January 8, 2022 Bible Study — Insights Into Abraham’s Family

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

We have two stories here where there is a subtext about what is going on that I do not think we entirely understand.  Usually, when I write about such things it is because I have had an insight giving me thoughts about what that subtext means.  Today I am writing about it because there are elements to this subtext I never noticed before, but I have no idea what the writer is hinting at.  So, we have the stories of Abraham’s servant finding Rebekah to be Isaac’s wife and the story of Esau selling his birthright to Jacob.  When Abraham’s servant wants to be on his way to take Rebekah back to Isaac, her mother and her brother try to convince him to stay for 10 days, but he insists on leaving immediately.  What I find interesting about this exchange is that it seems to contain elements similar to the negotiations Abraham had when he bought the land for Sarah’s burial.  Actually, the first part of this which I thought seemed to indicate the writer saying something I could not quite make out was when Rebekah answered the question about whose daughter she was by listing her grandfather and grandmother.  Then in the story of Esau and Jacob the writer concludes it by saying that Esau despised his birthright in a way which seems to imply more than just that.  All of this says something about the meaning of family, but I am not sure what.

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