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Category Archive: Bible - OT - Genesis

That Serpent the Devil - November 17, 2007
At the same SBL seminar, Rusty Reno examined Genesis 3:1, following the traditional interpretation that the serpent is a disguise for the devil. He dealt with the larger pattern of biblical evidence first, showing that the Bible links the devil...

The First Sin - November 17, 2007
J. Richard Middleton gave an intriguing paper on Genesis 2-3 at an SBL seminar on the theological interpretation of Scripture. He was trying to answer the question of the nature of the first sin, and concluded that the first sin,...

Baptismal elevation - October 31, 2007
James Jordan points out in an essay on the Ascension offering that the early chapter of Genesis follow a sacrificial sequence: Sacrifice outside the garden, then Enoch ascends to the Lord, then the world is washed in the flood, and...

Sermon notes - October 29, 2007
INTRODUCTION Raising children is a way of throwing out a line to the future. It is inherently an act of faith, an effort to outlive ourselves. That's true of all parenting. But Christian parents need to exercise the full range...

Bridal city - October 17, 2007
Even before Cain, there is a hint – only a hint, but a hint – of a better city to come. It is not good for man to be alone, Yahweh says of Adam, and then takes a rib from...

City of Cain - October 17, 2007
Girard says that "the Bible unveils the victim mechanism that lies behind polytheism and mythology, but not only behind polytheism and mythology, for its full expression underlies everything we know as human culture. The Bible recognizes this in the story...

Babel - August 13, 2007
Two notes about Babel: 1) What does it mean to construct a tower to heaven? Traditionally, this has been understood literally: They were trying to build a tower high enough to reach the sky. But were they really that naive?...

Reversing the curse? - June 06, 2007
When Adam and Eve sinned, Yahweh cursed the ground on account of/in relation to Adam (Gen 3:17). Following the flood and in response to Noah's offering, He declares "I will no more curse the ground on account of man" (ADAM;...

Radical solution - March 17, 2007
The one thing that is "not good" in the original creation is Adam's loneliness. And how does God go about addressing that imperfection? He puts Adam into deep sleep, tears out a rib from his side, closes up the flesh,...

Sermon notes, Fourth Sunday of Lent - March 12, 2007
INTRODUCTION Every family lives between the sometimes contradictory demands of the past and the future. Every family also lives between the sometimes contradictory demands of the "inside" and the "outside." Families have to develop their own distinctive "culture," but also...

Sermon notes, Third Sunday of Lent - March 05, 2007
INTRODUCTION Scripture demands that we honor our fathers and mothers, the past of our family. But families only exist because of a break with the past. To form a family, a man and woman leave their families and cleave to...

Re-creation - November 30, 2006
Richard Davidson, writing in the Andrews University Seminary Studies (Spring 2004), shows that the restoration of the world after the flood follows the creation week: 1. Spirit/wind, Gen 1:2; 8:1 2. Division of waters, 1:6-8; 8:1-5 3. Dry land and...

Prelapsarian carnivores - November 18, 2006
In a discussion of NT Wright's new book on evil, the question of pre-fall carnivores came up. Both Wright and his respondent basically agreed that animals killed and ate other animals before the fall, and that this was not incompatible...

Isaac and Saul - November 18, 2006
I don't recall now if I noticed the connections between Isaac and Saul in 1 Samuel. Isaac abuses his divinely favored son Jacob; Saul abuses his son-in-law David. Isaac preferred Esau, the eldest, to the second son; Saul prefers Jonathan...

Sunrise, sunset - September 23, 2006
Some thoughts on the sun/light symbolism in Genesis, inspired by a number of fine student papers on the subject. 1) The symbolism is set up in the first day of creation. Creation's original state is dark, formless, and empty; and...

Light and Division - September 18, 2006
The original formless-and-void creation was dark. God created light, and saw it was good. We might think that the creation of light itself would be sufficient to divide light and darkness, but that's not the way Genesis tells the story....

Creation and Exodus - July 05, 2006
Allison offers a series of interesting connections between the early chapters of Gen and the early chapters of Ex: 1) Israel is "multiplying" (Ex 2:2) in the way that God commanded the human race to multiply (Gen 1:26-28), concluding, with...

Easter Musings on Genesis 29 - April 13, 2006
1) Jacob goes to Paddan-Aram fleeing from his father's house; in that far country, he endures abuse and treachery, yet returns with brides and numerous flocks and herds. When he goes out from his father's house, he has nothing –...

Sermon notes, Easter Sunday - April 10, 2006
INTRODUCTION "You are not greater than our father Jacob, are you?" asked the Samaritan woman at the well of Sychar to the stranger who offered her living water. By His death and resurrection, Jesus answers that question: He is the...

Tale of Three Cities - October 19, 2005
In his book on the gospel in Genesis, Warren Gage notes that the book tell a tale of three cities: "Cain set out to found and build an earthly city, his descendants developing a technology suited to creating an earthly...

Babel in time - June 15, 2005
A friend, Toby Sumpter, points out that the tower of Babel project must have taken a considerable time. Nimrod, who founds Babel/Babylon (Gen 10:10), was a great-grandson of Noah (Noah-Ham-Cush-Nimrod). But the earth was divided in the days of Peleg...

Abraham and Adam - June 15, 2005
Yahweh promises Abraham an abundant seed, and a land to put them in. Planted in the land, Abraham's seed becomes the new Eden....

Noah's nakedness - May 27, 2005
John Bergsma and Scott Hahn offer a compelling defense of a "maternal incest" view of the story of Noah's nakedness in Genesis 9 (JBL 124:1). They reject a "voyeurist" interpretation of the story. They find more to recommend a "paternal...

Abraham's Exoduses - March 28, 2005
Or is it Exodi? In any case, everyone can see that Abram goes through an exodus in Genesis 12. But Jeffrey Geoghegan makes a compelling case for seeing a Passover-Exodus theme running through the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in...

Adam and the Tree of Knowledge - February 21, 2005
Would Adam have been admitted to eat from the tree of knowledge if he had kept the probation in the garden? Jim Jordan has argued from hints in Genesis 1-3 that the answer is Yes. Perhaps there's also some further...

Abram as Moses - October 19, 2004
Jerome Walsh (in Style and Structure in Biblical Hebrew Narrative) points out the chiastic structure of Gen 12:6b: Pharaoh gives Abram "flocks-and-herds/jackasses/men servants//women servants/jenny asses/camels." This arrangement highlights the gift of slaves to Abram, anticipating the "gift" of Hebrew slaves...

Exodus to Goshen - July 06, 2004
Israel's exodus involved a move from Goshen to the promised land. But the move into Goshen is curiously similar to the later exodus. Here are some of the similarities: 1) Israel sought to escape Egypt because of the oppression of...

The Rhetoric of Jacob's Blessings - July 06, 2004
Here are a few observations on Jacob's blessings in Gen 49. I don't know what the implications are; these are simply observations on the imagery and rhetoric of the different blessings. 1) The contrast between the rhetoric of curse and...

Ishmael and Isaac - June 30, 2004
In his fascinating book, Divine Symmetries, Victor Wilson points to a series of parallels between Ishmael's banishment from Abraham's camp (Gen 21) and the sacrifice of Isaac (Gen 22): 1. Yahweh's command, 21:10; 22:2: "cast out this...son"; "take your son"...

True and False Arks - June 22, 2004
When the men of Babel organize to build a tower reaching to heaven, they decide to use "tar for mortar" (Gen 11:3; NASB). The Hebrew phrase repeats two different forms of the same root word (CHMR): The word for "tar"...

Abraham's Sinfulness in Gen. 15 - February 15, 2004
Though the issue of Abraham's sinfulness is not immediately in view in the "justification" text of Gen 15, it is a crucial issue in the deeper context and structure of Genesis. This is true in two ways: First, Abraham is...

Adam and the Dragon - January 26, 2004
A discussion of death in the prefall world led to this thought: What was Adam supposed to do when a big dragon came to his wife and began tempting her to sin? I think he was supposed to do exactly...

Luther on Adam - December 30, 2003
A wonderful quotation from Luther's late commentary on Genesis. He notes that law exists already in Eden, but he also makes it clear that this does not make the Edenic situation a "covenant of works": "And so when Adam had...

Creation and Babel - December 16, 2003
There are a number of allusions to the original creation account in the account of Babel in Genesis 11. First, there is the general point that Yahweh is destroying what men have built �Ea rebellious creation "decreated" by Yahweh. Second,...

Ruth and Tamar - December 12, 2003
In the "Well, duh" category: After mentioning Warren Gage's work on the parallels between Ruth and Tamar here earlier in the week, now I've read a student paper that helps to fill out that point. She points out that in...

Murphy on Genesis - November 12, 2003
The first few pages of Francesca Aran Murphy's The Comedy Of Revelation were delightful, but her section on Genesis was disappointing. The comedy she sees in Genesis is mainly of her own making �Eshe simply retells the biblical stories in...

Mann on the Joseph Narrative - November 04, 2003
Thomas W. Mann has some interesting comments on the Joseph narrative in his 1988 book The Book of Torah: The Narrative Integrity of the Pentateuch. First, he points out that Joseph's "trial" of his brothers is equally a trial of...

Donkeys in Genesis - October 06, 2003
A student of mine, Luke Jankovic, tracing the motif of "donkeys" in Genesis, came up with a couple of interesting angles. First, he noted that Abram first acquires donkeys in Egypt in Genesis 12, a proto-plundering of Egypt. And in...

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