IntraText #6 - Genesis 39 part II

Ok, so you're up on Genesis 39 read in the context of Genesis 3?  Schweet.

Joseph's story is converse to Eve's in a couple more ways: in terms of (1) what he had and (2) what he didn't grasp at.

(1) Joseph felt like he had everything as Potipher's overseer, so at first it doesn't look like he's rewarded for his wisdom.  He goes to prison.  Yet the author is so keen to make sure we don't mistake this for curse from God that sticks in three verses of caveats right away:

But athe LORD was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love band gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. And the keeper of the prison put Joseph in charge of all the prisoners who were in the prison. Whatever was done there, he was the one who did it. The keeper of the prison paid no attention to anything that was in Joseph's charge, because the LORD was with him. And whatever he did, the LORD made it succeed. (Gen 39:21-23 ESV)

As if he couldn't wait until the next chapter when we'd get to find this out for ourselves.

In fact, as a result of his trust in God's goodness, looking at the everything given rather than the one thing withheld, Joseph goes from 2nd in charge of Potipher's household, to 2nd in charge of the whole flipping Egyptian nation.  Eve distrusted that God was good, looking at the thing supposedly withheld, and in grasping for it she lost it.  (I suspect that there's some interesting work to be done here with respect to seeing God's new methodology to bring blessing somehow in and through curse and negative things, but that's a whole different trajectory in Genesis.)

(2) Also, as a result of his right dealing with women, Joseph ends up with a woman.

And Pharaoh ... gave him in marriage Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera priest of On. (Gen 41:45 ESV)

Now I'm not sure if Potiphar and Potiphera are related.  But even if they're not, surely we're told this to make us connect the two characters in some way.  So as a part of the blessing for refusing to fornicate with Potipher's wife, Joseph ends up with Potiphera's daughter as his wife.

Eve had grasped at the fake, believing God to be stingy, and lost the real thing.

But Joseph refused to obey the tempter offering the fake, and so he gained the truly good thing that the fake thing looked so much like.


Amazingly crafted, these narratives, aren't they?  I think the point that all this literary art is driving at is God's positive disposition towards humanity despite human sinfulness.  God just seems determined to bless us, despite our self-destructive and world destructive and anti-God tendencies.  Determined to bring about life, even when the curse of death has been brought down upon us.

He's pretty awesome.

Instances of Gen 3 - #5 - Genesis 39

One part of what I've been doing as I've been working through Genesis has been to see whether Genesis 3 (with my particular reading of it) could be acting as a type-scene against which many of the subsequent events of Genesis can be set.

I think Genesis 39 is also such a scene. Let's look for some parallels.  (Not because parallels are cool in and of themselves, but because they point to the author trying to see one scene in the light of another, which enables us to better understand what the author is trying to do.)

Firstly, both scenes involve a woman desiring something forbidden to her. Secondly, they both involved a man who has been given absolutely everything, and has been forbidden only one thing.*  Third, that man is responsible to rule and care for all those things.  Fourth, we get Yhwh's blessing and increasing that sphere of influence.

Here's one which may be a long bow, but let me know what you think.  Have a look at verses 6 & 7.

So he left all that he had in Joseph's charge, and because of him he had no concern about anything but the food he ate. Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance. And after a time his master's wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, "Lie with me." (Gen 39:7 ESV)(Gen 39:6 ESV)

Why did he mention food and eating?  Completely irrelevant detail!  Just coincidence that this story juxtaposes something that's desirable to the eye with food and eating?  ^raised eyebrow^

Sixth, Joseph does not 'listen to her', the act of Adam that Yhwh cites as the reason the ground is cursed.

Convinced?  No?  That's ok.  But indulge me a moment.

If I'm right to read ch39 in the light of ch3, then a very interesting thing happens to the main point.  Have a look at how Joseph resists the temptation to sin. (I'm assuming it's not just that Potiphar's wife is fugly)

But he refused and said to his master's wife, "Behold, because of me my master has no concern about anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my charge.

He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except yourself, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?" (Gen 39:8-9 ESV)

What was Joseph's weapon of choice against the temptation to take?  To remind himself of what he'd been given.  Joseph's weapon, was thankfulness.  Gratitude.

Which, if you'll recall, is the opposite of Gen 3 where the serpent turns the generosity of Yhwh in giving all things into the stinginess of God in withholding the one.

When faced with the choice to sin or not to sin, to take that which God has said not to take, thankfulness is a great weapon.  And I mean this in two ways.

Firstly, it reminds you of the fullness you already have.  How could you sin against the one who has given you everything?  Literally!  Is that other thing you want worth so much?
Secondly, it recalls the goodness, the generosity, of the giver.  The one who is reminded of just how much he/she has been given by God trusts that God will continue to do the right thing by them: both in giving, and in withholding.


To be continued...


* Yes, that conjunction is definitely meant to be 'and' and not 'but'.  The serpent would have used 'but', but.

Grasping in Genesis #4

I've been blogging through Genesis since finishing my project, and it's been fascinating seeing some themes emerge so strongly.  Particularly, seeing that Gen 3 isn't the only place where find a character grasping at something God's already given or promised them.

So, we're up to chapter 27, and the theme reappears.  But first, some background:

Isaac prayed to Yhwh on behalf of his wife, because she was barren. Yhwh answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant. The babies jostled each other within her, and she said, "Why is this happening to me?" So she went to inquire of Yhwh. Yhwh said to her, "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older[Esau] will serve the younger[Jacob]."

 Rebekah came to love her younger son, Jacob.  Isaac came to love the older son (and the meat he hunted), Esau.  Now Rebekah is in a fantastic position here, because she's had a direct word from Yhwh that her favoured son will end up on top.  He'll rule over Esau, so there's no reason for her to fear losing contact with her son.  She already has, in promise form, what she's come to desire.  And so when she hears Isaac promising this same thing to Esau instead of Jacob, she fails to trust God's word and decides to take matters into her own hands.

"Go to the flock and bring me two good young goats, so that I may prepare from them delicious food for your father, such as he loves. And you shall bring it to your father to eat, so that he may bless you before he dies."

The context gives us a whole bunch of clues that we should be thinking of Genesis 3.  Firstly, the great desire for food is once again present.  (as it is at the end of chapter 25, to which we'll return; it's heaps interesting)  Second, the repetition of competing voices which ask to be obeyed ("heard").  Third, the dichotomy of blessing and cursing, as Rebekah (willingly) brings curse on herself.  Fourth, the sending away of Jacob out of the presence of Isaaac for fear of death, as Adam and Eve were from the presence of Yhwh (the phrase is repeated so you don't miss it).  Fifthly, the repetition of the covering with animal skins.

And lastly, of course, the very thing she wanted, and had, she ended up losing.  She sends her son away for fear he might die.  In effect, she loses both her sons. (cf. 27:45)

There are a few more connections, of varying strength.

Of course, as striking as the similarities of the scenes are the distinctions between them.  This is the art of Hebrew narrative, as expectations are set up and then twisted, added to or totally subverted.  A subtlety often foreign to the characteristically one-dimensional storytelling of Hollywood.

Ultimately, what happened?

Rebekah saw what she wanted.  She already possessed a promise from Yhwh that she would have that thing.  She took action designed to get it.  And, though God subverts the previous paradigm by keeping his promise to bless Jacob, Rebekah herself loses that which she grasped for.

 Thus Isaac sent Jacob away. (Gen 28:5 ESV)

And she never saw her son again.

Genesis intratextuality

I started out a set of observations from my reading through Genesis here and here.  The idea is essentially this:

There's a pattern emerging through Genesis where certain characters grasp at something that they already have, whether in actuality or by promise of Yhwh.  The result of the grasping tends to be the loss or spoiling of that which they have grasped for.  The prevailing theme is faith, or lack of faith, that Yhwh has given them that good thing.

For Eve, that was the knowledge of good and evil. Though she possessed it, she was tricked into thinking God had been stingy and so she grasped for it, and lost it, in the eating of the fruit of the tree.


For Sarah, it was having a son.  Though Abraham had received the promise of a son, she grasped at it by giving Hagar to Abraham, and ended up causing Isaac and his descendants the problem of their relationship with Hagar's son, Ishmael.

Now we come to Genesis 22 and the great test of Abraham's faith.  Will he give his only son back to God?  The one through whom God's blessings were promised to flow?  Or will he grasp at him, attempting to keep that which God has said he must give up?

It seems utterly impossible for Abraham to believe that Yhwh will provide for him an heir through Isaac.  The very act that Yhwh asks of him inherently destroys any hope of this.  Yet in a complete reversal of our previous scenes, Abraham trusts Yhwh in the impossible situation.  He freely gives up that which Yhwh had given him and in whom the rest of Yhwh's promises will stand or fall.  He entrusts himself to Yhwh's goodness in spite of all human logic.  (It thus makes sense that Hebrews 11:19 ascribes to him a divine wisdom that affronts all human experience and common sense.)

This scene is the ultimate example of trust in the providence of Yhwh, against all his human experience of possibility.  It is also the polar opposite of the actions of Eve and Sarah in grasping at that of which Yhwh had already assured them.  It is an anti-type-scene in every conceivable way.

The author sets Abraham's insane trust in the providence of Yhwh against the grasping of Eve and Sarah, whose lack of trust had varying degrees of "understandability".

There is so much pastoral application in these chapters that is really huge for our generation.  No time for it here, but perhaps I'll rant about it in another post.  This series is about establishing a pattern of scenes in Genesis, which in turn may enhance the case for my project's slant on Genesis 3.

Next stop, Genesis 27, where the scene reverts to type...

Intertextuality #2: the fun part

I posited here an argument for a strong thematic connection between Genesis 3 and Genesis 16.  While that's fun in itself, it was the possibilities that this connection unearthed that began to pique my interest.

I have suggested in some detail here that Genesis 3 is perhaps best understood as Eve grasping for something that she already possessed.  If this is right, then might that pattern also be repeated later in Genesis?

Indeed, it's worth asking why women are the focus in so much of the, if you'll excuse the pun, patriarchal narratives.

Genesis 16 is a case in point.  In what sense could Sarai be described as having grasped at that which she already had?

Well, if we understand Yhwh's promise that Abram would have countless descendants in its most natural sense (ie, that he would bear them through his wife), then in effect Sarai had already received the child she was grasping for: by promise.  The thematic links are strengthened somewhat in perceiving that lack of trust in God's word is a key operative in both cases.

Eve failed to trust that God had been good to her in what he had spoken to her.  Could we perhaps suggest that Sarai did the same?

The journey through Genesis should be interesting.  I'm holding out some hope that these intertextual links will provide some support for my reading of Genesis 3.



NB.  Feminists, don't get too agitated too quickly about where I'm going with this.  We'll get to Tamar who provides some narrative counter-balance and nuance.

Is there an 'inter' in this texuality?

I'm reading through the Bible cover to cover at the moment (much closer to one cover than the other) and am noticing some interesting things upon reading Genesis afresh.  For example, Genesis 16 seems to follow a familiar pattern.

Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. 2 And Sarai said to Abram, "Behold now, the LORD has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her." And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai.
 3 So, after Abram ahad lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife. 4 And he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress.
 5 And Sarai said to Abram, "May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my servant to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May athe LORD judge between you and me!"
 6 But Abram said to Sarai, "Behold, your servant is in your power; do to her as you please." Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her. (Gen 16:1-6 ESV)

Seeing anything yet?

The driving tension involves a husband, a wife and Yhwh.  The tension is brought to a head as the wife becomes convinced that Yhwh is stingy and has short-changed her.  This is stated in a way that contains a certain amount of factual truth, while misrepresenting the character of Yhwh's actions.
The wife perceives a means by which she may gain that which Yhwh has allegedly withheld from her.  This course of action seems good to her, despite seeming obviously flawed to the reader.  And so the wife takes, and gives to her husband.  The husband, passively and without a reported word, listens to his wife and receives that which is offered.

Then the negative consequences become all too apparent to the man and wife.  Each party shifts responsibility for the situation to the other.  The final result, is that someone becomes an exile.

Sound familiar?  If there isn't significant reference to patterns set up in Genesis 3 I'll eat my exegetical hat.  Which is easy.  Because it's imaginary.  Unless you buy me a real one.

Implications for exegesis?  Probably lots, I'd have to think about it.  Or get you guys to tell me.  It really casts the Genesis 16 event in terms of the nature of Adam and Eve's sin.  It proceeds again from a wrong view of God and ends in a failure to trust his predictive word.

Now something that is also interesting to me is the fact that there are, perhaps, particular resonances with Genesis 3 when read as I have in my project.  I'll post on that soon, God willing.

What's in a name?

I reckon I've uncovered evidence that the use of budgie smugglers was alive and well in patriarchal times.

Ophir, Havilah and Jobab. All these were sons of Joktan.

That's one tan line you really don't need to see.

Same cause, opposite response

Haven't looked up an commentaries yet, but does anyone here have a helpful understanding of what's going on in God's head when he says that:

20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21 The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though[a] every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

22 “As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.”

I mean, isn't that why he decided to send the flood in the first place?

Particularly interesting to me is how the pleasing aroma of the sacrifice enters into it.

Typical Noah

Have a read of Genesis 6-9 again before reading on.


---


Does anyone else see Noah's family being saved based on Noah's personal relationship with God? Any implications for how we view the whole event?

Just seeing if anyone's got any insights to help me out.

From the Master's Apprentices to the Animals

This is the third post of a series on Genesis 1-3 which started here, with part 2 here.

Another of Doug Green's thoughts on humanity is that if we were, as is fairly commonly held, that dominion and mastery is at least part of the divine image which we are to fulfill, then the first domain of dominion ought to be ourselves.

That is, if we are made to be Masters of the Universe (TM) under Yhwh, little gods representing the Big God, then the primary arena for that rule to be expressed ought to be our own person.

This, says Doug, is one of the most obvious features that marks us off from the animals. The mark of true humanity is that we exercise appropriate dominion and control over ourselves. And so, after the fall, we end up being humans who are less than human because we do not exercise dominion over ourselves.

He cites the story of Esau as paradigm of fallen humanity. Note how many things present Esau as animal-like. His body was like a hairy garment. He inhabited the open fields. He was a hunter. In order to be like an animal, like Esau, Jacob covers himself in the skins of animals.

Thus, we should not be surprised that Esau lives by instinct. He sells his birthright to satisfy hunger. This is the nature of fallen humanity.

Interestingly, 'beastly' is also how Peter describes a certain set of false teachers, while the ultimate judgement on Nebuchadnezzar for his pride was to become like a beast. (More on 'loss of reason' as a product of the fall in another post)

This is beautiful because it gives a positively glorious perspective on the Christian ethic of self-denial and restraint. Western capitalist culture sees nothing in this ethic other than repression (or oppression?) of natural instincts, the curbing of true humanity. Our age can see no positive virtue in deciding, for example, not to have sex before marriage. Why suppress yourself? Why not be who you are?

Yet Scripture holds the exercising of self-control as a mark of true humanity. We are not utterly beholden to our instincts. Nor should we be. Being re-made in the image of God (back to true humanity) by Holy Spirit includes the fruit of self control! Our age is pretty up on asceticism being stupid, but not so much on unbridled self-expression being stupid.

I'm very glad that Jesus that he did not obey his instincts but was truly human, and set his face towards the cross.

They were like us: part deux

Here's another angle on Doug Green's take on Genesis 3:22.

I've never really been too settled on the identification of the 'we' in Genesis 2 and 3. Who are they? Who are the 'us' that God makes us like? Who is the 'us' that Adam and Eve either became like or were once like?

Many people in my circles (Australian evangelicals) have taught in sermons that 'knowing good and evil' is the concept of usurping God's role. It means to determine good and evil, something that is not our place to do. This is because they take the more traditional translation that Adam and Eve 'have become like us' as opposed to Green's 'were like us'.

One exegetical consequence of this is that the identity of the 'us' is more limited. In 3:22, the 'us' are the 'knowers' of good and evil. If the phrase 'knowing good and evil' is understood to mean determining good and evil, then the 'us' can only include the divine. 'Us' cannot mean the heavenly court. (and, by the way, if you take Doug's take on 3:22, there's no exegetical problem with taking 'us' as the heavenly court anymore)

Thus, you're left with some kind of plurality within Yhwh being mentioned within the first couple of chapters of the Bible. A proto-trinitarian statement. It seems to me that God is not referred to in this way throughout the rest of the Old Testament, despite certain ambiguities later on in Zechariah, Malachi, etc. I personally would find it very strange were it to be the case here.

I can't see any evidence internal to Gen 2-3 that favours a 'determining good and evil' interpretation of that phrase. Can any of you? Things I've missed?

They were like us

It was suggested by Doug Green that a possible alternate translation to Genesis 3:22 was perhaps more correct than the traditional one. Traditionally, it reads something like:

Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever-- ESV

However, the Hebrew verb rendered there as 'has become' allows for a certain degree of ambiguity in terms of tense. It is simply Hebrew perfect tense of the verb 'to be'. Given the ambiguities of Hebrew, the verse could thus be read as:

Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man was like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever--

On this reading, the original state of humanity is 'knowing good and evil' and it is only upon the eating of the fruit that their minds were 'scrambled' and that they could no longer distinguish the good from evil.

So, is there any possible way that this could be a good translation? Well, from my admittedly limited Hebrew knowledge, I'd say these two examples make it possible.

Firstly, in the immediate context, you have the same word being used in what appears to be a past tense.

"Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field (Gen 3:1 ESV)"

And yet, this isn't so satisfying because you could argue that it's a past-tense of narration, where the language is describing something that was true at the time of the events being described. So what we really need is an example where it occurs in direct speech, as it does in Gen 3:22, and is still rendered as a past state of being. Interestingly, there's one even in Genesis:

They said, "We see plainly that the LORD has been with you." (Gen 26:28 ESV)

The same verb, translated as a state of being that was true prior to the actual speaking of the words.

If Doug's thoughts are right, then the irony of the situation is that the serpent who deceived Eve in telling her that she would become 'like God, knowing good and evil' has in a sense deceived a lot of translators over a lot of years. :P As Doug pointed out, pehaps Eve's response should have been,

"But I'm already like God. I'm in His image. And I know good and evil, God told us what that is."

More thoughts to come...

A little too much, perhaps?

I was at college today, when I overheard a discussion regarding an unnamed theological college student (not at QTC) who had what he thought to be a more culturally relevant translation of Genesis 2:23.

It involved an elegantly subtle translation of "zoth hapa'am" (loosely transliterated) which he rendered "Phwoooaar!!!".

This piece of brilliance was followed by a masterful work of literary art, using wordplay drawn from current Western parlance, substituting the word 'boner' for 'bone'. Sadly, I wasn't able to hear the rest of this 'translation' and so am unable to reproduce it accurately here.

Despite the obvious maturity of this scholarship one could, perhaps, accuse the student in question of having an over-realised sexchatology. I keenly await the publication of this forthcoming translation.

Men, angels and Yahweh

Something I've found interesting of late when reading Genesis 18-22 is the means by which God visits people. He calls from heaven, gets his angel to call down from heaven, he sends a posse of 3 blokes who then become 2 angels on the way from Abraham's place to Sodom. Sometimes the messenger seems to be speaking, at other times it's Yahweh himself who speaks. An interesting set of interactions.

I'm wondering now what can be made of God's choice of method, and the fluidity of the change from 'men' to 'angels' in the story of the men of Sodom's rape attempt. Why did God choose to interact with people in the specific way that he did? Is it supposed to tell us something about the nature of the interaction?

Hanging by a thread

I'm only this time reading through realising how heavy this sentence is. It's literally a death sentence.

By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return."

Imagine the increasing tension in listening to that sentence as it was first uttered.

...

Also, something of the weight of that sentence dawned on me too. The consequences of the fall here are un-creation. The un-doing of the last 2 chapters. Not only that, but the un-making of something that is the image of God!

Everything that was set up in the last 2 chapters now seems like it's hanging by a thread. What next?

Bigger verse than I had realised before.

An interesting question to ask

From Genesis 3:

He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"

What an interesting set of questions!

Firstly, why did God ask "Who told you? instead of something like "How do you know?"? (Note the correct use of question marks) The question doesn't even confirm Adam's statement that he's naked. What exactly was God anticipating in asking which person made the assertion? What is the answer to it?

Secondly, how does the first question give rise to the second? What is the necessary link between the two? If you play the imaginary mind-game that God didn't know what had happened, why is this the obvious second question after asking the first?

I'll post some thoughts in the next couple of days.