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 36-38.

I have noticed this before and generally avoid addressing it, but I decided today that I should do so.  Most people don’t even notice it.  Back in chapter 32 after Jacob resolved things with Laban he sent messengers to Esau in Seir. In today’s passage, we are told that Esau moved away from Jacob and settled in Seir because the land of Canaan could not support the flocks of both Jacob and Esau.  I am mentioning this apparent contradiction because I think we need to pay attention to such things, even though I don’t have an explanation I like.  This passage tells us that one of Esau’s wives was Oholibamah, the daughter of Anah and granddaughter of Zibeon.  A little later it lists the sons of Seir the Horite, and tells us that they were chiefs among the Horites.  Two of those sons of Seir were Anah and Zibeon.  So, it is possible that Esau was living with his in-laws when Jacob returned but was expected to return to Canaan at some future time and only made his residence permanent in Seir after Jacob’s return.  I want to note that there are references to things which the writer was familiar with but of which we no longer have any knowledge.  I sometimes wonder if God had chapter 36 placed here so that at some point in time archeological evidence of some of these people would provide corroboration  of Genesis.

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.

The story picks up with Jacob living in Canaan and Joseph being seventeen.  I have always assumed that it takes place after Dinah’s rape at Shechem.  However, there is no reason to believe that is necessarily the case.  Joseph was Jacob’s favorite son, by a longshot, and a tattletale.  The passage tells us that his brothers hated him for that, more for being Jacob’s favorite than the tattletale part.  As is often the case with young men (and young women), Joseph’s attempt to gain his brothers’ acceptance backfired.  The only thing that is not clear to me about the situation is what “tone” did Joseph use to tell his brothers about his dreams.  On the one hand, he may have told his brothers, “You should treat me with more respect.  In my dreams I foresee that one day you will bow down and serve me.”  On the other hand, he may have said, ” I had this really weird dream.  We were all binding sheaves in the field when my sheaf stood up and yours all gathered around and bowed down.  That’s really weird, what do you think it means?”  Whichever way Joseph meant to present it, his brothers took it the first way and hated him even more as a result.  Understanding that Joseph’s brothers hated Joseph for what his father, their father, did rather than because of anything he did is important to understanding what changed between this passage and when Joseph interacts with them in Egypt.

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.

Ordinarily, my eyes glaze over when I read genealogies such as those in this passage.  However, today as I read over them some things caught my eye.  I am not sure that any of these things will change my understanding of Scripture, but they do reveal some aspects of biblical history which I never thought about before and make me wonder about what those who composed this passage knew that we no longer have any record of.  First, I noticed that Amalek was the son of Esau by his concubine, Timna.  Amalek was the forefather of the Amalekites, whom the Israelites fought later (this is interesting because before today, I thought all of Esau’s descendants were Edomites, members of the nation of Edom).  A little later in these genealogies we learn that Timna was the sister of one of the Horite chieftains who lived in the area where Esau settled.  Which led me to do a little searching to discover who the Horites were.  I found that the Hebrew word translated as “Horite” means “cave dweller”.  I also found that some translators think that Horite was not meant to indicate a nation of people, but merely that these people lived in caves.  To me the passage seems to say that Esau and his descendants became integrated with those who had been living in this region in much the same way that Shechem had tried to make happen with Jacob’s family after he had raped Jacob’s daughter (although Esau’s descendants came to rule this area, which was not what Shechem had in mind).  The other thing of interest I found in these genealogies was that the first listed king of Edom was the “son of Beor”, which makes me wonder if this Beor is the same Beor who was the father of Balaam who was called on to curse the Children of Israel in the Book of Exodus.  If so, this would lead me to interesting thoughts about the worship of God among the Edomites.

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 have never understood why this passage contains the genealogy of Edom’s kings.  Today it occurred to me that this might provide information which can be checked against archeological finds.  So, I did a little looking and discovered that, until the late 1990s, the consensus in the field of archeology was that Edom did not exist as a kingdom this early in history.  However, recent finds indicate that there was indeed a kingdom there at the time these kings would have ruled.  Which makes this yet another example where archeologists and historians were convinced that a civilization mentioned in the Bible never actually existed, only to have discoveries confirm that the Biblical account was more accurate than they had wanted to believe.

For a long time I thought that Joseph was a spoiled brat in the account of his behavior before his brothers sold him into slavery, that his brothers’ animosity towards him was partly his fault.  But as I have re-read the passage over the years I have come to the conclusion that he genuinely did not understand that his dreams suggested he thought he would rule over his brothers and father.  The other thing I find interesting is that Joseph’s brothers were pasturing their flocks in the vicinity of Shechem, where a few years earlier they had killed most, if not all, of the men of the town, and Jacob sent his favorite son there without an escort.

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

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 36-38.

As I read today’s passage I cannot help but think about a curiosity.  Abraham’s father, Terah, left his family and set off on his own.  Abraham did the same.  Yes, Abraham brought his orphaned nephew Lot with him, but once Lot reached full maturity he went his own way.  Abraham sent his sons by his concubines away, leaving Isaac as the sole member of his family to take over.  Isaac’s sons, Esau and Jacob, each went their own way.  But Jacob’s sons stayed together and became a nation (as did Esau’s sons).  I can’t help but wonder what changed with Jacob’s sons that led to them staying together.  Perhaps they stayed together out of fear of reprisals for what they did in Shechem to get revenge for the rape of their sister Dinah.

In the story about Joseph being sold into slavery we have examples of two different styles of taking charge.  The way Reuben did things and the way Judah did things.  Reuben recognized that what his brothers wanted to do to Joseph was wrong, but he was unwilling to challenge them on it.  So, he used his force of personality as the eldest to get them to do something reversible, planning to seek back later and do just that.  Judah, on the other hand, recognized his brothers’ discomfort with killing Joseph (which he probably shared) and convinced them to get rid of the “problem” another way.  And in a way, Joseph was a problem for the sons of Jacob.  He was Jacob’s favorite and spoiled.  Joseph was too young to rule over his brothers in the household.  Yet, Jacob would likely have tried to make that happen.  Since God had other plans, it all worked out.