Thursday, June 11, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
Genesis 26-30
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.