I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 33-35.

    I did not touch on this yesterday, but when Esau heard that Jacob was returning he set out with 400 men to meet him. The first thing about this which is noteworthy is that when Abraham defeated the armies which had taken Lot captive he had 318 men with him. So, Esau was coming to meet Jacob with a rather large army. The second thing which is noteworthy (from yesterday’s passage) is that Esau and his army set out before Jacob sent his messengers. Which makes me wonder if Esau knew about Laban pursuing Jacob and was coming to Jacob’s defense?

    I find the negotiations between Jacob and Esau when they met interesting as well. After greeting Jacob as his long lost brother, which Jacob was, he asks about the people accompanying Jacob. Jacob introduces his wives and children to Esau. Then Esau asks about the flocks sent on ahead by Jacob. Since Jacob had instructed the herdsmen to tell Esau that they were gifts for Esau, by asking about them Esau is telling Jacob that the gifts were not necessary for Esau to forgive Jacob. There is a little further back and forth about who should keep them before Esau accepts them. This negotiation resembles the negotiation between Abraham and Ephron the Hittite over the plot of land where Abraham would bury Sarah. By insisting that Esau accept the gift of these specific herds, Jacob is establishing that Esau has no claim to any of the rest of his possessions. This is followed up by the next stage of the negotiations between Esau and Jacob. Esau indirectly offers Jacob the opportunity to enter into Esau’s household and to come under his protection. First Esau suggests that he lead Jacob and his family back to where Esau is based (and we know from the earlier passage where Isaac grew crops that Esau was not truly nomadic). When Jacob rejects this, Esau suggests that he at least provide Jacob with some men to protect Jacob and his family. Once again, Jacob rejects this offer. In both cases, Jacob makes it clear that he is not rejecting his brother, just the offer to become part of his brother’s household. It is worth noting that we learn at the end of this passage that both Jacob and Esau set up households independent of that of Isaac, but that it was Jacob who moved back with Isaac for Isaac’s last few years.

    Finally, I mentioned yesterday that Laban’s household idols would appear once more to provide insight into the mystery of Terah, Abraham’s father, deciding to move to Canaan (although he never got there). The story of Dinah being raped at Shechem tells us more about that. The first thing I think we see is that Jacob and his family hold women in higher esteem then the peoples among whom they lived. They did not just accept that Shechem marry their sister to make up for defiling her by raping her. However, the more interesting thing is that although the sons of Jacob worshiped God at least to the degree of being circumcised and having their sons and male servants circumcised, they also had various idols as well. In the aftermath of his sons sacking and looting the town, Jacob calls on them to give up their idols and purify themselves to worship God. The idols which Jacob buried there included the idols which Rachel had stolen from Laban. There are several important things which happened as a result of this event. First, Jacob and his family became more dedicated to God and abandoned, for the most part, the worship of other gods. Second, Jacob’s sons were forced to stay together in their father’s household, rather than setting out on their own the way their father, their grandfather, and great grandfather had. Because they had sacked and looted Shechem, none of Jacob’s sons could risk leaving the protection of their father’s household.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 31-32.

    When Laban’s sons, Jacob’s brothers-in-law, began grumbling about Jacob’s wealth, Jacob decided that it was time to return to the land of Canaan. He was very careful to make sure Laban did not find out that he was leaving until he was gone. He chose a time when Laban was away sheering sheep and he called Rachel and Leah out away from the household servants to inform them. We can see that Jacob was justified both in his decision to leave and in doing so secretly by Laban’s reaction to learning he had left. Laban did not just set out in pursuit of Jacob, he gathered a small army to do so.

    For all of his flaws, Jacob gave God credit for his success, both when he spoke to his wives about his plan to leave Laban and later when he was confronted by Laban. When Laban managed to catch up with Jacob, he pretended like he would have allowed Jacob to just leave if Jacob had told him that he wanted to do so. However, we know that this is not true because Laban cannot resist threatening Jacob even now by telling him that he could destroy him. Laban stated that the only reason he did not do so was because God had appeared to him the night before warning him against doing so. However, Laban is not willing to just let Jacob go, he wants to extract something from him, so he brings up the household idols which Rachel had stolen. (Those idols will come up again later and give us further insight into the thread about why Abraham left his homeland when they do.) It seems to me that, while I believe that God appeared to Laban in a dream to warn him against harming Jacob, when Laban realized how far he had come he began to have doubts about the wisdom of battling Jacob and his men, perhaps even some of the relatives he had gathered had expressed concern over fighting Jacob, who was also related to them.

    I mentioned that the household idols which Rachel had stolen will provide us another insight into why Abraham left his homeland, but there is actually a little bit of a clue in today’s passage as well. When Laban enters into a treaty with Jacob here he calls on the god of their grandfathers, while Jacob calls on the God of his father. The point being that for Laban, God was the god of his grandfather, with whom he had only a passing familiarity, but for Jacob, God was the god of his father, whom he had grown up revering. God is not Laban’s god and while He is not yet Jacob’s god, Jacob is moving in that direction. As Jacob is leaving the camp where he made his treaty with Laban, he meets angels and realizes that God was indeed there when Laban confronted him. Then the night before he meets Esau Jacob wrestled with an angel and became Israel. Israel means either “the one who fights with God” or “the one for whom God fights” (the literal translation is “God fights”, but I think the context makes my two meanings the intended meaning).

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 29-30.

    When Jacob arrived in the land where his uncle lived he spoke to some shepherds who were waiting by a well. They were waiting for all of the flocks to arrive before opening the well and starting to water the flocks. When Rachel arrived with Laban’s flocks, Jacob opened the well and watered them. The passage seems to imply that there were still more flocks due to arrive and that Jacob did not want Rachel to wait for them, although it is possible that what it is saying is that Jacob jumped the queue for Rachel and she got to water her flocks sooner than she would have otherwise. I doubt that this is important, but it strikes me every time I read the passage that the writer is telling us something beyond what he is explicitly writing. I just am not sure what that something is.

    Another thing which struck me today is that, after Jacob told Laban his story, Laban said that Jacob was really his own flesh and blood. One can argue about what Laban meant by that statement, or what it was in Jacob’s story that led him to say it, but I believe it is a reference to Jacob buying Esau’s birthright with a bowl of stew and tricking Isaac into giving him the blessing intended for Esau. If I am interpreting this correctly, Jacob was duly warned and should have been more alert for Laban substituting Leah for Rachel. However, I do not believe that Jacob was at all surprised by Laban taking all of the spotted and speckled goats and all of the black sheep out of the flocks he tended before beginning the deal whereby such sheep became Jacob’s. By the time Jacob made that deal I am quite confident he already had a plan whereby most of the newborn sheep and goats would be those which counted as his, even if none of the adults in his care were.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 26-28.

    The first thing which struck me in this passage was the comment about Isaac harvesting 100 times more grain than he planted one year. We think of Isaac as a nomadic shepherd, yet here we have it being recounted that he planted crops…and the harvest he got from those crops played a significant role in him being a wealthy man. Clearly Isaac was starting to put down roots. It was a short time after this that the ruler of the Philistines demanded that he move because he was becoming a threat to them. It took some time before Isaac was able to find a place far enough from the Philistines to settle again without conflict, but once he did they made a treaty with him.

    We get yet another hint about the differences between the Canaanites and the family of Abraham in today’s passage. We are told that Esau married two Hittite women and that they made life miserable for Isaac and Rebekah. We are given no hint as to what they did which made life miserable for them, just that it was bad enough to make a valid excuse for sending Jacob off to Rebekah’s family. Further telling is that when Esau learned that Jacob had been sent to their Uncle Laban to marry one of his daughters Esau married one of Ishmael’s daughters. All of this indicates that there was some significant cultural difference between Abraham’s family and the people living in the land of Canaan. Related to this whole mystery, at least in my mind, is Jacob’s reaction to his vision at Bethel. After seeing the vision, Jacob declares that if God will see him safely on his journey and home again that God will indeed be his god as if there were other gods to choose from.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 24-25.

    When it was time for Isaac to marry, Abraham emphatically did not want him to marry a Canaanite woman. Abraham asked his servant to return to his (Abraham’s) homeland and find a wife there among his relatives. The servant asked what he should do if the woman was unwilling to return to the land of Canaan, should he take Isaac to Abraham’s homeland? Abraham was even more emphatic that Isaac should on no account go to Abraham’s homeland. This exchange reminds me of the fact that Abraham’s father started out from his homeland heading for the land of Canaan. There was something about the culture of Abraham’s homeland that made him want Isaac’s wife to come from there, but did not want his son to go there. One further piece of the puzzle shows up in the response of Rebekah’s brother and father to the story Abraham’s servant told them explaining why he was there. They agreed to send Rebekah to be Isaac’s wife because they acknowledged that God had clearly directed Abraham’s servant to her. They clearly honored and worshiped the same God as Abraham, yet we know that years later when Jacob came to stay with Laban, the latter no longer worshiped God as his god.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 21-23.

    When we read the story of Abraham sending Hagar and Ishmael away we have a tendency to think of Ishmael as a young boy. However, this happened when Isaac was weaned, which means that Ishmael would have been at least 14 years old but probably 15. In other words, he was old enough to know better than to make fun of his baby brother (admittedly step-brother). This is just another example from the fallout from Sarah and Abraham not trusting that God would provide Abraham a son through Sarah.

    The part of this passage where Abraham takes Isaac with the intent to sacrifice him to God is one of the portions of the Bible most misunderstood by atheists. We know that child sacrifice was common among the peoples of the Land of Canaan. Since my experience of God speaking to me often involves things said by the people around me and the circumstances I find myself in, I have no problem with thinking that the same thing happened here. I can easily see Abraham hearing, either directly or indirectly, the people around him questioning his worship of God because he “refused” to sacrifice his son Isaac. The other gods of the area demanded the sacrifice of children, surely if Abraham truly worshiped God he would not hold back his son.

As an aside, I want to note that there is a foreshadowing of the sacrifice of Jesus here as well.

I do however believe that the exchange between Abraham and Isaac actually took place. From that it seems to me that when Abraham saw the ram caught by its horns in a thicket as he was about to sacrifice Isaac, he realized that what he had told Isaac was prophetic. I also want to point out that, while I tend towards thinking that the words attributed to God in this passage were never spoken out loud (that instead they represent Abraham’s interpretation of events going on around him, and perhaps the internal dialogue he was having with himself), I would not try to convince anyone that such was the case. So, we have Abraham struggling with the idea of sacrificing Isaac as he stands over Isaac preparing to sacrifice him as he has become convinced by his neighbors is the correct thing to do, but not really believing it in his heart, when he looks up and sees a ram caught by its horns in the thicket nearby. He remembers his throw away comment to Isaac as they traveled to this remote location, “God will provide,” and realizes that what he felt in his heart was correct and that God had provided. The lesson from this passage is thus: Abraham’s love of God was sufficient that he was willing to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice, but God did not desire such a sacrifice.
    The message here is that God desires us to not sacrifice our children in service to Him. The first lesson was to the people of Israel who lived among those who believed in and practices child sacrifice: it is NEVER God’s will that we sacrifice children to Him, and any god which demands such sacrifice is evil, not worthy of worship. There is a further lesson for those who are called to ministry today. They should not sacrifice the well-being of their marriage or their children to their service to God. Does your ministry have you too busy to go to your child’s sporting event? Unless this is the exception rather than the rule, you have your priorities wrong. Does your child have to misbehave to get your attention? You have your priorities wrong. I could go on, but I think parents will get my point. I will make one final point. The more important you are in the Church, the more important it is that you put aside your duties to the Church to make time for your children.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 19-20.

    When the angels came Sodom to see if the city was indeed as wicked as reported, Lot insisted that they spend the night in his house. They told him that they had intended to spend the night in the city square, something it was apparently common for travelers to do at the time, but Lot insisted. I noticed something interesting today when I was reading this passage. When the men of the city came to Lot’s door and demanded that Lot turn his guests out so that they could rape them, Lot asked them not to do such a wicked thing. There is reason to believe that, in Lot’s eyes, the wickedness these men wished to perpetrate was the violation of hospitality. They wished to inflict violence upon men who had been offered hospitality in their city. The response to Lot from the men of the city is interesting, to paraphrase, they said, “Who are you to judge us?” Notice that it was not enough for them that Lot look the other way when they violated hospitality by attacking men who stayed the night in the city square. He did not impose his sense of right and wrong on them there, but now they were declaring that his wish to defend men to whom he had extended hospitality was an offense against them. It was not enough that Lot did not interfere with their disregard for what he considered common decency in the public square, they wished him to allow them to turn out his own guests for them to abuse. I suspect that this may represent the sin which led to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. It was not enough that Lot did not come out and condemn their violation of the code of hospitality which he believed in. They demanded that he not uphold that standard in his own home.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 16-18.

    When Sarai was 75 years old she gave up on having a child, yet she wanted Abram to have a son. So, she gave Abram her slave, Hagar, to be his wife. As one could expect, this went badly. When Hagar became pregnant she started to treat Sarai with contempt. Sarai blamed Abram, who told her that Hagar was her slave so she could do as she pleased to her. Sarai then mistreated Hagar such that Hagar ran away. God appeared to Hagar and told her to return to Sarai, where Hagar’s and Abram’s son Ishmael was born. Despite the mistakes they made, mistakes which stemmed from their inability to trust God, both Abram and Sarai are held up to us as exemplars of faith.

    Thirteen years later, when Abram was 99 and Sarai was 89, God came to Abram once more. At this time, God told Abram that his name would be Abraham and Sarai’s name would be Sarah. Furthermore, Gold told Abraham that Sarah would bear him a son, who would be the father of kings. Abraham laughed to himself at the thought of having a son when he was 100 and Sarah was 90 (the ages they would be would be by the time a child conceived then would be born) and asked God to honor His promise through Ishmael. God rejected the idea that Sarah was too old to bear children, but promised to make Ishmael the father of twelve rulers (just as Jacob/Israel was the father of the twelve tribal patriarchs). If Sarah could bear a son at age 90, none of us should consider ourselves too old for whatever task God calls us.

    I usually refrain from writing the same point about a passage which I know I have written previously. However, I think the point about the negotiations between Abraham and God over the number of righteous people necessary to save Sodom and Gomorrah is worth going over again. Whenever I read this I am reminded of when Jesus compared the Kingdom of Heaven to yeast. It only takes a small number of righteous people to transform a society of wicked people into something acceptable to God.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 12-15.

    Today’s passage continues with God calling Abram to continue the journey which he had begun with his father. At God’s calling Abram once more set out for Canaan. Abram traveled to the Negev, which is largely suitable only for nomadic herders even today. It is worth noting that while Abram was in the Negev a famine came on the region similar to the one which would later send Jacob and his sons to Egypt…and this famine sends Abram there. I will not write much about Abram’s stay in Egypt except to note that he was afraid that the Egyptians would kill him in order to take his over 65 year old wife. Something those of you who think an older woman cannot be beautiful should keep in mind.

    I am always struck by the story of Abram rescuing Lot. First the backstory. Kedorlaomer, king of Elam, had been collecting tribute from Sodom and Gomorrah and several other cities for 12 years when they decided to stop paying. After a year of what I assume to be negotiations, but was perhaps just Kedorlaomer gathering his allies, Kedorlaomer loots the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, enslaving some of the people. Among those enslaved is Lot. When Abram receives word that his nephew has been taken as a spoil of war, he gathers his men and his allies and sets out after him. Now, Kedorlaomer and his allies each had the might of a city-state to draw upon. Abram and his allies did not. Nevertheless Abraham is able to defeat Kedorlaomer and retrieve the people and goods which had been looted from Sodom and Gomorrah. Or to put it another way, Abram was a “power” in the regional geopolitical circumstances of his day. This is something we need to keep in mind as we read the rest of the Book of Genesis.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 8-11.

    As I was reading today’s passage I was struck with what God told Noah after Noah offered a sacrifice for surviving the flood; “I will never again curse the ground because of the human race,…” I remember seeing this before and I remember thinking about its meaning. However, what struck me today was the thought, “How does this apply to pollution?” Or perhaps, “Does this apply to pollution?” I do not have an answer to that question, but I will note that it seems like every time when it has seemed like pollution has turned some place into a wasteland, it takes less time to undo it than anyone postulated. Even if that statement does apply to pollution that does NOT make it OK to pollute, because the end of that sentence is, “…even though everything they think or imagine is bent toward evil from childhood.” I would look at that and interpret it to mean that anything we do which results in something which can reasonably be interpreted as “cursing the ground” qualifies as evil.

    Generally, we think of the story of the People of Israel as starting with Abraham, but that is not correct. The story of the People of Israel starts with Terah, Abraham’s father. We are never told why Terah left the city of Ur. We know that he left Ur after the death of his son Haran and that he set out for the land of Canaan. But Terah never got to Canaan. He stopped in the city of Haran. I have long thought that if the Book of Genesis is to any degree factual, the stories about what happened before this point in the book needed to be passed down to Abraham from his father (and from Abraham to his sons). Is it possible that Terah left Ur because his son Haran was killed for telling the story of the Flood which conflicted with the official version as presented in the Epic of Gilgamesh? It has long been postulated that, because of the similarities between the story of The Flood and the Epic of Gilgamesh, the story of The Flood derives from the Epic of Gilgamesh. I have always wondered why we assume that the biblical account derives from the non-biblical rather than the other way around. I understand that the earliest records we have of the Epic of Gilgamesh are older than the earliest records we have of Genesis. However, those early records of Gilgamesh were on stone tablets, which survive the ravages of time better than any scroll. On the other hand, Abraham and his sons, grandsons, and great grandsons, were nomads. Which means that, if they had written their account down, they would likely have done so on something lighter, and more transportable, than stone. Even if they had written it on stone, they would have been unlikely to have left broken fragments of it where archeologists are likely to find it.