Yeah - whatever. I know I'm way behind in reading, and even further behind in posting. Sue me.
I'll say this about Exodus: It is even more epic in scope than Genesis - for about 20 chapters. After the giving of the Ten Commandments, it's all downhill. Regulations, dimensions of the tabernacle, blueprints for the Ark of the Covenant, and on and on and on. Where were they getting all those skins of sea-cows (that is; dugongs) to cover everything with?
Since the story of the Exodus is probably one of the most well-known in all of history, I won't belabor the point with copious notes on what the plagues mean, or the story about Moses and Zipporah's wacky incident with their son's foreskin (see a pattern emerging here?). What I will say is this:
I LOVE PRINCE OF EGYPT. Love it. You should watch it again.
Sooo - Leviticus.
Not much to say about Leviticus except this: God is thorough. Every legal eventuality is covered here. No Israelite could ever ask, "Yeah, but what if..." Nope. It's in there. Also - the rule about rules is that they probably wouldn't have to be made if somebody hadn't been guilty of whatever it is they are ruling against in the first place. In other words - chances are SOMEBODY in the camp was lying with man as one lies with a woman. SOMEBODY in the camp was offering their children to Molech (the god who causes children to pass through the fire). SOMEBODY was having sexual relations with an animal. And I'm sure everybody knew who it was, too. Well congratulations, buddy! You've got a verse in Leviticus with your name on it. You're practically famous... except it's for bestiality.
Anyway - the coolest thing ever about Leviticus is the Year of Jubilee. Every 50th year, all debts are forgiven, all slaves are freed, and all land that was bought or sold reverts back to its original owner. And do you know why? Because land belongs to the LORD, and you are just aliens and tenants in it, that's why, sucka.
There's also a thing called the sabbath YEAR. For six years you are to work the ground of your field, but in the seventh year you gotta leave it alone. No plowing, planting, or harvesting. God promises to give you enough in year six for three years - just in case. Even the earth gets a sabbath! Preach!
Any reading of Jewish laws is bound to scandalize the aspiring feminist or abolitionist. But when studied in the historical context, these laws are often huge jumps in women's rights from the existing culture. For example - Israelites are instructed that anytime they rape a woman, or seduce a virgin, they must pay the "bride-price" for her, and bring her into their house. Of course, this isn't much of a curve, but it's an upward curve nonetheless in the treatment of women in ancient cultures. It's a curve that continues well into the New Testament, and, I would say, today. A similar curve exists, I think regarding slavery - although it is much slower than that regarding women. Others have pointed out that it seems like no such moral curve exists in scripture when it comes to sexuality.
Lastly- what the bleep is a "wave offering"? That's gotta be one of the most hilarious things I've ever read. Never heard of it before now. Thanks a lot preachers and seminary professors!
What an epic two days! The story of Jacob and Joseph is the stuff movies are made from! It's a brilliant bronze-age tale. It's got everything - trickeration, sexytime, war, famine, infighting, work, love, separation and reconciliation - but it won't let us forget how primitive these people and times were. I'm trying to cut down on the notes, but keep in mind this is two days worth.
Now - new and improved with links to the described passages at Biblegateway.com!
Chapter 29
- My old Hebrew professor told us that "Leah" means "cow". Awesome!
Chapters 30 & 31
- I love how they gave their children names that meant something about the circumstances surrounding their birth. I wish more people did this today - but I'm afraid if they did the most common name of 2008 would end up being Whoops!, or VanHalenTourMilwaukee. Incidentally, the most commonly given boys' name for 2006 (the last year on record) was Jacob. So how 'bout that.
- See, now this is why polygamy is a problem.
Chapter 32
- See, now the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel is absolutely one of the coolest things ever. It says so much about the journey of Jacob's life, and who he has become. When we first meet Jacob, the "heel-snatcher", the "trickster", he lives up to his name. The first time we see him posed with the question "Who are you?" (by his father, Isaac, when he steals his brother's blessing), he pretends to be someone else. Not comfortable in his own skin, or playing his own role - not content with the station allotted to him in life - he denies being Jacob at all.
Since then he has fled for his life from Esau, encountered God at Bethel, worked for years on Laban's farm, married the wrong woman, then the right one, had a multitude of sons, and brokered a deal with Laban to make himself rich. He has undergone quite a maturing process. Now, when asked, "Who are you?" or "What is your name?" he is finally ready to respond, "Jacob". And no sooner has he done so, but God changes his name to Israel.
Chapter 34
- Not a ton of notes on this Chapter, but I did find it sadly hilarious what Jacob's sons did to the man who raped their sister, and then asked to pleasepleaseplease marry her.
"I tell you what. Why don't you and all of your men have this primitive genital mutilation ritual performed on yourselves - and then we'll talk."
2 days later, they're all limping and sore...
"Okay guys... we did what you asked! (ouch) Now can I marry your si-SLICECUTKILLDIE!
Awesome.
Chapter 38
- Ahh, the famous prooftext on masturbation.
For the record - Onan was struck dead for not producing and heir with his dead brother's wife like he was supposed to, not for "spilling his semen on the ground".
Chapters 40 &41
- Ahhh, Joseph - the fresh-faced little spoiled brat of Jacob's brood. Told all 10 of his older brothers about a dream he had where they would all bow down to him. It's what got him sold off to Egypt in the first place. Now, here he using his dream-interpreting skills to get out of jail, and find favor with Pharoah. Vindicated!
Chapters 42-44
- Joseph must have been absolutely relishing this opportunity to mess with his brothers, after what he had done to him. Didn't he have the right to be angry? I think his point of view on the whole incident was really interesting. What they intended for ill, God intended for good, therefore they didn't send him to Egypt - God did. What an interesting insight for all of us when our circumstances seem to take a turn for the worse.
Chapter 45
- I would really like to have been a scarab beetle on the palace wall for Joseph's big reveal.
- Don't do it boys! 400 years of oppression! Bricks without straw! Bricks without straaaawwwwww.....
That's it for Genesis.
Exodus tomorrow.
I've really gotta ease up on the notes.
Starting tomorrow, of course.
- Genesis 17:5 - a name change. See yesterday.
- In Genesis 17:11 God institutes circumcision as a way of identifying His covenant with Abraham and his descendants. Really? Circumcision? There's not a better way of identifying the "chosen people"? There's not a less-painful, less-traumatic, perhaps more-noticeable way? Ideally - most people will never know whether a person is circumcised or not, correct?
The other freaky thing is - context suggests that circumcision was already a thing.
I mean - God and Abraham didn't invent it here, they just adopted it.
Somebody else, at some point, thought it would be a great idea to take a flint-knife to their foreskin... or someone else's.
-Genesis 17:15 - another name change.
God: "I will decide who you are. Nobody else."
- Why is it so ridiculous to Abraham and Sarah that they would have children at 100 and 90, respectively? Abraham's own father was 70 when he was born. Only 10 generations ago, Shem - who was still alive at this point (do the math! Or check out this chart) - had a child at 100 years of age.
- Genesis 18:13-15. This exchange between Sarah, Abraham and God made me laugh.
- Genesis 18:20-33 is Abraham bartering with God to spare the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. A few observations here. 1) Abraham actually believes his conversation with God can affect the outcome. 2) It does. 3) Why does he stop at 10 faithful men? Why doesn't he go all the way to 1? Especially since he knows Lot and his family are there.
- Genesis 19:8. That dude Lot sold his daughters out to a porchload of sexual deviants a little too quickly for my taste.
- Genesis 19:13. Where is this "outcry" against Sodom coming from? The neighbors? Lot's daughters?
- After their Mom is turned into a pillar of salt, Lot's daughters get him drunk and take turns getting pregnant by him. To them, it seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Like a post-apocalyptic, last-man-on-earth scenario. To me, it sounds like the kind of scarred-psyche thinking that results from knowing your father would hand you over to a city full of angelphiles with a penchant for buggery.
- In Genesis 20, we again have Abraham saying that Sarah is his sister, so that the locals don't figure her for his wife and kill him for her. She's taken and almost taken advantage of by the local prefect. What I don't get is that, at this point - SARAH IS MORE THAN 90 YEARS OLD!
- Genesis 24:3. The phrase "put your hand under my thigh", sounds a little pull-my-finger-ish. The textual note in my Bible says, "Near the organ of procreation, probably because this oath was related to Abraham's last will and testament, and called for obedience on the part of Isaac."
Either way. Ew.
- Genesis 25:25. Esau, also known as Edom. Edom means "red", and is a version of Adam, which means "dirt". Both are plays on the word for the red clay indigenous to the region.
- Genesis 25:26. Jacob means, literally, "heel-snatcher", and figuratively, "trickster". What's in a name?
- Genesis 26:7. Wife? Sister? Wife? Sister? Like father like son, I guess. Weren't Abraham and Isaac ever afraid that somebody would eventually sleep with their wives because they didn't realize they were already married?
The world's greatest small group (ours) has decided to read through the Bible in 90 Days. We're using the plan in this book. 12 pages a day for 90 days. Abby and I read day 1 last night, and I decided to make some notes to post here. Look for this to be ongoing. Either that or I am a backslidden apostate on a fast train to Hellville. Your guess is as good as mine.
Here we go:
- During the creation account, Day 2 is the only day that is not called "good". It's true. Go back and read it again. I didn't notice this on my own, somebody had to point it out to me. But now I can't read Genesis 1 without thinking about it. Creation scientists would say that it's because that's the day God created the "firmament" (KJV) - a highly compressed layer of water that surrounded the earth in its upper atmosphere. They theorize that God knew he would later destroy this layer of water when he flooded the world (see Noah, Ark, Genesis 7), so he refrained from calling it "good". I, however, do not consider myself a creation scientist.
- Genesis 1:29-30 (you're gonna have to go back and look these up yourself. It can only help you.) This is before the fall. Before sin entered the world. When things were as God had created them and intended them to be. Did God intend for all men and beasts to be vegetarians/herbivores? It seems so from this verse. This would also suggest that there was no death before sin entered the world - not even animals killed for food - which makes sense to me, since death comes as a result of sin. Well, maybe there was large-scale plant death - but nobody cares about plants. They're not real life. Right?
- Maybe this is a little too John Eldredge - but Genesis 2 reminds me that Eve was created in the Garden, and that Adam was created somewhere else and "placed" in the Garden.
- Genesis 2:19, 20 - Assigning a name to something/someone means you have authority over them. Adam and the animals... parents and their children. This will become more important when we consider Abram/Abraham, Jacob/Israel, Saul/Paul, etc.
- Genesis 3:3 - Eve tells the serpent that God told them they weren't to eat of the fruit of that tree, or even touch it, which is a step beyond what God actually said. Since Eve wasn't around at the time God gave this order, I'm wondering if Adam told her that part - "Look - don't even touch it!" - just to cover his butt. How'd that work out for you, bro?
- Genesis 3:22 - Apparently, the Tree of Life is a completely different thing than the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I have more thoughts on this than I'd like to type here. But woe unto my small group on Sunday!
- Cain and Abel. (HT to Brian McLaren on this)
Cain (Farmer. Field owner)... KILLED Abel (Shepherd. Livestock owner) in a field!
Two livelihoods that are fundamentally in conflict.
McLaren suggests that these two represent huge shifts in human culture. One agrarian, tied to the land for life, prone to accumulating stuff, nervous about protecting its boundaries and interests. And the other nomadic, free to wander, trusting in God to provide new land for animals to graze in. Perhaps Cain killed Abel over a boundary dispute. I fear I've said too much already.
- I have no idea what Genesis 4:26 means.
"At that time, people began to call upon the name of the Lord."
- Genesis 6:4 is one of the classic "What the!?!" verses in the entire Bible. I love Madeline L'Engle's book Many Waters, and its take. She tells a story where the Nephilim and Seraphim are angelic beings, 9 feet tall and beautiful, who also take the form of some animal. They scandalously intermarry with the daughters of men. It's fiction, of course, but interesting fiction, nonetheless.
- Noah entered the ark on the 17th day of the 2nd month, and finally exited the ark on the 27th day of the 2nd month - 1 year and 10 days later! I'm not sure what the calendar differences are between them and us, but I do know this - that is one long stinky boat ride.
- Genesis 9:3 - God officially opens up animals as an option for food. Meat is no longer murder. Why now? Why wait this long?
- Genesis 10:25 - "To Eber were born two sons: the name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided" Not sure what the heck that means. Commentaries and the New Living Translation tell me it might refer to the Tower of Babel, when people began to speak different languages, and went separate ways. But I certainly wouldn't get that from a straight reading of most translations.
That's all for Day 1. Stay tuned - I'm off now to read for Day 2.
Yeah - whatever. I know I'm way behind in reading, and even further behind in posting. Sue me.
