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.

Jacob was afraid that Esau had brought his small army (Esau had more men with him than Abraham had used to rescue Lot) in order to exact revenge on him for stealing Isaac’s blessing.  However, it seems to me that Esau brought this force in order to protect his brother from Laban, although Esau may have also been bringing that many men in order to demonstrate the level of protection he could offer Jacob.  In any case, I always find the negotiation between the brothers in this passage interesting.  Esau invites Jacob to join his household and Jacob declines diplomatically.  If Jacob had joined Esau, he would have been subordinate to Esau, but Esau would have provided protection to Jacob and his family.  Jacob chose independence over safety.

The story of Dinah and Schechem give us evidence of what joining with Esau would have given Jacob and his family.  It also gives us an insight into how wealthy Jacob and his family were.  The men of Schechem were willing to be circumcised as a way to add Jacob and his family to their nation.  If Jacob had joined Esau, the son of Schechem’s ruler would never have dared rape Dinah, and when his sons extracted revenge, he would not have feared to surrounding peoples.  However, it is this incident which finally inspired Jacob to make God, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, his God.  It was only at this point that Jacob gave up the worship of any other gods and made his household do the same.

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.

There are several things in this passage I want to comment on, but I don’t see a connection between them.  So, I am going to start writing about them and see where this goes.  When Jacob decided to leave Laban he called Rachel and Leah to join him in the fields away from Laban’s household.  It was only after they joined him that he told them what he intended.  Yet, Rachel must have had some idea of what he intended.  Otherwise, why did she steal her father’s household gods?  As he explained his decision to leave, Jacob connected the guidance to that which gave him the insight to build his flock…and he credited both of those to God.  Jacob mentions the vow he had made to God at Bethel.  I read this as Jacob telling his wives (and perhaps his children) that this return would commit him, and them, to worshiping God and following His commands.

I find the references to God in the discussion between Laban and Jacob interesting.  Laban first refers to the One who warned him not to harm Jacob as “the God of your father.”  A little further in, Jacob refers to the One who aided him against Laban’s deceit as “the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac.” Then when they took the oath not to make war on each other, Laban called on “he God of Abraham and the God of Nahor, the God of their father” to witness their oath.  Meanwhile Jacob took the oath in the name of “the Fear of Isaac.”  Both recognized God as having the power to enforce their oath, but neither acknowledged God as their 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 29-30.

Reading this passage today, I wanted to look at part of it that I have often wondered about, but never really thought through.  When Jacob suggested that the shepherds should water the sheep and take them back to the pasture, they told him that they needed to wait for all of the sheep to be gathered and the stone to be rolled away.  Yet, as soon as Rachel arrived with Laban’s sheep, Jacob rolled the stone away and watered Laban’s sheep.  So, was Rachel the last of the shepherds to arrive with their flocks?  In which case, why didn’t someone other than Jacob roll the stone away from the well?  Or, did Jacob roll the stone away in order to water Laban’s sheep in violation of protocol?   In either case, we can conclude that Jacob rolled the stone away and watered Laban’s sheep in order to impress his cute cousin.  Another thing which is unstated, but apparent, is that Jacob and Rachel spent the time it took to water the sheep to talk, and probably to flirt.

It is really worth the time to look at the relationship between Jacob, Leah, Rachel, and their two handmaids which they sent to Jacob’s bed, but I will leave that to you.  I want to talk about how old Jacob and Rachel (and by inference Leah) were in this passage.  We do not really know how old they were.  What we do know is that Laban was Rebekah’s brother and was more or less running the household when Abraham’s servant showed up looking for a wife for Isaac. So, Laban was probably younger than Isaac, but older than Rebekah.  I wrote all of that and realized it does not really lead us to any firm conclusions, except that Rachel was almost certainly not a young girl any longer by the time she married Jacob.  Actually, when combined with the fact that Rachel was herding some of Laban’s sheep when Jacob arrived, it leads me to believe that Jacob was not exaggerating when he told Laban that Laban had little when Jacob first arrived.  Now, about Jacob’s age, we do not know how old he was either, but we have a little more information on that.  There are those who conclude that Jacob was 84 when he married Rachel.  This is based on working back from when Jacob went to Egypt, but I believe that involves making assumptions which those who wrote this would question.  What we do know is that Jacob went to Laban’s some significant number of years after Esau got married.  Esau was 40 years old when he got married, and, since Jacob was his twin brother, Jacob would also have been 40 at that point.  Personally, I would guess that Jacob was about 60 when he went to Laban’s.

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.

When Jacob, pretending to be Esau, brought the dish to Isaac, Isaac asked him how he was able to find it so quickly.  Jacob replied that “The Lord, your God, gave me success.”  Jacob does not at this point consider the Lord to be his own God, merely the God of his father.  Later, when he had a vision of a stairway to Heaven, he vows that if God brings him safely back to his father’s house, then the Lord would be his God.  This is a process that each of us must go through at some point.  We must transition from the Lord being someone else’s God to being our God.  If we are lucky, that someone else is one or both of our parents.  However, if the Lord was our parents’ God, sometimes we think that He just automatically becomes ours, but we must each choose Him, just as Jacob chose Him.

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.

In previous years I have written about how Abraham wanted Isaac to marry a woman from his home country. from among his relatives.  Yet, under no circumstances did he want Isaac to return there.  If a woman from there could not be found to come to the Land of Canaan to marry Isaac, then Isaac would be free to marry a Canaanite.  However, this year I want to write about how God provides and confirms His will to us.  Abraham believed that God wished for his son, Isaac, to marry a woman from among his relatives (I wonder what impact how Ishmael, whose mother was an Egyptian, turned out had on this).  So, Abraham had his servant vow to go and find Isaac a wife from among them.  When Abraham’s servant got to the land where Abraham’s relatives lived, he did not know how to find the right woman for Isaac.  So, he laid out a fleece (which is an interesting expression to use here, since it would be many hundreds of years after this story when the event from which that expression comes occurred).  Abraham and his servant believed that they understood what God wanted, but they laid things out so that God could confirm their decisions.  This sort of confirmation from God that we are following His will is not just for great men of God like Abraham.  When my wife and I were planning our wedding, we had picked out a date, but because of events beyond our control we had delayed booking a hall for the reception until just a few months before that date.  Then we decided we wanted to hold the reception in a hall which had deep meaning for her family.  When we approached the hall owner and said, “We would like to have our reception here.”  He responded, “Well, I have no open Saturdays for the next two years.  Except for this one Saturday.”  Which was exactly the day we wished to schedule it.   My immediate thought was that one day down the road there would be a time when we wondered if we did the right thing by getting married.  This was God giving us the answer to that.

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.

Every year when I come to the story of Hagar and Ishmael being sent away by Abraham, I have to remind myself that by this point Ishmael was a young man.  I have an image of Ishmael as a toddler being carried into the wilderness by his mother.  However, we know he was older than that.  Ishmael was fourteen when Isaac was born and this is at least a year after that and probably more.  When Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael away, Ishmael was old enough to try to take care of himself rather than just crying about the unfairness of life.

I do not want to make much of it, but I see a contrast with how Isaac acted when Abraham took him to offer him as a sacrifice.   While Ishmael had been a passive participant in his exile, Isaac noticed that they did not have a sacrifice and asked his father about it.  However, what I find more interesting is when the angel tells Abraham not to sacrifice the boy.  The angel refers to Isaac as Abraham’s only son in a way which foreshadows Jesus as God’s only son.  Abraham heading into the wilderness to sacrifice Isaac was recognition that something more was needed, but God stopped Abraham because Isaac was not that something more, that needed to wait for Jesus to be that sacrifice.  While I believe the focus of this story is to let us know that God does not want us to sacrifice our children to Him, it also foreshadows His sacrifice of His Son for our salvation.

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. I have decided to switch from suing the New Living Translation to using the New International Version because, all in all, I prefer the NIV.

I struggled with what to write about this passage until I was skimming it for the umpteenth time and I read this in isolation, “This fellow came here as a foreigner, and now he wants to play the judge!”  I knew right where that was in the story, so I understood the context.  Lot was trying to convince the men of Sodom not to rape his visitors and their response was essentially, “Who are you to judge us?”  He was an outsider among them, even though it was because of Lot that they, or their parents, had not been enslaved when Sodom had been plundered some years back (Abram had gone after those who had plundered Sodom and taken many of its people as slaves because Lot was one of them).  In many ways, this was THE sin of Sodom.  Sodom was not destroyed because of what these men wanted to do to strangers.  It was destroyed because the men of Sodom were going to turn on their neighbor for standing up for those strangers.

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. I have decided to switch from suing the New Living Translation to using the New International Version because, all in all, I prefer the NIV.

Abram was 99 years old when God changed his name to Abraham, and he became circumcised.  I am not entirely sure of the significance of that, but it really struck me this morning as I read this passage.  The passage also tells us that Ishmael was 13 years old at the time.  This means that Abraham was circumcised not less than 14 years after it was said about him that he believed God and God credited it to him as righteousness, a point which Paul makes in his letters. Abraham was not righteous because of his actions (being circumcised), he was circumcised because he was righteous.  And, no, that does not mean that we should be circumcised today.

I was struck by a thought about Abraham’s intercession with God for Sodom and Gomorrah.  I have always assumed that Abraham did so because his nephew Lot lived there.  Yet, I realized today that the passage does not mention that Abraham thought about his nephew.  No, God told Abraham that He was going to bring judgement upon those cities and Abraham immediately begged God not to do so if there were as few as fifty righteous people there.  Abraham continued to intercede with God on behalf of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah until God agreed that He would not destroy those cities if He found as few as 10 righteous people there.  I do not believe that Abraham interceded with God for Sodom and Gomorrah because Lot lived there.  I believe that he interceded (prayed) for Sodom and Gomorrah because he cared about the suffering they would experience when God brought His judgement against them.  I believe that this passage provides two lessons for us to follow. First, we should pray for those upon whom we see God’s judgement is about to fall.  Second, we should strive to live as one of “the ten” whose righteousness will cause God to withhold His judgement upon those among whom we live.

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. I have decided to switch from suing the New Living Translation to using the New International Version because, all in all, I prefer the NIV.

As I was reading today’s passage I started to wonder why the detailed description of the kings allied on either side of the battle which led to the capture of Lot and of the geopolitics which led to that battle.  Those listening to the story around the time it was first written down would not have known who any of these kings were, and would have barely known anything about the cities involved.  Then it struck me, this detail is evidence that the account is about an actual historical event.  Yes, by the time this story was written down many of those who were mentioned had been lost in the mists of time, and it is possible that at some point one or two of those mentioned had been substituted for those who were actually there due to someone’s flawed memory, but those telling it were not just telling a story, they were recounting an event which had actually happened.  As I think about this further, the account about Melchizedek’s encounter with Abraham suggests to me that Abraham had an ongoing relationship with Melchizedek.  Nothing particularly noteworthy, merely that they had friendly encounters from time to time, which were never important enough to mention in the stories about Abraham.

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. I have decided to switch from suing the New Living Translation to using the New International Version because, all in all, I prefer the NIV.

When I commented yesterday on the passage which says that Noah walked faithfully with God, I really thought I was going to spend more time on Noah’s drunken incident today.  I will merely make note of the fact that the Bible tells us both that Noah walked faithfully with God, and that, on at least one occasion, he got so drunk he was unaware of his surroundings.  However, today I want to look at God’s reaction when Noah made an offering to Him after leaving the Ark.  God’s reaction was that never again would He destroy all living creatures, that as long as the earth shall endure seed-time and harvest will never cease.  This passage is why I have never gotten terribly frightened by the various environmental scares which have come along.  This does not mean that I do not believe that we should be environmentally responsible, just that I do not believe we need to fear that the irresponsibility of others will destroy the earth.  God has not given mankind the ability to destroy the earth.  Seed-time and harvest will continue until God replaces this earth with a new earth (as we read He will do in the passages a few days ago).  There may be years like “The Year Without a Summer” but they will pass and seed-time and harvest will resume.