Exodus 3-4: The Burning Bush and Me

   Moses had been a lot of things in his life at the beginning of his chapter.   At various times, he could have identified himself as Egyptian, as Hebrew, as Midianite...as rich, as poor, as powerful, as helpless, as respected, as condemned, as rational, as impulsive.   Along the course of his life, with his often-changing identity, his spiritual life changed and grew as well.   Each of the three major cultures he belonged to had a historic reason for claiming the One God of Abraham, even Egypt, the homeland of Hagar, who bore Abraham's first child.  They all related to Him in different ways, with different customs, and Moses had experience with all of these.

   The God who had spent the previous 400 years seemingly quiet or unresponsive, really had a strong current under the surface, and burst dramatically back into human history now in the form of a dazzling divine fire that does not burn up.   The Holy Spirit often shows up as fire, and the Father's voice rings out in the proclamation of himself as "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob"...the "angel" could then complete the Trinity as a manifestation of the Son.   The Early Church Fathers like Augustine thought about it in this way.   This kind of amazing power required that you leave behind everything perishable and earthly (like leather shoes) and approach with the utmost humility and fear.   Before Christ reconciled us to the Father, He was utterly too awesome to look at directly.   By identifying himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Lord was placing emphasis on the chosen line, the ones He had been preserving and sustaining His light of hope in for generations.   The Midianites didn't have it, the Egyptians didn't have it.

   God hears our prayers and responds to them in a very personal way, but time doesn't limit Him.   He can respond to  prayers and rectify wrongs after 400 years if that must be, according to His infinite wisdom.   In the specific moment written about here, his plan is to clear away the six (a number of human frailty and rebelliousness, always missing the mark) tribes that already live in Canaan and give it to his Firstborn nation, the Israelites.  

Moses, upon being called, looked back on his life, and a single question from his past came back to haunt him: "Who appointed you judge and prince over us?"   His countryman's sarcastic question showed him that he could be no leader alone.   He couldn't do anything to help his people and guide them out of this on his own.   The Pharaoh who knew him so well and remembered all the evil he had done would jail and kill him if he went back on his own merits and terms.   God's response is, of course, the refrain that "all things are possible through Me.  You as an individual are incapable but I'm not."   He is the leader, not Moses.   The promises and covenant he makes with Moses on behalf of the entire nation of Israel will be sealed when Moses brings them all back to Sinai. 

His second problem results from the various ways Moses had encountered the God of Abraham and other deities in his lifetime.   He was living in Midian, a nation that knew God but had altered the covenant rules of Abraham to suit themselves (e.g. they circumcised when boys were thirteen, not as infants).   He had grown up in Egypt, a land where deities abounded and "priests" and "sorcerers" did cheap magic tricks in their names.   How did he know the God he spoke to was the real one, and how would the Israelites believe him?   Gods, in his experience, had names.   Names that allowed humanity to call upon them, essentially to wield a form of control over them.   If this God was the real one, Moses could prove it to one and all by offering His name.   Again, Moses thinks that he alone is required to prove where his authority comes from, and again, God responds by saying "You're incapable of proving it, but I'm not.  Use My name to prove I'm behind you in this."   The God who had spoken to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob as YHWH, I Am, He Who Creates, would be recognized by this sacred name.  

   God's plan at this point was to bring the Israelite people out of Egypt for a three day (three days being a time of testing and then restoration/intervention by God) worship-fest at Sinai.   It could be that this is literally what He wanted, but it also makes sense that He intended this to be a symbolic "three days", after which they'd be free forever.   The people who hadn't seen the full divine power of El Shaddai (Almighty God) would learn a lot about Yahweh (I Am) as he dramatically intervened for them with plagues and the like.   They would even receive just compensation for their labors on the way out the door.  

  But what if the Name isn't enough to establish what Moses has seen and what he must do?   God again indicates himself as the source of authority instead of Moses.   Moses' staff, his symbol of authority and leadership over his flock, was thrown down and became a snake...symbolizing evil in nature...God was pointing out to one and all that Moses had authority over both nature and evil.   The demons acknowledged only Christ's authority as God in the New Testament, and God was handing this dominion over evil to Moses in a really flashy way   Picking it back up again by the tail, an act of unbelievable trust, made it harmless again.   Flesh degraded by leprosy, symbolizing sin, came under his authority too.   Evil and sinfulness are under God's total control and nobody else's.   Moses could only prove this through God working through him.  

     Throughout all of this Moses still basically trusts.   He has faith, and God gives him powerful tools to demonstrate where Moses' authority comes from.   He believes in the God who made those promises, who gave him His name, and who alone commands even evil and sin.  The previous three challenges demonstrate how humble he really is and how little he trusts in his own human flesh.

   Finally, however, he stumbles.   This God is powerful, and has authority over evil, but would he heal?   No, no...impossible.   Also, when I demonstrate this kind of Godly might to people and then stutter in the next sentence, what kind of witness would that be?   I can't be allowed to stumble and fall when I'm that visible an example.   Moses here is like many Christians who believe that God cannot use an imperfect person to lead...who tut-tut over televangelists who are adulterers and embezzlers, priests who abuse and bishops who are misguided in handling them.  They refuse to step up to responsibilities God is calling them to because they fear their own imperfection.   God deals with this more sternly and plainly.   I make the deaf!   I make the weak and the blind!   I am in charge of even your imperfections, and they're always there!   Let me use your imperfections and perfect them in the process.   But Moses pleads "No, I just can't."  Finally, God spells out the solution for him: the human family.   You stutter, but your brother is a fantastic speaker.  If you refuse to allow Me to work through you alone, I'll "shore up" your weakness with the strength someone else has.  Here, God shows us that some problems and weaknesses can be faced alone through relationship with Him, by letting Him shine through us, and some can be faced by enlisting human help.  

   Moses sets off with Jethro's blessing and Zipporah's, which makes me wonder how the poor man explained his experience to them.   He had been living with them in Midian, and his father in law and his wife both related to God in the Midianiate way, which included waiting to circumcise their sons.   As Moses is heading out, the covenant requirement to circumcise sons early on (so that it is a free gift, not linked in any way to "manhood") comes back to hit him square in the face.   It isn't clear if he merely was pressured by Zipporah and Jethro to live their way, or if he forgot the covenant nature of this, but he didn't do it.   God's covenant with Abraham made it absolutely non-negotiable, a sign just like the rainbow, that circumcision (a prefigurement of baptism) had to be done at eight days.   God is willing to dialogue with us, and in his mercy He can forgive anything, but He had made a deal with us that defined how He related to us, and at the time, our end of the bargain was that circumcision.   God is about ready to kill him in his infinite Justice, but then Zipporah, who may have been the reason, takes responsibility and rectifies the situation.   She thus showed a brand new commitment to Moses' call, a call she couldn't share.   She'd be there for him from then on.  

Exodus 2: Look At Your Life Through Heaven's Eyes

     Like a certain other Israelite child 1500 years later, a boy child survives against the odds due to a combination of his family's human cleverness and God's protective hand, symbolized by the ark (little basket-boat, in this case) that carried him in the flood.   Moses is often spoken of as a "type" of Jesus, a previous person whose life events would mirror the greater glory of Jesus.   The Ark secured Noah against the raging waters, just as the new little ark secured Moses.  The Ark of the Covenant would secure the law of the kingdom of David and protect his warriors, and the body of the Blessed Mother would finally be the Ark of all Arks, securing the growing Son of God.   Hiding from infanticidal tyrants, both Moses and Jesus would find protection and grow.

   It strikes me as more than a little awesome that, in a moment in history when Hebrew women's babies were being torn from them left and right, Jocheved was allowed not only to publicly keep her son, but was PAID to breastfeed him.   She was paid to change his diapers, burp him, rock him, to get up in the middle of the night with him.  Yes, she had to give him away eventually, but when?   The phrase used was "when he grew."   Interpret this as "when he didn't need a wet-nurse," then she only got to keep him for about two and a half years or so, which would be sad but still far better than Jocheved's countrywomen.   Interpret this as "when he grew up," an interpretation which makes some sense, then she got to keep him for his entire childhood.   Those movie moments where the young-adult Moses in the palace suddenly realizes that he is Hebrew after years of not knowing this...might not make sense.   The Bible doesn't say anything about a sudden realization.   It is very likely that Moses absolutely knew who he was and was taught something of The God of Abraham/Isaac/Jacob as he grew up.   Then, when he had to be given away, no matter what exact age, he was given away to a "better life," a life that gave him familiarity with power, an intimacy with the Egyptian royal court, politics, warfare, and religion that God knew would be absolutely necessary to extract His Chosen People from this situation.  

   Then, however, God had to mold Moses some more.   He had to experience hardship and suffering, to be brought out of his comfortable life and have all else stripped away in the desert so he could be touched by God.   A prince of Egypt with some vague sympathy for the Hebrews could not do what needed to be done...he had to be drawn closer to God to be able to look with true compassion on his people.   He had to suffer and be tested to have strength for the fight against a Pharaoh he knew all too well and strength to be a just lawgiver to a difficult, disheartened nation.  

   God started close to his heart, when a nameless, faceless Egyptian struck a Hebrew kinsman of Moses.   Like most people, his family meant more to him than mere ethnic identity, and like many people of the time, he did not hesitate to act with violence in a situation like this.   He believed himself to be doing the right thing by standing up for the Hebrews, but it becomes quickly and painfully clear that this Moses isn't ready yet.   He reacts to violence against his tribe with retaliatory violence, which makes a sort of brutal sense.   It's the way organized criminals and ancient tribes acted.   This retaliatory violence, he believes, is the solution to ending Egyptian cruelty and he assumes that the Hebrews will immediately recognize that he is bidding to be their leader and savior.   They don't.   They merely begin to wonder when this violence will be turned against them.   He's hunted down by the legitimate authorities, as criminals should be, and also rejected in his attempt to become an organizing leader of the Israelites.   Nobody wants a Mob boss as self-proclaimed chieftain and liberator...they need a more righteous, mature, formed leader.  

   He runs off to let the situation die down, and in doing so, he finds himself stripped of everything he thought made him a good potential leader.   His Egyptian ties and Egyptian clothing mean nothing to the women he meets at the well, except a mistaken identity.   The only thing that gets their attention, and their father Jethro's, is his bravery and helpfulness in protecting them and their sheep.   Yet another time in scripture, an important man sits down at a well and finds a loving woman there.    Zipporah is yet another "woman at the well," like Rebekah and Rachel.    Meanwhile, it is becoming time for God to take decisive action.   And His timing is always perfect.

Exodus 1: A King who Knew Not Joseph

        Exodus is the continuing story of the fulfillment of the promises God made to Abraham, and the journey to a brand-new covenant under Moses, in which the Chosen Family of the covenant with Abraham becomes the Chosen Tribe, with Moses as the leader.   God is working once again to redefine and widen the scope of His covenant with humanity to include more people, more comprehensive ways of relating to Him.   In bringing the Hebrew people out of bondage, chosen from birth for this purpose and preserved from harm, Moses previews for us what Jesus would do for all.   Every time we renew Jesus' saving sacrifice at Mass, we experience the Passover, the shielding blood of the Lamb, keeping us from sure death no matter who we are or what we have done before.

     God told Abraham back in Genesis that his descendants would be in oppression and exile for 400 years before He brought them home to the Promised Land.   Like all of those promises, God has an unbelievable way of making this come to fruition, not just once in a literal fashion, but many times in ever wider and more meaningful ways.   The story of Exodus 1 shows the development of the oppression and exile in the most narrow sense, but I am constantly reminded to look past this to the reverberations of this pattern ever since.   The Hebrew people of 1400-1500 BC needed to experience slavery and deliverance by God's hand to form them as a people, to "test them like gold in a fire," and so do we.   According to Agape Bible Study, this is also related to the fact that God's justice toward the Canaanite people already living in the Promised Land required that He not just arbitrarily hand over the land to the Israelites, but that He would only return the Promised Land when the Canaanites were maximally, unrepentantly sinful and as unlikely as possible to change.   That would only come to its peak 400 years later.

   The Israelites were doing exactly what God commanded, being fruitful and multiplying, becoming a true nation.   Then a new Egyptian administration came to power, who "knew not" Joseph, a pharaoh who didn't just not remember Joseph, but one who had no treaty or covenant relationship (like the sexual bond of "knowing" between a husband and wife) with Israel.   He made them slaves in a particularly cruel fashion, because slaves at the time were usually a person captured in war, sold into slavery for debt-related reasons, or born slaves, none of which were true of the legally protected, free Israelites.  They had to be kept alive, as they knew how to herd sheep, and none of the Egyptians did, but God's promise of fertility might be held back through hard labor building cities.

   I think it beautiful how God remained faithful to His promise of increase even through Pharaoh's stronger and stronger barriers.   Through the faithfulness of two midwives who "fear God", who put Him above all else and strive never to offend Him or disobey Him, nonviolent resistance to tyranny kept some precious Hebrew baby boys alive.   The beautiful work of the two midwives is carried on today by doctors and pharmacists who follow their consciences and refuse to perform abortions or give contraception out of honest "fear of God."   It's carried on today by pro-life advocates who insist that women, particularly the vulnerable and preyed-upon urban poor African American women, should be given the truth about the "choice" they make.   It is through people like this whose integrity matters to them that God's promise can be realized.  "Lying for the Lord" is a sin, but God sees the heart, and a healthy conscience and integrity are still worthy of reward and praise.  

   The Israelite people who emerge from this slavery are toughened, tested, and prepared by God for the road back to the Promised Land.   No matter what Pharaoh tries to do to negate their blessings, God continues to use his actions to bless them further.   That's how I want to be...so sure of the Lord's promises that even my sufferings become blessings.  

Genesis 49:28-50:26 : The End of an Era

These scenes strike me as some of the most realistic and relatable in Genesis so far.   Jacob's parting, and then Joseph's, are full of such real emotion.   He seems to be feeling what I felt at my grandfather's deathbed, with family gathered around to share in the grief, and the desire to properly honor a life like Jacob's is clear.

   The description of  Jacob being "gathered to his people" is a really really notable one.   The author deliberately chose to state it this way, not merely to say he died.   Jacob, not being after Christ's redemption, had to wait for heaven, but he was gathered, brought into the state of readiness and taken up by God.   Who are "his people"?   His family, clearly, the father, grandfather, wife, mother, and grandmother he spoke of being buried with.   He was gathered into the burial cave they all shared, marking the foundation of their legacy in the "Promised Land."   No matter how much or how little of it their people would control in the future, by Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham's burial at the very significant location of Mamre, Israel as a nation would always have a place in the land promised to them.   Even more so, "his people" included the "people", the great nation Jacob was promised he would bring forth.   From his eternal vision with God, he was able to watch the nation change and members of it who would die later were already present to him.     Eventually, "his people" would include not the ethnic tribe of Hebrews only, not the religious tribe of Jews only, but all the people on earth who believe in The God Who Is and the salvation offered by his Son.   My guess is that Jacob rejoiced to enter eternity and find out how far-reaching his spiritual paternity was, how hugely abundant the fulfillment of God's promise to make him a great nation really was.  

   Jacob's funeral, in which the greatest nation on Earth at the time, Egypt, mourned this one foreign man with little to catch their attention, is an example of how great his nation was already.    Hebrews and Egyptians (Gentiles) came together to fulfill this man's last request, to be buried at Mamre.   He was embalmed for 40 days, a number significant for completion and turning-over, renewal.   The Israelites 40 years in the desert, Jesus' 40 days in the desert, the 40 days of fasting in Joel's day, were all chances to strip away the old and come to grips with the new, to be tested and consecrate oneself.   Jacob was embalmed for this long, giving his family a chance to grieve, be tested, and to consecrate both him and themselves.   They mourned him for 70 days, a number of spiritual completion and perfection...in a sense they mourned him forever, and in a sense, they mourned him for exactly the amount of time God wanted them to, the perfect amount.

   Joseph makes his final "moral of the story", reconciling with his brothers for good and telling them that he understands that God is in control of what happened to him.   All things work for good in his life, for love of God,  says Joseph thousands of years before St. Paul would echo him.   He lives a complete life, dandling great great grandchildren on his knee and adopting them as his own.   Sadly, he's buried in Egypt, leaving his family to return to the promised land without him, and living a life just short of completeness at 110 years (11 being a number of incompleteness and just missing the mark).   It would not be for him to carry on the flame, but for Judah.  He has hope, however, that his descendants will carry him to the promised land and re-bury him there later, bringing the final completion after death.

Genesis 48-49:27

Jacob's blessings on his sons and grandsons here are interesting because they represent a father's insight into his children's character, probably God-given. The Lord, who searches and knows us, is the real author of these pages, and Jacob's blessing involves a lot of allusions to the tribes that would bear these names. The authors were inspired to lay out a picture of the tribal structure...where they live, which are most prominent...in a way that shows how God worked to create it, working in and through Jacob and his sons. This passage is kind of a summary of what has gone before through the entire book of Genesis, as Israel was formed step-by-step from a single couple.

It seems fitting that Jacob should reiterate here the promises God made to him, his father, and grandfather. He's looking upon his legacy and seems touched by how abundantly filled those promises already are, knowing that even more is to come. In blessing Joseph's sons, he replays the theme of the eldest making way for a younger brother to come into prominence. Jesus' life and death and resurrection would call a worthy "younger brother" in the Church to be the new Israel, the new "chosen nation" With Jacob's arms forming a cross, Ephraim, whose tribe would reign over the ten Northern Tribes, was given the birthright and the power. Jacob, like his father, is blind from age, blind to everything that gives a person worldly status, including age, physical characteristics, wealth, charm. Jesus himself, though firstborn of his mother Mary, had "brethren" who were probably his father's sons or other cousins, who treated him the way older brothers treat younger ones. God's plan is foreshadowed again and again, until eventually Jesus the younger brother dies and rises again to save the older brothers in the culmination of history.

As Jacob moves on to comment on his own sons, he wastes no time in condemning the first three sons for reasons we've already read about. These three squandered what could have been theirs when they chose to destroy rather than build up. Reuben's tribe is going to remain small and insignificant because of his self-aggrandizing action against his father, despite his incredible potential. Simeon and Levi will be destroyed because they chose to destroy in anger, and they will no longer be able to claim independence as tribes, remaining as helpless and dependent as the circumcised men and hamstrung oxen they attacked.

Judah, the one for whom the Jews would be named, the one from whom all kings to Jesus himself would come, is depicted as a royal lion, a terror in righteous war and the bearer of authority. The Messiah would be of Judah, and would unite the donkey, the old nation, and the donkey's foal, the "unbroken" Gentiles, in his incredibly fertile vineyard. The wine, the Blood of Christ, washed clean Judah, and then the shining, glorious Messiah would reign.

Zebulun's territory of seashore and harbors, and the hard labor of the tribe of Issachar are allusions to the later tribes, and Dan's "judgement" of the tribes was an indication of Samson, who was a Danite. Asher's very fruitful land was mentioned, and Benjamin, the tribe of zealous St. Paul, whose land was the site of a terrible war, was prophetically described.

Genesis 46-47: So Jacob Came to Egypt

Jacob, in leaving Canaan for Egypt, seemed to realize that he would never return to the Promised Land in life. This land, so connected to his ancestors, needed to be taken leave of properly. He stopped by Beersheba, the Well of Oaths, where both his father and his grandfather had encountered God and made covenants. God reminds him one last time of the promises He has made, particularly that He will make of Israel a great nation and that Canaan will still be the Promised Land, that Jacob and his descendants have not left there permanently. With this reassurance, the weak, equivocating Jacob becomes once more the strong, faithful Israel and he sets off.

The list of Jacob's family here is carefully planned out to make a perfect number (70) of people. Seven, a number of celestial perfection, and ten, a number of order, come together here. Most lists of families in the Bible seem to include particularly meaningful numbers of people. These 70 people are the beginnings of the tribe of Israel, just as there were 70 descendants of Shem who were the beginnings of the Chosen lineage/tribe. God's restarting with a perfectly chosen group of people.

Joseph, the type of Jesus, is returned to his father in the same way Isaac was returned to Abraham after both were given up as dead, offered as a tragic sacrifice. Joseph sets his family up with as good a start as possible, making sure they explain their trade to Pharaoh properly so that it becomes only logical to him to set the family up in the pasturelands of Goshen. Joseph's family, like the Church Christ founded, was intentionally made separate from the rest of the world. Goshen was far from most important Egyptian settlements, a little isolated cradle of plenty where the family could prosper.

When the family meet with Pharaoh, they impress him. Particularly, Jacob's longevity and humility impresses Pharaoh and he lets them have great land. Then the problems come. The Egyptians use first money, then livestock, then land to buy bread from Joseph until he has essentially every resource in the country. There is, at the end of the period, no more private land ownership, but an entire nation of serfs working Pharaoh's land. The only exceptions to this are Israelites and priests. As Jacob draws near his death, his family/tribe has become incredibly successful in Egypt. The Egyptians clearly cannot take this for long.

Genesis 44-45: Benjamin is Straighter than the Tall Palm Tree

Since Joseph first saw his brothers, he has wanted to forgive them and reveal himself. At the same time, he needed to be asked for forgiveness. He needed them to truly repent, and his destiny as revealed by the dream needed to be truly fulfilled. He needed them to pull together as a brotherly unit and prove their character. These brothers had turned on the youngest in envy before, and he was hoping to see that they would not do so again.

Notably, Joseph projects the complete image of Zaphenath-Paneah, the Egyptian wiseman and Grand Vizier. He pretends to use a very typical form of divination involving liquids in a cup to get information he gets from God. He makes the other Egyptians go eat somewhere else as a sign of how much higher his status is and refuses to eat with his Hebrew brothers, a common Egyptian prejudice at the time. He pretends not to understand Hebrew.

Mercifully, his brothers pass his tests. Judah, as spokesman for the ten, makes an impassioned confession, assuming the guilt on the shoulders of the entire group instead of letting it fall only on Benjamin. He confesses Joseph's supposed death and the impact that it has had on the family, without excusing himself. Judah, once again, does absolutely the right thing, and comes before the throne of mercy and justice with a humility that would be totally instructive for anyone. It's enough to make you want to weep...the lost lamb has led his brothers back home.

Joseph embraces his brothers and expresses his utter conviction that God's plan for him to come to Egypt and give them life was the best possible plan. Even Pharaoh is so touched that he offers incredibly generous treatment for the brothers when they bring Israel/Jacob back with them to live in Egypt. Their every want will be more than provided for. Reconciliation with Joseph, like reconciling with God, prompts a shower of generous love and blessings...a heaven, really. Joseph treats Benjamin, his full brother and the virtuous one, with especial generosity, but none are left out, and the past is forgotten.

Genesis 42-43: Grovel, Grovel

Joseph, the type of Jesus, is in charge of handing out bread to sustain life. It is repeated over and over again in Chapter 42, "Go get bread so we can live and not die." The very lives of Joseph's brothers and father are in his hands. It is up to him to choose to save them, just as it was up to Jesus to incarnate, live, teach, and die for our sins so we could live. A popular Christian song (which, I'm sorry, is probably copyrighted but I'm not sure how to cite it) contains some powerful lyrics about the situation both are in:
I'm forgiven because You were forsaken.
I'm accepted...You were condemned.
I'm alive and well, Your spirit is within me,
Because You died and rose again.

Joseph's undeserved tragedies formed him into the kind of man who could forgive, and his brothers received forgiveness, acceptance, and food to sustain their physical lives because of what Joseph went through. After being sold off, Joseph might as well have died in the eyes of his brothers, and finding him again, having conquered his misfortune, now in charge of so much, it must have seemed almost as though he had risen from the grave. At this point, however, they still have no idea that it is he. Note the fairly inconspicuous fact that Judah, fresh from his descent into disaster and the Tamar Incident, Reuben the Usurper/Concubine Stealer, Simeon, and Levi the Massacre Brothers, are all there, all together again, seeking closure and forgiveness.

The stumbling point with receiving life and grace from Jesus is that you have to repent and truly look your sin in the eye to do so. When Joseph recognizes his brothers, thinks back to that life-defining dream God sent him, and decides to forgive, he could easily have done so right then. Boom, Genesis becomes 5 chapters shorter. We're all happy with the touching story and move on to Exodus. But he didn't. Joseph, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, realizes that God isn't finished with them yet. The family is, first of all, missing a member, and Benjamin must be gathered into the fold. At the same time, some of the brothers look critically at their own actions toward Joseph and begin to repent, but Reuben isn't yet convinced. He throws out a blame-deflecting "I told you not to!" Reuben's statement, however, did some good in that it revealed his own intent to rescue Joseph and indicated that he realized the evil nature of what they did.

Of note, this interchange takes place on the third day (symbolism much?) after three days of being locked in the very prison Joseph himself was in. People in the Bible are always being thrown into three days of some kind of horrible test and coming out better on the other side. Also notable is the fact that the bread money was returned sneakily by Joseph. The life-giving bread that God gives us is always without cost. His grace and His life are always freely given, not as a result of anything we can offer Him. Jacob reacts to this as though his sons stole it, like the indignant reaction we sometimes have to people who live lives of sin and then turn it around. Like the older brother in the prodigal son story, we cannot believe that we, who work so hard to do the right thing, can receive grace right alongside those who seem to do everything wrong.

The end of Chapter 42 and the beginning of Chapter 43 seem to be about leadership and taking initiative. Within this family, Jacob is clearly not the leader, as he isn't about to undertake an expedition to take Simeon, a wayward son, back at the risk of Benjamin, a blameless one. He's the opposite of the Good Shepherd, unwilling to put good sheep at risk for a lost one. Jacob even goes so far as to say that Benjamin is the only son he has left. The favoritism that his parents showed that nearly ruined his life and his relationship with Esau has led him to show equally destructive favoritism toward Joseph and Benjamin.

Reuben's attempt to take up the mantle of leader and go get Simeon is met with an absolutely deafening silence. Even with his own sons as "collateral", Jacob and the others won't trust him with Benjamin. He has been so thoroughly untrustworthy that there's no chance. He's ruined it. God's natural preference for younger brothers who (at least to his heart-piercing gaze) appear to be more virtuous than their elders shines through. Leaders are chosen by God in this family, not by birth.

Finally, we hear from the reformed sinner, now fine upstanding mensch Judah. He doesn't have to offer his own children as collateral on this loan. With his example, Jacob gets him ready to go, spurred to do the right thing when his son takes the initiative. Judah takes the money they found, plus interest, and his brother Benjamin, and Jacob's confidence in him shows. "If I have to be bereaved, I will be." Not the same Jacob who feared the loss of his son so incredibly much a few verses ago, now is he.

Joseph seems to fully understand his brother Judah's life turnaround, and he knew all along that it was Judah who got him out of the well while Reuben just talked a big game. When Judah comes clean and gives an honest confession, he pretends that he got paid for the food and lets the brothers keep the money...God's grace is a freely given gift, remember? As a result, they get invited in for a party, and Joseph's generosity just overflows. Things are beginning to come together, and he is so incredibly happy at all God is doing and has done, so moved at seeing his last brother, that he begins to weep for sheer joy.

Genesis 40-41: Any Dream Will Do

Three dreams, three interpretations...three wonders worked, and Joseph skyrockets from able prisoner/prison administrator to Grand Vizier of Egypt. His interactions with people of increasing clout prove to them time and again his gift for administration, his political savvy, and his ability to interpret prophecies. Through all of this, Joseph never forgets that both his hardships and his talents were undeserved and that God has been with him the whole time. Now to get "Go go go Joseph" out of my head...

The butler comes, like an innocent and humble man, directly to Joseph with his dream. He doesn't even necessarily jump to favorable conclusions when Joseph's interpretation includes the ambiguous phrase "lift up your head" (could mean restore former glory, or just behead you). The guilty baker, on the other hand, only speaks up when he hears the good news the other guy got. These two are much like the good and bad thieves who hung next to Jesus, each demonstrating his own character. In the end, though, human failing leaves Joseph with only God in whom to place his trust. The butler forgets him, at least for the moment. The lesson in this is clear: Trust God. The righteous Joseph isn't protected from hardship as a result of his character...bad things he doesn't deserve still happen, but God blesses him through all of this.

Pharaoh's dream, then, gives God a chance to prove His power and display the gifts He has given Joseph. Joseph does what he can to make the situation turn out well, shaving himself and making himself as much as possible like a clean, smooth, ritually pure Egyptian priest. He wants to give the impression to Pharaoh that he can fit in, and that his God is just like the Egyptian gods in terms of requiring respect and ritual purity but that His power is so much greater and more awesome. The God-given interpretation also conveniently points to Joseph's other God-given talent: administration.

Joseph from here on out becomes very Egyptian, taking an Egyptian name, marrying a very very high class Egyptian woman and giving his sons names that are based in words borrowed from the Egyptian language. Unlike the warnings God has given others against marrying foreign, pagan women, God does not seem to mind this. It is not "foreign-ness" that God is warning against, but rather the corrupting influence of particular cultures and religions that can be tempting. God does not want to see us stray from Him and foresake His ways, and if that means warning us against something that might tempt us away, so be it. Joseph, on the other hand, was faithful and trusting, less likely to be tempted away. Also, the blessing God had bestowed in the position of Prime Minister would have been ruined if Joseph had been inflexible culturally (rather than morally or spiritually). He can dress differently and speak differently, but he is still a faithful follower of God, and a prime minister has to act culturally appropriate. By the time all this is done, Joseph is unrecognizable as an ethnic Hebrew, even to his brothers.

Genesis 38-39: Getting In God's Way

Looking back on Genesis so far, the major theme I notice is that God is tracing a line down through history. He has his reasons, and the human author of this Book often doesn't really know what they are, but the light of hope and salvation gets handed down from one generation to the next, making an arrow pointing to Jesus. Because Adam, Noah, Abraham, and their women are all human, they do not realize that God's plan will occur no matter what, and often they (intentionally or not) either try to "help" or they intentionally put roadblocks in His way. God is a loving God and He has an intense, single-minded desire for us. He went to any lengths required to save us and bring us to Himself, including bringing about good from the morally questionable or outright evil acts of humans. The Holy Spirit moved over history like a mighty wind. These two chapters outline this "nothing stands in God's way" theme in a remarkable way.

The story of Judah and Tamar is the first time we hear of a woman who would be directly mentioned in the genealogies of Jesus. From what I've always learned, the five women who the Evangelists specifically mention (Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary) have a lot in common. All five bore sons in remarkable, improbable circumstances, all five were "fallen women" or outcasts, and all five lived lives of incredible faith. These five "turning points" were crucial in the carrying on of the line of Jesus, though they didn't know it. The first was an unloved foreign wife, denied her chance to do her duty to the family she grew to love. The second was also foreign, at the very least an independent business owner but may have been a prostitute, a madam, or both. The third was a foreigner too. The fourth was raped and her husband intentionally killed in battle. The fifth, of course...was a virgin who claimed divine paternity for her unplanned pregnancy. What male at the time of Jesus would have paid even the least attention to these lowest of women? The evangelists, however, inspired by God, saw past this and pointedly included them in Jesus' genealogy where Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Leah, and many other upstanding women were ignored.

When taken at face value, Tamar and Judah both use each other in a tremendously cruel manner. The Judah who saved Joseph's life is gone, mired in guilt and grief, and in an attempt to escape, he has moved away, found a local pagan woman for a wife and made many pagan friends. Judah is (unbeknownst to him) the current lightbearer but is this guy the "holy seed of Abraham"? You wouldn't know it to look at him. He fathers sons, but they are pretty horrible guys. It isn't clear what the first one did, but he was so incredibly wicked that God actually intervened, according to the text, and killed him outright. You have to, by this point, be a fairly blatant sinner for your death to be attributed directly to God smiting you one. One novelization of the story that I read depicted Er as blaspheming horribly just prior to this sudden death. His brother Onan is just a jealous pig who flouts a cherished custom of marrying brother's widow and bearing sons that in essence belong to the dead brother. Onan wants what most guys would want, a chance to marry a girl of his own and bear sons that he can call his. His jealousy of Er, however, leads him to a petty revenge. Many would say that Onan's real crime was of not being open to life in his marriage, and it does seem clear that contraception and masturbation don't come out of this looking very good, but the jealousy factor behind it just makes this "stink to high heaven."

Tamar is handed off like property between these men and seems to have the right, in that time and place, to expect that she will be. When Judah married her to Er, she gained a right to the blessing of children. She had an unquestioned right to expect to bear children for Judah's household, and this seems understood by both sides. Er does wrong by not providing her with children for some reason not really explained in the text. Onan deliberately keeps them back. Finally, Judah selfishly tries to ignore her right to marry Shelah, possibly believing somehow that this girl is a "black widow", bad luck for her husbands. He forgets that, without marrying Shelah, Tamar can't marry anyone else and has no chance of avoiding being alone, penniless, and shunned. Finally, when her anger boils over, she takes up a plot for a fairly cruel, sinful
revenge which works out beautifully for God's purposes, with the birth of Perez and Zerah. Jesus didn't just eat with sinners and the outcast...he was born from them.

Perez and Zerah are just like Jacob and Esau...a younger twin who sneakily triumphs over his brother. The New Covenant, chosen by God, takes over for the Old Testament, the natural heir. Upon their birth, Judah receives something of a new birth of his own.

The next chapter about Joseph in Potiphar's house shows once again how God's plan can triumph over stumbling blocks, this time in an individual life. Joseph isn't the official bearer of the chosen line, but God has a plan for his life anyway. Joseph's close relationship to God leads him to put much more trust in this plan than Judah did, and it pays. Judah's descent into grief, guilt, trickery and a kind of incest even when free and relatively rich, is contrasted with Joseph's rise to importance and wealth despite the "curses" of slavery, isolation, and destitution. Other people trust Joseph almost instinctively with just about their entire lives, despite the risk that he might steal, lie and cheat to buy his freedom from bondage. Nobody trusts Judah with anything despite the fact that he's done fairly well with his own circumstances. Given the chance, Judah sleeps with Tamar, disguised as a prostitute, and he spends more effort making sure he's paid her properly than he does making sure his poor little widowed daughter-in-law is provided for. Joseph, on the other hand, does not give in to temptation, begging, or pleading and accepts quietly being lied about. This second tragedy still cannot stop God from blessing him, and soon even the jailer trusts him with unthinkable power. God promised to be with Abraham and his descendents, and to bless them and make them great. Joseph trusts, and therefore the worst things anyone can do to him cannot stop what God wants for him.

Genesis 36-37: A Dreamer Like You

In this chapter, I get all confused again, all caught up in a flurry of names I don't know. This list of Esau's descendants must be here for a reason, because the writers recognized them as such, but I don't make any sense out of it. The only name I know here is Amalek, whose tribe the Amalekites would be an important enemy of the Hebrews later. The important points I glean here, out of all of this nonsense, come from the hints of actual narrative between the names. First of all, Esau himself is the ancestor of many many tribes, part of Abraham's promise to make his descendents great in number. He, like Lot, makes two conscious choices that leave him outside the line of the Promise. First, in choosing where to relocate, he leaves the land promised to his family and settles in the mountains south of Canaan and to the southeast (East in Genesis is generally a move away from God), and second, he intertwines his family with the various other native tribes of the area, all pagan, including the Hivites/Horites and the Ishmaelites.

The next chapter brings things back to familiar ground for me...I was in a high school production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, playing Leah, so I know all about the "tale of a dreamer like you", but the story yields so many parallels with the Gospel narrative I know so well. Joseph is well known as a type of Jesus, so it should be fun finding these parallels as I go. First off, Joseph speaks plainly about his promised authority, even when he knew the feelings it would inspire, and the source of the authority is hard for others to see or accept as credible. Jacob the Father mantles him in a robe of royal/priestly authority, which Biblical translators have a hard time translating but is much more than merely a "coat of many colors" or a "long tunic" as my totally flat and here-inadequate NAB translates it. According to Agape Bible Study, the word used for Joseph's amazing garment is one only used later in David's era to describe something a priest wore, and another place to describe the garments the royal princesses wore. This isn't just a snazzy piece of clothing. Jacob makes his son palpably more powerful by giving him this.

"Joseph's coat annoyed his brothers," who of course represent the universal sinner status of every member of the new Israel, the Church. The brothers seem to be in agreement that the little snot needs to be silenced, and permanently. Reuben does a tremendously ambiguous thing by toning down the violent sentiment and proposing a solution that should keep their own malformed consciences from bothering them. He does not, as the eldest brother and the presumed leader, use his clout to suggest anything other than Joseph's death, but instead proposes a more extended, painful death in the desert that conveniently would not be directly their fault. The Jewish leaders, representing the "firstborn of the nations", when faced with a Jesus who annoyed them by claiming a mysterious authority they didn't understand, did the same. They left it to the Romans to slowly, painfully kill Jesus. The brothers even feast while condemning him to starvation in their cruelty.

The brothers (Jews) were not only bothered by Joseph's claims of authority (Jesus') but also because he told Dad bad things about them. Joseph, like Jesus, knew their sin and became their judge, exposing their faults when they would have preferred to hide. Joseph refused to be silent when he saw error and sin in their ways.

Here, at last, we see some of the reason Judah alone out of all his brothers became the bearer of the chosen line. Judah, for all his faults, is unwilling to commit fratricide even indirectly and instead convinces the group to sell Joseph. Jesus too would later be sold out for the price of a slave. Reuben, Simeon, and Levi had each laid down their rights as firstborn via the usurping-Dad's-authority and Shechem Massacre incidents, so Judah was next in line, the one his brothers would respect. Judah's the new power in town and, while less cruel, is still willing to defend this against Joseph's claims and make money off of him at the same time. The tribes of Israel later would divide along these two lines, with the Northern tribes headed by Joseph's son Ephraim's tribe opposed by the Southern tribes, headed by the tribe of Judah. In the end, God's assessment of the two would place righteous authority in Judea, and the other tribes would be lost.

Jacob is one last time tricked by his sons in a viciously ironic twist on his own deception of Isaac. His sons don't even have the guts to take the tunic to Jacob themselves, letting a servant do their dirty work. Reuben selfishly worries about his own fate in the face of this act, but isn't able to mourn his brother properly. Jacob himself is tremendously grieved and never plans to recover from his loss. Joseph's life is safe in Egypt, like baby Jesus, but he has still been sold out by his brothers.

Genesis 34-35: The Apples Fall Far, Far, From The Tree

In these chapters, it becomes clear that one cannot inherit a relationship with God. The fact of Jacob's profound personal experience with God in the previous chapters does not arise from the fact that his father and grandfather had personal experiences with Him. He doesn't become godly because of Isaac, and he doesn't become a perfect father because of it either. Being in God's friendship does not guarantee perfect peace and harmony in life, and in fact often means otherwise. Jacob looks on his sons here in these chapters, mystified by their inability to receive the knowledge and understanding he struggled for. He receives yet again the fruits of his living, of his earlier deceit, as he settles down in the very place his grandfather did upon coming to this land, Shechem.

While there, his daughter Dinah begins to make friends in the area, pagan friends, friends outside her Tribe. Her father has been led safely to this new home but has not, incidentally, done what he promised to God in return for this, and he doesn't really know the people of the area very well. Dinah is allowed to go visit her girlfriends in the area alone, unprotected. It isn't one hundred percent clear here, but she probably already knew the young man Shechem and his father Hamor, and may have actually liked him romantically. Either way, the two had premarital sex (consensual or not), and after this, Shechem tried to sweet talk Dinah. It works whether this was reassuring her after a rape, or whether it was reassuring her of his love and desire to marry her after a consensual tryst. From what I'm told, a common reason women accuse men falsely of rape is the case of a consensual encounter the woman does not wish to admit. It could have been that Dinah got scared of her father's anger and threw out an impulsive false accusation. The words here, "saw", "took", are words reminiscent of previous instances of boldly succumbing to a tempting forbidden fruit, fitting in any of these scenarios.

No matter what the reality of the situation, the reaction to it by Jacob is quickly overtaken by the tidal wave of his sons' opinion. Jacob is reluctant to react, possibly because he knew of feelings she had for Shechem and that this was likely consensual, but he is clear in his opposition to Dinah's union with a local pagan. He waits to discuss things with his sons, not providing leadership but allowing them to take over. Their sense of macho honor demands that they react strongly to this. Hamor and Shechem are relatively honorable men, in their way, and Shechem speaks up for himself, neither blindly subordinate to, nor dominating his father. Jacob's sons have a lot of Dad's craftiness in them, and they plainly take total advantage of Hamor, Shechem, and the entire male population of the town. These brothers take justice into their own hands, not caring that the Just God is the one with the right to judge, and in their "justice, they looted and made themselves more wealthy. Where is their father, who had such a profound experience of mercy and reliance and trust in God? They didn't really bother with what he thought. Shameful, shameful, shameful.

In the wake of all this, Jacob is reminded of his promise to build a house for God at Bethel. The faithful man that he is, he does so, taking even earrings from his family as sacrificial donations to make it even better. He finds protection from the wrath of the surrounding area and peace because he is doing God's will. He continues in his task, even though Deborah, his mother's servant and nurse, probably even more of a mother to Jacob than Rebekah was, passes away and is greatly mourned. Jacob didn't get to see his real mother when she died...so now this surrogate mother also dies, giving Jacob a chance to mourn both. He then recalls God's re-naming him and the encounters he has had with God before. He calls to mind the blessing he was given, an echo of every promise and basic command God has given to mankind before him: Be fruitful and multiply (Adam and Eve), Kings and nations will come from you (Abraham), and this land is yours (Abraham and Isaac). In going back to Bethel and fulfilling his promise, Jacob gets a retrospective of his life, all he has been promised, and all that has been fulfilled in his sight.

On the way to Bethlehem, symbolically fitting as the birthplace of David and Jesus, Rachel bears one more son in a terrible terrible pain, eventually succumbing. Even the hopeful encouragement by the midwife that this is another son is no longer enough for her. It seems to me that the old, son-obsessed Rachel has come to understand, possibly at Bethel watching her husband's example, that there is nothing on earth that could satisfy that longing she has. She spent her entire life trying to bear sons to fill a hole in her soul, much as others make lots of money, buy lots of stuff, take drugs, drink, take risks, etc. She looks at her life as she is dying and understands that God is what fulfills, and that those sons she deemed so precious are what is about to kill her. She is saddened by how cheap and counterfeit it all seems, so she names her son Ben-Oni, son of pain and affliction. Jacob, whose God has begun to fill that longing, changes the name to Benjamin, my right-hand son, good omened son. A son born in affliction and pain will become vitally important Jacob. Jesus later would be a man of suffering, a Ben-Oni, who used that suffering to redeem us and then rise again, becoming a Benjamin, a Son at the right hand of his Father, vitally important to Him.

Jacob gets one last kick-while-down from these sons who do not respect him or care much for him. Like Ham before him, the firstborn Reuben is a loser who believes in his own power above that of his father. Reuben sleeps with Bilhah, who is a surrogate Rachel (as her maid and the one whose children technically belonged to Rachel). He usurps Dad's power by taking his concubine, and makes a stab at his mother's rival and Dad's favorite, now dead and defenseless. Not much is said about this immediately, but Reuben has kept alive the tradition of disappointing and conniving firstborn sons. Jacob at this point is distracted by the need to bury Isaac, but he does not forget what Reuben did to him.

Like Abraham, Jacob has made the conquering tour of Canaan. He goes to Shechem, Bethel, and then Hebron, in the very south, just as Abraham did. He travels over the land promised to him, even though he doesn't own much more of it yet. He and Esau are reunited and also reconciled with their father's memory. The father that divided them by favoritism reunites them at his death.

Genesis 32-33: Jacob's Exodus

As we start today, Jacob is about to leave a place where he was practically a slave for years, turning his back on the past, but is about to enter a place where his brother's wrath may destroy him. Laban kisses his daughters and grandchildren, who are his legacy, and much of his wealth goodbye, ruined by his attempts to ignore God and deal unfairly with Jacob. He has come to accept this and peacefully made an agreement with Jacob, but it still must have hurt him.

Along the way back to Canaan, Jacob runs into angels much in the same manner as he did at Bethel on the way out of Canaan. These angels seem to be there to remind Jacob that he is doing the right thing, that he is stepping into the land promised to him, the land blessed by God. He has been away far too long. Bethel, the House of God, is very near this place, Mahanaim, Two Camps. God, the spiritual, the divine, is encamped right with Jacob, the earthly, the human. The two meet at this place.

Jacob is clearly growing in his faith...the prayer he prays is such a poignant one, appropriate for any time we face something that scares us. Like we ought to do in the face of danger, Jacob takes the practical active steps he knows to do to prepare, dividing what's important to him ("diversifying his portfolio", if you will) into two groups and offering propitiatory presents to Esau, and then when he has reached the end of all he can do, he prays. First, he calls to mind the legacy of faith in his forefathers and by extension calls to mind God's mighty and wonderful deeds done for Abraham and Isaac. He brings specifically to mind then the call he has received to leave Laban and the promised help from God that should follow now that he is obeying. God has been good in the past, has delivered amazing blessings in the present, and will continue to protect in the future. Jacob lays all this at God's feet and in faith asks for the promise of protection to be fulfilled. He didn't stop after the division of his assets or the peace offerings, believing that they would keep him safe, but continued on to place himself in God's hands in prayer.

That night, starting from this basis of increased trust and faith, Jacob meets the divine one last time. The first time, he envisioned a ladder with angels climbing up and down...envisioned what it was like to have an actual relationship, a back-and-forth, give-and-take, with the God of the universe, and he wanted in. The second time, he gets even closer, describing the existence of a place where God and Man camp together...not a God you have to climb to see, but a God who lives with you. Jacob is strengthened by this idea and wants to live where the divine dwells. Now, there comes the final picture to complete Jacob's relationship with his God. Here, in this scary moment, something supernatural (an angel? God himself?) comes and wrestles with him. Jacob comes to understand that his life is about grappling with the mystery and trying to lay hold of a God who is so close as to be touched, smelled, and tested. He wants blessings, good things to come his way as a result of being in relationship with God, but this does not come easily. Being so close to God as to see Him and talk to Him leaves us both keenly aware of our disabilities compared to Him and unbelievably blessed as a result. Jacob is crippled by the angel physically in a way that reminds him that God is in control of his life. His transition from entering the House of God, to encamping alongside Him, to seeing His Face is complete. Like Abraham before him, Jacob is renamed to more clearly coincide with his new mission in life. He is no longer the Underminer, the Supplanter, the one who contends with his brother...he is now the one who contends with the mystery of God. No longer fisherman but fisher of men.

He receives the fruits of this new improved relationship with God almost immediately. The one who undermined his brother, now that he has a new mission, is capable of making peace with Esau. At first, he, as I, doesn't quite believe what an amazing thing has happened. He approaches Esau still on the defensive, putting his most valuable stuff (Rachel and Joseph) behind the less important stuff, but when the time comes, Esau ignores all of it. He runs up to his humble brother and greets him with the kind of warmth with which you greet the brother you have missed for so long. He comments on how abundant the blessings Jacob/Israel has received are, but refuses to accept a peace offering. None is needed. Jacob thanks God for this and gives Esau a gift anyway...more of an offering of thanks to the God Jacob sees in Esau than a peace offering to his human brother, so Esau accepts this on God's behalf. The two walk back to Canaan, with Jacob walking slowly without an escort of Esau's men, ostensibly because he has a lot of slow children and such to keep his pace down. They needed a rest, and Jacob himself needed to stay out of anyone's debt, no longer bound to anyone in that way.

Finally, Jacob reaches the border of the promised land and stops there, at a place he names Shelter, Sukkoth, in order to remind him of the shelter God has given him from what could have been a very painful situation. When he crosses the river into Canaan, he buys some land near Shechem, near where his ancestors are buried, thus increasing the amount of Canaanite foothold his family possesses.

Genesis 31: A Declaration of Independence

Jacob here sounds like a man pushed to the brink. He might be killed by Esau if he goes home, but suddenly in light of his indentured-servant status and utter contempt from his father-in-law, it doesn't matter as much.

I love the scene here where Jacob makes an impassioned persuasive speech explaining to his wives why they need to leave. Laban, says he, has changed his attitude regarding him, has cheated him on his due numerous times. He isn't trustworthy anymore. Above all, Jacob says, the Lord is telling him to get out, and the Lord's advice has always been to his benefit. Jacob for once isn't making a decision like this on his own terms. He has looked for guidance in prayer and God has spoken to him, clearly identified as "the one you met at Bethel". Like in the reading from Acts today (12:24-13:5), good things happen when, in the face of a difficult decision, the Holy Spirit is allowed to lead and guide what we do. Jacob is the first man I've seen in the Bible try to convince his wives of anything, rather than exerting dominance over them. In calling Rachel and Leah to him, he called the first "family meeting" in the Bible.

Rachel and Leah, in one voice, agree that their father is a greedy, selfish man who even spent the money they were supposed to have as a dowry, and that leaving is the best idea. Rachel here does something I don't quite get. She steals her dad's "household gods", his idols, his teraphim. It kind of makes sense that she, in her zeal for her newfound relationship with the Lord, would try to get rid of the symbol of her father's idolatry. It also makes some sense that she might not have been so entirely convinced of God and His Promises, and thus wanted to take with her some little token of her pagan side...a part of her she hasn't entirely let go yet. It could just be that the teraphim were materially valuable, that they were made of gold or silver or something, and she wanted to take them to make up for the dowry Dad squandered. She could have viewed them as helping her father, as they were believed to bring prosperity, and thus took them in revenge. This action clearly represents something about where Rachel is in her faith walk, but what part of the faith walk that is, isn't clear.

No matter what her motivation, her stealing, just like Jacob's final deceptive sneaking out of Haran, is wrong. Both acts are based in the self, in the desire to make choices on one's own understanding.

Laban, when he catches up with them, definitely hasn't changed much. Without the warning of God holding him back, there might have been violence and bloodshed. When Laban says that he only wanted to give his daughters and grandchildren a going-away party and to see them off properly, you can almost hear him lying through his teeth. He is an abuser whose prey has escaped and he'll say anything to have it returned. He blusters threats about how much harm he'd do them if only he could. He speaks of his daughters and grandchildren and Jacob in terms that call to mind slaves...indentured servants...property, not beloved family. He then tops this little tantrum by asking why Jacob took his teraphim, as though even the gods were his to control via these idols. He acts like Jacob took them to pray to them himself, like Jacob is jealous of him for having them. They were valuable property and as such would have been passed down to the key heir, so Rachel in taking them seemed also to be identifying her family with Jacob as the key heir to Laban's property.

Jacob responds the way any relatively honest man should...with openness. He knows he has nothing to hide. He offers to use his own authority to help the cause...to help punish whoever took them. When nothing is found, Jacob gives the best closing argument speech I've ever read, a ringing indictment of Laban's injustice and an account of Jacob's utterly honest dealings with him every step of the way. He stands up and defends his honor without stepping on Laban's, and in the end the two hammer out a just agreement and swear to it by their respective deities. Laban warns Jacob one last time that he needs to be just to his wives and not take any random women as further wives...finally switching his language from referring to them as his daughters (property)... and then their deal is made. This covenant oath between them is sealed, much as the covenants between God and man, via a sacrifice and a shared meal.

I totally admire the chutzpah of Rachel, who presumably wasn't actually lying when she said she was menstruating and couldn't get up off the camel. She was off in her own tent, after all, away from Leah and the other concubines. If she wasn't lying, she was sitting there bleeding all over the precious, sacred idols. Making them impure. A total "flipping the bird" at her father's pagan beliefs, and a more clear indication of how she was beginning to feel about them and about the One True God. Rock on, sister.

Genesis 30: The Great Childbearing Race

The son-bearing contest and flock-increasing contest described in this chapter are perfect examples of people attempting to take control of their own lives while simultaneously trying to build a relationship with God. It doesn't work...something has to give.

Rachel here is beginning to grow desperate to bear a child. She's the wife Jacob wanted, mostly for her physical attractiveness, but it is Leah he married first and she is the one who has been wronged by Jacob's preference for her sister. Rachel doesn't seem to believe that God has anything to do with this, but that Jacob does, so she angrily demands that he give her a son or she will die (kill herself out of shame and desperation, perhaps?) . Jacob will lose the woman he's so attracted to if she doesn't bear a son. She hasn't been promised one by God the way Sarah was, but she is driven to envious distraction at the fact that Leah has several. In order to take control of the situation, both Leah and Rachel bring surrogates loyal to their cause, their maids, into the contest with disappointing results much the same way Sarah did.

Leah and Rachel name their children spiteful, gleefully smug names that reflect their attitudes at the births of the boys, with the exception of one...Judah. Judah is named when his mother has begun to believe that God has blessed her with these sons, not as prizes in a contest, but as gifts from Him. She says "Finally, this time, I'll praise God." and names him Judah, "praise the Lord" Even though Rachel's son Joseph would grow up to become a good, Godly man and a force in the history of the patriarchs, it was Judah whose tribe would be blessed with the world's redeemer. Joseph himself is named in both relief and somewhat selfish demand, "may god add more!" His mother is happy to have him but is hungry for more.

Rachel and Leah are both worthy of respect as the two mothers of the tribes of Israel, the ones who made Jacob's promised nation a reality, but between the two, Leah is the only one who has that momentary spark of understanding in the midst of the Sons Contest. Rachel continues to sulk, growing more and more bitter. If only she could understand that both of the sisters would bear important sons in Joseph and Judah, and that the fates of the two boys would depend on each other. God uses both Joseph (whose sons Ephraim and Manasseh would found the dominant tribes of the Northern Kingdom, the Lost Tribes) and Judah (who would band together with Benjamin to form Judea) together to advance His people...but in the end, Judah, the praising one, would be the road that leads to the Savior.

Jacob's sins and (not quite sinful) mistakes, his deceitfulness, his steadfast insistence on marrying Rachel the Hottie in addition to Leah instead of forgetting about her, and his willingness to be bought, are not enough to stop God or His plans. Like a river that flows around a rock in its way, God makes his plans happen in and through the bad choices his Chosen make. He receives the fruits of every bad choice he makes, with wives who fight and compete bitterly the same way he fought and competed bitterly with Esau, a father-in-law and wives who consider him a hireling to be bought for a pretty woman or a bunch of mandrakes the same way he bought his brother's birthright for some stew, and a father-in-law and sons who trick him the same way he tricked Isaac.

I'm amazed at God's ability to work through all our choices, even trickery, to give us what He promises. Jacob's deft zig-zagging with the sheep and goats makes him very materially wealthy despite all of Laban's attempts to...forgive me...screw him. Laban knows that he might try to breed the rarer colored animals to make more for himself, so Laban takes them away. Jacob then tries a little lucky trick to get the normal colored animals to produce the rarer colors anyway. Laban tries to take some of the rarer colored animals anyway despite the earlier agreement and Jacob gives him some, but only the weaklings. In the end, his wiliness has made him a really really rich man. Is this God's doing? Maybe. Will Jacob reap what he has sown with his trickery? If there is sinfulness in it, yes, absolutely.

Genesis 28-29: Jacob Follows in Isaac's Footsteps

I think the thing that bothers me most in these two chapters is that, for all his blessedness and bearing of the flame of righteousness and all that, Isaac is a pretty lackluster father. The two chapters here considered show over and over again the fruits of Isaac's failure to live up to his potential as a father and as a leader. This all starts, of course, with Jacob and Esau's choice of wives.

When it was time for Isaac to marry, Abraham commissioned the Servant (essentially the Holy Spirit Himself) to go out and find a bride, and he found Rebekah. There was love at first sight, and Rebekah continually acted decisively and prudently to bring about the Lord's promises. Jacob, on the other hand, is sent himself, blessed but also running from Esau. Isaac tells him not to marry a Canaanite woman, but apparently Esau wasn't given even this much instruction when he went out dating. Esau, on realizing that this was bad, tries to make it better by marrying an Ishmaelite woman, but that's not really much better, and it's clearly a "closing the door after the horses have escaped" solution. Isaac, though trying to do the right thing, is all too human, and the results are clear.

Jacob's attempts at a love-match, choosing a wife for himself on his own terms, results in several years of wasted time for him and a marriage based in deception with no basis in love. I see this happen so often these days. If Jacob were alive today, I'm sure he'd look to divorce Leah and marry his true love Rachel, putting the whole thing down as a "lesson learned the hard way" and a cause for some cynicism about love. Rachel is his love at first sight, which in the Bible seems to indicate a match made by Heaven, but his human failings lead to wasted time, strife in his family, and a dubious polygamy.

Another failing of Isaac is his seeming failure to properly introduce his sons to his God. Jacob, in the guise of Esau, referred to God as Isaac's God, not his own. In the desert on the way to Paddan-Aram, Jacob meets God himself, almost as though he didn't know Him before and wasn't taught about His promises. Perhaps the real lesson here is that being introduced to God and faith in your family isn't enough...you must learn about Him and become His child yourself. Jacob needed to see a set of ziggurat stairs leading to heaven with angels walking up and down to understand that God is always at work in our world and that He is intimately connected to it. But even after this, Jacob's faith isn't woven into the fabric of his being yet. He is still considering it, trying it on for size. If God helps him, he'll believe.

Jacob here is a lot like me, a lot like many cradle Catholics. Having been raised with the Faith, baptized before we knew it, entered communion when we were young, we find still that faith is a journey. We consider and reconsider whether Christ is who He said He was. We put him to the test sometimes, finding ourselves in a place where we need reassurance of blessings to believe. We don't have the zeal of converts, but find that we envy them. If only we could have stumbled onto this truth later, how much more convinced and convicted we'd be! Jacob was maturing in a faith that he was always around but was brand new to him at the same time. It isn't clear how good a "living Gospel" his parents were for him, but even if Isaac and Rebekah were perfect examples of godly living, Jacob had to claim it for his own.

Genesis 27: Spinning Trickery into Blessing, Straw into Gold

This story is such a great story because it is so human. The heroes and the villains each have admirable and blameworthy qualities, and the actions they take are so morally ambiguous, but God takes this muddled, ambiguous scene and transforms it into a key part of His plan.

Isaac, a good man who built on the legacy he was handed down from Abraham, extending the blessings of God even farther, is now old and blind, reduced to a weak and dependent position. He has been spiritually blinded by his preference for Esau, whose heart appears unworthy in God's sight, even though he is strong, a good provider, and generally pretty obedient. Unlike Abraham, when Isaac's firstborn son is shown to be unworthy of the birthright and blessing, Isaac does not willingly agree. He tries to settle the blessing on Esau anyway, resulting in trickery, a loss of trust, and a rupture in his family. Jacob and Rebekah's deception would not have been necessary if Isaac had submitted. Also, his stomach...his human, worldly instincts and desires...get in the way of his making the right choice. Jacob-as-Esau secures Dad's favor by bringing him a bowl of tasty stew, satisfying his base desires as the real Esau does. Even when Isaac blesses Jacob, he blesses him in a way that leaves Esau (intended to be Jacob) out in the cold entirely, instead of leaving room for both his sons in his affection. This too would result in serious division between the two.

Rebekah, the trusting and decisive woman who followed where God led, does what she feels she must do to ensure that God's promise to her, Jacob's precedence, comes to fruition, and takes a huge risk for God's promises' sake. She chooses the right in supporting Jacob and believing that God's promises will come, much as Sarah did by believing that Abraham would indeed have a son. Like Sarah, however, she is too limited to see what God is doing, and thinks she needs to "help him along". God wants Jacob to win the birthright and blessing away from Esau, and it seems clear that deception is the way that will occur. God, however, does not help those who help themselves, and her actions, though they pay off, also lead to a horrible rift in the family. She would never see Jacob again.
Esau is an obedient son and cares quite a lot for his aging, weak father. He goes out right away when asked, hunting for meat his father so badly wanted. He's already been hurt by his brother before but he remains steadfast in love for his family, particularly his father. On the other hand, when Jacob impersonates him, Jacob refers to the Lord as Isaac's God, not his. Esau is detached from Yhwh, seeing nothing wrong with Dad's faith and religious ritual but choosing not to embrace it as his own. Some Catholic and other Christian scholars have suggested that Esau and Jacob are like the modern Jewish and Christian people...that Esau, while not a bad guy and certainly not evil, chooses not to embrace God for who He really is and what He really says about himself, and thus chooses to forfeit the birthright of blessings that he originally had. Jacob, through fidelity and a close relationship with God, becomes worthy of having the birthright handed off to him. The Jews, the "firstborn sons" of God, are destined for blessings unless through pride and lack of faith, they relinquish them to Christians who have inherited them through Christ.

Jacob, the trickster and usurper, in reality has chosen to take a real risk on behalf of God's promises to him, as has his mother. He ends up abundantly blessed, but he also ends up being tricked himself several times in life, cut off from his family for much of his life, and a fugitive for a while. This seems to be a real theme through the Bible so far... things people do are rarely purely good or purely evil, and God takes messy, muddled human actions and blesses people for what they do right and also allows them to reap the consequences of what they do wrong. Those who live in close relationship with God don't always trust Him and this leads to drama and pain. God is a just God, and He knows our hearts and our true intentions. He wants to use this family to bless the world, and He will guide them through all kinds of craziness to get to His ends.

Genesis 25-26: Digging Up the Wells of Blessing

I was totally unaware that Abraham had more sons by another concubine after Sarah's death. Clearly this, among other things, illustrates that not all "sons of Abraham" were members of the righteous line, not all Jews at the time of Christ (who considered themselves sons of Abraham) are destined to be saved. These sons represent tribes of the Arabian desert, including the Midianites, who would later prove so helpful and welcoming to another "son of Abraham", Moses. When Jesus came and extended the New Covenant to all the peoples of the world who believe, no longer just to a chosen, righteous lineage/tribe/kingdom, these other sons of Abraham were gathered back into the fold. He also treats them fairly, leaving them a fair inheritance, even though the bulk of the inherited blessings would go to Isaac.

The places where Abraham is buried and where Isaac goes to live after Abraham's death are full of symbolism and seem to be representative of their lives. Abraham is buried in the cave at Machpelah, in his first legal foothold in the promised land. He faces Mamre, where he met God and where he found out that Isaac would be born. In death, he continues to look God in the face and watch over the place where God's promises were so beautiful to him and Sarah. Isaac goes to live at the Well of God Seeing us (Beer-lahai-roi) where Hagar saw the angel and inherits the holy ground she stood on carrying Ishmael. Her son, while a son of Abraham and therefore blessed by this, is not the one to fulfill God's promises. Abraham and Sarah spend eternity looking on the place they were promised so much, and the son of those promises lives on to inherit even the legacy of Hagar's encounter with Deity.

Ishmael's inheritance seems to be permanently stuck between two statuses. As child of Abraham, his family becomes great and inhabit a lot of land, but as Hagar's child, his descendents are wild and fight amongst themselves often. They live between Egypt, the place of worldly plenty but spiritual emptiness, and Canaan, the land of spiritual promise. Again, I cannot help but think of the legacy of those who claim Ishmael as a founding ancestor. They are permanently stuck between bearing a great light as spiritual sons of Abraham and degenerating into infighting, living between the promise of great spiritual truth and violence because of the lack of full truth.

Once again, the suffering of barrenness, felt by many women today, is used by God to bring about amazing things. Rebekah finds out that she, as so many women before her in this story the Bible, is going to bear two distinct sons with two very different legacies, and that the blessings the two receive will be based on their relationship with God, not any chance circumstances like birth order. God wants to drive home the point over and over again that these children are special, longed for for so long, and that He has granted them as a gift, in His own timing and for His own reasons.

The Bible pauses here to describe in many parallel ways and with many symbols just who these two men are, Esau and Jacob. They both have faults and they both have virtues, but the Lord who looks into the heart knew who these men really were, and blessed Jacob as his favored one because of that. Esau and Jacob are born, and Esau is red (fiery-tempered), hairy (unclean and uncivilized). Jacob, on the other hand, is grasping at his heel, trying to either hold his brother back from being the first born, or trying to rely on Esau to get him out. Esau is a hunter, his brother a shepherd. The two descriptions can lead to both vices and virtues. Esau is rough around the edges and could be seen as brutish, violent, and concerned with base things, but likely could be admired as a plainspoken, straightforward man, hardworking, and a good provider. Jacob is smoother, cleaner, a "prettyboy" with a natural pastoral leadership quality, a man of peaceful pursuits and friendly, congenial demeanor. He could also easily become a deceptively smooth talker, a politician-type who says what you want to hear and then backstabs you.

In the story told about them, we see both sides of both of them. Esau is tired and hungry after providing for the family, but he is also genuinely over-concerned with his stomach, just getting what he needs, to the point where he trades away blessings to get some stew. He doesn't think that what God has provided for him, in the form of a birthright inheritance, is as valuable as his own need to eat something right now. He is one in a long line of people who lose what is important by ravenous gluttony... Adam's gluttony for knowledge led to eating the fruit, Noah's gluttony for wine made him vulnerable to Ham's sin against him and unable to stop it. Jacob is a trickster in his method of exploiting his brother's weak moment, but he has his priorities in order. He wants blessings and a relationship with God so much that he takes charge when he can. He doesn't force the birthright away from Esau by violence, doesn't kill him or usurp his power, just bargains for it. In the end, both men are a balance of darkness and light, but Jacob's heart is found more favorable when God examines him.

Isaac wandering toward Egypt (again!) in an attempt to avoid famine and to protect his worldly wealth and power and again runs into a King Abimelech. He repeats his father's mistake of claiming that his wife was his sister, with some similarity in the results. The first time Abraham did this, in Egypt, he was far far away from his Promised Land, far out of touch with God, and he got pretty deep into his sin before being rescued from it by God. The second time, he was closer to the promised Land and while Sarah was still taken into the harem, the consequences were less dire and the breach between Abraham and Abimelech was less severe. In this third case, Isaac is less far from the Promised Land, Abimelech notices Isaac's lie before he goes forward and acts on it, and Rebekah is never taken into his harem. In justice, Abimelech here is not required to make restitution for a sin he hasn't committed, unlike Pharaoh and Abimelech previously, and Isaac earns envy for his subsequent prosperity instead of it being seen as just compensation. He's blessed for what he does right, and cursed with other people's envy for what he does wrong here. Not all foreigners in the Bible are bad, bad people, and not all are even less good than the lineage of the patriarchs, but the lineage of the patriarchs is in unique relationship with God and has been chosen to bring salvation to the other nations.

Isaac brings back the wells, bringing back the flow of God's blessings and restoring his loving relationship with God. In doing so, he puts himself back into practical opposition to the people of the area, who start to fight with him over the rights to the water. The great blessing of salvation would belong to Isaac's descendant Jesus, who would restore the real "living water" of Baptism and send the Holy Spirit on his followers to do their work. The other local people could only draw on the benefits...their true ownership belonged to Isaac, just as was true with Abraham the last time the wells were open. Isaac finally comes to the Well of the Seven/the Oath (Beersheba) and again makes a covenant with the local people in the same way God has made a covenant with his family, and God's promises and Isaac's to Abimelech strengthen and echo Abraham's. He even is able to go a step farther, bring a new well and new blessings of his own to add.

The scene closes with Esau further demonstrating how far he is going to wander from the loving relationship God wants with him. Isaac and Rebekah have each chosen a son as their favored one, a division that is going to only sow misery in the family. Esau, by marrying not just one but two foreign pagan women, adds more to the drama in the family and makes God's plan for these people harder to smoothly bring about. God transforms the trickery and divisiveness in this family into a tool for His glory, but imagine what it would have been like without this! Isaac, in favoring Esau, is showing a very human tendency to see worldly marks of goodness and success. Rebekah, in favoring Jacob, is showing a very human and womanly tendency to favor a son that causes you less pain and strife, whose looks and smooth words are soothing rather than irritating. Neither sees as God sees.

Genesis 24: My Bride, My Bride, I've Come to Claim My Bride

Even the beginning of this chapter is reassuring - "Abraham had now reached a ripe old age and the Lord had blessed him in every way." When Abraham trusted in God and did things His way, blessings of every sort were poured out. Isaac, as the heir to these blessings, needs to have a wife, and she must be found and wed in a way that is different than the neighbors, in a way suitable to the Lord and his promises about Isaac. He needs to find a woman of the righteous lineage of Shem, not a local woman, and he needs to bring her to the Promised Land. Neither location nor family can be sacrificed here because each represents a promise God made.

The servant goes babe-shopping at the local well around water-retrieving time. If he were a 21st century guy, he might have been looking for her in the supermarket in a "trendy" neighborhood where there are a lot of young professional women, or on a dating website. He prays about his mission, much as we all should pray for future spouses if we don't have one yet, asking God to indicate a good woman for him. He agrees upon a sign he'll use to indicate that this woman is worth looking into...generosity to a stranger (camels need a lot of water!). We need to pray while we discern a vocation, while we discern who our future spouse might be, and ask God what qualities the person ought to have that indicates their suitability.

When Rebekah is found to be just the kind of generous, kind spirit the servant is looking for, he offers her presents of gold jewelry and makes plans to spend time at her home to make the offer of marriage. He gets right to work and is seemingly so overjoyed at having found just the right woman that he insists on proposing as soon as he gets to her house. There is no get-to-know-you meal, no settling in. Now! She agrees to this crazy proposition of running off to Canaan to the home of a relative who left the area twenty five years before on some whim to become the wife of a son she has never seen. Her whole family agrees because they see that God is at work here, even if they don't worship Him, and they are happy to be part of what He wants. Rebekah's family asks for a little time to get her ready to go, but the servant is so insistent on getting Abraham's and God's will done that he rushes her out the door. "Do you wish to go with this man?" her family asked her, and in faith and generosity she said "I do." Rebekah herself came from a wealthy family and brought servants with her, even though she had to go away so quickly. This is a woman who makes decisions and never looks back from them, and she is prepared for God to change her life at a moment's notice.

The servant doesn't have a name...the one who makes all this happen is unnoticed and unknown. God Himself, it seems, was really the one who took charge here. You can see it too in that beautiful moment where their eyes meet, where they notice each other and begin to fall in love.

Genesis 22-23: The Torch About to be Passed

The story of the near-sacrifice of Isaac is familiar to me, but I'm only beginning to plumb its depths. What a test this was of Abraham and Isaac's character, faithfulness, and love. Both of them knew that El-shaddai was not a god who demanded sacrifice of human beings, and both of them knew the promises that were to be fulfilled in Isaac. Each step they took toward Moriah (note here - Calvary is one of the hills of Moriah. Spooky, no?) required even more trust than the step before.

Many people focus so hard on the asking for sacrifice that they forget to read on...this is a God who returns the sacrifice! God appears to demand a sacrifice, then He uses the process to transform the entire idea of sacrifice...after which he returns that which was sacrificed in a new, blessed state. Jesus, like Isaac, was offered in sacrifice on the Cross, but by his Resurrection, he returned himself to our midst, and then returned himself to God in the Ascension, both times in a glorified state. The Eucharist bread and wine we offer are taken to his altar in heaven and return as the very Body and Blood, soul and divinity of Christ. Whatever he asks of us, he will give back in even better condition. "What kind of cruel God would ask for Isaac to be sacrificed? What kind of cruel God would sacrifice his son?" The kind who returns and glorifies the sacrifice, who doesn't keep it for his own. That's the kind of God I worship.

Isaac, like Jesus, willingly walks to the hill, carrying the wood on his own back. Isaac is thought to have been a young adult at this point, even perhaps roughly the same age as Jesus. In stopping to think about the sacrificial sheep, he seems to almost believe that it will be his own sacrifice. Abraham's answer indicates trust either way, that he will move forward whether God provides a sheep or whether the necessary sacrifice is already there. Isaac, "He laughs", is a type of the man who would make the whole world laugh either in joy or disbelief and derision when He laid out God's plan for the world.

I've never seen God swear before, but here he indeed swears an oath, on His own Name. He makes a third covenant with Abraham, completing the process of making his promises into real covenants. He would father a great nation, in him and them the world would find blessing, and the land He promises will be the homeland of this nation. These promises would be the root of how Jesus understood himself and his people.

Rebekah's pedigree, presented here, foreshadows the woman who will carry Abraham and Isaac's promises forward. She is presented as being consummately qualified for this, being of a righteous lineage, Shem's family, and a member of a community that would later be known as Arameans. She is the daughter of a wife (not a concubine), just like Isaac, and in many ways parallels him. I almost get the sense that she is born for this and is being unconsciously groomed for it, almost in the way Mary would later be. Interestingly, I begin to get a sense that wherever patriarchs aren't actively punished for having plural wives (this isn't explicitly forbidden yet, as the Law of Moses hasn't been given to the people), the flame of righteousness is carried via the offspring of the first wife, implicitly indicating that concubines and plural wives are not practices of which the Lord wholeheartedly approves. As much as Jacob loves Rachel and her son Joseph, it is Judah, Leah's child, who will become the ancestor of the Messiah. Ephraim, Joseph's line, will become the leader and shining light of the ten tribes of Israel that get lost and scattered.

With Sarah's death, Abraham seems to recognize that his own future is short and that he must lay down groundwork for those promises to continue to bloom and be fulfilled. He buys the very first portion of the Promised Land, the "down payment on the promise" to ensure that he and Sarah would sanctify and claim the land from the very beginning by being buried there. The Hittites of the area try to twist this and screw him in a couple of different ways. First, by trying to give him the land as a gift, making him debtor to them. Then, when he insists on buying only the cave, they insist that he buy the entire land plot, thereby making a man who held himself apart, obligation-free, a landowner who is now subject to certain obligations and responsibilities among them. He may have even become the vassal of their king via this route. Finally, they charge him what a footnote in my NAB describes as an exorbitant amount...I suppose figuring that if they were unable to make this rich chieftain their subordinate in any other way, at least they could shake him down a little. Abraham finally succeeds, winning himself a free and clear foothold for eternity in the land promised to him.

Genesis 21: The Promised Child Arrives

After a couple chapters of build-up, various people's laughter (in joy or in derision) at God's plan, and various and sundry reassurances on God's part that this child is special, Isaac (he laughs) has arrived. God did for Sarah just as he said...just as He did for Mary just as He said. Both these children were led up to and pointed to by history. Sarah is amazed at God's faithfulness to a promise, just as we all ought to be. He does what He says he will do. She breastfeeds him personally, and cares for him as a special boy.

When Isaac is weaned, it is clear that Ishmael (now roughly 16-18) does not agree with the assessment that Isaac is the Promised Child. He does...well, something...with his little half-brother that angers Sarah greatly. What this is seems kind of unclear. He was not, obviously, just "playing" with Isaac as my NAB so mildly puts it. Some folks read the Hebrew to indicate that he was trying to molest Isaac, or was picking on him, or was playing very roughly and violently with him. No matter what, he was not treating his little brother with respect and affection, but was making some kind of move as his enemy or rival. Sarah's defense of Isaac stemmed from her newfound understanding of the legacy due to her son, God's intentions for him, and not from the jealousy and pettiness that got Hagar and Ishmael thrown out before. Justice is on Sarah's side this time, and God makes this clear. He will treat any son of Abraham with fairness and justice, but Sarah is right to assert her son's primacy here.

God does indeed keep his promises yet again. Ishmael and Hagar are preserved in difficult circumstances in the desert, and he does go on to found a great nation of people. Like many self-reliant sinners in the Bible, he becomes a hunter, an archer. Instead of taking stewardship over creation, he takes dominance. He does not lead with a crook or coax out of the ground with water, he uses cunning and violence to feed himself and dominate his world. Not all who are born of righteous families and grow up with this as an advantage end up righteous themselves.

Speaking of meriting righteousness and not inheriting it, the king Abimelech whom we met before is now back, looking to make a covenant with Abraham in much the same way Abraham met one with God. He is respectful, making conciliatory gestures, despite the fact that he came with a military commander in case things with Abraham didn't go well. The grace and magnanimity Abraham has learned from God now shines through him and he agrees to make a covenant (with the number seven all over it) with Abimelech. The place itself is called Beersheba, Well of the Seven/Well of the Oath.