Israel Settles in Egypt

Genesis 47-48

            When Israel came to Egypt, they settled in Goshen, which seems to have been in northeastern Egypt in the area where the Suez Canal runs today. As it’s presented in Genesis, Goshen is the ideal place for the Israelites because it is removed from the Egyptian population centers. The location, coupled with the reported Egyptian disdain for shepherds means that, although Israel is in a foreign land, they will not be in danger of intermarriage and assimilation. As a matter of fact, there’s no indication that the Israelites were ever tempted by Egyptian idols while they were there. The Lord quietly protects His promise.

            In view of how Israel understood their land, namely, that the land was the Lord’s and He gave it to them for use, it is interesting how Joseph secured the land for Pharaoh, legitimizing Pharaoh’s claim over all of Egypt. In the ancient world—frankly, into the Middle Ages—the power of kings was absolute: the land was theirs unless they made a royal gift and the people owed them loyalty, taxes, and their very lives. The Egyptians, at least, seem to take it in stride. But as we read Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy in the coming weeks, keep this in mind. Israel’s society is meant to be much different.

            Finally, we have two interactions between Jacob and Joseph. In the first, we see Jacob extracting a promise from Joseph that Jacob would be buried in the land of promise. We saw the unusual (to us) practice of placing a hand ‘under the thigh’ in Genesis 24. It probably indicates putting one’s hand near another’s genitals, and it seems to be a way of making solemn vow, especially when claims of kinship are involved. It is noteworthy that Jacob asks for this promise from Joseph, not from Judah, who will become the heir. Perhaps that’s as simple to explain as that Joseph remains the favorite and that he has the most power in that moment. The most important aspect, though, is surely that Jacob recognizes that he is going to die outside of the land that the Lord had promised to him, and he wants to go back.

            That last pairs well with the story of Jacob meeting and blessing his grandsons, Manasseh and Ephraim. Genesis 48:15 stands out, “The Jacob blessed Joseph and said, ‘May the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked faithfully, the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day…’” Jacob finally calls the Lord his God. After a lifetime of struggle, a lifetime of not walking faithfully, Jacob sees that the Lord has been leading him and owns the Lord as his God, not just the God of his fathers. 

The Reunion

 Genesis 45-46

            What a moving scene! Joseph, convinced that his brothers are changed men, reveals himself to them. Just look at the number of times in these two chapters that there is weeping. After 17 years apart, after jealousy and bitterness and rage, after time to stew and reversals of fortune, after being convinced of death—after all that and beyond all hope, the family is back together.

            The one thing that stands out to me is the faithfulness of God. We’ve observed it often in Genesis: the Lord takes a long time to fulfill his promises, but He does fulfill them. No matter our circumstances, no matter our loss, St. Paul says in Romans 8, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28). Reconciliation and restoration may take place in our lifetime. I myself rejoice that the Gospel opens up the possibility that reconciliations that seem impossible from a human point of view become possible in Christ. Even if I can’t see how it will happen, there is a potential for blessed ends. But even if that healing doesn’t take place our whole life long, we are a people who believe that we will live with God forever, and we believe that in the new creation all disease and brokenness will be undone. The Lord will do things in His own time, but ultimately He is faithful.

Changing or Not

 Genesis 42-44

            You have to give to Jacob. The man is consistent. Unfortunately in this case, that’s a bad thing. It’s clear he’s still playing favorites among his sons, maybe even more than he was before. His protectiveness of Benjamin, whom he views as his last link to Rachel, is just heartless. Notice Jacob doesn’t send Benjamin with his brothers to Egypt the first time, for fear of losing him. (Genesis 46 numbers ten sons of Benjamin at the time the family went to Egypt, which means Benjamin is certainly a full-grown adult by now!) Notice that Jacob delays sending the brothers back to Egypt until the family is on the brink of starvation. Notice also that he doesn’t care that Simeon is moldering in an Egyptian prison that whole time!

            The brothers, on the other hand, have changed. They recognize that their father has a weakness for Benjamin; they recognize how deeply they hurt him when they sold Joseph and faked his death. Whether they resent Jacob’s weakness we don’t know. But they have certainly become sensitive of it and solicitous to the old man.

            I suppose there’s something to ponder in there, that coming to understand our own weaknesses is a sign of strong, maturing character and that seeing others’ weaknesses while not holding those weaknesses against them is also a sign of maturity.. (There’s a line in The Great Gatsby that I just love: “Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.”)

            Another thing we should at least mention is that Joseph comes across a little vindictive. I mean he knows exactly what he’s doing when he forces his brothers to bring Benjamin and he knows exactly what he’s doing when he frames Benjamin. I don’t think he’s just being mean, though. I think he has a very specific reason for doing these things, namely, he wants to know that they have changed, that they’re not the same jealous monsters that sold him into slavery. (For the record, they are, especially Judah, whose idea you may recall it was to sell Joseph in the first place.)

            There’s a ponderable in there, too. The Scriptures teach us to be loving, and sometimes we take that to mean that we are to be doormats even for toxic people. But sometimes the most loving course of action is to challenge a toxic person exactly for their toxicity and to remove them from our lives if no change is possible. That’s a whole topic in itself. For now, I’ll just lay that thought here for your consideration.

Joseph in Charge

 Genesis 41:41-57

            Joseph becomes Pharaoh’s prime minister, and part of the story is Joseph receiving new clothes. Like his father had given him a royal robe in his youth, so now Pharaoh gives him royal clothes in his adulthood. The fair linen means that Joseph will be no manual laborer. (Who wears white to work in the dirt?) The signet ring gives Joseph the power to issue orders with the authority of Pharaoh. The gold chain is a sign of his position. Unlike the robe his father had given, Joseph will wear this one the rest of his life. Pharaoh also gives him a new name. (You can’t have some dirty Hebrew running Egypt, now can you? ‘Hebrew’ was actually a pejorative name for any nomadic people, and we’ll read later that Egyptians had little use for shepherds—which is what Joseph’s whole family was.) And Pharaoh gives Joseph a wife, indicative of giving him a future, a promise which bore fruit in the births of Manasseh and Ephraim.

            One thing we might worry about is whether Joseph will assimilate to Egyptian culture and religion and forget the God of his fathers. After all, he’s dressing in their style, adopting their names (although interestingly Joseph gives his sons Hebrew names), and intermarrying with one of their women—and not just any woman, but the daughter of a priest at one of their more prominent shrines! It reminds me of the challenge that Daniel and his friends will feel in Daniel one, where they are taken into imperial service, given a Babylonian education, and renamed with Babylonian names. In both cases, we find the rare example of an Israelite who maintains his identity as an Israelite, while living in a hostile world. Because Peter describes us as aliens and foreigners in this age of the world (1 Peter 2:11), it is good ponder these stories and to consider how we can live as God’s faithful people in fallen age, how we are to maintain our identity as God’s new people and yet to work for the good of an age in which we don’t really belong (Jeremiah 29). I don’t have time to write about this morning, but it is a topic the Scriptures will lead us to time and again.

Joseph’s Accession

 Genesis 41:1-40

            Joseph’s life has been a roller coaster. He was the favorite son, spoiled and decked out in an expensive robe. That robe was stripped from him when his brothers sold him into slavery and returned to their father, Jacob, dipped in blood to fake his death. He went to Potiphar and became the chief of servants, only to have still another cloak torn off, this time when Potiphar’s wife falsely accused him of assault. In prison, he once again rose to authority, only to be forgotten by the cupbearer for two more years. Finally, he receives a new set of clothes and goes to see Pharoah, who ends the rollercoaster, saying to Joseph, “Only with respect to the throne will I be greater than you.”

            One thing we can’t say of Joseph is that in all the ups and downs he lost faith. He refused Potiphar’s wife’s advances because of his faithfulness to the Lord. He credited the Lord with his ability to interpret dreams. How unlike his father!

            The Christian life is full of ups and downs, too. Some days it’s easy to believe that we are beloved of God; other days we wonder if the Lord has forgotten us. Both conditions prove a challenge to faith: good times can make us rely on ourselves as the source of our blessings; bad times can make us doubt God’s love. Yet, by the Spirit of God, faith endures, ultimately trusting Him for every good thing.

Dreams

 Genesis 40

            A short reading today. Let me comment on two things. First, the cupbearer and the baker. In our day, these seem like inconsequential jobs, mere servants. In the ancient world, they were jobs of significant responsibility since those who prepared food for royalty and those who served it were the ones responsible to make sure it was safe, which is to say, not poisoned. The bake and the cupbearer were responsible for the life and health of Pharaoh, the title of the king of Egypt. We can’t know for certain, of course, but seems likely that these men were caught up in some attempt on Pharaoh’s life or some issue of national security.

            The second thing I want to comment on is the relative frequency of predictive dreams in the Bible. Joseph himself will be involved in 5 of them. Abimelek had one specifically from God (Gen. 20); Jacob had his famous dream at Bethel (Gen. 28) plus another (Gen. 31); and God spoke to Laban in a dream (Gen. 31). (Biblically speaking Genesis has the most ‘divine’ dreams. They’re not this prominent again until the book Daniel, over a thousand years later.)

            Here’s the thing: we read Genesis and we think that the Lord speaks in dreams all the time. The same things goes for miracles. Because the Scripture is filled with them, we assume they happen all the time. Consider this, though: the reason the Scripture is filled with dreams (and miracles) is because they are unusual in human experience! It’s like the old saw about the news: dog bites man is not news because it happens all the time, but man bites dog—get that on at both 6 and 10! It’s why the news is filled with horrible stories: most people live perfectly ordinary lives.

            The same goes for dreams. most dreams are completely ordinary. Now, dreams, by their nature are kind of weird, even troubling. I read a book once on sleep and the current understanding of dreams is that they are the brains way of processing information and events and filing them into more permanent places in the brain. That probably explains why they so often feel relevant to our current experience—because they are. The brain is categorizing, analyzing, and filing our current experiences. But this does not give our dreams predictive value! Often when we are tempted to say, “Oooh! I dreamed about this!” it might be helpful to say, “And, no wonder, I’ve been worrying about this for a while.”

            We can say with certainty the dreams in the Bible had predictive value, because the Bible says they do. But, please, please, please! Be careful in trying to assign the same value to dreams today. God speaks to us through the Bible. That’s the source of Christian certainty. Everything else must be suspect.

Contrasting Stories

Genesis 38-39

            Judah’s story is filled with sexual irregularity, and he doesn’t seem to bear any consequences. Joseph keeps himself from sexual sin and pays a terrible price.

            In Judah’s case, the thing starts with him marrying a Canaanite wife. I think I talked about intermarriage a few days ago. On the human level, the disdain for marrying those of different backgrounds could be written off as mere prejudice. From the heavenly viewpoint, at least as regards the children of Israel, the issue is one of faithfulness to the Lord. An Israelite putting themselves into such close proximity to one who worships others gods poses a threat to the Israelite’s loyalty to the one God. (Can a Christian, in these New Testament times, marry an unbeliever? The New Testament seems a little more ambiguous about the whole thing. On the one hand, Peter and Paul suggest that a believing spouse can have a sanctifying effect on an unbelieving spouse; on the other hand, they are both aware of the dangers to one’s faith such a marriage poses. We can talk about that when we get to the relevant passages in the New Testament.)

            Back to Judah’s story: sexual irregularity continues. We don’t know why Er died, but the focus of the story is on Onan refusing to impregnate his sister-in-law. This is a custom later named levirate marriage (Deuteronomy 25). The idea is that it is of utmost importance that the dead brother’s line goes on, so the surviving brother is supposed to provide a son. In a culture in which the man of the house provides all the support and standing, male offspring are particularly valued. Onan chooses to “spill his seed on the ground” (ick… too much information) instead. Probably the sin here is greed: Onan is more concerned for his own family name and well-being than that of his brother. I’ve heard people try to use this verse as a justification against using birth control, but that seems kind of stretched to me. Anyway, Onan dies, too—literally the Lord put him to death—and Tamar has no children.

            By this time Judah seems to think of Tamar as a bit of a black widow and refuses to give his youngest son to her. So, Tamar tricks Judah into sleeping with her. Shades of Lot’s story! Consider the double standard: Judah is willing to pass off his own use of a prostitute, to the extent of ignoring the loss of his seal and his staff,  Those two things were marks of legal identification—think Judah’s driver’s license and social security number. But when Tamar is accused of prostitution, Judah orders her burnt alive! (So, it’s ok for a man to engage a prostitute, but it’s not ok for a woman to be a prostitute?)

            What a sordid tale! And Judah seems to face few consequences. The story ends with Judah receiving another generation of heirs, as his grandsons (and troublingly his sons…) Perez and Zerah are born. And to add insult to injury, throughout the rest of the Scripture’s genealogies, Perez is the heir, not Shelah!

            Contrast that with poor Joseph, who’s doing his best to hold off the sexual advances of Potiphar’s wife and ends up falsely accused and in prison for his troubles!

            Years ago, we used a psalm in a church service I was leading. I don’t remember which one, but the thrust of it was that the Lord would punish the wicked and prosper the righteous. As I was greeting the congregation after the service, a member thrust his bulletin in my chest, open to the offending psalm, and asked, “When?!” It is a curious thing that those who are faithful to the Lord often seem to struggle while those who disregard the Lord seem to prosper. I guess it’s easy enough to understand: when I watch football and a big running play is called back for holding, I often make a dad joke that the game is easier if you cheat.  But it does leave faithful Christians wondering when they might see the justice of God. The answer, unfortunately, is, “Someday.” Peter makes the comment that the Lord doesn’t count time like we do (2 Peter 3:8), and Paul promises that God will work out all things for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28). So, we rely on those promises, even as we wait eagerly for the day of Christ’s return when He will set all things right.

Wrapping Up Esau, Introducing Joseph

Genesis 36-37

            Another genealogy… There sure are a lot of them in Genesis. This one is wrapping up the account of Esau, who isn’t mentioned again in Genesis after chapter 36. There are two things we should note here. First, the Lord continues to keep his promise to Abraham that he would have descendants like the stars in the sky. Esau is Abraham’s grandson, and even though he is not the carrier of the promise of a Savior he does become the father of a nation. Second, these genealogies serve to explain things come up later in the story. For example, there’s an overlap between some of the descendants of Esau and certain place names (Teman becomes the name of a prominent town in the land of Edom). Or, Esau’s grandson through a concubine was named Amalek. The Amalekites were a particularly difficult foe for the Israelites during the exodus—500 or 600 years after Esau. Are we to think that this illegitimate offspring of Esau was the source of those troublesome people? Maybe… (The territory of Amalekites was named in the days of Abraham (Genesis 14), but that may have been an anachronism.) Remembering that Genesis was put in written form by Moses several hundred years later, it’s not unlikely that some of the later history is in view as a kind of way to explain why things are like they are in that latter day.

            If another genealogy is terribly interesting, just wait until you start reading about Joseph! The end of the book of Genesis reads like a soap opera!

            Jacob wasn’t a great husband, loving Rachel more than Leah. (Yes, I know, Leah was foisted on him by his conniving father-in-law, but still, he didn’t seem to treat her very well.) And Jacob isn’t a great dad, doting on Joseph to the exclusion of Joseph’s 10 older brothers. Genesis 37 tells us that Jacob loved Joseph more than the others and that he gave him what NIV translates as an ornate robe. We’re not entirely sure what that robe meant; the phrase only comes up one other time in the Old Testament to refer to a robe that King David’s virgin daughters wore. Maybe it indicated royalty, so Joseph’s brothers took it as a sign that dad was going to skip all of them with the inheritance and go to Joseph. Whatever it meant, it was clearly a sign of favoritism. And Joseph’s brothers resented it.

            Joseph’s dreams didn’t help. Dreaming that you would rule your brothers is one thing; telling those brothers—who already hate you—is another. The boy was, as my wife pointed out, either really arrogant or kind of stupid, a conclusion supported when he tells Jacob that the old man will bow down to him, too.

            This is when things get really out of hand. Jacob sends Joseph to his brothers, and it seems likely that his brothers took this as Joseph spying on them. So, you know, naturally, they decided to kill him. To their credit, they were convinced not to kill Joseph, but their alternative wasn’t much better: they sold him into slavery and faked his death.

            One interesting note (and I wish I could say I discovered this for myself, but someone else pointed it out) is that they stripped Joseph of his robe. Not extraordinary in itself; they needed some way to prove to their father Jacob that Joseph was really dead. But clothing figures prominently in Joseph’s story. He’s going to lose a cloak again to Potiphar’s wife (ch. 39); he will be dressed in clean clothes when he leaves prison (ch 41); and he will be dressed in fine clothes when he enters Pharaoh’s service (also ch. 41). It reminds me (and this is my insight) that we are clothed in Christ’s own righteousness (Galatians 3:27, Ephesians 4).

More of the Same

 Genesis 34-35

            The story borders on being funny—darkly funny, but still: Simeon and Levi trick the Shechemites into being circumcised and attack them during their recovery in order to avenge their sister Dinah. But the potential humor is undone by the tragedy that Jacob’s sons have inherited his worst qualities. They, too, are tricksters who will use any means to get what they want. Jacob worries that his sons have made him obnoxious to the peoples living around him, and, at the Lord’s direction, he flees the area via Bethel. For a moment at least, Jacob had to be thinking, “Well, here we go again.” The desire to get what they want on their own terms is on display in the very brief incident of Reuben sleeping with Bilhah, Rachel’s servant. This wasn’t just a sexual sin; it was widely recognized as a way by which one could claim the inheritance (see 2 Samuel 16).

            Lost in all of this is the dangers Jacob faced. First, there was the threat that the surrounding Canaanites would absorb Israel by force, which is why Jacob relocated to Bethel. Second, and more serious, he faced the danger of intermarriage with pagan peoples. The danger here is the temptation to follow other gods and so, by unfaithfulness to the true God, to put His promise of salvation in danger. (Again, there are a ton of parallels with David’s family; look at 1 Kings 11). As we’ve said, Israel’s purpose was to preserve that promise and to be the instrument through which the Lord saved humanity. Jacob saw this danger, and demanded that everyone in the family get rid of their idols (we’re looking at you, Rachel—31:16, 30-35) and rededicate themselves to the Lord

            To focus on the fulfillment of the promise, we should note 1) that the Lord moved them away from danger, 2) that He used the moment to remind them to be faithful to Him alone, and 3) that the Lord was positioning Judah to become the heir (more on that a different day). Amid all the sinfulness of this family, the Lord was still using them to nurture His promise to fruition.

The Struggle of Faith

Genesis 31-33

            Nothing is ever as simple as it seems. Yesterday, Jacob resorted to magic to grow his flocks; today he acknowledges that it was the Lord the whole time. Today, Jacob is in abject fear of his father-in-law and his brother, but he also remembers God’s promise. At the same time he recalls that the Lord had made promises to him, Jacob refuses to call the Lord his God; it’s always the God of my father.

            Faith is not binary; it’s not on or off. We walk by faith and sometimes we walk with confidence in that faith; we walk by faith and sometimes we walk in that faith with fear and trembling. This is the normal walk of faith, and Jacob is no different.

            No wonder, then, that the Lord names Jacob Israel. No wonder the name Israel stuck to His chosen people. No wonder the New Testament describes the church as the new Israel. For we all struggle with God. In some seasons of life, His promises are right before us and we feel blessed; in other season, we wonder where that promised blessing is.

            Two great verses to consider in this regard are Hebrew 11:1, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see,” and Romans 8:24-25, “For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”

            This “now/not yet” shows in the climactic story of Jacob’s life, wrestling with God on the banks of the Jabbok. On the one hand, Jacob is tenacious: even after his hip is wrenched, he refuses to let go. On the other hand, he is marked, presumably for the rest of his life, with the resulting limp. To me, this is a fitting metaphor for faith, holding tenaciously to God’s promises and bearing the mark of the struggle.

The Shenanigans Continue

 Genesis 29-30

            The deceiver is deceived, first in the matter of his wife, then in the matter of his flocks.

            Leah, so the text says, had weak eyes. The commentators, going all the way back to the rabbis over 1500 years ago, have debated what that means. However, given the contrast with Rachel having a lovely figure and being beautiful, the conclusion is pretty shallow: Leah wasn’t very pretty. (Turns out that body-confidence is not just a modern problem! Women have been suffering with this for a long time.) To be fair, then, Laban kind of had a point. Custom said that the older sister should be married first; looks shouldn’t have mattered. The incident highlights the continued callowness of Jacob. An interesting side note: “weak eyes” could also be translated “tender eyes.” It’s within the realm of possibility that this is evidence that Leah was kind—not a bad attribute in a life partner! But Jacob has his heart set on Rachel, and that means another seven years. (If we wonder why Jacob didn’t notice the switch until the morning, remember that a bride would have generally been veiled and the bridal tent would have been dark)

            In the matter of Jacob’s flocks, Jacob ostensibly offers to take the rarer animals out of Jacob’s flocks as his wages. Apparently, most sheep were white and most goats were black, so speckled creatures were less common. But Laban, in order to ensure his own profits, moved everything that Jacob had claimed, separating from his usual flocks. Cheated again!

            One interesting theme through this chapter is the use of magic: Leah and Rachel bicker over mandrakes, a supposed fertility drug; Laban learns ‘by divination’ that Jacob is the source of his blessing (as if he couldn’t tell that Jacob was good at his job); and Jacob himself utilizes some kind of weird trick with peeled branches to encourage the birth of speckled animals. Here is an indication that Jacob’s faith is shaky at best. He didn’t trust the Lord to get him the birthright; he relies on his own plans to find a wife and a livelihood; he dabbles in magic. I studied this years ago, but if I recall correctly Jacob never even calls the Lord “my God” until later in the story.

            So, a few takeaways: first, there’s evidence here of an oft-repeated axiom of the Bible’s wisdom, namely, the wicked will not prosper forever. Eventually their deeds catch up with them. (See Psalm 1, for example.) Second, like his grandfather before him, Jacob’s faith is a work-in-progress. He had the vision at Bethel, received God’s promise, and seems to have believed it. But he’s still trying to do things by his own wit and wisdom. Third, the Lord blesses Jacob anyway. Despite his shallowness, the Lord blesses him with 11 sons (Benjamin, the twelfth will be born later in the story) and a daughter, and despite his self-reliance the Lord makes him “exceedingly prosperous.” We should see in this less a promise that God will bless us materially and more the fact that in blessing Jacob the Lord is keeping His main promise—that through this family a Savior for all humanity would come.

Family Dysfunction

 Genesis 27-28

            There’s nothing particularly difficult to understand in today’s reading about the rivalry between Jacob and Esau. One might ask, “What’s the difference between the birthright that Esau sold for a bowl of soup and the blessing Jacob stole?” The answer there seems to be the blessing was the final ratification of the birthright, so when Jacob “stole” it he was really just making sure the Esau gave him what he had promised. Other than that, it’s just an ugly story of a dysfunctional family. We’ve already read that Isaac favored Esau and Rebekah favored Jacob (25:28). Now we see Rebekah plotting to fool her own husband. And let’s be clear: this was quite the heist! We read yesterday Isaac’s great wealth (26:12-14), the majority of which would go to the one designated the heir. No wonder Esau was filled with rage! He was finally caught in the consequences of a stupid, youthful mistake, and Jacob (and Rebekah!) wasn’t going to allow any takesy-backsies!

            The longer I minister, the longer I think, “Every family is broken in some kind of way,” even the family of the promise. I’ve ministered to families that look normal on a casual view only to find out that there are brothers who haven’t talked in decades. I’ve ministered to families that seem strong and close only to see them attack each other when it is time to settle the parents’ estate. The examples multiply. If your family isn’t a fit subject for a Norman Rockwell painting, you are certainly not alone. This is the ongoing power of sin, and it doesn’t exempt anyone. Sometimes we want to pretend that we Christians live in perfect little families, but we don’t. What we live in is the grace of God, a grace which helps us forgive those who hurt us, a grace which opens the possibility of reconciliation, a grace which promises us final restoration for Jesus’ sake—which is the reason we care about Isaac’s family at all, since out of them came Christ our Savior! So, if you read about Isaac’s family and see comparisons to your own, take heart! Not because yours is not the only broken family but because out of the brokenness of Isaac’s family, the Lord has brought healing and redemption in the death and resurrection of Jesus!

Sibling Rivalry

 Genesis 25:1-26:35

            Esau and Jacob competed from the womb. Esau, the rugged, hairy, man’s man, who loved to hunt, was born first, but Jacob, a softer, more homebody sort, was holding on to his brother’s heel. There couldn’t have been a more fitting start for these two brothers.

            The Lord had already promised that the older would serve the younger, but as for his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac (who repeated Abraham’s lie, passing off his wife as his sister), so also for Jacob—faith came hard. And Jacob didn’t want to wait, swindling his brother out of his birthright (and tomorrow his blessing, too). For his part, Esau doesn’t seem like a great thinker, giving away the firstborn’s portion of what seems to have been a very large estate because he was hungry right now! Now into its third generation, Abraham’s family is reading a bit like a soap opera!

A Grave and a Wife

 Genesis 23-24

            Two things stand out in the story of the death of Sarah. The first is that Abraham is unwilling to receive land for a burial plot from the locals, described in this era as Hittites. Why not just take the gift? Two interrelated reasons: first, the land is going to be a gift from the Lord. That’s the promise, and Abraham seems to have finally learned that lesson. Second, to receive a gift from the locals would make Abraham beholden to the locals, obligated to them, and Abraham will not do that. (Remember Abraham is fabulously wealthy and powerful; it’s good to a guy like that in your debt!)

            The second thing that stands out is that, despite all appearances to the contrary, Ephron takes advantage of Abraham in his time of grief. Abraham wants the cave at the end of the field; Ephron offers the whole field. Abraham wants to buy the field; Ephron names a price that commentators widely recognize as exorbitant. The irony is that a man who was willing to talk God down from fifty righteous people to ten righteous people in the matter of Sodom is unwilling to negotiate as fiercely for himself. (I think there’s a lesson there for us: our intercession and concern for others should be fiercer than our intercession and concern for ourselves.)

            Isaac was 37 when Sarah died—and not yet married. In our day, that’s not so surprising, but it does explain Abraham’s urgency in sending for a wife for his son. Time is flying, after all. (Genesis 25:20 says Isaac was 40 when he got married.) The story of a wife for Isaac has a number of interesting points. One point is that it’s repetitious story: the action is recounted and the it’s recounted again. This is a common feature in the Old Testament, so it’s worth commenting on. It is a safe assumption that these stories circulated orally for a long time. (Moses, the writer of Genesis, lived a good 500 years after the events, after all.) Stories that are transmitted orally often repeat themselves as a memory aid. Frankly, repetition is common in the Old Testament because even after the stories were written down most people didn’t have access to printed texts; they only ever heard the stories read out loud.

            Another interesting point is the importance of marrying someone from one’s own people. Rebekah is Isaac’s first cousin once removed; his first cousin’s daughter. Today that strikes us as unseemly, but Abraham doesn’t want a local wife for Isaac, perhaps for religious and cultural reasons. Take a look at Genesis 26:34-35 and 28:6-9 for an insight into this phenomenon. This concern for marriage is another thing that we’ll be able to track through the Old Testament.

            Finally, on a personal note, observe Genesis 24:66-67. There’s a hint there that we’re not supposed to think of Isaac as a particularly strong man. He’s portrayed as perhaps overly sensitive and a little weak, which may explain how things unfold between his sons (see chapter 27-28.)

The Testing of Abraham

Genesis 22

            For many people, this is one of the most disturbing passages in the Old Testament. I’ve had opportunity to teach it several times over the years, and one of the most common questions is, “How could God demand such a heinous thing from Abraham? How could He even ask that?” I have an answer, although I’m not sure it’s enough to get that question out of a person’s head. The answer is simply, “This was a test.”

            The Lord never intended for Abraham actually to kill his son, but He was testing whether Abraham would trust Him in even this. Reflect for a moment on Abraham’s history: he had the moment with Pharaoh (ch. 12); he fell into despair (ch. 15); there was the incident with Hagar (ch. 16); both he and Sarah laughed derisively (chs. 17-18); and there was a second incident in which he passed Sarah off as his sister (ch. 20). Abraham has a history of doubting that the Lord can or will keep the promise of a son. Has he learned his lesson? If God takes Isaac away, will Abraham still trust Him to keep His promise? The answer is, “Yes.” Abraham has learned to trust the Lord to keep His promise. The writer to the Hebrews puts it this way, “Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death” (Hebrews 11:19).

            I think 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 is relevant here. The apostle Paul writes, “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.” Paul had encountered opposition and danger in Ephesus that was unparalleled in his ministry. (N. T. Wright offers an interesting reconstruction in his book Paul: A Biography.) While that trouble is never described as a test, we can see it as such. The question is, “To whom was this test supposed to reveal something?” And the answer is, “It was supposed to reveal something to Paul.” He had to learn not to trust himself but the God who can even raise the dead.

            Similarly, the Lord didn’t need prove of where Abraham’s faith was; Abraham needed that proof. I find that helpful. When we undergo times of testing in our faith, it’s not that the Lord doubts us and wants us to prove ourselves. He know who we are. I think it’s helpful to thing that in those times the Lord is offering us the chance to clarify for ourselves where our trust really lies. I’m not saying it’s easy or pleasant: neither Abraham nor Paul were thrilled to undergo the test. Paul in particular speaks like a broken man; his testing had to crush all of his own self-confidence. But they came out to a place of peace, coming to a place of confidence that the Lord keeps His promises, no matter how long it takes, no matter how different it looks. 

Isaac: Abraham and Sarah’s Laughter

 Genesis 20-21

            The promised child is finally born—25 years later, but the child is born to Abraham and Sarah. They name the boy Isaac, which means “laughter.” Both Abraham and Sarah had laughed at God’s promise; they had let their doubts get the best of them and snorted in derision about a promise that seemed impossible to fulfill. But God is faithful and now they laugh for joy.

            One of the themes that runs through the Bible is reversal, that the Lord changes the fortunes of His people unexpectedly and suddenly. Consider this:

 

They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads.

Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

(Isaiah 35:10, 51: 11)

 and,

 The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me…

to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes,

the oil of joy instead of mourning,

and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.

(Isaiah 61:1, 3)

 and,

Weeping may stay for the night,

but rejoicing comes in the morning.

(Psalm 30:5)

 When the Lord changes the fortunes of His people, it’s good to remember that He does so because the Lord keeps His promises. Sometimes it might seem to take forever; sometimes it doesn’t happen in our lifetime. But the Lord keeps His promises.

Doubt and Confidence

 Genesis 18-19

            Abram’s 99th year must have been an exciting one: the Lord appeared to him twice! Yesterday we read about the Lord’s appearing to Abram and the covenant of circumcision. By that point, Abram had pretty well despaired of having a son with Sarah and asked the Lord to accept Ishmael. Abram’s laughter tells us something about the condition of his faith: it wasn’t good.

            Today it’s Sarah’s turn. Three visitors appear to Abraham (turns out it’s two angels and the Lord Himself!), and, after receiving extraordinary hospitality from Abraham, they repeat the promise, “Next year.” (It would be good to comment on hospitality in the ancient Near East, because it was a core virtue of that culture and carries over in some ways to the New Testament. Maybe another day…) This time, it’s Sarah who laughs, “Now that I’m old and worn out…”

            In Romans 4, the apostle Paul gives us an interesting insight into faith: “Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead” (Romans 4:19). Genesis shows us Abraham and Sarah wracked with doubt; Paul says, “He never lost faith.” The key insight here: doubt is not the opposite of faith. The opposite of faith is unbelief. Doubt can certainly grow into unbelief, especially if we aren’t regularly strengthened by hearing the promises of God repeated, but doubt, it seems to me, is really just a natural feature of faith, wondering how or when the Lord’s promises will come to fruition.

            That Abraham’s doubt isn’t unbelief is demonstrated in his remarkable confidence in asking the Lord to spare Sodom. For a man who just recently scoffed at the Lord’s ability to keep His promise, Abraham is pretty brazen to ask the Lord to reconsider His plans for Sodom. What’s interesting about Abraham’s negotiation is that he bases his request on the Lord’s own character, “Surely you won’t destroy the righteous with the unrighteous! That’s not like you!” That’s a lesson about our prayer: we pray on the basis of God’s character and His promises; every prayer should, at its core, be, “Lord God, here’s what you said. I’m only asking you to keep your promises.” Martin Luther once described prayer as “rubbing God’s promises in His ears.”

            Unfortunately for Sodom, only four righteous can be found: Lot, his wife, and his two daughters. Not even the sons-in-law accept the warning. Notice the contrast with the story of the Flood, where Noah, his wife, three sons, and three daughters-in-law escaped on the ark. How far gone in wickedness must Sodom have been! Even the four turn to three when Lot’s wife hesitates and looks back. It reminds me of Luke 9:62, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” The episode ends with a second call back to the Flood: a drunk father and sinful children, this time daughters who commit incest. Two final thoughts: first, this is the family that Abraham so earnestly prayer for, reminding us that no one is too far gone to be the object of our prayers. Second, the human race is every bit as sinful as it was before the Flood; this incident with Sodom and Lot points us back to why the Lord committed His promise to a single family, so that that family could be a sort of greenhouse, where the Lord could weed sin out and maintain better conditions for that promise to grow.

Waiting for the True Son

Genesis 16-17

            Yesterday, Abram had his crisis of faith; today it’s Sarai’s turn. As was typical in the ancient world, Sarai took her barrenness as some sort of punishment from the Lord. Reading between the lines, we can imagine her thinking, “I don’t know what I did to be punished in this way, so I can’t fix it. Better find another solution.” Her solution was to use her slave as a proxy. Sarai intends Hagar to do the bearing and delivering, and it seems that Sarai intends to raise the child as her own.

            Of course, it doesn’t work out that way. Hagar’s pregnancy comes between them; Sarai abuses Hagar in some way; and flees to the desert. (Hagar in the desert will be a theme again in chapter 21; stay tuned.) But the Lord has more promises, this one directed to Hagar but part of the promise to Abram: Ishmael will have descendants too numerous to count. Abram will indeed be the father of many nations (17:2).

            The name change from Abram to Abraham is significant. Abram means “exalted father;” Abraham means “father of many.” Every time someone uses Abraham’s new name he is going to be reminded of the Lord’s promise, even though at the ripe old age of 99 he currently has exactly one child and the Lord has specifically said, “That one is not the child I’m talking about.” 24 years in and Abraham is still waiting for the fulfillment of the Lord’s promise.

      At this point, the Lord makes what seems to be a new covenant with Abraham, an additional one. Some commentators see this as a conditional covenant (of the suzerain-vassal sort—see my comments from January 6). They see the Lord saying, “If your descendants obey circumcision, then I’ll keep up my end of the deal.” I’m not so sure.

I tend to think of circumcision sacramentally, and the sacraments (Baptism and the Lord’s Supper) are gifts, not ordinances. Yes, there is something for us to do, but it would be a mistake to understand our effort in the sacrament as the main thing. Martin Luther, in explaining the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper says, “Certainly not just eating and drinking do these things, but the words written here: “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” These words, along with the bodily eating and drinking, are the main thing in the Sacrament. Whoever believes these words has exactly what they say: “forgiveness of sins.” So, it’s not the human activities, the eating and the drinking, that should be our focus, but the gift, that by this eating and drinking God forgives sins; He gives a gift.

            Similarly, circumcision calls for human action: parents have to complete the ritual. But the effect of circumcision is to mark the child as a member of the covenant community. It is a gift given. The overall point of Genesis 17, then, is another reiteration that the Lord intends to keep His promise to Abraham, and circumcision is an outward reminder of that guarantee. 

Power, a Priest, and a Promise

Genesis 14-15

            Today’s reading begins with a little historical nugget about politics in Abram’s day: a coalition of kings make war against another coalition; the latter rebel and are defeated (again); and Abram saves the day.

            Speculation abounds about why the number of Abram’s “trained men” is so specifically 318, and I honestly don’t know. Some of the explanation may be reasonable (for example, it may be a surreptitious reference to Eliezer, Abram’s servant and heir apparent (15:2), whose name when converted to numerical values add up to 318). Probably the most obvious and certain thing to observe about 318 is that it’s an indication of just how wealthy and well-off Abram is: he has enough armed men to chase and defeat four armed chieftains. The Lord has certainly blessed Abram!

            The odd question of the 318 is followed immediately by the odd person, Melchizedek. Melchizedek, whose name means something along the lines of “king of righteousness” or “my king is righteous” is priest in Salem, short for Jerusalem and a play on the Hebrew word for “peace.” He is said to be the priest of El Elyon, God Most High, whom Abram identifies with Yahweh, the Lord’s personal name. So, Melchizedek, apparently, worships the same God that called Abram from Harran to the promise land. So, again apparently, other peoples worship the true God in this era besides just Abram. (By the time that Israel conquers the promised land under Joshua, some 600-700 years later, Jerusalem has become a source of pagan opposition to God’s people.) Melchizedek will come up again in Psalm 110 and again in Hebrews (chapters 5-7); we’ll have to revisit him later. Right now, we see Abram honoring the Lord as the one who provided victory by visiting this odd, barely known man.

            Finally, we see Abram in a bit of a crisis of faith. It’s been a while now since the Lord promised Abram a son, and his only heir is Eliezer, his servant. The incident with Lot and the four kings is probably on Abram’s mind, too. You can imagine him thinking, “I don’t have a son of my own, and even my adopted heir will inherit my estate in a precarious, dangerous place.” The Lord reiterates his promise and tells Abram that he will have descendants like the stars and that he will inherit the land.

            Then follows a difficult scene. The Lord renews His covenant with Abram. Cutting creatures in half seems strange to us, but it is the usual ways these things happened. The Hebrew phrase for “make a covenant” is actually “cut a covenant.” The odder thing is the smoking firepot and the blazing torch that pass between the halves of the animals. Again, part of the custom of making a covenant was that the promising party would walk between the slain animals. At the very least, the pot and torch are meant to symbolize the Lord sealing the covenant. Why a pot and a torch? Probably just a typical representation of the Lord, like for example the pillar of cloud and fire during the Exodus. More than that would be speculative.

            In this whole scene, probably the most important dynamic is that the Lord repeated His promises, and Abram believed Him. Specifically, “Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord credited it to him as righteousness.” In Romans 4 and Galatians 3, Paul is going to make a big deal out of that, when he makes the case that we saved not by our works but by faith in Jesus. And faith is not a work, either; faith is simply hearing the promise of God and recognizing, “That’s for me.” Faith is nothing more than trust.

A More Nuanced Picture

Genesis 12:10-13:18

            One of the things we should get used to right away is that no one—bar no one—in the Bible is perfect. (Okay, Jesus is, but I hope we can agree He’s a special case…) The Lord had directed Abram to a land He would show him, and Abram obediently wen. Then, he kept on going, right to Egypt. He was escaping a famine, to be sure, but the Lord had never told Abram to go; Abram did that all on his own. The great patriarch, famous for his faith, had a lot to learn about living by faith. The God who had sent him to Canaan would have provided for him there.

            This temptation to live by his own plans and schemes works on Abram in the matter of Sarai, too. He instructs her to say that she is his sister, not his wife. (It wasn’t a complete lie; Genesis 20:12 tells us that Abram married his half-sister, Sarai.) Abram’s reasoning is that if Pharoah wants Sarai in his harem, he would have to kill Abram, if he knew Abram was her husband. If he’s just a brother, Pharoah can just take Sarai without consequence. Notice that Abram is willing to sacrifice Sarai’s honor for the sake of his own life. So much for chivalry! But the larger point is how Abram fails to trust that the Lord will take care of him.

            The strange thing is that in the next story, Abram is trusting God again. When he and Lot have to separate, Abram had every right as the family patriarch to tell Lot where to go. Instead he offers the choice, even though it would seem pretty obvious that Lot would choose the lush Jordan valley and that Abram would be left with the wilderness. Abram is willing to trust that the Lord will provide, even if he doesn’t demand what looks like the best land.

            I think one takeaway from these stories—a lesson we’ll come back to time and again—is that faith is hard. Critics of Christianity often talk about faith as a crutch; that doesn’t make any sense to me. It is infinitely harder to live by faith, to believe that our God has our best interests in mind, than it is to either rely on yourself. It is infinitely harder to live by faith, to believe that God has plans and purposes, for us than it is to fall into a sort  nihilism that says, “The world is unfair,” and to resign ourselves to injustice. Abram wasn’t perfect, and neither are we. His struggles to live by faith help us to negotiate our own struggles.

A Major Transition

 Genesis 11:1-12:9

            Today’s reading encompasses one of the major transitions of the Bible’s story. As our reading opens, we are treated to the story of the tower of Babel, a neat little play on words because in Hebrew it sounds like both the words for ‘Babylon,’ one of Israel’s most prominent enemies, and also the word for ‘confusion.’ The confusion is not just a reference the languages, but a reminder of the consequences of sin.

            Sin and its effects are a major point of the story. Just as Adam and Eve had wanted to ‘be like God’ in Genesis 3, so here in Genesis 11 humanity wants to build a tower to the heavens. That is to say, they want to live in God’s place: they still want to be like God. Humanity is on the same path that had led to the flood, so the Lord slows them down by confusing their languages and scattering them.

            Because humanity cannot be trusted to keep it together long enough for the Lord to fulfill His promise of a Savior (Gen. 3), the Lord settles on a new strategy: He entrusts His promise to a single family of the earth, the family of Abram, who is in the line of faithful Shem. This family will grow to become the people of Israel, and this transition is our first opportunity to understand the role that Israel plays in the Lord’s plans.

            Israel is like a greenhouse. The Lord has a seed to cultivate and grow, the promise of a Savior. The conditions outside are wild and unconducive to the plant’s growth. Therefore, the Lord brings it inside, into the greenhouse, where He can more easily control the conditions for the plant’s flourishing.

            Now, this is not really a new strategy. The strategy has always been to restore the full human race to its place as God’s image-bearers. This is just a different way of achieving that end. That the Lord’s goal is the same is shown in the promise to Abram in Genesis 12:2-3. The promise is a poem of seven lines: 1) “I will make you into a great nation, 2) and I will bless you; 3) I will make your name great, 4) and you will be a blessing. 5) I will bless those who bless you, 6) and whoever curses you I will curse; 7) and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” In Hebrew seven is the number of the Lord, and any Hebrew speaker would see that the seventh line is the climactic line. The goal of the Lord’s plans with Israel is to bless all the peoples on earth—through Abram, that is, through His descendant, ultimately Jesus.

            The rest of the Old Testament—1600 more pages in my Bible, 73 more weeks in our reading plan—is the story of Israel. In order to understand it, in order to understand, for example, the laws that the Lord will give on Sinai, the command to exterminate Israel’s enemies, the Lord’s fierce wrath over Israel’s idolatry: in order to understand all of that, we must keep Israel’s purpose in mind. All of that serves the larger purpose of bringing forth Jesus, at just the right time, so that He could redeem humanity from its sin by His death and resurrection.

A Covenant?

 Genesis 9-10

            Through the great flood, God pressed reset on the earth. He had washed the worst of human sin off the earth, and in Genesis 9:1 He reiterated the command of Genesis 1:28 to be fruitful and multiply. The particular proof of that new start was God’s covenant.

            Covenant is an important word in the Bible, appearing over 300 times. It’s first used in Genesis 6:18, and it’s repeated seven times in Genesis 9 alone. Unfortunately, it’s not a word that we use much in modern English, so it takes a little explanation.

            In its most basic sense, a covenant is simply an agreement, a legal agreement. In the ancient Near East, there were several kinds of covenants, two of which are most prominent in the Bible. First, there is a royal grant covenant, in which a king or superior of some kind gives an underling some kind of gift. Such a covenant was unconditional and irrevocable, at least in the lifetime of the grantee. That’s the kind of covenant we have in Genesis 9. The Lord makes a promise to Noah and his descendants and with the living creatures: Never again will I flood the earth like that. The sign, the reminder, of that promise is the rainbow. It is interesting to me that in Hebrew the word for “rainbow” is really just “bow,” as in “bow and arrow.” The idea is that God is hanging up His bow; it’s no longer pointed at the earth; it’s pointing harmlessly skyward.

            The second kind of covenant is called a suzerain-vassal covenant. This is also made by a king to an underling, but this one is conditional. It lays out mutual obligations: “I, the king, the suzerain, will provide protection, etc., but only as long as you, the underling, the vassal, do these things.” The covenant that the Lord makes with Israel at Mt. Sinai is of this type.

            Distinguishing these two kinds of covenants is hugely important for understanding the Bible. The covenant of Sinai looms large through the pages of the Old Testament, but, as Paul teaches in Galatians 3-4, the Sinaitic covenant also only applied to Israel until the Messiah appeared. Therefore, we latter day readers need to be very careful how we apply the ‘if/thens’ of the Old Testament. We’ll have many opportunities to think about this over the next two years.

            Two other things to note briefly: first, it’s important that humans are given permission to eat animals (properly prepared) after the flood. I take that as an indication of how thoroughly the world was changed by the flood. Even nutrition is harder to come by. This is also indicated in the rapidly declining lifespans in chapter 11 (an issue for tomorrow). Second, the incident with Noah’s drunkenness shows us that the world may have been reset by the flood, but the problem of human sin was not cured. Noah is implicitly criticized for his drunkenness and Ham is outright cursed for his shamelessness and immodesty.

God's Terrible Judgment

 Genesis 6:9-8:22

            When our oldest son was a baby, he had a little stuffed Noah’s ark. I remember this because he loved the giraffe. There was a time when, if he didn’t have it, we had to find it. I tell the story because it reflects what we have reduced Genesis 6-8 to: a children’s story famous for its animals.

            But read today’s reading, and you get a whole different picture. God’s action in the flood is driven by human sinfulness. We read yesterday that every inclination of the human heart was only evil all the time. Today we read that the earth was corrupt and full of violence. (Violence is actually mentioned twice. What Cain started and Lamech continued, the rest of the fallen race carried on.) Finally, God had had enough and decided a new start was in order, and that new start entailed wiping the corruption from the face of the earth. We don’t know how many people lived on the earth at that moment but the Lord saw fit to save only 8. This is no cute story about animals; it is a demonstration of God’s revulsion over sin and of how terrible His judgment can be.

            I have a friend who calls Noah’s flood “the second greatest outpouring of God’s wrath in human history.” The greatest outpouring was Jesus’ death on the cross, when, as the hymn puts it, “Many hands were raised to wound Him, / None would intervene to save; / But the deepest stroke that pierced Him / Was the stroke that justice gave” (Lutheran Service Book, 451, v. 2). Between Noah and Jesus is nothing less than God’s forbearance, not punishing human sin until by His death Jesus would make atonement (Rom 3:25).

            Therefore, Noah’s flood is, at its core, a story about judgment and mercy, God’s fierce wrath over human sin—all human sin, don’t kid yourself that your sins aren’t so bad—and God’s grace, preserving a remnant because He will not give up on our fallen, beloved race, and foreshadowing the moment when His Son would bear the full weight of our sin in our place.

            So, please, forget the stuffed animals. It’s not that kind of story.

Sin’s Dire Effects

 Genesis 4:1-6:8

            Once Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden, sin’s effects accelerate quickly. Eve bears a son. The major English versions (New International and English Standard) both translate her comment that she has borne a son with the Lord’s help. In Hebrew it may be a bit more ambiguous; literally she exclaims, “I have born a man—the Lord!” It seems to me she thought she’d borne the promised one who would crush the serpent’s head in that first generation. How wrong she was! Sin took hold in Cain and led him to murder his brother. That is 0-60 acceleration in, like 3 seconds. And it gets worse. Among Cain’s descendants, Lamech marries two woman (the first explicit breaking of what Genesis 2: 24 intended) and boasts of his violence, retaliating out of all proportion to the injury given and avenging himself to excess.

            The climax is in Genesis 6. There we have the odd story of the “sons of God” marrying the “daughters of men.” Whacky theories abound about what’s going on there, but I favor the boring explanation: powerful men, probably in some kind of ruling caste, forcibly taking women in marriage, perhaps in some kind of a harem arrangement. There’s no mention of violence in these verses, but there is the Lord’s exasperated, “I will not contend forever” and his observation that “every inclination of the thoughts of human hearts was only wicked all the time.” That’s a lot of absolute terms, reflecting how thoroughly depraved  our race had become.

            Two thoughts about the Lord’s statement that the humans’ days would be 120 years. First, it may be a reflection on the extraordinary lifespans of Genesis 5, namely, that the Lord is intentionally shortening them. (The genealogy is clearly stylized: there are 10—only 10—generations; Enoch lives 365 years, the same number of days as a year; Lamech—different Lamech—lives 777 years, which seems pretty stylized around the previous Lamech’s statement in 4:24. I don’t think there’s any doubt that human lifespans were much longer than we’re accustomed to; I also don’t think we know all the conventions and metaphors the genealogy might be trying to communicate to us.) Second, the 120 years may be a warning about when the flood would come on the earth, which is our topic in tomorrow’s reading.

What Went Wrong?

Genesis 3

    It's pretty clear to even the casual observer that we don't live in an idyllic garden anymore! Genesis 3 tells us what went wrong.

    Genesis 3 tells how humanity, designed to be God's wise stewards of creation, decided that being a steward wasn't enough. They wanted to be the owners. Hence the serpent's terrible temptations: "You will be like God." The temptation wasn't just that they'd intellectually know the difference between right and wrong but that they could choose what was right and wrong.

    The consequences were immediate and dire. Notice, first, that they hid from each other. Where there had been openness, honesty, and complete transparency, now there was distrust, secrets, and blame. When asked what happened, Adam immediately threw Eve under the bus. Then, even more catastrophically, they hid from God; their relationship with Him was ruined, too, which ultimately led them to be banished from His garden. God made permanent their alienation from him (banishment) and from each other (hide clothing). They were under a death sentence. And so are we.

    That's the first lesson for us: what Adam broke, we endure. We deal with the ramifications of his sin. In Lutheran lingo, we call it original sin: the corruption of our nature we inherited from Adam. It means we inherited (no choice in the matter) a nature turned away from God, centered on itself, dead in trespasses and sin.

    The good news in that is that in the very middle of cursing our first parents, the Lord made a promise: the woman's offspring would eventually crush the serpent's head. That's a promise we see fulfilled finally in Jesus' death and resurrection. In Jesus, we still have a corrupted nature, but we also receive by our Baptism into Him, a new--renewed--nature. The healing has begun.

    Finally, we find a glimpse of what the Lord's ultimate plans are for His world and for us in His world. He does not intend to give up on either. The grand promise is that the world will be restored to its original condition on the last day. We will receive the gift of resurrection onto life.

    There's so much more we could say. Genesis 3, like Genesis 1-2, are foundational to the rest of Scripture. But this is enough by summary: Adam and Eve introduced a terrible sickness into God's world and into our very nature, but it is in the Lord's nature to heal, and that's what He did in Jesus and what He will bring to completion on the day of Jesus' return.

God's Wise Design

     Welcome! I haven't used this blog since the pandemic hit in March, 2020, but since my congregation is starting a two-year Bible reading program today, the time is right to get going again. (A bit of a bucket list item: I've started and stopped blogging my way through the Bible several times now; I'd really love to blog through the whole of it1!) I hope two things: 1) that I can keep up with the project, and 2) that it will be a blessing to those who read it!

Genesis 1-2

    Genesis 1-2 are foundational to the rest of the Scripture. They are the story of a God who, out of no compulsion or necessity, called a world into being for humans, who are the special objects of His love.

    There are literally dozens of books written on these two chapters alone. Add the extensive commentaries on these chapters and you have thousands and thousands of pages. Those books look at Genesis 1-2 from every conceivable angle: literature, mythology, ideology, science. And, I daresay, modern readers want answers that perhaps Genesis 1-2 were never intended to deliver. For example, in the whole debate about the origins of the universe, modern readers want a scientific explanation. (For full disclosure, the Bible certainly thinks the world was created by God speaking it into existence in 6 literal days. Consider Exodus 20:8-11 and Psalm 33:6, 9. I like to point out that there is a problem with the 6-day creation, but it's not what most people think. No, the problem is this: if God is all-powerful and can speak things into existence with just a word, why didn't he do it all at once?) Anyhow, the point is, we can ask these chapters a lot of questions, but maybe we should let them set their own agenda.

    I think that the point of Genesis 1-2 is twofold. First, the God that Israel confesses (and by extension the God that the Church confesses) is a God of order. The calm, wise way in which God calls  for the cosmos, the earth, and life on the earth stands in stark contrast to the prevailing mythologies and ideologies. In ancient Mesopotamia, the world was formed by the gods in conflict and violence; in modern conceptions the world and life within it begins in chaos and chance. But there is none of that in Genesis 1. No, Genesis is orderly to the point of repetitious: God said, it was, it was good, there was evening and morning. The world functions the way God intended it to function; it is designed to burst with life. (We can talk about what went wrong with God's good design tomorrow.)

    Second, Genesis 1-2 want us to consider the unique role that humans play in God's creation. They are created in God's image, a statement which, again, could lead us in a number of different directions: they share God's moral nature; they think and have the gift of language as He does; etc. But I think the most important sense of the image of God that Genesis 1-2 want to convey are that they are God's stewards for the creation. They are meant to extend His wise and peaceful rule throughout the creation; they are meant to tend His creation, as to whom He entrusted it; they are the special object of His attention and love.