With the spring of 2020 providing more downtime than usual, and me no longer spending upwards of two hours per day driving to and from the office, I recently opened ye olde Bible and read the Book of Genesis from start to finish instead of flipping only to specific parts.
Well, not quite. Iskipped rushed through the purely genealogical portions -- the "X begat Y" in the KJV, or "these are the names of the sons of X" in my NIV -- because, frankly, they make my eyes glaze over.
Anyway, here are some semi-chronological but otherwise random thoughts about Genesis fresh off of reading it. This is not meant to be a theological deep dive or "truth vs. allegory" commentary or apologetics essay. It's supposed to be plain reading rather than academic gobbledygook. But having said that, I am still starting off with something that sounds awfully academic because I feel compelled to mention it -- and it is regarding the use of the word "day" in Genesis's creation account.
Most English-speakers hear "day" and think only of 24 hours, or of the period of time between sunrise and sunset. However, the number of words in ancient Hebrew was less than one-fifth of one percent the number of words in our language. Many of those words had multiple meanings, and the precise definition intended by an author often had to be inferred. That opens the door for things to get lost in translation.
The ancient Hebrew word yom is what was used when Genesis spoke of creation. After translating Genesis from that original language to ancient Greek and ultimately to modern English, yom now appears in our Bibles as "day" when we read about creation. But in ancient Hebrew yom was also used to denote passages and concepts of time that are immensely different than just daylight or just 24 hours. Its other meanings included (but were not limited to) a year, various multiples of years, a certain point in history, and, according to the Theological Workbook of the Old Testament, "a general vague 'time.'"
There are places in the Bible where yom was taken to mean a whole era (e.g., 2 Chronicles 15:3 is translating yom when it says "for a long time Israel was without the true God") and there are others where it was even taken to mean eternity (e.g., Psalm 23:6 is translating yom when it says "I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever"). There are other divergent translations of yom in the Bible, but I won't wander into those weeds because I promised this post wouldn't be academic.
What I'm getting at is that there is no reason -- at least no obvious one -- to take the first-day, second-day account of creation and assume that it means the universe and world were brought to bear in six 24-hour increments. In the Bible's native tongue, each "day" of creation could equal 700 million years or 1.2 billion years or any other vast period of time. Kind of like if somebody were to say "the day of David," he would be talking not about an individual date but about the entire period of Israel's history when David was king. We don't know, and we shouldn't assume that we know.
I believe a combination of translation hang-ups and human stubbornness causes some people to get way too rigid when they opine about the Bible's account of creation. And this seems to be a peculiarly Christian phenomenon, for I've never heard Jews quarrel over it even though we're all talking about the same thing.
Again, however, I promised not to get academic so now I will move on to the stuff that's more fun. And please understand that while the following observations are my own, I am far, far, far from the first person to have made them.
Ask 20 people to explain original sin, and 19 of them will tell you that's what happened when Eve damned us all by eating the forbidden fruit. The general perception of what happened in Genesis, Chapter Three is that the serpent slithered up and tempted/tricked Eve into eating the fruit, then she went off and found Adam and tempted/tricked him into doing the same.
But that's not actually how it went. Eve had yet to even be given her name when, in Verse Five, the serpent tells her that if she eats the fruit she will become God-like in her knowledge. Then Verse Six states, verbatim (emphasis added): "When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it."
The dude was standing there the whole time, watching a serpent tell his wife to eat something he (Adam) had been told would cause death, and Adam did nothing to intervene. He didn't even open his mouth and try to tell her that maybe she shouldn't do that, or that she should at least think it through first. And again, like I just said, it was he who had been warned that the fruit would cause death, for God told him that before Eve was created.
So who really committed the first sin? Was it Eve for eating the fruit, or was it Adam for standing by eunuch-like and not lifting a finger to stop her?
And why wouldn't he lift a finger, seeing as how death might occur? Was he just curious whether it actually would, and so he decided to let her take the risk and not him? Because that would make him devil-like, not just eunuch-like, correct?
When God next came into the garden, he asked Adam (not Eve) whether he (not her) had eaten the fruit, and what was Adam's response? He said: "The woman you put here with me -- she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."
It might not seem appropriate to cuss when discussing the Bible, but what an asshole! Adam stands silently by and watches his wife get sly-talked by a serpent... then allows her to risk her life... then blames her for making him eat the fruit when he knew damn well what he was doing the whole time... and he even passive-aggressively blames God for everything by noting that it was God who "put" his wife "here with me."
It takes just five paragraphs for Adam to display every character defect for which men are known. The only reason he didn't also commit adultery and incest in those five paragraphs is that there was nobody else around to do it with. No modern-day feminist could write a more anti-male screed than this.
Speaking of the serpent, are we talking about a snake? It's easy to think so, and most people do think so and almost every piece of art depicting the event shows a snake. But if you read what the Bible actually says, there is strong reason to think otherwise.
After Adam and Eve confess what they did and Eve tells God "the serpent deceived me," God doles out punishment to all three because he had not merely warned about that fruit, he had commanded that it not be eaten. And when doling out punishment, the first thing he says to the serpent is: "Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life."
Sounds to me like the serpent had legs when it was talking to Adam and Eve, and only afterwards did it get transformed into something that would need to slither around with its mouth constantly near the ground (on a side note, this really gave snakes a bad rap going forward).
On another note, while it's easy to perceive that the serpent was Satan, nowhere in Genesis does it say that, and I don't believe that any later books in the Bible make that claim retroactively. The generally accepted notion of Satan being able to appear anywhere in various forms is contrary to God having forced him to crawl on his belly "all the days of your life," so I interpret the biblical account to mean that the serpent was not the devil himself (and yes I know I'm in the minority on this).
Genesis deals with Adam and Eve and the serpent in Chapter Three.
It introduces Noah in Chapter Six, then details the flood and its immediate aftermath in Chapters Seven through Nine. On this topic, I am going to briefly lapse back into sounding academic but I promise that I think it's the last time I will do so.
There are huge and sometimes nasty-sounding debates (Christians behaving non-Christian) about whether the flood covered the entire planet or just a region of it, namely the region about which the author (Moses) knew and about which he was writing.
Kind of like what I said earlier about yom, a key ancient Hebrew word that was used in the account of the flood has more than one meaning. That word is erets and it can mean either "earth" or simply "land," so I do not believe we must be wedded to the belief that Noah's flood covered the whole world rather than "just" the region of Mesopotamia or the overall Middle East.
Falling on one side of the "global or regional" debate about Noah's flood does not make a person any less of a Christian than those on the other side. Claiming that the flood was immense and covered the world that was known to Moses, but that it did not necessarily cover Japan or the Americas as well, is not at all like denying the divinity of Christ.
It's interesting how much incest takes place in Genesis without any criticism from Above.
Abraham and Sarah are half-siblings. Lot's daughters deliberately get him drunk and have sex with him in order to get pregnant. Isaac and Rebekah are first cousins. Jacob marries not one, but two of his first cousins in Rachel and Leah (bigamy to boot!) although he clearly prefers the former. Meanwhile, Nahor and Milcah are not only husband and wife, but also uncle and niece. I know the choices were fewer way back when and that the prohibitions against incest didn't get handed down until Exodus, but still.
And while I am on the topic of what would seem to be sexual impropriety, take a look at what happens in Chapter 19 as God is ramping up to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.
Appearing as men, two angels come to Sodom in search of ten righteous people within its walls, since God has promised Abraham he will spare the city if ten righteous can be found. They stay the night in Lot's home, which becomes surrounded by "all the men from every part of the city," who proceed to call out to Lot: "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them." Lot responds by going outside and saying to the mob: "Don't do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don't do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof."
This certainly wouldn't earn him any votes for Father of the Year, yet he was deemed righteous -- the lone righteous man in the city -- so he was spared and permitted to escape before the hellfire and brimstone rained down later that night. From a modern perspective, this is a head-scratcher.
Then there's the matter from earlier in Genesis, specifically in Chapter 16, when Sarah grants history's first hall pass by telling Abraham: "The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her."
So Abraham beds the slave, a comely young lady named Hagar, and she becomes pregnant with Ishmael -- after which Sarah becomes pregnant with Isaac (in Chapter 21) and is consumed with envy toward Hagar and Ishmael, who therefore get exiled to the desert. So as a direct result of having granted the first hall pass, Sarah becomes enmeshed in the first love triangle and the world's first soap opera takes place, approximately 4,000 years before the invention of TV.
And that is not the only soap opera to play out in Genesis. Flip forward to Chapter 30 where Jacob, married simultaneously to the sisters Rachel and Leah, is granted a hall pass by the former to have sex with her servant Bilhah because -- deja vu alert -- she is concerned that she isn't becoming pregnant by him whereas her sister Leah is.
That kicked off a cascade of sexual licentiousness that most men can only dream of, for when Leah stopped becoming pregnant and knew that Bilhah was producing children with Jacob, "she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. Leah's servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son." And -- deja vu alert again -- eventually Rachel got pregnant too. By the time it was all said and done Jacob had six sons with his wife/cousin Leah, two with Leah's servant Zilpah, two with his wife/cousin Rachel, and two with Rachel's servant Bilhah.
With material like this, it's shocking that Hollywood doesn't make more movies about the first book of the Bible.
Before Jacob got to experience that bizarre love pentagon, he was a young man who set out from Canaan and journeyed to the land of Paddan Aram in search of a wife. While sleeping outside one night using as a rock as a pillow, he made Plant and Page proud by having "a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it."
God stood at the top of the stairway and told Jacob that he would "watch over you wherever you go," and would bestow to "you and your descendants the land on which you are lying," and that "all peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring."
That's quite a gift from on high! In recognition of it, the next morning Jacob vowed "if God will be with me and will watch over me in this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear...this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God's house, and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth."
I suppose this is notable for introducing the idea of tithing, but I think it's more notable for what it says about mankind's selfishness. Notice the "if" Jacob put in the vow, and how he made his part contingent on what God does for him. It's as if he didn't trust God and wasn't really willing to accept God's will. Reminds me of how people (I'm including me) often approach prayer.
If you've been alive long enough, you have experienced the lesson that things rarely turn out as bad as we expect them to.
An example of this happens in Chapters 32 and 33 with Jacob departing Paddan Aram after 20 years and journeying back to his homeland. He wanted to see his brother Esau for the first time in those 20 years, and sent messengers ahead; but when they returned and said that Esau was en route "and 400 men are with him," Jacob went into a panic and assumed Esau was bringing some kind of militia to attack him, presumably over some perceived slight from when they were young.
Jacob rushed back to his camp and divided all the people and livestock there into two groups and separated them, on the theory that if Esau attacked one group at least the other would be safe. He divvied up one of the livestock groups into three herds and dispatched them in waves, instructing the servants who led them to offer them to Esau as a gift from himself on the hope that "I will pacify him with these gifts...perhaps he will receive me." Then Jacob sent Rachel, Leah, Bilhah, Zilpah, and their sons across the Jabbok River to presumed safety, and then he camped alone that night, and headed out to meet Esau the next morning.
When they finally encountered each other, Jacob "bowed down to the ground seven times as he approached his brother. But Esau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him; he threw his arms around his neck and kissed him." And four verses later, Esau asked "what's the meaning of all these flocks and herds I met?"
Somewhere in there is an obvious lesson about not letting your fear and anticipation get the better of you.
The story in Genesis that is hardest to believe at face value has nothing to do with the talking serpent or the ark or people living to be hundreds of years old. Instead it is the story of Jacob's sons avenging their sister Dinah. It also happens to be the coolest story in Genesis, and goes like this:
Dinah went out to visit some lady friends and was raped by Shechem, the son of the area's ruler. (easy to believe)
Upon hearing this, Jacob and his sons became enraged. (easy to believe)
Shechem's father, Hamor, tried to defuse the situation by asking that Shechem be allowed to marry Dinah, in exchange for Jacob's family being allowed to settle in Hamor's land and acquire property in it and trade in it, on top of which Hamor said they would be allowed to "take our daughters for yourselves." (also pretty easy to believe, considering some of the other things I've mentioned and that this was 4,000 years ago)
Jacob's sons saw an opportunity to respond to Hamor's offer in a "deceitful" way that would enable them to score revenge for their sister. (also easy to believe, and cool)
So they responded by saying "we will enter into an agreement with you on one condition only: that you become like us by circumcising all your males." Notice they said "all your males," not "newborn baby boys going forward." (not easy to believe they would think there was any chance of this offer being accepted, and therefore it doesn't seem like much of a chance for revenge, but okay)
This proposal "seemed good to Hamor and Shechem" (kinda weird but whatever) so they went home and pitched it "to the men of their city," and those men "agreed" and "every" one of them got circumcised. (impossible hard to believe)
Three days after the mass circumcision "all of them were still in pain" (easy to believe, if you can get past the above paragraph's unbelievability) and two of Jacob's sons, Levi and Simeon, took advantage of the men being incapacitated by showing up with swords and slaughtering them all, including Hamor and Shechem (cool, and easy to believe if you can again get past the above paragraph's unbelievability)
Then Levi and Simeon looted the city of its wealth and livestock and took it back to Jacob (cool) but he worried that this would anger the native Canaanites and Perizzites and that they could destroy him because of their large numbers (understandable).
Jacob expressed this worry to Levi and Simeon, to which they responded by saying simply: "Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute?" (mic drop)
That story is cool as can be, but man that one paragraph is hard to believe.
Speaking of Jacob and his sons, the story that centers around the eleventh-born is one of the best known in human history, and one of the most moving as well. The eleventh-born was Joseph, who of course wore a robe of many colors, although most people refer to it as a coat of many colors. The abridged version of the story is as follows:
1) Joseph's brothers were jealous that their father favored him, so one day they plotted to kill him in the fields; but the oldest (Reuben) protested against the thought of murder, so instead they sold Joseph to some passersby who in turn took him to Egypt and sold him to the captain of Pharaoh's guard... 2) The brothers took Joseph's robe and smeared it with the blood of a slaughtered goat then returned home and showed it to a devastated Jacob, saying that they found it and it must mean that Joseph was killed by an animal... 3) Because he was blessed by God, when Joseph got to Egypt he had something of a Midas touch and was held in such high esteem by his captors that he pretty much got to call his own shots... 4) He correctly interpreted Pharaoh's dreams to mean that seven years of bounty were about to commence but would be followed by seven years of famine, so he devised a plan to set aside excess crops during the first seven years to help Egypt survive the second seven... 5) When the famine struck, it affected the entire known world, not just Egypt, so people traveled to Egypt hoping to buy food from the massive reserves that Joseph had set aside... 6) Among those people who traveled to Egypt were Joseph's brothers, having been dispatched by Jacob to purchase food to keep the family from perishing... 7) Joseph recognized his brothers from long ago, but they didn't recognize him because he was still a kid when they sold him into captivity... 8) Ultimately, on their second visit he revealed who he was and forgave them and asked them to bring Jacob to Egypt so he could see his father again before he died... 9) The entire family relocated to Egypt and settled in the Land of Goshen near the Nile Delta, where Jacob died after getting Joseph to agree to transport his remains back to Canaan and bury him in the same cave where Abraham and Sarah were buried long before, and later Isaac and Rebekah as well, and more recently Leah.
One of the things that struck me as I perused the story this month was how frequently the words "wept" and "weeping" occur. During this story I counted eight separate instances in the passages between Genesis 42:24 and 46:29, and I may well have missed some, and keep in mind I didn't try keep track of any before or after those passages.
The words are never "cried" or "crying." Nor are they "teared up" or "shedding tears." They are always either "wept" or "weeping," such as in 45:2 where it says that right after telling his brothers who he was, Joseph "wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard him, and Pharaoh's household heard about it."
It made me think of that famous New Testament verse, John 11:35, which is also the shortest in the entire Bible: "Jesus wept." When he saw where the corpse of his friend Lazarus was entombed, it does not say that Jesus "cried" or that he "was sad" or that he "felt tears in his eyes." It says that he "wept."
There has got to be a reason that this is the word that always shows up in our English translations, and I presume it has something to do with the raw authenticity of the emotions. But I'm not gonna go looking up ancient words again, at least not right now. I just find it interesting how ubiquitous this particular word is in the Bible.
Genesis ends with Jacob dying in Chapter 49 and being transported back to Canaan for burial in Chapter 50.
But not before blessing his grandsons from Joseph by famously crossing his arms to place his right hand atop the head of the second-born Ephraim rather than the first-born Manasseh. This went against custom, which had always assumed that the greatest lot would fall to the first-born, but Jacob explained to Joseph that while Manasseh "too will become great, his younger brother will be greater than he, and his descendants will become a group of nations."
And Jacob does not slip the surly bonds without also foretelling what will become of the descendants of each of his twelve sons. Going forward, those twelve branches of descendants will become the twelve tribes of Israel and Jacob does not hold anything back, telling Reuben he "will no longer excel" and Levi and Simeon that they will "scatter...and disperse." But it's not all bad, for Jospeh will be all kinds of awesome and Zebulun "will live by the seashore and become a haven for ships." And there are eight others of course, but you can read them for yourself.
My last curiosity about Genesis concerns where Jacob was laid to rest after his body was transported back to Canaan. The text clearly says that his body was taken into the cave described above, which had first received the bodies of Abraham and Sarah so long before. I've always wondered how they knew exactly where it was, considering the passage of time and the land's wilderness character and the fact that it seems to be teeming with caves.
But more to the point, I wonder where it is today? Tradition holds that it is now beneath the city of Hebron, specifically beneath a large building that houses both a synagogue and a mosque. Within the building are two entrances to the same cave, one of which is covered by a small grate while the other is sealed by a stone covered with prayer mats. Thus people are barred from getting into the underground cavity known as the Cave of the Patriarchs. How cool would it be if it really is what its name suggests?
With that I'll sign off. This post has been long but I hope you found it worth reading.
Well, not quite. I
Anyway, here are some semi-chronological but otherwise random thoughts about Genesis fresh off of reading it. This is not meant to be a theological deep dive or "truth vs. allegory" commentary or apologetics essay. It's supposed to be plain reading rather than academic gobbledygook. But having said that, I am still starting off with something that sounds awfully academic because I feel compelled to mention it -- and it is regarding the use of the word "day" in Genesis's creation account.
Most English-speakers hear "day" and think only of 24 hours, or of the period of time between sunrise and sunset. However, the number of words in ancient Hebrew was less than one-fifth of one percent the number of words in our language. Many of those words had multiple meanings, and the precise definition intended by an author often had to be inferred. That opens the door for things to get lost in translation.
The ancient Hebrew word yom is what was used when Genesis spoke of creation. After translating Genesis from that original language to ancient Greek and ultimately to modern English, yom now appears in our Bibles as "day" when we read about creation. But in ancient Hebrew yom was also used to denote passages and concepts of time that are immensely different than just daylight or just 24 hours. Its other meanings included (but were not limited to) a year, various multiples of years, a certain point in history, and, according to the Theological Workbook of the Old Testament, "a general vague 'time.'"
There are places in the Bible where yom was taken to mean a whole era (e.g., 2 Chronicles 15:3 is translating yom when it says "for a long time Israel was without the true God") and there are others where it was even taken to mean eternity (e.g., Psalm 23:6 is translating yom when it says "I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever"). There are other divergent translations of yom in the Bible, but I won't wander into those weeds because I promised this post wouldn't be academic.
What I'm getting at is that there is no reason -- at least no obvious one -- to take the first-day, second-day account of creation and assume that it means the universe and world were brought to bear in six 24-hour increments. In the Bible's native tongue, each "day" of creation could equal 700 million years or 1.2 billion years or any other vast period of time. Kind of like if somebody were to say "the day of David," he would be talking not about an individual date but about the entire period of Israel's history when David was king. We don't know, and we shouldn't assume that we know.
I believe a combination of translation hang-ups and human stubbornness causes some people to get way too rigid when they opine about the Bible's account of creation. And this seems to be a peculiarly Christian phenomenon, for I've never heard Jews quarrel over it even though we're all talking about the same thing.
Again, however, I promised not to get academic so now I will move on to the stuff that's more fun. And please understand that while the following observations are my own, I am far, far, far from the first person to have made them.
* * * * *
Ask 20 people to explain original sin, and 19 of them will tell you that's what happened when Eve damned us all by eating the forbidden fruit. The general perception of what happened in Genesis, Chapter Three is that the serpent slithered up and tempted/tricked Eve into eating the fruit, then she went off and found Adam and tempted/tricked him into doing the same.
But that's not actually how it went. Eve had yet to even be given her name when, in Verse Five, the serpent tells her that if she eats the fruit she will become God-like in her knowledge. Then Verse Six states, verbatim (emphasis added): "When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it."
The dude was standing there the whole time, watching a serpent tell his wife to eat something he (Adam) had been told would cause death, and Adam did nothing to intervene. He didn't even open his mouth and try to tell her that maybe she shouldn't do that, or that she should at least think it through first. And again, like I just said, it was he who had been warned that the fruit would cause death, for God told him that before Eve was created.
So who really committed the first sin? Was it Eve for eating the fruit, or was it Adam for standing by eunuch-like and not lifting a finger to stop her?
And why wouldn't he lift a finger, seeing as how death might occur? Was he just curious whether it actually would, and so he decided to let her take the risk and not him? Because that would make him devil-like, not just eunuch-like, correct?
When God next came into the garden, he asked Adam (not Eve) whether he (not her) had eaten the fruit, and what was Adam's response? He said: "The woman you put here with me -- she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."
It might not seem appropriate to cuss when discussing the Bible, but what an asshole! Adam stands silently by and watches his wife get sly-talked by a serpent... then allows her to risk her life... then blames her for making him eat the fruit when he knew damn well what he was doing the whole time... and he even passive-aggressively blames God for everything by noting that it was God who "put" his wife "here with me."
It takes just five paragraphs for Adam to display every character defect for which men are known. The only reason he didn't also commit adultery and incest in those five paragraphs is that there was nobody else around to do it with. No modern-day feminist could write a more anti-male screed than this.
* * * * *
Speaking of the serpent, are we talking about a snake? It's easy to think so, and most people do think so and almost every piece of art depicting the event shows a snake. But if you read what the Bible actually says, there is strong reason to think otherwise.
After Adam and Eve confess what they did and Eve tells God "the serpent deceived me," God doles out punishment to all three because he had not merely warned about that fruit, he had commanded that it not be eaten. And when doling out punishment, the first thing he says to the serpent is: "Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life."
Sounds to me like the serpent had legs when it was talking to Adam and Eve, and only afterwards did it get transformed into something that would need to slither around with its mouth constantly near the ground (on a side note, this really gave snakes a bad rap going forward).
On another note, while it's easy to perceive that the serpent was Satan, nowhere in Genesis does it say that, and I don't believe that any later books in the Bible make that claim retroactively. The generally accepted notion of Satan being able to appear anywhere in various forms is contrary to God having forced him to crawl on his belly "all the days of your life," so I interpret the biblical account to mean that the serpent was not the devil himself (and yes I know I'm in the minority on this).
* * * * *
Genesis deals with Adam and Eve and the serpent in Chapter Three.
It introduces Noah in Chapter Six, then details the flood and its immediate aftermath in Chapters Seven through Nine. On this topic, I am going to briefly lapse back into sounding academic but I promise that I think it's the last time I will do so.
There are huge and sometimes nasty-sounding debates (Christians behaving non-Christian) about whether the flood covered the entire planet or just a region of it, namely the region about which the author (Moses) knew and about which he was writing.
Kind of like what I said earlier about yom, a key ancient Hebrew word that was used in the account of the flood has more than one meaning. That word is erets and it can mean either "earth" or simply "land," so I do not believe we must be wedded to the belief that Noah's flood covered the whole world rather than "just" the region of Mesopotamia or the overall Middle East.
Falling on one side of the "global or regional" debate about Noah's flood does not make a person any less of a Christian than those on the other side. Claiming that the flood was immense and covered the world that was known to Moses, but that it did not necessarily cover Japan or the Americas as well, is not at all like denying the divinity of Christ.
* * * * *
It's interesting how much incest takes place in Genesis without any criticism from Above.
Abraham and Sarah are half-siblings. Lot's daughters deliberately get him drunk and have sex with him in order to get pregnant. Isaac and Rebekah are first cousins. Jacob marries not one, but two of his first cousins in Rachel and Leah (bigamy to boot!) although he clearly prefers the former. Meanwhile, Nahor and Milcah are not only husband and wife, but also uncle and niece. I know the choices were fewer way back when and that the prohibitions against incest didn't get handed down until Exodus, but still.
And while I am on the topic of what would seem to be sexual impropriety, take a look at what happens in Chapter 19 as God is ramping up to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.
Appearing as men, two angels come to Sodom in search of ten righteous people within its walls, since God has promised Abraham he will spare the city if ten righteous can be found. They stay the night in Lot's home, which becomes surrounded by "all the men from every part of the city," who proceed to call out to Lot: "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them." Lot responds by going outside and saying to the mob: "Don't do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don't do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof."
This certainly wouldn't earn him any votes for Father of the Year, yet he was deemed righteous -- the lone righteous man in the city -- so he was spared and permitted to escape before the hellfire and brimstone rained down later that night. From a modern perspective, this is a head-scratcher.
Then there's the matter from earlier in Genesis, specifically in Chapter 16, when Sarah grants history's first hall pass by telling Abraham: "The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her."
So Abraham beds the slave, a comely young lady named Hagar, and she becomes pregnant with Ishmael -- after which Sarah becomes pregnant with Isaac (in Chapter 21) and is consumed with envy toward Hagar and Ishmael, who therefore get exiled to the desert. So as a direct result of having granted the first hall pass, Sarah becomes enmeshed in the first love triangle and the world's first soap opera takes place, approximately 4,000 years before the invention of TV.
And that is not the only soap opera to play out in Genesis. Flip forward to Chapter 30 where Jacob, married simultaneously to the sisters Rachel and Leah, is granted a hall pass by the former to have sex with her servant Bilhah because -- deja vu alert -- she is concerned that she isn't becoming pregnant by him whereas her sister Leah is.
That kicked off a cascade of sexual licentiousness that most men can only dream of, for when Leah stopped becoming pregnant and knew that Bilhah was producing children with Jacob, "she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. Leah's servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son." And -- deja vu alert again -- eventually Rachel got pregnant too. By the time it was all said and done Jacob had six sons with his wife/cousin Leah, two with Leah's servant Zilpah, two with his wife/cousin Rachel, and two with Rachel's servant Bilhah.
With material like this, it's shocking that Hollywood doesn't make more movies about the first book of the Bible.
* * * * *
Before Jacob got to experience that bizarre love pentagon, he was a young man who set out from Canaan and journeyed to the land of Paddan Aram in search of a wife. While sleeping outside one night using as a rock as a pillow, he made Plant and Page proud by having "a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it."
God stood at the top of the stairway and told Jacob that he would "watch over you wherever you go," and would bestow to "you and your descendants the land on which you are lying," and that "all peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring."
That's quite a gift from on high! In recognition of it, the next morning Jacob vowed "if God will be with me and will watch over me in this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear...this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God's house, and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth."
I suppose this is notable for introducing the idea of tithing, but I think it's more notable for what it says about mankind's selfishness. Notice the "if" Jacob put in the vow, and how he made his part contingent on what God does for him. It's as if he didn't trust God and wasn't really willing to accept God's will. Reminds me of how people (I'm including me) often approach prayer.
* * * * *
If you've been alive long enough, you have experienced the lesson that things rarely turn out as bad as we expect them to.
An example of this happens in Chapters 32 and 33 with Jacob departing Paddan Aram after 20 years and journeying back to his homeland. He wanted to see his brother Esau for the first time in those 20 years, and sent messengers ahead; but when they returned and said that Esau was en route "and 400 men are with him," Jacob went into a panic and assumed Esau was bringing some kind of militia to attack him, presumably over some perceived slight from when they were young.
Jacob rushed back to his camp and divided all the people and livestock there into two groups and separated them, on the theory that if Esau attacked one group at least the other would be safe. He divvied up one of the livestock groups into three herds and dispatched them in waves, instructing the servants who led them to offer them to Esau as a gift from himself on the hope that "I will pacify him with these gifts...perhaps he will receive me." Then Jacob sent Rachel, Leah, Bilhah, Zilpah, and their sons across the Jabbok River to presumed safety, and then he camped alone that night, and headed out to meet Esau the next morning.
When they finally encountered each other, Jacob "bowed down to the ground seven times as he approached his brother. But Esau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him; he threw his arms around his neck and kissed him." And four verses later, Esau asked "what's the meaning of all these flocks and herds I met?"
Somewhere in there is an obvious lesson about not letting your fear and anticipation get the better of you.
* * * * *
The story in Genesis that is hardest to believe at face value has nothing to do with the talking serpent or the ark or people living to be hundreds of years old. Instead it is the story of Jacob's sons avenging their sister Dinah. It also happens to be the coolest story in Genesis, and goes like this:
Dinah went out to visit some lady friends and was raped by Shechem, the son of the area's ruler. (easy to believe)
Upon hearing this, Jacob and his sons became enraged. (easy to believe)
Shechem's father, Hamor, tried to defuse the situation by asking that Shechem be allowed to marry Dinah, in exchange for Jacob's family being allowed to settle in Hamor's land and acquire property in it and trade in it, on top of which Hamor said they would be allowed to "take our daughters for yourselves." (also pretty easy to believe, considering some of the other things I've mentioned and that this was 4,000 years ago)
Jacob's sons saw an opportunity to respond to Hamor's offer in a "deceitful" way that would enable them to score revenge for their sister. (also easy to believe, and cool)
So they responded by saying "we will enter into an agreement with you on one condition only: that you become like us by circumcising all your males." Notice they said "all your males," not "newborn baby boys going forward." (not easy to believe they would think there was any chance of this offer being accepted, and therefore it doesn't seem like much of a chance for revenge, but okay)
This proposal "seemed good to Hamor and Shechem" (kinda weird but whatever) so they went home and pitched it "to the men of their city," and those men "agreed" and "every" one of them got circumcised. (
Three days after the mass circumcision "all of them were still in pain" (easy to believe, if you can get past the above paragraph's unbelievability) and two of Jacob's sons, Levi and Simeon, took advantage of the men being incapacitated by showing up with swords and slaughtering them all, including Hamor and Shechem (cool, and easy to believe if you can again get past the above paragraph's unbelievability)
Then Levi and Simeon looted the city of its wealth and livestock and took it back to Jacob (cool) but he worried that this would anger the native Canaanites and Perizzites and that they could destroy him because of their large numbers (understandable).
Jacob expressed this worry to Levi and Simeon, to which they responded by saying simply: "Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute?" (mic drop)
That story is cool as can be, but man that one paragraph is hard to believe.
* * * * *
Speaking of Jacob and his sons, the story that centers around the eleventh-born is one of the best known in human history, and one of the most moving as well. The eleventh-born was Joseph, who of course wore a robe of many colors, although most people refer to it as a coat of many colors. The abridged version of the story is as follows:
1) Joseph's brothers were jealous that their father favored him, so one day they plotted to kill him in the fields; but the oldest (Reuben) protested against the thought of murder, so instead they sold Joseph to some passersby who in turn took him to Egypt and sold him to the captain of Pharaoh's guard... 2) The brothers took Joseph's robe and smeared it with the blood of a slaughtered goat then returned home and showed it to a devastated Jacob, saying that they found it and it must mean that Joseph was killed by an animal... 3) Because he was blessed by God, when Joseph got to Egypt he had something of a Midas touch and was held in such high esteem by his captors that he pretty much got to call his own shots... 4) He correctly interpreted Pharaoh's dreams to mean that seven years of bounty were about to commence but would be followed by seven years of famine, so he devised a plan to set aside excess crops during the first seven years to help Egypt survive the second seven... 5) When the famine struck, it affected the entire known world, not just Egypt, so people traveled to Egypt hoping to buy food from the massive reserves that Joseph had set aside... 6) Among those people who traveled to Egypt were Joseph's brothers, having been dispatched by Jacob to purchase food to keep the family from perishing... 7) Joseph recognized his brothers from long ago, but they didn't recognize him because he was still a kid when they sold him into captivity... 8) Ultimately, on their second visit he revealed who he was and forgave them and asked them to bring Jacob to Egypt so he could see his father again before he died... 9) The entire family relocated to Egypt and settled in the Land of Goshen near the Nile Delta, where Jacob died after getting Joseph to agree to transport his remains back to Canaan and bury him in the same cave where Abraham and Sarah were buried long before, and later Isaac and Rebekah as well, and more recently Leah.
One of the things that struck me as I perused the story this month was how frequently the words "wept" and "weeping" occur. During this story I counted eight separate instances in the passages between Genesis 42:24 and 46:29, and I may well have missed some, and keep in mind I didn't try keep track of any before or after those passages.
The words are never "cried" or "crying." Nor are they "teared up" or "shedding tears." They are always either "wept" or "weeping," such as in 45:2 where it says that right after telling his brothers who he was, Joseph "wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard him, and Pharaoh's household heard about it."
It made me think of that famous New Testament verse, John 11:35, which is also the shortest in the entire Bible: "Jesus wept." When he saw where the corpse of his friend Lazarus was entombed, it does not say that Jesus "cried" or that he "was sad" or that he "felt tears in his eyes." It says that he "wept."
There has got to be a reason that this is the word that always shows up in our English translations, and I presume it has something to do with the raw authenticity of the emotions. But I'm not gonna go looking up ancient words again, at least not right now. I just find it interesting how ubiquitous this particular word is in the Bible.
* * * * *
Genesis ends with Jacob dying in Chapter 49 and being transported back to Canaan for burial in Chapter 50.
But not before blessing his grandsons from Joseph by famously crossing his arms to place his right hand atop the head of the second-born Ephraim rather than the first-born Manasseh. This went against custom, which had always assumed that the greatest lot would fall to the first-born, but Jacob explained to Joseph that while Manasseh "too will become great, his younger brother will be greater than he, and his descendants will become a group of nations."
And Jacob does not slip the surly bonds without also foretelling what will become of the descendants of each of his twelve sons. Going forward, those twelve branches of descendants will become the twelve tribes of Israel and Jacob does not hold anything back, telling Reuben he "will no longer excel" and Levi and Simeon that they will "scatter...and disperse." But it's not all bad, for Jospeh will be all kinds of awesome and Zebulun "will live by the seashore and become a haven for ships." And there are eight others of course, but you can read them for yourself.
My last curiosity about Genesis concerns where Jacob was laid to rest after his body was transported back to Canaan. The text clearly says that his body was taken into the cave described above, which had first received the bodies of Abraham and Sarah so long before. I've always wondered how they knew exactly where it was, considering the passage of time and the land's wilderness character and the fact that it seems to be teeming with caves.
But more to the point, I wonder where it is today? Tradition holds that it is now beneath the city of Hebron, specifically beneath a large building that houses both a synagogue and a mosque. Within the building are two entrances to the same cave, one of which is covered by a small grate while the other is sealed by a stone covered with prayer mats. Thus people are barred from getting into the underground cavity known as the Cave of the Patriarchs. How cool would it be if it really is what its name suggests?
With that I'll sign off. This post has been long but I hope you found it worth reading.
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