In these chapters, we shift focus from Abraham
and his generation to Isaac and then to Jacob. The author of this section
mentions Abraham’s second wife Keturah whom he married after Sarah’s death; also mentioned are Abraham’s concubines. There has been much talk in recent years among some
Christians in our culture about “Biblical marriage”. However, if by biblical
marriage one means marriage between one man and one woman only for life, that
is hardly the picture of marriage and/or sexual relations that the entire Bible
gives to us. The many wives and concubines of the patriarchs gives the lie to
that. The biblical account of marriage reflects the various cultures within
which the characters of the Bible lived over the hundreds of years covered by
the biblical narrative.
Covenant is an important concept introduced in
these early chapters of Genesis. We see God making a covenant with various
human beings (Noah and then Abraham), and we see human beings making covenant
with one another. A covenant is basically an agreement, a contract. However,
when God makes covenant with human beings it is much more one-sided and less
like a contract. God remains gracious and keeps up his end of the covenant even
when human beings like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob fail. Jacob says to God, “If you do this for me, then I will do
this for you.” There is no if with
God; there is continued love and faithfulness on God's part in spite of our sin.
It seems like the children of the covenant
have a harder time in life. We do not read of Ishmael having any particular
problems, whereas Isaac and Rebekah are unable to conceive a child. This forces
Isaac to pray about the problem. God is always driving his children to find
their resources in him.
I find the contrast between Jacob and Esau an
interesting one. Esau is a hairy man of the land, a hunter, while Jacob is a
smooth-skinned man who prefers to stay in the tent and cook. Jacob is hardly
the typical picture of the hunter-gatherer man providing for his family. In
fact, as the story moves along we will see Jacob as a farmer. Thus, the two
brothers portray the two different lifestyles of early humanity.
In chapter 26, we have the story of Isaac lying
to Abimelech of the Philistines just as his father Abraham did. Did Abraham
really pull this trick twice and did Isaac repeat the same practice? Biblical
scholars tend to think this is an example of a doublet (or triplet really) in
biblical story telling. In other words, each telling of this story comes,
perhaps, from a different source, and the final editor or editors of Genesis
have woven all of these stories together in the final version.
In chapter 27, we see both how patterns of sin
(in this case the sin of deception) as well as blessing are passed from one
generation to another. We see how important a father’s blessing is to his
children. I believe such a blessing is no less important in our time. Children
need to hear their father tell them that he loves them, that he is pleased with
them, and they need to hear their father speak positive words about their
future.
I really like the C. S. Lewis quote from this
section: “What can you ever really know of other people’s souls—of their
temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole
creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your
hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense alone with Him. You cannot put
Him off with speculations about your next door neighbours or memories of what
you have read in books. What will all that chatter and hearsay count (will you
even be able to remember it?) when the anaesthetic fog which we call ‘nature’
or ‘the real world’ fades away and the Presence in which you have always stood
becomes palpable, immediate, and unavoidable?” (Mere Christianity)
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