Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 21-23.

I know I have mentioned this before, but until a few years ago I always pictured Ishmael as a toddler when Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael away.  However, if we pay attention to what is written we realize that Ishmael was already 14 years old when Isaac was born and it was probably two or more years later that he was sent away.  So, when Hagar “put the boy under one of the bushes” he was actually a young man.   Which brings me to Abraham taking Isaac to sacrifice him to God.  Interestingly, when God told Abraham to take Isaac He said that Isaac was Abraham’s only son, even though Ishmael was still alive.  We do not know how old Isaac was at this point, but I would guess he was about the same age as Ishmael when Abraham sent him away.  However, all of what I just wrote is just introduction.  The story of God calling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is foreshadowing of Jesus.  God said to Abraham, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love…”. Jesus was God’s only son whom He loved.  Then, when Abraham and Isaac left their servants, Isaac carried the wood for the burnt offering.  Jesus carried His cross on the way to His Crucifixion.  Finally, when Isaac asked his father where the lamb for the sacrifice was, Abraham answered that God will provide.  God did provide, both on this specific occasion and later with Jesus’ crucifixion.  I want us to take the lesson from this which I think Abraham took from it: God will provide.  Do as God directs and God will provide what you need.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 19-20.

I want to comment on what I think are a couple of interesting points, although I am not sure any of them give us any guidance for living our lives.  First, it seems to me from this passage, and several other Old Testament passages that it was common for travelers to spend the night in the town square of walled cities they were passing through.  Directly related to that, Lot was sitting at the city gates and invited these men to stay with him.  When they initially demurred, he insisted.  This suggests that Lot was well aware that the men of the city would mistreat these visitors.  Thinking about that takes me back to Abraham’s “negotiations” for saving Sodom and Gomorrah from destruction.  It seems likely that if there had been as many as ten men in the city who would have acted as Lot did, the rest of the men of the city would not have confronted Lot about his guests.  There are a couple of different ways I can go here, but I think I will go with the lesson for us:  Lot offered up his hospitality in an attempt to protect these men from the violence he knew would otherwise be visited on them.  There is one other interesting thing I want to highlight.  The passage says that the morning after the destruction, Abraham looked down on the plain and saw smoke rising from the cities.  It seems likely that Abraham believed that Lot had been killed along with the rest of the inhabitants, a conclusion which is supported by the fact that Lot lived out his life in a cave in the mountains overlooking the plain.  How might things have turned out differently for Lot and his daughters if he had reached out to his uncle after the destruction of the cities on the plain?  Even if only for so much as to let his uncle know that he had survived.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 16-18.

The Old Testament allows for polygamy.  Yet, in every instance where polygamy is addressed in the Old Testament, things go badly.  Here, Abram takes Hagar as his second wife at Sarai’s suggestion, but as soon as Hagar becomes pregnant things go wrong.  If we look at the story closely we can see the aspects of human nature which came into play to make things go badly.  One could argue that people could choose to behave differently, but that is not the point.  We learn from every story in the Bible where a man’s relationship with multiple wives are an important part of the story that humans are designed to be monogamous.  There is also a lesson in this account about the importance of waiting for God’s timing.  Abram and Sarai knew that God had promised Abram descendants who would inherit the Land of Canaan.  Since Sarai had been unable to bear children, they thought that they needed to take this action to make God’s promise come to fruition.  There may be times when God desires us to take some action in order to bring His promises to us to fruition.  This was not one of them.  Yet, despite the fact that Abram and Sarai acted outside of God’s plan, God promised to bless Ishmael.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 12-15.

I am not sure there is much to make of this, but it strikes me as interesting.  When Abram set out from the city of Haran to complete the journey to Canaan which his father had begun, Lot went with him.  Why did Lot go with his Uncle Abram rather than stay with his Uncle Nahor?  It suggests to me that Lot’s grandfather, Abram’s father, had a deeper reason to set out for Canaan than we are given by the Bible.  Of course, that also raises the question of why Nahor stayed in Haran.  I believe that the answers to these questions are closely related to why later Abraham was so vehement that Isaac was not to travel to Haran for his wife.  I find these questions interesting.  I also find it interesting that they do not appear to be answered.  There is just one more hint about the answers to this question.  When God spoke to Abram and told him to go to Canaan, Abram was no longer living in Ur, but when God made His covenant with Abram He said that He had brought him out of Ur.  There is no contradiction here, but it does tell us that God’s hand played a role in the decision of Terah, Abram’s father, choosing to leave Ur.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 8-11.

Today’s passage contains the reason I do not get caught up in any of the panics about mankind destroying the Earth which come up from time to time.  God promised that as long as the Earth endures, He will never again destroy every living creature.  That means that when people say, “If we do not take action, life on earth will be destroyed,” I dismiss what they are saying.  I know that God will not allow Man to destroy His Creation and He has promised to never again bring about such devastation until all things are fulfilled.  The end will come about exactly when God has planned for it to happen, not a moment sooner, nor a moment later.  Now, this does not mean that we are free to despoil the earth however we please.  We are called to be stewards of the Earth, of all of God’s Creation, but that part comes from other passages.  Whether it be “nuclear winter”, or “global warming”, I do not fear the destruction of all life on Earth, not even of most life on Earth, because God has promised that, as long as the Earth shall endure, that will not happen again.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 4-7.

My first thought when I started today’s blog was, “How long until I forget that it is no longer 2021?”  followed by, “How long until I do not have to think to type 2022 instead of 2021?”

I find it interesting that in today’s passage that the account gives so much information about the descendants of Cain.  If the story about Noah and the Flood is to be taken literally, no one alive today is a descendant of Cain.  This would seem to make the fact that the sons of Lamech were the first to do certain things of no particular significance.  If all of their descendants perished in the Flood, why is it significant that Jabal was the first to be a nomadic herdsman? Or that Jubal the first to make and use stringed and wind instruments? or that Tubal-Cain was the first to make metal tools?  Then, while discussing the events which led up to the Flood, the account speaks of the Nephilim.  They were apparently the offspring from when the “sons of God” had children by the daughters of humans.  This would not be significant, except that the passage seems to say that there were Nephilim on the Earth after the Flood.  All of this makes me wonder if we are intended to take it literally when later in the passage it tells us that every living thing which dwells on the land perished in the Flood.  I want to be clear that I am not saying that I believe that not all life that dwells upon the land and was not in the Ark perished in the Flood.  I am merely saying that these little comments make me wonder.  Much of this ambiguity stems from the fact that the Bible was written in Ancient Hebrew, and, based on what we know from more recent languages, it is probable that many words used in the Bible changed meaning to one degree or another from the oldest time they were used in the Bible to the most recent time they were used.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 1-3.

Happy New Year

And so we begin a new year, I hope that all of those reading this will spend the new year serving God.

Today I noticed two things which I never thought about before.  The first I have heard people touch upon in various ways, but not in the way it struck me today.  The second I have never heard anyone mention, not even in passing.  So, at the end of chapter one, God tells the people He had created that He had given them every seed bearing plant as a food source and that He had given every green plant as food for all of the other animals (all beings that have breath).  This leads to two important conclusions.  One of those I have heard talked about before: at Creation everything (particularly humans) were vegetarian.  Some people use that as an argument for being vegetarian now, but that is not what really struck me about this.  No, what struck me is that this links the chapter one account of Creation to the the Account of the Fall given in chapter three.  However, the Account of the Fall grows out of the chapter two Creation account.  What makes this significant is the fact that many scholars, and others, see chapter one and chapter two as two completely separate, unrelated Creation accounts.  However, if the chapter one account is linked to the Account of the Fall, that means that it is linked to the chapter two Creation account.   I just realized that I have not stated what links this to the Account of the Fall.  That something is that before the Fall, nothing died.  In other words, in order for something to be carnivorous, something must die, but death did not first occur until after Adam and Eve sinned.

Which brings me to the second thing I noticed.  When people read the account about the Garden of Eden and try to figure out where on Earth it was located, they assume that current geography bears some resemblance to that which existed right after Creation.  The assumption is made that since we “know” where the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers are, that the other two rivers must have been nearby.  However, the account we have here declares that all four rivers, including the Tigris and the Euphrates, had their headwaters in the river which flowed through the Garden of Eden, in modern geography, the rivers we know as the Euphrates and the Tigris have separate headwaters and join together shortly before entering the Persian Gulf.  Now, it is worth noting that the headwaters of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers are very close to each other, even though the rivers go in remarkably different directions for most of their length.  What struck me about the other two rivers is that the words used for the places they are described as flowing through describe places in Africa where those words are used elsewhere in the Bible.  Perhaps as importantly, the Hebrew word here which is translated as “Tigris” only appears twice in the Bible: once here and once in the Book of Daniel.   As I looked at this, it occurred to me (and I found several references online where others had the same thought) that perhaps these four rivers represented the four rivers where the earliest human civilization arose: the Yellow River in China, the Indus River in India, the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia, and the Nile River in Egypt.  The other thing which occurred to me is that the geography of the world would have been massively changed by an event like Noah’s Flood.  Going along with that thought was the recollection that modern geological science postulates that at one time in the distant past the positioning of Africa relative to Europe and Asia was massively different.  When I started writing this paragraph there was a meaning which connected my thoughts in these two paragraphs which I intended to conclude with.  Unfortunately, I have forgotten what that thought was.

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

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 48-50.

I am not sure I ever thought about the fact that when Jacob blessed Joseph’s sons he said that Ephraim, the younger of the two, would become the ancestor of a group of nations.  In some ways that is because I am used to God telling Abraham that he would be the father of many nations, so I have just glossed over this.  I am not sure of the significance of this prediction by Jacob. I just wanted to take note of it.

Once again we have Joseph giving us an example to follow.  After Jacob’s death, Joseph’s brothers feared that Joseph would take his revenge mow that their mutual father was no longer with them.  In response, Joseph states the basis for his forgiveness, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good…”  We should seek to have a similar attitude towards those who wrong us.  They may have intended it for harm, but God intends it for good.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 45-47.

I usually try to look for something other than the “Sunday School” lesson in a passage to write about, but I have written on some of those other things in this passage in previous years.  And I feel like the feel-good, “Sunday School” lesson in this passage is one too many people today have dismissed.   When Joseph revealed to his brothers he did not blame them for the wrong which they had done him.  Instead, he pointed out that if they had not done that to him, if he had not experienced the suffering which he experienced, he would not have been in a position to save them and their father in this time of famine.  But not only does he absolve them of their sin against them by attributing it to God’s providence, he also give God credit for his rise to prominence.  Just as when he was first called before Pharaoh, Joseph takes no credit for what he has accomplished.  He was merely in the place which God had placed him, doing the things which God had given him the gifts to accomplish.  Joseph’s attitude reminds me of a book I read about the village of Le Chambon, France during World War II.  The book is titled “Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed.”  The people of the village did much to rescue many Jews (particularly children, but not just children) from the Nazis.  After the war, when questioned about what they had done, many of them answered, “I just did what anyone would have done.”  We all know that is not true, but Joseph shared that attitude: that nothing he had done was particularly exceptional.  Let us strive to have that attitude.  We will just do the tasks which God puts in front of us to the best of our abilities and give honor to God for however they turn out.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 42-44.

I do not know if I have ever commented on one thing which always troubles me about this passage: Jacob and his sons left Simeon as a prisoner in Egypt for an extended period of time.  Ancillary to that, I always wonder about how Joseph treated Simeon during this time of imprisonment.  After giving it some thought, I believe that Simeon was treated as a diplomatic hostage, someone who was forced to live in a country hostile to their own in order to ensure that their people abided by a peace treaty.  We have no idea how long it was between the first trip and the second trip, but it was clearly an extended period of time.  During that time, they would have had no idea what kind of circumstance Simeon was in.  Even if Simeon was being treated as a diplomatic hostage, he could never be sure if something would change that for the worse. I will note that this provides some context for Judah’s offer to be imprisoned in place of Benjamin at the end of today’s passage.