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

Whenever I read today’s passage I am struck by God’s promise to Noah and his sons.  Actually, I am struck by what the passage tells us about God’s reaction to the offerings which Noah made after releasing the animals from the ark.

As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.

This should act as a counter to those theories which arise regularly declaring that if we do not change the way we behave mankind will destroy all life on the planet, or perhaps they declare that the earth will become uninhabitable for humans.  In either case, God’s promise here to Himself, along with His  promise to Noah and his sons, should reassure us that such fears are mistaken.  The day will come when God will bring an end to this earth, but until that day seedtime and harvest will never cease.  That does not mean that we should act in ways which pollute this earth or otherwise damage the environment.  It just means that we should not allow anyone to convince us that doom is pending, whether that doom is nuclear winter, hole in the ozone layer, global warming, or any other potential doom.  God has promised that He will allow nothing to interfere with the cycle of life until that day when He brings about the end of this earth.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 4-7.

As I was reading the account of Cain and Abel, two things struck me.  The first being that God did not reject Cain’s offering.  God looked on Abel’s offering with favor, but did not do so on Cain’s.  As I read this, Cain did not sin until he took Abel out into the field and killed him.  God’s message to Cain after the offerings was that his anger and jealousy were baseless.  Cain had not been rejected, he could choose to follow his brother’s example and gain God’s favor.  Rather than do the hard work needed to gain favor, Cain chose to eliminate his brother.  I think that it is worth noting that it seems that gaining God’s favor would not really have been harder work than Cain was already doing.  He just would have needed to take special note in selecting his offering to God rather than choosing it almost as an afterthought.  Cain allowed his anger to rule over him, thus giving in to sin.  We should seek to rule over our anger and the sin which seeks to rule us, or we too shall be devoured by our sin.  If Cain had done what was right going forward from this moment, he would have gained God’s favor.  Instead, he gave in to his anger and to sin, and was ruled over by it.  If we do what is right, we will overcome sin.  Fill your time doing what is right, and you will gain God’s favor.  Fail to fill your time with doing what is right, and sin will rule over you.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 1-3.

Happy New Year

As I was reading today’s passage it occurred to me that most mythologies contain a “tree of life”.  In those other mythologies it often takes on much greater significance than it does in Judaism and Christianity.  The presence of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden places the central idea of those other religions inside the bounds of the creation story.  The tree of life, the world tree, was in the Garden of Eden.  Perhaps, the presence of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is meant to indicate that the “Tree” from those other religions had a bad side to it as well.  God told Adam that he was not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil or he would die.  At least one element of this prohibition is that if we cannot do evil if we do not know what it is.  I want to take a moment to highlight that the full name of this tree is important.  It is neither the “Tree of Knowledge” as some shorten it.  Nor is it the “Tree of Good and Evil”.  It is the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil”.  So, the sin of Adam and Eve was not obtaining knowledge in general, nor did they obtain good and evil from the tree.  Rather, by eating of the tree they learned what was good and what was evil.  Only when we know what evil is are we able to do evil.  It is only when we perceive that we may benefit from harming others that we will choose to harm others.

The other thing which I wanted to write about today was the way Adam and Eve responded when God confronted them about what they had done.  When God asked Adam if he had eaten from the tree he was told not to eat from, Adam did not take responsibility for his actions.  Adam said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”  So, while he is directly blaming Eve, he is really blaming God.  When God turned to Eve, she also refused to take responsibility for her actions.  Eve blamed the serpent for deceiving her.  This was the first evil which they did.  Adam could have said, “Yes, I ate of the tree you commanded me not t o eat.  I made a mistake, please forgive me.”  He could have taken responsibility for what he had done.  I am not saying that things would have turned out differently if Adam and/or Eve had taken responsibility for what they had done, just that trying to shift the blame for their actions to someone else was the first thing which they did which they knew was wrong.  While it was wrong to violate God’s command not to eat of the tree, until they ate from the tree they did not know it was wrong.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 48-50.

Despite what Joseph had said when he revealed himself to his brothers they feared that he would seek revenge on them after their father passed away.  So, they sent a message to him claiming that their father had left a last message asking Joseph to forgive his brothers.  I think we learn a lot about Joseph from his reaction to that message: he wept.  He was broken hearted that they still feared him, even after he had reassured them that he saw God’s hand in the actions for which they still felt guilt.  Really, it teaches us an important lesson about forgiveness.  In a way, Joseph never forgave his brothers, because he did not think they had done something for which they needed forgiveness.  Yes, they had acted in a way which caused him suffering, but God had used that suffering to build Joseph up and to put him into a place to save his family.  We should strive to see our lives in a similar manner.  Instead of seeing others doing us wrong, let us see how God uses our trials and troubles to bring good things into our lives.

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

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

When Joseph revealed himself to his brothers, his first thought was to reassure them that they should forgive themselves for what they had done to him.  Joseph stresses that God used what they intended for evil to bring good.  This statement by Joseph is consistent with how he behaved when things went wrong in his life.  In fact, Joseph lived his life, and was telling his brothers, and us, according to the principle which Paul laid out in Romans 8:28:

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Or, to put it another way, this story communicates the same message which Paul relates in the New Testament.  No matter how bad things may seem for us today, or even tomorrow and the day after, God has a plan which will lead to better things for us and those we love, if we will just put our faith in Him and act today according to the commands He has given us.  Joseph was able to so readily forgive his brothers because he never allowed himself to succumb to bitterness over the “bad” things which happened to him.

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.

Two days ago, I mentioned that seeing how Joseph’s brothers reacted to him though no fault of his own was important to seeing what had changed between then and when they interacted with him when he was ruler, under Pharaoh, over Egypt.  Today we see how they acted at that later time.  So, previously, Joseph’s brothers hated him because they were jealous of the fact that he was their father’s favorite son.  This time, they acted to protect Benjamin because he was their younger brother and their father’s favorite son.  The way in which Jacob showed his preference for Benjamin over his other sons is just as extreme as what he did for Joseph.  He chose to consider his son Simeon lost to him rather than risk sending Benjamin to Egypt to gain Simeon’s release.  Nevertheless, Judah, the brother who proposed selling Joseph into slavery, offered himself into slavery to save Benjamin.

I want to take notice of one other thing.  Reuben tried to convince Jacob to let them take their brother Benjamin with them to Egypt with by offering the lives of his two sons should he fail to bring Benjamin back from Egypt, but Jacob would not relent.  It was only later when Judah offered to be responsible for Benjamin’s return that Jacob relented.  I cannot tell if the difference in Jacob’s reaction was because Judah took personal responsibility for Benjamin’s safety while Reuben offered Jacob revenge or because time had passed and Jacob was more desperate.

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.

First I want to take note that it was thirteen years from when Joseph started this sequence of events and when he entered into Pharoah’s service as the second most powerful man in Egypt.  I am not sure there what significance that has, but those recording the events thought it was important to note that he was 17 years old when the events began and that he was 30 years old when he entered Pharoah’s service.  Let’s follow what happens to Joseph from when he was 17.  I am going to guess that Joseph was no more than 18 when his brothers turned him over to the slaver traders who took him into Egypt and sold him there.  Which means he would have probably been between 20 to 25 years old when Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce him (I would guess he was closer to 20 than to 25).  He then spends several years in prison before providing a dream interpretation to Pharoah’s cupbearer when he was 28.  Now let’s track Joseph’s life up to this point.  At 17, his wealthy father used him as his right hand to manage his assets, sending him to check that his older brothers were managing their father’s goods properly.  His brothers betrayed him, made it clear they were thinking of killing him until one of them convinced the rest to sell him into slavery.  As a slave, things couldn’t get much worse, but Joseph keeps his head up and is soon running his master’s household.  Then his master’s wife tries to seduce him and when he will not give in, accuses him of rape.  He is sent to prison, which is a worse place then when he entered slavery.  But, he continues to keep his head up, maintains his faith in God, and rises to a position of some respect.  I want to note that even though he made the best of his circumstances each step was worse than the one before.  From his father’s right hand man to chief slave of a wealthy man to managing the prisoners, as a prisoner, in a jail.  He gets an opportunity to do a favor for a man with the ear of the ruler of the kingdom, but nothing comes of it (or so it seems).  When he finally comes before the Pharoah, he says that he cannot do as Pharoah asks, but that God can.  Despite things going wrong for him repeatedly, Joseph never let himself become mired in despair.  Each time he found himself in a worse situation he merely did the best he could in the circumstances in which he found himself., trusting God to take care of him.

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 33-35.

One of the aspects of the story about what happened in Shechem to Jacob’s daughter Dinah is that we get no idea about Dinah’s feelings in the situation.  Would she have liked to marry Shechem?  Would she have been receptive to his pursuit if he had not chosen to force her?  What was her life like after this?  All we know about her after this is that she accompanied the rest of Jacob’s family when they went to Egypt.  Another aspect of the story is that it was Simeon and Levi who put the men of Shechem to the sword after they circumcised themselves.  The passage mentions that they were Dinah’s brothers as if that explains why they, and none of Jacob’s other sons, took revenge on the men of Shechem for Dinah’s defilement.  Even if you consider that Dinah was Leah’s daughter, and so full sister to Simeon and Levi, Leah had four other sons, who would also have been full brothers to Dinah.  Now I can easily understand why Issachar and Zebulun were left out of this.  They were much younger than Simeon and Levi, but the description of their births suggests that Reuben was only a little older than Simeon, and Judah about the same amount younger than Levi (I would guess that the four were each born about a year apart).  So, why didn’t Reuben and Judah take part in avenging their sister?  I don’t know the answer to that, but I will note that it was Reuben and Judah who later took leadership roles among the brothers concerning Joseph (both when the brothers betrayed him and later when they encountered him 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 31-32.

My first thought reading this was, “Why did Rachel steal her father’s household gods?”  I spent some time thinking about that and trying to come up with something to write about that question and its answer.  However, as I thought about it some more it struck me that this account of Rachel stealing Laban’s household gods conflicts with the idea that the Book of Genesis was composed in the eighth century BC (or even that it was composed in the ninth or tenth century BC…note that in BC higher number centuries come before lower numbered centuries).  Further, the fact that this passage records that Rachel stole Laban’s household gods suggests that the story being told here reflects actual events.  As we read the story here, its primary message is about how God looked out for Jacob, protected, and blessed him.  Why would someone, who believes that there is only one God, making up a story to tell that message include that his favored wife stole her father’s idols?

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