I am so excited to be closing in on Joesph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I've heard: It was red and yellow and green and brown , and black and ochre and peach And ruby and olive and violet and fawn And lilac and gold and chocolate and mauve And cream and crimson and silver and rose And azure and lemon and russet and grey And purple and white and pink and orange.....AND BLUE! 
so sorry for the brief lapse into my world of show tunes.
..................and now ladies and gentlemen my very serious and mature discussion of my Bible readings for today.
I think today's theme is deceit. Everybody's deceiving everybody in these chapters.
It all starts with Issac and the old "she's my wife not my sister" bit again. No ones seems to tire of this gag. The problem with it is, they seem to be assuming the worst of these people. Once they find out that the woman is indeed a wife and not a sister they usually say something like, "Man! Why didn't you JUST tell us that! Had we slept with her, we'd be in a heap of trouble!"
Issac moves around and digs some wells, and names some wells. Until one night God speaks to him and there Issac builds an altar, sets up his tent and digs a well. In that order which I see is important. Thanks to the Lord, home, then work.
and so the drama begins.
Apparently Issac, who is blind at this point, loves his smooth son Esau more than his hairy son Jacob. (and rightly so, some might say)
He asks his eel of a son to go hunting and once he's killed something, cook it the way he likes and bring it to him. When he does that he shall bless him.
Now Issac's wife Rebekah, favors the hairy beast of a son, Jacob?
She want him to get the blessing. So she devises a plan to trick the blind Issac into blessing Jacob. Jacob tells her that hes worried Issac will feel his hairiness and call him out as a cheat and impostor.
I feel like Jacob doesn't really want to do this but does as his mothers says.
The plan works and Jacob receives the blessing. We learn in a bit that it worked too. He has a butt load of sons.
But just as all plans which involve deceit, it sort of falls apart at the end. Esau brings his meat and when Issac realizes what he's done he tells Esau basically "I'm sorry, I've given my one blessing to your brother and now you must serve him"
Thus begins a feud among brothers. Rebekah (who actually caused all the problems, in my opinion) told Jacob to leave until his brother calmed down.
And now we get into Jacob. I just THOUGHT we had seen the worst with Abe and his maids and such. Jacob's sexcapaids make Abraham look like a monk.
In choosing a wife, I think Jacob is involved in a "what goes around, comes around" sort of thing. He is now the one who's deceived.
He works for seven years in order to get his wife Rachel and the very night he is to have her, her dad sends her older, duller sister in to sleep with Jacob. Thus, he is blindly deceived just as his father was. Now he's got this dull gal Leah and he has to work sever more years for Rachel, the one he truly loves.
So begins the great baby wars.
Leah is poppin boys out left and right. The Lord has made Rachel barren to make up for Leah's embarrassment of not being good enough. Therefore, Rachel has Jacob sleep with the maid, then Leah is barren and she has him sleep with her maid, then Rachel can have babies and FINALLY the star of one of my favorite shows is born.....JOSEPH.
After the love-fest something very strange happens that I did not understand at all and shall call on my my trusted friend Jamie for explanation. I didn't understand the division of animals and the rods of the trees and the wells??
I realize that I'm writing with a lot of humor, its something I can't help, it's how I see most things. However, I am reading seriously and thinking about it everyday. I feel like I may need to read it again, once I'm through. This first time I'm just so into the drama of it. I just so good, I get really into the stories....I guess what I'm saying is I hope I'm not disappointing you.
4 comments:
Again, love the graphics.
There's an underlying message here that I failed to touch on last time that continues through this reading, and throughout the Bible. It's about servants securing WILLING brides for the bridegrooms. Keep that in mind, and we'll get deeper into that later.
You've got the hairy brother backwards. Esau was the hairy one. Rebekah had Jacob put on the sheeps skin cause it's furry; and she thought that'd fool Isaac into thinking Jacob was Esau. Not that that matters all that much (three thats in six words), you've got the overall storyline. It's important here to once again (God does it in creating the world) to see what the spoken word (blessing or curse) can have on a person's life. I am a firm believer in verbal (out loud) declarations and affirmations. The Bible will talk about this throughout - the power of saying something out loud.
A couple points to bring out of all of the baby having. It seems clear that in those days people really felt like children were a blessing from God. The Bible will say that fairly clearly in a later verse. The other point is that although these women sometimes had difficulties, they never gave up. They did their part to the best of their abilities, adapted, and stayed in faith; God rewarded them for this. He is the God of those who help themselves. That is to say, He'll help us, but we have to do our part.
The animals and the rods....
That was a clever way Jacob was getting the speckled and black sheep to breed, and preventing the white sheep to not breed. Apparently sheep don't like those sticks (rods) he was putting in front of the wells, and since the sheep bred when they came to the wells (normally), they wouldn't do it (pun not intended) when he'd put the sticks out. So he'd only put those sticks out when his father-in-laws sheep came to drink so that they wouldn't multiply. I hope I explained that ok.
You are not disappointing me. Although sometimes I wonder if your humor (which I thoroughly enjoy, and laugh several times reading your blog) doesn't borderline on mockery with a dash of disrespect. That may just be the cynic in me.
That does explain the sheep thing, thank you.
As far as the humor, I by NO means mean it disrespectfully. That's exactly what I was afraid of. I want to make the point again that this is just the way i write. If SOMEONE had read my other blog which tells stories of my childhood they would have seen the exact same style.
My intent is to entertain while causing people to think and not to offend. I write what I would want to read. I can make no more excuses than that.
I forgot to mention also that I am keeping in mind that these people are basically populating the Earth. Hence all the babies.
Also sorry for the hairy son mix up.
Maybe Jacob was just better at manscaping. I think God gave Esau that "fur coat" cause he was always outside, hunting and fishing and what not. Jacob might have been more of a metrosexual. See, I can be funny, too, but not as funny (looking) as you.
dork
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