First creation story
Second creation story, fall of man
Hitting the reset button with Noah; the tower
Noah's sons
Abraham's exploits, the promise, and an intimate meeting with God
Hagar, and more of Abraham's exploits
A son! Abraham's big finish
Isaac has sons, one is a cheat and runs off with Abraham's promise
Jacob has kids; he and Laban pull some fast ones
Jacob comes to know God through a wrestling match, returns home.
The setup: Joseph is sent to Egypt
Jacob's family reconciled, saved, and relocated.
Jacob's blessings, Joseph's last words
Genesis: literal history or metaphor?

As I finish reading, taking notes on, reflecting on, and posting about each book of the Bible, I plan on writing a post or two reflecting on common issues people have with that book, along with a post summarizing and linking to all the posts about one book. This is the first of the summarizing posts and is related to Genesis.

Genesis, a mix of origin myths and ancestor stories (among other things) is the first book of the Bible. It is very long and its content is very foreign to a modern Western culture. However, it is still very purposeful and thoughtfully themed, with a thick thread that is easy to follow. This thread revolves around God's beautiful creation, the fall of that creation into corruption, including the corruption of man, and God's calculated first steps in returning the creation to harmony, especially as his plan involves one man, Abram, and his son, grandson, and great grandsons.

Parts 1 to 3: The Creation of Earth

The first story in Genesis is a creation myth that is poetic and orderly and beautiful. God makes the world almost like he's stretching a canvas and then painting a picture on top. Humans are created in God's image and their purpose is to rule earth and multiply on it. Everything is great.

The second story is another creation myth, this time it's mostly about mankind's creation. A man is made, and is put in a sweet garden to work, and can live forever, eating from the tree of life. He needs a friend so after he names all the animals God makes him a wife. They're naked but it's a good thing. God warns them not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil or else they'll die.

A serpent tells the woman that if they eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they won't die, but they'll be like God, knowing good and evil for themselves. The woman and her husband eat that fruit, and it only goes down half like the serpent. Yeah, they know good and evil, but it makes them ashamed of their nakedness. Plus, they do end up dying. Not only that, but God puts a curse on a ton of stuff, from the serpent to childbirth to marriage to farming. Things don't heal over time as one of their sons actually murders the other one. One of HIS descendants murders two people and is proud of it. Yikes.

A third story is then told (see above linked post) in which it is reiterated that God made man in his image. Generation after generation passes, and eventually man is totally corrupt and evil. God is sorry he ever made earth, except for one righteous guy, Noah.

This is the story of the creation of earth, according to Genesis. I also wrote a post in which I talked about my thoughts on the literal vs. metaphorical interpretation of the Genesis, and that is worth checking out at this point.

You can see two main things in these first two posts / three stories: God is consistently good, just, powerful, and creative. Meanwhile his creation starts out great, but becomes evil through the acts of Adam and Eve and through the passing of generations.

Parts 4-6: Noah and his family

At this point the story turns to one man: Noah. He is the only person left on earth worth a lick. God reveals his plan to Noah for restoring harmony to earth: he'll destroy absolutely everything with a flood, but will save Noah and his family and some animals in a big boat. It all goes down like God says, and at the end, Noah worships God and God makes a promise to never do this kind of thing again. He tells Noah's family to fill the earth like before, and to stop killing each other.

After that, Noah's family line is traced, and just as humans begin filling the earth, they decide they'll make a name for themselves and not fill the earth by building a huge tower out of brick. They don't get too far before God spreads them all over the earth himself and confuses their languages. Noah's family line is then reiterated, right down to a man named Terah, who has a son named Abram.

So it is seen that God is still the same all-powerful God, very concerned with restoring creation to how he first made it. So he starts over. But he doesn't totally neglect man, saving one man very much on purpose and basically giving man a fresh start with his commands at the end to not murder and to fill the earth again. A few more generations pass and mankind is already fighting against this, trying to stay in one place and follow his own path. God does what he can to proceed with the plan but of course he won't destroy earth again. We end with geneologies leading to Abram, but the story leaves us hanging on what God will do next.

Part 7 - 8: From Abram to Abraham

God gets to work right away, telling a guy named Abram to move to where God shows him, telling him that HE will make Abram's name great, will bless him, give him tons of descendants, give him the land he will show him, and will bless all nations through him. Abram then has a series of exploits in which God blesses him greatly or reiterates his promises, and Noah often responds by giving God credit or worshiping him.

Eventually Abram and God share a powerful scene in which Abram doubt's God's promises of many descendants because his wife Sarai is old and barren. God tells Abram his descendants will be slaves but will come back to take the land, and as a sign, God moves a firepot between some sacrifices.

Nevertheless, Abram takes his slave as a wife because it doesn't seem Sarai will ever have a kid. God says that Abram's slave's kid, Ishmael will become a great nation too, but that Sarai will indeed have a kid. God then makes it a covenant (the blessings, land, descendants, and and blessing all nations) by giving Abram circumcision and by renaming him Abraham and his wife Sarah. Meanwhile not only is Abraham very blessed by he seems to be best friends with God, able to talk with him about anything, with God listening.

Eventually, Sarah does have a son, Isaac, and Abraham now believes God's covenant so much that he'd be willing to sacrifice his son, the son OF the promise, when God tells him to. He finds his son a wife and dies at a good old age.

Meanwhile Ishmael does indeed become the father of a great nation as well.

This part of Genesis focuses on on Abraham exclusively instead of all of mankind, and God not only makes world-big promises to Abraham, but he begins to carry them out in incredible ways and single-handedly carries Abraham from a place of pseudo-belief in what God says to a place of complete trust no matter what the circumstances. God also becomes absolute best friends with Abraham through the process.

Part 9 - 11: Isaac and Jacob

Isaac, to whom God gives the same covenant He gave Abraham (and gets even richer than Abraham), has a couple kids and accidentally hands his blessing down to the younger, deceitful one, Jacob. Jacob runs off in fear of his brother's wrath, and God appears to him, confirming that indeed he has received the covenant from Isaac that Abraham originally got.

Jacob then spends a lot of time with his Uncle, getting four wives, having 12 sons and deceiving and being deceived by Uncle Laban lots of times.

Jacob heads home with his numerous family members and possessions, but when he hears his brother is about to meet him, he panics. He literally wrestles with God all night. God blesses him and changes his name is Israel (struggle with God), telling him he will indeed be blessed and his descendants will be a great nation. His brother meets him and hugs him, and Israel returns home to his dad.

Jacob's brother is shown to have lots of kids and be blessed as well.

Throughout the stories of Isaac and Jacob, God's covenant with Abraham is passed down, so God is working through generations of people. Isaac and Jacob are both made very rich by the covenant. Jacob is given more stage time and is brought over time by God from a state of decietfulness to a state of mature trust and respect for God.

Part 12: Jacob's family

Jacob's sons aren't to nice to the favorite son of Jacob, Joseph, and long story short, he is sent to Egypt as a slave and no one knows he's alive but his brothers. He is continutally blessed in Egypt despite years of hard times and ends up basically the prime minister of Egypt. With God's help he's well prepared for a seven year famine and when it kicks in Egypt is doing great and making money off the whole world by feeding the nations.


Jacob's sons go to Egypt to get food because of the famine and Joseph recognizes him, after getting them to bring the youngest to Egypt, he is emotional in front of them and reveals himself as Joseph. They are afraid but he insists it is God who sent him to Egypt not them, so that he might save his family from starvation. Jacob is delighted to hear his son is alive and they all move down to Egypt.

Jacob, about to die, gives his sons their share of the blessing, especially praising Joseph and giving him a double share of the nation that will one day rise out of the person Israel's blood line. Jacob dies and they bury him back in the land God sent promised to Abraham (Canaan). Eventually Joseph dies but he reminds the Israelites that they belong in Canaan and that one day when God sends them back, to take his (Joseph's) bones back to Canaan with them. Then Joseph dies.

In the final part of Genesis, there is more character development as God brings Joseph's older brothers from a state of violence and deceit to humility and regret over their mistreatment of Joseph. Meanwhile God uses Joseph to save his family by bringing them to Egypt during the famine, which is just the place God told Abraham his descendants would become slaves. As the book ends, Jacob's kids are starting to grow into a nation, the Israelites.

The book ends in great anticipation, because God's covenant with Abraham, the focus on the book, are absolutely certain (because of God's character) and yet mostly not yet there. Yes, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were greatly blessed. But they are not a great nation yet (although that seems to be emerging), they're not yet in the land, they haven't taken the land, and all nations haven't been blessed (although many people comment on how blessed they are). It's like the tiny buds of the covenant are seen but there is much more to come.

I believe Genesis intends to end with that sort of mindset.

Friendship. At this stage of their relationship, I'd say it's clear Abram and God are good friends. That's saying a lot, as it's not a relationship-type that had been mentioned specifically earlier in Genesis, but it is clearly there.

Yesterday, God spent about six pages telling Abram over and over and over again what an enormous nation he would make from him.

Then right off the bat today, Abram gets worried about his wife not having a kid; she gives him her servant, Hagar, to have a kid by, and that causes problems between everybody (as one might expect). Then, Hagar gets a messenger of the Lord to tell her to go back, indicating that her son Ishmail will be a great ruler as well.

This is followed by an intense, intimate scene between God and Abraham, in which he changes Abram and Sarai's names into Abraham and Sarah. This time it's a serious covenant and Abraham is officially involved through circumcision. God tells Abraham his descendants, through Sarah, will be as numerous as the stars... Abraham circumcises everyone in his household.

Abraham's adventures coninue in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah being destroyed. Abraham's intimate relationship with God is demonstrated once again with the way, although he admits to being a weak-minded human, that he negotiates down the number of righteous people present to defend it. God even cares about Abraham's opinion.

There is a short substory about Lot and his daughters, which seems to be taking a quick shot at a couple other nations.

Finally, Abraham once again lies about his wife and as a result eventually becomes eve more wealthy. A note about it, though is that Abraham is referred to as a prophet; one who speaks for God. He prays to God and God answers his prayer. (This is the first time this happens in Genesis.)

Edit: When I first typed this last night I was literally falling asleep and a lot of it was nonsense. Now it's fixed. Overall, my response to this story is a little bit of shock, even as a Christian, that this early, way back in Genesis, God was more or less best friends with a human being. Abraham makes great decisions and not-so-great decisions but he and God have a commitment to each other. And the weirdest part is, it was all initiated by God. There are lots of iinteresting stories about Abraham's adventures but the more dramatic part of his story is that after each adventure God reiterates his promise, and even strengthens its voice.

Genesis' perspective here is definately that God is working with this man and building something with him because of who God is, not even just who Abraham is. This is set against a backdrop of a God who cannot stand murder or corruption of his creation (humans). Of course, the elephant in the room is that he has already annihilated humanity and a couple cities. I'm still processing that one.

This morning I jumped into what seems like the whole next section of Genesis: Part 7. This is a very long part, the story of Abram, and it's going to take me a few days to get through.

We left off of with a nice descendant list ending with Terah and his three kids (one of them Abram). A literary shift seems to take place as we are introduced to a whole new cast.

Synopsis

The main characters here are Terah, his son Abram, his daughter-in-law Sarai (who, it is mentioned, is barren), and his grandson Lot (nephew of the latter two). Although Terah quickly dies so we're left with the "misadventures" of the other three. God shows up and tells Abram to head to Canaan, and the fun starts there.

The events of this part of Genesis are many: They do a lot of traveling to and from Canaan, they head to Egypt during a famine and lie to the Pharaoh, , Abram and Lot go their separate ways, Abram saves Lot from some warring kings, and Abram refuses to take stuff from a king he helped.

And surprisingly, my sense is that all those things are rather peripheral, lacking a need for analysis, compared to the other thing going on in this section: over and over again, we see God making promises to Abram, and also we see Abram calling on God's name and building alters to Him.

Right near the beginning, God talks to Abram and promises to bless him, to make a nation out of him, to make his name great, and to bless all peoples through him. This starts off a relationship, initiated and carried forward by God, that is restated several times throughout a few stories about Abram's life. It continues to build until it reaches a powerful passage as Abram and God discuss the promise:

God says HE is Abram's shield and great reward, but Abram questions how God can fufill these promises since Abram has no kids (remember, Sarai is barren). God says he'll take care of it, and Adam believes him, which God appreciates. Abram asks how he will take the land, and God tells him to put out some sacrifices. Abram is told that his offspring will be slaves for a while and then return to Canaan, and then some smoking firepot thing moves through the sacrifices to seal the deal. It's a powerful passage.

Analysis

This whole section has a whole different feel to it, some sort of literary shift. For one thing,
instead of God simply talking back in forth with people, the mode of God's conversation is always revealed, through "appearing" to people, or coming in a dream, or through a vision, or even using someone else to speak for him. Also, all the explanations of things like why there are rainbows and why snakes don't have legs disappear. Instead we are invited into the life of this man, whose main distinctive trait is that God seems to like him. The overall message, I think, of this section has been, "God's gonna do something special with this guy."

Response

What stands out to me about this whole section is God's pursuit of Abram. Sure we hear lots of interesting stories, but I don't think there's much to learn from them in particular. I think what we learn is that whatever situation this guy is in, God is faithful to him and directing his steps. Abram in turn often calls on God's name and worships him.

God's character is revealed as he goes out of his way for the first time since hanging with Eve and Adam to intimately be involved with a particular human being. His passion for Abram can be felt in this narrative, in my opinion. The last story that I read, in which the firepot passes through the sacrifices, is especially expressive of how intentional and involved God is.

If most of Genesis so far has reminded me how I buy into man being totally corrupt and this world full of problems, these stories of Abram touch something inside me that hopes that our creator wants to act in response and to know people amidst the chaos.

Neat.