Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 24-25.

I try to make my posts about the ways in which the passage applies to our lives or beliefs, but for the last several days they have been more speculation which has been triggered in my mind by what I have read.  While the latter is not what I consider ideal, it is something I expected to happen from time to time when I started doing this blog.   I write this blog in order to inspire myself to regularly read the Bible.  I hope that it inspires those who read it to do the same, even if only to see if my speculation has any basis in what is written.

Sorry for that long preamble to today’s blog, but once again I have been inspired to speculate about something.  So, when Jacob was born we are told he was given that name because he was clutching the heel of Esau, his older (even if only by moments) brother.  If you read the NIV translation notes you learn that Jacob means in Hebrew “he grasps the heel”, and that it was a Hebrew idiom for “he deceives”.  Now, I had heard several speakers, and read it as well, that Jacob was well-named.  As we see later, Jacob uses deception on several occasions throughout his life to get what he wants.  All of the previous commentators I have seen who commented on this idiom implied that those who named Jacob, presumably Isaac and Rebecca, named him this either because they took his grasping of his older brother’s heel as an indicator that he would be a deceiver, or that them so naming him was an indicator that he would become a deceiver.  However perhaps the deceptive behavior of Jacob, the son of Isaac, caused the Hebrew word for “he grasps the heel”, to become an idiom meaning “he deceives”.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.