16...An Inheritance for a Bowl of Stew 

 Based on GN CHs. 24-37...Read more there.

It’s been said of AB’s son Isaac whom we met last episode that he is an ‘ordinary’ person. He’s also been described as a 'marking time’ person. This isn’t to put Isaac down, simply to note that others become more the focus of the continuing story of the Hebrews. Isaac is in a way the ‘bread’ sandwiching a 'giant' - his father, AB,  & his own younger son, Jacob. Jacob starts out, as we’ll hear, rather unpromisingly. A slippery customer. But YHWH singles him out & helps him redeem himself, re-naming him ‘Israel’, the father-to-be of the Twelve Tribes to come. AB sends the manager of his household back to the family's old homelands in Mesopotamia to find a wife for Isaac. Having entered into a covenant with YHWH, the One True God, AB doesn't want Isaac marrying into the surrounding Canaanite families with their idols & other goings on! After journeying back into the old family territory the manager is led by God to a young woman named Rebekah, who turns out to be family! When the match is approved by her family & Rebekah herself, the manager leads her & her servants back to Isaac & she becomes his wife. Before AB dies at a great age [GN 25:5-11] he makes provision for all his children, but it is Isaac who is the main beneficiary. Despite their history, Isaac & Ishmael join forces to bury AB in the same grave as his wife Sarah, near Mamre where God had in a mystical way  appeared to AB & Sarah long before. [GN 18..See 14: Starry Starry Night.]

The story of Isaac & Rebekah continues from this point but soon focuses on the twin sons born to them. Before their birth Rebekah tells God they are 'struggling in the womb'. YHWH tells her she has two struggling nations in her womb, [GN 25:23] an omen of the bitterness that will develop between the Israelites, descendants of Jacob, & Esau's descendants, the Edomites. (See 13: Babel). In due course, Esau is the first-born twin, but it is his younger twin, Jacob, who comes to the fore & usurps him. Jacob turns out to be Rebekah's favourite, & appears to become YHWH's too! Which raises questions like, 'Why does God seemingly choose A but not B, C but not D, etc., over & over again?'. When they are older, one day Esau returns hungry from hunting & begs Jacob for some of the stew he's been making. Jacob deviously demands Esau give up his birth-right of eventually inheriting a greater share of their father's property as first born before agreeing to give him the stew he asks for.

Years later, when Isaac is old, blind, & dying [GN 27] he summons Esau & asks him to go out & catch some game & make stew for him to eat. But while Esau is away hunting, Rebekah puts Jacob up to bringing her two kids from their flock. She prepares a savoury stew from them for Jacob to take to his old father before Esau can return with game. The plot thickens, like the stew, with Rebekah insisting on Jacob putting on Esau's best clothes, so he will smell like Esau, & wrapping his arms with the kids' skins, so he will feel like him! Esau is a hairy man, Jacob a smooth one - in more ways than one! The point of all this is to trick the dying Isaac into giving Jacob the blessing intended for his elder brother. Despite obvious suspicion on Isaac's part, Jacob successfully usurps the blessing due to Esau - & his right as elder son to inherit the greater share of the family property. When Esau arrives later with his stew, Isaac realizes he's been tricked, but can't undo what he's been tricked into doing. All he can do is give Esau a lesser blessing. There & then Esau pledges to kill Jacob as soon as their father dies! Rebekah doesn't seem to have thought of this possibility, & sends Jacob fleeing to her brother Laban in Haran till Esau calms down! At this point, a new story-teller interjects to tell us Isaac actually blesses Jacob on his way, even giving him instructions to find a wife from among Laban's family as he himself has done years before! And that’s another story…Jacob’s Ladder

Question: What's the most important thing you've inherited?

15…HOLD THAT KNIFE, HOLD YOUR FIRE

Based on GN Chs.21-23…Read more there.

The child born to Hagar is a son, Ishmael. Later, Isaac is born to AB (for short, now on) & Sarah. Sarah is jealous & insists AB sends Hagar & Ishmael away [GN 21].  With help from an angel of God they survive the desert & its ordeals, but then fade from the story as the Hebrews focus on Isaac, his wife Rebekah, & their descendants,  in particular their son Jacob, later to be renamed ‘Israel’ by God. [GN 32:28]. In time, Ishmael comes to be seen as an ancestor of Arabic peoples, & Islam a religion of his  descendants, while Judaism becomes a religion of the children of Israel (Jacob) & his wife Rachel.

But now, is AB out of his mind? Has all that sun & sand & wind got to him, that he would prepare to offer his promised & precious son Isaac as a sacrifice? [GN 22]  Maybe he gets the idea from his travels among other peoples where child sacrifice is not unknown. But if AB sacrifices Isaac, there goes any chance of him & Sarah becoming the parents of a great people as God has promised! Maybe AB just trusts God so absolutely he knows all will be well in some way he doesn’t yet understand! [GN 15:6 tells us AB’s faith in God is so strong, God counts him as righteous. Later Paul echoes this in RO 4:3 & GAL 3:6] So AB & Isaac set out together with servants, a donkey, & wood for the sacrificial fire. AB chooses the spot, & then he & Isaac go on alone. Isaac carries wood, & AB a knife & a torch of fire. When Isaac asks his father, "Where's the lamb for the sacrifice?" instead of telling him, "It's you, my son!" AB tells him "God will provide the lamb!" So AB builds an altar of stones, arranges the wood on it, binds Isaac, places him on top of the pyre, & readies the knife.

 But YHWH is never going to let this happen! As AB prepares to kill Isaac, an angel tells him he doesn't have to prove his faith like this. God knows how strong it is! When AB looks around he sees a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. This is the lamb God has provided! Like many of us AB may show great faith, but has still to grow in  his understanding of God! The story of AB & Isaac highlights how important it is for us reading them at such a distance from the events themselves to understand the Scriptures as a whole if we’re to find & live out mature answers to questions such as, ‘What is God really like?’, ‘What does God require of us?’, ‘Does God ever ‘put us to the test’?’, ‘How far?’ We find understandings of God mature later in the O.T. prophets & then, from a Christian perspective, in the Person of Jesus. We also need to read the O.T. in the light of the N.T.   Next time: An Inheritance for a Bowl of Stew

Question: Are we conscious of sacrifices other people have made for us?

14... STARRY STARRY NIGHT
Based on  GN Chs. 11-23. Read more there.

 
Here we cross a frontier – between pre-history & ‘real’ time. And we also cross other frontiers now the Hebrew world’s first real person comes striding, well, riding, maybe, onto the scene, about 1850 years before Jesus. Leaving the more generalised ‘world’ questions from before, we move on to questions such as, ‘Is there really only one God out there & not many gods?’ ‘How come we Hebrews are chosen to be ‘special’ to this one God?’ ‘Can we really have a personal faith in & relationship with this God?’ As the stories focus more & more on the Hebrew people, we begin to find answers to our questions not in parables or myths any longer, but in happenings in the real lives of this new, emerging people in a new emerging world.

Our newcomer is introduced as Abram, who has grown up in Ur in today's Iraq, then when his father leads his family in migration there, lives in Haran in modern Turkey before moving via Egypt to Palestine. (We should read much of what follows against a background of wide-ranging migrations by nomadic tribes through the Middle East.) One night in a vision [GN 15] God takes Abram out to look at the stars & tells him, "You will have as many descendants as there are stars!" YHWH renames him Abraham (father of a multitude) to indicate his new status as ambassador of YHWH the One True God. Yet Abram & his wife (renamed too, to Sarah) have no children! Despite this God promises them & their descendants all the land from the Nile in Egypt to the Euphrates that runs through today’s Turkey, Syria, & Iraq. What a prospect! As Adam & Eve became representative parents of humankind, Abraham & Sarah become parents of a new race, the Hebrews. Sarah apparently cannot bear children, so, as is common then, she gives her slave girl, Hagar, to Abraham so he can produce children through her. That, then, would mean Sarah is legally no longer childless. But this will not fulfil the promise YHWH has made. God is talking about a child for Abraham & Sarah! When Hagar becomes pregnant, Sarah, jealous now, treats her so badly she runs away. But YHWH tells Hagar to go home & He will make her child the fore-runner of a great people too. 

God makes a further covenant with Abraham [GEN 17], very down to earth, involving circumcising each boy-child born as a perpetual mark of the Hebrews' duty to God. (Sadly, the girls don't count for much in those days, but maybe they don't mind giving this one a miss!) This covenant is very selective & personal compared with the more general one made with Noah that can be seen up in the sky by anyone. In GEN 18 we find an intriguing story, a vision of some kind, of YHWH appearing in the person of three men or angels, it's not at all clear which, who visit Abraham & Sarah while they are camped at Mamre in Palestine & confirm God’s earlier promises. (Early Christians become adept at putting a Christian spin on old Hebrew stories, & interpret this one of YHWH 'visiting' Abraham & Sarah in the person of three angels, maybe human messengers of course, as a foreshadowing of God as the Holy Trinity. The story continues in No.15: Hold that knife, Hold your fire!

Question: Do we see anything beyond the stars when we gaze up at them?

13...BABEL: DESERT HIGHRISE
(Based on GN 11: 1-9...Read more there.)

Sticking up from the desert sands is a ramped tower, reaching for the heavens. Though it may  answer questions like, ‘How is it we don’t speak the same language people from other places speak, & we can’t understand each other?’ our tale of a city & a tower & those building it from other such answers we’ve explored. Questions like this one raises must have risen early in human history, but this tale was almost certainly developed centuries later when many of the Hebrews had been taken captive to Babylon. (More of this in later episodes.) In Babylon the Hebrews find high, ramped, temple-towers of mud brick seemingly ‘reaching to heaven’. To the captives these towers represent the arrogance of a people daring to take YHWH’s own people captive. (Perish the thought, but maybe the possibility that even YHWH was now captive to their false & foreign gods is in their hearts too!) The Hebrews cannot over-throw their captors physically, but they can do it symbolically in a great story. Their tale then winds its way back into the collection of their earliest stories we’re exploring!

The tale of desert high rise is a fitting follow-up to the story of the great flood. A warning not to take God & God’s mercy for granted! The Hebrews have to learn the hard way that YHWH hasn’t been left behind back in Palestine. PS 137, for instance is a poignant lament for earlier days. A group called Boney M sang part of this Psalm to a catchy tune & made it very popular back in the late 1970s in their version. Another version goes:

By the rivers of Babylon we sat & wept when we called Zion (Jerusalem) to mind.
We hung our harps up on tree branches
Rather than sing songs that reminded us of Jerusalem, 
When our captors persisted in asking us to sing them songs from back home.
How could we possibly sing YHWH God's songs in a foreign country?

In exile the Hebrews also questions, like: ‘Why has YHWH let this happen to us?’ ‘Will we ever see Jerusalem again?’ ‘Is YHWH here in Babylon with us or still back in Palestine?’ During the exile one of the religious teachers known as Scribes looks at the temple-towers reaching high into the air & spins a yarn about people once all speaking the same language on the face of the earth, & a minstrel composes PS 137. The tale of the tower & city of Babel are clearly protests against their fate & their captors’ pride in their temples & the sheer size of their city. It’s only a short step to telling of YHWH frustrating their plans by scattering the would-be builders of tower & city as the Hebrews have been scattered, & replacing their common language with a confusing ‘babble’ of different tongues. Thus bringing to a dramatic & symbolic ending this arrogance against YHWH & His people!

Though questions about language differences must have existed a long time, such an imaginative tale like this one set in Babel at a later time gives us a new spin on the outcomes of pride & arrogance: people making a lot of noise but confused & with no understanding of the consequences of what they’re doing! Moral: Let's not get too big for our sandals, boots, slippers, or whatever else we wear down there on our feet or we may find ourselves cut down to size too! But that's another story...14…STARRY STARRY SKIES

Question: What's the biggest question we've never found an answer to?

12. RAINBOW SKIES

Based on GN 5-10…Read more there.

Over the years of all the tellings & re-tellings round camp fires & tents & more solid settlements by now, the story of the Ark becomes bigger & bigger. Like the Ark itself does! Like the fish that got away! Rather than Noah & his wife managing to take on board their extended family & save some livestock, the story expands to them taking on board representative animals & birds so that not only will Noah & his family be able to begin the human race over again, but other living creatures can do the same. The story goes that after the ark has been bobbing like a cork on the flood waters for 'forty days & forty nights' Noah sends a dove out from the raft to see if there is any dry land yet. The dove comes back without finding any. Later Noah sends the dove off again, & eventually it comes back with an olive leaf in its bill, which suggests to Noah that the flood waters must be receding. (That leaf has sometimes been used as a symbol of a new peace between humans & God.)  After a few more days, Noah sends the dove off again, but this time it doesn't come back, so Noah believes the waters are drying up & it has found somewhere to roost. Soon after, Noah & his ‘crew’ bring the Ark to dry land & begin life anew after the flood.

Other people must have managed to survive such a flood, too, wherever they could scramble to high ground. But they aren't important to the story, so they don't feature in it. The storytellers focus only on Noah & his family to make the point about living ‘rightly in God's eyes'. Although some people still like to believe the story happens literally as it's told, (& some even go looking for what's left of the Ark !) the real value of the flood story is as a parable, to put us in mind that not living as God wants us to live, as individuals & in community, can put us in danger. Thanks to the greater understanding Jesus later gives us of God as loving & compassionate rather than destructive & vengeful, it's OK for us to see things differently from those who first tell or hear them. 21st C. people don't have to live with pre-historic understandings of things! When the flood is over God makes a covenant, or agreement with Noah that all will be well with him and his family & all human beings who are faithful to Him from that time on. As the sign of this covenant YHWH sets a beautiful rainbow in the sky for all to see as a reminder. So, in ancient Hebrew society when someone sees a rainbow in the sky, & asks, What is that? some unknown but inspired storyteller recounts the tale of Noah & how the rainbow is the sign YHWH has placed in the heavens to assure us that never again will there be a flood so  widespread & destructive. Perhaps some of the threats inherent in climate changes taking place today are a more up-to-date reminder that God wants us to take care of each other & the world in which we live, but the Noah story's a pretty good one & leads us on to yet another. But that’s another story… Next time: Babel - Desert High Rise.

Question: Has the pot of gold gazumped the covenant in the rainbow watching stakes?

                                               11…THERE COMES A GREAT FLOOD
                                             (Based on Genesis 5-10. Read more there.)

"What's that pretty bow up there in the sky?" someone once asks. We know a rainbow is light being broken up into colours we can see, but long ago people watch & wonder at the beauty but don’t understand how it comes about. Well, one day, it begins to rain. And it keeps on raining. There is rain, rain, & still more rain. Until it becomes a great flood. There's water all over the earth. Many people can't find higher ground to escape to & drown. The ancient story-teller tells us it rains for 'forty days & forty nights', a term they often use to mean 'quite some time’. Weeks, months, maybe, the way we tell time. Many peoples throughout the whole world have stories about a great flood. Some think this may mean the human race has somehow stored such an ancient & wide-spread flooding in its 'corporate memory', a bit like a computer saves work in its 'memory'. None of this uncertainty stops the Great Flood from being a Great Story! But don't take it too literally, will you! 

In the days the story comes from, people believe the earth is flat like a plate, covered by a great dome preventing water up above the sky from breaking through - except when it rains! Seas & rivers cause an uneasiness that all that water underneath the earth might one day threaten them by overflowing & engulfing the solid land they live on. This old story tries to explain how this great flood comes into being by putting a ‘God-spin’ on it & blames it on people behaving badly. (Remember, we’re hearing these tales from the point of view of the ancestors of the Hebrew people.) By now, People Behaving Badly have become widespread. More so than in some of our earlier stories. Evil is no longer just a personal matter between Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, & their like.

Rot has been setting in among the whole of society. There is violence everywhere. So much so that people can think of YHWH God being fed up with Bad Goings-On & deciding to teach human beings a lesson by wiping out everybody & everything He’s created & starting all over again. But do bear in mind that later the N.T. makes it clear that idea doesn't sit at all well with the God Jesus embodies, though in very early times it seems a perfectly reasonable explanation to camp-fire questions like, "Why do floods happen?”, “How does God deal with evil?”, & not forgetting, “What's that pretty bow doing up there in the sky?” On a more positive note, the storyteller goes on to explain how God saves one symbolic family so life can start all over again after the flood. A man called Noah lives a good life and pleases God. So God warns Noah to build a rough boat, a raft, actually (despite the inflated dimensions that go with the story). This craft comes to be known as the 'Ark'. Supposedly big enough for Noah to take his family & representatives of the animal kingdom on board so they can ride out the flood & begin life again. (Read the story carefully & we find there's another version of the story, with different arithmetic, embedded in the one we probably know better! We’ll often find stories being interwoven or combined like this - & not always harmonised - as we explore the Scriptures further.) And that's another story: Rainbow Skies

Question: Does the story of Noah raise any issues relevant to today's climate change debate?

 

10...WHERE THERE'S FIRE THERE'S SMOKE
 (Based on GEN 4 & 5. Read more there.)

We're using our imagination to re-tell biblical stories with deep & lasting meaning. Some call them myths, i.e. profoundly though not necessarily literally true, others think of them as parables. Tales of  how everything & everybody begins, & what happens in a garden. Next thing we know, Adam & Eve, who've been put out of Eden for their own good, are having a family. First, a son called 'Cain', which may mean ‘blacksmith’ & then another son they call 'Abel' (which may mean ‘cattle-herder’). Cain tills the ground & needs sharp tools! Growing food for yourself & your family is a very important task. Abel raises sheep & cattle, also important for food & family  & also needs the food Cain grows. One day Cain & Abel have a falling out over offerings they make to YHWH. On stones as an altar Cain burns some of his crops, while Abel burns an animal from his flocks. Somehow Cain thinks God is accepting Abel's offering more than his. Maybe there’s more smoke going up from Abel's animal than Cain's crop! Cain attacks Abel & hits him hard enough to kill him. Then he buries his body. You can’t hide that kind of thing from YHWH, who of course sees what happens. He asks Cain, "Where's your brother?" Cain just shrugs & pretends he doesn't know. He says to God, rather rudely, "I don't know! Am I my brother's keeper?" (That's become a famous saying about not wanting to share responsibility for what's happening to someone else.) YHWH is not impressed! Not at all! He says to Cain, "I can hear your brother Abel's blood crying out to me from the ground!" Then, just as He's already banned Adam & Eve from Eden, now God bans Cain from the land he's been farming. Because he's killed Abel & is trying to shrug it off & cover it up by not admitting to it. Cain becomes a wanderer over the land. God puts some kind of mark on him, maybe a scar on his forehead, or something like that, so people will beware of him. Or, is it to keep Cain safe from others taking further vengeance on him, a mark to indicate YHWH’s already punished him enough by expelling him from his lands? Anyway, in this sad story of two brothers we have a reminder human beings can't always get on with each other, & that many die at the hands of others, even those close to them. In other stories told by our ancient story-tellers, there will be more & more tales about people killing & being killed by each other. All is not well on earth!

Adam and Eve go on to have two more sons, Enoch, then Seth. We're told Adam & Eve later 'have other sons & daughters' too. Back then, disappointingly, no-one bothers to name most of the girls & women in our stories. Though they count in God's eyes, in that patriarchal society their place is to play second fiddle to the menfolk! (When we come to N.T. times, we'll find not much changes despite Jesus' efforts on women’s behalf!)  By the way, because most of the women are left out of the stories people still sometimes ask, "If there are only men in the story, whom did they marry?” The simple answer is, from among the women who've been left out (we might say ‘air-brushed’ out) including from other families & clans who don't ever get into the story either! Truth is, when YHWH creates humankind, He makes us all 'in His own image' [GEN 1:27] which means we’re meant to be so like God people can tell just by looking at us & the way we live that we are God's children. But the tales of Adam & Eve disobeying God in the garden, & then Cain killing Abel, remind us people (including ourselves!) & things don't always turn out to be whom or what God means them to be. It’s quite a bit later that Jesus lives out God's image & shows us how to do the same by loving each other as God does. But that's another story.... Next time: There Came a Great Flood

Question: Do we ever feel God is unfairly treating someone else better than us & feel aggrieved? Where to from there?