Jen gives us a view of women in Genesis. She says that it can be tough on women. It's a real opportunity to think through what it was like to be a woman in a near ancient Middle Eastern culture.
We can also examine the implications for us as women today: what it means to be a follower of Christ as a female.
In this session Jen will talk about probably the most intensely vulnerable stories about women in all of scripture. She began with Dinah - the only female name who showed up in the baby wars list of names when Rachel and Leah were having their children.
We finished up our last session with Jacob having gone through a major shift. He now understands that God is not just a God of Abraham and Isaac but is the God of Israel - his God.
We can probably relate to the process he has gone through where we first began to be drawn to the things of the Lord. We understand God as someone else's God. Over time, we came to understand He is the God of me. The implications of that are we would live lives of obedience. So Jacob receives a new name - Israel. It means he strives with God but also God strives.
It's good to hold both those meanings in view when we think how we relate to God and God relates to us.
We're going to see in Jacob's life that:
- He wrestles with his former self
- Moves forward with his life
He's endured a great deal as well as his family.
We know that when he had his dream and saw a ladder extending to heaven, he made a pledge to God that he would return to Bethel. We also saw God refer to Himself twice as we looked in the previous week, as the "God of Bethel." When he has the opportunity to move about freely and live wherever he wants, Jacob instead of going to Bethel he goes to Shechem.
It's in Shechem we see our story where the result of his delay or detour becomes immediately disastrous.
Genesis 34
Verse 1-4. There seems to be some conflicting messages in this text:
- Does he love her?
- Does he not love her?
- How are we supposed to feel about Shechem?
- Added confusion about a city named Shechem and a person named Shechem
Basically, Hamar the father has named the city after his son. Hamar's favorite son. Shechem acts like the favored son of a wealthy father - he takes what he wants when he sees it.
Dinah is immediately connected to Leah. This should jump out to us because what we will see for the rest of the story of Genesis is this friction that continues to exist between the children of Leah and the children of Rachel. God is going to use it to accomplish His ends. We need this story in this session to set us up for what we are going to find out in the life of Joseph.
Dinah is the daughter of Leah. It says she "went out to see the women of the land." What does that mean? She's a teenager going out to see what everybody is up to, like most teenagers. She's living near a city now and interested to see what's going on. She probably wasn't particularly supervised. Why do you think she would have been unsupervised? Perhaps because she is the child of Leah and Leah's children are treated with a level of disrespect.
We will see that idea played out as we take a look at how her sons act in future chapters.
Things don't go well for Dinah. Shechem sees her and rapes her, humiliates her. He decides then he wants to keep her. It says "his soul was drawn to Dinah." It tells us this after it tells of what he has done. We cannot turn this horror into a romance. We must follow with the flow of the text.
He tells his father "get me this girl for my wife." A tone of entitlement.
Verse 5. Says he "held his peace until they came." What we want this to say is "and Jacob sought the Lord." Or "Jacob demanded his daughter back" or "demanded restitution." Instead, we see him do nothing.
Verses 6-7. The sons offer aid or a solution "as soon as they heard of it." I hope when it hits you when you read verse 7 the way it should, Jen said. In a historical narrative it's very rare for the author to state an opinion or a moral judgment on what is going on in the text. They assume you'll be able to follow the moral flow of what's happening. Moses leaves nothing to our imagination here. He goes out of his way to repeat that this is a terrible thing that happened.
Verses 8-12. What do we see here?
- Daddy coming to clean up the mess with money and power
- Shechem trying to use smooth speech to sweeten the deal with a generous bride price
Hamar has suggested intermarriage of their family's. This is an unattainable suggestion. There is no way the sons of Israel can agree to this. It is forbidden for them to marry Canaanites.
Verses 13-17. Notice the language used here. We see this deceit setting up Hamar and his people. Jacob, the deceiver, will reap the whirlwind of his deceptive patterns in his sons. Notice the language in verse 17 "we will take our daughter, and we will be gone." Though Jacob has not treated his daughter the way he should, her brothers are determined to honor her, to give her the protection she should have had. Their motives are right. Their method a disaster.
Verses 18-22. Circumcision being told to the men of the city.
Verse 23. This is the selling point. If you do this, we get all their stuff. They intend to plot against Israel just as Israel tends to plot against them.
Verse 24-26. All the males killed. Notice the detail we have in verse 26 - they took Dinah out of the house of Shechem after they had killed Hamar and Shechem. Days had gone by and she is still there.
Verses 27-29. They captured all and plundered all. What are we seeing played out here? Is it justice? No. This is revenge. This is where the punishment far exceeds the crime, although the crime is a terrible act, Jacob's sons have used the sacred sign of God's Covenant as a cover for murder.
You are probably familiar with the name of Levi. Why? Who will descend from his line? The priests of God. Note: God can work through anyone. This very line is the one who is called to shed the blood of animals on behalf of the people of Israel.
Verse 30. Notice the "I" and "me" in this verse. Jacob is concerned about himself.
Verse 31. Jacob finds himself an outsider in a foreign land but also now a target of hostility from everyone they encounter. His statements though are revealing. "Should he treat our sister like a prostitute?" Do you hear them stating what Cain should have said about Abel? "We are our sister's keeper."
Things have spiraled because Jacob did not act. Bitterness and awareness of neglect amongst the sons.
Notice also that in this chapter of 34, God is not mentioned. He drops out of the narrative completely.
Genesis 35
Note that the very first word is "God". He's mentioned 11 times in Genesis 35.
Verses 1-3. God tells Jacob to "arise, go up to Bethel." He's saying go where you said you were going to go - Bethel. There is also the statement "put away the foreign gods." Wait a minute! Remember from the last session that Rachel had stolen the household gods and concealed them in her saddle bag. It's not clear how long Jacob has known they were there. It appears they were not just among them but were being put to use. Worship of foreign gods along with worship of the One True God.
Jacob is here not being called Israel. After this terrible situation, Jacob is ready to give undivided devotion to where it goes - God. He says "purify yourselves" and also "change your garments."
Verse 3. Jacob has had a major revelation. God has not just been with him at Bethel but "wherever I have gone."
Verse 4. Jacob "hid them under the terebinth (the foreign gods) tree that was near Shechem." Trees in Canaan were places of idol worship. In other translations "hid" sometimes is "buried." What is he doing? Holding a funeral for foreign gods in the very place they were worshiped. This is the first burial, but there will be more to come. For us: we do this too. "I will worship God and _______."
Verse 5. Important detail here "a terror from God fell." God miraculously deflects the attentions of these enemies.
Verse 8. Why do we have this detail? We've not met her nurse. Most commentators think this is an oblique way of pointing out Rebekkah has already died with an indicator of another passing away - our second burial is Rebekkah's nurse.
Verses 9-15. This is a repeat of years earlier. Jacob needed this again. He needed to know God would fulfill His Covenant still through his line. The Covenant was unilateral and no way depended on Jacob's showing up and fulfilling his part. God's grace is shown here. Jacob will understand it at a deeper level than before. God will repeat this process until Jacob's death.
This is the Christian life:
- We sin and we find restoration
- We remember the name given to us
- We receive again the blessing
- When we sin, we know the process will take place
- We know we must grieve our sin
What Jacob is learning through this process is to turn from sin because he hates it. His life and our life are a process of looking at things we've told ourselves for years. "Oh, it will be fine. It's harmless." We come to see it for what it is and burying it in the ground where it stays buried that no resurrection of our false gods occurs.
Verses 16-19. Rachel giving birth and dying. She calls the son Ben-oni which means "son of my sorrow." Jacob calls him Benjamin "son of my right hand." "Rachel was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is Bethlehem). This is a little whisper of things to come. It is a favored child born to a mother who describes him as the son of her sorrows to a father who describes him as the son of his right hand. Bethlehem - whispers of the Christ.
Verse 20. Moses here is appealing to their sense of the local sites (the Israelites) that there are. He's saying these are actual sites you can go visit. Remember, this is 650 years in their past.
Verse 21. Notice he's Israel again.
Verse 22. This verse is like it was just thrown in there. What's the problem here? Bilhah is Rachel's servant. Obviously, there is a problem with Reuben sleeping around to begin with but Reuben is what order in the birth order? He's the firstborn. Simeon is #2 and Levi #3. Simeon and Levi have just committed a terrible act, and now the firstborn also commits a terrible act. It's significant because women were viewed as property and on his father's death, this concubine would have belonged to Reuben. So when he sleeps with his father's concubine, he is saying to Jacob "I wish you were dead." It's a huge insult to Jacob. He is enraged and we see Reuben function not as the firstborn but as something cast off. We will see that continue on as the narrative moves forward.
Verse 23-26. The sons of Jacob are listed. They are listed off for us. The original audience would have listened to this with a great source of familiarity and comfort. The names are not quite all there in the way we would expect.
Verses 27-29. Two adversarial sons joined in a final act of unity at the death of their father. Jacob is the fourth burial we see in a very short space.
Violence and death looming large over these chapters. Jacob buries his past. We will see though that even though Rachel is dead, he will continue to show favoritism to her even in memorium. Leah would have lived out the rest of her life in that shadow.
Genesis 36
We get that familiar phrase in verse 1 "these are the generations of Esau." We hear this massive list of descendants that came from Esau. How many in the list of Jacob's descendants? 12. How many for Esau? 81. It says there were so many of them that it became a burden. They couldn't be in the same area as Jacob because their possessions were too great for them to dwell together (verse 7).
They separate. We have this list of 81 names and it's pretty revealing. Remember Esau married two women who were Canaanites and then married a woman who was descended from the line of Ishmael. The original audience can identify with this list of names and they became enemies of God.
Of this giant list of names, only two contain the name of God: the "El" in them. Most connotes some sensual pleasure like the name Ado which means "delight". One of the names Bael-Hannon includes the name of "Bael." Though Esau forgets God, we see this played out in his descendants, God remembers His promise to Esau to make him a great nation.
God does what He says He will do. But once again, we see the vast multiplication on the side of the family tree where we don't want to see it. We turn to those who are called the chosen people of God and say "why only 12?" The Lord is at work and will do exactly what He says He will do because He remembers His promises.
Conclusion
When we remember God, we're broken of our idolatry, we bury our idol. One of the idols we bury is us. This is why scripture speaks so often of a death to self. We bury our idols and we die to self. We find we too are blessed and are renamed once again.
The difficult stories we find in these three chapters have a deep impact on the rest of the story we will see as we enter into the life of Joseph.
No comments:
Post a Comment