And the number of them, after their genealogy by their generations (Luke 3)

The first issue the SAB brings up in Luke 3 is the harsh language John the Baptist uses in reference to the people who come out to see him. While in some of the parallel accounts the phrase "generation of vipers" is used for the Pharisees, here it seems to be addressed to the crowd in general. I'm not sure what to comment on this; yeah, it's pretty harsh. Also, verse 9 has some pretty harsh phrasing, although I'm not convinced that the SAB is right in identifying it as a verse about salvation. I think John the Baptist is talking about a purely earthly judgment, although I could be wrong.

John the Baptist talks to three groups of people, and basically he tells each one to be (in their own way) kind and generous. The group that the SAB makes no comment on, the publicans, is an interesting case that I feel like addressing. Publicans were tax collectors, and the way that they made a living is that Rome would assess a tax to a certain region, and the publicans would tell people what they had to pay to make their quota. It was a common, Roman-approved method of collecting that a publican would charge people more than Rome needed, and then keep the difference for their personal income. It's a cultural thing that was well-known in Biblical times, so it's never quite explained, although it's crucial to understand whenever Jesus associates with "publicans and sinners". (The Apostle Matthew was a publican before he followed Jesus; it wasn't a profession that people tended to like for obvious reasons.)

The SAB does comment on the soldiers, and brings up a very good point. How does it make sense to tell soldiers to "Do violence to no man," when that's essentially their job? I suspect that this is a problem with the translation, as many other versions of this passage say something like "Do not extort money from anyone." The Greek word that the KJV translates as "violence" seems to have a meaning more akin to harassment than actual physical harm. I think that all three things that the soldiers are admonished to do boil down to, "Don't abuse your authority." (When he says "be content with your wages", I think it's not about whether or not their wages are fair, but about whether they may be tempted to supplement their income by extortion of commoners.)

Yes, verse 17's mention of "fire unquenchable" is almost surely a reference to eternal judgment, but that's a big issue that I'm not going to go into here. If the reader really wants my insight on Hell, there are surely a few entries elsewhere with that tag.

How did God address Jesus at his baptism? I'm sure I've said it before, but I'll say it again here that slight changes in wording from one version of a Bible story to another don't bother me, so I'm not sure what to say when they seem to bother the SAB.

Who was Jesus' grandfather on his father's side? It was Jacob. Long explanation in the last two paragraphs of this post.

Who was Zerubbabel's father? This is an interesting point, as throughout the Bible, Zerubbabel is referred to as the son of Shealtiel, with the exception of 1Chronicles 3:19, where his father is claimed to be Pedaiah. If you look at the context of the oddball verse, you'll see that Pedaiah and Shealtiel were brothers, with the latter being the first-born in the (now defunct) royal line. This suggests a possible resolution: if Shealtial had died childless, it would have been necessary for one of his brothers to sire a son and with said son being Shealtiel's heir apparent. It may have been that Pedaiah was Zerubbabel's biological father, while Shealtiel was his legal father, in order to carry on the royal line. (Of course what's really odd is that these names should show up in both genealogies, given the point I bring up in the next paragraph.)

It seems from re-reading my Matthew 1 post that I missed the question "From which of David's sons was Jesus descended?" although in some ways, I think I answered it there. As I explained in that post, the two genealogies are of Joseph and Mary, and each of them were descended from a different son of David.

It was hinted at, but not an actual note in Matthew 1 when I covered it, but "How many generations must a bastard wait until his offspring can enter the congregation of the Lord?" The answer is ten, and the SAB only arrives at a supposed contradiction by counting wrong; Phares is the first generation, so David ends up being tenth. Besides, I'm not at all clear as to what the Deuteronomy passage is saying; I really should ask someone who would know better, like a Rabbi.

Who was Salah's father? is an interesting one; especially in Matthew's genealogy, there is a tendency to telescope generations and leave people out, but here, we have an instance of someone being added in. I don't know why this would be and have no response to this one.

Was Enoch the seventh from Adam? Again, this is a counting error on the part of the SAB; Enoch is seventh from Adam if you start counting with Adam as "one".

How many sons does God have? This is a tricky one. I'm going to refer it back to my post in Genesis 6, where I explain that it has no simple answer, but it has a lot to do with poetic language.

But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law (Matthew 1:1-17)

So here I am again, and starting over with the New Testament, in Matthew 1. As the SAB points out about this chapter, Paul writes in a couple places that genealogies are a waste of time, and yet as with so many other places in the Bible, we're here presented with not just a genealogy, but one that will lead to (as Titus 3:9 in particular warns against) "foolish questions, ... and contentions, and strivings about the law;" oh well. I'll dismiss the genealogy issue with a simple fact: I don't know what Paul had against them, so I'm going to gloss over that issue until I may happen to hit one of those passages in a future entry. I'm going to have plenty of other things to deal with here.

The first specific detail the SAB latches onto in this list is the mention of Tamar in verse three. Of course, that story is a rather racy one, so I can see why the SAB marks it with the sex symbol, but I'm not sure what the absurdity symbol is about. If it has something to do with the related cross reference to Deut. 23:2, it's something interesting I find worth noting: David was ten generations removed from Tamar, so while there are some hints in Genesis that Judah was intended to be the royal line of Israel, in the end, David was the first in that line to take the throne; perhaps it was because of the ten generations thing in the Deuteronomy passage?

The SAB goes on to comment on the inconsistencies between this genealogy and the one in Luke's Gospel, which is as par for the course in Biblical criticism as noting the apparent disparities between Genesis 1 & 2. In this case, there are a number of issues that I think are valid to bring up, and are not simple misunderstandings, although there are some good responses that some people have come up with. The usual response to the discrepancies on the whole is that one of these two genealogies is that of Mary, while the other is that of Joseph. This explains away some of the discrepancy, but admittedly may bring up other issues.

I've heard it said that this genealogy is that of Mary, since it's the one that mentions Mary, but that's a problem with the bigger issue of why Mary's genealogy is needed in the first place. If we skip down to the note on verse 12, the SAB asks "Did Jeconiah have any children?" which is actually an important question. As referenced on the linked page, Jeremiah 22 says that Jeconiah should be considered to be childless, but this is a bit of poetic speech, the latter part of the quoted passage explaining the real meaning: no blood descendant of Jeconiah was to ever be allowed to be king. Thus, while the royal line goes through Jeconiah, it was cursed by God in Jeremiah's time, requiring any future king of Israel to be a blood descendant of David, but only a legal descendant of Jeconiah. Since Joseph (the husband of Mary) was a descendant of Jeconiah, but Jesus was only adopted by Joseph, that gives Jesus the blood and legal requirements to sit on the throne. This is a complicated issue that I'm not doing justice here, but I don't want (nor do I likely have the wherewithal) to write a huge essay here on this single topic. Suffice to say that if this is the reason for the two genealogies, then this one needs to be Joseph's.

This also answers (albeit pretty weakly, I'll admit) the question on verse 16 regarding the identity of Jesus' paternal grandfather: it was Jacob son of Matthan, while Heli son of Matthat (confusingly similar name there) had to be his maternal grandfather. As for the rest of the issues, and particularly Matthew's odd fetish for the number 14, they have to do with, well honestly, Matthew was fudging the numbers, and very poorly. For reasons he doesn't explain, Matthew really likes this pattern of 14s. It has something to do with Hebrew numerology and some relationship between the Messiah and the number 14. I know the numerical value of the name "David" in Hebrew is 14, but beyond that, you'd have to look elsewhere. As I said, I'm trying to not stretch this out to ridiculously long, and I probably already have.

When Doeg the Edomite came and told Saul (1Sam 22)

So David and his family flee to Moab, and after David sees to it that his family is taken care of, he returns to the land of his tribe, Judah, now with a small army to protect him.

Saul meanwhile is very unhappy with, well, pretty much everyone and everything. The fact that David is against him, and Jonathan, his own son, is a friend of David has caused him to become paranoid. He gives a speech to his Benjamite soldiers, pointing out that surely David will not give the sort of deference to the tribe of Benjamin that he himself has. He questions their loyalty.

Doeg the Edomite (a foreigner, in case you didn't catch it) speaks up to show his own loyalty, pointing out that he saw David visit the priests in Nob. Saul sends for Ahimelech and demands to know "Why have ye conspired against me, thou and the son of Jesse...?" Ahimelech insists (honestly, by the look of things) that he had no idea David was not on a mission from Saul, but Saul refuses to believe this excuse, and tells his men to kill all of the priests. The men refuse, but Doeg apparently eagerly complies, killing not only the priests, but every person and animal in the city of Nob. The SAB notes this as violent, to which I wholeheartedly agree, and with the "Family Values" icon, the reason for which completely escapes me.

And now to Abiathar the priest. Here, as I mentioned in my previous commentary, is some confusion as to lineage. Is Abiathar the father or the son of Ahimelech. You know, one thing I tried to do was see if this complex sentence (verse 20) could be unraveled to translate differently, such as the idea that "named Abiathar" could be a reference not to the son that escaped, but that it was saying Abithar was another name for Ahitub, who seems to be clearly the father of Ahimelech (at least in this verse). It doesn't seem to be so, especially since the following verse seems to make clear that Abiathar was the escapee, the clear subject of the sentence.

Clearly there is an error somewhere, but as I said, I can't seem to let it go with that, and I've been doing some reading, trying to unravel it as much as I can. First of all, I'm fairly certain the answer is once again with the minority reading, that is, Ahimelech is the father, despite the fact that more verses name him as the son. Why do I think this? Well, firstly because those verses saying Abiathar is the father are ones that were written later, much longer after the events' actual occurrence, so that makes it seem to me that they are slightly more likely to be erroneous. Secondly, and more importantly, there are several verses such as this one that mention Ahimelech as the son of Ahitub, who is (according to 1Sam.14:3) the grandson of Eli, which seems to fit in pretty good culturally and with the timeline. On the other hand, I don't think there is an instance of a single verse that lists anyone else as being the father of Abiathar other than Ahimelech in these two chapters.

Admittedly, there is still some confusion beyond that. I tried to map out the family tree of Eli, but it gets murky after a few generations, partially due to the fact that there are multiple people with the same name (there seem to be two different priests by the name of Zadok, both of whom were contemporaries of David), and the genealogy doesn't seem to be in anywise complete. This may be the key to the answer, but I'll admit this theory, while possible, doesn't seem to be strongly supported: It may be that since Ahimelech was killed in the massacre at Nob, Abiathar may have named his next child after his dead father as a memorial. In such a case, the latter mentions of "Ahimelech the son of Abiathar" would actually be to the grandson of the Ahimelech in these two chapters. I think if this were the case, there would be some mention of the fact that this special repeat naming had taken place (after all, it seems to me it makes for an interesting story) but there is no mention of it, so it remains questionable speculation.

Whoever Abiathar is (and I'll say that despite Jesus referring to him as the high priest, I think there's still possibility that he was not high priest until after the massacre, if that sounds weird, feel free to ask in the comments), David invites him to come with him and his company, as they now share a common enemy in Saul.

What is this that is come unto the son of Kish? (1Sam 9)

Chapter 9 opens with yet another identity conflict, this one having to do with the family tree of Saul. Here we see the claim that Kish was the son of Abiel, but in 1Chronicles, we are twice told that Kish is the son of Ner. So which is it? Well, despite the fact that being told twice in 1Chronicles might lead you to go with the majority statement, reading elsewhere seems to suggest this minority reading is the correct one. Various other passages tell us that Ner is in fact Kish's uncle, suggesting that the passage in 1Chronicles is some sort of scribal error, and one that only appears twice because, as the SAB points out, for some reason the extended passage that it appears within is inexplicably written twice. We've seen this sort of discrepancy before, and we'll probably see it again, I expect. [Edit to add: See the comments for a suggestion that may resolve this problem; Kish may be the offspring of a Levirate marriage.]

So we are introduced to Saul who is apparently tall and handsome, which for some reason, the SAB finds absurd. I don't know what should be absurd about this. It's actually an important aspect of the story, I believe, because when the people get introduced to Saul, they will immediately say of a tall, good-looking guy, "Wow, that guy looks like a king!" The overarching lesson of the story of Saul is that people tend to prefer to look good than to be good, and that goes for their choice in politicians as well.

Right after introducing Saul as a physically impressive person, we are given a story about Saul in which we see perhaps a suggestion of his shortcomings. He's been sent out to find some donkeys, and he has no luck finding them, so he decides to give up. His servant tells him that they are near the home of Samuel, and Saul seems to know nothing about Samuel, not even recognizing him for who he is when he runs into him in the street. Samuel recognizes Saul is the new king-to-be, and invites him to his house to eat. Later, before sending him away, he has a few personal moments with Saul that we are told little about here.

Samuel was established to be a prophet of the LORD (1Sam 1)

The first issue of the book of Samuel is with Samuel himself. What tribe was he from? Samuel was a Levite, something I never realized before reading this comment in the SAB. I'd always wondered how Samuel ended up where he did in life without being a Levite, but since he is one, no problem. Oh, how do I know? The verse here in 1Samuel never names the tribe of Ephraim, only the mountain of Ephraim. Levites lived all over the place, and Samuel's parents happened to live in Ephraim.

Now Samuel's father had two wives. The fact that the Bible mentions this without condemning it does not, in my mind, imply endorsement. In general, I stand on my previous statements on the matter, but recent political developments present me with an excellent example of the flaw in logic. I have recently written much on Proposition 8, the proposed amendment to the California Constitution banning same-sex marriage. In all my writing, I never endorsed either side of the issue. In failing to take a side, the logic here implies both (A) that I endorse same-sex marriage, and (B) that I endorse the banning of same-sex marriage. Clearly, I cannot endorse both and the fact is, I endorse neither. The Bible likewise by silence does not endorse any position on this matter.

As for the note on verse 5, I tend to think of a phrase like "the LORD had shut up her womb" as simply a colloquial way of saying "she had no children", which after all is what it boils down to. However, it may in fact be the case that God has made Hannah barren for the purpose of setting up the story we are about to see unfold. Samuel was one of the most important prophets in Israel's history, and without his mother's problems in procreating, his life might have been very different.

The story of Samuel's birth has some parallels to the stories of Samson and John the Baptist, and I call your attention to the former for my comments on long hair, which I think are implied to be applying in Samuel's case. The claim that Samuel's hair would never be cut implies that Hannah is dedicating him to the service of God.

The interchange between Hannah and Eli is an interesting one, because as a priest, Eli is supposed to be a representative of God*, and yet he keeps making largely baseless assumptions about Hannah without consulting God. First he assumes that she must be drunk because he sees her praying (huh?), and then in what I assume to be embarrassment, he more or less assures Hannah that God's going to grant her wish, without finding out what it was. This is why I tend to take it with a grain of salt when a person in the Bible says that such-and-such thing is the "will of God". Anyone, including Christians, can fall into the trap of setting too much store in such a statement. In this case, however, things turn out alright.

I honestly don't know what the SAB is on about with its last marginal note on this chapter. A married couple having sex is far from scandalous, so I guess the "sex" markup is just matter-of fact? The really interesting thing here in my mind (but I suppose it's not marked because it's not a contradiction or some such thing) is that after Samuel is born, Hannah tells Elkanah that she has dedicated Samuel with a vow. As mentioned elsewhere in the Bible, it's part of the Mosaic Law that a married woman's vow made without her husband's knowledge is not binding unless her husband allows it. Elkanah is really being quite kind to Hannah by ancient Israelite standards, allowing her vow to stand and essentially giving up his child. He would have been well within his rights in that culture to tell her she couldn't fulfill her vow, keep the kid and give him a haircut.

* There is an interesting and humorous facet to this story that's easy to miss. I know, because I missed it even this time reading it, despite already knowing about it. In the footnotes of Robert Alter's translation of Samuel, he points out that this is a typical "annunciation scene", also pointing out parallels between this story and those of the birth of Samson, Isaac, and John the Baptist. The weird bit is that when Hannah is sitting there praying for a son, it would be a typical time for an angel to appear and say, "Fear not, Hannah, for God hath heard thy prayer, etc..." Instead, a fat, half-blind, ineffective priest walks up to her and accuses her of being drunk. Eli has missed the fact that he's witnessing a moment of historical significance for the nation of Israel, and in doing so, he essentially flubs his lines.

The house of him that hath his shoe loosed (Ruth 4)

So Boaz goes to the gate of the city and waits. The purpose is twofold: he's expecting the nearer kinsman to come through the gate eventually, and in that location, the elders of the city will be present to act as witnesses to whatever comes to pass. (Important men of the city in those days tended to sit by the city gate and talk about civic matters.) The man comes along and Boaz flags him down.

Boaz informs the man that Naomi has returned, and a goel is needed to buy back her sold land. Boaz tells this man that he is willing to do it, but this man has first right to it. The man agrees to buy the field. Boaz points out that along with the field, the goel has to marry Ruth, a Moabite woman, and give her children. The kinsman doesn't like the sound of this, and refuses, giving his shoe to Boaz in apparent accordance with Deuteronomy 25:10.

This is exactly what Boaz wanted, and he declares to all assembled that he is buying the land back, paying off the debt of Elimelech, Naomi and Ruth, and marrying Ruth in order that he might reestablish the inheritance of Elimelech. The people pronounce blessings on Boaz, both a straightforward one ("The LORD make the woman that is come into thine house like Rachel and like Leah, which two did build the house of Israel.") and a very strange one ("And let thy house be like the house of Pharez, whom Tamar bare unto Judah"). This second blessing is odd, because it's a reference to what is probably one of the more shameful chapters in Israel's early history, but most likely, the reason for the blessing was twofold: First, Boaz and perhaps several others there were descendants of Pharez, and so it might be fitting to remember not just the founding of the tribes of Israel, but the founding of their own tribe within the nation. Secondly, there is an interesting similarity between the two stories, both involving a non-Israelite woman whose first husband died and had to be given a son by the second-closest living relative.

The story closes with a genealogy from Pharez to David through Obed, the son of Ruth, reminding us that despite the fact that Jewish men to the present pray daily thanks to God that they are Jews and not gentiles, men and not women, and free and not slaves, it was the work of a gentile woman under the enslavement of a debt that led to the establishment of Israel's greatest dynasty.

Allegorically, who is this nearer kinsman? Well, if we're taking a Christian approach to this, who had the first chance to redeem the nation of Israel, but was not able to do so? This first kinsman may represent the Mosaic Law, which does not have the ability to redeem, but has to be given the first opportunity to at least make an attempt. In the end, though, there was a need for a redeemer who was willing to give up everything to redeem. (Admittedly, this part of the allegory is a bit murky.)

Is there significance to the shoe thing? I think so. It's actually quite surprising how many times in the Bible there is talk of the removing of shoes at significant transitional points in history. Most people remember that Moses was asked to remove his shoes when he approached the burning bush (Exodus 3:5), but the point I like the best is a point from the New Testament that actually appears in all four Gospels:

Matthew 3:11 "he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear:"
Mark 1:7 "There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose."
Luke 3:16 "one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose"
John 1:27 "He it is, who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose."

Why would John the Baptist be so concerned with Jesus' shoes? As we have seen, removing another person's shoes is symbolic of that person having failed to perform an important duty to you. I believe John is saying there is no portion of the Law that Jesus will fail to fulfill, and His redemption will be complete.

What is it in the allegory that is really being redeemed, though? Well, in the days of ancient Israel, when the land was sold, the title was written on a trust deed scroll which was sealed until someone should come to redeem it. Since it was sealed, information had to be written on the outside of the scroll so that people could remember what was inside it, and who had the right to open it. Because of the nature of scrolls, this was one of the few times that a scroll would be written on both sides. Suggestive?

And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof? (Revelation 5:1,2)

It has been suggested by some scholars of Apocalyptic literature that this "book" (a scroll), which by its format is clearly some sort of trust deed, may in fact be the trust deed to the earth, which in some esoteric manner was sold by Adam to Satan. Whatever the nature of the transaction that led to the earth being sold and needing to be redeemed, it does seem clear that Satan owns the land for the time being, as he offered to give it to Christ during His temptation in the wilderness. If the world were not Satan's to give, why would it be a temptation to offer it? But to get it the wrong way? That simply wouldn't do. Christ paid the full price for the earth with His blood on the cross, and in so doing redeemed us all from the debt that our ancestors left to us. Not out of a sense of power or acquisition, for He had all that He needed already, but out of a deep love that the love between a man and his new bride, however powerful that may be, can only be a mere shadow thereof.

How say the scribes that Christ is the son of David? (Matthew 1:18-25)

Having finished Joshua, I now intend to turn back to Exodus and do some more work there for a few chapters and then I'll come back to where I left off here after a while and start in on Judges, which is probably the ugliest book of the Bible, loaded full of plenty of sex and violence. For the moment though, I'd been considering going back an correcting the mistake I made before for reasons I do not recall. Two years ago, I did a special Christmas side track and covered Matthew 2 and Luke 2, which was sort of nice. However, I don't know what I was thinking when I skipped over the last few verses of Matthew 1 and the whole of Luke 1, which are closely related to the Christmas story, if not actually part of it. I intend to remedy that now.

Right after finishing up a genealogy, Matthew jumps right into the story of Joseph's side of the story leading up to Jesus' birth. Joseph was engaged to Mary, who of course was supposed to be a virgin, but he found out that she was pregnant, which tends to be pretty damning evidence. In those days, being engaged was a legal status that pretty much had the weight of being married, and Joseph had the right to have her put to death as an adulteress. Instead, he chose to have a divorce quietly and not shame her publicly. (The Bible calls Joseph a "just man" here not necessarily as a general description of his character, although many take it that way, but rather in the context of the fact that he viewed it his legal duty to divorce Mary when he found her to be pregnant.)

The SAB asks a question about Joseph that seems odd to me, because really, the answer seems pretty apparent. Was Joseph Jesus' father? Yes and no. Joseph was not the biological father of Jesus, but he was the legal father. This also answers an unasked but implied question of the SAB as to what the point is of giving a genealogy of Joseph when he's not the father. It's understood by most people that the genealogy of Joseph shows that if there were still a Davidic monarchy in Israel at the time of Jesus, then Joseph would have been the King rather a poor carpenter. As his adopted son, Jesus inherits the royal line of David.

(I do find it interesting that none of the verses mentioned by the SAB there actually mention Joseph by name, but all refer to Jesus as being the "son of David". It's interesting because here there seems to be the understanding that a person's descendant, no matter how many generations down, can be referred to as a "son", while that understanding appears absent elsewhere.)

The fact is that Jesus' lineage through His mother is considered to be important, as there is a complicated bit of prophecy having to do with a curse on the Davidic line. When I do come to the New Testament in full, I'll have a bit of fun going over the genealogies in Matthew and Luke, and explaining the supposed purpose that most Christians give to those differing lists, and reasons why there is both merit and lingering doubts about the explanation. If any reader is really curious, I'm sure there are a plethora of commentaries out there on this matter. In short, Jesus' lineage is supposedly indicative that He is the legal heir of King Solomon but only a blood descendant of David through another of David's children.

Verse 23 concerns an old prophecy from Isaiah. Many people have picked apart this verse as not being a valid prophecy of Jesus for the very reason the SAB lists, that the Hebrew word "`almah" used here for "virgin" could just as well mean "young woman". Although technically true, there are some problems with this. First of all, what kind of "sign" would it be for a "young woman" to have a child? That happens pretty much every day. Secondly, when the Jews in the time shortly before Jesus was born translated the book of Isaiah into Greek, they chose to use the Greek word "parthenos" which is not vague, but clearly means "virgin". They understood that it was a miraculous sign. Thirdly and finally, this is one of those odd places in the Bible where detractors make what I consider to be very strange: "Jesus raised people from the dead, but it's not like he's the only one who ever did that." "Well, Jesus may have driven demons out of a guy, but why did he have to pick on the pig farmers?" "Okay, so Jesus was born of a virgin, so what?" Are you serious?! Matthew meant what he said; does it really matter that the word choice in Isaiah was too nuanced for 20th century skeptics? How often does something like this happen to humans?

The same prophecy says that the child will be called "Emmanuel", which the SAB rightly notes is not a name Jesus is ever called. However it is worth noting that the name is Hebrew for "God with us", which is the very theological concept behind Jesus' incarnation, so this may be figurative speech. Some people have suggested that while people on earth called Him Jesus, the angels refer to Him as Emmanuel. This is an interesting theory, but there's not much to support it as far as I am aware.

The last issue in this chapter is that of whether or not Mary was an eternal virgin. Of course, not being a Catholic, I don't much care. In fact, I've heard many people suggest that other than to fulfill the Isaiah prophecy, there is no real reason for Mary to have been a virgin, and certainly once they were married, Joseph had every right to have sex with her. So why does Joseph wait to have sex with her until Jesus is born? Who knows? However, in defense of the Catholic belief that Mary was an eternal virgin, I don't quite buy that this particular verse is saying that Joseph and Mary had sex. I assume they did because the Bible says Jesus had brothers (although there are other possible explanations for that), but simply saying that a thing didn't happen before a certain point in time doesn't necessarily imply that it happened after that point in time.

O ye children of Benjamin, gather yourselves (Gen 45-46)

Ugh, sorry for not updating, my adoring fans (all three or four of you) but I've been down with a nasty stomach flu. Still, it probably beats spending several years in an Egyptian prison, I guess.

So Joseph is overcome with emotion, and he orders all of the Egyptians out of the room, beginning to weep so loudly that apparently a lot of people outside hear him. All alone with his brothers, he no doubt switches to speak to them in their own language, astonishing them with the proclamation "I am Joseph." Apparently, they say nothing, being completely dumbstruck. He repeats himself, and assures them that he is not going to take revenge on them, but that he believes it was all a part of God's plan to save the family from the famine. He invites them to come and live in the land of Goshen, and Pharaoh gives them some wagons to bring back all their belongings. Joseph gives them a lot of stuff to bring back with them, and tells them to be quick about it, and not stop to argue or get worried about their fate.

They go back to Jacob, and give him the news that not only is Joseph alive, but that he has a high position in the government of Egypt. This apparently causes Jacob to have something like a heart attack, but he revives, and agrees to come back to Egypt to see Joseph "...before I die," no doubt facing the fact that his life can't be too much longer (he's 130 years old, after all).

At the beginning of chapter 46, Jacob stops in Beersheba to give sacrifices to God, as his father and grandfather had done. There, God speaks to him in a similar manner that he had spoken to Abraham in chapter 22; in both cases, there is a difficult journey to be taken ahead that will have a happy ending. Yes, God calls Jacob "Jacob" rather than "Israel", and you can decide to take that as a serious problem and contradiction to earlier verses, but as I have said, I don't have a real problem with this personally. A new issue here, however is the promise God makes in verse 4 that he "will also surely bring [Jacob] up again." The SAB points out, quite obviously correctly, that Jacob dies in Egypt. Well, there are two possible explanations, and I personally would lean toward the latter myself. Firstly, it may simply be the fact that Jacob's body would eventually come to be buried back in Canaan. In the bodily sense, Jacob indeed came back up from Egypt. The other likely possibility is that when God claims immediately previous to this claim that He "will there make of [Jacob] a great nation", it should be clear that He's talking about the distant future, and when He says He will bring him up again, He's referring to his descendants. After all, it's a recurring literary method throughout the Bible to refer to a nation by the name of its king or patriarch. (A third option occurs to me as I finish this paragraph: it may be a spiritual concept that is being conveyed here, but it's hard to say. The fact that God promises to go into Egypt is very interesting, as most deities of that ancient period were considered to only have power within a limited geographical boundary.)

Most of the rest of chapter 46 is essentially a "roll call" of the family. The SAB points out some things that need some clarification. In verse 11, three sons of Levi are listed, but in Ezra 8:18, another son, Mahli, is mentioned. So who is Mahli? A peek at Numbers 3:20 verifies the answer to be the most likely one in such matters: Mahli is Levi's grandson, and any descendant of Levi could be called a "son of Levi" by Biblical conventions.

In verse 21, we have a long list of the sons of Benjamin, a list that does not agree with other lists given elsewhere. There are a lot of things that could be said about this, one of which, like the previous point, is that grandsons are sometimes called sons. That doesn't clear up the whole list by far, though. There's a lot of stuff to get into in 1 Chronicles, which is a rather daunting book to slog through. (I salute Steve Wells' perseverance in checking all this stuff out!) In any case, in addition to Ard and Naaman being grandsons, we can see that Shupham and Hupham (which can easily be transliterated from Hebrew into Shuppim and Huppim) are children of Ir, who himself is a son of Bela; this implies that these "sons" of Benjamin are actually great-grandsons! (It's slightly possible that the "Huppim" in the Genesis passage is the same, but that might be a bit of a stretch; Benjamin doesn't seem anywhere near old enough for great-grandchildren.) The KJV concordance notes that Jediael is "maybe the same as 'Ashbel'," but gives no explanation of this. Perhaps it's because Ashbel is only missing from 1Chr. 7, and that would be convenient, I don't know. Interestingly, "Aharah" means "a following brother", and may not be meant to be a name at all. Clearly, the whole matter of genealogies can be rather confusing, and various genealogies in the Bible can be edited in different ways for different purposes. For instance, the Numbers 26 passage probably refers particularly to families within the tribe of Benjamin that had a large number of fighting men within them. I really can't begin to make a whole lot of sense out of 1Chronicles, I admit. (As to Benjamin's supposed age, I addressed that in the last paragraph of yesterday's post.)

Summing up in verse 27, the author claims there were 70 people in Joseph's family (not counting women, I think?), but Stephen, in the book of Acts, claims there were 75. Not at all obvious this one, but there is an explanation for it. Stephen, as many in the days the New Testament was written did, quoted from the Septuagint, in which five more descendants of Joseph are named for some reason. Since Joseph didn't come with his family out of Canaan into Egypt, I suppose that technically, neither number is correct. (Also, without knowing the numbers of wives and/or daughters...you get the picture.) Robert Alter points out that 70 is probably just a nice round number.

Jacob and Joseph are finally reunited, and Joseph tells his family to tell the Egyptians that they are cattlemen, "for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians." This is an odd thing to tell them, as it's not quite clear what the purpose is, nor does there seem to be any extrabiblical collaboration for this statement. Perhaps due to the fact that the Egyptians are either agricultural or urban, they have a hard time accepting nomadic shepherds? In any case, it may help them to acquire the land of Goshen in some way.

Separate yourselves from the people of the land, and from the strange wives (Gen 36)

Before the Bible dives into the story of Joseph, which due to the amount of space and detail lavished on him is in my opinion the real focus of the book of Genesis, it takes a side-trip into the genealogy of the Edomites, the descendants of Esau. This genealogy, while yes, fairly boring to the modern reader, probably was of some interest to the people living in the time when Edom was a prominent nation neighboring Israel. It also serves as a sort of transition between the strories of Jacob and Joseph in the same way that Ishamel's genealogy in chapter 25 served as a transition from Abraham to Isaac. In both cases, there is the concept that even though this son was not the one given the special covenental promise, God had blessed them as well. (My comments on the avoidance of genealogies are here.)

There are a number of oddities in this genealogy, which makes me wonder if the boringness of these genealogies sometimes caused the scribes to be a bit more lax in copying them than in other places. Before we even get to Bashemath, there's the matter of Anah, which the SAB interestingly misses. There may be two people here named Anah, but if so, it's an uncle/niece, and I'm finding it hard to believe that someone would name their daughter after their brother even in modern times, much less in the ancient Middle East. In this chapter, Anah is referred to as: the parent of Aholibamah (vv. 2, 14, 18, 25), a "daughter" of Zibeon (vv. 2, 14), a son of Zibeon (v. 24), a son of Seir (v. 20), a Horite "duke" (v. 29). The only other place that the name Anah is mentioned is in 1Chronicles, where we also see mention of a son of Seir and a son of Zibeon by this name, which might lend credence to the idea that there were two of them, but I strongly suspect that the "daughter" references at least are a mistake in gender. (In verse 24, the translation "mules" is a bit suspect. In Robert Alter's translation of Genesis, he assumes that the Hebrew word "yemim" is an accidental transposition of the letters of "mayim", which means "waters". Finding water in a desert wilderness is something perhaps more noteworthy than finding mules.)

Another minor matter that I noticed in trying to sort out the names in this genealogy was that Korah was listed as a son of Eliphaz in verse 16, which seems to also be a mistake, as the only other use of that name in this chapter is in reference to a half-brother of Eliphaz. Sure, it's possible that Eliphaz had a son named Korah that the writer forgot to mention earlier in the chapter, but I'm inclined to see this as a copyist error somewhere. Oh, and then there's the issue of whether these people are Hittites, Hivites, or Horites; it appears that may be largely interchangeable terms.

Okay, Bashemath's father... I ducked this one before, let me take another look. I swear that the SAB had a page dedicated to the subject of Esau's wives, because this is indeed a touchy subject, and I know I read about it somewhere on the net. I thought it was there. Verses in question:

26:34 And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite:

28:9 Then went Esau unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives which he had Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael Abraham's son, the sister of Nebajoth, to be his wife.

36:2-3 Esau took his wives of the daughters of Canaan; Adah the daughter of Elon the Hittite, and Aholibamah the daughter of Anah the daughter of Zibeon the Hivite; and Bashemath Ishmael's daughter, sister of Nebajoth.

It really seems that something is very mixed up here. I suppose it might be possible that Esau had more than three wives, although it would be very odd not only to have six wives, but to have among those six two sets of sisters and two wives with the same name. There may be an explanation for all of this, but I don't know what it might be.

Basically, I'm saying despite the fact I've addressed the issues of polygamy and the Amalekites, I don't think I can explain most of this chapter, as it's one of the stranger genealogies in the Bible in my opinion.

There was a certain disciple at Damascus (Gen 15)

An interesting feature of chapter 15 is the fact that verse 2 is the only mention of the name of Abram's chief servant, Eliezer. This guy has a few important roles to play, but for the most part he does it rather anonymously. Some have suggested that his name, which means "God is help", has a certain suggestive symbolism to it. There are a few moments in the life of Abram that are considered by Christians to be prefiguring of events in the early Church, and in those stories, Abram represents God the Father and Isaac represents God the Son. So what about the Holy Spirit? Well, apparently the third person of the Trinity, who is never given a name in scripture, but is sometimes referred to as a "helper" (the word translated "comforter" in John 14:26 could also be translated "helper") is represented by Eliezer. I may get back to this in a later chapter.

One of the reasons that Eliezer is so important at this moment is that Abram has no child, and verses 2-4 are, translated into plainer, more modern words: Abram says, "Thanks for all the wealth you've given me, God, but I don't have any children. I guess when I die I'll leave it all to Eliezer." God says, "No, I'm going to give you a child that will actually be your blood descendant." Then in verse 5, God says that Abram's descendants are one day going to be so numerous, trying to count them would be like trying to count the stars. Some people interpret this as meaning that the Jews will be plentiful, some think it means all nations that trace descent from Abram (which would include the Ishmaelites, the Edomites, and a few others) and some interpret it to mean all followers of Judaism, Islam and Christianity. One thing it clearly doesn't mean is Abram's immediate descendants, as he had only about eight.

Last thing worth noting before I address the objections is verse 6, a verse that Christians consider a very significant one. Off and on, I've had to address the issue of whether Noah was a "righteous" man, and of course, the SAB points out others that are called as such. In Christianity, (and perhaps in Judaism to an extent, I'm not sure) there's a concept of self-righteousness vs. imputed righteousness. Everyone who tries to be righteous by their own merit has the former, and the Bible says "...our righteousnesses are as filthy rags..." (The SAB has many notes on this passage, but they ought to add the "Language" icon to it; the original Hebrew phrase is translated delicately, and literally means "used menstrual cloths". How's that for an image?) It's not that it's wrong to try to do good, but that deep down, we're trying to fool ourselves into believing that we're better than we really are. Now imputed righteousness, which is the kind I believe Noah had, is where a person, despite their failings, decides to trust in the Lord and accept that He is good. The epistle of James talks a lot about how real righteousness of this sort is intertwined with doing good things, but most of the Bible makes it clear that it comes first and foremost from a relationship with God. Abram had this relationship.

Okay, now to the rest of this chapter. Abram cuts up some animals and has a vision. What's it all about? This is an odd one, as this is not a sacrifice in the usual sense. Note that no altar is used and the animals are not burned up. My understanding of this chapter is that it's a cultural thing from Abram's time. When two people wanted to make a covenant with each other, they would take some animals, chop them in half like this, and the two parties of the agreement would walk down the middle. Probably like the sacrifices, the idea was that the goriness of the scene would be a reminder of the seriousness of the matter, and that if one should break the covenant, they might suffer a similar fate. Sure, it's a bit barbaric, but it's a symbolic gesture that Abram would understand. Also, note that there is no mention of Abram walking down the middle, only that God, in the form of "a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp" goes through the middle. This promise to Abram is a unilateral covenant with no conditions: Abram will be the father of a great nation, and that nation will inherit the land of Canaan. The fact that this was not fulfilled in Abram's own lifetime was mentioned a few chapters ago, and I addressed it there.

Then God tells Abram that the Egyptian captivity is going to happen before all this comes to pass, and that it partly has something to do with the Amorites. I thought I had mentioned that before, but I can't find it, so let me risk repeating and explain. Apparently, many of the nations in Canaan were immoral, and God was planning to wipe them out, but He was going to give them a few more years to clean up their act before He got rid of them and gave their land to the Israelites. He didn't just destroy these nations because he wanted to give something to Abram; He was using the Israelites as a tool to get things done.

So, how long was the captivity? 400 years or 430? Well, it depends on how you count it. Note that the wording in this chapter is different than in Exodus 12:40. I believe what's going on here is that the young nation of Israel went into Egypt during a famine, and stayed there 430 years. However, it wasn't until they had been there 30 years that they became slaves. Remember, the period of slavery didn't start immediately upon arrival; at first they were welcome guests treated with honor. How many generations was that? The SAB says seven, which contradicts the claim of "in the fourth generation" in verse 16, but what is that verse talking about? I believe it's not talking about the fourth generation from Abram, but the fourth generation from the beginning of their slavery. That would mean four generations after the death of the tribal patriarchs. So Kohath is the first generation, and Moses is the third, making the generation after Moses (and Moses was quite elderly when he led them out of Egypt) the generation God is talking about. Of course, generations aren't always well-defined. My oldest cousin is about 40 years old, but her father recently remarried and had a new child. Age-wise, my cousin is old enough to be her sibling's grandmother. So what is a generation? In this case, it's oddly enough about 100 years! There's something I think is more worth questioning than the number of generations.

The LORD will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation (Gen 14)

Ugh, Amalekites... What a drag. (No offense to any Amalekites reading my blog!)

The Amalekites are this tribe of people who live in the general region of Canaan. They get defeated about six or seven times throughout the Bible, a couple times being "utterly destroyed". But they just KEEP COMING BACK! What the heck? Sometimes I feel like I'm helping the SAB's cause more than countering it, but the SAB might do well to have a reference page just for all the varied mentions of Amelekites and how they pop up in some strange places.

Here in chapter 14, the SAB points out that the Amalekites are mentioned three generations before the birth of Amalek, who one would think it would be safe to assume was the patriarch of the Amalekites. After all, Cush is the father of the Cushites, Canaan is the father of the Canaanites, Israel is the father of the Israelites, etc. Well, I believe the Amalek mentioned in chapter 36 does indeed become the father of a tribe of people called the Amalekites eventually. But one would be right to ask, what the heck are Amelekites doing back here before Amalek's birth? These can't be the same people, so why the same name?

Well, although it's strange that two separate nations might have the same name, it's certainly not impossible. For instance, there is a tribe in Oklahoma known as the "Kado", but there are also ethnic groups with that name in Chad and Burma, and the groups have nothing in common but their name. I think in this case, the real key to understanding what's likely to be going on is to look at the Hebrew. The name "Amalek" means "dweller in a valley". Thus "Amalekites" would really mean "the people who live in the valley". It may or may not be a genuine name, and could be simply a label that could be applied to any nation that happened to live in a valley. I think that in general, when this name appears in the Bible, there is a chance that it is referring to a people that has little in common with the other Amalekites other than happening to perhaps be located in a valley. That certainly seems to be the case here.

I'm not going to look into all of the Hebrew for this chapter, but there may be more of interest, such as "the Zuzims in Ham" mentioned in verse 5, which apparently is, rather than a title, just a generic term for nomadic people, and "Shaveh Kiriathaim" which means a plain with two cities.

Also, since I've already touched on slavery as an ancient Middle Eastern custom that differs from our modern concept, I'm not going to respond to the notes on verse 14 and 15, but refer you to my earlier post, and the comments following.

I am however going to finish this post out with some comment on Melchizedek, as promised earlier. Melchizedek appears here in verses 18-20, and it's the only place he appears, but the Bible has a fair amount to say about him. Who is he? His name means something like "King of Righteousness", and he's the king and high priest of Salem, a place with a name that means "peace", and eventually becomes Jerusalem, the capital city of Israel, location of the Jewish Temple, and location of Christ's crucifixion.

Melchizedek is an interesting person for numerous reasons. His ancestry is not mentioned (it's usually the practice to say a person's name and the name of their father), and in fact Hebrews 7 says that he was "Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually." This is suggestive, but before I follow this line, I'd like to also point out that he's in the unique position of being simultaneously a king and a high priest; in the law of Israel, a person was never allowed to be both, and you don't really see it in other nations either. (Call it "separation of church and state"; even God thinks it's a good idea!) Apparently some scholars have suggested it might be Shem who, oddly enough, is still alive according to the numbers in chapter 11's genealogy. Other people have other interesting ideas. The most significant idea, however, is that some believe this to be the first "Christophany" as it is called: a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus on the earth. Note that this guy knows who Abram is, knows who Abram's God is, and Abram gives him a tithe (one-tenth of his spoils from the war), something that in Israel's future was something people were supposed to give to their priesthood in order to honor God. Also note that Melchizedek brings bread and wine, a traditional communion plate long before communion was instituted. Whoever this was, he was definitely a messenger from God.

At the end of the story, the king of Sodom offers to give all the material spoils of the war to Abram, but he declines, saying that while he was willing to team up with the army of Sodom to win this war, he's not willing to take anything from Sodom as a gift beyond that. It seems that Abram already knows that something's not quite right with this place.

Am I my brother's keeper? (Gen 11:10-32)

Yay! This will be a short post. I've already addressed just about everything that's to be found in the rest of chapter 11, so I'll drop some links and give a few short comments. At least, I hope so.

The extraordinarily long lives of these people are, in my opinion, a residual effect of whatever let people live so long before the flood. Whatever was making these people so healthy is quickly going away, as their lives get progressively shorter generation after generation. I've already commented on the paternity of Salah, but there are new problems that must be sorted through when we finally get to Abram in verse 26.

The first question is regarding the timeline of Abram's life. How old was Abram when he left Haran? Okay, let me sort some things out. First of all, although the SAB probably knows better since it gave no comment on it, it's worth nothing to alleviate confusion that the city Abram's family moved to after Ur was "Charan", which has a similar pronunciation to "Haran", Abraham's brother and Lot's father; that's why the KJV renders both names the same. I just wanted to make sure nobody gets stuck there, because it is easy to get confused.

Okay, back to the first verse in question. The quote of Gen 11:26 on the above page in the SAB is a partial quote. The full verse is important. When the Bible says "And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran." there's no reason to believe that these three sons are triplets, nor that the verse is giving them in birth order. (See the final paragraph of this post.)

5:32 "And Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth."
7:6 "And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth."

So Shem should have been one hundred when the flood started, and "two years after the flood" he ought to be 102, or even 103 or 104 if by "two years after the flood" the Bible means two years after the end of the flood. The fact is, I strongly believe that Shem was Noah's second son, and Japheth was the first-born, two or three years older than Shem. Likewise, Haran was Abram's older brother; older by about 60 years. This leads to the interesting concept that Lot, while Abram's nephew, could easily have been older than Abram. His age is never mentioned to my knowledge.

But, was Lot Abram's nephew? Well, yes, he was. The SAB notes accurately that Lot is referred to as Abram's "brother", but this is hardly a problem. The real problem is in understanding the looseness of the way familial relationships are expressed in the Biblical Hebrew. Ancestors, regardless of the number of generations past, are often called "father", while likewise descendants are called "sons". In this case, "brother" is a word that can literally mean brother, or it can also mean a man who is a near relative. Heck, it can also mean a really close friend, as David referred to Jonathan as his "brother", and Solomon referred to his wife as his "sister", which I believe he meant in a non-literal sense, unlike Abraham. I think in chapter 14, the word "brother" is used to emphasize how important Lot was to Abram, and it may have also been the case that they were raised like brothers since, as was noted before, Lot's father died, and he was possibly raised by his grandfather.

These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations (Gen 10)

Minor point about the SAB's first note on chapter 10: this is actually the third genealogy (fourth if you count chapter one as the genealogy of the earth), after 4:17-24 and chapter 5 as a whole. The point is taken, however; Paul says to avoid genealogies, but the whole Bible is peppered with them throughout. I really don't know what this is about. My study Bible suggests the possibility that some of the pre-gnostic Christian cults were building strange doctrines based on obscure points in biblical genealogies, and Paul was warning not to take genealogies beyond their face value. They serve a purpose, but a very mundane one for the most part. I mean, could you imagine someone building some sort of bizarre cult based on some tiny little passage like IChronicles 4:9-10? How ridiculous would that be? (I've probably offended somebody; oh well...)

The SAB notes, as many others have, the mention of languages in verses 5, 20 and 31, and notes that this provides evidence against the story of the tower of Babel narrative in the next chapter. I disagree, and for similar reasons I disagreed with some items previously. It's always made sense to me that when the people were divided up into languages at Babel, they were divided by families, and so when the division eventually happened, these families migrated apart from each other and became nations, and so these nations were nations of distinct languages. I'll be honest though, and say that I do take the Babel narrative with a grain of salt, but mostly because I don't know much about formation of languages. There are thousands of different languages in the world today, and sometimes it's hard to imagine they all came from the same place. Still, I suppose if I can believe in something as far-fetched as the flood, this ought to be easy, right?

Verse 24 presents a true problem, at least, when you compare it to the genealogy in Luke. (Here's a suggestion for skeptics: maybe Paul said to avoid genealogies because if you really look into the genealogies in the Bible, it'll make you quite confused since they're occasionally hard to reconcile if you really read them closely. I did notice that the SAB catalogs a lot of these oddities and discrepancies.) Luke mentions some guy named Cainan between Arphaxad and Salah/Shelah, and you've got to wonder where he came from. One possibility is telescoping. Mainly I mention this concept because I've heard that many Biblical scholars explain most of the discrepancies in Matthew's genealogy by this phenomenon which the SAB notes on verse 17 in that chapter. In Hebrew, genealogies often are allowed that sort of flexibility, that a grandparent or great-grandparent can be called a parent, although it's odd Matthew tries to make some nifty magic number case by using this shorthand. I'm totally going on a tangent, here, though, because I don't really think this makes sense for Luke (although it's a distant possibility) because it would mean Luke (who wasn't even Jewish) knew some information about these genealogies that weren't in the Torah. That's highly unlikely. What's far more likely is that this is an error by some early copyist of Luke's Gospel, and perhaps he accidentally copied part of verse 37, which includes the phrase, "which was the son of Cainan," in it.

Only one more thing remains to comment on in this chapter, and that's verse 25, and this guy named "Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided". The SAB is right; I have heard creationists try to claim that this passage is referring to continental drift somehow. I find it unlikely (although not impossible) that continental drift somehow happened all at once just a few thousand years ago. It is far more likely that this is referring to the way the people of the earth were divided in the Babel incident. Peleg was likely born right after this moment in Biblical history, and was named by Eber (from whom some believe the word "Hebrew" comes) to commemorate the event.

What's up with this Nimrod guy? How come the SAB doesn't ask about him? That's a weird story, isn't it? Note that his name means "rebel", and he's the one who founds the city of Babel, which we get to in the next chapter.

And called their name Adam (Gen 5)

This is going to be fun, since despite the large number of notes in chapter 5 of the SAB, most of them are of the same nature, and so I think we can dispense of this whole chapter in one post. Let's see...

The first point that the SAB brings up is the verse I've used for the title here. "So the woman's name was Adam, too!" The SAB notes as an absurdity. Well, the answer is, "Yes." Sure, it's not something you get from a surface reading of the KJV, but most people know that "Adam" is the Hebrew word for "man", so in a symbolic sense and in a very real sense, we are all "Adam."

As I noted before, the Bible can admittedly be a bit sexist when it comes to details, and daughters are indeed very rarely mentioned. So while verse 4 contains the first mention of daughters, there may actually have been various children of both genders before Seth was born. I myself had often assumed that this genealogy was mentioning firstborns only, and that they were coincidentally only sons, but what's really very likely going on here is we're tracing the male lineage of Noah from Adam. Sons not in the lineage and all daughters are not worth mentioning by name apparently. Even Noah's wife and three daughters-in-law aren't named despite their apparent importance to the story that unfolds after this.

So the big repeated note throughout this chapter is essentially, "Man, these guys sure lived to be pretty old!" I've heard a lot of theories about why these guys had such extended lifespans, and suffice it to say that most of them boil down to simply being so soon after the fall. They were living in a world that was new and fresh, and there probably weren't all the modern problems of disease that we have in modern times. Most theologians do believe that Adam was created to be immortal, so it took some time before the system really broke down and people started dying of natural causes. Whatever it is going on here, we'll see a contrast in the next genealogy. While having no particular value, I nonetheless present a little diagram I threw together last week when I was looking ahead at this chapter:

Enoch is an odd one, isn't he? The SAB has a lot to say about him, and indeed, he's strange. Let me address the three questions raised by the SAB in response to Enoch's story.

(1) Must everyone die? I suppose the SAB ought to have included the references to the prophet Elijah that it did in the second question here. (And it might have considered even discussing some odd interpretations of John 21:22 that are out there.) Yes, there are in fact two people in the Bible that didn't die: Enoch and Elijah. This coming despite the two verses quoted in the right-hand column. While the verses on the left are in some cases misunderstood, I'm going to focus on those two right-hand verses. When the Bible says "...death passed upon all men," we have to realize that there is room for exceptions. If there are a bunch of people going to sea in a leaky boat, and you say to them, "Everyone in that boat is going to drown," that doesn't mean that they can't get out of the boat and be safe. For whatever reason, Enoch and Elijah were allowed to "get out of the boat" if you will. The second verse is another matter that, if indeed a skeptic were to reject my reasoning here, the SAB needs to add some more notes to passages like John 11. Not only do we have a couple folks (at least) who don't die at all, but contrary to being "appointed unto men once to die," we have about half a dozen people in the Bible that die more than once, Lazarus being simply the best-known of the bunch. The real sense of this verse, as taken by theologians and run-of-the-mill Christians, is that under normal circumstances, people have one physical death to look forward to. The Bible gives us less than ten people that have non-normal circumstances in regards to the matter of death, so that's well over 99.99% of the world conforming to a literal interpretation of Hebrews 9:27.

(2) Has anyone ever ascended into heaven? This is a simpler one. My take on this is that nobody has ascended into Heaven and thereafter given testimony of it on earth. We do know that two people ascended to Heaven, and in fact, a lot of others ascended after their death, but what Jesus is saying in John 3:13 is that if you're looking for someone to tell you what Heaven is like, you've got nobody other than Jesus with that firsthand knowledge. (Of course, the SAB could consider this verse next to 2Cor. 12, although it describes an event after Jesus left.)

(3) Was Enoch the seventh from Adam? Yes, if you count Adam as #1, which is not at all unreasonable to do.

As a last note for this chapter, I'd like to take a side trip into Hebrew and talk about the meaning of these names. Maybe you've heard this before, I find it all fascinating. We know from the text that "Seth" means "appointed", and "Noah" means "comfort". The other names all mean something as well. The most interesting name on the list is probably Methuselah, whose name some have said means "his death will bring it." Methuselah died the same year as the flood.

The way of Cain (Gen 4:8-26)

Sure enough, as God warned Cain, his jealousy and selfishness eventually led to further sin. Cain murders his brother.

I think in order to stay consistent with its objections in verse 3:9 and elsewhere, the SAB really ought to mark every passage in which God asks a question. If God knows everything, why is he asking questions? Of course, if anyone did indeed have a problem with this, it should be especially clear in this passage that God is not asking questions that He doesn't know the answer to, as He proceeds to essentially immediately answer His own question in verse 10. God's looking for a confession from Cain, but all He gets is a smartass retort, "Am I my brother's keeper?" (It's an interesting parallel in the KJV that Abel was a "keeper" of sheep, and Cain's final word on his rivalry is to point out that he's not a "keeper". However, I looked, and this parallelism is not in the original Hebrew, so it's just an oddity of this particular translation.)

Anyway, for committing the second murder, Cain gets a curse. It's not clear at all to me what portion of this curse is punitive and what is just the natural consequence of his transgression. Being "a fugitive and a vagabond" seems like the sort of thing that just plain happens when you're a murderer, since you will eventually have to flee the scene of the crime, and it seems somewhat reasonable to assume that all of the people in the world at this point, however many they are (could be several, although probably not many) all live in the same general area, and are near relatives of his brother and him. So, he has to run away. As for the ground somehow being even more cursed for him than it was for his father in the previous chapter, I don't know what that's about. Perhaps since they are likely living near the garden of Eden, the ground in that area is nicer than in outlying regions. That's pretty speculative, though.

So Cain proceeds to complain about his punishment, and claims that people will try to kill him. I don't really understand why he is so certain this would be so, nor why God seems to agree that there is a risk and protects him. Actually, the whole "mark" thing is rather odd, and I wonder what sort of mark a person might have that would say to any person he met, "Hey, don't kill this guy!" but apparently, such a mark existed. (I don't buy that this has anything to do with dark-skinned people, especially since it's likely no descendants of Cain were on the ark.) Most likely, God is interested in preventing vigilante justice; Cain has already received a punishment from God, nothing more is needed.

Cain also says to God, "From thy face shall I be hid." This is not to say that God shall be unaware of the doings of Cain from this point onward, but rather that Cain is turning away from God, so to speak. God has an eye on everyone in the world, but not everyone has an eye on God. Sometimes my children, when they get angry, will turn their backs to me, effectively hiding themselves from [seeing] my face, but not becoming invisible. This is the same sense that is meant by "out from the presence of the LORD" in verse 16.

Starting in verse 17, we get a sort of life story and genealogy of Cain. Yes, Cain had a wife. No, the Bible doesn't say where she came from. Most likely, she was a sister, but as some others have pointed out, she could have been a niece (although such a niece probably would have been the offspring of two of Cain's siblings, so it hardly makes her less of a close relative genetically). They settle down somewhere far away from the rest of civilization and start a family.

They also start a city, which the SAB is right to be confused about in light of Cain's curse to be a "fugitive and a vagabond". Such people don't make cities. Some possibilities come to mind, though. Cain did remain a fugitive from the other part of society for all of his life, I think we can pretty safely assume. The curse may have simply been that he had to leave all that he had previously held dear and relatively become an outcast. Another couple of possibilities both have to do with that part of his curse being temporary. God said he'd have a hard time with planting "henceforth", but doesn't really give a timeframe for being a vagabond. Either eventually it just ran out and was no longer effective (not all natural results of sin last forever), or if it was a punitive sentence set on him by the Lord, then he simply refused to comply. In the latter case, building a city was yet another act of defiance, which may well fit with his character as we know it.

I guess I'll wrap up this post with a few comments on Lamech, Cain's great-great-great-grandson, of whom for some unknown reason quite a bit is said. Perhaps the reason is that he seems to be exceptionally evil, although he does seem to have okay kids. Lamech is the first noted polygamist in the Bible. I already mentioned my view on the Biblical subject of polygamy at the end of this post, and I think all that needs to be added is that it's hard to see (at least for me) that the Bible is setting this guy up as an example of righteousness and right living. Lamech makes a claim at the end of his story that although he is a murderer, in the manner that Cain was promised to be avenged "sevenfold", he would be avenged "seventy and sevenfold". The SAB calls this absurd and unfair, and I totally agree, but I also point out that this is Lamech talking about himself, not God saying anything about anyone at all.

Aw, heck, I'm going to consider that the end of the chapter for me. There's really nothing to say about the last two verses that hasn't already been said about the first two in yesterday's post. Have a great weekend, everyone!