“Hope is kindled”: GENESIS CHAPTERS 10 – 12
In
today’s passage, the tragic narrative of
Genesis 3 – 11 finally turns the corner.
With the call of Abram, hope is restored for a future where the
Creator’s project for humanity can go forward…
RECAPPING…
Genesis
3: Out of Eden. The first two humans in the biblical
narrative disobeyed God and ate of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of
good and evil (Gn. 3.1-7). In his
(merciful) judgment, God then threw the man and the woman out of the Garden of
Eden, thereby removing their access to the Tree of Life and thus preventing
them from attaining to immortality in their rebellious state (Gn.
3.22-24). Even in the midst of judgment,
the Creator remains committed to his creatures, and does not destroy them for
their rebellion, but rather takes a fatherly stance vis-à-vis the primal pair and clothes them in animal skins and
directs them toward an – admittedly harsh – future, but a future
nonetheless. This future includes the
hope of children, though – as with all aspects of life after the Fall – this
hope will not be realized without pain (cf. Gn. 3.16). Reminding the man of his “earthy” nature (Gn.
3.19; cf. 2.7)[1], God
promises Adam that he will – through much blood, sweat and tears – be able to
provide for himself and his family by tilling the ground (Gn. 3.23; cf. Gn.
4.2).
Genesis
4: Problems east of paradise. Once Adam and Eve are thrown out of the
Garden, the primal family welcomes two new arrivals – Cain, a “tiller of the
ground” and his brother Abel, a “keeper of sheep”. In what will become a major dynamic in the
plot of Genesis, a rivalry breaks out
between the two siblings due to God’s preference for Abel’s offering (Gn.
4.3-7). Unable to “master the sin
lurking at his door” (Gn. 4.7), Cain murders Abel in cold blood. As in chapter 3, following an act of
treachery, God appears on the scene with a question: Where is your brother Abel? (Gn. 4.9). Once again, we note God’s tremendous restraint – he does not
destroy Cain for his crime (Gn. 9.5-6 notwithstanding). Rather, in yet another demonstration of
fatherly compassion, and in response to Cain’s complaint that “anyone[2] who
meets me may kill me” (Gn. 4.14), God “put a mark on Cain” (Gn. 4.15) in order
to ensure that no one will avenge Abel’s murder by lynching him. As was the case with Adam and Eve, so now
with Cain – God does not give up on his
creature, but adapts himself to the new state of affairs brought about by human
sin. God’s goal is life – if only his creatures could
understand what is good for them. The former
chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, Jonathan Sacks, describes the relationship
between Yahweh and the nation of Israel as resembling that between an
automobile driver and a GPS – “OK, you missed a turn back there, so in order to
get back on track, please turn here…”
God is always concerned with moving
forward towards the goal of human flourishing. “Then Cain went away from the presence of the
Lord” (4.16; cf. 4.12). As in chapter 3,
we find here the cycle of sin (4.8) –
judgment (4.9-12) – compassion (4.13-15) – exile (4.16).
Genesis
6-9: Reaping what you sow. The murder of Abel turns out to be a
harbinger of things to come. In chapter
6, we discover that not only have humans “filled the earth” (cf. Gn. 1.28), but
they have filled it with violence (Gn. 6.11-13). The patience and mercy of the Creator are
stretched to their limits, but just as God prepares to wipe the slate clean,
his eyes fall on Noah, “a righteous man, blameless in his generation, who
walked with God and who found favour in the sight of the Lord” (Gn. 6.8-9). In his (harsh) mercy[3],
the Creator decides to spare Noah and his family, along with representatives
from the animal kingdom, while the rest of the inhabitants of earth are
condemned to perish in the Flood (Gn. Chapters 6-8). After the Flood, God repeats the blessing
that had been pronounced over the first man and woman (cf. Gn. 1.28-30), this
time blessing Noah and his sons (Gn. 9.1-7).
Noah and his family are the beginnings of a new humanity (Gn. 9.18-19).
Also, the Creator introduces a new element into his relationship with
his human creatures – that of the covenant
(Gn. 9.8-17). The Creator blesses his
creatures and will eventually invite chosen individuals to enter with him into
a relationship of mutual commitment. The
“noahic” covenant is rather one-sided, as God makes the promise to all creation
to never again destroy it through a flood, and the sign of God’s commitment is
said to be the rainbow. Also, after the
flood, we see the beginnings of the worship of the Creator in the form of
altars and burnt-offerings (i.e. animal sacrifices: Gn. 8.20; cf. Gn. 4.4, 26).
Genesis
10-11: Spreading around, getting
scattered. Chapters 10 & 11 can
be understood as alternate accounts of how humanity proliferated after the
Flood.[4] Chapter 10 describes the descendants of the
sons of Noah. The descendants of Shem
are the “good guys” (Abram is a descendant of Shem: 11.10-26), while the
descendants of Ham are the “villains” (cf. Gn. 9.18-27; 11.31), to whom all
those nations who will prove to be the enemies of the Israelites can trace
their ancestry: Egypt, the Canaanites, etc. (not to mention Sodom & Gomorrah;
cf. Gn. 15.21; 19.1-29).
“Knockin’ on heaven’s door”. If the
problem in chapter 6 was violence, in chapter 11 the problem is found to be a
wrong-headed unity on behalf of (a segment of) the human race. This people-group (descendants of Ham, of
course: cf. 10.6-10) had a common language, and in order to avoid being
“scattered abroad upon the face of the
whole earth[5]”,
they decide to make a city, a tower, and for good measure, a “name for
themselves” (Gn. 11.1-4; cf. 12.2). In
v. 3, “bricks” and “mortar” are mentioned for the first time in the biblical
narrative. The next time they are
mentioned is in Exodus 1.14, where we find the Israelites enslaved in Egypt,
constructing cities of “brick and mortar” for Pharaoh…
Back to Babel
– once again, humans overstep their bounds and seek to form an identity outside
of the Creator’s mandate to “abound on the earth, multiply in it and spread
abroad on the earth” (cf. Gn. 9.7; 10.32).
Humans seek to flourish outside of
God’s design for his creation. It
all starts with fear – a perception of God’s mandate to “fill the earth” as
being a threat to their well-being (“being scattered abroad”). Ironically, in their fear and pride[6],
they invoke the very thing they dreaded
– God confuses their language and exiles them from the place of hubris and
rebellion (Gn. 11.8-9) and through his judgment, compels them to fulfill the
creation mandate, albeit in a situation of tribalism and eventual imperialism,
exploitation and international warfare (cf. Genesis chapter 14, which describes
warfare between the Sumerians and the Canaanites). In the account of the Tower of Babel,
humanity’s main concern is for security – let’s huddle together, and hunker
down behind the walls of our city, with its tower stretching to the heavens
that will let everyone know who we are and demonstrate our invincibility. We’re afraid of others, therefore we build
the city; we’re proud of our accomplishments, therefore we build the tower –
fear and pride have done it again: (literal) walls have been built between
different people-groups! Instead of
incarnating the vulnerability and trust that would make for a truly flourishing
humanity, these people opt for a passive-aggressive program of claiming fame,
all the while hiding behind their walls – you
may admire/fear/envy us from afar, but don’t get too close!
Under
the curse. And so comes to an end
the sweeping narrative of cosmic origins and the beginnings of human
civilization. Humans are a threat to
each other and feel threatened by the Creator, they are divided along ethnic
and linguistic lines, and struggle to eke out an existence under the shadow of
the curses pronounced against their primeval parents (cf. Gn. 3.16-19). The Creator’s desire has not changed – he still
longs to bless his creation, but how can
this come about?
To
pick a pagan. If the first 11
chapters of Genesis are cosmic and global in scope, chapters 12 – 50 focus in
on the fate of a single (and as we shall see, unlikely) family – that of Abra(ha)m. Towards the end of Gn. 11, “Abram” is
presented as being a son of Terah, himself a descendant of Shem (11.10,
27-30). Following the death of his youngest
son Haran, Terah and his family set out from Ur with the intention of going to Canaan, but as they pursue a
northwestwardly course along the Fertile Crescent, they come to the city of “Haran”
and decide to settle there. It is in
Haran that Terah himself dies (Gn. 11.31-32).
The
people of God. The ancient Israelites believed that their
nation had been “elected” by the Creator to be his “chosen” people, endowed
with a special destiny/vocation.[7] The Israelites believed that they had been
called by Yahweh (God’s personal
name) to represent him to all the other nations of the Earth (cf. Ex. 19.5-6) –
in a word, they were the true humanity and
they were called to demonstrate to all nations what genuine humanness looked
like. Israel’s understanding of its own identity as a nation was inseparable
from its understanding of Yahweh.
The way that the ancient Israelites told the story (the way the Bible
tells the story) of their origins as a nation was to begin with the calling, by
God, of a Mesopotamian man named Abram.
At this early stage of Israel’s history, Yahweh was known as “the God of
Abraham (Isaac, and Jacob)” and the “nation” of Israel existed only as the promise that Abraham and his
wife Sarah would have a son despite their advanced age and that their family
would grow and become a “great nation” (cf. Gn. 12.1-3; 15.4-6).
God/god. The Bible is very aware of the fact
that the word “god”[8] is
not univocal; i.e. during the biblical period, just like today, the word
“god(s)” means different things to different people. Every tribe or nation or civilization
throughout history has had its own pantheon of divinities,[9]
most of whom represented different aspects of the natural world, e.g. the
goddess of fertility, the god of thunder – the Sun itself was sometimes
worshipped as being divine. Monotheism –
the belief that there is only one God (capital “G”) – developed gradually
during Israel’s early history. Before
encountering the god who called him to leave his country and journey to the
“Promised Land”, Abram was a typical Mesopotamian polytheist; i.e. he worshipped
many different gods (cf. Joshua 24.2).
There is no indication in the Abraham story that he ever became a strict
monotheist.[10] At no point in the story does the god who
called him tell Abram that he is the only
God. What Abram knew was that this god
was his god, that this god had called
him and had made promises to him.
Genesis
12: The way home. Chapter 12 begins with God instructing
Abram to “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you”
(12.1). This is it – this is the moment when things start to get turned
around. The call of Abram is the
beginning of the journey back to the Garden.[11] Biblically speaking, the “Promised Land” of
Canaan was to be the new Eden, the place where God would dwell among his people
in the midst of his creation, i.e. in the Holy of Holies of the Temple in
Jerusalem, the capital of the kingdom of Israel. Jerusalem is described as the place where
“Yahweh would put his name” (Dt. 12.5-21).
In the Old Testament, the Temple mount of Jerusalem is often referred to
as “Zion”, the city of Yahweh (ex: Is. 2.3).
Jerusalem was where the Creator would begin to reclaim his creation, to
flood it with his presence (cf. Is. 11.9; Hab. 2.14; Ps. 48.1-2; Micah 4.2,
etc.).[12] However, for the prophets, the blessings of
Zion always had a global objective, that of “edenizing” the whole world. In the book of the Acts of the Apostles,
after Jesus’ resurrection, the apostles are anxious to be informed about the
destiny of the nation of Israel. Jesus
responds by “scattering” them “to the ends of the earth” (Ac. 1.6-8). The salvation of the world had been
accomplished in Jerusalem, the Lamb of God had been sacrificed in the region of
Zion, and now it was time for the “good news” to be proclaimed the world
over. At the end of the Gospel of
Matthew, Jesus promises the Apostles that he will be with them always, to the
end of the world (Mt. 28.19-20). Where
Jesus is, the blessings of Eden – and more! – are available. In Revelation’s vision of the final
consummation of all things, we find the Tree of Life in the midst of the new
creation, available to all and providing healing to the nations (Rev. 22.1-5).
Time
for Plan A. What is of note here is
that God sticks to the original plan as laid out in Genesis chapter 1: that of
exercising his reign of blessings over creation through his human regents who
bear his image and reflect his glory into all the world. Just as God does not overwhelm humans with his power – even in judgment – so he does not
bypass human beings in his plan of
redemption; he is utterly committed to working with and through humanity in order to achieve his purposes. This divine-human partnership stands
continually on the edge of a knife, as those chosen by God constantly prove
themselves to be stubborn, fearful and arrogant. However, as the Psalmist put it: “…you, O
Lord, are…merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love
and faithfulness” (Ps. 86.15). With the
call of Abram, we witness the first steps of a 2,000-year long journey which
will culminate in the birth of the Messiah, the definitive “seed” of Abraham
(cf. Gal. 3.16)…
Let’s
start a family! Back to Abram. God tells him to “Go …to the land that I will show you” (Gn. 12.1). And so begins the tale of the last 100 years
of Abram’s life.[13] An ancient Jewish Rabbi, commenting on
Genesis, said that
“Perhaps in the proper order of things Abraham
should have been the first man created, not Adam. God, however, foresaw the
fall of the first man, and if Abraham had been the first man and had fallen, there would have been no one after him to
restore righteousness to the world; whereas after Adam's fall came Abraham,
who established in the world the knowledge of God.”[14]
On
this reading, Adam was simply created as a provisional “head” of humanity,
awaiting the arrival of the true human
– Abraham! As was the case with Noah, in
the call of Abram we once again witness the beginnings of a new humanity. The first
thing to strike us as we read Gn. 12.2-3 is the 4-fold repetition of the verb
“to bless” (barak) in addition to the
noun “blessing” (berakah:
12.2b). Whatever’s going on here, it
definitely has something to do with the Creator’s desire to see his creation
flourish and thereby give him glory. As
St. Irenaeus put it: “The glory of God is a human being fully alive” (Gloria Dei homo vivens). So far in Genesis, the divine blessing has
always been attached to human procreation, to babies! This God is definitely a God of life (cf. Gn. 1.28; 9.1)! God promises to make of Abram a great nation
(cf. the oft-repeated command to “be fruitful and multiply”). (Note that God promises to make Abram’s name
great, as opposed to “the Babblers”[15]
who had attempted to make a name for themselves [cf. Gn. 11.4]). Not only that, but through Abram all the
families of the earth shall be blessed. This is the way back from curse to blessing. This is the way back to the Garden. Somehow, through this nomadic family-group
(Abram, Sarai, Lot & cie.), the consequences of original sin will be undone
and the whole world will return under the blessing of the Creator. God waxes hyperbolic in his promises to Abram
– he promises him offspring as numerous as the dust of the earth (Gn.
13.16)! There’s just one little problem:
Sarai, Abram’s wife, is childless and barren (Gn. 11.30; cf. 16.1)…[16]
Trouble in Egypt (that’s all you’ll find in Egypt, dummy). For the first time, but certainly not the
last, Abraham’s family goes to Egypt in search of food.[17] Abram comes up with a ruse to protect himself
once Sarai is, inevitably, taken and added to Pharaoh’s harem. And so God “plagued” Pharaoh with “plagues”
(KJV). The Hebrew term “naga” can mean
“to afflict or plague” or “to molest or harass sexually”. Kass takes this to refer to a “plague” of a
sexual nature (genital boils, etc.).[18] In the end, Abram does pretty well for
himself, as Pharaoh had given the “brother” of the beautiful foreign woman “sheep,
oxen, male donkeys, male and female slaves (including Hagar: cf. Gn. 16.1-16),
female donkeys, and camels”, and Abram leaves Egypt, the narrator tell us,
“with his wife and all that he had”
(12.20). Here we see the shrewdness of Abram. Indeed, Kass makes the case that it was
Abram’s ambition, autonomy and yearning to be the head of a new nation that
uniquely qualified him to be the Father of the Jewish people and that “got
God’s attention”.[19]
THE 11 TRIALS OF ABRAHAM (GENESIS 12 –
22)[20]
·
Called
with a COMMAND and a PROMISE, Abraham answers the call (12.1-3)
o Sarah in trouble in Egypt (12.10-20)
§ Trouble with Lot; Abraham parts ways with Lot
(13.1-18)
·
Lot in trouble: Abraham wins victory for the king of
Sodom and rescues Lot, who returns to live in Sodom (14.1-16)
o Hagar,
the stranger woman,
as host mother; trouble with Sarah (16.1-16)
§ ENACTS THE COVENANT OF CIRCUMCISION
(17.1-27)
o Serves as hospitable host to strangers (18.1-15)
·
Lot (and all of Sodom) in trouble; Abraham argues the justice of
destroying Sodom but eventually accepts it (18.16-33)
§ Sarah in trouble in Gerar (20.1-18)
o Trouble with Ishmael; Abraham parts company
with Ishmael (21.8-21)
·
Abraham
binds Isaac; puts obedience to God’s COMMAND above PROMISED rewards (22.1-19)
[1]
The man (adam) is formed from the
dust of the ground (adamah).
[2] This
is the first indication that Genesis doesn’t intend to provide a precise,
exhaustive, chronological account of human origins. Here, the narrative assumes the existence of
other humans beside Adam, Eve and Cain, and Cain is all too well aware of their
existence, hence his fear (cf. Gn. 4.26).
This also suggests a solution to the perennial problem of the identity
and provenance of Cain’s wife (Gn. 4.17).
We can see something similar going on in Genesis chapters 10 and 11: in
chapter 10, we find a list of the descendants of Shem, Ham and Japheth, the
three sons of Noah. At the end of each
genealogy, we find the same phrase: “These are the descendants of --- in their
lands, with their own language, by their families, in their nations” (10.5, 20,
31). Following this, in Gn. 11.1, we
read “…the whole earth had one language and the same words”. It would seem that the account of the Tower
of Babel in chapter 11.2ff “fits” chronologically within the account of the
exploits of Nimrod recorded in chapter 10.6-10, within the genealogy of Ham. In chapter 10, we have a sweeping description
of the world’s population after the Flood, followed by a “vignette” of a
particular episode in chapter 11. What
would seem to be missing from the narrative is a description of the spread of
the world’s population following the exile from Eden…
[3] Cf. the line towards the end of
Flannery O’Connor’s novel The Violent
Bear It Away, where Tarwater, the central character, hears the divine
command to “Go warn the children of God of the terrible speed of mercy”; cf.
Fitzgerald, Sally, Ed. Flannery O’Connor:
Collected Works, New York: The Library of America, 1988, p. 478.
[4] Cf. Kass, Leon R., The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis,
Chicago & London: The Chicago University Press, 2003, pp. 221-22.
[5] This phrase occurs 5 times in Gn.
11.1-9: cf. Sacks, Jonathan, Covenant
& Conversation: Genesis: The Book of Beginnings, New Milford: Maggid
Books & The Orthodox Union, 2009, p. 51.
[6] Cf. Kass, Leon R., The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis,
Chicago & London: The Chicago University Press, 2003, p. 230.
[7] The idea
of a nation or an individual being possessed of a special destiny/vocation is
an idea that originated with the ancient Israelites. Unlike other ancient Near Eastern cultures,
ancient Israel did not have a fatalistic outlook on life and the world; i.e.
they didn’t believe that things had
to happen a certain way, due to divine determinism, etc. The ancient Israelites believed that they
could chose to create their own future, a future that was open-ended and not
pre-determined.
[8] When the
word “god” is spelled with a capital “G”, it is assumed that the author is
discussing (the god who is perceived by a certain person or group to be) the
one true God.
[9] It
appears that most ancient cultures were polytheistic, i.e. they believed in
several gods. However, there are some
researchers that claim that there is evidence that monotheism (belief in one
God) existed in many ancient cultures before degenerating into polytheism over
time.
[10] In
fact, it’s not clear in the Genesis narrative if strict monotheism actually
took hold among the members of Abraham’s family (ex: Gn. 31.19, 30-35). It’s possible that many members of the family
held to “henotheism”, a belief in a supreme God (“God Most High”? cf. Gn.
14.17-20) without ruling out the existence of other, lesser gods. In the narrative, the Lord God is never
described as being the only God;
rather, he is described in terms of his acts in favour of Abraham and his
descendants (ex: Gn. 15.7; Ex. 20.2; Ez. 20.6, etc.). For a clear statement of monotheism, one has
to wait until the book of Exodus (3.13-15; 20.1-6; cf. Dt. 6.4-5).
[11]
Cf. Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock”: “…we’ve got to get ourselves back to the
garden”…
[12] Of
course, the book of Genesis was written by people who lived in the land of Canaan
(Israel) and who believed that Yahweh had granted their nation this land and
had designated the city of Jerusalem to be his special dwelling place.
[13] Cf.
Gn. 12.4; 25.7-8 [the account of Abraham’s death is found in Gn. 25]; cf. also
Gn. 16.16; 17.1, 24; 21.5.
[14] Genesis Rabba 14 (6th-century
AD Midrash of Genesis): http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/mhl/mhl05.htm
(accessed October 6, 2015).
[15]
Cf. Gn. 11.9: God confused (balal)
the language of the builders of the Tower of “Babel”.
[16]
In fact, the wives of the first 3 patriarchs (Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel) are
all barren when they marry their husbands!
Quite the beginnings for this as-numerous-as-the-dust-of-the-earth
family! Cf. Ps. 118.23: “This is
the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.”
[17]
Cf. the Joseph story in chapters 37-50; the entire story of Joseph is about how
God provides for the survival of Abraham’s descendants during a famine by
“sending” Joseph to Egypt years ahead of time so that he can save his family
when the time of need comes. Of course,
from Joseph’s point of view, this involved being betrayed and sold into slavery
by his jealous brothers…
[18] Cf. Kass, Leon R., The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis,
Chicago & London: The Chicago University Press, 2003, p. 274, n. 11.
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