Genesis 36

Wow - lots of names today, many of which I can't pronounce. Being that almost the whole of this chapter is a genealogy there isn't much to say, but there is one item of note. In the first few verses we see that Esau and Jacob had so many possessions between the two of them that they couldn't occupy the same area. I'm not sure if it was reasoning Esau thought of or not, but because Jacob was the heir to Abraham's covenant he was to stay in the land of the promise while Esau and his folk left for other lands. It is also cool to see that, though Esau and Ishmael were not the heirs to this promise God still made them fathers of great peoples.

Genesis 33

Compared to yesterday's reading there isn't much to say about this chapter. It is the logical conclusion to what we read yesterday, though I do find it odd that ,even after the great reception from Esau, Jacob still didn't go with him. Even if one assumes the excuse he gave about not wanting to drive the animals and young too hard was true, he didn't follow Esau to Seir but instead went to Succoth instead. Perhaps those locations are close together - I should try to find a map online to reference and see. Anyone know of any good Biblical maps available on the web?

Genesis 32

Ah, we have come to one of my favorite chapters in Genesis - and one of my favorite stories in all the Bible! There is a lot of good stuff here, so I'd best list it and try not to miss anything:

1) The very first verse, while lacking in details, is rather cool: "So Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him." (NKJV) We don't know what was said, or what they looked like, or how many there were - but it still must have been an awesome experience.

2) When Jacob finds out that Esau, his brother, is coming to meet him he does not instantly run away, nor does he prepare to fight. Instead he sends gifts, showing that he is a peacemaker, and makes intelligent preparations so that if retreat is necessary he is ready - but moreover he trusts in the Lord to make good on His promises.

3) Few men have ever seen God, and even when you count Jesus' life and ministry the total is likely still in the tens of thousands. But as far as I know only one has actually wrestled (physically) with the Lord - and that would be Jacob. He carried the scar from it all his life (where God touched him on the hip), but I doubt that he regretted it even one second.

Genesis 28

Here we have yet another instance of a favored son being instructed to take a wife from among Abraham's relatives, rather than the locals. This time, though, instead of sending a servant to find the bride Isaac sends the one to be married - Jacob. Along the way he has a bit of a dream, in which he sees and hears God speak to him.

It seems that God re-affirms his covenant with Abraham's bloodline over and over, but here we have the first occurrence of it with Jacob specifically. This shows, officially, that Jacob will be the heir of Issac through whom the covenant will be fulfilled - just as it came through Isaac rather than Ishmael.

A few interesting things to note from the passage:

- When Esau realizes that his parents dislike the women he married (due to their ancestry), he goes and marries another woman - a daughter of Ishmael. This is closer in to the family line, and so presumably an attempt to curry favor again with his father. I guess I am a little surprised, given all the events that transpired in the last chapter, that he is still concerned about impressing his father.

- After the dream that Jacob has, he promises to obey and serve God - but on the condition that he is kept safe on his journey. Given the vision he had just woken from, one would think that he would be best served not to try and 'make a deal' with God. I wonder what God thought of that...

Genesis 27

Here we have the fulfillment of what God had told Rebekah about her sons when they were born. Esau already traded his birthright to Jacob in an earlier passage, and now Jacob (at the behest of his mother) deceitfully steals their father's blessing. It is no wonder that Esau is enraged, but I suppose God's will comes about one way or another. I wonder if Isaac had simply planned to bless Jacob rather than Esau, in accordance with the words God had said to Rebekah in chapter 25, what would have happened. I've always looked at this as a bad act on the part of Rebekah and Jacob, but perhaps Rebekah was acting this way because of what God had told her - trying, in her own way, to obey God. That is a rather odd way of looking at it, but without more details into what each person involved was thinking I suppose it is a possibility.

On a lighter note, how hairy must Esau have been that the best way to mimic his feeling was to strap goat hide to Jacob? Seriously, I've never seen or heard of anyone else with such an abundance of hair! Hairy backs and chests are one thing, but on his hands and his neck? Yikes...

Genesis 26

Well, the apple does not fall far from the tree they say - and it certainly seems true with Abraham and his son, Isaac. When Isaac moves into a new land he tries to pull the same "my wife is my sister" trick that his father used twice. Just the same as before, though, it falls flat. Will these guys never learn? The thing I find most odd about this, though, is that God does not chastise them for lying. I suppose in Abraham's case it was at least somewhat true (Sarah was his half-sister), but the same cannot be said for Isaac and Rebekah; at best they are cousins, if I read the preceding chapters correctly.

Much of the rest of this section is taken up by the digging of wells, the filling of wells, and arguing over wells. I suppose the important bit is that God led Isaac and his family to a region which was not contested, and where the covenant between them would be fulfilled. There is also a renewal of the peace treaty that Isaac's father had with the leaders of the Philistines.

At the tail end of this chapter we see that Esau married a pair of Hittite women, when he was around age 40, and this did not sit well with his parents. Because there isn't much in the way of details, I have to assume that their concerns were due to the region and people those women were from; I suppose it could also be that he married twice, but given the relationships their other son (Jacob) will have with a total of four women I doubt that is the problem.

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).