A Technical Problem? (2)
Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart, “Will a child be born to a man one hundred years old? And will Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” Genesis 17:17 NASB
Laughed– Yesterday we looked at this verse in comparison with Genesis 18:12. We noticed that God does not correct Abraham for laughing but He (or someone) does when Sarah performs the same act, silently, one chapter later. We suggested that the reason for this seemingly fickle action on God’s part might have nothing to do with God at all. It might be all about the impact of the story on the audience. Abraham needs to be justified so the story doesn’t take him to task. But there’s another possibility, one that seems to affect other parts of the Genesis text. It’s not without evidence that Sarna calls Genesis the strangest book in the Bible.
You will recall the story of Jacob at the brook. Perhaps you remember the very strange verse when the “man” he is wrestling pleads for Jacob to let him go because the šaḥar is ascending (Genesis 32:26a). If the “man” is God (or God by some other name), what possible fear could he have from the coming sun? Since the word šaḥar is also the name of a pagan deity, it seems that we have here a left-over anomaly from an earlier legend, or we have a part of the story that the audience (the children of Israel) could identify with.
Then there’s the equally disturbing verse in 28:16, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.”[1] How is it possible that Jacob knows YHVH and doesn’t know that YHVH is the God of all creation? The answer seems to point in the direction of ancient ideas about the territorial restrictions of gods. YHVH is the God of Canaan, the Promised Land to Abraham. But in the ancient Near East, this does not mean YHVH is the God everywhere else, and so Jacob is genuinely surprised that YHVH shows up in Mesopotamia. In the same way that the audience for the story, the children of Israel coming out of Egypt, probably did not believe YHVH was the God of the territory they were marching toward. How else can you explain that reaction of the spies, convinced that their God, YHVH, would be powerless to protect them against the “giants” of the Promised Land?
Yes, the Genesis text is full of hints about completely different ways of understanding the world, hints that we almost automatically gloss over because we read the story as if the audience were Christian, Western, 19th to 21st Century, evangelical believers. Perhaps we need some serious re-adjustment if we want to know what the text meant to the first people to hear it.
Topical Index: audience, Jacob, Genesis 18:12, Sarah, Abraham, Genesis 17:17, Genesis 28:16
Very good insights again, we can never take for granted, what the Bible has to say to us. We have been told of traditions custom even some translations that make no sense. They are someone else’s story, with details that don’t line up with anything. We must read the Bible for ourselves and do our own reference work. With reliable sources. The truth will stick Through Time. And the truth is what we need to know. The truth is not a concept the truth is Yahweh revealed through Yeshua. Yeshua explains every detail. His attention to detail. Explains his deep love and concern for his people. So they can feel protected, provided for, so the world will turn to them. To ask what is the reason for your hope. So they can say, I put my hope in God alone. It causes me to laugh, when people don’t want to understand God. Know what love is all about. To love another person, is to show God to that person.. no joking. He loves even The vilest Sinner. Who Paul relates to. Is this like Paul is such a profound writer scripture.?
Seems as if there is a ‘movement’ to hear what the book has to say from the mindset of those who heard it first….another paradigm is opening. Prof John Walton is also opening minds as well…hmmmmm whatchaupto Abba? 🙂
The words that popped out at me were” we almost automatically gloss over”
as a Western audience. This is so true and it seems to be okay and maybe even preferable to the leadership of the church that we just buy into what we are told is Truth. We are not taught to think for ourselves, to question, to search, to live in the uncertainty or in shades of gray. It makes us nervous or restless when we can’t explain things. Actually it turns out to be a wonderful place to be because we have the potential to grow and eventually have a greater understanding of who God is. It seems that people in the church don’t want to make any waves, ( actually, we are taught not to make any waves, like how dare we question the authority of the leadership of the church!)so we just buy into what is digested by someone else and passed down to us as the full gospel! Yuk! Can’t live there anymore. I would rather live in uncertainty, with questions then to “have my mind made up!”. But I’m swimming upstream here ! Thank you Skip for being in a place where God is able to use you to grow us up in Christ, through much conflict, I must add . The church has seen unity meaning no one having any differences instead of having differences but still being able to be united. “Give me that old time religion, it’s good enough for me!”. Crazy man ! God help us to grow ( process and development !) in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ