Genesis 19-42 Book Report

Genesis 25:19-36:42 – This begins with Isaac and Rebekah struggling to have children. Rebekah is barren until God answers their prayers and she conceives twins. Jacob, the younger brother, tricks Esau into giving him his birthright and later tricks his father Isaac into blessing him instead of Esau with the help of Rebekah. Jacob flees from Esau to his uncle Laban, where he falls in love with Laban’s younger daughter Rachel. However, Jacob is ironically tricked into marrying the older daughter Leah. Jacob is eventually able to marry Rachel as well and he in time has many sons and one daughter. All this time, Jacob is under God’s protection and even appears to have a physical encounter with Him. Jacob wrestles with a man that happens to be a heavenly being and comes out the victor. From then on, his name is Israel, which is the name for God’s people from here on out.

Anderson (159-63, 38-42) – One important note that Anderson makes is that the ancestors, though equipped with God’s promises, at times behaved like they did not necessarily believe that God would deliver on his promises and therefore took matters into their own hands, which would have proven disastrous if not for God who protected them.

Also, Anderson illustrates how the stories of Israel’s ancestors may have been influenced by the surrounding Mesopotamian cultures and religions (example “God of my father”).

Miller (61-83) – Miller states that relying solely on the Hebrew Bible may not be a wise decision when attempting to recover an understanding of Ancient Israel from a historian’s viewpoint. Too many factors from multiple sources outside of the Bible such as folk-tale material and other stories may also contribute to the picture of what the ancient world was

like.
First, in regard to Miller’s comments, I suppose what he is saying holds water only if one chooses to stay in the historian mindset. I argue that most readers of the Bible are not purposefully reading it in that same mindset, meaning with the intention of gaining an understanding of what the world of the ancient Israelites looked like. People read the Bible to better understand and grow in their relationship with God. So what if the stories in the Old Testament (especially in Genesis) seem too grandeur or miraculous to stem from actual, historic people and events? What is important is whatever message of God that particular passage is trying to convey. For me, the more troubling questions of the ancestral history and other passages from the Old Testament come from thinking about the characters and what their hearts were like and what their motives were for doing what they did. For example, I am disturbed when I read about Rachel, Jacob’s second wife, and how she steals her father’s household gods before fleeing. This seems like a pretty stupid thing to do, considering her husband is involved in a major covenant with the Almighty God (YHWH). So this would lead me to ask why she did this. Did Jacob not reveal to her his relationship with YHWH? This seems unlikely since she outright prays to Him in order to conceive sons. These are the questions that preoccupy my mind. The point is that no matter how far-fetched these stories seem to be to the naked eye that does not change the fact that the stories and messages are very much so relatable and applicable.