Day 013 - Genesis 31-32

The idea of the Lord's favour being on one particular person, his family and eventually a nation is a little strange to someone who has grown up in an environment where God is equally available to all. With hindsight it's possible to know where this whole thing is going and when the word Israel pops up at the end of chapter for the first time the modern reader knows that this story is still going on today in some shape or form.

God is extravagant in what he gives to Abraham, Isaac and now Jacob, but he doesn't overwhelm them and they are always dependant on him. It's a slow process as we are now a couple of generations down from the original promise and all that seems to have happened is the accumulation of wives, slaves and livestock for Abraham's descendants.

And then we have this strange wrestling match where Jacob becomes one of the few people in the Bible before Jesus came who actually gets to meet with God in a real physical way. He's just as stubborn as he's always been and it costs him to extent of being crippled for the rest of his life.

This passage has again reminded me of how the Bible is written, not as a God's list of rules for living or a book of systematic theology, but a story of people and their interaction with him. As such it contains little bits of human activity and at times is even humorous. The scene where Laban is searching for his household gods which Rachel is sitting on brought a chuckle to my lips as I was reading it out. It seems that God is not just concerned with the big picture, but with the smaller less significant things of life.

Day 012 - Genesis 29-30

Ok, hopefully I'm back on track now with a bit of a routine and I should be able to do one per day again.

So this is the famous passage where Jacob is tricked by his uncle and marries the wrong sister and then the right one and then there's a battle between them to see who can produce the most kids. It's another strange passage for the modern western reader as we struggle to understand the cultural context of what is going on. Working overseas we had a motto of, "it's not wrong, it's just different," to help us deal with things that other cultures did differently. In this passage however it just seems plain wrong and the cause of much strife. It's sad to see how far humanity has come from God's ideal set out in Genesis 1 and the pain that it causes both women as Leah is unloved, but Rachel is (for the most part) unable to have kids. It's a stark picture of the brokeness of the world, but knowing what is to come I can see the beginning of that hope here.

We Interrupt This Broadcast...

If there is anyone out there reading this blog you'll probably realise that even though it gives the appearance of having one entry per day I've actually been playing catch up since near the beginning. Life has been very busy over the past couple of weeks and trying to record and then comment on a few chapters each day has been difficult. I hope to get a bit more structure into my life once term is in full swing and then I should be able to get back to doing 1 per day.