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.

He had power over the angel, and prevailed (Gen 32)

More weirdness today in the life of Jacob; this guy just had some odd things happen to him, didn't he?

So when Jacob gets near home, he remembers that his brother wants him dead, and he starts to get nervous. He sends a few messengers ahead to tell his brother that he's coming back, and the messengers return with the news that Esau is riding out to meet Jacob with 400 men. Although the Bible doesn't say if Jacob said anything in response, I imagine if he did, it was something like, "Oh crap, I'm a dead man." He decides the thing to do is divide up everything he has (perhaps including his family) in to two equal groups, and if Esau starts attacking one of the groups, the other one is to run away quickly in hopes that they'd be spared.

Then he prays to God to save him from his brother's wrath, and comes up with another plan. He sends out a number of servants in groups with large amounts of livestock of various types, and he tells each group that when they meet Esau's party, they are to tell him that the livestock is a gift. Hoping that having these gifts go before him will make him more safe, he's willing to finally send his family at the rear, but he himself hesitates alone on the far side of the river. And here's where the really weird stuff starts.

It says Jacob is alone, but then it says, in the very same sentence, that he wrestles with another man. They fight to a standstill, and the man somehow manages to dislocate Jacob's hip, but Jacob still won't give in. The guy essentially says, "Look, we've been fighting all night, and we're not getting anywhere. Why don't you just give up?" Jacob insists on being blessed by this guy before letting go.

The guy (who may be God; Jacob seems to think so) asks Jacob his name. Whether God or not, I don't think this person is really asking for info, he's using the question as a segue into giving Jacob the new name of "Israel". Jacob asks for the man's name, but he refuses to give it. Weird.

Now, I'm not really clear on why it's a big issue (maybe it's just a little one?) but the SAB points out quite rightly that despite what verse 28 says, Jacob actually is still called Jacob by many people after this incident, including God. The reason I don't think it's an issue is because sometimes people change their names, and yet are still called by their old names. My mother, for instance, is known by many people as Mrs. Gardner because that was the surname of my stepfather, and she was married to him for a little over ten years. People who meet her for the first time after knowing me sometimes assume she is Mrs. Brucker, however, she goes by her maiden name. When she went back to her maiden name, she said she didn't want to be known as Mrs. Gardner anymore, but since so many people knew her by that name, she is still called that by many people to this day, and doesn't bother to correct them as far as I know. Jacob's name may have been changed, but it's not unreasonable to call him Jacob still, and not only do people call him that, but in the future, the nation of Israel would occasionally be called "Jacob" as well. Okay, yes, the verse actually says, "Thy name shall be called no more Jacob," but I'm just not clear on why this should disturb my confidence in the Bible.

Is this guy God, though? While Jacob says so according to the KJV and pretty much all the other translations I'm familiar with, there remains some ambiguity in this strange tale. The word translated "God" in these verses is elohim, a strange Hebrew word that, while often translated as "God", is actually plural in form. I may have mentioned it before, but here I think it's worth delving deeper into it. The KJV usually translates this word as "God", but also sometimes uses "god" or "goddess" if the context warrants it, a few times "judge", and once, "angels". Basically it's a word that expresses the concept of a powerful being. It may be possible that Jacob is wrestling with an angel, a prophet, or even some sort of demonic being. I think Jews tend to favor the idea that it's an angel, but I'm not at all certain about that. Many Christians do view this as being God, usually particularly an appearance of a pre-incarnate Christ. One might rightly wonder if indeed this is God, how is Jacob able to wrestle him to a standstill? It's a mystery to me.

Whatever the true nature of this confrontation, there is almost certainly a level at which this is all having symbolic significance. Jacob has spent his whole life, from before birth even, wrestling with his brother, his father, his father-in law, his wives, and even the occasional inanimate object, and now, he is wrestling with his fear and his faith in God. In the end, he is triumphant, and crosses the river to accept his fate and place his future in the hand of God.

Strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods (Gen 28)

Okay, chapter 28 has some more meat to it, although many of these questions are fairly easy to address.

First, the SAB notes as "intolerance" the fact that Isaac didn't want his son to marry a Canaanite woman. This may indeed be intolerance, but it's intolerance with a point. Even people who dislike intolerance tend to be intolerant of intolerant people. In this case, it was very likely the point that Isaac felt all of the local women were too pagan to be suitable for his sons, and was afraid these women would turn his heart from serving God. Apparently, the land of Abraham's youth is still considered a better place to get a wife, although I'm never too sure why.

Jacob goes off to his uncle Laban (Rebekah's brother) to look for a wife. This is a convoluted family tree by this time (Abraham marries his sister, Isaac marries his double-first cousin once removed, and Jacob is heading towards marrying his first cousin/double-second cousin once removed), so I had to sketch it out to track who was who and answer the question of who Laban's actual father is. It's Bethuel. Yes, the next chapter calls him the "son of Nahor", but (and I think I covered this before, but it's certainly not a little-known concept) saying that X is the son of Y is often simply a way of saying Y is an ancestor of X, not necessarily directly. Nahor is Laban's grandfather, and I'm speculating that the reason Jacob calls Laban the "son of Nahor" is that he's choosing a more prominent member of that family or perhaps accentuating the more distant relation that nonetheless is traced through only males by way of Abraham.

After Jacob is sent away, Esau gets married to yet another wife. No, this is not okay; it's wrong on numerous levels. Esau is going against his parents' wishes to marry this woman, he's already got wives, and he seems to be doing it to get some sort of reaction from his parents. As I said before, Esau is not set up as an example of good morality.

Jacob has a dream along the way, and he sees a ladder going up to Heaven, and God reiterates the promises He gave to Jacob's father and grandfather. Did this promise come true? Maybe, it depends on how you read it. He calls the place Bethel or "House of God", which he does again many chapters later. The SAB sees this as absurd, suggesting "I guess the name didn't take the first time." It's funny, because I suggested that as a slight possibility in the case of Beersheba, but here, I'm fairly sure that's exactly what happened. Sometimes it's not clear what the full details of a story are; I, like many no doubt, have a tendency to envision the patriarchs wandering lonely through the desert, but forget that they had a rich possession of livestock and servants. In this case, though, that lonely picture seems fitting. If Jacob was traveling with an entourage, would he be using a rock as a pillow? I think Jacob was traveling alone with the clothes on his back, and at this time he originally calls the place Bethel, there's nobody there. The name didn't stick, because only Jacob knew it for over a decade.

As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated (Gen 27)

Ah, I have a wireless connection and a lull in the meeting that may not last, I'll pop in here for a moment to deal with a chapter I am surprised to see having so few SAB notes. There does seem to be an affinity for pointing out the personal foibles of Biblical characters in the SAB, and this is a prime example for many of that sort of thing, although not all Bible readers see this story the same way.

Short synopsis: Isaac gets old, decides he's going to bless Esau, Rebekah tells Jacob and encourages him to trick his father into giving the blessing to him instead.

Jacob, one may note, never objects because it might be wrong to deceive his father, but only because he's not quite convinced he can pull it off. Either Jacob has no conscience about the matter, or perhaps he might think he's doing the right thing. Note that back in chapter 25, both before and after Jacob is born, there is indication that Jacob is destined to get the best of his brother. I'm not sure whether that so much makes it right for him to trick his father, nor whether it had to be that way for God's plan to work out, but there it is. Furthermore, I have heard it said that aside from the morality of Jacob's deception, Isaac was doing the wrong thing to base his decision of which son to bless based on his own preference rather than God's. Add to that the fact that Isaac obviously knows something is up in verse 22, and is hesitant. (Also in verse 35, he figures it out awfully quickly.) Perhaps Isaac knows what's right, and what's God's will, but... I don't know, this is an odd story, and I almost wish the SAB had more to say so I could respond more directly.

Both Jacob and Esau seem to believe they are the rightful owners of this blessing. Jacob's response to hearing it would go to his brother is to work to set things right. Esau's response is to plot to kill Jacob. This, along with the story at the end of chapter 25 shows the difference in the character of these brothers. Jacob may be tricky, but he isn't a violent or vengeful man. Maybe it's a self-fulfilling prophecy that Esau turns out so bad, but he is what he is in the end.

So, in a similar turn of events to his father, Jacob goes away to his cousins' land to find a wife, and out of the reach of his brother.

Behold, twins were in her womb (Gen 25)

Ah, Genesis 25, the chapter that most clearly demonstrates the non-linear style of storytelling that's used throughout the Bible, and especially in the book of Genesis. (Not to mention a bit of very interesting storytelling in its own right.) In fact, I was reading the commentary in Robert Alter's translation of Genesis, and he notes at the end of chapter 24 that some scholars believe that Abraham may have died before Isaac was married, and that the actual death of Abraham may have occurred while Eliezer was off looking for Isaac's bride.

Anyway, Abraham takes another "wife" after Sarah dies, named Keturah. I put "wife" in quotes because, as the SAB points out, it's not really quite clear whether she's truly considered a wife. A verse from 1Chronicles is quoted, but really, you only need to scan down to verse six, where one can easily assume (as I do) that the term "concubines" refers to Keturah and Hagar. So it might be worth asking what Keturah's status is to some people, although personally I'd suspect that the line separating "wife" and "concubine" is not exactly well-defined. A simple answer might be to point out that, as in many languages, the Hebrew word for "wife" and "woman" is the same. In verse one here, as well as back in 16:3 with Hagar, this could have been translated simply as "woman" and made sense, but perhaps the KJV translators (along with most others) didn't like the idea of Abraham having sex with a woman who was not his proper wife. A more complicated answer might be to consider that the writers of the parts of the Bible that mention this woman might have particular points to make at different times, and so used terms that would accentuate their points. Although Keturah was indeed a "wife" by any normal standard, when we drop down a few verses and the author decides to call her a "concubine", he's trying to make a clear distinction between Sarah and the other two women in Abraham's life. Particularly the relation they have to the promises of God and the land of Canaan.

So Abraham has at least six more children after Sarah is gone, and each of them is sent away from the place where Abraham lives, so that they won't be in the way of Isaac growing up and being prosperous. While I covered most of the objections to this story back in chapter 13, I might as well hit on them just lightly again. Abraham is able to have more children easily because the infertility problem was Sarah's. As far as I'm aware, in fact, while women have menopause, men never stop being fertile, although they certainly may have other problems that would impede them from conceiving. In a sense, there is a viewpoint theologically that nobody has any children ever without God's help, but that's an extreme viewpoint. These other children may not be considered legitimate children if indeed Keturah was a "concubine", I'm not sure. However the point I said back in chapter 13 was that every time Isaac is referred to as Abraham's "only" son, it refers to a time frame before he has any children with Keturah, so the existence of these children has no bearing on the question of how many children Abraham had. Oh, and furthermore on the subject of time frame, I don't know anyone who considers it polygamy to marry another wife after your first wife dies.

Abraham dies at 175, an impressive age, but certainly not impossible. Ishmael comes back from wherever he's living to help Isaac bury their father, so apparently they're getting along okay, perhaps in a large part due to them not having to live together. A short synopsis is given of Ishmael's life and children, who become a powerful nation in their own right as Israel will in the future. Ishmael also lives to an impressive age.

Rebekah turns out to be barren, which the SAB labels as absurd, but doesn't explain why. Perhaps it's the fact that she seems to be in a long line of infertile wives? I don't know what the SAB's getting at, but as I think I said before (and I don't remember where it was if I did) I think that God is putting some odd control on the biological clocks of the matriarchs to make the timing just right for the period the nation of Israel spends in Egypt. Who knows? Maybe infertility was just a problem in that time and place?

Rebekah does eventually get pregnant though, and actually, her infertility is an odd footnote, because it's just for one verse of the story, and we don't know how long in time it was. She only gives birth once, though, and it's twins. More interesting names here; the older one is Esau or "hairy", while Jacob is "heel grasper". Imagine your child being born and you notice that she has a funny nose, so you say to your spouse, "Hey Honey, let's name her 'Schnozia', don't you think?"

Obviously not identical twins, Esau is a big burly hairy man who loves hunting, while Jacob is a bit of a momma's boy (literally) who likes to hang out at home and cook. Their parents play favorites, and apparently, so does God. Despite the note on the SAB, the Bible does not in any place that I am aware of say that Rebekah hated Esau, she just liked Jacob better. In part, it may have been the prophecy she was given about them. Throughout the story of these boys' lives, Isaac keeps trying to make Esau the better one, but God and their mother keep trying to manipulate things to put Jacob in front, because despite not being as manly as his father might like him to be, Jacob is the more morally upright of the two (which says a lot, since he's no angel). We get the first hint of it in the end of the chapter when he sells his birthright for a bowl of stew. Not exactly the shining example.