Take the Levites from among the children of Israel (Exod 6)

Sheesh, Blogger's acting up a bit for me today, and after getting sidetracked by yesterday's topic which started out as a look at chapter six, but ended up being...well, whatever it was. Hopefully this will post today.

Well, here we are at Exodus chapter 6, and the first point that we get to is "Did Abraham know God's name?" I thought to myself, "Ah, I must have answered this back in Genesis. Looking back, I found that I specifically did not answer it in this post. Poop. Well, there is only one explanation that I can think of, but I have to admit, it's a tenuous one, especially in light of the verse the SAB uses to point it out, and, in my opinion, a possible contrast with Exodus 3:14. Well, here it is: As I touched on sort of tangentially in this really old post, and a bit more directly here, Moses wrote the book of Genesis, but was not there when the events took place. Since he wasn't there, I'm not sure one can rightly assume that any dialogue can be considered a direct quotation. If Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob ever mentions YHWH, it may be the case that Moses is inserting the name editorially, so to speak. In case the above problems I admitted are not clear, I'll spell them out. If Abraham actually named a place after YHWH, then one would think he knew the name, and an actual place-name seems more permanent rather than a bit of spoken dialogue. Secondly, if Moses telling the Israelites that "I AM" spoke to him was supposed to be significant, then one would think that name was already known.

At least I did answer the other issue, that of God being seen by someone or not, right here. Phew.

In verse 12, the phrase "uncircumcised lips" is marked as absurd. Really, I'm not sure what to say to this, as I myself have always found it sounding a bit absurd as well. Culturally, circumcision was a big deal to the Israelites, and while circumcision is literally something done to the foreskin of the penis, the Bible speaks of uncircumcised ears, hearts and nations, and it seems to metaphorically refer to not being dedicated to God as is proper.

Later in the chapter, as we get a genealogy of Moses, the lifespans of several forefathers are called absurd. As I mused in a previous post, I'm not sure what the specific threshold is for ridiculously long lifespans, but it seems to be somewhere between 127 and 133, and I don't know why. Something that the SAB fails to mention here, although I'm surprised because it's pretty glaring, is that despite the fact that 400-odd years have passed since the last mention of Levi in the book of Genesis, Moses is only Levi's great-grandson. Something weird is definitely going on here, either these long-lived people are having children in their old age, or the genealogy is telescoped in some manner. There's no clear-cut contradiction even if you take it literally, it just seems very odd, that's all.

The last point the SAB brings up in this chapter is another one I have already addressed. Moses' parents were siblings, and thus their relationship was incestuous. But didn't God condemn incest? Yes, He did, but not yet. I discussed this issue when Abraham mentioned that Sarah was his wife.

There are no more points to address as given presently, but there is something that I'd never noticed before this morning that the SAB might want to point out as absurd just because it's a little bit funny, I think. Is it a sign that Moses may not be a very good writer? In verse 14, we read "These be the heads of their fathers' houses..." This seems to be an introduction to a list of the sub-families of the twelve tribes, listed in order of the birth of the sons of Jacob. One problem, though; it goes Reuben, Simeon, Levi--Oh! That's Moses' tribe! Let's talk about Moses' ancestry and family, shall we? Okay, but what about the other nine tribes? We don't get back to this list until Numbers 26, nearly 90 chapters later! Something that's an issue to consider in some places in the Bible is that few of the Biblical authors were professional writers, and none of them had word processors.

I will bring them again also out of the land of Egypt (Gen 50)

So, Jacob is dead, and his last request is to be buried back in the Promised Land. It's interesting that for so many of these forefathers, despite the fact that they had little or no ties to the land of Canaan personally, they wanted to be buried there, both to be with their forefathers and with their ancestors that they assumed God would bring back there sometime in the future. Joseph mourns for his father, but then he requests to Pharaoh that he and his family be allowed to take the body back to Canaan to be buried at Machpelah.

In much of this exchange, there are hints at an unsteady relationship between Joseph and Pharaoh that foreshadow what is to come. After all, Joseph was put into a position of prominence from out of prison precisely because he was useful to Pharaoh. Joseph must be very careful to promise Pharaoh that he will indeed come back and not stay in Canaan, the land of his birth. The accompaniment of Egyptian servants along the way may be partially out of respect for Joseph's high position, partially for the purpose of protection of the Israelites, and partially out of protection of Pharaoh's interests: to see to it that Joseph and his brothers (who are also on Pharaoh's payroll) return when they are done. Also, they leave their children behind.

Jacob is indeed buried at Machpelah, as the text says repeatedly. The SAB points out that Stephen claimed Jacob was buried in Shechem. Yeah, this is a contradiction, but I think there are a couple things that could be said about it. First of all, Stephen's speech in the book of Acts is a speech, and I don't know that the Bible would be required not only to be correct in every detail, but that every character in the Bible never make a mistake either. Surely there are many places in the Bible where prominent people say things that are quite mistaken. (Peter is famous for this, of course.) Secondly, Stephen is not so much making an outright error as telescoping the details of the story, since Joseph, and probably his brothers as well were buried in Shechem. This mixing of the two parts of the stories is no doubt the source of the error Stephen does appear to make about who bought the grave. In any case, this is not at all the first time we've run up against problems with Stephen's Acts 7 speech, nor will it be the last; just remember he's telling the condensed version of the Old Testament, and he's going to gloss over the details quickly.

After the funeral is over, Joseph's brothers get worried once again that he will take revenge on them, and they tell him that Jacob had commanded that they be forgiven. Jacob is never actually seen making this speech, so you might wonder whether they made it up. It doesn't matter, though, as once again, Joseph assures them that he believes it was all part of God's plan.

Joseph lives to be 110 years old (apparently not an absurd age for the SAB, whose threshold for absurd age lies somewhere between 123 and 137, I may do more research on this) and to see his great-grandchildren. I just realized that I misread an issue from chapter 48 that comes up here, but my response is the same: these prophecies about being brought back to the Promised Land (here, here and here) are not personal prophecies to be fulfilled in the lifetimes of these people, but point to the future Exodus centuries later. Jacob, Joseph, and the other patriarchs all died in Egypt, but God brought the twelve tribes of Israel back to the land in the end.

And the end this is. Genesis begins with the creation of life, and now ends with the death of this prominent patriarch of Israel. The Bible moves on to a new chapter in the history of that nation, and I will take a break.

Fathers of the tribes of the children of Israel (Gen 47-49)

I'm looking forward to finishing Genesis, which ought to be very soon, since there are only a few chapters, and not a lot of SAB comments. As I think I have commented before, I'm not sure where to go after finishing the book, since going straight through makes some sense, but it can also be tedious in some parts. Exodus is good, but there's no denying that the majority of the other three books of Moses don't have a whole lot going for them. I think what I'm going to do is, after finishing a longer book like this, I'll skip ahead somewhere and take a detour through a shorter and more "action-packed" book as a sort of palate cleanser if you will. So before hitting Exodus, I think I'll either do Ruth or Jonah, two of my personal favorites. (Or perhaps I might do Luke chapter 2, as a sort of Christmas special. [Edit to add links to parts 1, 2, and 3.] I'm hoping to put some Christmas stuff in my other blog today anyway.) Any opinions (or comments at all) are welcome.

Chapter 47 is pretty straightforward, both the content and the SAB objections are largely a repetition of stuff in previous chapters. As instructed, Joseph's family stands before Pharaoh and tells him that they are shepherds, and what they really need is some good pasture land, preferably Goshen. In verse 11, Goshen is referred to as "the land of Rameses", which some have suggested to be an anachronism, and it technically is, "Rameses" being a name not used until hundreds of years after this time in history. Most likely, this is a reference that was common in the time this story was committed to paper rather than the time it actually happened similar to the references to Philistines and possibly Amalekites and others. Since the SAB doesn't claim an issue with verse 11, it may not have one, but it does bring up an interesting point anyway. I've heard many skeptics insist that if God really "wrote" the Bible, He would be aware of scientific facts that were discovered long after the stories were written as well as future historical events, and the writing ought to reflect that. That is probably true to some extent, no doubt, but note that another objection that is often raised to the Bible is to point out anachronisms! Maybe somebody can explain to me what the Bible could do in this area (as well as others that I won't go into here) so that it could please everybody. But enough of that...

Jacob is asked by Pharaoh how old he is, and Jacob tells him that he's 130, but that he's just a youngster compared to many of his forefathers. You may recall that Jacob's father lived to be 180, his grandfather 175 and great-grandfather 205. The SAB finds the thought of Jacob living to 147 to be absurd, but I'd be curious as to what the threshold for absurdity in lifespans is, since no note is made about Sarah.

Much of the rest of the chapter is concerned with the playing out of the remainder of the famine, and Joseph using the stored food to squeeze every last bit of capital out of the citizens of Egypt, making Pharaoh more wealthy and powerful than ever.

Just before Jacob dies, one noteworthy thing he does is make Joseph swear to bury him back in the Promised Land. The fact that Jacob does die is, in my opinion, not an issue with respect to the promise made by God in the last chapter, as I explained in my last post. The custom of swearing in the manner described here is indeed odd, but apparently it was a cultural thing of the time. As I explained in response to a similar exchange between Abraham and his servant, there is nothing wrong with swearing an oath per se. While I went over it in an older post, the short version is this: the two New Testament verses linked to in the SAB note are taken out of context, both of them saying not merely "...swear not," but "swear not, neither by heaven..." The point is not that making promises or swearing is wrong, but that swearing by something because your word alone isn't good enough is a bad thing.

Chapters 48 and 49 are essentially a long list of blessings that Jacob gives to his family before he passes away. (Despite the note by the SAB concerning Jacob seeing God, it seems very unlikely that Jacob is referring to something new, but rather is more likely referring to what happened way back the first time he saw God.) It's notable that like previous generations, the greatest blessings don't necessarily go to the eldest. In fact, it seems that the biggest blessing is going to the youngest child of the second-youngest son.

Although they are not really called "tribes" yet (oh, wait, I guess they are in verse 28), the SAB takes this moment to note the inconsistency in the naming of the tribes of Israel. It seems like a reasonable enough moment, but a little disappointing, since most educated Christians know that the inconsistency goes farther than what is quoted here, and various lists throughout the Bible will list them differently. I was going to leave it at that, but apparently I can't seem to help assisting Steve Wells in his research, so a quick guess as to where I would find a third list was fruitful: Numbers 1:4. In this list, we see the tribes listed as Reuben, Simeon, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Ephraim, Manasseh, Benjamin, Dan, Asher, Gad and Naphtali, which one can see does not fit with the other lists given. If you go down further in that chapter, there's a bit of explanation, but I can't remember where the full explanation is, it may be spread throughout the law in various places. The short of it is that the tribe of Levi is chosen to be set aside as a priestly tribe, and they don't get an inheritance in the Promised Land in the same manner as the other tribes. However, the sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh, each form a tribe at that point. So the tribes of Levi and Joseph are special, and it can cause some confusion at times. As for the passage in Revelation that is referred to, there are some theories among scholars as to why Dan is not on the list. Of course, it's not considered to be an error, but rather something of hidden significance.

The last thing to be settled in this chapter is the strange prophecy given in verse 10. Honestly, I don't understand this well (nor much of the rest of this chapter, which uses some strange poetic stuff), but I do know that it is considered by many to be telling of the idea that the Messiah should come from the tribe of Judah. While "Shiloh" is a place, many scholars have favored a different translation here in which the phrase becomes "until he comes to whom it belongs". Whether it refers to King David, Jesus, or someone or something else, I'm not sure how to respond to the note here, because I don't really know what it means. Nonetheless, a lot of issues regarding the validity of Saul's kingship will come up once I get to 1Samuel, so I'll save the discussion for that time.

Almost done!

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.

Nay; but I will verily buy it for the full price (Gen 23)

Deciding to myself that I'd rather not do more than one chapter per post may not have been a good thing when there were bound to be chapters like this one with no notes to reply to. Or maybe it's a good thing that I can have some nice short posts, or at least would if I didn't ramble like this whenever I get a nice short one.

I've got a lot of questions I'd like to ask anyone who's bothering to read this, in hopes that people might actually leave comments. Should I limit myself to a single chapter for ease of organization? Are these posts too long, too short, or just right? Once I finish Genesis, should I just go on to Exodus, or should I skip around a bit? (I am of course not looking forward to Leviticus, as that's a rather tedious book.)

But anyway, there's still a few things I could say about chapter 23, and so I will. As I said somewhere before, Sarah is unusual in the Bible due to what most would consider sexism in being one of only two women whose age is given, and the only woman whose age at death is given. Like all the men whose lifespans are numbered in these pages, she lives a long life, dying at 127. (The original Hebrew does something a bit odd that's not translated by most English translations, actually; a literal translation is something like, "And was the life of Sarah hundred years and twenty years and seven years, the years of the life of Sarah.") I wonder if it might have been extra-tough for Abraham to lose her. It's hard enough for someone to lose a spouse, I'm sure, but as Sarah was his half-sister, and he was ten years older than her, he probably knew her for her entire life.

In the midst of his mourning, Abraham goes to some nearby people and asks them to give him some land where he can bury Sarah. They tell him that he can just ask and anyone would be willing to sell some land to him, so he asks this guy Ephron. Now it gets a little weird, because Ephron at first says he'll just give the land to Abraham, but Abraham insists on paying a full price. So Ephron, shortly after saying he'll give it as a gift, tells Abraham the price is four hundred shekels. This whole exchange is very odd. Abraham tells Ephron that all he wants is "the cave...which is in the end of his field" indicating that he's not looking for land, and that there is no reason for him to even need part of the field to walk through, since the cave is at the end of the field. Ephron then insists that Abraham take the whole field, and asks an incredibly exorbitant price for it. (Jeremiah bought a field for less than twenty shekels.) So Abraham's getting ripped off, but in a strangely roundabout manner.

Something about history that my own Bible notes but the SAB does not is that fact that a "shekel" is commonly a kind of coin used in the Middle East in ancient times, but coinage wasn't invented for hundreds of years later. In this context, though, it seems pretty clear that the term is being used as a measurement of weight. There are a lot of terms in the Bible of which people have questioned the historical authenticity, but often they're just referring to another similar concept.

See you tomorrow for a somewhat more exciting chapter...

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.

The sons of God (Gen 6:1-5)

The "sons of God" is an understandably confusing phrase. It occurs five times in the O.T., and six times in the N.T., and in many of the places it appears, it's clear what it's referring to. Unfortunately, this is not really one of those times. In those appearances in the N.T., it's really a reference to our (Christians') relationship status to God due to our response to the person of Jesus Christ. I think we can pretty much rule out that interpretation here. All O.T. instances of the phrase outside of this chapter occur in the book of Job, where it is pretty much universally accepted that it is referring to the Heavenly spirit beings that we call "angels". Now, some people have tried the suggestion that "the sons of God" and "the daughters of men" refer to the descendants of Seth and Cain respectively, but I'm not sure there's good evidence for it. Whatever is going on, though, the fact that it's mentioned in two verses sandwiching a verse in which God says He's not happy with what's going on seems suggestive that it's not good.

Oh, but to answer the question that the SAB poses regarding the number of "sons" God has, you have to look at the subtleties of the language and the theology. Note that the verses calling Jesus God's only son actually say "only begotten son," and that word is important. Every other being called the "son" of God was either created by God ex nihilo, or was "adopted" into His family. In a sense, all human beings are God's children, but this terminology is talking about a special relationship, as is the relationship we find a few chapters from here between Abraham and Isaac, where I'll probably talk a little bit more about this.

Back to God's actual words in that sandwiched verse, He says of mankind that "yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years." The SAB points this out as a possible contradiction to a verse in the Psalms claiming that men live to be only seventy. There's a lot that can be said about this. One thing is that of course either number being thought of as an estimate of how long a person might live is clearly an average. Not every man is going to live to be exactly 70, many will die young, some will live to be well over a hundred, so any specific counterexamples to this number are hardly breaking the general rule. It may very well be that the life expectancy at the time around the flood was quite different. Before the flood, we see the average life span of those people whose ages are given is right around 900 years old, while after the flood, the life span seems to quickly drop to about half of that, and continues dropping, tending towards the lower 100s (although admittedly never quite getting there). But lifespans aside, there is another possible meaning to this verse, and I think it's a likely one. When God says "yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years," what He may in fact mean is that the flood is going to come 120 years after the events being talked about here. Note that in the end of chapter 5, Noah is 500 years old, and the flood comes when he's 600, so it may be that the story is saying, "Around the same time that Noah was raising Shem, Ham, and Japheth, there was some stuff going on in the world that was making God very unhappy."

So what was making God so unhappy? I'll engage in some slightly wild speculation aided by verse 4. We've got giants, we've got "sons of God", and we've got some notable sexual unions happening. What is this all about? Believe it or not, it's a fairly commonly accepted concept that what's happening is procreation between human females and fallen angels. There is a theological doctrine that says that before the world was created, some of the angels in Heaven decided to rebel against God, and God kicked them out. (As some have pointed out to me, a lot of this we owe to Milton's "Paradise Lost" more than the Bible, but there is some Biblical basis for it.) After the fall, these creatures managed to gain free access to earth. The whole idea related to this short passage is that some of them figured out how to have sex with humans, and eventually, they somehow had children that, for whatever reason, were giants. (In the Hebrew, the word nephilim, translated "giants" actually comes from a root word meaning "fallen" or "cast down". It's also used in Numbers 13:33, where it's much more clearly referring to giants.) This was apparently an important part of the whole problem of the earth that led to God causing the flood.

Let me finish today's post with a look at verse 5, and what the SAB says concerning it. I think it's odd that in comparing this verse to 8:21, it's cited as an absurdity rather than a contradiction, but I guess sometimes it's a personal judgment call. Here, God says He's going to destroy every living thing because of the evil of men's imaginations, in the later verse, God says He's going to be nicer because of the same thing. I think you have to look at 8:21 more carefully.

And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.

Note that God doesn't say that He won't destroy the world because of this evil in men's hearts initially; He first says He won't "curse the ground". I think this primarily hearkens back to the curse from chapter 3, which given this verse, may in fact show to be more of a punitive thing than I had said in my commentary there, but it's hard to say. In any case, I think the point that God may be making here is that the world keeps growing steadily more and more evil, and in the end, evil is largely its own punishment. Why does God need to add any more of a burden on to the life of man to remind him of the fallen state of the world, when mankind has to live with itself day after day? Not that things will be rosy and cheery and all good, but that things are just going to be largely left to their natural processes. Furthermore, in the case of the flood, which is tacked on as an ending clause to this verse, I think God is saying that once is enough.

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.

To die is gain (Gen 3:20-24)

The SAB takes issue with the statement that Eve is "the mother of all living", but for an odd reason. Well, at least I think it's odd. The issue is not with the concept that all humans are descended from a common female ancestor (and actually, I think biology may teach that to be the case, someone can correct me if I'm wrong) but that there was supposedly a man named Melchizedek who had no ancestry. I'm going to save discussion of Melchizedek for chapter 14, where he shows up in person. This guy is definitely an oddball in the Bible, and there are more than a few theories concerning his nature.

God makes some fur coats for Adam and Eve, which the SAB labels as an absurdity, but doesn't explain why. This is actually a much more significant event than most people get on a surface reading, and is worth noting. Previously, Adam and Eve had covered themselves with fig leaves, and before that, they ran around naked. This indicates to me that the issue of clothing was a matter of covering up nakedness, and not a matter of protecting against the cold. Yet God feels there is a need to give them furs to cover them. A pattern throughout the Bible is the idea that sin leads to death; but not always the death of the person who sins. In this case, while Adam's death is put off for at least another 800 years, God can't let it rest without the death of some animals. This is actually the beginning of the sacrificial system, and the idea that the only thing that can cover up the sin of the guilty is the blood of the innocent. Don't ask me why, I don't understand it well myself.

After giving them the skins, God expresses concern that Adam and Eve have access to the tree of life. (Comments on God using "us" are back here.) Apparently eating the fruit from the tree of life will make one immortal. I think the SAB has a bit of a clear misreading in its notes here, however*; God isn't afraid that mankind will become like God by eating the tree of life, He's grieved that they have already become like Him by eating the forbidden fruit. Note that the tree of life was not a tree they were banned from eating, but the situation has changed. As I said before, now the world is not a pleasant place to be in, and mankind has become separated from God. In order to fix both these situations, God decides that it will be an act of mercy to let mankind die. In dying, they will have the chance to be separated from their physical sinfulness and eventually brought back into a relationship with God in Heaven. Remember, in Christian theology, death is not a bad thing in and of itself. If you desire to be with God, then you will be. If you desire to have God leave you alone, then that will happen for you.

Adam and Eve are kicked out of the garden, and a guard is set to make sure that nobody goes back in and gets to the tree of life. It would be very tempting for someone to go and eat from that tree, but it would be wrong to do so, because it would make their life a living Hell.

I'm reminded of C.S. Lewis' book The Magician's Nephew, which Lewis clearly intended to be an allegory of a sort for the Genesis story. Near the end of the book, the main character, a boy named Digory discusses with Aslan (symbolic of Jesus) how he was tempted to steal a magic apple to take home to his sick mother. A witch had told him that the apple would have healed her sickness. Aslan responds to Digory:

"Understand, then, that it would have healed her; but not to your joy or hers. The day would have come when both you and she would have looked back and said it would have been better to die in that illness."

Like Digory's mother, we're all suffering from an illness known as sin, and to have eaten an apple that made us live forever would not so much cure the illness as treat one of the symptoms. We're all going to die someday, and it's something that everyone ought to know, but even Christians often forget, but dying is not a loss, it's just stepping into the next phase of our existence, and one that for many of us will be a much better one.

*SAB notes have been changed since the writing of this entry; see comments.