One summer during the time I was in seminary, I served as an intern at Montreat Presbyterian Church, Billy Graham’s home congregation. At one point during the summer, the pastor, Calvin Thielman, left me in charge of things while he went away on a trip. That Sunday we were to have a guest preacher in church, a missionary. The guest preacher communicated his sermon title and text to the church secretary. However, when I read the text I sensed that there had been a mistake in communication somewhere, because the reading for that Sunday began with Genesis 31:38, “These twenty years I have been with you; your ewes and your female goats have not miscarried, and I have not eaten the rams of your flocks.” Indeed, that was not the passage the guest preacher intended to preach on. However, the congregation got a laugh out of it when I read the verse and told them of the miscommunication. In a similar way, I think there are many strange things in these four chapters. We see Jac...