve in their shame and nakedness and to protect them as they left the shelter of the Garden. 

    And as Adam and Eve were ushered out of the Garden, another promise was made. God promised in his curse to the serpent that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent's head, even as the serpent would bruise his heel. This somewhat enigmatic line is the "proto-evangel." The first gospel. As with subsequent prophecies to come, it has a twofold meaning. There's a general truth here. Snakes and people don't usually get along. They bite us, and we crush them. But the deeper promise is that there will be a specific descendant of Eve who will come along and deal the death blow to Satan. 

    What happens at the Fall is critical to understanding the rest of the Bible. Adam acted as a representative for all creation. This is "Federal Headship." This becomes a theme repeated throughout the Bible. As the head goes, so goes the body. As the king goes, so goes the nation. This idea seems foreign to our highly individualistic western cultures, but once you understand it, you see it everywhere in the Bible. 

    After the Fall, Genesis continues with what is now the long slow story of redemption. Eve starts having kids. Cain kills Abel. The population grows. People fall farther away from God. Things get bad. They get bad enough that God intervenes with a hard reset. This is the story of Noah. Obviously this is one of the most well known stories in the Bible. Every Sunday school child has heard it, although I can't imagine most teachers focus on the death and destruction of 99% of all living creatures. If you're calculating time as a hard Biblical literalist, there was close to 2000 years between Adam and Eve and Noah. It may have been longer. But regardless, this is the first big intervention since the Garden, and it results in the Noahic Covenant. 

     The Noahic Covenant echoes the Adamic Covenant. Noah and his sons are told to be fruitful and multiply. God isn't done with humanity. He still has a plan for them and wants them to start afresh. 

    From Noah, we wait another 400 years before Abram (Abraham) comes along. In the meantime, men had gathered and attempted to build a tower to Heaven (the Tower of Babel), and God had confused their languages. This results in the great dispersion of peoples away from what we now call the Middle East. One of the resulting tribes had settled in Ur which was believed to be somewhere in modern day southern Iraq. This is where Abram was when God called him. 

    God's speaking directly to Abram is the first recorded incident of direct communication from God since Noah. There isn't any record of God talking with anyone between Cain and Noah. So for two millennia, God has generally left people alone and observed their wickedness. 

    The calling of Abram can be seen as the first active step God takes toward bringing about the "proto-evangel" he promised to Eve. It is in the Abrahamic Covenant that God makes a promise to a single person to establish him as the father of a specific nation through which blessing will come to the whole world. 

And I've been going on too long, so this will have to resume in Part 2 "The Second Part"