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.

Last post, after reading Genesis' first creation story, I commented that it seemed too idealistic. God creates everything and it's all just great. Of course most of us know that it's not going to stay that way very long in Genesis, and will quickly spiral down into a broken world we're more familiar with. That's where I found myself as I read part two of Genesis.

I say part two because it each begins with "This is the account of..." which according to the introduction to Genesis in my Bible, marks a new section. Thematically it seems reasonable, because the second creation story is a lot different from the first. Here's a table I made comparing the two:

Note that a big part of the scope of the second story that is absent from the first story is comparing before the fall vs. after the fall. I'll get to that in a second.

Also interesting are all the every-day-life explanations this story has: how animals got their names, why snakes don't have legs and are hated by women, why we have sex, why childbirth hurts, why marriage is hard, why farming is hard, why we have clothes, etc.

These are a fun part of the story and of course are not all... historically accurate... to say the least. But one particular explanation is the far more important and the central theme of this creation story. It is the explanation of why we die.

Here's the synopsis of Genesis part 2: God needed somebody to work the garden, so he breathes life into a man. The guy gets a pretty good deal living in the garden and hanging out, walking around with God. In fact, after naming the animals, God makes a woman for the man out of his own body, which he is so happy about that he breaks into poetry and bam, we have an explanation for sex. However they will die if they eats from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Why don't I hear about the name of that tree more? It is not the Tree of Evil that's off-limits but the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. All I can say is that the humans must not have had a clue about the difference between good and evil, and perhaps they weren't created to have such knowledge. The serpent and God seem to confirm this in their speech.

As in all stories like this, a crafty animal (in this case the snake) fools them into eating from that tree. Immediately they recognize and are ashamed of their nakedness. They also hide from God. Besides those two things, check out all the problems this causes: childbearing is painful, marriage is oppressive, the ground is hard to farm, people will not live forever, they are separated for good from the Tree of Life, and to top it all off, one of their sons kills his brother. Four generations later, a descendant who is married to two women proclaims that he has killed two men and is proud of it.

The contrast is stark; instead of working and living and walking alongside God and each other in harmony forever, humans move away from God, hide from him, kill each other and eventually all die.

Part 3 starts after that, and I might as well summarize it because it's similar and short. This part reemphasizes that God made humans in his likeness and blessed them. It then lists Adam and tons of his descendants, so that by the time a very very long time passes and a man named Noah is born, the humans are 100% corrupt and evil. They are so evil compared to how God created them that God is sad that he ever created humans and decides he will wipe them out; however, there is one little hitch in his plan, and that's that Noah found favor in God's eyes.

So part one of Genesis was about the beautiful perfect harmony and beauty of earth and man that God created. Part two demonstrates that by choosing to figure out good and evil for themselves, humans screwed everything up and went into a downward spiral. And part 3 is basically the same, except demonstrated through the passing of time rather than one single act.

So, what have we learned so far? What is the Bible about so far? God has been the main character, and he is a very personal, real, character who walks, talks, feels, etc. He is portrayed as totally good and unbelievable powerful, as everything he creates is perfect and he even helps humans when they fail, by protecting Cain and making skin garments for Adam and Eve.

Meanwhile, man, who was supposed to be a ruler under God, made in his image, rejected God's way in order to choose his own. This has lots of bad instant results and even worse ones down the road.

Now this is a story I can get into. This is the world I see around me. Humans have serious problems. According to the Bible, the problems exist because we turned from God and are cut off from the tree of life. It's an intriguing idea and one that our rights-oriented, I'm-the-victim culture would not appreciate. Anyway, the foreshadowing at the end of part three indicates that God is planning on wiping out humans in the next part. Sounds like a plan; the whole exercise was a disaster, really.

Poetry.

This is the word that comes to my mind after reading and reflecting on the beginning of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Everywhere from the beginning to of the book to God resting on the seventh day constitutes a single cohesive creation story, one that likely predates the composition of Genesis by hundreds of years. And the story is pure poetry.

Here's the rundown: God creates the heavens and earth. From over top dark waters, God creates one feature per day, all by the power of his voice alone. The first three days he makes day and night, the sky over the seas, and the land, plants and trees. The next three days he fills up what he made in the first three days: He makes the sun moon and stars, the sea creatures and birds, and finally the land creatures and the humans.

The humans (both male and female) he creates extra special by making them like God ("in the image of God") and he assigns them to fill the earth and to rule earth. Finally his creation is complete, and it's all very good, so he takes a day off. The end.

I get the sense this story stood by itself before it was part of Genesis, but I'm guessing the rest of Genesis will also fit it in with it quite nicely.

Like I said, this passage is pure poetry, some of the most compelling poetry I've ever read. It speaks to my heart in a poetic way, even though it's not a native English story. How? Because the beauty is in the way the author uses the events of a creation story to explain things about God and man and the earth. This story says that God is in total control. It says we're here to be like God and rule the earth. It says God created a really good earth that is full of harmony and order.

Good times.

And the story does it all through this beautiful foreign medium of a creation story. God's power is demonstrated through his SPEAKING causing the earth to appear. He creates with order and harmony: light, sky and ground followed by sun, birds, and wild beasts. Beautiful. The story literally breaks out into verse about how humanity is made in God's image.

Another note: God is a character who talks, both to himself and to humans. Interesting. All in all, it's a story that stands in stark contrast to other ancient creation stories, where humanity is an accident or is the product of a god's masturbation.

The idea that someone could take this first part of Genesis as the literal scientific truth is downright silly, I have to say. After all, in this story, the earth is created first, then later plants, and then yet later the sun moon and stars. This order and timespan is literary rather than scientific.

There is harmony; there is a powerful, intentional God who talks; there are humans ruling over the earth like God wants. God is taking a holiday. It's a good deal.

I think there are many that would love to read the first story of the Bible and leave it there, that humanity is doing just fine, thank you, and if there is a God, he put the answers inside us. But looking at the world it is obvious things didn't play out the same way they started (started according to Genesis). Even in this first reading, I can't help but think of unjust wars being fought these days, over a billion people without good water, and oppressive governments.

Even now in my own life, I just got off the phone with my beautiful fiancee. She had some reasonable emotional needs, and I had some reasonable needs for sleep and getting over a headache. We didn't communicate all that well and I don't think either of us were satisfied. I got off the phone and just punched my bed because I'm so frustrated and angry that she could be sad and yet I am too weak or selfish to do anything about it.

What happened to "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good"?

(note: This was a lot of reflection on not much of Genesis. I expect, after the first few days, to read 4-5x as much at a time. However, the beginning of this book is so rich that it's hard to read more than what I did today.)