Day 008 - Genesis 20-22

History repeats itself as Abraham once again pretends that Sarah is his sister instead of his wife because he's afraid that he'll be killed so that Abimelech (another cool name) can have her. This time however God intervenes at an earlier stage by appearing to Abimelech in a dream and thus saving the messy inflicting of diseases that we had last time (though all the women in the palace become infertile for a time). It's cool to see that Abimelech was a God fearing man and although has a special place for Abraham in his plan he desire for a relationship with others as well. It also makes you wonder at the character of the Egyptian king from chapter 12 who suffered more and ended up throwing Abraham out of his country.

Isaac's birth is a joyful occasion and the fulfilment of God's promise to Abraham. However the event is overshadowed by Abraham and Sarah's earlier mistrust of God because Hagar and Ishmael are still around. Abraham has to make the difficult decision to send them away, first at the behest of his wife and then after God tells him to listen to Sarah. We then see God's provision again as he cares for Hagar and her son.

God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son after all the things he had gone through must have seemed terrible to Abraham, it definitely seems terrible to the reader. Many consider God to be cruel in this passage to put Abraham through this ordeal and it certainly seems that way on the surface. When you think about it though and study the text you can see that this is a man who has lived trusting God for many years and he knows God's character. He says to his servants that 'we' will come back even though he knows that God has asked him to sacrifice Isaac. It has been suggested that Abraham believed that God could raise his son from the dead and trusted that he would do so. God doesn't give us more than we can handle and he knew that though this would be a great act of faith on Abraham's part, that he would come through and their relationship would be strengthened.

Day 003 - Genesis 7-9

There's a lot of repetition today particularly in the first chapter when we're told about Noah going into the boat twice and the animals he would take with him three times. It's a very familiar story, but one that's easy to get slightly wrong unless we pay close attention to the text. We always think that, "the animals went in two by two, hurrah", because of the song and pictures of the event (even the illustration in my Bible has it like that). However Noah is commanded to take seven pairs of each ritual clean animal and one pair of each ritually unclean animal with him. You may think that this is unimportant (and to be honest in the grand scheme of things it isn't), but it does make sense to pay close attention to the text.

What this passage does throw up is the idea of 'clean' and 'unclean', which isn't really explained at this point. We'll get a detailed set of instructions later when we get to the law, but at this point you have to wonder where Noah got his knowledge about the cleanliness of animals from. One can only assume that there was an unrecorded conversation between him and God about the details.

The thing that strikes me about these early passages is the relationship that the characters have with God. God speaks clearly to people and they can choose to follow his guiding or not and they seem to know a way of living that will please God (e.g. sacrificing to him). At the same time there isn't rigourous law set out for them to follow and there's no scripture to refer to at this point. All Noah gets told in chapter 9 is to have loads of kids, to rule of the animal kingdom (making sure not to eat meat with blood in it) and that murder will bring punishment on the perpetrator.

We end today with one of those strange human events that compliment the universal scale of the rest of the narrative. Noah becomes the first drunk recorded in the Bible and his youngest son has a good laugh at his immodesty whilst his two older sons do their best to cover him up and preserve his honour. This event becomes prophetic in Noah's sober eyes and sets up future biblical events...