Genesis 25

There are some interesting things in today's passage, along with some further genealogical information that doesn't seem to be very critical. Time for another list, I think!

- Apparently Abraham had another wife, who gets a very short account here. I can only assume that she was brought in after Sarah died, since Abraham still lived another half-century or so after that. Apparently she was a lot more fruitful than Sarah had been, but Abraham sent her and his children by her away before he died. Clearly he saw that Isaac was his main heir, through whom God would fulfill his covenant.

- People had lots of kids in the past. I have only one, but I really don't know how I could ask my wife to go through the pain of pregnancy and childbirth again - not to mention I don't want to have to deal with additional years of changing diapers, and I have no idea how I would be able to afford more than one more mouth to feed. I suppose the people we are hearing about here are pretty affluent, and may have had all sorts of servants to take care of menial tasks, but it still seems like such a foreign concept.

- Twins... boy am I glad there is only one of my Gus! Having two sons born at the same time would bring in all sorts of competition, favoritism, and other things that are unhealthy. We can see in this account between Jacob and Esau that there was such tension, and that it turns out badly for one of them (granted it is his own fault, but still).

Genesis 24

This is a very beautiful account of faith put into action, as many of the preceding passages in Genesis have been. Abraham puts his faith in God and in his senior servant, that servant in turn trusts God to show him the right woman for Isaac, and then she and her family trust in God's decision merely based on the words of the servant. It is a pretty big commitment to send your daughter off to marry a man you've (probably) never met, and even more so to be the girl being given in marriage!

There is one odd thing that struck me here, though. We get an account that when the servant finds Rebekah and believes her to be the woman God has chosen, that he gives her a ring and bracelets right off. I thought, "wow, did they really use rings way back then for proposals? thats cool" - until a few verses later when we find out that the ring was in her nose! Ew! I'm not a fan of piercings, and especially not big gaudy ones in noses and other odd anatomy. I suppose this would be a good verse to point to, though, when dealing with parents or other family who don't want a girl to get her nose pierced. Hmm... if I ever have a daughter, I'll have to remember to come back and delete this paragraph ;)

Genesis 23

Well, I'm tired this evening - so it was good timing that brought me to this chapter. It is an account of the death of Sarah, Abraham's wife, and his purchasing of a field and cave in which to bury her. I suppose it is interesting that the man who owned the field previously tried to give it to Abraham at first, but Abraham insisted on paying for it. I suppose one could say that he did not want to be indebted to anyone, which is admirable, and moreover Abraham didn't argue or haggle over the price at all. Any real estate agents listening in - how nice would it be if people just paid whatever asking price you set on a property without discussion? ;)

Genesis 22

Today we have one of the more memorably passages from the book of Genesis - God's command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his son through whom God had promised to make a great nation. It took a lot of faith on Abraham's part to believe God's promise in the first place, but to now throw it away would be almost unthinkable. Now that I am a father myself I can better understand what God was asking of Abraham here, and it would be very tough to follow through with.

Thank goodness it was just a test, though! God knew what He was doing, of course, and all that was necessary was for Abraham to show that he had faith enough to act on such a seemingly impossible request. Bravo sir, well done!

Genesis 21

The reading today covers the birth of Issac, through whom God's promises to Abraham are to be carried out. It is rather funny that Sarah laughed again at his birth, but this time it seems to be a laugh of happiness and joy rather than of disbelief. Unfortunately for Hagar and Ishmael, though, Sarah's dislike of them rears its head again - and they are exiled.

The later section of Genesis 21 describes what seems to be a territory dispute between Abraham and the people in whose land he and his family were staying, and then a treaty between them. It shows once more that Abraham likes being a peacemaker, I think, and it explains the name of one of the locations that will be mentioned again later in the Bible (Beersheba). Beyond that, though, I am unaware of any significance to this event.

Genesis 20

So, it seems that Abraham has a habit of hiding the identity of his wife everywhere he goes. This time around it nearly brings destruction on a king and his family, but the crisis is averted through obedience to God (on the part of the king) and Abraham coming clean in the end. Apparently, though, Sarah really is blood-related to Abraham: his half sister, to be precise. Ew!

Oddly, Sarah is also 90 years old here (based on the previous chapters). It is somewhat surprising that a king would want to take such an old lady to be his wife. She must have been a real looker ;)

Genesis 19

Wow - there is a lot that could be said about this passage. It is one of the most disturbing chapters I know of, on several levels. It deals with attempted rape, homosexuality, incest, and extremely destructive judgement. If I had the time I could write pages on all of this, but for now I'll just list off a few of the oddest and most surprising (and disgusting) things I noticed.

- Lot lives with the people of Sodom, which he selected because of the nice land quality in that region (earlier in Genesis). Here he appears to actually live in the city, though he apparently does not participate in or condone the activity that the others there take part in. I guess the old adage of "location, location, location" is not strictly true: your neighbors and their moral compass (or lack thereof) should also be taken into consideration!

- The passage says that all the men of the city came to try to rape the angelic messengers, so it makes me wonder if the men engaged to marry Lot's daughters were also there. If so, did they not speak out when Lot offered his daughters to satiate the crowd? Did they care? They certainly didn't heed the warning that Lot gave them to leave, which leads to the next observation...

- Lot's daughters were planning to marry before Sodom was destroyed. They don't seem to have had kids yet, which likely means that they weren't simply sleeping around as appears to have been the norm in the area they lived. That speaks well for Lot and his parenting, but I guess he hadn't mentioned that incest was a bad idea - left to their own devices the girls didn't say "lets go find new husbands", but instead got their dad drunk and raped him (effectively). That seems to be the opposite of many abusive family relationships these days, and seems just plain weird... and wrong! I wonder how much wine it took to get Lot so far drunk that he didn't even know they were taking advantage of him. I'm also curious what the conversation looked like nine months later when his daughters gave birth, and Lot thought back to the three of them being alone in the mountains :/

- Lot's wife looking back on the destruction - and so bringing judgement on herself - and the actions of the daughters later on seem to be very influenced by the culture of Sodom that they lived in. I wonder if the wife was actually from that area, and married Lot after his arrival in the area. That would explain the resulting tragedies a bit more, if they felt that they were loosing the only home they had known (whereas Lot was still considered a foreigner).