Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 45-47.

I was going to only touch something which comes later, but I wanted to touch on how Jacob answered Pharaoh asked him, “How many are the days of the years of your life?”  Jacob answered by saying that he had sojourned for 130 years and that was only a short and bitter time.  A sojourn is a time away from one’s real home.  Jacob was saying that his time on this earth was a mere sojourn from his true life, to which he would return when his time on this earth was over.  Let us remember that our time on this earth is only a sojourn, a short time away from our true home with God.

Now to the thing which first struck me in today’s passage.  I have thought about this before but have avoided writing about it for various reasons.  At the end of the passage it talks about how Joseph sold the food back to the people of Egypt and gives us an important lesson about relying on the government.  The food which Joseph has in the storehouses was collected from the people of Egypt by the government of Egypt during the years of plenty as a supply for the coming years of famine.  However, when the years of famine came, Joseph, as the leader of the Egyptian government, did not give that food back to the people.  Instead he made them pay for it.  When they ran out of money, he took their livestock in payment.  Once he, as the representative of Pharaoh, the head of government. had their livestock, he made them sell him their land, and themselves into slavery.  The lesson being that if we rely on the government to provide for our needs, they will, eventually, demand that we enslave ourselves to the government.  I will also note that Joseph’s family, his father, his brothers and their descendants, all profited during this time as well.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 42-44.

In yesterday’s passage it said that Reuben encouraged his brothers to throw Joseph into a pit rather than kill him outright.  In today’s passage, when the other brothers attributed what Joseph (although they did not know he was Joseph) was doing to them as God’s judgement on them for what they had done to Joseph, Reuben claimed to have tried to convince them not to harm Joseph.  There must be at least a little truth to what Reuben says here, because his brothers did not call him out for saying it.  On the other hand, I suspect that, while Reuben may have initially tried to talk his brothers out of killing Joseph, he also suggested putting Joseph into the pit as a way to kill him without getting blood on their hands.  However, the key point is that all eleven of the brothers took responsibility for “killing” Joseph (as they thought he was dead).  They knew that they had done wrong, and regretted it.

I also want to look at the difference between Reuben’s promise of safety for Benjamin, which Jacob rejected, and Judah’s, which Jacob accepted.  Reuben offered his sons’ lives as surety for Benjamin’s safe return, while Judah took personal responsibility for ensuring it.  I want to be clear that I believe the main difference for Jacob accepting Judah’s guarantee was time.  Enough time passed after Reuben’s guarantee until Judah’s that things had become more desperate.  However, Reuben offered something he valued, his sons, for Jacob to destroy if Benjamin did not return safely.  Judah offered his personal honor.  Judah offered that he would bear the blame forever if harm were to come to Benjamin.  The difference was that Reuben offered an exchange: if Benjamin came to harm, Jacob could take the lives of Reuben’s two sons, two lives in exchange for one life.   I believe that from Reuben’s perspective he was offering to allow Jacob to cause him the same suffering that Jacob would feel if harm came to Benjamin, but that’s not what it felt like to Jacob.* Judah offered responsibility, he would bear the burden of breaking his father’s heart for the rest of his life.

*In fact, I think Reuben offered both of his sons as compensation for both Benjamin and Joseph (although he could not say the latter).

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 39-41.

I know that we say this a lot about Joseph, but I don’t think we can say it too much.  Joseph went from being his father’s favorite son to being a slave in a foreign land.  Yet, when his master’s wife threw herself at him, his response was, “How can I sin against God by accepting your offer?”  His concern was not betraying his master who had entrusted him with so much.  His concern was not with getting caught.  His concern was sinning against God, who had allowed him to be sold into slavery.  Then when he was unjustly thrown into prison because she lied about him, he did not give into self-pity.  Instead, he worked to serve God.  Then, when two of Pharaoh’s officials were in prison with him and had troubling dreams, he told them that God could interpret those dreams for them.  Even after the cupbearer was freed, Joseph languished in prison for two more years before the cupbearer brought him to the Pharaoh’s attention.  And even then he gave credit to God for interpreting the Pharaoh’s dream.  Finally, he made no effort to use his interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream to gain power.  Through all of his trials, Joseph remained dedicated to serving God.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 36-38.

I am not quite sure how this is going to come together.  There were a few things about today’s passage which I wanted to comment about, but I’m not sure how, or even if, they fit together.  Today’s passage says that Esau went into a land away from his brother Jacob because their possessions were too great for them to dwell together.  That land was Seir.  Yet, yesterday’s passage said that Esau was already living in Seir when Jacob returned from Paddan-aram.  I have seen commentaries which suggest that in yesterday’s passage Esau was in Seir as part of his nomadic moving his herds around and he only made it permanent after Jacob’s return.  I am hesitant to accept that resolution for this apparent contradiction.  However, I do believe that if we properly understand these two references we will discover that there is not a contradiction.

Next I want to write a few things about how Reuben responded to his brothers wanting to kill Joseph.  Reuben tried to save Joseph from his other brothers, but was not willing to call them out for wanting to kill their younger brother.  So, he suggested that rather than get blood on their hands by outright killing him, they throw him in a pit and let him starve to death.  No, Reuben did not outright say that last part, but it was understood.  Perhaps the brothers understood that throwing Joseph in the pit would allow them to change their minds later, pull him out, and send him home.  However, since Reuben did not come out and SAY that they shouldn’t kill Joseph, Judah later came up with the idea of selling Joseph into slavery.  This allowed the brothers to emotionally distance themselves one step further from killing their brother.  When Reuben came back, all his plans for saving Joseph were for naught.  Reuben was right for stopping his brothers from killing Joseph outright, but he should have confronted them with the wickedness of their plan.  We should also notice that it was Judah who came up with the idea of selling Joseph and we will want to think about what changes led to his later behavior.

Which brings me to the last account in today’s passage.  In the account of Judah and Tamar the first thing I noticed was that Judah thought Tamar was a prostitute because she had covered her face with a veil.  That makes me think about those cultures which insist that women cover their faces to avoid “tempting” men.  How do we reconcile that with a culture in which men “identified” someone as a prostitute because she covered her face?  Just a thought which makes we wonder about the cultural origins of women concealing their faces when in public.  From this same account I want to ask whether perhaps Judah’s first response to learning of Tamar’s pregnancy influenced his later behaviors.  Judah initially wanted her burned to death for her immorality.  When he learned that he was the father of her children (she was pregnant with twins), he realized that he had failed in his moral obligations worse than she had.  He had sex with a prostitute (or, so he thought) who was doing so as part of worship to an idol (again, so he thought), while she had sex with the father of her dead husbands, a man who had been supposed to marry her to his remaining son in order to provide for her, and to produce heirs for his dead sons.  I suspect that the way in which he had failed Tamar brought home to Judah his moral failings and brought about a true repentance and transformation.

I use 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 was recently listening to a video discussion about the age of marriage for women in the Old Testament.  In doing so they talked about different Hebrew words for girl, young woman, virgin, etc..  One of the words they talked about was “yaldah”.  They said this referred to a girl who was old enough to have some independence, but not yet old enough to be married (they said typically 8 years old to 12 years old).   The reason I bring this up is that they also said that “yaldah” was one of the words used in this passage to describe Dinah.  I could not find any supporting evidence for this claim when I looked it up today.  All of the references I could find said that “yaldah” refers to a girl/young woman of close to, or early marriageable age.  The sources I found put Dinah’s age at 14-16.  If the claim from that video I watches is correct. it puts a completely different understanding on what happened to Dinah, and to her brothers’ response to it.  I had always thought of Dinah as being 16-20 when Shechem raped her.  From that perspective, her brothers’ response was understandable, but seems a bit more about them being disrespected than about concern for their sister.  On the other hand, if Dinah was only 14, or even younger, then what Shechem did to her was reprehensible, and the fact that the people of the town found it acceptable makes them reprehensible.  It puts into context what God said to Abraham in chapter fifteen about the sins of the Amorites not yet being complete.

I find it interesting that it is after the incident at Shechem, when Jacob goes to Bethel and gets his entire family to dedicate themselves to the God of Abraham and Isaac to the exclusion of all other gods, that the writer tells us that God came and officially changed his name from Jacob to Israel.  Before that the name change was given to Jacob by a “man” about whose identity the writer is ambiguous.  God here confirms the name change given to Jacob.  He has striven once more with man (this time through the actions of his sons) and won.  Jacob is not a deceiver, he is one who strives with God.  I want to note that does not mean strives against God.

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

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

The first thing I want to comment on is that the passage said that Jacob tricked Laban by taking his wives and flocks and heading for Canaan while Laban was with his sons shearing his sheep.  I want to make note that sheep shearing was a time of celebration which would have kept Laban and his people busy for a few days.  So, we understand that Jacob almost certainly chose that time to flee on purpose.  When we see how Laban reacted when he learned that Jacob had fled we should understand why Jacob did so when Laban would be distracted.  Laban gathered his kinsmen (who were likely with him for the sheep shearing celebration) to pursue Jacob.  Laban did not bring all of his relatives with him in order to bid farewell to his daughters and grandsons.  However, I don’t really view what Jacob did to Laban as a trick.  What I really wanted to focus on was the account of the “man” with whom Jacob wrestled before he met with Esau.  We generally say that the “man” was God or an angel of God.  Jacob certainly seems to believe that to be the case.  The passage itself does not say that.  Reading that part of the passage and trying to decide if the writer was trying to tell us that the “man” was God, or if he was an angel, or if the writer was saying that he did not know who it was that Jacob wrestled that night, made me notice something about Jacob’s name change to Israel.  The name Jacob meant “heel-catcher” and was a euphemism for a cheater.  The fact that his name was a euphemism for cheater has colored the way we think about Jacob in the passages about him.  However, if we think about what Jacob did from the perspective of the new name which he was given, we can see them a bit differently.  The “man” who gave Jacob the name Israel says that he does so because Jacob strove against God and man.  Jacob strove against Esau and he strove against Laban.  As I was reading the stories about Jacob this year, I saw them less as Jacob tricking people into doing things which benefited him and more as him striving to make his way in the world when others had the upper hand over him.  Jacob did not give in to depression when things went against him.  He trusted in God, dug down into his soul, and tried harder.

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

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

We think of Jacob as the trickster, but it was his mother, Rebekah, who plotted out how he would steal Esau’s blessing and it was Laban, Rebekah’s brother, who twice violated the spirit of the agreements which he made with Jacob.  Yes, Jacob carried out his mother’s deception, but the deception was not his idea.  Even the case where he got Esau to trade his birthright for a bowl of stew was not deceptive.  The other thing I find interesting is that Laban deceptively dealt with Jacob, even though he begged Jacob to stay because God had blessed him because of Jacob.  The thing is that Jacob did not get down when Laban essentially cheated him after agreeing to his idea for his wages.  Jacob just went to work to maximize his profits.  I want to look at what the agreement was.  Jacob proposed, and Laban agreed, that all of the speckled, spotted sheep, the black lambs, and the speckled and spotted goats in the flocks which Jacob was tending would be Jacob’s.  Laban promptly went out and removed all of those animals from the flocks which Jacob would be tending and sent them to the flocks being tended by Laban’s sons.   Jacob did not complain because Laban had cheated him.  He did not descend into depression because ‘the deck was stacked against him’.  He just went to work to make the most of the hand he was dealt.

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

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

I think that perhaps we do not pay enough attention to Esau’s poor choices for his first two wives.  They represent the same sort of poor decision making which led him to sell his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of stew.  It says here that Esau’s wives made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah.  The NIV translates that as “They were a source of grief for Isaac and Rebekah.”  In either case, Esau’s wives made life miserable for his parents. This was not just a matter of them not liking his wives.  What made me go down this path was that as I read this passage I began to wonder what made Rebekah choose to trick her husband into giving his blessing to Jacob.  Yes, in yesterday’s passage it said that Isaac loved Esau because he ate of the game which Esau killed when he went hunting, and that Rebekah loved Jacob, but that does seem like enough for Rebekah to go to this much effort to steal Isaac’s blessing for Jacob.  No, I think Esau’s wives were the reason that Rebekah chose to conspire with Jacob to steal the blessing.  I think that it never occurred to Esau that his wives had caused a problem with his father until after Isaac sent Jacob to Paddan-aram.  Perhaps he was aware that his mother did not like his wives, but I don’t think it ever crossed his mind that that was a problem.  Of course, Esau’s wives also did not see how their behavior negatively impacted Esau’s relationship with his family, or, perhaps they thought it did not matter.  It never occurred to any one of the three of them that they needed to care what Isaac and Rebekah thought about their relationship or how they acted.  While this example gives us an example of the sorts of problems which arise when we do not think about how our actions, and the actions of those we choose to love, will impact our relations with our families, the same thing holds true with our other relationships as well.  We should think carefully about our various relationships will impact our other relationships, especially when we decide on who we will marry (but not just who we marry).  I want to also note that I think Esau would have been better off trying to get his wives to act differently in regard to his parents rather than trying to fix the problem by marrying a third woman.

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

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

One thing that struck me during this time reading through the accounts of Ishmael and Isaac is that despite Ishmael being given reasons to resent Isaac, he appears to have been on good terms with him by the time Abraham died.  Back in chapter 17, God gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision at the same time as He told Abraham that Isaac would be born the following year.  Ishmael was thirteen years old when Abraham circumcised him.  It seems that there is a good chance that Ishmael would have known about the connection between being circumcised, which was surely a painful procedure, and the birth of Isaac.  Many thirteen year old’s would have resented their younger half-brother for that.  Later, when Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael away, Ishmael would have surely known it was because Sarah viewed him as a threat to her son Isaac.  Again many young men would have resented their younger half-brother for that.  Yet, when Abraham died, Ishmael stood by Isaac as they together buried their father.  And we know from later on that there were some continued relations between Isaac and Ishmael because when Esau realized that his parents did not like his first two wives, he tried to fix that by marrying Ishmael’s daughter.  Esau would not have done that if there were not some goodwill between Isaac and Ishmael.

I have never really given much thought to Esau’s side of the relationship between Jacob and Esau.  I often think about the fact that God said that He favored Jacob before they were born, but that’s not exactly what God says here.  God told Rebekah that her older son would serve his younger brother.  (Yes, later, in Malachi, God said “I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated.” But that doesn’t change what I am writing here).  Here we see that Esau had no real thought for his future.  He came back from the field when Jacob was cooking.  Esau was hungry and casually sold his birthright for a meal.  As the eldest son of Jacob, Esau’s birthright was a double portion of his father’s wealth when his father passed it on to his sons (typically upon the father’s death).  But it’s more than just the wealth, it is also a double portion of his father’s legacy.  It should have been Esau through whom God’s blessing to Abraham and Isaac should have come, but here he sold that to Jacob for a bowl of stew.

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

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

I always find the account of Hagar and Ishmael being sent away by Abraham interesting.  Reading it out of context makes it seem like Ishmael was a young boy at the time, but, if we read it in context, Ishmael was at least sixteen when this happened.  We know that Ishmael was fourteen when Isaac was born and this account took place when Isaac was weaned, which would have happened when Isaac was between two and five years old.  This completely destroys the idea that children were considered adult at younger ages than today.  Having said that I want to look at one other aspect of this story.  Sarah had felt that Hagar held her in contempt, which had led to Hagar running away in yesterday’s passage.  Only to have God tell her to return and submit to Sarah.  Now, Sarah felt that Ishmael mocked Isaac and would bully him, so she told Abraham to send Hagar and the boy away (I want to note that I am not saying that Sarah was wrong in either case, just that it was her perception of the sleight which led to her actions).  Abraham was hesitant to send Ishmael and Hagar away, but God told him that He would care for the two of them and be with them.  Abraham sent Ishmael and Hagar away at Sarah’s request in order to maintain peace in his household.  God confirmed to him that he was doing the right thing.  Then God provided for Hagar and Ishmael.

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