GENESIS

In Genesis Moses gives Israel a Biblical worldview: a powerful revelation of God’s character and the history of the origins of the world, humans, evil, nations and especially the nation of Israel.

Moses writes Genesis as the first of his five books (called Pentateuch) probably during Israel’s forty years in the wilderness. In the Pentateuch, which is a description of both historical events as well as the Law of God, Moses is repeatedly mentioned to be ‘writing everything down’. The later Biblical writings of both Old and New Testament and Jesus himself refer to the Pentateuch as ‘the books of Moses’, thus establishing him as the author.

Moses’ second book describes Israel being freed by God’s powerful hand from bondage in Egypt. Israel at this time is a people belonging together by their common ancestry, but with little idea of God nor their nation’s beginning, calling and history. Moses writes Genesis to give Israel that story, thus building Israel’s national identity.

The importance of Genesis cannot be overstated in laying down the framework for understanding God, ourselves and the world around us. Moses describes how God created the physical world and called it good. He created humans in his image and gives them leadership over creation, commanding them to farm and develop their surroundings. God is the powerful Creator, the joyful Maker, the empowering God, the God who seeks fellowship with humans (Ge 1-2). Adam and Eve disbelieve, reject and disobey God, the first sin, which results in a separation from God, shame, fear and broken relationships with fellow humans and creation (Ge 3).

Humans in rebellion to God quickly deteriorate and murder, violence, polygamy and wholesale evil engulf the world (Ge 4-6). God decides to judge the earth, cleanse it by a massive flood and give it a new start with one family, though sin and rebellion continue after that (Ge 7-11).

Then God makes a new beginning by calling one man, Abraham, and revealing himself to him. Moses dedicates about three quarters of Genesis to describing Israel’s calling and the first four patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. Moses describes God’s call to Abraham, to leave his homeland, family and religion behind and follow God to a new land, life and faith (Ge 12:1). God gives Abraham the promise of becoming a great nation, of receiving a great name and possessing the land of Canaan. God promises Abraham his blessing, and gives him the role of being a blessing to all the families of the earth (Ge 12:2-3, Ge 13:15). To Abram and Sarai, as a barren couple of high age, mere sojourners in Canaan, these promises must have sounded as remote as great. Yet Abraham believes God and this faith is reckoned to him as righteousness (Ge 15:6). God enters a covenant with Abraham to communicate his commitment to keep the promises (Ge 15). Later circumcision of all males is instituted by God as an outward sign of this covenant (Ge 17).

Since many years pass without the longed for child, Abraham and Sarah embark on a self-ordained strategy to get the needed child: Abraham takes the Egyptian slave Hagar as a second wife. She promptly delivers a son, Ishmael, and equally promptly the tensions arise (Ge 16). God will not have his promise through human effort or a polygamy (Ge 16:18-19) but gives the promised son, Isaac, as a miracle birth at high age to the original wife Sarah (Ge 21:1-7).

Isaac carries on like Abraham in faith, obedience and prayer for his barren wife Rebekah, who after twenty years gives birth to Esau and Jacob (Ge 25:19-26). The pattern of lying started by Abraham (Ge 12:10-20, Ge 20) and continued by Isaac (Ge 26:6-11) is continued with Jacob. He cheats his older brother Esau out of the right of the firstborn and father Isaac’s blessing. Jacob flees, meets God and spends twenty years with his uncle Laban, who in turn cheats him. When Jacob finally leaves to return to Canaan, he has four wives and eleven children. He reconciles with Esau, but continues as a sojourner in Canaan (Ge 33-35). His favorite son Joseph is sold as a slave by his own brothers to Egypt, where through much hardship he rises to high honor. God uses him to save Egypt, the surrounding nations and his own family from a seven year famine. Jacob’s entire family relocates as honored guests to Egypt’s Goshen (Ge 37-50).

Authorship and Pass down

Moses writes Genesis as the first of his five books (called Pentateuch) probably during Israel’s forty years in the wilderness. In the Pentateuch, which is a description of both historical events as well as the Law of God, Moses is repeatedly mentioned to be writing (Ex 17:14, 24:4, 34:27, Nu 33:2, De 31:9). At the very end of his life Moses is described as ‘writing down in a book the words of this law to the very end’ (De 31:24). This book of the law is carefully stored beside the ark of the covenant (De 31:25) and Moses ensures the continued pass-down of this document by instructing regular public reading of it to all of Israel, great and small (De 31:10-33).

The later Biblical writings the Old Testament continually refer to the Pentateuch, including Genesis as ‘the Law of Moses’ or the ‘Books of Moses’, thus confirming Moses as the author (Jo 1:7-8, 1 Ki 2:3, 2 Ki 14:6, De 9:11-13, Ez 6:18, Ne 13:1, Ma 4:4). In the same way the New Testament authors and also Jesus himself refer to the Law or quote from the Law identifying Moses as the author (Mt 8:4, 22:24, Mk 1:44, 12:26, Lu 16:29-31, Jn 1:17, 7:19, Ac 3:22, 26:22, Ro 10:19, 1 Co 9:9, 2 Co 3:15).

What were Moses sources for writing Genesis?

Since Genesis is describing events centuries before Moses lived, the question arises how Moses received the information that is the basis of this writing. It seems that he used oral traditions and genealogies handed down in the Abrahamic family. Possibly he used older written sources (though nothing was ever found). If the ages of the early humans and the Patriarchs are tabulated, it becomes clear that there was great overlap in their life-spans. Adam was still alive when Noah’s father was born. Noah was still alive when Abraham was in his fifties. Thus a seamless pass down of the stories and accurate information is not unreasonable to assume. Whatever exactly his sources were, Moses wrote by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit a text that has stood for millenia.

Who does Moses write Genesis to and why?

Moses’ second book (Exodus) describes Israel being freed by God’s powerful hand from bondage in Egypt. Israel at this time is an enslaved people belonging together by their common ancestry, but with little idea of God nor their nation’s beginning, calling and history. They have seen God’s powerful hand with their own eyes as witnesses to the plagues of Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea. They are now (for years!) traveling in circles in the wilderness. How did they ever end up in Egypt? Who is this God that acted on their behalf? What is the story of Abraham and the patriarchs? Where is this hope of a promised land coming from? Will it come true? How does God want Israel to live and respond?

Moses writes Genesis to give Israel its history. He writes to build Israel’s national identity, to assure them of the promises that rest on them, to challenge them to respond to this high calling in faith and obedience.

With Genesis Moses also explains to them the on the ground reality of the many peoples and nations they will soon encounter. Who are the peoples they will meet on their journey? How are they related to them? Who should they respect? Who are the nations that God will remove before them and why have they lost their right to the land?

Moses writes to the Israel of his day, but he also clearly has future generations of Israelites in mind. This important history and calling, the very Word and promises of God must be understood by every generation. Moses writes to ensure that, and at the end of his life he sets up a system of regular public reading and ongoing teaching of the Law (De 31:9-13).

When and where from was Genesis written?

In 1 Ki 6:1, when referring to Solomon starting to build the temple, a reference to the Exodus from Egypt is given: ‘In the four hundred eightieth year after the Israelites came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, he began to build the house of the LORD.‘ Since Solomon’s reign can be accurately dated to 971 BC, the construction starts around 966 BC, and so the Exodus is in 1446 BC. Moses is born 1526 BC, he is eighty at the time of the Exodus and dies aged 120 years in 1406 BC after leading Israel during the 40 years in the wilderness. Genesis, and the entire Pentateuch, was thus written in this time span, 1446-1406 BC, during the wilderness years.

A basic Biblical Worldview

Truly the importance of Genesis cannot be overstated in laying down the framework for understanding God, ourselves and the world around us. Genesis lays all the foundations: It lays down the character of God, the goodness of creation, the value of animals, the sanctity of human life, the mandate for humans in this world, the value of work and the celebration of growth, multiplication, diversification and spreading of human communities. Genesis tells of a good world gone bad, it explains the origins of evil and what plagues this world. It paints a realistic picture of what wrong choices lead to, as well as right ones.

Genesis describes how God calls a man, then a family, endows them with a promise of blessing and a charge to be a blessing. It follows that family, and God’s dealings with that family, through high and low points. Now this family has turned into a people, a people that God has just spectacularly saved and freed from bondage and that he is about to build up from scratch as a nation under God.

An overview of Genesis

The first part of the book (Ge 1-11) describes the origins of the cosmos, humans, nations and evil. It has four major events: the creation (Ge 1-2), the fall (Ge 3-5), the flood (Ge 6-9) and the creation of nations (Ge 10-11). the second part of the book (Ge 12-50) describes the four patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph.

The Creation

Moses describes in simple prose how God created and ordered heaven and earth, and all that is in it. It is by the power of his mere spoken word, identified by John as Jesus himself (Jn 1:1) that everything is made.

God first creates the room for things to live in, sky, sea and land, and then populates them with plants, birds, fish and land animals. God provides for all living things and blesses them to multiply according to kind. Life, growth, development, differentiation and diversity is affirmed. Measurable time has started and history is moving forward.

All of God’s creation is his handiwork and reflects him, but only humans, created on the sixth day, are made in his image. Humans, man and woman together are given a high calling of stewardship over God’s world. Other worldviews hold that the physical world was created unintentionally, as an accident or even as a punishment. In contrast Genesis affirms God’s design, care and joy over creation. Creation’s essential goodness is affirmed by God repeatedly evaluating his work: ‘and indeed, it was very good’.

Humans are created in the image of God as two genders and are made for relationship. Humans in good relationship are the highest revelation of the Trinity in whose image they are made. Mutuality, equality, blessing and a common calling and authority over the world are theirs. God sets them in a lavish garden and seeks fellowship with them.

God affirms human relationship in marriage and endows the new family with authority and higher priority than the old ‘therefore a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife’ (Ge 2:24).

Human’s are indeed God-like in that they have been given authority over themselves and real freedom to act.

The Origin of Evil

In Ge 3:1 Satan appears in the form of a snake, lying and deceiving. Where did he come from? If everything was created good, where does an evil being come from? Did God create evil? Or is Satan uncreated? But wouldn’t that make him a God-like being?

The Bible’s answer by implication is that God alone is uncreated, that everything he created was good, that he also created two species with power to choose as he himself has power to choose: spirit beings (angels) and humans. Freedom of choice is a good thing, but it essentially entails that evil can be chosen. It seems then that some spirit beings chose evil (self-exaltation, pride, denial of God as God) and now seek to spread their rebellion (Ge 3:1, 3:4-5).

The one forbidden tree comes into focus, expressing minimally human’s power to choose. Though they have only seen God’s goodness so far, they choose to mistrust God’s character and rather ensure for themselves the one thing that seems to be withheld, eating the fruit of the forbidden tree (Ge 3:6).

The consequences are immediate: they find themselves with the powerful emotions of fear and shame. Shame means that their relationship with themselves is broken: they no longer are at peace, at ease with themselves. The subsequent need to hide, to cover and to pretend is immediate. Their relationship with God is also broken (spiritual death), now they fear God’s approach and no longer dare to come forward.

Their relationship with each other is also broken, for upon God’s inquiry they blame each other to supposedly save their own skin, selfishness starts its reign. They also blame Satan, the circumstances and ultimately God, all of which amounts to the same, but leads them away from the one thing that is needed: acknowledging guilt, taking responsibility, asking forgiveness.

A fourth relationship is also broken, that with creation, though it will take some time to show: hard labor for survival, a hostile environment and the certainty of physical death will now be their constant challenge.

For all this they only gained themselves a partial increase in knowledge: they now know guilt, shame, fear, alienation, distance, loss and frustration. In many ways their knowledge has decreased: they hide and pretend before an all-knowing God; they evade the one thing that would really help: repentance. It’s not those who sin who know the destructive power of sin best, it is those who suffer for other people’s sin. Jesus, himself sinless, knew most about sin.

All these effects are just the beginning of a long descent into more and more godlessness: their broken relationship with self will start off the spiral of shame, fear, inferiority, frustration, depression, mental illness, self harm, suicidal thoughts and the like. Their broken relationship with God will start off the spiral of spiritual homelessness, increasing confusion, vain philosophies, deception, sinfulness, idolatry, depravity and the like. Their broken relationship with each other will start the spiral of tension, conflict, selfishness, blame, carelessness, negligence, abandonment, jealousy, competition, control, domination, hatred, oppression, violence and the like. Their broken relationship with nature will start of the spiral of menial labor, frustration, infertility, lack, sickness, drought, famine and the like.

Before they have even acknowledged their guilt, God in his mercy gives the promise of redemption: one day one of their descendants will crush the Serpent’s head, though he himself will also be bitten by the snake (Ge 3:15). This is the first Messianic prophecy in the Bible and it will be fulfilled by Jesus, the Savior who will undergo suffering to ensue this victory. Also God providing clothes from animal skins for them is a powerful picture: only blood can cover sin.

The downward spiral

Quickly things escalate into a first murder (though God tries to prevent it, Ge 4:1-16), a first polygamy and escalating violence in retribution (Ge 4:23-24), and eventually wholesale, willful evil and total anarchy (Ge 6:5,11). At the point where to let things run as they are becomes more evil than to stop them, God decides on a devastating flood, a cleansing and a re-start with one family, the best one he can find. Noah, though not perfect, responds to God’s command in obedience and builds an ark to save mankind and animals. His hundred year ark construction is a warning to all who want to hear, but no-one repents. A flood engulfs the earth and takes over a year to subside again. God gives a promise of never using a flood again and gives to the 4 couples saved a calling like to Adam and Eve: to be fruitful and multiply again (Ge 8:22-9:1). God’s joy at multiplication and diversification of human communities and the formation of new peoples is documented in Ge 10, the world’s oldest record of the relationship between peoples and their eventual spread into new areas.

Soon humans want to prevent this: ‘Let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth’. This prideful and probably idolatrous attempt at building a centralized culture and government is the opposite temptation: before the flood it was anarchy, now they attempt tyranny. God wants neither one, he would rather have smaller self-governing nations.

The origin of the nation Israel

God makes a new beginning by calling one man, Abraham, and revealing himself to him. Moses dedicates almost three quarters of Genesis to describing the beginning of the nation of Israel, its calling, the promise God spoke to it, the lives of the first four patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph.

Abraham, the first patriarch

God calls one man, Abraham, of the line of Shem, from the southern city of Ur in Chaldea. Ur was a center of the moon God Nanna’s worship and also Abraham most likely grew up with this idolatrous background. It seems already his father Terah heard God’s call to go to Canaan (Ge 11:31), for he starts moving his family that direction, but only gets half way, to Haran. Abraham, having heard God’s call himself, obeys in leaving family and religion behind and follow God to a new land, life and faith (Ge 12:1).

God gives Abraham the promise of becoming a great nation, of receiving a great name, of being the recipient of God’s blessing and of becoming a blessing to all the families of the earth (Ge 12:2-3). A bit later God adds the promise of inheriting the land of Canaan (Ge 12:7). To Abraham and Sarah, as a barren couple of high age, mere sojourners in Canaan, these promises must have sounded as great as remote. Yet they obey the call and even when years pass, with God’s continual encouragement they manage to hold on to this faith: ‘And he believed the LORD, and the LORD reckoned it to him as reckoned it to him as righteousness‘ (Ge 15:6). Paul quotes this verse with great emphasis in Gal 3:6 and Ro 4:3, showing that the basis for God’s acceptance is precisely that faith.

God enters into a promissory, unilateral covenant (Ge 15:12-21). The outward sign of this covenant, instituted several years later, is male circumcision (Ge 17).

Since many years pass without the longed for child, Abraham and Sarah embark on a self-ordained strategy to get the needed child: Abraham takes the Egyptian slave Hagar as a second wife. She promptly delivers a son, Ishmael, and equally promptly the tensions arise (Ge 16). God will not have his promise come through human effort or a polygamy (Ge 16:18-19) but eventually gives the promised son (Isaac) as a miracle birth at high age to the original wife Sarah (Ge 21:1-7).

Not surprisingly tension arises between the two children and their two mothers. God supports Sarah’s demand that Hagar and the (approximately) eighteen year old Ishmael leave the clan and sustains them in the wilderness (Ge 21:8-21). Ishmael, as promised by God is blessed and becomes the father of twelve princes and a mighty nation (Ge 25:12-18), from whom today’s Arabs trace their descent.

At a pivotal moment God demands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and with him all hope for a fulfillment of

the promises spoken. Abraham travels to the place indicated (the land of Moriah) and manages to obey God’s command. God save the boy and himself provides ‘the lamb for a burnt offering’, a picture for the death of Jesus (Mount Moriah is associated with Jerusalem, 2 Chr 3:1), God the Father providing his Son as the true burnt offering.

Patriarch Isaac – Continuation of the promise

God gives Isaac the same promise as Abraham (Ge 26:1-5) and Isaac carries on like his father in faith and obedience. He marries Rebekah, a grand-daughter of his uncle Nahor. Rebekah is barren and Isaac sticks to praying for her without resorting to a ‘polygamy strategy’ like his parents. After twenty years Rebekah gives birth to Esau and Jacob (Ge 25:19-26). The precarious pattern of lying about one’s wife for security reasons started by Abraham (Ge 12:10-20, Ge 20) is continued by Isaac (Ge 26:6-11), though each time God miraculously bails out the wife so treated (Sarah and Rebekah). God’s blessing on Isaac becomes so visible in growing wealth that the Philistine king Abimelech of the area he sojourns in asks him to leave. After some conflict over water sources, they make a covenant of peace (Ge 26).

Patriarch Jacob – Desirous, scheming and blessed

The other problem running in the family is favoritism: Isaac prefers his hunter first-born Esau, Rebekah prefers Jacob (Ge 25:27-28). Jacob first manages to catch his brother at a weak moment and buys his rights of a firstborn for a meal (Ge 25;29-34). Later at Rebekah’s command he deceives his blind father and thus obtains the blessing Isaac meant for Esau (Ge 27). He has to flee his brother’s presence and heads towards his mother Rebekah’s family in Paddan-Aram. On the way, when sleeping in Bethel, God meets Jacob in a dream. God gives Jacob the same promise as to Abraham and Isaac, adding that he will keep Jacob safe and bring him back to Canaan (Ge 28:10-17). Jacob is overwhelmed to receive by grace what he tried to obtain by scheming, but is still responding in his ingrained bargaining mode: ‘If God … will keep me and give me bread … then the LORD shall be my God‘ (Ge 28:18-22). He finds his uncle Laban’s family and falls in love with Laban’s daughter Rachel. He agrees to work as a shepherd of Laban’s flock for his younger daughter Rachel. When the day of the wedding comes, he is given Leah, the elder daughter. For the promise of another seven years of service, he is given Rachel as well. Scheming Jacob has met his match in his cheating uncle Laban and is thus forced into a polygamy. The sisters thus put in competition start a war over who has how many children, in the course of which two concubines are added and the number of children rises to eleven (Ge 30:1-24). Jacob wants to return to Canaan but ends up serving Laban another six years in which God by his blessing builds up a strong livestock for him (Ge 30:25-43). Tensions with Laban boil over. Jacob’s family flees but is overtaken by Laban. Again by God’s intervention a peace contract is made, which keeps Jacob’s back free as he now faces Canaan and has to meet his brother Esau (Ge 31). At this point of great conflict, fear and isolation God meets with Jacob, who wrestles with him and demands a blessing. God grants it and changes Jacob’s name to Israel, the schemer has now become one for whom God himself contends (Ge 32:22-32). To his utter relief Esau welcomes him warmly. They find out that in spite of the lop-sided blessing of their father both have been so blessed by God, that their livestock is too much to stay together. They separate in peace (Ge 33:1-17).

While camping at Shechem Jacob’s daughter Dinah is violated by the Shechemite leader’s son. Shechem’s leader confesses the wrong and seriously attempts restitution. Jacob’s sons Simeon and Levi deceitfully ask them for circumcision, but only to attack and kill the Shechemite men at the moment of their weakness. The deception running in Jacob’s family for three generation has thus escalated into unprecedented violence: they have deceitfully used the sacred symbol of circumcision to commit a genocide on the men of Shechem. The ensuing looting and taking of slaves just makes matters worse still (Ge 34). Jacob rightfully is in great fear of a backlash against his isolated sojourning family. God leads Jacob in a time of family repentance and re-commitment at Bethel (Ge 35:1-15), but his sons are callous enough to soon after move the herds back to Shechem. They are obviously in no fear or shame or conviction. It seems that it is this event, the descent of the chosen family into willful deception and brutal violence, that triggers the sentence God had announced much earlier about sending Israel into four hundred years of slavery (Ge 15:13). The very next major event happens again when they are close by Shechem: they are planning to kill their brother Joseph (for no other reason than jealousy) though they end up selling him into slavery instead. It is selling Joseph near Shechem that will set up the path fro them to go to Egypt.

Patriarch Joseph – finally a godly man

Joseph is the son of his father Jacob’s favorite wife Rachel. Jacob, not having learned from the havoc partiality created during his youth, openly prefers Joseph. Joseph is godly, and reports on his less godly older brothers. He also has grand dreams of everybody bowing down to him, all of which exacerbates the tension. His brothers, after first planning to kill him, end up selling him to Egypt as a slave (Ge 37).

Joseph manages to forgive his brothers, move beyond the resentment and work whole-heatedly wherever he is put. God is with him and he gains favor wherever he turns. When sorely tempted into adultery by his Lord’s wife, he refuses to lie or sin and is falsely charged and imprisoned in turn (Ge 39). In prison the exact sane thing happens again: he manages to forgive the recent injustice against him, moves beyond resentment and serves wholeheartedly, this time in the prison. When two officers of Pharaoh are imprisoned, Joseph – who has every reason to resent dreams – by God’s grace interprets their dreams correctly. The prisoners leave and Joseph is forgotten (Ge 40).

Only when Pharaoh himself has an urgent, threatening dream Joseph is remembered and brought in front of Pharaoh. With God’s help he interprets Pharaoh’s the dream and predicts a seven year season of plenty, followed by a seven year season of utter famine. A grateful Pharaoh promotes Joseph to second in command and puts him in charge of Egypt’s famine prevention plan (Ge 41).

When the famine strikes, Jacob’s sons go to Egypt to buy grain where they meet Joseph, though they don’t recognize him (Ge 42). Joseph threatens them and so manipulates the circumstances that the brothers are set up for a test: they only have to sacrifice their half-brother Benjamin, the other favorite of Jacob, to be free. The brothers, stricken by conscience refuse to abandon Benjamin. Upon seeing that Joseph reveals his identity (Ge 43-45). He invites the entire family to come to Egypt where he will provide for them during the famine. He says ‘Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people’ (Ge 50:20). One of Abraham’s family has indeed become a blessing to the nations.

Color Coding Suggestions

• Who God, persons, tribes, nations, kings …
• when, numbers
• where
• commands
• promises, predictions, warnings
• emotions
• contrasts, comparisons, connectives, conditions

Repeated Themes

• obedience, obey, do right, do good, right choices
• blessing, welfare
• sin, judgment, destruction, death
• rule, dominion, strength, power, war, battle
• sacrifice, offering, altar, tabernacle, temple

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Who wrote the book?

• Who wrote the Pentateuch, the ‘5 books of Moses’ (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy)?
• Both Jews and Christians have held Moses to be the author, hence the name ‘5 books of Moses’. In German the Pentateuch books are called 1st Moses, 2nd Moses, …

Evidence from the Pentateuch itself that Moses is recording events

• Ex 17:14                 Then the LORD said to Moses, Write this as a reminder in a book and recite it in the hearing of Joshua: I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.
• Ex 24:4                   And Moses wrote down all the words of the LORD.
• Ex 34:27                The LORD said to Moses: Write these words; in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.
• Nu 33:2                  Moses wrote down their starting points, stage by stage, by command of the LORD.
• De 31:9                  Then Moses wrote down this law, and gave it to the priests…and to all the elders of Israel.
• De 31:24                When Moses had finished writing down in a book the words of this law to the very end. See also De 31:19, 22, 32

Evidence from the OT

• Jos 1:7-8                  God refers to the Pentateuch as ‘the law that my servant Moses commanded you’
• 1 Ki 2:3, 2 Ki 14:6     Referring to the Pentateuch as the ‘Law of Moses’
• Dan 9:11-13             Referring to Deuteronomy as the ‘Law of Moses’
• Ezr 6:18                    Referring to Nu 3:6 and Nu 8:9 as the ‘Books of Moses’.
• Neh 13:1                  Referring to De 23:3-5 as the ‘Books of Moses’
• Mal 4:4                     Referring to Ex 20 as the ‘Teaching of Moses’

Evidence from the NT

• 1 Co 9:9                    Referring to De 25:4 as the ‘Law of Moses’
• Mk 12:26                 Referring to Ex 3:6 as the ‘Book of Moses’
• Lu 16:29-31, Ac 26;22, 2 Co 3:15 Referring to the Pentateuch by the metonymy ‘Moses’
• Jn 1:17, Jn 7:19      Referring to Exodus says ‘Moses gave the law’
• Mt 8:4                     Referring to Le 14:3-4, 14:10 as ‘Moses spoke the words of the Lord’
• Mt 22:24                Referring to De 25:4 as ‘Moses spoke the words of the Lord’
• Mk 1:44                  Referring to Lev 13:49-14:32 as ‘Moses spoke the words of the Lord’
• Ro 10:19                 Referring to De 32:31 says ‘Moses spoke the words of the Lord’
• Acts 3:22               Quoting De 18:15 says: ‘Moses said…’ … and many more

Moses recorded not just the laws, but also the events of his time in order for people to remember the things that God had done. Moses was well schooled (as he was raised in the Pharaoh’s family), well able to communicate and write.

Sources for Genesis?

• In Exodus to Deuteronomy is Moses reporting current events. But where did Moses know the information from that went into Genesis, a book covering many centuries before?
  • The source must have been oral traditions, memorized genealogies and stories, which Moses then gathered and recorded them.
  • God’s inspiration leading to Moses writing God’s infallible word.
  • Possibly earlier written sources. Ge 2:4, 5:1, 6:9 could be Moses copying in those earlier records.

To whom was Genesis written?

• Probably still the first and definitely the second generation of current Israel, and clearly also to future generations.

When was Genesis written?

• The date of Exodus an be reconstructed quite accurately. In 1 Ki 6:1 it says: ‘In the four hundred eightieth year after the Israelites came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, he began to build the house of the LORD.’
• 970 BC Solomon began to reign (his accession year being 971 BC). He starts building the temple in his fourth year, which is 967 BC. When added 480 years this yields 1446 BC as the year of the Exodus.
• Moses probably started writing almost immediately, and definitely finished it before his death in 1405 BC (after Israel’s 40 years of wandering). When within that time span he wrote Genesis is unknown.

From where was Genesis written?

• Is was written in the wilderness years, so anywhere from the borders of Egypt to the plains of Moab during the 40 years of the wandering.

Significance of Genesis for Israel?

• Genesis, as the book of the origins of mankind and Israel, is incredibly important as it lays down basic Biblical worldview, God’s character, the reason why anything and everything exists, the origin, purpose and calling of humans, the explanation of how evil started, the origins of nations, the identity, calling and history of Israel.
• Genesis gives the oppressed people of Israel their origin, identity, calling, purpose, covenant and history. Genesis is Israel’s past history (Bangladesh: ’71 freedom story), but also a reminder of their calling & future, the promises given to Abraham. Some promises are being fulfilled in their very generation.
• Genesis gives the story of Abraham, the revered patriarch and father of the Jewish race, from whom each Jew traces his family line: ‘sons of Abraham’.

Main Characters of Genesis?

• Noah, who is the most righteous in very sinful and depressing surroundings. He is acting on faith and clinging to God’s word, he becomes the main figure in a judgment, a washing clean, a new start. He also becomes the new ‘father of the nations’.
• Abraham is not faultless but clinging in faith to God’s undeserved but confirmed promises. We see that Abraham was obedient to God from the beginning. He had a relationship with God where he could speak to God and God spoke to him. Abraham was a righteous man, and God made many promises to him. Also, as a sign of the covenant that God made with Abraham as one set apart, he institutes circumcision. Abraham believed God, received a son of promise-Isaac, in his old age, and is the “patriarch” or founder of the nation of Israel.
• Isaac is less eye-catching but more obedient it seems, and continuing to cling to the promises. Isaac was the son that God had promised to Abraham and Sarah. He has twins with his wife Rebekah. The covenant that God made with Abraham now is confirmed to rest on Isaac.
• Jacob is a difficult character, but he is improving over the years. He is ambitious and struggles with ‘resting in God’s blessing’. He learns dependency on God. As Isaac the twin brothers Jacob and Esau were also “miracle-children” as their mother Rebekah had been barren. Jacob stole Esau’s birthright and blessing from Isaac. He ran away to save his skin and there found Rachel and married first her sister and then her. Jacob became the father of twelve sons, the 12 patriarchs of the tribes of Israel. God changes Jacob’s name to “Israel”. The covenant of Abraham was confirmed to pass on to him by God.
• Joseph is the most godly of the patriarchs, also clinging to promises, thought hey seem to get him into trouble. By faithfulness and service he rises to the second highest position in Egypt, saving many from famine. Joseph is Jacob’s eleventh son, the firstborn of Rachel. He is Jacob’s favorite son. He was sold into slavery into Egypt. He carried with him into Egypt the dreams that God had given him. Through Joseph and his eventual rise to power in Egypt, the nation of Israel was saved from starvation and death during a great famine.

Surrounding Nations?

• Egypt was the main one of the surrounding nations for Israel at this time. It was a neighbor to the land where Abraham and then his descendants lived. The children and descendants of Jacob went to Egypt to escape the effects of a terrible famine. This saved their lives. During the time in Egypt the nation of Israel grew in size and identity.

Israel’s spiritual life?

• Israel was only beginning to be established in Genesis. It seem that some of the key figures had a relationship with God. They spoke to Him and He spoke to them. They had the concept of Him as God and understood the need to obey His words. Israel did not yet have an existence as a nation, it was a clan only. However, the attitudes and actions of the people in this book were the building stones for the faith in God that their descendants would later have.

Literary Category?

• Mostly prose > literal interpretation.
• Some poetry (poems, speech of Lamech, blessings) > figurative interpretation: Ge 3:14-19; 4:23-24; 9:25-27; 14:19-20; 25:23; 27:27-29; 27:39-40; 49:2-27

Structure?

• Historical Narrative … Biographical in Ge 12-50.

Composition?

• Principality, about two thirds of Genesis deals with Abraham’s family
• Continuity Example: the days in Ge 1, also age and description of people in genealogies, death of persons mentioned by a formula.
• Genealogies

Main Ideas or Topics?

• Revelation of who God is: Creator, All-powerful, Lord of history, God of relationship, Covenant-making God
• Description of the creation and origin of all things: world, plants, animals, humans, gender, nations, language … and sin
• The origin of the nation of Israel: their identity, descent, history, calling and covenant … the example of the patriarchs
• God wants Israel to be his people, to be in relationship, to live up to their calling, to have faith, to obey

Main Reasons or Goals?

• So that current Israel, the second generation of Israel and future generations of Israel would know point 1, 2, 3 above and respond to God.

Structure of Genesis

• There are two main divisions:
  • 1st Division Ge 1-11 origins of the world, describing four main events: creation, fall, flood, Babylon
  • 2nd Division Ge 12-50 origins of Israel, describing four main persons: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph

GENESIS TEXT

GENESIS 1 CREATION OF THE WORLD

Genesis 1:1

• In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. This is a foundational sentence and needs to be looked at very carefully:
• In Hebrew the sentence (and the Bible) starts – appropriately – with the word ‘God’: ‘Elohim beresit bara …’ Elohim is the Hebrew word for Creator God.
• Let’s think about this sentence some more:

TABLE

GOD                      created the      HEAVENS and the         EARTH

Creator                                              created                                created

was already here                             appears now                      appears now
has no beginning                            has a beginning                 has a beginning
eternal, pre-existing                        not eternal                         no equal, one of a kind many things many things
Owner                                             his possession                     his possession
Authority                                        under him                            under him
Life-Giver                                       keeps receiving life             keeps receiving life
Source                                             existing by him                    existing by him
Independent                                  dependent on him              dependent on him
Reason                                            consequence, fruit              consequence, fruit
Maker                                              reflects the maker              reflects the maker

• God has no equal. He is one of a kind, unparalleled. Islam teaches this well, and rightly so.
• As a creature, where does my fear, my worship, my unconditional obedience belong?
  • only to the Creator, the One behind all creation, never to creatures
  • no tree, no river, no sun, no star, no spirit, no human, no husband, no wife, no child is ever capable of taking the role of God, nor worthy to do so.
  • theses things are not God. They do not have the power to be what God needs to be, they cannot carry my life, they cannot give me meaning, they are good things but too small things. These things will fail me if I make them ‘god’.
  • worship, trust, utter reliance, complete obedience belong only to God. My life, my identity, my reason for being, my meaning in life comes from God. To seek it elsewhere is to set myself up for both heart ache and sin.
  • Another application: do not fear creatures. No need to fear humans, no need to fear spirits, they are simply our co-creatures.
  • Sometimes people worry about ‘extraterrestrial beings’. Even if they existed, they simply would be other creatures of God. If they were beings with no conscience, they would be one more kind of animal. If they were beings with conscience, they would be in the same class as humans and bound by the same law and morality as we are. > So no reason to worry at all.
• A question that is not directly answered in this sentence is: Why does God create the heavens, the earth, us? Typical answers include:
  • to get our worship, honor
  • to get relationship, fellowship
  • to get subjects for his kingship
    to get servants
• How good are these answers?
  • Never forget: God has lived for all eternity past till the moment he creates without any of this, without our worship, without our fellowship, without our service
  • God doesn’t need anything. He isn’t dependent on anything. He doesn’t need our worship in order to be God – he is God! He doesn’t need our prayers to act – he acted long before anybody prayed.
  • The problem is with the word ‘get’. God doesn’t create to ‘get’ anything. He is fullness in himself, life, light, beauty, existence, richness all is in him.
  • So he doesn’t do this to ‘get’ anything, he creates to ‘give’. Give life, existence.
  • He is generous. He wants there to be things other than himself. He creates beings and powers other than himself, not to get, but to give … that’s his character.
  • And yes, he wants relationship with us, he rejoices at our worship … but is is not the “fuel” he runs on. The fact we have the power to touch, to make glad the heart of God himself (wow!) is his gift to us; he gives of significance and calling. It’s the humility of God that we can give him something at all.
  • We tend to say: God needed fellowship. Is that so? Was God alone before he created us humans?

God is a Trinity

• Ge 1:1      In the beginning God created                             God the heavenly Father
• Ge 1:2     and the Spirit of God hovered God’s Spirit      the Holy Spirit
• Ge 1:3     and God said: “Let there be”                               God’s word the Son, Jesus
• John, in his poetic retelling of the creation of the earth, puts it this way (Jn 1:1-3): “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him …”
• John continues to make clear who the Word is (Jn 1:14): “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. Jesus, the Word of God.”
• In Colossians Paul puts it this way (Col 1:16-17): “for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created … all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
• So in the first 3 verses of the Bible, at the very beginning, we see hints that God is a Trinity.
• Also: The word used for ‘God’ in Hebrew in Ge 1:1 is “Elohim”, which is a plural (!).
• H430 ‘ĕlôhı̂ym אֱלֹהִים – Plural of ‘eloah’ H433; meaning gods in the ordinary sense; but specifically used (in plural thus, especially with the article) of the supreme God
• Even though the full revelation of God as a Trinity only comes with the New Testament, already in the OT there is much evidence if we look carefully. Examples:
  • Ge 1:26b “Let us make humans in our image”, a clear plural where we didn’t expect it!
  • De 6:4 is a very important text to the Jews. It is called the ‘Sh’ma’, the confession of faith: “Hear, o Israel, the Lord your God is one” (literally: “they are one”). It’s interesting that at the very heart of the Monotheism in the Jewish faith lies this sentence containing a plural.
  • Is 9:6 has another curious reference to the Trinity: “For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; … he is named … Mighty God, Everlasting Father”
  • Ps 110:1 David says from his perspective: “The LORD (Jehovah) says to my lord (Adon)…” Jesus uses this Scripture to shake up the overly sure Pharisees in Mk 12:36. See also Pr 30:4 and Is 42:1.
• In summary: The Trinity is by no means an New Testament invention! It is foundational truth throughout the Bible.
• But what is the Trinity? It is hard to explain, especially to those of Monotheistic faiths. Sometimes Christians ‘wish it wasn’t there’, because it is hard to explain.
• But God is a Trinity, whether you like it or not, whether you understand it or not, whether you can explain it or not.
• God did not ask for your permission to be triune, He is triune, and we better get used to the fact, and try to get our brains around it.
• We will find as we continue: though we cannot easily understand the Trinity, it is a foundational reality that is reflected everywhere and is essential to biblical thinking. The Bible reveals God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, three persons but one God. For a more detailed teaching see CHU 13 – The triune God.
• For our purposes here, let us look at one aspect of the Trinity:
  • God is a Trinity. That is: God is a God of relationship. There is relationship withing God, within the Trinity. Though many other descriptions of God can rightly be given (“God is Almighty” etc.), this is the most basic description: God is a Trinity.
  • If God is a God of relationship, what is the relationship within the Trinity like? Many NT scriptures come to mind:
    • At Jesus’ baptism we see the Trinity in action: when Jesus takes baptism in obedience to the Father, the Father says “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased”, and the Holy Spirit descends on Jesus (Lu 3:21-22).
    • At Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountain a voice from heaven says: “This is my beloved Son, listen to him!” (Mk 9:7).
    • Jn 14:9 has ‘seeing Jesus’ = ‘seeing the Father’. Jn 14:7 has ‘knowing Jesus’ = ‘knowing the Father’. Jn 5:17 has Jesus working as the Father is working. Jn 5:19 has Jesus only doing what the Father is doing. Jn 5:21 has as the Father gives life, so the Son gives life. Jn 5:23 has ‘whoever honors the Son honors the Father’.
    • Jesus also talked about the Holy Spirit, who will come in his stead (Jn 14:16, 18), who will remind the disciples of Jesus’ words (Jn 14:26), who will lead them into all truth (Jn 16:13, Jn 14:17, 26), who will be an Advocate (Jn 14:16), who will enable them to do greater deeds than Jesus (Jn 14:12) … and the Holy Spirit does exactly that.
    • The Father answers Jesus’ prayer at Lazarus’ grave. The Father is affirming Jesus publicly with a voice from heaven at his baptism, transfiguration and in Jn 12:28.
  • In summary: How does the Trinity relate to each other? What is their relationship like?
    • Honoring each other, recommending each other
    • preferring one another
    • representing one another, explaining one another
    • submitting to one another, obeying one another
    • they are in complete unity of purpose … yet different in role and function
    • they are in unity, though they are not the same.
  • When God through Jesus is commanding us to ‘love one another’ (Jn 15:12) and ‘prefer one another’ (Php 2:3) he is only commanding us what he has been obeying within the Trinity from eternity past till now.
  • God does not command what he is not himself willing to keep. Application: Do not command, what you are not willing to do yourself! Really!
  • And: If this is the quality of relationship found in the Trinity, this has to be the model for human relationships as well. What a standard!
  • Note that their relationship is not hierarchical! There is diversity, but there’s unity.

Heaven and Earth

• The word “heaven” in Hebrew is שָׁמֶה שָׁמַיִם “shamayim shameh”, a plural.
• There is only one word for heaven in Hebrew, but it is used in many different ways. A Word study on “heaven” yields 4 major uses:
  • 1 Where the birds fly and the clouds float ‘sky’ (we often count that as part of earth)
  • 2 Where the moon, sun, stars are ‘universe’ (we often count that as part of earth)
  • 3 the world of spirits ‘spiritual world’
  • 4 where God reigns ‘heaven’
• Be aware that there are these 4 uses, so as to prevent confusion. Some examples:
• Ge 1:26 humans have dominion over the birds of the air          (> 1 ‘sky’)
• De 4:19 do not worship heaven’s stars, sun, moon                     (> 2 ‘universe’)
• Ep 6:12 mentions evil forces in the heavenly places                   (> 3 ‘spiritual world’)
• Jb 1:6 Satan comes before God                                                     (> 3 ‘spiritual world’)
• Mt 6:10 Jesus: “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”     (> 4 ‘where God reigns)
• But mostly heaven and earth are mentioned together, meaning the total of God’s creation, like here in Ge 1:1.
• In today’s language and thinking we often lump (1) and (2) together with the earth. It then becomes: division into the spiritual world (heaven) and the physical world (earth).
• Often Christians believe: ‘spiritual world = good’ and ‘physical world / body = evil’. We say things like: ‘we should not be worldly, but spiritual’ … ‘this body only brings me into temptation’ … ‘the physical world is doomed anyway’ … ‘we will go to heaven, as spirits into a spiritual heaven’ … ‘Jesus comes back and will rapture us away from the physical world’ … ‘working for this world is worldly’ … ‘only ‘spiritual vocations are spiritual’
• But is this biblical thinking? Not really. Let us debunk this thinking:
• If the physical world is bad, why then did God make it? And declare it ‘very good’ (Ge 1:31)? If this body is only a temptation, why did God create is and keeps giving life to it? If this body leads us to sin, then how did Satan sin, who has no body but is a spirit? If spiritual = good, why then are there evil spirits like Satan in the first place? If the ‘fruits of the flesh’ in Gal 5:19 are ‘problems due to the body’, why has over half of the list nothing whatsoever to do with the body (like anger, strife, competition, jealousy, factions …)? If the body is evil and no physical world will remain, why does God give Jesus a physical resurrection body? If this physical world is doomed and unimportant, why the will God make a new heaven and a new earth? (Rev 21:1)
• Our thinking is clearly confused. We need to re-establish some basic Biblical truths:
  • God created                              the spiritual world and physical world
  • God wanted                              the spiritual world and physical world
  • God declared                            the spiritual world and physical world … to be good
  • God keeps giving life to          the spiritual world and physical world
  • Sin entered both                      the spiritual world and physical world
  • Both                                           the spiritual world and physical world … are needing redemption
  • Both                                           the spiritual world and physical world … will be judged
  • In 2 Pet 3:7                                the spiritual world and earth are burned up
  • In 1 Cor 15:42, 51                     we will be changed, the perishable will be raised imperishable
  • In Col 1:20                                he will reconcile all things (visible and invisible) to himself …
  • in Rom 8:17-23                        creation will be redeemed with the sons of God
  • in Rev 21:1                                the spiritual world and earth will be made new …
• So, no: ‘spirit = good’ is not true, rather there are both good and evil spirits
• So, no: ‘physical world / body’ = evil is not true, these things are given to us by God, and can be used rightly as Jesus demonstrated. For God so loved the world …
• So ‘being spiritual’ does not mean being ‘spirit only’ but it means to be ‘led by the Holy Spirit in all areas of life, practical and otherwise’
• We Christians need to recover an appropriate love and care for this physical world.
• For more details see teaching unit ‘SCI 09 – Heaven and Earth‘

Three Creation accounts

• Gen 1:1                 first creation account focusing on who created
• Gen 1:2-2:4         second creation account focuses on on what was created
• Gen 2:5-25          third creation account focusing on how humans were created

Genesis 1:2-1:27

• What are the repeated words or themes in this text? Many could be mentioned:
• God’s evaluation at the end of each day … “good”. God is evaluating his own work > evaluation is a good and needed thing. God is rejoicing over the work of his hands > we should also have joy in good work
• God is declaring all things spiritual and physical ‘good’. The creation of this world is not a mistake, it is not an ‘unlucky accident’ (like in Greek mythology), it is planful, intentional, purposeful, celebrated and done with care and joy!
• God is creating by separating, by ‘differentiating out’ 5 times … Gen 1:4 light & darkness … Gen 1:6 water & sky … Gen 1:9 sea & land … Gen 1:18 night and day … Gen 2:21 man and woman. Differentiation is a good thing. Complementarity is a good. Being different is good.
• God is creating in an orderly fashion and sequentially: first realms to live in, then creatures to live in them. Water, Sky, Land > water animals, birds, land animals. Evening and morning the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, … day
• God creates different ‘kinds’. Each is according to its ‘kind’. Bananas are not apples, dogs are not cats, and don’t need to be. God creates diversity and loves it.
  • Application: We have very narrow ‘beauty ideals’, how something should be (Illustration: wedding make up at beauty parlors, beauty pageants).
  • God doesn’t share this narrowness. He doesn’t want ‘everything the same’, he created originals, and wants originals. One Aiswarya Ray, one Sharuk Khan is enough, thank you very much, no more needed. Proverb: ‘All people are born as originals. Most people die as copies’.
  • Application: we need to find a ‘yes’ to who we are, how we look, what gender we were born into, what nation we were born into, what families we were born into, what abilities and personalities we have. Don’t say: ‘if only’.
  • Warning: do not criticize what God has made, neither in yourself, not in another! Isa 45:10-11 says in no unclear terms: “Woe to anyone who says to a father, “What are you begetting?” or to a woman “With what are you in laovr?” Thus says the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, and its Maker: Will you question me about my children, or command me concerning the work of my hands?”
  • Do not criticize how God made you. Do not criticize how God made another person. You have no right to do so. You are attacking the Creator. How dare you?
  • This brings enormous freedom: the only person I need to be is me. No pride. No shame. No other demands.
• Repeated theme: ‘seed’, ‘blessing to multiply’ (Ge 1:22 to fish and birds, Ge 1:28 to humans). God wants and celebrates growth, development, increase, pass down.

Concept of Time

• Another repeated theme is time: ‘there was evening and there was morning’ … 1st day, 2nd day, 3rd day, 4th day etc. What is the significance of this?
• In the beginning not only ‘heaven’ and ‘earth’ were started, but also ‘time’ and ‘history’
• Time is important. Time is linear. Though there are cyclical aspect to time (day-night, monthly moon, yearly seasons), time in total is linear and goes forward. Why is this important? In philosophy there are two views of time: linear time (Christianity) and cyclical time (Hinduism, Buddhism). Cyclical time is a natural assumption, cycles of day, moon, years … unless we had revelation, we might think is was the same summer coming back.
• If time is cyclical history will always eventually come back to where it is now.
• That means: whatever I as a human may do, decide, try, attempt … at the end of the day I will not produce any lasting change … all will come back to what was.
• Therefore human choice, work, effort have no ultimate value. Therefore there is no real responsibility, no real possibility for change, no real hope. I am a victim of fortune, fate & environment. Also there is no real accountability, no hardcore evidence to prove anything, ‘nothing happened’ … and that will affect justice systems.
• If time is linear this means that: my decision today will create a new reality for tomorrow, every little faithfulness, service, obedience to God’s voice today will have an eternal effect. Therefore human choice, work, effort has ultimate and eternal importance, what will be is co-decided today. Example: Salvation.
• Therefore there is real responsibility, real power to influence something, change is possible, hope is real, accountability is built in. I with God can make a difference, I can make history. Everything is important.
• Illustration: I throw a stone in a pond. Does it dissolve into the water with no change … or does it create ripples that go on till eternity?
• Linear time is absolutely foundational to long-term thinking, planning, development, just judgment, redemption, salvation, decision making, empowerment … if there is no past, present and future, all of these things are gone.

Diversity

• Creation reveals the Creator. Illustration: Cooking dinner … I will know something about the cook. Using the toilet after you, tells me something about who you are.
  • Creation is beautiful > God is beautiful. God loves beauty
  • Creation is powerful > God is powerful
  • Creation is diverse > God is diverse … ??? Is he? Yes, God is diverse: the Trinity.
• So we shouldn’t be surprised: Creation, God’s handiwork, reveals something about its Creator: it reveals tremendous diversity: thousands of tastes, textures, colors, shapes, forms, spices, smells, functions.
• There are 30’000 types of trees alone, millions of different species. We are still discovering today and cataloging more ‘formerly unknown species’ every year.
• But even within species: no two leaves are alike, no two snowflakes alike, no two finger prints, no two proteins (> DNA analysis).
• What is the real root of diversity? The Trinity itself … there is diversity within God, there are 3 different persons, but one God.
• Therefore diversity is godly, it is good thing. It is not only tolerated, it is wanted, commanded, celebrated! “there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and people and languages standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (Rev 7:9).
• Looking at creation we hear in its overwhelming diversity the melody of the Trinity: Diversity is good! Looking out the window we get a taste of the Trinity and its importance.
• Contrast to Islam (a Monism): one language, one culture, one holy place, one way to have your hair, your beard, one color for your dress, one kind of prayer … which gives great unity and strength, but cannot fully affirm diversity. Freedom is a thing to fear.

Sequence

• God > humans > animals > plants > inanimate world. There are several divisions:
  • 1 “God” and “creation” (humans, animals, plants, inanimate)
  • 2 “image of God” (humans) and “just reflection of God” (animals, plants, inanimate)
  • 3 “living” (God, men, animals, plants) and “inanimate” (stones, water, planets)

Humans

• Ge 1:26 … a fascinating small insight into how the Trinity decides! … “Come, let us …”, not ‘Do it!’ This speaks of communication, suggestion, discussion, evaluation, agreement, consensus decision, ownership in the decision. What a model!
• Ge 1:26 … “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness … 27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.”
• What does is mean for humans to be “in the image of God”?
  • Humans have been given by God: personhood, they are a ‘self’, they are self-aware, have a mind, thinking, reason, emotions, conscience, will, power to decide, power to act. In this they are like God, by his gracious gift.
  • How are humans not like God? Well, they are created, he is not.
  • God is all-powerful, humans have some power. God is all-knowing, humans have some knowledge. God is omnipresent, humans can only be one place at one time. God is unlimited. Humans are limited.
  • Also: we shouldn’t make conclusions about ‘how God looks’ by looking at humans. Physical representations (statues, drawings) are forbidden in the 2nd commandment.
  • After Jesus came, – him having become ‘visible’ -, the total picture prohibition is lifted. But not: There is not one single physical description of Jesus in the entire New Testament (and God surely wanted it so). Otherwise we would come up with bad theology ‘Jesus had brown eyes, only brown-eyed people can get saved’ or some other nonsense.
• Ge 1:27 breaks into poetry (so amazing this is!), a 3 line parallelism:
  • 1 So God created humankind in his image
  • 2 in the image of God he created them
  • 3 male and female he created them
• The parallelism makes clear that both man and woman are in the image of God.
• This is the first mention of gender in the Bible. We have much to say about gender (whose hair is how long, who cooks etc.) but really, when God introduces the topic of human gender, what does he say? And what does he not say?
  • Ge 1:26 men are created by God women are created by God
  • Ge 1:26 men are wanted by God women are wanted by God
  • Ge 1:27 men are in the image of God women are in the image of God
  • Ge 1:28 men are blessed by God woman are blessed by God
  • Ge 1:28 men are given authority to rule women are given authority to rule.
• We define gender by differences, God in his foundational statements about gender stresses only their sameness! There is nothing in Ge 1 that suggests a difference.
• And even in Ge 2:23 … when Adam finally sees Eve, he is not shocked at such long hair, but rather says: “at last, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” … the stress is not on difference, but on sameness, equality, fitness, appropri-ateness, for each other (animals not being appropriate! see Ge 2:20). Adam essentially says: Finally somebody like me! In all of Genesis 1 & 2 the tenor is not difference, but rather: sameness, appropriateness, fitness for each other.

Relationship with creation

• Ge 1:26,28 “fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth”.
• Dominion, authority, leadership is here conferred by God (who is the true Authority and King) to humans, both man and woman together. God gives away power.
• What does dominion mean? We think: dominion means commanding others to work. Illustration: Adam to Eve: Sweep! Eve, also ruling, tells the monkey: Sweep!
• They have been delegated authority to, they are the care-taker government, the stewards on site, representing God on earth, to till it and develop it.
• In the Bible: authority = work = responsibility = accountability. In the Bible there is no such thing as ‘having the position but not doing the work’
• This defines man’s relationship with nature: creation is submitted under humans > authority is given
• But: The stewards (humans) are accountable to the Owner (God) > authority is limited
• East, Animism, Hinduism, Buddhism: humans subjugated to nature
• West, Atheism:                                           humans ruling over nature
• Biblical view:                                               humans ruling but preserving
• Illustration East: farmer, farming, trying not to offend any spirit, if offended > sacrifice
• Illustration West: one life, no eternity, now I need to enjoy, buy the life I want
• The Eastern one doesn’t understand his authority, the Western one doesn’t understand his accountability.
• Dominion means to develop, to investigate, to do research, to innovate, to try out, to improve, to increase, to multiply … > this is a command for Science
• For details see ‘SCI 03 – Foundations for Science‘

Human work

• Ge 1:28         authority and responsibility given, implying work
• Ge 2:15         “God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it”
• Ge 2:19         animals brought, named by Adam, implying work, categorization
• Clearly, therefore, work was commanded to humans before the fall, that is: in the perfect, sinless world. Work is God-commanded. Work is good.
• Work is not a punishment for sin, not a revenge, not a curse. Work was part of Paradise. it will be part of heaven also (!) … no good thing will be missing in heaven.
• What is the purpose of work?
  • To produce what is needed (food, clothes, houses), what is useful (light bulbs, buckets) and what is beautiful (decorations, fashion, art)
  • to provide for myself and my family
  • to serve others, to produce valuable goods
  • to glorify God
  • Work gives me significance, importance, contentment, satisfaction, dignity
  • All types of work are equally important: Adam is a farmer, Abraham a shepherd, Amos a tree dresser, Jesus a carpenter, Peter a fisher, Paul a tent maker.
  • East:            Work is a burden, only because this miserable body binds me to this unreal world, this world is not real, not worth my work
  • West:           Work is needed to get the money to afford myself the life I want.
  • Biblical:       Work is needed and good. This world is worth my work, all work is valuable.
• Illustrations: Government office. Chair stories. Contrast: Bosses leaving last in the West.
• For more details see teaching unit ‘ECO 04 – Work & Rest‘.

Multiplication

• Ge 1:22 animals (water and air) commanded to be fruitful and multiply
• Ge 1:28 humans commanded to be fruitful, to multiply, fill the earth
• Congratulating to humankind for obeying that!
• We have grown up hearing that Overpopulation is the world’s number one problem.
• What a contrast to our current thinking! What to do?
• Was this command given in the beginning only (when all was empty)? Did God ever take this command back (now there are too many)?
• De 1:10-11 When Israel is around 2 Million people (Ex 12:37 600’000 men), Moses prays that they would multiply a 1000 times more! That would come to 2 Billion of just one nation. Today world’s population is at 7 Billion.
• We say: Population is the problem! God says: Population is a blessing!
• To qualify: injustice to indigenous is exactly that: injustice. Some people have 5 pregnancies back to back not because they want to, but because the first four were girls.
• Yet still: What do we do when we find in the Bible a views so radically different?
• Thomas Malthus said in 1798: exponential population growth, but only linear food production growth > massive famines. His first prediction for food running out: 1890 AD.
• Yet this never actually happened. Though indeed today’s population could definitely not be fed by 1900’s food production, today the world can feed its population.
• What does a country’s riches depend on?
  • Natural resources? yet Japan, Switzerland have none … India has just about all resources known now.
  • Colonialism? yet Portugal is poor, and former colonies like Singapore are rich. Never colonized
  • Thailand is poor and never-had-a-colonial-empire Switzerland is rich
  • Amount, fertility of land yet Singapore, HongKong are rich. Also: this changed drastically in history: Tunisia, Egypt conquered by Rome for wheat, Ukraine as bread basket of Europe
  • Oil, now a major issue, was not even understood to be a resource as little as 150 years ago, it was just a black stinking liquid, oozing out of the ground in some places.
• This is a complicated many-faceted issue but principally God seems to indicate that:
• the resources he as placed (minerals, land, undiscovered ones)
• the law and lawfulness he commands
• the intelligence, wisdom and hard work he makes humans capable of
• the wisdom and revelation he can give
• the blessing he is happy to give
• … together are enough to produce food for everybody at any given time.
• Maybe our number one enemy is not population, but injustice, war and wrong thinking

Evolution

• Alternative philosophy or worldview to Genesis.
• Arose around 1850 AD in Europe in answer to a dwindling faith & justification of colonial empires
• Charles Darwin published 1859 AD ‘Of the origin of species”
• Life developed slowly of its own, in water > single cell > diversification > … > amphibia > reptiles and birds > mammals > humans
• Survival of the fittest, the best, the strongest > no morality, worship of power, stronger preys on weaker
• No guiding principle, no God, no direction

First Readers

• Egypt worshiped things that were created or at least in form of created …
  • Hathor         personification of sky, goddess of festivity and love — symbolized by cow / cow-headed goddess
  • Nut                goddess of the sky
  • Min               personification of generative force of nature – of fertility and harvest…
  • Shu               god of light and air and supporter of the sky
  • Re                  personification of the sun at its zenith (a bunch of sun gods)
• Other Creation accounts see pictures (Ancient Chinese, Babylonian, Biblical)
• Greek (and derived from that Gnostic) view of Creation

Is creation all good?

• How about mosquitoes? How about germs? … theories that mosquitoes didn’t bite because of higher oxygen levels, that germs only started being problematic for being found where they should never have been … partially through sin

Genesis 2: Creation of male and female

Comparison of the two Creation accounts in Ge 1 & 2

• Genesis 1                                           Genesis 2 not intended to be general narrative, but insight
• Focus on what God created          Focus on how God created
• Elohim                                              Yahweh
• God is powerful                               God is personal
• Creation of the universe                Creation of man
• Climaxes with man                         Climaxes with marriage
• The 6 days of creation                    the 6th day of creation

Why did God create gender?

• The typical answer that is given: for procreation, so that there would be children.
• This answer is fine. God has chosen for offspring to be conceived through the relationship of the genders.
• But is this really the core reason? God created many forms of procreation in nature that are not gender-based (Example: snails), or where the same organism is both male and female, or even first male and then female. So God has created procreation without gender. But for humans he did it differently.
• So more foundationally: Why did God create gender?
• Ge 2:21-22 describes woman being created out of man, the 5th time there is a ‘differentiation’ in the creation account after 4 occurrences in the first chapter. Out of a not-differentiated thing make two differentiated beings.
• The word “Adam” (H121 אָדָם) is actually a plural, in English often rendered “humankind”. All through chapter 1 and 2 it remains a plural, until Ge 2:23, when it turns into a singular: Adam (singular!) on seeing Adama (singular!) says: “at last, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh …”.
• Ge 2:21 stresses that it was from the side that Eve is made, not from the head (indicating woman’s superiority), not from the foot (indicating woman’s inferiority). God creates a horizontal picture, an even picture, them side by side.
• If we with our sinful hearts hear that one got differentiated out into two beings, we jump and ask: Who got what? Who got more? Who is higher? But these are the biases of our sinful hearts, but not what the Bible text actually implies.
• The real question we must ask is: Why are there two genders? What can two people in relationship with each other reveal about God that one person alone cannot?
  • In whose image are we? In the image of a Trinity! … To reveal a Trinity there must be at least two! Therefore two genders. Two people in relationship can show something about the nature of the Trinity that one person alone never can.
  • Illustration: One human alone on an island … how can he reveal love? service? respect? Justice? It’s not possible to reveal that, for all these things are characteristics that only show in how I treat another being.
  • Again we hear the melody of the Trinity in the reality that we are: gender. Gender is created to reveal the Trinity: diversity yet unity … mutual love, service, respect, … as is lived out every day within the Trinity.
  • Application: Your relationships must reveal the Trinity. Your relationships must be in the image of the Trinity!
  • The quality of relationship that is in the Trinity therefore is the standard for human relationships: primarily for marriage, but also for all human relationships in general: Love, honor, respect, represent, serve, prefer, obey and submit to one another!
  • The famous Ge 2:18 … “It is not good that man should be alone”, our favorite marriage ceremony verse comes into a new light: It does not mean one must marry (Jesus didn’t marry either and fulfilled God’s will). It doesn’t mean if you are unmarried you are only half a person. But it does mean that humans are made in the image of the triune God of relationship, therefore humans are creatures made for relationship.
• Ge 2:18 God will make a ‘helper fit for him’, an ‘ezer neged’ נֶגֶד עֵזֶר in Hebrew.
• ‘ezer’ is translated: partner. The literal translation is: ‘helper’.
• Careful with our culture-influenced thinking: ‘Helper’ does not mean maid, domestic helper, worker.
• ‘ezer’ is used 16x in the OT, 1x here about a wife, 1x about a political deliverer and 14x as a description for God. Therefore ‘ezer’ does not mean maid, rather it is a powerful term, mostly used of God himself “God, you are my help and my deliverer” (Ps 70:5), somebody with the power to help, not somebody weak or subservient.
• ‘neged’ is translated ‘fit for him, appropriate, partner, counterpart’, which means simply that: one like him, one appropriate, one fit, an even description.
• Ge 2:20 God has Adam search for a partner among animals so that Adam will realize that an animal won’t do and to make him realize what he needs: only an ‘image of God’ is good enough for an’ image of God’.
• When Adam finally sees Eve, his words reflect this: “This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” (Ge 2:23). He doesn’t express any difference of man and woman, but rather their sameness, their appropriateness for each other. At last! Because that’s what didn’t happen when looking for a partner among the animals (Ge 2:20).

The Presence of the Tree

• Ge 2:16-17 tree of knowledge of good and evil … alone forbidden …
• Ge 2:11-14 river dividing in 4: Tigris, Euphrates, Gihon (Cush), Pishon (Havilah)
• Not totally clear geography but the garden was large (probably from Iraq to Ethiopia)!
• They are in a huge garden, not dying of hunger, with nothing but one tree forbidden
• Why does God ever create this tree? Would it not have been much better without it?
• What is the tree for: to tempt? to test? to reveal obedience or rebellion in their hearts? God’s heart is not for them to fail, yet the tree is there.
• Let’s think about this from a different angle: Is fire good? Is water good? Is sex good? … it depends on when, where, what amount, with whom …
• Can I use a pen to kill someone? Yes, probably. So then: let’s forbid all pens?
• In a real world there will always be the right and the wrong use on any given thing.
• We say: we want a temptation-free, risk-free, responsibility-free, evil-is-impossible, cotton-packed world. We say: no tree is good!
• But to make wrong uses of things impossible means to make any use impossible which means to abolish man’s ability to act. Or else abolish the real word.
• The tree minimalistically means choice. Humans can act. But to make possible for humans to act right, God has to give them the freedom to act at all, also to act wrong.
• If I am unable to do evil, if I do not really have two paths before my feet, my choice is not choice, and I also cannot chose good.
• Our risk-free world is a puppet’s world: We want the abolishing of choice, we want to be a cow: no morals, no choice, no responsibilities. Fine. Welcome to the cows.
• Or else human choice means something. But then it means something, good and bad
• This is the compliment God pays us that we don’t want: He so desires your heart’s free choice (knowing that God is good and obeying him willingly) … that to get this he will risk evil and suffering.
• And by the way: He knew what this would ultimately cost him: even death on a cross.
• This is the breath-taking importance he places on our little hearts … this is our problem, this is our dignity, this is our weight, this is our honor.
• You can argue with God that he shouldn’t have taken the risk (but remember, cows can’t argue)… or you can worship him for the dignity & value he has bestowed on us.
• Who determines or decides what is good and what is evil? God does. God sets the standard for what is good and evil and lets us know what it is. Humans choose to ignore God’s definition and set up their own, humans are abysmal at doing so and have sanctioned the most horrific things. Absolute truth is relativized, now anything goes that we agree on or that the strongest can implement. What are you going to base your standard of right and wrong on if you rule out God? Will it be what Satan says, rationalism, humanism? What feels good, what the world says?

Genesis 3: The Fall

The Presence of Satan

• Ge 3:1 Here we got this snake. Snakes don’t talk. Clearly this is something out of the ordinary. Rev 12:7, 20:2 says that devil = Satan = dragon = ancient snake. So that’s clear.
• Satan is present, he is clearly evil, he is tempting, contradicting God, lying.
• But where does this evil Satan come from? Where does evil come from? We thought the world was good? Did God make Satan? But how can he make something evil?
• Basically there are three possible answers to these questions: Monism, Dualism and the Biblical answer:
• Monism … God is good. God made everything. God must have made Satan. God must have made evil. The problem: He who makes evil is evil …
• Dualism … God is good. He does not make evil. He cannot have made Satan. Satan must be un-created and eternal like God. The problem: you end up with two eternal Gods, one good, one evil, fighting each other of completing each other somehow …
• Biblical answer: God is good. All things that are were created by him. He created Satan, but he created him good, like everything else. God created various things, among them 2 groups that have true choice: angels and humans. Some of these chose evil. Conclusion: God did not make evil, but he did create free choice, he did therefore make evil choices possible. He didn’t make evil, but he didn’t make evil impossible.
• Angels that chose against God are now called evil spirits, Satan being the famous one.
• Angels that stayed obedient to God are now called heavenly angels.
• There is no record of angels being asked to repent or given a chance to repent. Why?
• Probably because they rebelled against God in full view of his majesty, goodness, purity, that is: in full knowledge. Therefore their choice is permanent.
• Humans, on the other hand, understand about God only gradually, by conscience, by experiences, his voice in our hearts. Humans are like people groping through mist, gradually understanding and responding, that’s why they get the chance to repent.

Satan tempts to sin

• Ge 3:1 Did God say “You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?” … Satan sowing doubt about God’s word, He is confusing (‘any tree’) by mixing truth with lies. He is riding the victim line (‘poor you, all forbidden?’), sowing doubt about God’s goodness.
• Ge 3:2-3 Eve’s answer shows that she does know what the command is. She catches Satan’s attempt at confusion and clears it up (‘we may eat of any tree but not of the one tree’). She answers correctly. The only trouble: she adds ‘don’t touch it’ … that was not in Ge 2:16-17.
• Is that a problem? Isn’t she just drawing the line a bit more harshly expressing care not to sin? This is how human additions to the law start (see the Pharisees).
• It may become a problem when in Ge3:6 she plucks fruit (touching it) and nothing happens, she eats and passes fruit on. But all in all Eve is doing good here.
• Ge 3:4-5 Satan: “you will die” … now he is straight contradicting the word of God, declaring it a lie. But worse: he is declaring God a liar.
• In order to cover for the audacity, a reason must be given: “for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil”. Actually: they are already ‘like God’ or ‘in his image’ (Ge 1:27)!
• Satan charges God with selfish motives, with fear, with wanting to withhold from the humans, wanting to keep them small and stupid, not wanting to lose his special status.
• Up to now Adam and Eve have seen no behavior of God that remotely supports this assumption: God has created them, blessed them, given them dominion, given them good commands, has fellowship with them. There is no reason they should doubt him.
• Up to now Adam and Eve have seen no behavior of Satan, that should make them trust him, and trust him more than God.
• Why are they not taking this issue back to God, asking: “God, why is this tree forbidden?” Wouldn’t knowledge of good and evil be a good thing? How should we know good and evil if not by this tree? Will you teach us?
• Satan’s basic temptations (which haven’t changed for the last ten something thousand years) are confusion, half-lies, casting doubt about the word and character of God, playing on our desires, giving false promises, telling us we need to ‘fend for ourselves’
• Basically what humans need to do is to trust God’s goodness, to make him their point of reference, to believe: trust and obey. Still today this is what God desires.

The Fall

• Ge 3:6 Eve takes fruits, eats, gives some to Adam who also eats.
• Often the picture we have in our mind is one of Adam being elsewhere, her taking him fruit, he doesn’t know what he is eating, or else she lures him into eating
• From this view then it is concluded that women are more easily tempted than men, sin more easily than men, and that women are a snare to men.
• To support this view: Ge 3:17 is quoted: Adam is held accountable for listening to her voice, so she must have spoken to him, tempted him, persuaded him to sin.
• Against this view is Ge 3:6 itself … “she gave some to her husband who was with her”.
• For Adam to eat unknowingly would not have been sin. Sin is choosing against God knowingly. Also in Ge 3:8-13 God first addresses the man, and holds the man equally accountable for the sin.
• The story doesn’t so much try to show their difference in regard to sin, rather: both ate, both ate consciously, both sin, both are held accountable.
• So here the amended picture:

Happenings after the Fall

• Ge 3:7-13 describes the first immediate effects of the sin:
• Ge 3:7 “their eyes were opened” … and they didn’t die. So Satan said the truth (Ge 3:5) and God lied (Ge 2:16)?? This needs to be looked at more carefully:
• Sin has lead to them knowing that they are naked. How come?
• Ge 2:25 said that they were “naked, and unashamed”. In our sinful ears this sounds like they are naive, innocent, but backward and stupid. We smile at it, look down on it.
• But what does it really mean? Why, really, are they unashamed? Well, what is there to be ashamed of? The body God gave them? Surely not.
• This is the beauty of sinlessness: There is nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to hide, no fear, no shame; just frank, open, transparent relationship. This is what humans hunger for ever since: to be accepted just as I am, no conditions, no hiding, no pretending. This is what people seek in marriage, and may or may not get it. This is what we ultimately get in Jesus: an acceptance, a cleansing, all shame washed away, a new righteousness, a fresh start.
• So: because of sin, they understand their nakedness, shame, their loss of righteousness (right standing with God). They cover up, hide, are fearful, get bitten by conscience. This shows: Relationship with self is broken
• Shame means: I do not feel at home with myself any more, I don’t like myself, I am not at peace with myself, I have to hide, to filter … if others knew what really goes on in me! I compare, compete, I put myself forward, try to look good, I put down others. It’s a loss of inner freedom, self-confidence, peace … we all suffer with this till today.
• “They sewed fig leaves together and made loin cloths for themselves” … covering up with anything will do. Out of this will come legalism and religiosity, any human attempts at restoring righteousness. It’s a pitiful and deceived attempt ‘fig leaves’, ‘hiding behind the tree’, ‘filthy rags’ (Isa 64:6) in God’s eyes. Only God’s way will do: Jesus’ sacrifice of his own blood.
• Ge 3:7 What does is mean ‘their eyes were opened’? They have more knowledge.
• Knowledge of what kind? shame, fear, pangs of conscience. New knowledge, but not good one. Sin will give you “more knowledge”, new ‘experiences’, things you didn’t know before you now know … but none are good.
• Ge 3:8-11 “The man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of God”. Sin has lead to hiding before God, avoiding fellowship with him, experiencing conviction and the bite of conscience. This shows: Relationship with God is broken
• Ge 3:8 How smart is it to hide before the all-knowing God behind a bush? If we sin, in one sense our knowledge increases (see above), but also our knowledge decreases: We now justify sin, explain sin, make excuses, rationalize that everyone does it. We choose to darken our minds, so we understand less of sin and its destructive effects.
• Ge 3:9 It is God, not man or woman, who initiates communication, who seeks the other out, who still wants fellowship, who tries to address the problem.
• “Where are you?” is not: God not knowing which bush they hide behind. It is a soul-searching, conscience-awaking question: Where are you? Why are you hiding? What situation do you find yourself in? Where has sin taken you?
• Ge 3:10 Adam answers, but only describes the effects of sin, he does not trace the effects back to sin itself. Does he do that to cover up? Or because he doesn’t realize?
• Ge 3:11 … “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” God leads him back to the reason, the origin of the problem. Adam up to now refused to see it or is confused. Either way: God clears it up and shows cause and effect.
• Why? God wants truth, he wants him to know (unlike what Satan claimed in Ge 3:5). God wants him to fully realize what he did, in order for him to take responsibility, to repent and ask for forgiveness. Where there is no understanding of sin, there is no repentance. For God to give conviction is grace, so as to make repentance possible.
• Ge 3:12 … Adam answers: “The woman whom you gave to be with me she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate”. He confesses (only what is already known), but takes no responsibility for his sin. Rather Adam blames Eve. He now is trying to hide his skin by ‘sacrificing her’, revealing selfishness, lying, irresponsibility. This shows: Relationship between humans is broken
• Not only that, he actually blames God himself, who has given him Eve! “the woman you gave me”. How smart is that? Has their understanding improved or deteriorated??
• Ge 3:13 God addresses the woman equally. Eve answers: “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.” Sadly Eve doesn’t do any better than Adam: she blames Satan and the circumstances (and indirectly God, who allows the circumstances). She neither takes any responsibility or repents.
• To blame my fellow-humans, to blame Satan, to blame God, to blame circumstances – it all comes down to the same thing. Lastly all our bitterness is against God.
• The main point is that I am refusing to take responsibility for myself, and therefore close for myself the doors of repentance. God doesn’t close them, I do.

Consequences of the Fall

• Ge 3:17-19 Addressing Adam: his work now will be hard toil, surviving will be a challenge. This shows: Relationship with Creation is broken
• Ge 3:17 The ground is cursed, Satan is cursed, but humans are not cursed. Is this curse a God-intervention or simply a description of a natural consequence of sin?
• Ge 3:19 For the first time there is a prediction of physical death … “out of the ground you were taken, to the ground you will return”. Death is not part of God’s original creation but a thing brought on by our sin. “For the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23). They have died spiritually the moment they sinned (Eph 2:1-10), they will surely die a physical death slowly. We think of death as primarily physical. But death is primarily spiritual, with the physical manifestation following, as a separation from the Author of life.
• Ge 3:16 Addressing Eve: now bearing children will be filled with pain. Also your desire shall be for your husband (position of your husband), but he shall rule over you
• Two interpretations of this verse are possible:
• this is a command of God … this is now God’s will: husbands should rule wives
• this is a description of the reality of sin … this is not God’s will, but a sad reality that husbands often rule, but actually husbands should not rule.
• Different people interpret differently. Those who think Eve had a much greater role in bringing in sin usually go with option 1 (it is a command), for she sinned more and must be controlled now. Adam gets rewarded whereas Eve gets punished. God now wants hierarchy.
• But has the Trinity in whose image they are really changed? Has the will of God really changed? And: if Jesus came to undo the effects of sin, how far does his redemption go? Will Jesus’ redemption not cure this effect of sin also and improve the marriage relationships?
• Also: When in Mrk 10:1-9 the Pharisees come to Jesus interpreting the law to give them the freedom to divorce their wives (though not for the wives to divorce their husbands), Jesus accuses them of ‘hardness of heart’. He takes them right back: “But from the beginning of creation …” and proceeds to quote Ge 2:24. Jesus acknowledges the reality of sin, but to understand what God’s heart is and what he really desires, you have to go to Ge 1 & 2, not to Ge 3 .
• Ge 3:15 … “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”
• A promise of a Redeemer is given: this is the first prediction in the Bible about Jesus. This passage is also held to be messianic by Jews who do not accept Christ. “strike his heel” refers to Jesus’ suffering on the cross. “strike his (snake’s head)” refers to Jesus defeating Satan. Isa 53:5 … “He was wounded for our transgression, crushed for our iniquities”. Isa 53:10-12 … “It was the will of the LORD to crush him with pain. When you make his life an offering for sin”. Rom 16:19-20 … “God will shortly crush Satan underneath your feet.”
• God’s heart of grace is revealed: Right after their cold unbelief, their unjustified doubt about his character, their disobedience, their refusal to repent – still God in his grace promises a Savior, promises to die on a cross to redeem this disaster.
• God leaves another picture with them as they now continue their sinful lives on earth: Ge 3:21 … “God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife, and clothed them”. This is the first death in history. An animal has to die to cover their shame. The wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23). Without blood there is no remission of sin (Heb 9:22). Important truths are held before their eyes. These truths will be displayed even more clearly when God will institute the sacrificial system (Lev 1-7) and they will be ultimately fulfilled by Jesus’ death on the cross.
• Ge 3:22-24: As the relationship with God is severed, that is made visible by the banishment from the presence of God. Access to the tree of life (which was up to now freely granted) now becomes dangerous: unending life with an increasingly evil heart is a nightmare, which God prevents. Cherubim guard the tree, later they are present as pictures on the curtain that separates the Holy Place from Holy of Holies, and on the ark, shadowing the Mercy Seat, the very presence of God. When Christ dies, the curtain is ripped, the way into the Holy of Holies is thrown open. God keeps us out until the way of forgiveness of sin can be secured. In a sense the tree of life became the cross. In Rev 22:2 the Tree of life reappears with food and healing leaves.

Summary

• In summary it can be said:
  • 1 Relationship with self broken > shame, fear, hiding, pretense, unpeace, self-doubt > mental disease
  • 2 Relationship with God broken > this is the definition of death. So they do die immediately a spiritual death
  • 3 Relationship with humans broken > selfishness, hurt, abuse, dominance, violence > human injustice
  • 4 Relationship with creation broken > world affected, now deterioration, disease, catastrophes, destruction, death
• Through sin – a rejection of the God of relationship – all relationships are broken: with him, with ourselves, with each other and with creation.
• But equally the redemption Christ brings is (and fully will) be a redemption and restoration of all relationships:
  • 1 with God … we are forgiven, accepted, saved, adopted as children & heirs
  • 2 with ourselves … Jesus wipes away all shame, gives peace and heals us
  • 3 with others … we are brothers, committed to love and serve each other and all
  • 4 with creation … we are re-instated as caretakers and developers of this world
• Rom 8:17-23 … Creation was subjected to us humans (Ge 1:28). When we humans fell creation fell with us. When we humans will be fully restored in Christ creation will also be fully restored:

A Case Study to better understand the Nature of Sin

• Suppose your younger sister was raped by the village leader’s son and his gang. What consequences will there be … for your sister? for her little sister? for you? for your father?
• A church team comes to the village to preach the gospel. They preach that Jesus can forgive anything. A young man comes crying to the front, he confesses to having raped a girl.
• Will God forgive him? Will he go to heaven? How do you feel about that?
• Will the effects of the sin on your sister will have vanished? Where is justice?
• This is why Jesus had to die: in the cross the justice and the mercy of God are equally displayed.
• If the church team disciples the rapist well, what will they tell him to do?
  • Ask for forgiveness
  • take responsibility for his actions
  • make restitution
  • turn himself over to the police to be tried under the law of the land

Genesis 4: Cain & Abel

Genesis 4:1-5

• “Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have produced a man with the help of the LORD”. 2 Next she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground. 3 In the course of time Cain brought to the LORD and offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, 5 but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.”
• The verb for ‘produce’ sounds similar to ‘Cain’ in the Hebrew language.
• Maybe Eve thought of Cain as the promised Savior (Ge 3:15). Maybe she preferred him because he was the firstborn.
• Cain tills the ground as commanded (Ge 2:15), Abel becomes a shepherd, an acceptable variation, as the text shows. The commands are not a tight law.
• Both brothers acknowledge God and give offerings of their produce.
• Why is Abel’s offering acceptable and Cain’s is not?
• One possible answer: because it’s an animal sacrifice, not grain, foreshadowing the sacrificial system and ultimately Jesus’ sacrifice. Possibly, but Ge 2:15 affirms agriculture. Offering of the fruit if one’s labor makes sense. The law commands various grain offerings (Num 28). Ignorance is not sin.
• One possible answer: God sets down the way he will be worshiped, and it is not negotiable. In a sense this is the first idolatry, I choose how I want to come to God, I put down the conditions. We can’t.
• What is clear: the two brothers’ attitudes were different. “If you do well, will you not be accepted?” (Ge 4:7). So Cain is ‘not doing well’, his attitude is not right, and God lovingly confronts him with that..
• Cain’s reaction is to be angry. He is not asking why, he is not seeking God, he is not asking for reasons nor tries to understand God’s thinking.
• Cain is not repentant, not apologizing, not changing his attitude, not improving.
• If Cain’s attitude about his sacrifice had been right, he would have responded to God like this: ‘I am sorry, I didn’t understand, thanks for letting me know, I will now proceed in a way that pleases you.’
• Instead he is angry. Anger? He has a sense of betrayal, of injustice. But he doesn’t verify it. He is clearly taking no responsibility and thinks the problem is entirely God’s. God is unjust to him, therefore he has a right to be angry, and attitude we all know too well.

1 John 3:12

• “We must not be like Cain who was from the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil, and his brother’s righteous”. John clearly lays full blame on Cain’s attitudes and actions, not on an ignorance of his heart or an injustice on God’s part. He did evil, he resented the righteousness of his brother.

Genesis 4:6

“The LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry and why has your countenance fallen?”

• God comes to Cain, not Cain to God. God engages him, coaxing him with a question to think, to talk, to reason, or at least to complain, charge God with wrong
• God describes reality: anger and a fallen countenance. Maybe Cain is unclear as to what he is feeling, though he is feeling it strongly. God helps him to process, to name, to describe, to think about it.
• The question is designed to lead him to be honest, to engage, but also to make him understand what exactly was different

Genesis 4:7a

“If you do well, will you not be accepted?”

• God clearly diagnoses the problem: the problem is not that God is arbitrary or playing favorites, the problem is not God, but Cain, his attitude, his action.
• God states the reason for non-acceptance: he hasn’t done well, his attitude or possibly motivation hadn’t been right.
• God gives the truth and perspective that Cain needs.
• This is comforting: there is clearly something Cain can do about it, the way is open, just acknowledge the wrong attitude, and come to God with the right attitude, and you will most definitely be accepted. Repentance is possible, forgiveness is assured, God speaks in order to restore him and bring him back into right relationship.
• This is challenging: it shows Cain’s thinking to be the choosing of lies: his jealousy has no basis, his sense of injured pride is false, his conclusion that he is being unjustly treated is wrong, … basically his assumption that everybody else is at fault, especially God, is thrown over. This is not popular, but needed.

Genesis 4:7b

“And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.”

• God affirms that Cain truly has a choice, educates him about the choice, its importance and its consequences.
• God also denies ‘victim mentality’ here: Cain can choose to do wrong, but it will have been his choice, not an inevitable consequence of the injustice committed against him … He must master it. It’s possible for him to master it.
• Sin is lurking at the door also implies, that his wrong attitude about the offering is not that big of a problem, possibly not even sin yet, the real problem is how he now responds and chooses: that can be a full-blown sin. God encourages here: it’s not ‘all lost’, ‘done deal’, ‘can’t undo’ at all, it’s most recoverable, God invites him to do so.
• God sorely warns: if Cain stays on his track of thought and persistent in this attitude, he is giving himself to sin, he will succumb to it, he will make sin his master.

Genesis 4:8
“Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out to the field.” And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him.”

• Cain shows by his action, – an outright murder against his own brother who has done nothing against him – what he has chosen to listen to and think.
• Cain feels unjustly injured. Cain reacts against perceived injustice. Yet here he metes out a death sentence to Abel for an offense that was nothing, and that definitely wasn’t Abel’s fault. Abel has done no wrong whatsoever. In our sense of injustice we become unjust ourselves.
• Jealousy is dangerous, it blows everything out of proportion, has barely a root in reality any more. Jealousy deceives. Sin masters if we let it. Tall puppy syndrome.
• This is a full blown murder: it’s intentional, premeditated and pro-active. No circumstances that could lessen the guilt of what Cain is doing.
• How does Cain go from annoyance all the way to murder? > probably not in an instant, but by letting this sit, turn, rot his thoughts, by denying God’s words, by choosing to hold on to a sense of injury, to ‘I’m being treated unjustly’, to ‘victim mentality’. Cain has given over his thinking to jealousy, pride, bitterness … he is mastering nothing, rather he is inviting this warped thinking to dominate him.
• The murder is also a full denial: Cain has taken no responsibility whatsoever for his attitude and thoughts. The murder says: “it’s all your fault! I have the right to revenge myself”.

Genesis 4:9
“Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel? He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?”

• God does not prevent the murder. He initiated communicated, reasoned, cautioned, warned … but he doesn’t prevent the murder!
• God is fully and painfully committed to the right to choose that he gave to humans.
• Again it’s God graciously initiating, communicating, giving an opening question, a convicting question, an invitation to confess, to repent, to ask for forgiveness.
• Cain is lying (he does know), denying, taking no responsibility, not confessing, even charging God with unjustly demanding. ‘Abel’s safety is not my business’.

Genesis 4:10
“And the LORD said, “What have you done? Listen: your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!”

• God now speaks truth directly and he charges the offender with the his offense: you, Cain. No victim mentality, Cain has chosen, Cain has done. God calls him to the reality of his choice and behavior.
• God’s question is “What have you done?” expressing grief, grief Cain doesn’t express, grief at the magnitude of the sin, an appropriate emotion about a murder.
• The questions is meant to convict: Realize what you have done, a full-blown murder for a jealousy, an irreversible crime for a completely reversible issue.
• “Blood crying out” … injustice is not silent, even though the person can’t speak any more. The reality of the crime remains even though ‘nothing can bring Abel back’ … the irreversibility cannot excuse the crime.
• Cain has lied and denied. But reality speaks: evidence can be found, Cain’s actions had consequences, the reality he created through his choice and sin will not go away by ignoring it.

Genesis 4:11-12
“And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. 12 When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to your its strength; you will be a fugitive and wanderer on the earth.”

• “You are cursed” … not “I curse you”, is there a difference? The curse is not so much an added-on punishment, but more a consequence … the ground had to swallow the blood, the ground was soiled, the ground was violated, now it responds by refusal to yield its strength.
• Ground is almost personified, as also in for example Lev 18:28.
• Sin affects the physical world, fertility and ease of cultivation are linked to the sin of people living on the ground. This is spelt out in detail later in the law.
• Being a “fugitive and wanderer” is a consequence, since fertility is denied, his profession of tiller of soil is affected, the ground won’t be home any more… leading to a hunting-gathering lifestyle. He will live a bit like a thief off the ground.
• ‘fugitive and wanderer’ also is metaphorical, his conscience is biting him, he has broken relationship with his God.
• He is now considered dangerous by humans and is excluded from their society (his parents and future siblings). He doubts everyone and everyone doubts him, no intimacy, no acceptance, no ‘home’.
• All 4 relationships are shown affected by sin: to creation, to God, to others, to self

Genesis 4:13-14

“Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is greater than I can bear! 14 Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer of the earth, and anyone who meets may kill me.”

• God spoke of consequences, Cain speaks of unfair punishment … to a unrepentant mind God’s actions will look as unfair punishment, for there is no acknowledgement of guilt, of responsibility, of one’s own wrong choice.
• “You have driven me … from soil, your face, men” … not really, his action has driven him away, but he doesn’t acknowledge that.
• Cain is not confessing, not repenting, not asking forgiveness, not changing his mind, still thinking God unjust and still thinking God the problem.
• Cain is worried about his life … the murderer fears murder. “The treacherous are ever distrustful” (J.R.R. Tolkien). Cain claims a protection, a value to his life that he was not willing to grant his innocent brother … there is no congruency, no sense of fairness, no proportionality in his thinking, just stubborn self-focus.

Genesis 4:15-16

“Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.” And the LORD put a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him. 16 Then Cain went away from the presence of the LORD, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.”

• God is gracious in his judgement. Life is valuable, also Cain’s. God affirms that.
• Why does God not punish murder with death penalty as in the Law (Deu 5:18)?
• Because he won’t exercise judgement but rather a human government (Gen 6:9)?
• But that is not yet instituted. Because the only humans to date to execute the sentence would be own family, and judgement is given to the domain of Government, not family (Deu 21:18-21)?
• Why the seven fold? Why an escalation? Is this not in conflict with Deu 19:21? This escalation will be picked up selfishly and disastrously by Lamech in Gen 4:23-24. Why does God institute it? Possibly to hit home the ‘sanctity of life’: His life is protected. Everybody’s life is protected. God wants life protected.
• Who are the people to come upon Cain to kill him? It must be his own family, later siblings. He is estranged, they will not know him a few years from now.
• ‘mark’? a clear communication, used metaphorically again in Revelation, positively and negatively, for both believers and unbelievers (Rev 7:3, 13:16).
• Cain goes away from the presence of the Lord. He says he is hidden from it (Gen 4:14). But God never said that, never hid himself, rather pursued Cain, initiated communication, engaged reason, gave conviction, showed grace & ways forward.

Genesis 4-5: Genealogies

Genesis 4:17-24: Genealogy of Cain

• Ge 4:17-18       Cain > Enoch > Irad > Mehujael > Methushael > Lamech
• Ge 4:19-22       Lamech & Adah > Jabal (> tent lives) and Jubal (> lyre & pipe players)
• Lamech & Zillah > Tubal-cain (> bronze and iron tool makers) and sister Naamah
• the mention of iron & bronze tools is interesting. Typically Bronze Age is considered to be 3300-1200 BC, Iron Age 1200 BC ff. This would indicate that iron metallurgy might be older than thought.
• Ge 4:23-24       Lamech’s escalation of violence, revenge, self-importance & polygamy. Lamech boasts in out of control retribution (wound > murder, strike > murder, 77fold retribution). Lamech has taken God’s gracious protection of life granted to Cain and perverts it.
• Progression of causality: self-importance > revenge, self-importance > violence, self-importance > polygamy. A devaluation of human life in general, and women in particular.
• Ge 4:25-26      Focus back on the original line: Adam & Eve have a third son, Seth.

Genesis 5: Genealogy of Seth

• Ge 5:1-2          Summary statement, maybe introduction of a oral tradition piece
• Ge 5:3-5         Adam first child at 130 y lived another 800 y died at 930y
• Ge 5:6-8         Seth first child at 105 y lived another 807 y died at 912 y
• Ge 5:9-11        Enosh first child at 90 y lived another 815 y died at 905 y
• Ge 5:12-14     Kenan first child at 70 y lived another 840 y died at 910 y
• Ge 5:15-17      Mahalalel first child at 65 y lived another 830 y died at 895 y
• Ge 5:18-20     Jared first child at 62 y lived another 800 y died at 962 y
• Ge 5:21-24     Enoch first child at 65 y lived another 300 y taken away at 365 y
• Ge 5:25-27     Methuselah fist child at 187 y lived another 782 y died at 969 y
• Ge 5:28-31     Lamech first child at 182 y lived another 595 y died at 777 y
• Ge 5:32           Noah first child at 500 y lived another 450 y died at 950 y
• average first child at 146 y lived another 702 y died at 858 y
• Generally long lifespans and late first children. Sumerian King lists also have such long lifespans, and also a mention of a flood followed by shorter lifespans.
• There is always mention of ‘other sons and daughters’. With the long lifespans, there could potentially be many children, leading to a rapid, if not exponential growth.
• If literal back to back ages are assumed, then only about 1500 years elapse between creation and the flood (1456 y plus Adam’s pre-child years, plus Seth’s age).
• The numbers also suggest great overlap, that is: Adam dies just shortly before Noah’s birth. This would ensure the seamless pass down of oral tradition and general information.
• if average family size was 8, if length of a generation was only 93 years (average assumed), then the population at time of Adam’s death 930 years after creation could be around 2.8 million. At these rates, at the time of the flood the population was around 137 million. The known earth would have seemed ‘filled with people’.

Genesis 6-8: The Flood

Ge 6:1-8 Pre-flood Situation

• Maybe a copied-in piece of writing?
• Famous passage Ge 6:1-4: “the sons of God saw that the daughters were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. Then the Lord said, “My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days – and also afterward – when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.”
• This passage has given rise to wide speculations among Jews and also Christians. Different interpretations:
  • Sons of God = angels, who turned evil and impregnated human women to bear extraordinary children. This is parallel to Greek mythology, where adultery is common between gods & godesses but also gods and humans. Problem: what are these children? Degrees of spirit-physical beings? Jesus says in Mrk 12:25 that “in the resurrection there will be no marital relations, we will be ‘like angels'”,  so cleary implying that angels don’t have sexual relations with men.
  • Sons of God = human kings, who claimed divinity and therefore took freedoms with female fellow-humans. The children of such willful lords may well grow up to be feared warriors. This is a reasonable explanantion, showing the domination and wilfulness of human lords, that has brought about a culture of violence.
  • Sons of God = poetic metaphor for human males, marrying human females. Luk 3:38 calls Adam a “son of God”. In Psa 82:6 humans are called “sons of gods”. The thrust of the passage is not the introduction of a new species, but to explain why the flood was necessary: one aspect was dominion, willful use of power, sexual violence, rampant polygamy, children growing up in broken families and a violence exalting culture.
• Nephilim simply means giants (DNA of tall people). They are mentioned to re-occur later, for example the Rephilim, and Anakites (Num 13:33), as a natural mutation of a gene. It is not that Nephilim were a people that survived the flood somehow.
• God decides to reduce average lifespan to 120 y (clearly shorter after flood, though still longer than 120 y, coming down).
• God is not against multiplication nor has the growth been ‘too much’ (as Gen 9:1, Deu 1:10-11 would imply), but the combination of tremendous humans wickedness that has created a culture of violence and oppression need to be stopped Reducing the lifespan is one way to make sure entrenched evil leaders do not rule forever (Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong…).
• Maybe the limitation of lifespan was a first measure of God, which turned out to not suffice to control evil, therefore he resorts to the flood.
• Ge 6:5  “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind in the earth and that the every inclination of the thought of their hearts only evil continually.”
• Ge 6:6  “And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.”
• Ge 6:11  “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and the earth was filled with violence … for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon earth.”
• God decides to ‘make and end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I a going to destroy them along with th earth’…. He is doing completely what they are doing slowly, uglily and painfully. Death will come to them anyway, and much to early. In that sense God doesn’t bring anything new. To limit or end violence, injustice and evil is grace (remember Revelation?). God’s holiness is rejected. God’s love for the victim is burning. God’s justice is outraged by the total disregard for human rights and life.
• God is all-knowing and not surprised at what happened … but capable of emotional reaction to willful depravity of his creatures … not impassive but cares and has deep concern even for evil humans.
• The flood has the aspect of termination, wiping out, but also cleansing and anew start.

Flood Stories around the World / The Gilgamesh Epos

• Flood narratives discovered among Babylonians, Sumerians, Greeks, Hindus, Chinese, Hawaiians, Mexican Indians. All relate a lone survivor.
• In Old Chinese characters, the sign for the word ‘flood’ is ‘8 people in a boat’.
• In Genesis we have the most detailed account, it has aspects of a log, a record.
• Parallels of Genesis and the Babylonians Gilgamesh Epos:
  • Both mention a worldwide flood, an ark, animals taken on the ark
  • Both mentions numbers of days of the flood (though numbers themselves differ)
  • Both mention the waters coming from above and below
  • Both mention birds being sent out when the flood subsides, the ark landing on a mountain and a sacrifice of thanksgiving after the ark landed.
  • Noah’s name is ‘Utnapishtim’, which means ‘he who found life.
  • The fragment on the right decribes the end of the storm.
• Differences between Genesis and the Babylonian Gilgamesh
  • Much of the epic involves Sumerian gods, believed to rule the earth, including a Babel story, though pre-flood
  • It depicts many gods who control different things, waters, heavens etc. and one god Enlil who controls all gods. Gilgamesh believed in Enlil.

The Chronology of the Flood

• 40 days rain fell Ge 7:12, 7:17
• 110 days waters continued to rise (total of 150 days) Ge 7:24
• 150 days water abated Ge 8:3
• 74 days 17th of 7th month to 1st of 10th month water continues to abate till mountain tops clear Ge 8:4-5
• 40 days before Noah sent raven out Ge 8:6
• 7 days between raven & dove – implied by “other 7 d” Ge 8:8, Ge 8:10
• 7 days between 1st & 2nd dove trips Ge 8:10
• 7 days between 2nd & 3rd dove trips Ge 8:12
• 29 days 601 yr, 1st month, 1st day – waters dried up (Ge 8:13); (Ge 7:11 – Noah is 600y, 2nd month, 17th day – rain started
• 29 days =314 days passed yet here only 285 days, so difference: waited 29 days then removed covering)
• 57 days 2nd month, 27th day – out of ark
• 371 days total

A universal Flood

• Biblical records imply no local inundation but rather a world-wide flood with water levels surpassing highest mountains for almost a year. Overtopping of Mt Ararat it would require high levels (above 17’000 ft / 5100 m if it is assumed that Ararat didn’t rise further later). The flood was wen to cause the end of all flesh (Ge 6:13). Water to such an altitude would engulf the entire surface of the planet, except highest peaks (that may have risen later).
• The measure of 15 cubits (7.5 m above the highest peaks) is curious, how was that known? Measured? Seen?
• Because of the total flood representatives of the animals had to be saved (except water animals).
• Prevalence of sediment rock on the surface of the earth > huge, thick sediment rock up to the highest peaks (Mt. Everest has shell fossiles in the highest levels).
• Evidence of very fast depositing can be found in various places. Millions of years needed for Evolution are not evidenced in sedimentary rock > trees found through layers supposed to have taken 200 million years to build.
• major seismic disturbances indicated in rock levels in various parts of the world seem to have occurred at the same time & could be explained by the flood (Gen 7:11).
• some strata contain large boulders midst coarse gravel – attributed to violent tidal movement and water agitation beyond what is presently known.
• There have been found an amazing profusion of animal bones (mammoths, bears, wolves, oxen, hyenas, rhinoceros, deer & small mammals) discovered in violently separated state in several fissures excavated in Europe & North America. Fissures were found even in hills of considerable height and extend to a depth from 140 -300 ft. No skeleton is complete, therefore conclude that none fell into fissures alive, nor were they rolled in there by streams. There is calcite cementing the bones together, therefore they must have been deposited under water. Such fissures have been discovered in Black Sea area, Malta, Gibraltar & Nebraska.

Where did the waters come from?

• Rain … dissolution of a vast water canopy, though sun, moon and stars must have been visible before (Ge 1:14-19).
• Waters from the deep, could be underground caverns collapsing, liquifying of sediments under pressure, …?
• The pre-flood word might have far less extreme heights and depth than today’s world. Later plate tectonic could have pushed up mountains far beyond levels of Noah’s time.
• Where did the waters go?
  • Presumably Ocean ditches, some of which are deeper than Himalayas are high (till 11 km). It seems mountains lifted further, ocean ditches appeared further …
  • It seems mist / water canopy was dissolved. Only after the flood appear words like ‘rain, cold, heat, summer, winter’ (Ge 8:22).
  • It seems that the geology, geography and even plant world were majorly affected. Many species died out later in the changed, presumably more rough or extreme environment. Example: possibly Dinosaurs. It seems that the ice age was after the flood

Noah’s ark

• Length 300 cubits = 450 ft = 140 m (6) … Width 50 cubits = 75 ft = 23 m (1) … Depth 30 cubits = 45 ft = 13.5 m (.5)
• measurements are those of a modern ocean liner … ratio of is such that adjusts itself within large waves so as to not being entered not broken apart.
• Capacity = 3.6 cubic ft (?) or 43.5 thousand cubic meter, which allows for 2,000 cattle cars, each capable of carrying 18-20 cattle or 60-80 hogs or 80-100 sheep, so a very significant volume, allowing for large numbers of animals being accommodated.
• At present time species are made up of 290 land animals larger than sheep, 757 of sizes between sheep & rats, 1,358 smaller than rats. It is therefore very possible for 2 individuals of each to fit comfortably in 2,000 cattle cars, with plenty of room left for fodder.

Promise after the Flood

• Ge 8:20-22 “I will never again curse the ground because of mankind for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever destroy every living creature as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.”
• Is the ‘never again curse the ground’ a cancellation of Ge 3:17-19? Probably not as difficulties with nature continue. Or simply harking back to Ge 6:7 where God decrees to blot our from the earth humans beings and animals.
• As long as the world remains, it will not remain forever, 2 Pet 3:7 predicts a destruction of heaven and earth, Rev 21:1 predicts a re-creation of heaven and earth.
  God promises ‘general grace’, rain on the righteous and unrighteous (NT language), here a continuation of seed time & harvest etc.

Genesis 9 – The Covenant Reestablished

The Covenant after the Flood

• Ge 9:1,7 is a re-establishment of Ge 1:28‘s command to multiply and fill the earth, a new gracious beginning after cleaning away an abortive start. It re-states the value of humans, human life, human procreation, human development and building of cultures and societies.
• Ge 9:2 is a re-establishment of Ge 1:28‘s giving of authority over creation. The point of animals fearing humans is probably in the light of the following verses:
• Ge 9:3-4 allows humans to eat meat (kill animals to get food), but the blood (the seat of life) must be poured out. The is the beginning of the food laws, in detail in Lev 13 etc.
• Ge 9:5 is upholding the sanctity of human life, an animal that kills humans must be killed.
• Ge 9:6 is upholding the sanctity of human life, a human that kills a human must be judged and killed by a human government.
• What is all this? It seems that pre-flood humans acquired a taste for meat, even a taste for blood. It is not unlikely that there was widespead canibalism by that time, humans eating humans. God restricts but partially accommodates: Humans are now allowed to eat meat, meat of animals, though originally that was not human diet.
• The original human diet in Ge 1:29 was seed-yielding plants, every tree with seed in its fruit. Basically greenery, fruits and seeds (grains, pulses, nuts). This is a sufficient diet for humans.
• But now God allows the eating of meat (and therefore the killing of animals), but with the restriction of not eating blood.
• Why this command? Possibly:
  • The respect of ‘breath of life’, even of animals that was found in Ge 1:30 has long been lost with the fall. Already in Ge 4:8 Cain killed not only an animal, but a human. In Ge 4:23-24 Lamech claims the right, even boasts of his perceived right to kill human life for merely being hit, a further deterioration of the respect for human life, let alone animal life. Ge 6:4 mentions ‘heroes of old, warriors of renown’, showing that human fighting and warfare was well under way, a taking even of human life, far more likely an animal life. By Ge 6:5 things have totally deteriorated: human ‘wickedness is great*, every* thought and will of the human heart is only* evil continually*.
  • This is a quadruple *emphatic statement. If things were this bad we must assume that humans by this time not only killed & ate animals, but probably killed and even ate humans (canibalism). Humans have long overstepped the ‘breath of life’ barrier, for animals, for humans and have acquired a taste for meat. It seems in the concession in Ge 9:3 that besides plants now animal meat is allowed, God tries to accommodate human habits and taste. He gives permission for animal meat, but strongly upholds the protection of human life.
  • But God upholds the value of human life in several ways: Ge 9:2 by putting the fear of man on animals, even when they are now hunted and attacked. Ge 9:5-6 by requiring a reckoning for all human blood shed by human or animal. Ge 9:6 by upholding humans being made in the likeness of God (unlike animals). God sacrifices his beloved animal kingdom to accommodate men.
  • But God upholds the value of animal life at a lower level: Even though an animal can now be eaten, its blood, – the seat of life -, may not be eaten (Ge 9:4).So even in permissible meat eating a limit is put and a procedure must be followed, reminding the one slaughtering the animal of the value of animal life.
  • Ge 9:1-6 God upholds humans being made in the image of God, of being on a different level than animals (animals may be killed, humans may not be killed), Human life being sacred, neither a human nor an animal may terminate it.
  • It is interesting that Noah and his family were quite clearly strict herbivores at least during their time in the ark, for they take only 2 of each type of animal, except the ones permissible for sacrifice, of those they take 7 (Ge 6:2) in order to sacrifice after the flood (Ge 8:20). There is therefore no additional meat taken.
  • Also the whole story of the ark illustrates the same point: not only humans are saved, but also very intentionally and carefully every type of animal, enshrining the value of animal life. Plants survive a flood anyway.
  • From now on we see animal meat being eaten (Ge 18:7, 27::3, 38:17, 43:34, Ex 16:3, etc)
• Ge 9:6 This verse is foundational to government, it is the first official instruction for government, or expressed need for government. Government’s number one role as the established of justice is also laid down.
• Ge 9:8-17 Covenant of God with Noah, his sons, thus humans and living creatures: never again destructions by flood. Sign of rainbow. Rainbow? > post rain, again sun, peaceful, beautiful, quiet. The rainbow is a reminder of both judgment and of grace to not judge again.

Canaan (Ham’s son) is cursed

• Ge 9:20-21 Noah is a ‘man of the soil, the first to plant a vineyard’ which is all good, but not his getting drunk. Later we will have the equally problematic story of Lot’s daughters, making their father drunk (Ge 19:30-38), which was possible. That story also has sexual connotations. Very often drunkenness and immorality go together. Still today.
• Ge 9:22-23 What really happened? It is not totally clear but to ‘uncover nakedness’ in for example Lev 18:6 is a euphemism for sexual relations. So the best case scenario is that Ham just unwillingly saw his Father naked. The middle scenario is that he maybe unwillingly saw his Father naked, but despised him in his heart, not covering him immediately, telling the others, maybe joking. The worst scenario is that he had sexual relations (incest / homosexuality) with his father, using his drunken state. Evil has not left the human heart, it must be assumed that in pre-flood times things like this were rampant.
• The brothers Shem and Japheth are very respectful in their approach, they immediately take action, ensuring their father being covered, ensuring that they don’t see (or worst case: do) anything, and that seems to be in contrast to Ham.
• Ge 9:24-27 Noah awakes and finds out what happened (how? Did they tell him?) and curses not exactly Ham but his son Canaan. Why? Again not clear at all. Was it just a livid, out-of-control Noah? Why not cursing all Ham’s sons if the goal is revenge, but only one son is singled out. Why? Was there a link with the son Canaan? What was Canaan’s age? He was born after the flood (Ge 9:18), but many years may have gone by and he may be a young man by now.
• Again a worst case would be an incest-homosexual relationship of Ham and Canaan, not in an off-moment projected unto the father. Or maybe Canaan had no hand in this at all and it is Noah’ scewed reaction.
• People – still today – believe a cure (or a blessing) to be a very powerful thing. Actually God relativizes that by saying things like ‘an undeserved or causeless curse will not come’ (Prv 26:2) and by stating that blessing and curse is linked with one thing: the obedience of the person in question (Deu 30).
• Canaan – of course – is the ancestor of a group of peoples called summarily ‘Canaanites’, and Canaan is the land that God promised to Abraham. Canaan is the ancestor of Canaanites of Plalestine, brother Cush the ancestor of Ethiopians, brother Put ancestor of Africans / Lybians and brother Egypt of Egyptians (presumaby).
• The Canaanites are highly idolatrous, highly immoral, highly unjust or violent, with fertility cults and human sacrifice. In Ge 15:16 at around 2000 BC God says ‘the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete’. It seems that some 550 years later, by Moses 1446 BC time their iniquity has become complete, because the Amorites (one of the Canaanite peoples) are on the ‘black list’: Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites (Exo 3:9).
• Does this curse fulfill? Or what is the later history, maybe not due to this curse? 1405 BC partially fulfilled with Joshua defeating and killing many Canaanites. Later Persia (descended from Japheth through Madai) conquers the Canaanites and in 300 BC Alexander the Great conquered Palestine (Greeks are descended from Japheth through Javan).
• Moses is giving the first readers information on the surrounding nations.

Genesis 10 – Origins of the Nations

• This table is the oldest record of this kind and still is heavily used in ‘secular’ Ancient Anthropology.
• God is celebrating his dream: a spreading, differentiating, nation-developing humanity! 4 times the chorus comes: ‘There are the descendants of XXX in their lands, with their own language, by their families, in their nations.’ (Ge 10:5, 10:19, 10:32).
• This gives the concept of nationhood in the Bible: land & people & language or cultural identity. God wants self-governed nations, not centrally controlled empires.
  • Noah > Japheth > Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, Tiras.
  • Gomer > Ashkenaz, Riphath and Togarmah.
  • Javan > Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim and Rodanim. From these > coastland peoples.
  • Noah > Ham > Cush, Egypt, Put and Canaan.
  • Cush > Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, Sabteca and Nimrod. Raamah > Sheba and Dedan. Nimrod, the first on the earth to become a mighty warrior. Geography: He founds Babel, Erech, Accad, all in the land of Shinar. Then Nineveh, Rhoboth-ir, Calah and Resen, all in Assyria. All these cities have been excavated and indetified.
  • Egypt > Ludim, Anamim, Lehbim, Naphtuhim, Pathrusim, Cashluhim and Caphtorim, from which the Philistines come.
  • Canaan > Sidon, Heth, Jebusites, Amorites, Girgashites, Hivites, Arkites, Sinites, Arvadites, Zemarites and Hamathites. Geography: Sidon, Gerar, Gaza, Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim till Basha.
  • Noah > Shem > Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, Lud and Aram.
  • Aram > Uz, Hul, Gether, Mash.
  • Arpachshad > Selah > Eber > Peleg and Joktan. Joktan > Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, Obal, Abimael, Sheba, Ophir, Havelah and Jobab. Geography: Mesha in the direction of Sephar, the hill country in the east.

Genesis 11 – Tower of Babel and Terah’s call

Tower of Babel

• Ge 10 is a celebration of diversifying nations, in contrast to that Gen 11 is the nightmare attempt to build a centrally controlled mega-nation or empire.
• Ge 11:3-4 “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said: Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, otherwise we will be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”
• What is the attitude that is the problem here?
  • A new scientific discovery (not problematic in itself) has created a new thinking. They want to preven scattering, in opposition to God’s dommand in Ge 1:28, keeping together in one mega-city, protect themselves, self-preservation, reliance of human spirit, rebellion against God’s clear will.
  • a name for ourselves > pride, self-reliance, taking control, no recongnition of God, competing with God
  • quite likely idolatry linked to that
• Ge 11:6 God: “they are one people, one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do, nothing that they propose to do will be impossible for them” … God frightened?? God outmanouvered??
• More light shed on the attitue God doesn’t want: a unity which is not diverse, it’s dominating, it’s centralized, it will extend to many other things, it will turn into a centralistic, oppressive government with no freedom to be diverse. Mega nation or empire, a Mega government.
• God is committed to diversity, to spreading, to diversification, to diversity of culture, to creation of different nations … !!
• Ge 11:7 ‘Let us go down and confuse their speech.’ … A curious plural. And a simple method. The gift of communication, language and understanding is from God, he can easily take it back, even if just partially. Also a bit of irony: God has to “go down” though they think their tower reaches to heaven.
• Ge 11:8 “So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.” > named Babel (= to confuse, ‘balal’), the later Babylon.
• God succeeds easily, all big plans are abandoned. So much for God being frigthened. Rather God, for human good, prevents a thing here, who would have turned very evil and very oppressive.
• Message to the first readers? Nations and diversity is from God. Do not rebel against God’s plan but cooperate with it. Origin of different languages, though used here as a deterrant, is not a problem in itself. Recognize what God can bless, and what he can’t bless.
• Sumerian tablets record the confusion of language as we have in the Biblical account of the Tower of Babel. There was a golden age when all mankind spoke the same language. Speech was then confused by the god Enki, lord of wisdom.
• The Babylonians had a similar account in which the gods destroyed a temple tower and “scattered them abroad and made strange their speech.”
• Ge 11:1 mentions that the whole earth was of one language and one speech … according to evolution this makes no sense, as language should have sprouted up in many various ways and places. Yet modern philologists attest to the likelihood of a common origin of language … Algredo Trombettis says he can trace and prove the common origin of all languages.

Genealogy Shem > Abraham

• Ge 11:10 Summary statement: ‘These are the descendants of Shem…’. The line of promise is followed more closely.
• Ge 11:10-11 Shem first child at 100 y, 2y after flood lived another 500 y (diead at 600 y)
• Ge 11:12-13 Arpachshad first child at 35 y lived another 403 y (died at 438 y)
• Ge 11:14-15 Shelah first child at 30 y lived another 403 y (died at 433 y)
• Ge 11:16-17 Eber first child at 34 y lived another 430 y (died at 464 y)
• Ge 11:18-19 Peleg first child at 30 y lived another 209 y (died at 239 y)
• Ge 11:20-21 Reu first child at 32 y lived another 207 y (died at 239 y)
• Ge 11:22-23 Serug first child at 30 y lived another 200 y (died at 230 y)
• Ge 11:24-25 Nahor fist child at 29 y lived another 119 y (died at 148 y)
• Ge 11:26-27 Terah first child at 70 y Nahor, Haran lived another ?y (died at ? y)
• Ge 16:16 Abraham first child at 86 y Ishmael lived another 89 y (died at 175 y), second child at 100 y Isaac
• Ge 11:27-30 Terah > Abraham * Hagar (Egyptian slave) child: Ishmael … * Sarah (half-sister by 2nd wife) child: Isaac … * Keturah children: Zimran, Jokshan, Mdan, Midian, Ishbak, Shuah
• Terah > Nahor * Milcah (niece by Haran) children: Uz, Buz, Kemuel, Bethuel
• Terah > Haran * XXX children: Milcah, Lot, Iscah
• Ge 11:31-32 Terah goes from Ur in Chaldea to Haran ‘to go to Canaan’, taking Abrahm & Sarai and Lot, ‘but’ settles in Haran.
• What is this? An abortive start? Was the call of Abraham first meant to be the call of Terah? Did Abraham pick this calling up? Was he the one most serious about it? Is this why Abraham took Lot?

Ur of the Chaldeans

• Two opinions on location: Either roughly in the northern Tigris plain (modern day: Iraq) or near the Euphrates and on the Gulf (modern day: Kuwait).
• Chaldeans were a semitic people, they were raiders.
• The southern city of Ur was inhabited from 5th millenium BC to 300 BC. It’s ruins have shown it to be a highly civilised city with a postal service, royal cemetery, temple tower and a strong economy. The principle deity of Ur was Nanna (Sumerian) or Sin (Akkadian) which was also worshipped in Harran. It was the ‘god of the moon’, son of Enlil & Ninlil, and was worshipped as chief deity around 200 BC in the Euphrates valley. Joshua refers to the general idolatry of Abraham’s family in Jos 24:2.

1st PERSON – ABRAHAM – ISRAEL’S FOUNDATIONS

Genesis 12 – The Call of Abraham

• Ge 12:1-3 One of the foundational texts of the OT! … “Now the LORD said to Baram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blesing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and he one who curses you I will curse and in you all the families fo the earth shall be blessed.”
• Challenge: leaving behind country, kindred, father’s house … the familiar, the known situation, relative security
• Command: go to a new country that God will show. No foreknowledge, but an invitation to trust God, follow God, walk with God, to continually hear from this God. An invitation into a new sort of relationship with a new God (or Terah’s God?)
• Promise: great nation (to a barren man at 75 y (Ge 12:4), a great name (what those at Babylon wanted to make for themselves Ge 11:4), receiving a blessing, being a blessing to all the families of the earth, of becoming a decisive factor (people’s attitude to Abraham will deternine their standing with God). Ge 12:7 adds the land promise. Note that the revelation is clarifying and developing as Abraham obeys.
  Fulfilled in Abraham’s life?
• Great nation? > at 86 y a child, at 100 y the child of promise, later 6 more children > a slow start. A great name? > only very partially (Ge 14). Land? > not yet, he is a sojourner with no rights to the land. Blessing? > yes, he gets wealthier and wealthier. He enjoys God’s protection is very special ways (Egypt, Ge 14). A blessing to the families of the earth? > very limited oly.
• How is this fulfilled in Israel’s life?
  • Great nation? > they do become a nation, not a particularly big one, during David & Solomon they have an international atrraction, but the longer it goes the less great things look. With exile and post-exile the picture is even bleaker.
  • Great name? > their name starts growing each time they obey God (David, Solomon, Uzziah, Hiskia…) but is also falls apart again abysmally.
  • Land? > the second generation of Israel does get the land under Joshua, but due to complacency, disobedience and idolatry about half of the promised area is ever occupied. Finally exile with total loss of land, post-exile with only partial autonomy.
  • Blessing? > they do get is when they obey, and that’s rare. Being a blessing? Only at very limited times, the longer the less.
• How then really is this fulfilled?
  • In Jesus. With salvation going to the ends of the earth, the great nation (all willing humans), the great name (the nation in which God became man), the land (all the earth), the blessing (salvation and everything else) and being a blessing to all others.
  • The Jews will later turn this calling into a prideful self-focus and exclusive chosenness, but that is very clearly not what God meant. This is an equal challenge to the church: to not be in-grown, but to reach out and serve all.

Obedience

• Ge 12:4-6 Abram, Sarai, nephew Lot, persons acquired in Haran (slaves), all possessions (valuables, tents, tools, livestock) slowly move South-West and South (Haran > Damascus ? > Shechem, later > Bethel > Ai > Negeb).
• Ge 12:6 The Canaanites are in the land – this is not an empty stretch. Abraham’s family will be nomadic sojourners among settled people and other nomadic people. Water sources and grazing grounds are a potential areas of conflict.
• Ge 12:7 When Abram arrives in Canaan by obedience God speaks again: ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ This is reaffirming the earlier call, but expanding: the promise of land is actually new.
• Simple obedience. That’s were all callings much start. Obedience is essential. It is very valuable in God’s eyes. It honors him. By continued obedience to what God has said more revelation will come. Things will clarify, sharpen, develop.
• If you can’t seem to hear God, go back to the last thing you clearly heard and obey from there.

Sojourn in Egypt

• Ge 12:10 Lack of rain > drought > famine … fiercer competition for the water sources and grazing grounds. Abram as a sojourner will have to leave first. Trip to Egypt, which took several weeks with flocks but is doable. From Egyptian history we know that nomadic peoples regularly migrated to Egypt in times of famine (and back again), because the head of the Nile is in the tropics > constant water, constant agriculture.
• Ge 12:11 Sarai (at about 70y!) is extraordinarily beautiful. Abram knows this, is scared to be killed for her sake and resorts to lying and deception. He says (and has her say) that she is his sister, which is half true, she is his step-sister by another wife of Terah. There is financial benefit as well: Pharaoh gives livestock etc.
• What is he thinking? Does he think he can ‘temporarily loan’ her and then get her back when he can leave? Though his fear is justified (Sarai does catch the Pharaoh’s eye), on no account is this a reasonable plan, not to speak of using his wife very willfully.
• What is needed? Simple trust. Trust that the God will protect him and his small family, though they are like dependent pawns among far more powerful forces. Trust that God will fulfill his word. Fear is a legitimate emotion but a bad counselor.
• Here starts a pattern of lying and deception, which will run though 4 generations and worsen steadily. Sin that is not dealt with will become generational sin, unwittingly handed down in families. Isaac will lie in the exact same way about Rebekah, Jacob will lie and deceive as a life-style, Jacob’s sons deceitfulness will lead to a genocide.
• If there is sin running in your family, don’t ignore it. Decide that the buck will stop with you. Confess, repent, ask forgiveness on behalf of your ancestors, renounce it, make restitution for it, set down systems of accountability for yourself, ask help. Sin can be overcome, but not by ignoring or belittling it.
• God himself is committed to Sarai. He bails her out by putting plagues on Pharaoh and his house. Pharaoh does get the message, releases Sarai, rebukes Abraham (rightly so) and grants them safe conduct, letting him go with all he has. No financial penalty, no taking back of the gifts. It is like a restitution.

Genesis 13 – Separation from Lot

• Ge 13:1-7 Back in Canaan (Egypt > Negeb > Bethel > Ai) the promised blessing of God is becoming visible in Abraham growing rich (in people, lifestock). Also Lot, so much so that there is bickerings over water sources and grazing grounds.
• Ge 13:8-13 Abraham seeks good relationship and a peaceful agreement with Lot. Though he is senior and the primary person called, Abraham is humble, willing to yield, peaceful and let’s Lot choose.
  They are in Ai, the edge of the hills, overlooking the fertile Jordan plain. Lot sees the green, fertile, watered Jordan plain and chooses it. Abraham accordingly chooses the hill country. Probably Abraham struggles to let Lot go, because Lot is the closest he has to a son. In the absence of a son, he probably pinned his ‘alternative hopes’ on Lot.
• Ge 13:14-17 God speaks again: ‘Raise your eyes now, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and west ward; for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offstring also can be counted. Rise up, walk through the length and the brreadth of the land for I will give it to you.’
• A proactive command of looking, dreaming, engating, travelling, putting his foot on the ground, claiming it in faith for his descendants … Later a very similar command com promise will be given to Joshua (Jos 1:3): ‘Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you…’
• Ge 13:18 So Abram moved his tent and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron, and there be built an altar to the LORD. This seems to be a bit a half-hearted response to a stirring command! It is us who chose how far God will be able to go with us!

Genesis 14 – Caught in a War / Careful Alliances

• Ge 14:1-12 The five cities in the Jordan plain (Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, Zoar) were 12 years under Chadorlaomer, king of Elam. Then they rebell, which brings an alliance of kings against them (Shinar, Ellasar, Elam, Goiim). Traditionally Shinar is Babylon, Elam is today’s Iran, so this may be a bigger war then assumed at first sight, or there are other smaller cities with similar names nearby, and this is a more local war.
• Lot, camping near Sodom, gets caught in the war and is taken captive as the nearby Sodomites.
• Ge 14:13-16 Abram hears of it, and together with his 300 trained men and two allies (Mamre the Amorite, brothers Eshcol and Aner) pursues the departing armies, overtakes them at Dan (Luz), defeats them and frees captives and spoil. Abram here proves to be one with great loyalty, courage and faithful friends. This is in contrast to his fear in Egypt.
• Ge 14:17-24 Upon coming back a grateful (probably just freed) King of Sodom is happy for Abram to have the spoil (he claims only his people). Abram refuses: ‘I have sworn to the Lord … maker of heaven and earth, that I would not take a thread or a sandal-thong or anything that is yours, so that you might not say, ‘I have made Abram rich.’
• This refusal to be associated with Sodom is probably because of the wickedness of the city. Abram signals that he didn’t do that for their sake, but for Lot’s.
• In stark contrast is Abram’s submission and acceptance of the King of Salem, Melchisedek, who – it is not clear how – somehow appears in this story (what link?). Abraham submits to him, tithes to him (though he hasn’t taken any loot) and receives bread and wine from him. Salem is the later Jerusalem. The writer of Hebrew picked up this story in Heb 7, linking it to Jesus.
• What is the significance of this story? Moses shows his readers how Abraham as a smaller clan and foreign sojourner is careful who to ally himself with, and how evern when the situation looked favorable, didn’t ‘ride on the wave’ but refused to compromise with an evil ruler and evil city. Is this a preparation for the conquest of Canaan? He does have friendships with the Amorite Mamre, Eshcol, Aner, and newly with Melchisedek, so he is not an ‘island unto himself’ either.
• Abram is loyal here to Lot (who will become Ammon and Moab), though in opposition to Sodom. Maybe a message to Israel who will find themselves on this same map?
• We also find ourselves on a mixed map with many people of other ethnicity or religion than ourselves, many bigger than us. How should we behave?

Genesis 15 – God’s Covenant with Abraham

• Ge 15:1 God comes to Abram in a vision ‘Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield, your reward shall be very great.’
• Ge 15:2-3 Abram is wistful ‘What will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?’ Abram sees the blessing, but is seems to be going nowhere.
• Ge 15:4 God renews his promise: ‘This man shall not be your heir, your very own issue shall be your heir … Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them … so shall your descendants be.’
• Ge 15:6 “And he believed the LORD, and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness”. The all decisive attitude: faith, considering God faithful, somehow holding on to him. Paul’ verse of revelation, quoted in Gal 3:6.
• I don’t think this means that Abram never had a doubt in his mind. But he manages to hold on to this faith, to make his life decisions in the light of this faith, to stick with God, even when promises sound a bit like jokes.
• Ge 15:7 God reaffirms his promise: ‘I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of ghe Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.’ God spells his involvement, though at the surface it was Terah who moved the family as far as Haran.
• Ge 15:8 “O Lord God, how am I to know that I will possess it?”
• Ge 15:9-18 God’s covenant with Abram. Sacrifice of a heifer, a female goat, a ram, a turtledove and a pigeon, split in two and laid out in a line on both sides. Abram shews off birds of prey. Then night and darkness descends. The comes a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch between these pieces, presumably burning them up as well.
• The need for sacrifice, for blood to cover, for forgiveness when the Holy God meets unholy men. Abram finds himself in a totally passive role.
• Types of Covenants
  • Parity between equals (marriage, trade, friendship treaty). Covenants with God are never parity.
  • Suzerainty between a Suzerain and a vassal, imposed by the superior party, with rights and obligations on both sides but unequal
  • Promissory one sided. It is a promise from one side, made in covenant form to make it legal and give further assurance, with the initiator fulfilling his side but the other party not fulfilling any conditions. God’s covenant with Abraham is a promissory Covenant. Salvation is another promissory covenant (I think).
• Prediction: Ge 15:13-19 “Your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs, and shall be slaved there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years; but I will bring judgement on the nation that they serve and afterward they shall come our with great possesssions. As for yourself, you shall be buried in good old age. And they shall come back there in the forth generation; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete … To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river , the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.”
• Timeline This covers about the next 600 years: Abraham (2000 BC) > Israel to Egypt (1870 BC) > slavery in Egypt > Exodus (1446 BC) > conquest of Canaan (1405 BC).
• Oppression? There is no reason given as to why the slavery and oppression must happen, but there must be a reason. This is a prediction, the act that becomes the reason hasn’t happened. But maybe the further story will tell.
• Right now these peoples live in the land. And right now they still have a right to the land according to God, for ‘their iniquity is not yet complete’.
• But in another 500 years it will be complete. So the reason Israel gets their land is not because Israel is chosen, but because these peoples have become so evil, God cancels their right to existence. A early version of this will happen with Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah & Zeboiim, who are already on the brink.
• The list is limited, not all peoples are on it. There will be nations Israel won’t be allowed to dispossess.

Genesis 16 – Making the Promise happen > Hagar & Ishmael

• Timeline Abram was 75y when he obeyed God’s call. He probably had hoped that by time he obeys and is in Canaan, the promised son would come. Now he is 85y and still no son in sight.
• Ge 16:1-4 Sarai comes up with the plan to use an Egyptian slave maid for a birth, not uncommon at that time (probably), an ancient version of surrogate motherhood. The plan seems good and Abram agrees with Sarai, so he takes Hagar as his 2nd wife. The problem is we now have a polygamy, and – of course – the mother of the child has rights.
• Soon problems appear: Hagar, having becom pregnant, despises Sarai, not a mature attitude, but maybe an understandable one. The fact is Hagar’s role has been changed, though she is a slave, she now alse is a wife and mother, with associated weight, and that cannot be reversed.
• Ge 16:5 Sarai is upset, blames her husband (not justly so).
• Ge 16:6 Abraham doesn’t want to get into the firing line and tells Sarai that after all Hagar is a slave, so she can do what she wants with her.
• Ge 16:7 Sarai treats Hagar harshly and the pregnant Hagar flees.
• Ge 16:7-14 Hagar flees South, probably roughly in the direction of Egypt, but really is vulnerable in all regards, as an unprotected woman, with child. God meets her and tells her to go back and submit to Sarai. Not a popular command, but a reasonable one: she needs protection, provision and help. God also gives her a promise: ‘I will greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude.’ … ‘You shall bear a son; you shall call him Ishmael (‘God hears’) for the LORD has given heed to your affliction. He shall be a wild ass of a man, with his hand against veryone, and everyone’s hand against him, and he shall live at odds with all his kin.’
• God comforts her by meeting her, by hearing her, by seeing and acknowledging her affliction. God comforts her by promising her a great nation, which shows how God views this privilege! He gives a promise to Hagar and Ishmael not unlike the one to Abraham.
• Ishmael? The prediction is not a determination, but a prediction. It is not quite as negative as it may sound. Wild ass means one incredibly skilled at survival, at surviving in the tough places.
• Ge 16:15 Hagar gives birth to Ishmael, Abram in 86y at this time.
• The human here have brought on themselves – through their lack of trust and rather reliance on own effort – a difficult situation that will not go away.
• Sin creates new realities. God doesn’t prevent sin, he doesn’t prevent new realities. But he is willing to forgive, to redeem, to show a new way godly way in the current realities. Example: Australian single mother.

Genesis 17 – Sign of the Covenant: Circumcision

• Ge 17:1 Abram is 99y now, he has a 13y old Ishmael. 14 years have passed since the covenant. God speaks to him:
• Ge 17:2-8 ‘I am God almighty, walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you … exceedingly numrous … father of a multitude of nations … name change to ‘Abraham’ (‘ancestor of a multitude’) … I will make nations fo you, and kings shall come from you. Covenant between me and you, and your offspring … I will give you Canaan, where you are now an alien as perpetual holding.
• Progression of revelation, sharpening and focusing of call … as we walk in obedience.
• Ge 17:9-14 Circumcision as outward sign of this covenant, 14y after the ‘rightous by faith’. Paul uses this as his argument in Gal 3. Why this physical sign? … maybe to signify fruitfulness?
• Ge 17:15-16 Name change from Sarai to Sarah (‘XXXX’) … I will bless her … I will give you a son by her … she shall give rise to nations, kings of peoples shall come from her.
• Ge 17:17-18 Abraham laughs … He will be 100y, Sarah 99y, child? … Requests: ‘O that Ishamel might live in your sight!’
• Ge 17:19-22 “No, but your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac (‘laughter’), I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant with his offspring after him … at this season next year.”
• Ge 17:20 “As for Ishmael, I have heard you, I will bless him and make him fruitful and exceedingly numerous; he shall be the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation.” God’s grace and care for Ishmael, who has done no wrong. Again being a nation is a comfort!
• Medically? Circumcision is to be done on the 8th day after birth. It so happens that there is a platelet peak in the blood of the newborn on the eigth day (platelets are integral to blood coagulation / stopping bleeding).
• NT This passage is foundational. Paul interpreted it in Gal 4:21-31 to signify the difference between human effort or self-appointed action and God’s grace. God’s way will not be established, his promised Messiah will not come through the line of human effort but by the line of trust, faith, dependency on him.
• Principle: Also of utmost importance: God’s commitment to Sarah. He will not let her be sidelined, even after her dubious scheme and conflict with Hagar. God is committed to the original plan: a son by the wife. This is also God’s utter commitment to marriage, and first marriage, and indirectly monogamy. God will not say ‘if the wife can’t perform, let the concubine do’. God will not have his promise come through a second marriage, a concubine, a polygamy.
• Just imagine God had said: ‘Okay, whatever, the concubine will do’. Can you imagine what that would have done to Jewish view of marriage? Monogamy? Women in general? … I am thankful to God.
  Ge 17:23-27 Abraham obeys and circumcises all males.

Genesis 18 – Intercession for Sodom

• Ge 18:1-8 Three men suddenly ‘stand there’, Abraham is very hospitable and accommodates them.
• Ge 18:9-15 They predict a child by Sarah soon. She laughs, then is rebuked, then denies for fear. Affirmation of earlier promise of a child within the year.
• Ge 18:16-21 Now somehow the three turn out to be two angels (who procede to bring judgment on Sodom) and ‘the Lord’ (‘Jehovah’). This is a possible theophany.
  God / Jesus ‘speaks to himself’: “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall become a great and might nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? No, for I have chosen him, that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice … How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin…”
• This is a breath-taking interaction, God sharing his heart with man, involving him into the very affairs of God as co-workers, even co-regents. Psa ?
• Ge 18:22-33 Abraham intercedes for 50, 45, 30, 20, 10. God grants the request, though it later shows that there is none righteous in there, except Lot. And that one God gets out. So in that sense the intercession is successful. Who was the intercession for? Mostly Abraham’s understanding and revelation of God, I think.
• Famous Icon of Andrey Rublev interpreting Ge 18 as the Trinity visiting and deciding that Jesus will go to earth.

Genesis 19 – Judgment of Sodom

• Ge 19:1-3 The two angels proced to Sodom. Lot now lives in Sodom itself, though he is maintaing a different life (2 Pe 2:7-8). Yet still: what is he doing in this city? What does he think the future of his daughters here will be?
• Lot is very hospitable, urges them to take refuge at his house (knowing the streets).
• Ge 19:4-11 “The men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house; and they called to Lot, ‘Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them.” Lot pleads with them, even offers his virgin daughters (!), but only is saved from the mob by the angels striking them with blindness.
• A very disturbing picture. Not just a city with individual sinful behavior (here: adultery, homosexuality, forceful sexual relations (rape), gang rape) but a city where all this evil has become total general culture, with everybody given to it, universal and multigenerational. What do you think the ‘old men’ are doing with the ‘young men’ on a normal day? Discipleship in total depravity.
• Why is Sodom judged?
• Geb 19:4-11 adultery, homosexuality, forceful sexual relations, gang rape, pedophilie
• Jer 23:14 adultery, walk in lies, strengthen the hands of evildoers, they are all of them unto me as Sodom, Gomorrah
• Eze 16:49-50 This was the iniquity of your sister Sodom, pride, excess of food, prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty, and did abominable things before me.
• Gen 19:12-29 the angels disclose to Lot what is coming, offer to betrothed husbands who laugh it off, Lot flees with wife and two daughters. The angels have to work really hard to get Lot out, he is dragging his feet, delaying, bargaining.
• Science? The description of the destruction of Sodom, Gomorrah, Zeboiim, Admah (not Zoar) ‘sulpur and fire from heaven’, ‘cities overthrown’, Abraham sees ‘smoke going up’, it could be a total seismic / volcanic / geothermal event with an upheaval of the ground.
• Archeology: No trace of the cities exist, though they are mentioned in the Ebla tablets (2500-2250 BC), discovered 1975 AD in Tell Mardikh, Syria. The Jordan valley is a plate tectonic border, pulling apart (> depth).
• Gen 19:30-38 Lot settles in the hill, in a cave.
• This is like an opposite reaction, first he can’t leave Sodom, now he can’t live normally among other peoples. A fruit of this is his neglect of his daughters. Would it have been so hard to ask Abraham’s help to marry them off?
• This sets the stage for the daughters going for another ‘human way’ of achieving the goal: fornication (sexual relations), incestual relations and drugging.
• Peoples createdL The older daughter bears Moab > Moabites, the younger Ben-Ammi > Ammonites.
• These are cousin-peoples to Israel. Israel will meet them shortly (or have met them already) during their approach to Canaan. God will forbid Israel to engage in battle with them or take an inch of their land.
  Learning from Lot’s story? Neglect or no care for people’s lives or rights can set people up for choosing sinful paths. Also: God is very gracious, but don’t be as stupid as him!

Genesis 20 – Gerar: Deception Again

• Gen 20:1-18 Abraham’s clan moves South towards the Negev, near Kadesh, Shur, Gerar. King Abimelech of Gerar (a title, a generation later Isaac will do the same mistake with a later Abimelech of Gerar (Gen 26).
• This is the exact parallel story to Gen 12:10-20 with the Pharaoh in Egypt. Only that Sarah is now not 74 but 99 years old and possibly pregnant already, but obviously still stunning.
• What is Abraham thinking? It is obvious that he learnt exactly nothing from the earlier story. Again fear, again lies & deception, again he makes Sarah say the same lie (Gen 20:5), again it is God who bails Sarah out by sending a plague on Abimelech, his wife and female slaves. Gen 20:17 could imply that there was quite a time factor in this (?). Even worse: what is Abraham doing sending his wife into sexual slavery at a moment when they have the ‘one year later’ promise ticking? If Gerar was this dangerous, why go there at all?
• The red thread of lies and deception is by no means broken, and will be passed down to the next generations. Again God is committed to Sarah also, not just to Abraham.
• Moses as writer: Why does he include Abraham’s stupid behavior twice in full length? Showing how this sin is unbroken, passed down and worsening? Showing God’s protective power when his people find themselves in sticky situations? Showing them that in this case a Gentile king has almost more fear of God than the one with the promise?

Genesis 21 – Isaac is born

• Gen 20:1-7 Abraham is 100y, Sarah is 99y when the child of promise is born. Both laughed. Isaac means ‘laughter’. It once was a thing of unbelief, not it’s a thing of joy. God has fulfilled his promise.
• Gen 20:8-9 But the past is not undone: When Isaac is weaned (typically at 4 or 5 years of age), Ishmael (who is 18 or 19 now) ‘plays’ with him.
• What exactly didn’t Sarah like? It is – of course – clear, that a 18 year old, can easily tease, put down or be hiddenly revengeful on a 4 year old without that child being able to express it much.
• Paul in Gal 4:29 interprets this passage as ‘the child born according to the flesh persecuted the child who was born according to the Spirit’. So Paul states aggression on Ishmael’s part, which is quite easily understandable
• Sarah is not happy and tells Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away without inheritance.
• Gen 20:10-11 Abraham is distressed but God tells him to heed Sarah, though he restates the comfort-promise of a great nation about Ishmael
• Paul again quotes that in Gal 4:30 ‘Drive out the slave and her child; for the child of the salve will not share the inheritance with the child of the free woman.’
• But why the non-inheritance? Presumably Abram managed to give them some gold coins to carry, but mentioned is only bread and a water-skin.
• Hagar and Ishmel leave towards Beer-sheba, South, again possibly the direction of Egypt. The story kind of sounds like Ishmael is still a child (her casting him under a bush (Gen 21:15), but that is definitely not true. Even if we assume very swift weaning Ishmel’s age is 16 years, a strapping youth. How to explain that? Maybe heat exhaustion (which can take down a health man very quickly) or diarrhea?
• Gen 20:17-21 God again intervenes to save Hagar and Ishmael by letting her find water. They do survive, they keep living in the wilderness of Paran (today: Sinai peninsula, Western side across the gulf of Suez, opposite Egypt).
• Ishmael becomes an expert at the bow. Hagar finds Ishmael an Egyptian wife. They will keep loose relations with Abraham’s clan. Esau’s 3rd wife is a daughter of Ishmael.

Genesis 22 – Command to Sacrifice Isaac

• Gen 22:1-2 The instuction ‘on a mountain I will show you’ sounds like Ge 12:1-2 ‘to a country I will show you’. God says ‘your only son’, probably since Ishmael is gone and unaccessible. The story is undated, but Isaac would be a minimum of 5 years old, possibly already a lad or youth. He would definitely understand what was going on.
• Burnt offering were signs of whole-hearted devotion, where the entire animal was burnt.
• Gen 22:8 ‘God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering’ is heavy with meaning. Abraham means Isaac himself, who was provided by God. But the parallel to God providing his son Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice are strong. Actually the entire story of a Father giving up his Son for a higher purpose has multiple resonance.
• Where? ‘The mountain in the land of Moriah’ … where is this place? Why exactly this place? 2 Chr 3:1 describes Solomon building the temple on Mount Moriah, which is also the threshing floor of Arauna. Some people think Moriah is the actual temple hill, others think is was actually Golgatha. Either way, the resonance with this story are clear.
• The challenge of being willing to give something up, something good, something given by God, something most precious, to honor the Giver over the gift remains a challenge for all of us. Whether it’s a marriage, a child, a ministry, a calling …
• Gen 22:18 ‘and by your offspring shall all the nations gain blessing for themselves’ … quoted by Pau in Gal 3:16 as ‘offspring’ in singular, referring to Christ.
• Gen 22:20-24 News comes that Abram’s brother Nahor & Milcah also have children: Uz, Bux, Kemuel, Chesed, Hazo, Pildash, Jidlaph, Bethuel. Kemuel > Aram. Bethuel > Laban, Rebekah.
  Nahor and concubine Reumah have children: Tebah, Gaham, Tahash and Maacah.
• Is this good news (relatives to draw brides from?) … or a bit bitter-sweet (Abraham & Sarah have one only)?

Genesis 23 – Sarah’s Death and Burial

• Gen 23:1-20 Abraham is near Kiriath-arba (Hebron) when Sarah dies at age 127. She lived the last 28 years of her life as a mother. One huge problem of sojourners is burial grounds, where to put the dead.
  Abraham here buys a piece of land with a cave named Machpelah from a Hittite called Ephron in a very honorable and corrrect procedure. This shows that Abraham had the respect of the local people.
• Modern day application: burial grounds for neighbor converts is a very sticky business. Example: Rajshahi reserving a parcel of their land for burial grounds for that very reason. Another application: tensions around muslim burial grounds in Switzerland. This is an encouragement to be generous in these matters.

2nd PERSON ISAAC CONTINUATION

Genesis 24 – Isaac and Rebekah

• Gen 24 Beautiful story of Eliezer of Damascus (presumably) finding a wife for Isaac among Abraham & Sarah’s relatives. God’s hand and blessing is visible in the whole interaction. Some things to notice:
• Gen 24:5, 8, 58 The consensus of the woman (and of course also the man) to the marriage is mandatory. No ‘giving in marriage’ unless the person consents. Eliezer is free of the oath if the woman doesn’t want to come. Rebekah is asked whether she wants to go with Eliezer, though her father and brother have already given green light.
• Gen 24:30 We are introduced to Laban, who has an eye on the gold ornaments that Rebekah is getting. We will meet this nice young man again shortly.
• Gen 24:15-21 Rebekah is keeping her Father’s sheep, she is alone at the well, she deals appropriately with the thirsty foreigner, she speaks to him in public … this shows that women had room to act in that society.
• Gen 24:55 Rebekah veils herself on first meeting Isaac, but she also obviously didn’t veil herself for the journey or for Eliezer.

Genesis 25 – Abraham & Keturah, Ishmael, Esau & Jacob

• Gen 25:1-7 Abraham takes a third wife after Sarah is dead and Hagar is long gone: Keturah. No indication where she is from, mabye a local marriage?
• Abraham and Keturah have > Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, Shuah. Jokshan > Sheba, Dedan. Dedan > Ashurim, Letushim, Leummim. Midian > Ephah, Epher, Hanoch, Abida, Eldaah.
• Some names we’ll meet again: Dedanite Caravans, the country of Midian, Judah’s wife is a daughter of Shua.
• Gen 25:6 Abraham gives gifts / valuables to these sons but make Isaac his main heir. The sons are sent away before his death.
• Gen 25:7-11 Abraham dies at 175 years, Ishamel is at this time 89 y, Isaac is 75 y, Keturah’s sons younger than 48y. Iaac and Ishmael bury their fathe together in the cave of Machpelah, where 48 years earlier Sarah had been buried. This shows that there was active communication between the sons, for in hot countries burials happen rather quickly and Isaac must have been able to inform Ishmael in time.
• Gen 25:12-16 Ishmael was promised he would become the father of 12 princes, here they are: > Nebaioth, Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish and Kedermah. Daughter Mahalath. Ishmael’s age: 127 years. They settle Havilah (Yemen roughly) to Shur (Sinai roughly).
• The Arab’s trace themselves to these 12 tribes of Ishmael. I don’t know whether they have genealogies without gaps, but it is definitely the perceived truth.

Birth of Esau and Jacob

• Gen 25:19 Another pattern repeats: childlessness. Isaac marries Rebekah at 40y, prays for a child for 20y. He is 60 y at the birth of Esau and Jacob. Isaac does well: he doesn’t enter polygamy, nor tries other pathways. He has learned something from the difficult story of his parents.
• Gen 25:22 Rebekah has a ‘kicking pregnancy’. She is wise enough to inquire of the Lord, who answers her: ‘Two nations are in your womb, and wo peoples born of you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger.’
• Gen 25:24-28 Birth of the older Esau (‘handling, rough, felt’), birth of the younger Jacob (‘he takes by the heel’). Esau is a skillful hunter, a man of the field. Jacob was a quiet man, living in tents. Isaac loves Esau ‘because he was fond of game’ – now that is not a good reason! Rebekah loves Jacob.
• Partiality is introduced as a further dysfunctional aspect. The parents’ partiality will aggravate a relationship with naturally high conflict potential, with already prove conflict (in the womb! Ge 25:22) and even predicted conflict potential (Gen 25:23).
• It becomes a bit muddled what is the reason for the competition / enmity, what causes what. In a sense the conflict predates any human’s conscious mistake (in the womb), in a sense God almost puts them into competition, and the partents are definitely not wise enough to minimize things, rather do their own politics withing that.
• Who does God say will the promise rest on? Actually he doesn’t say, except that the older shall serve the younger. Only when most conflict has already happened, when birthright and blessing is past, at Bethel God speaks to Jacob. Does God here confirm man’s will and determination? Is this a choosing of the desperate, the pursuing, the willing? Or is it all ‘predestined’?
• The Bible knows the principle that seekers are rewarded. Or should this never have been so difficult a conflict, is it aggravated by human sin?
• Moses’ Israel will walk around Edom and not engage them in battle, even when Edom is not in any way accommodating them.
• Gen 25:29-34 Esau sells his birthright for a pot of lentil stew. Jacob is crafty, playing on his brother’s weakness, cheating him, though with his open consent.
• But Esau reveals his lack of wisdom and self-control: ‘I am about to die, of what use is the birthright to me?’. Clearly this is untrue, he isn’t dying, and also how long does it take to wip up something edible in a household as big as this?
• Esau’s great problem is that he doesn’t value the valuable, but on a spur of the moment decision he sells something valuable for a momentary pleasure or satisfaction.
• Heb 12:16 ‘See to it that no one become like Esau, an immoral and godless person who sold his birthright for a single meal.’
• Deception is running in the family, now into the 3rd generation. Here not so much lies, but craftiness, careful manipulation.
• Do not sell your birthright, do not jeopardize your calling, your future and the promise of God for one moment of pleasure! Learning to forego momentary pleasure, satisfaction, meeting of desires for the long-term valuable thing of importance is absolutely essential. No wisdom without self-control, without learning to value the valuable. Address familial evils. Address partiality.

Genesis 26 – Isaac and Abimelech

• Gen 26:1 Again a famine. Isaac moves to Gerar of the Philistines, ruled by King Abimelech (a descendant of the former one, presumably).
• Gen 26:2-5 At this critical time God speaks directly to Isaac, which probably was a great comfort and encouragement to him, having a father who heard God regularly, but not necessarily hearing God himself so far.
• God’s command is to not go to Egypt (common sense default, past experience default) but to stay.
• God promises Isaac his presence, blessing, in the future land ownership, fulfillment of the oath to Abraham, numerous offspring, all the nations shall gain blessing for themselves through your offspring (ultimately fulfilled in Jesus). It’s a full-on coveant renewal with the new generation: Isaac.
• Gen 26:6 The all important thing: Isaac trusts God’s word and obeys God’s word > he settles in Gerar.
• Gen 26:8, Ge 24:67 Isaac and Rebekah have a love relationship.
• Gen 26:7-11 But then he resorts to lies and deception concerning his wife, in an exactly parallel way to Abraham. The sin has been successfully passed on the the new generation.
• Again the Gentile King has more integrity than the bearer of the promise: He ensures that Rebekah is left alone.
• Gen 26:12-14 Isaac sows seed and reaps a 100fold harvest. This is a new development into agriculture.
• The blessing of God continues and Isaac becomes very rich, so much so that the Philistines envy him, but also that hosting him has become a problem for Abimelech.
• Gen 26:15-16 Abimelech asks Isaac to leave: ‘God away from us; you have become too powerful for us.’
  This is a righteous request. He did host him with a good will. Now that tensions arise he politely requests him to leave. A similar scenario will repeat itself with Pharaoh, but he isn’t willing to properly put up people, but also not willing to let them go.
• Gen 26:15, 17-22 Tensions around water sources, no wonder in a dry land with a famine running or possibly just past and a guest with a big household and huge flocks. Isaac yields again and again, till he is in lands far into the Negev, up to Beer-sheba.
• Gen 26:23-24 God reaffirms his promise: ‘Do not be afraid, for I am with you and will bless you and make your offspring numerous’ … Isaac calls on God, builds and altar (like Abraham used to do) and digs a well.
• Gen 26:25-32 Abimelech officially visits him with his counselor and army commander: They want a covenant. They must have gotten afraid after making Isaac leave, that he may ally himself with other and turn on them.
• They make a non-violence, non-attack covenant (parity covenant). Isaac agrees > feast, oath. Abimelech is Philistine. Thie covenant wil not be in violation of the conquest and ban commands of God.
• Gen 26:28, 29 They acknowledge: “We see plainly that the LORD has been with you… You are now the blessed of the LORD”. Isaac (Abraham’s clan) is no longer a small nomadic tribe that lives on the fringes of other’s existence, but a force to be reckoned with. Also witness is going out to others, as it is meant to.
• Moses is showing Israel a role they should be to others: People of the Lord, fair, peaceful, in friendship and reasonable covenant, a influence and witness to the surrounding peoples.

Esau’s Hittite wives

• Gen 26:34-35 Esau marries two Hittite wives, Judith and Basemath. They make life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah. Again Esau is probably willful. He is not following the family pattern of getting a wife from Abram’s family in Haran. He is the first to enter of Abraham’s family to enter polygamy without a pressing reason. Hittites are on the death list (Gen 15:19).

Genesis 27 – Jacob steals Isaac’s Blessing

• Gen 27:1-4 Isaac is blind due to age. Before he dies he wants to ensure that he blesses Esau, his favorite son, and he wants to eat game.
• Gen 27:5-27 Rebekah gets news and pulls Jacob into a scheme to obtain the coveted blessing for him: complete with cooking, disguise, furs to imitate skin, lies …
• Gen 27:28-29 Isaac blesses Jacob, thinking him Esau: ‘May God give you the dew of heaven, and of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine. Let peoples serve you, and nations bow down to you. Be lord over yours brothers … Cursed be everyone who curses you,a nd blessed be everyone who blesses you.’
• Especially the last line is parallel to Gen 12:3, Isaac clearly thinks the promise lies on Esau. Or is he trying to undo the earlier prophecy made of the older serving the younger?
• Ge 28:30-38 Esau returns and goes to Isaac, the deception is revealed.
• Ge 28:36 Esau ‘cries out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry …’. He accuses Jacob ‘he took away my bithright; and look, now he has taken away my blessing’ … the second is true, the first not really. Esau has not taken responsibility for that one, nor learned something from it. He pleads with his father for another blessing.
• Isaac has give a very unneededly lopsided, even competitive blessing to what he thought was Esau, which now backfires. In his mind is deeply scripted competition and scarcity mentality. He thinks that to bless one son with rain means the other can’t be blessed with rain. So now his remainder blessing is skewed also.
• That is deeply untrue about God. In the Law it will be abundantly clear that God will bless any and everyone who obeys, regardless of how many. We also are deeply scripted in scarcity mentality. We need to think like God!
• Gen 28:39 Isaac blesses him ‘See, away from the fatness of the earth shall your home be, and away from the dew o heaven on high. By your sword you shall live, and you shall serve your brother, but when you break loose, you shall break his yoke from your neck.’.
• Fullfillment? Esau becomes the nation of Edom, which lives in a very dry, rugged terrain, but tenacious and powerful in battle.
• Moses’ Israel will walk around Edom and not engage them in battle, even when Edom is not in any way accommodating them.
• David will subdue Edom, but later they will revolt and become a very bitter enemy of Israel. ‘Edom’ becomes a byword for rebellious, self-willed strength in opposition to God.
• Gen 27:41-46 Esau is plotting Jacob’s murder, not rightly so but quite understandably so. Rebekah again ‘hears’ and acts, she sadly learnt a little too much from her manipulative father Laban:

3rd PERSON JACOB FATHER OF ISRAEL

Genesis 28 – Jacob at Bethel

• Gen 28:1-5 Isaac blesses Jacob and charges him to find a wife from Rebekah’s brother Laban’s daughters. Isaac, who could be very resentful, somehow blesses Jacob now. Is this ‘the irreversibility of blessing’?
• Or is he realizing that in spite of it all God’s will has gone forward? That he couldn’t cheat the original prophecy (Gen 25:23)?
• Jacob leaves. Rebekah for all her successful scheming has brought on herself a bleak reality: her older son is most likely very resentful of her and her favorite younger son she will never see again (upon Jaco’s return 20 years later only Isaac is still mentioned). So she finds herself almost bereaved of two sons.
• Gen 28:6-9 Esau, seeing that Isaac was sent to find a wife of Rebekah’s family, he goes and finds a third wife, also from ‘family’, Mahalath, the daughter of Ishmael. It would have been better to ask before taking the Hittite wives, and before taking two wives, this third wife is not going to help.
• Gen 28:10-22 Jacob, probably feeling very alone, travels North from Beer-sheba towards Paddan-Aram. During an overnight at Bethel God appears to him: he sees a ladder into heaven, angels ascending and descending on it.
• Gen 28:13-15 God reveals himself (in his dream) as the God of Abraham and Isaac and re-confirms the promises: land, descendants like the dust spreading out all directions, ‘all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring.’ (possibly quoted by Paul in Gal 3:16 as referring to Christ). ‘I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land.’
• Again God in a promissory covenant style commits unilaterally to this not very worthy person. Jacob, who all his life tried to conquer things (valuable things, right things), now he is given everything by grace.
• Gen 28:16-17 Jacob is awed, calls the place ‘Bethel’ (house of God), sets up his pillow-stone for a pillar, anoints it with oil
• Gen 28:18-18 In his response it shows that he is still the ‘old Jacob’ because he grandly vows to follow God, to set up Bethel as house of God and to tithe … if God keeps him, provides for him and let’s him return in peace. Very gracious of you, Jacob. He hasn’t quite captured grace yet. Neither have we.

Genesis 29 – Jacob cheated into a Polygamy

• Gen 29:1-10 In a very parallel replay of his mother before (Gen 24), he meets Rachel at the well and waters her flock, is accommodated by Laban, starts laboring there.
• Gen 29:15-20 Laban asks for what wages Jacob wants, Jacob suggests 7 years for Rachel. The marriage is agreed on.
• Gen 29:21-30 Laban cheats Jacob into a marriage with Leah. Jacob agrees to serve another 7 years for Rachel.
• In the Law (Lev 18:18) God forbids marrying one woman and her sister as a rival during the first woman’s lifetime. It is not only polygamy, but setting two women mercilessly into competition. Laban is a deceiver at its best. He blames it on culture ‘This is not done in our contry – giving the younger before the firstborn”. Maybe, but then say so! Laban has cheated Jacob into a polygamy, and has set up his two daughters for unending conflict and heart ache.
• Gen 29:31-35 Rachel is loved. Leah is unloved. Both initially are barren. The problem of barrenness is in the 3rd generation, now. God ‘opens Leah’s womb’ and grants her 4 sons: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah.

Genesis 30 – Children War

• Gen 30:1 Rachel is barren. She envies her sister. ‘Give my children, or I shall die!’
• Of course, they should have never been set into competition. If It was a monogamy Jacob and Rachel would bear the burden of childlessness together, but now in the polygamy she is all alone, and surrounded by 4 strapping boys. We look down of Rachel’s desperation, but the guilt is totally somewhere else.
• We often do that: put women into impossible situations and then look down or smile at their desparation.
• Gen 30:2 Jacob becomes very angry ‘Am I in the place of God?’ …
• What makes Jacob angry? His feeling for Rachel predicament, his helplessness at the impossible demand. And of course he obviously can’t be blamed, the barrenness is not due to him.
• Gen 30:3 Rachel goes back to the ‘strategy’ of her grandmother Sarah: ‘Here is my maid Bilhah’, again with the intent to claim the resulting child for herself. But that will not really work.
• Gen 30:9 Leah also goes back to the same strategy, so Zilpah is added as the 4th wife.
• The only thing that is achieved through all this is that there will be 4 wives, instead of two, with children each.
  
  • Leah: 1 Reuben, 2 Simeon, 3 Levi, 4 Judah, 9 Issachar, 10 Zebulun, Dinah
  • Bilhah: 5 Dan, 6 Naphtali
  • Zilpah: 7 Gad, 8 Asher
  • Rahel: 11 Joseph, later 12 Benjamin
• Gen 30:14-15 The mandrake story further highlights the misery of a polygamy: the preferred wife allowing the less preferred wife a night with her husband against payment. This is really humiliating for all involved, and it is a preventable tragedy to have women reduced to such bickering and manipulation.

Jacob & Laban’s flocks

• Gen 30:25-43 After the 14 years of service Jacob wants to leave.
• Gen 30:27 Laban has ‘learned by divination that the LORD has blessed me gecause of you; name your wages and I will give it.’ Laban is fair enough to state the obvious.
• Gen 30:28 Jacob: before Laban had little, now he has much. Suggestion: wages of a speckled & spotted lamb & goats, black lambs.
• Gen 30:35-36 Laban agrees but secretly removes those. A deceiver at his best.
• Gen 30:37-43 Jacob tries to influence the breeding in such a way that many speckled & spotted be born by laying speckled & spotted rods into the water troughs.
• This is the scientific assumption of the day: same will breed same. It doesn’t but God has his hands in it and more and more high quality animals belong to Jacob.

Genesis 31 – Jacob flees from Laban

• Gen 31:1-2 Laban’s sons say ‘Jacob has … gained all this wealth from what belonged to our father’. Laban’s attitude changes. Laban’s son, well discipled by their master manipulator father, are in no way committed to truth.
• Gen 31:3, 10-16 God tells him to return to Canaan and assures him that he has seen the cheating. ‘I am the God of Bethel’
• Gen 31:4-9 He consults with Leah & Rachel. He says Laban has cheated him continually and ‘changed his wages 10 times’.
• The cheater has lived through 20 years of being cheated, putting up with continual injustice. God made him feel it from the other side.
• Gen 31:14 In this the two sisters are unified: ‘There is no inheritance left to us in our father’s house. He regards us as foreigners. He as sold us, and he has been using up the money give for us. All the property that God has taken away from our family belongs to us and to our children; now then, do whatever God has said to you.’
• What a view of two daughters of their father: basically a greedy cheat, using and manipulating people continually, but not good at management at all, rather squandering and the claiming of others. Their dowry has not been kept for them.
• Gen 31:19-21 Jacob flees in an opportune moment with his whole family and the acquired herds and flocks.
• Gen 31:22-24 Laban pursues them, is warned in a dream by God, overtakes them in the hill country of Gilead.
• Gen 31:25-32 Laban posters as an offended benevolent father, wanting to give a smashing farewell. Gods were stolen. Basically things were taken that are not Jacob’s, division of a household is a sticky business.
• Gen 31:33-42 Rachel actually did steal the gods, but manages to hide them. Jacob angry at the humiliating search.
• Gen 31:36-42 Jacob for the first time talks straight, spitting out 20 years of continual labor, non-appreciation, even injustice
• Gen 31:43-44 Laban for the first time talks straight, and is full of false claims ‘The daughters are my dauthrer, the children are my children, the flocks are may flocks, and all that you see is mine’. None is true. This finally is the bottom line of his greedy and unjust heart: he is only right and has no fairness in any sense left for Jacob. ‘But what can I do today …?’ Thankfully God is putting a stop to it. Laban suggests a covenant of non-attack.
• Gen 31:45-55 Covenant with a stone heap as witness: Both parties will not cross over this signal for harm for the other party.
  Jacob must have been very relieved, and his family. He hasn’t won by striving but by God sticking to his promise. He has one potentially very sticky conflict behind him. He now is free, his back is secured, he has his family and good live-stock, a basis for the future. But he will now face the challenge on the other side, the mess he left behind when he fled.

Genesis 32 – Wrestling with God

• Gen 32:1-8 Jacob sends lavish gifts and greetings ahead of himself. The messangers come back with disturbing news: Esau and 400 men are coming to meet him.
• Gen 32:9-12 Jacob is in fear, cries out to God, acknowledging gratefully God’s hand so far (he has been kept, he has been given family and livestock), acknowledging his own unworthiness, calling on God’s promise and character. This prayer is very different from the Bethel ‘bargain with God’ prayer.
• Gen 32:13-21 He moves all his flocks, herds, family across the Jabbok, organizes them in droves, finally ends up himself alone on the other side.
• Gen 32:22-32 At night a man wrestles with him. Jacob is tenacious. The other hurts his hip. Jacob doesn’t let go… ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me’. ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.’ … Jacob called the place ‘Peniel’, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” He limps.
  Jacob’s life in a nutshell. His striving, his deep desire, his scarcity mentality, his reliance on self, his control and manipulation, his suffering and integrity, his crying out to God. ‘Israel’ means ‘God strives (for you)’, ‘The one who strives with God’.
• Jacob = Israel will become the name of all his descendants. All his descendants and nobody but his descendants will be called ‘Israel’ or later ‘Jews’.

Genesis 33 – Jacob and Esau meet

• Gen 33:1-3 Jacob arranges everybody to serially meet Esau.
• Gen 33:4-11 Esau runs to meet him, embraces him, kisses him and they wept. God has striven for him:
• Esau has found through to forgiveness or ease, a 20+year old bad story has just been sweetly concluded in a few seconds, you can hear the boulders of weight falling off Jacob’s shoulders. Now he is free.
• Esau is easy: I have enough, no need for big gifts. He has 5 sons (from the 3 wives), he is a leader (the 400 men with him). He has so much livestock that Jacob and Esau have to split later (Gen 36:6-8). Isaac’s stingy blessing is more than exceeded, there is abundance, no lack of anything.
• Gen 33:12-17 They part in peace, due to different traveling speeds.
• Gen 33:18-19 Jacob’s clan camps near Shechem.

Geneiss 34 – Dinah violated – the Shechem Genocide

• Gen 34:1 Dinah goes out to visit the women of the region. This raises the question as to her age. This seems to be right after Jacob’s return, Jacob hasn’t even been to see Isaac yet (Gen 35:27), he is therefore married to Leah (and Rachel) since 13-14 years. Dinah’s birth (Gen 30:21) seems to be after the 4 sons, the gap, then the two sons of Leah. But that would make her age barely 6y. Also Simeon and Levi, who attack the city afterwards would barely be 12-13y. It is therefore likely that a few years have passed either in slow travel of generally.
• Gen 34:2 Shechem, son of Hamor, prince of the region ‘took her and laid with her and defiled her’. The word used for Dinah is H5291 ‘na’arah’, translated ‘girl, damsel, maid, young woman, from childhood to adolescence’. They are Hivites, a people on the death list.
• Gen 34:3-12 Hamor and son Shechem come to Jacob, ask for favor, ask for a proper marriage, are willing to pay any bride price. It’s a serious attempt at rectifying after a wrong doing.
• Gen 34:13-20 Jacob’s sons are very angry, answer deceitfully, feigning that they agree, allow for intermarriages, ask for circumcision as condition.
• Gen 34:21-24 Hamor & Shechem try to convince their people to agree to circumcision by telling them that the Shechemites can bascially mix with this clan and take it over slowly (including possessions).
• Gen 34:25-26 On the third day (when all the males are in pain due to the circumcision), Simeon and Levi (2nd and 3rd son) attack city with swords and kill all males (including Hamor, Shechem) and take Dinah out of Shechem’s house
• Gen 34:27-29 The remaining sons ‘come upon the slain’, and plunder the city, taking flocks, herds, goods, wealth, women and children
• Gen 34:30 Jacob objects: ‘You have brought trouble on me by making me odious to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites; my numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household’. This is a reasonable fear, if the locals gather Jacob as as a sojourning clan is in danger, indeed. But why Caananites & Perizzites, why not Hivites?
• Gen 34:31 But they said, ‘Should our sister be treated like a whore?’
• This is a bad story in all ways. The original act was a rape, or very close to one. He is senior, she is junior, no indication about any consent, something that ‘ought not to be done’ (Gen 34:7). The brothers are right to be angry, right to call it a crime. But their deception is evil.
• Now deception has gone into the 4th generation, and it has turned into a deadly thing. It is clear that Jacob doesn’t know what Simeon and Levi are planning, neither do the other brothers is seems, he would have objected (out of fear) as he does afterward. Clearly Jacob thought the agreement was meant seriously, which also means he thought it acceptable. Also Dinah is given officially to Shechem (they take her out of his house on the day of the genocide, Gen 34:26), which also sounds as if all thought the agreement was going forward. If Dinah was asked whether she was willing (as was done with Rebekah, Rachel) she must have agreed, or maybe felt she had no other choice.
• Simeon and Levi’s actions show that they have no problem or remorse (see their reaction afterward, Gen 34:31) at serverely escalating violence. If they had feigned an agreement, lured Shechem over to their household and killed him, that would be by stealth, but at least not an escalation of violence (one person > whole city). To execute a genocide on a people they have just agreed to covenant with is also a severe breech of word. They rightly ask for judgment on a criminal act, but commit multiple criminal acts to implement it.
• The ‘second thought’ looting makes it even worse, and makes the ‘moral indignation’ even more hollow. The other brothers do not object, but join in at a moment of weakness of the enemy (see Obadiah, Edom).
• They have not only become people of violence and breech of word, they are have used the sacred sign of covenant with God to bring undeserved violence on another people. So much for being different, so much for being a blessing!
• The whole clan walks away thinking this a relative success, a revenge, enlarged wealth, new slaves, no consequences.
• Only Jacob is seriously afraid, and rightfully so. When God asks him to go up to Bethel in Gen 35:1, he must have been relieved. How Dinah felt about all this nobody is asking.
• Gen 35:5 God even grants them a ‘terror’ on the inhabitants of the land, so no-one will follow them. That is God’s gracious protection, and Jacob will appreciate it, but the others will misunderstand it: ‘See, nothing happened, why are so afraid? We did the right thing, after all.’
• Gen 49:5-7 Jacob gives his verdict in the ‘blessing’ he gives: ‘Simeon and Levi are brothers; weapons of violence are their swords. May I never come into their council; may I not be joined to their company – for in their anger they killed men, and at their whim they hamstrung oxend. Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it si cruel! I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.’
• I think it is this event that makes God decide on the 400 years in Egypt. Some genealogies and small events are in Gen 35-36, but the next major even is Joseph, who becomes the bridge into Egypt.
  Though they think nothing happened, and though nobody ‘punishes’ them for the genocide they committed, God has seen the escalation of deception, of violence and of total desacration of the sign of the covenant, but this time not by the general people (like in the flood) but by his chosen clan. Not good.
• God gives a life sentence: slavery in Israel. They, who have been free so long, wealthy so long, and have enslaved Shechemites, will taste what it feels to be enslaved, poor, needy.
• Gen 37:12 I find it very intersting where the pivotal story of wanting to kill Joseph happens. Joseph is sent to find the brothers, who in nomadic style have gone North all the way to where? … ‘near Shechem’. Now why would they go exactly there? If they had any fear at all or any conviction, that is the one place they would not want to go back. The fact that they move the herds back exactly there speaks of their fearlessness (they still don’t think what they did was objectionable) and their callousness (what did you go see? The ruins? What has remained? Whether there is still anything lying around? Are trying to claim that land? Are you trying to prove your victory and courage? .. This is not good, further hardening of hearts.
• And it is in this very area (now Dothan, Gen 37:17) that Joseph finds them, and that they conspire to kill him. It worked so well last time, didn’t it? Just doing it … It is also interesting that it is Reuben (brother 1) who secretly plans to set Joseph free in the night (Gen 37:22), and Judah (brother 4) who suggests selling instead of killing (Gen 37:26), probably his way of trying to save Joseph. It is interesting that for all the wealth the clan has, this argument should win support! It is very likely again Simeon and Levi (brother 2 and 3) who call the shots, for the others are still younger, though time seems to have passed. Reuben, though the firstborn, doesn’t have the courage to speak against the plan directly.

Genesis 35 – Jacob at Bethel

• Gen 35:1-4 At this point of fear and utter frustration for Jacob (I think, seeing what his sons are becoming), God speaks to him again: Command to settle in Bethel, to make an altar, to put away foreign gods, to purify themselves and to come meet God. I think Jacob is relieved, and more than willing to have the clan undergo a degree of spiritual revival.
• The clan gives Jacob the gods they have (they did have them!) and ear rings, Jacob hides them at the oak near Shechem. Maybe these things are (at least to some part) loot from Shechem?
• Gen 35:5 God graciously grants the ‘terror’, they are not attacked. What witness do you think has gone out to the peoples?
• Gen 35:9 God appears to Jacob, blesses him, reaffirms his name ‘Israel’, ‘I am God Almighty’, “be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall spring from you. The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will giv eto you, and I will give the land to your offspring after you.’
• Gen 35:12-15 Jacob makes a stone pillar, pours out a drink offering and oil. Remembrance.
• Gen 35:16-21 Rachel dies in childbirth. Benjamin is born.
• Gen 35:22 Reuben has sexual relations with his father’s wife Bilhah. This is forbidden in the law (Lev 18:8), which has not been given yet, though. There is no record of Jacob punishing him, but will hold this against him. In the ‘blessing’ this will reappear (Gen 49:3-4): ‘Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might and the first fruit of my vigor, excelling in rank and excelling in power. Unstable as water, you shall no longer excel because you went up unto your father’s bed, then you defiled it – you went up unto my couch!’
• Gen 35:27-29 Jacob finally meets his father again after so many years at Hebron. Rebekah is no longer mentioned, it seems she never saw her favorite son again. Isaac dies at age 180 y (so his desire to bless his sons before he dies was a bit premature 🙂 … Esau and Isaac togher bury him, a good sign.

Genesis 36 – Esau’s Descendants

• Gen 36:1-19 Esau’s wives are 1 Canaanite Adah, daughter of Elon the Hittite. 2 Oholibamah, daughter of Anah, son of Simeon the Hivite (earlier called Hittite by Rebekah). 3 Basemath, daughter of Ishmael.
  Adah > Eliphaz. Oholibamah > Jeush, Jalam, Korah. Basemath > Reuel. Eliphaz & wife > Teman, Omar, Zepho, Gatam, Kenaz. Eliphaz & concubine Timna > Amalek. Reuel > Nathath, Zerah, Shammah, Mizzah.
• Gen 36:8 Esau becomes the patriarch of the nation of Edom, the clan settles in the hill country of Seir.
• Gen 36:20-30 Genealogy of Seir the Horite, the inahbitants of the land
• Gen 36:31-39 List of the early Kings of Edom. Not specific about familial descent
• Israel will soon meet (or has already met) Edom. They will respect their borders, walk around their land as God commands.

4th PERSON JOSEPH A GODLY MAN

Genesis 37 – Joseph dreams of Greatness

• Gen 37:1-4 Joseph is 17y, the son of Jacob’s old age (together with Benjamin), the firstborn of the favorite wife Rachel. His father prefers him, gives him the colorful, long robe. Partiality, already a problem with Isaac & Rebekah, appears again. We think he should have seen the havoc partiality created in his family, and try to avoid it. But it’s easier said than done, and he may have been blind to his weakness. He will pay dearly for it later.
• He is also godly and truthful. This sets him on a path of conflict with his older brothers, he brings a bad report about Gad and Asher (Zilpah), Dan and Naphtali (Bilhah).
• Gen 37:5-11 He has two dreams, one with sheaves, one with sun, moon and stars, always him being bowed down to by the others. Needless to say these dreams will not make him popular. He still is simple enough or courageous enough to share them. Even his father Jacob is alarmed, but he keeps the matter in mind.
• Gen 37:12-17 The brothers are away, moving their flocks till Shechem.
• Why there? That should be the one place they don’t want to go back to, the place of their greatest sin. But they seem to be neither fearful, nor convicted. Maybe this is a test of courage among them. Maybe they want to see how it looks now, see the ruins, see what remains, whether there is still anything lying around. This would result in a further hardening of hearts. They’ll think the issue even less a problem.
• Gen 37:15 ‘A an found him wandering in the fields’. He gives him directions as to how to find his brothers. Some people think this was an angel to help Joseph, or one to ‘overhear’ what the brothers are talking?
• Gen 37:18-24 Plan to kill Joseph. Reuben converts it to a imprisonment for one night with the plan to release him secretly. He, though the firstborn, doesn’t have the power to directly oppose their plan, but he seeks to prevent it. Why? Maybe his conviction is at work over his adultery with Bilha? Maybe he knows that this will win him favor with Jacob?
• Gen 37:25-28 Judah converts the plan to a selling, instead of a killing, also to protect Joseph. Brother 1 and 4 try to save Joseph, it seems brother 2 and 3 (Simeon and Levi) must be the ringleaders, the other brothers still being younger, some barely 20. Simeon and Levi have learnt nothing. In the same place where they killed people and enslaved others, they are not willing to kill or enslave their own brother. Violence not only to foreign Shechem where there was a reason, but now to an own brother who is innocent. Again a descent into callousness, an escalation of violence.
• Gen 37:29-36 Cover-up with a wild animal story. Joseph sold in Egypt to Pharaoh’s captain of the guard, Potiphar.
• Moses tells Israel the story of how they ended up in Egypt.

Genesis 38 – Judah and Tamar

• Gen 38:1-6 Judah leaves the clan and lives near Hirah the Adullamite. He sees a Caananite men Shua’s daughter and marries her. They have three sons: Er, Onan and Shelah. Er marries Tamar, presumably also a Caananite or something. Judah clearly doesn’t think he needs a wife or daughters-in-law from Abraham’s family.
• Notice that there is no such thing as purity of blood within Israel. This is Jesus’ line of ancestors now. Perez and Zerah, the children Tamar will bear to Judah will be half Canaanite.
• Gen 38:7 Er is so evil, that God actually directly kills him. We are not told what his wickedness was, but since God didn’t judge directly after the Shechem genocide we can assume that Er was really evil. Where did he learn that from? Maybe his Canaanite mother and mother’s family? There is no racial purity, neither serious religious purity.
• Gen 38:9-10 Judah tells Onan to perform the duty of a brother-in-law. Onan uses Tamar for sex, but spills his semen so as to prevent a child. God puts him to death. Nice family.
• Gen 38:11-14 Judah tells Tamar to wait till the Shelah will be of age, but the promise is not redeemed. Judah’s wife dies.
• Gen 38:15-23 Tamar poses as prostitute (zanah), Judah hires her. Adultery and prostitution. She demands his signet and cord as pledge, then disappears.
• Ge 38:24-30 Tamar is pregnant with twins. Judah wants to judge her an punish her by burning. This is not a Jewish method of killing. Also he visits prostitute and she gets the death sentence for fonication. Tamar reveals the truth and Judah says ‘She is more in the right than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah.’ But he doesn’t marry her.
• Gen 38:30 She gives birth to Zerah and Perez. On Perez is the line of promise.
• Moses shows Israel the very mixed picture of their ancestors’s lives, racial mixing, but worse: immorality and religious mixing. This could be a warning not to do this, once in Canaan. Or to show the sharp contrast to Joseph, who is in a league of his own.

Genesis 39 – Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife

• Gen 39:1-6 Joseph is a slave, but God is so with him and so blesses him that whatever he touches is successful. He gets Potiphar’s favor, truth and promotion to main manager.
• Joseph must have battled with disappointment, with unforgiveness, with resentment. Resentment against his Father, for setting him up, against his brothers for betraying him, against God for getting him into trouble with those stupid dreams, who sound like irony now. Who is bowing before whom? Joseph works himself through this, he trusts in God, he does what is possible, he is hard-working, he has integrity. And the one thing that is visible is God’s presence and blessing.
• We would have pouted, blamed, sunk into victim mentatlity, cut corners, become bitter, …
• Gen 39:7-18 Potiphar’s wife tempts Joseph to adultery, repeatedly, daily. Joseph: ‘How then could I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?’. He resists evades. Eventually he is caught and he flees. The wife, now thoroughly offended, accuses him of attempting to violate her.
• We think her fast and ugly. You can be sure she wasn’t. She was probably the only one nice to the young foreigner. The only one who was nice. This would have been such a sore situation. She as the mistress of the house, can so set him up for trouble, for temptation, constantly, day in and day out.
• We would say God is unjust, he sets me up for failure, how can I resist? We say: the woman in the road whom I saw for a second is not dressed entirely properly, so I am entitled to harass her. What a contrast in Joseph! Integrity and principle is stunning.
• Gen 39:19-20 Potiphar is enraged and has imprisoned. The same pattern as before: He gets punished for doing the right thing. Now he has some more people to forgive. And not resent. And forgive, not least God.
• Gen 39:21-23 Joseph keeps his attitude straight. He gets favor with the jailer. He offers to serve ‘whatever was done there, he was the one who did it.’ He doesn’t wine, he doesn’t blame, he doesn’t resent.

Genesis 40 – Dreams of the Prisoners

• Gen 40 Since he is in the jail with the king’s prisoners, he serves the cupbearer and the baker. They have dreams. Joseph says ‘Do not interpretations belong to God? Please tell them to me.’
• This is a sore test from God. Joseph has every reason and ‘right’ to be resentful to God about dreams and interpretations of dreams. Did not God set him up for failure? Do not his own dreams seem like cruel jokes by now? If Joseph still resented God, he could not now come forward with trust and interpret these dreams.
• He accurately predicts the two dreams. He asks the cupbearer to please remember him, and that he has been jailed unjustly (Gen 40:14). Now there is someone who should be grateful to him, and has the power to do something for him, but: ‘Yet he chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him.’
• What a sore test. The test of rising hope and then it coming crashing down. Two full years pass. Tell me what resentment he is not entitled to have?

Genesis 41 – Joseph exalted

• Gen 41:1-5 Pharaoh’s dream of 7 fat and thin cows, and 7 fat and thins ears. No one can interpret the dream. Finally the cupbearer remembers. Joseph is brought in. He acknowledges God ‘It is not I: God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer’ (Gen 41:16). He interprets the dreams: Both mean the same: 7 years of plenty followed by 7 years of famine.
• Gen 41:31-36 He advises appointing an overseer, who will store away 20% of production over the 7 years of plenty for the 7 years of famine following ‘so that the land may not perish through the famine.’ (Gen 41:36). Here is one of God’s people being a blessing to the nations.
• Gen 41:37-45 Joseph is exalted to second in charge (this is the 3rd time) over Egypt with Pharaoh’s signet ring and people bowing to him (as his dream with 17 indicated). He gets a name of honor and a wife, and two sons Manasseh & Ephraim (half Egyptian blood). He was 17 when he was brought to Egypt, 13 years he served, at 30 he is exalted. David has almost exactly the same timeline.
• Gen 41:46-57 The plan is implemented, the 7 fat years occur indeed, followed by the famine.

Genesis 42 – Jacob’s Sons of Egypt

• Gen 42 As the drought and famine grips, Jacob’s clan runs out of food, and probably loses a lot of animals, but they do have wealth. News comes of Egypt having grain. Jacob sends his 10 sons to Egypt to buy grain. Joseph recognizes them and charges them with being spies. They say they are brothers and mention Benjamin. Joseph insists they bring Benjamin to prove the truth of their words. Conviction kicks in (Gen 42:21-22). They find the money in their bags.

Genesis 43 – Jacob’s Sons bring Benjamin

• Gen 43 They have to go back to Egypt due to the famine. They bring double money, choice gifts and Benjamin. Joseph receives them cordially, gives a feast with birth order seating and double portion to Benjamin to test whether they will be jealous again.

Genesis 44 – Benjamin detained

• Gen 44 Joseph lets disaster strike: Benjamin has Joseph’s drinking cup in his sack. Joseph insists on detaining only Benjamin, to test whether they will abandon their brother (of Rachel, likely the new favorite) as they abandoned him. Judah seriously asks to be the substitute prisoner. Then Joseph breaks down and reveals himself.

Genesis 45 – Joseph reveals himself

• Gen 45 Joseph reveals himself: ‘And now, do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine’. Joseph, ever since the brothers showedup, has had time to ponder the providential hand of God in the way his life unfolded, and though it was hard, it is even more amazing now.
• The brothers are totally dismayed (Gen 45:3). To find out the brother you betrayed is not the chief of the most powerful nation on earth, holding the grain of the world, would be scary, even if you didn’t have a biting conscience. Pharaoh hears family has come and sends wagons to bring the whole clan. The brothers tell Jacob that Joseph is alive and great in Egypt.

Genesis 46 – Jacob’s Family moves to Egypt

• Gen 46:1-4 God confirms the move to Egypt and the promise of his famly becoming a great nation there, the promise of bringing him back to Canaan (his dead body for burial). God doesn’t mention the slavery to come.
• Gen 46:5-34 The whole clan moves to Egypt and is settled by Pharaoh in Goshen, the fertile Nile delta, the best of the land. Full list of the family clan.

Genesis 47 – The Famine bites

• Gen 47:1-6 The Jacob family is introduced to Joseph, given Goshen and is offered to take care of Pharaoh’s flocks.
• Gen 47:7-12 Jacob meets Pharaoh and blesses him. The clan is provided with food according to their number.
• Gen 47:13-26 Joseph administers the famine relief. Upon first reading it looks like Joseph is enslaving the entire population of Egypt, but let’s look closer:
• During the 7 fat years he stores away 20% of the crop, from which he then parcels out grain for the lean 7 years, for not only Egypt but even surrounding nations’ buyers.
• This means that the fat years had tremendous overproduction: a mere 20% of the crops were enough to live by, but each year the Egyptians got 80% into their hands (after Joseph cut off 20%). If the farmers took the Word of God earnest enough, they could have easily stored away 50-60% of their crops (100% minus Joseph’s 20% minus 20% for current living). If they had done so, they would have had almost tripple the amount they really needed to make it through the 7 lean years.
• Gen 47:15 ‘When the money from the land of Egypt and from the land of Canaan was spent, all the Egyptians came to Joseph, and said: ‘Give us food! Why should we die before your eyes? For our money is gone’. It is not said how many months or years into the 7 lean years this is, but it still means they lived totally over their means for 7 years, otherwise there would have been no way to run themselves aground so quickly.
• Gen 47:16 Joseph takes livestock in payment for grain. All life stock become’s the government’s. The grain lasts for a year.
• Gen 47:18-22 Next year Joseph takes their lands and their labor in payment for the grain (all except priests’ land).
• Gen 47:23 Joseph then gives them seed to plant the land (is this after the 7 lean years?). It seems that everybody is going back to their land, for planting (how else would this work?), but this time they have a right to 80% of the harvest, and Pharaoh to 20%. Either Joseph returns their land (herewith) or once the lean years are over they should be able to produce enough for themselves and a slow buy back of land.
• Gen 47:25-26 They acknowledge Joseph as saving their lives. They call themselves slaves to Pharaoh, but Joseph makes it a statute that Pharaoh only gets 20%.
  It first sounds like a total government take over of private property (money & livestock). Yet in the end, Pharaoh is on a limited budget.
• Ge 47:27-31 Jacob makes Joseph promise they will bury him in Canaan. Jacob models the right attitude: grateful for Egypt, accepting of God’s ways but the true home is the promised land.

Genesis 48 – Jacob’s blesses Joseph’s sons

• Gen 48:1-16 Jacob blesses Ephraim and Manasseh
• Gen 48:17-21 Jacob predicts that both brother will be a people, be great and strong, but the 2nd born Ephraim shall be greater than the 1st born Manasseh. ‘By you Israel wil invoke blessings, saying, ‘God make you like Ephraim and like Manasseh.’
• Fulfillment: Both Ephraim and Manasseh become strong tribes with high population and strength each. Ephraim has natural leadership, sometimes in competition with Judah. Judge Deborah is from Ephraim, judge Gideon is from Manasseh. In two tribal conflicts Ephraim has a leading role. Ephraim is easily offended and weighty in the total. The term ‘Ephraim’ in the Bible sometimes denotes all of Israel.
• Gen 48:21 ‘God will bring you again to the land of your ancestors, I now give to you one portion more than to your brothers, the portion that I took from the hand of the Amorites with my sword and with my bow.’
• Fulfillment: No idea what the ‘portion I took from the Amorites’ is (Shechem??), but indeed Joseph receives a double portion, both his sons are counted as full tribes. The name Joseph is less used, but Ephraim and Manasseh are ‘tribes of Israel’. Manasseh even ends up in two parts on both sides of the Jordan.

Genesis 49 – Jacob blesses his sons

• Gen 49:1-2 Before his death he gives a prophecy and blessing to each of his sons.
• Gen 49:3-4 Reuben (of Leah) ‘Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might and the first fruits of my vigor, excelling in rank and excelling in power. Unstable as water, you shall no longer excel because you went up unto your father’s bed, then you defiled it – you went up onto my couch! A prediction of loss of pre-eminence due to the adultery with his Father’s concubine Bilhah.
• Fulfillment: Reuben throughout history has no leadership role in Israel. None of the judges comes from Reuben, neither Saul nor David, as a tribe they do not stand out in any way. They are also not particularly numerous.
• Gen 49:5-7 Simeon and Levi (of Leah) ‘Simeon and Levi are brothers; weapons of violence are their swords. May I never come into their council; may I not be joined to their company – for in their anger they killed men, and at ther whim they hamstrung oxend. Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel! I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.’
• Fulfillment: The prophecy of being scattered come true, but in two very different ways and with two different outcomes: Simeon gets land within Judah and is the longer the more simply absorbed into Judah and loses any separate identity. No judge comes from Simeon.bSimeon is not mentioned in any history of Israel after Joshua & Judges. On a positive note they get absorbed into the tribe that lasts longest and that has the Messianic line running in it.
• Fulfillment: In Levi the scattering also comes true, but in a more positive way. The Levited prove their zeal in the affair of the golden calf. God takes them as a tribe as a replacement for Israel’s first born.
• They become the tabernacle workers and out of them comes the priestly family. When settling the promised land they are intentionally spread out in 48 levitical cities among the land of all the tribes, to fulfill their function.
• Gen 49:8-12 Judah (of Leah) leadership, victory over enemies, honor from brothers, comparison with lion … ‘The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet until tribute comes to him; and the obedience of the peoples is his. … he washes his graments in wine and his robe in the blood of grapes’
• Fulfillment: Judah always has a leadership role in Israel, it is by far the most numerous tribe, with natural weight. Judah really is like the first born. The faithful spy Caleb is from Judah, the judge Otniel is from Judah, and of course David and his long line of kings is from Judah. Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of the Judah and David prophecies.
• Gen 49:13 Zebulun (of Leah) ‘shall settle at the shore of the sea; he shall be a haven for ships, and his brother shall be at Sidon.’
• Fulfillment: no idea, his tribal allotment is neither on the sea of Galilee, nor on the Mediterranean, Asher is.
• Gen 49:14-15 Issachar (of Leah) ‘is a strong donkey; … he saw that a resting place was good; and that the land was pleasant; so he bowed his sholuder to the burend, and became a slave at forced labor.’
• Gen 49:16-17 Dan (of Bilhah) ‘shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a snake by the roadside, a viper along the path, that bites the horse’s heels so that its rider falls backward.’
  Fulfillment: a very self-willed, partially strong, partially weak role. Very quickly steeped in idolatry. Judge Simson is from Dan.
• Gen 49:18 ‘I wait for your salvation, O LORD’ a Messianic hope expressed.
• Gen 49:19 Gad (of Zilpah) ‘shall be raided by raiders, but he shall raid at their heels.’
• Gen 49:20 Asher (of Zilpah) ‘Asher’s food shall be rich and he shall provide royal delicacies.’
• Gen 49:21 Naphtali (of Bilha) ‘is a doe let loose that bears lovely fawns.’
• Gen 49:22-26 Joseph (of Rachel) ‘is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a spring, his branches run over the wall. The archers fiercely attacked him, they shot at him and pressed him hard. Yet his bow remained taut, and his arms were made agile by the hands of the Mighty one of Jacob, by the name of the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel, by the God of your father, who will help you., by the Almighty who wil bless you with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies beneath, …’
• Gen 49:27 Benjamin (of Rachel) ‘is a ravenous wolf, in the morning devouring the prey, and at evening dividing the spoil’
• Fulfillment: Benjamin will show fierceness in battle, even in a civil war. Saul is from Benjamin, and Paul.
• Moses is giving personal identity and calling to the 12 tribes, letting them know the blessings spoken over them, challenging to live up to them, or to undo the evil of their fathers.
• Gen 49:29-33 Jacob orders for his dead body to be buried in Canaan, in the cave of Machpelah and then dies.

Genesis 50 – Jacob’s Death and Joseph’s Perspective

• Gen 50:1-14 Jacob dies. Joseph has him embalmed according to Egyptian tradition. He is given a state funeral with repatriation to Canaan in great honor.
• Gen 50:15-17 After Jacob’s death, the fear of the brothers over a revenge of Joseph flares up again. They approach Joseph quoting a plea for forgiveness by Jacob (probably not invented, probably long talked over and put away for Joseph) and also themselves pleading for forgiveness.
• Gen 50:17 Joseph weeps hearing this, I think because he long ago forgave this and is shocked that they are still afraid and worried.
• Gen 50:18 The brothers also weep (for other reasons), fall down before Joseph (the dream again!) and declare themselves his slaves (they sold him into slavery).
• Ge 50:19-21 Joseph expresses his long held perspective on God, his own life and this whole story: ‘Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today…. I will provide for you.’
  Joseph does not belittle the crime they committed, but he sees God’s greater plan and hand in it. God used it to save Israel, and even other nations. Israel in Joseph becomes a blessing. Joseph has long ago forgiven, has long ago worked through anger, hurt and resentment and found through to a Christ-like attitude. He accepts God’s way. He is willing to serve and suffer, he is willing to be treated unjustly. He throws himself on God, does not cut corners, uses nothing as an excuse. He trusts God to bring about good in his way, but doesn’t ‘accommodate himself’. Joseph truly is stunning in his trust and integrity.
  Similarities with Jesus Gen 37:3 His father loved him dearly Mth 3:17.
• Gen 37:2 A Shepherd of his father’s sheep Jhn 10:11,27
• Gen 37:13,14 Sent by father to brothers Heb 2:11
• Gen 37:4 Hated by brothers Jhn 7:5
• Gen 37:20 Others plotted to harm him Jhn 11:53
• Gen 39:7 Tempted Mth 4:1
• Gen 37:25 Taken to Egypt Mth 27:2
• Gen 37:23 Robes taken from them Jhn 19:23
• Gen 37:28 Sold for the price of a slave Mth 26:15
• Gen 39:20 Bound in chains Mth 27:2
• Gen 39:16-18 Falsely accused Mth 26:59,60
• Genn 40:2,3 Placed with 2 prisoners, one who was saved and the other lost Luk 23:32
• Gen 1:46 Both 30 years old at the beginning of public recognition Luk 3:23
• Gen 41:41 Exalted after suffering Php 2:9-11
• Gen 45:1-15 Forgave those who wronged them Luk 23:34
• Gen 45:7 Saved their nation Mth 1:21
• Gen 50:20 What men did to hurt them God turned to good 1 Cor 2:7,8
• Gen 50:22 Joseph instructs (like Jacob) for his bones to be brought up to Canaa when Israel will go back to Canaan. He is embalmed according to Egyptian tradition.
• This instruction will be obeyed by Moses (Exo 13:19), contemporary history for the readers. They left Egypt with those bones, and they are still carrying those bones around now in the 40 years of wilderness! Moses gives the history with it.

Why was this time in Egypt needed? Different thoughts:

• to atone for the genocide in Shechem. They were free people, rich people, covenant people but they killed, enslaved and looted. God not makes them suffer through the other side: Slavery, poverty, oppression. So when the time for nation-building would come, they would know to protect the rights of slaves, sojourners and vulnerable people. Repeated theme in the law ‘remember you were a slave in Egypt’ (Deu 5:15).
• To have them become a great nation, which they probably couldn’t do as well as a nomadic people in a land not yet their own (Gen 46:3-4)

Repeated Theme: Later son preferred to firstborn

• Seth over Cain
• Abram over brothers
• Isaac over Ishmael
• Jacob over Esau
• Judah over Reuben
• Joseph over his brothers
• Ephraim over Manasseh

Repeated Theme: Building of Altars

Repeated Theme: Jacob becoming a multitude of nations

• Gen 35:11-12 ‘And God said to him, “I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come from your own body.’
• Gen 48:4 Jacob quotes God at Bethel (though in Gen 28:10-17 is doesn’t come in this wording): ‘I will make of you a company of peoples’.
• Gen 48:19 Jacob blesses Ephraim with ‘he shall become a multitude of nations’
  This seems to indicate, that Israel was meant to not become a centralized one-nation thing, but rather a replicating nation-spawning thing, with self-governing peoples in good relationships (possibly covenant relationships) with each other. A whole bunch of Israels!?! We can barely think it.

Repeated Theme: Names of God in Genesis

• H430     Elohim Creator God                     218x in Genesis      2601x in OT      English translation ‘God’
• H3068  Jehovah Jewish name for God   162x in Genesis      6521x in OT       English translation ‘LORD’
• H7706  Shadday Almighty                         6x in Genesis          48x in OT           English translation ‘Almighty’
• H410    El God                                               17x in Genesis        242x in OT         English translation ‘God, god, deity’