Genesis 12:1-9 Good News Translation
1The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your country, your relatives, and your father's home, and go to a land that I am going to show you.
2 I will give you many descendants, and they will become a great nation. I will bless you and make your name famous, so that you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
But I will curse those who curse you.
And through you I will bless all the nations.”
4 When Abram was seventy-five years old, he started out from Haran, as the Lord had told him to do; and Lot went with him.
5 Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all the wealth and all the slaves they had acquired in Haran, and they started out for the land of Canaan.
When they arrived in Canaan, 6 Abram traveled through the land until he came to the sacred tree of Moreh, the holy place at Shechem. (At that time the Canaanites were still living in the land.)
7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “This is the country that I am going to give to your descendants.” Then Abram built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
8 After that, he moved on south to the hill country east of the city of Bethel and set up his camp between Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There also he built an altar and worshiped the Lord.
9 Then he moved on from place to place, going toward the southern part of Canaan.
Jeremiah 31:31-34 New International Version
31 “The days are coming,” declares the Lord,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.
32 It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,”
declares the Lord.
33 “This is the covenant
I will make with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
34 No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
I will forgive their sins
and I will no longer remember their wrongs.
I, the Lord, have spoken.”
1The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your country, your relatives, and your father's home, and go to a land that I am going to show you.
2 I will give you many descendants, and they will become a great nation. I will bless you and make your name famous, so that you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
But I will curse those who curse you.
And through you I will bless all the nations.”
4 When Abram was seventy-five years old, he started out from Haran, as the Lord had told him to do; and Lot went with him.
5 Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all the wealth and all the slaves they had acquired in Haran, and they started out for the land of Canaan.
When they arrived in Canaan, 6 Abram traveled through the land until he came to the sacred tree of Moreh, the holy place at Shechem. (At that time the Canaanites were still living in the land.)
7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “This is the country that I am going to give to your descendants.” Then Abram built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
8 After that, he moved on south to the hill country east of the city of Bethel and set up his camp between Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There also he built an altar and worshiped the Lord.
9 Then he moved on from place to place, going toward the southern part of Canaan.
Jeremiah 31:31-34 New International Version
31 “The days are coming,” declares the Lord,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.
32 It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,”
declares the Lord.
33 “This is the covenant
I will make with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
34 No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
I will forgive their sins
and I will no longer remember their wrongs.
I, the Lord, have spoken.”
Reflection
So you know there are lots of ways to read the Bible, and different people, different churches, different denominations read it differently and because the Old Testament is such a foundational book the different religions of the book: Judaism, Islam, Christianity read it, study it and understand it, well, differently.
As well, you can look at the Bible from different perspectives so historically as a history of the people of God, as literature; different genres of story: allegory, myth, parable, history, through a lens called historical criticism which uses several techniques used to discover the historical situation, the sources behind the writings, the literary style and relationships, the date, the authorship, approach to composition, destination, and recipients. Historical criticism seeks to answer a basic question; what historical circumstances does this text refer and out of what historical circumstances did it emerge and, of course, you can read the Bible literally, meaning that the Bible means just what it says and says what it means.
So, when you are me, and you happen on a new perspective from which to read, at least, some of the Pentateuch or the first five books of the Old Testament; you go wow – now, this is interesting, maybe I can learn something I missed seeing and understanding before.
So, I’ve been reading my way through a few books put out by the Bible for Normal People, and the one written on Genesis people by Peter Enns and Jared Byas, was interesting. Well, really, it was like putting on 3D glasses at the movie theater to watch Lord of the Rings - and the butterfly, well it’s a real butterfly coming out of the screen right at you.
Basically, what they reminded me was that the people who were writing these books (Priests and Deuteronomists); those who were collating the stories, writing them down and editing them may only have started doing that during the post exile period (around 539 BCE and later) and that they were doing it within the context of their own time, addressing the problems they were facing.
So, what you have are a lot of Judahites; those who were exiled from Judah to Babylon and fifty years later they are allowed to return to Judah and Jerusalem. Not everyone returns because some people have rebuilt their lives in Babylon and they quite like it. And, oh yeah, the first Temple had been destroyed so even those Judahites who had been allowed to stay – basically the poor, farmers, craftsmen.
So they start at the beginning: Genesis, and they start by telling their story of how their God: Yahweh and Elohim, created the world,, out of chaos God brought order, out of darkness; light, out of mud and dust; human beings. And it was good. Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, Tower of Babel.
So one thing before we get to Abram, I know that when we read the Bible we have it pretty easy because we have chapters and verses but they weren’t written with chapters and verses. unfortunately who ever edited in the chapters in Genesis didn’t really get a good look at it because Genesis all ready had these natural divisions- those lists we usually want to skip over called genealogies!
So Genesis 11:10-31 is Abram’s family tree and we came into the story in chapter 12, God speaks to Abram, mostly importantly for Jews, God makes a covenant with Abram promising him the land of Canaan, and to make him a great nation with lots of people, and to be on Abram side blessing those who help him and cursing those who don’t. Abram agrees by building an alter at Bethel.
This covenant is repeated three more times, so in chapter 13, after Abram and his nephew Lot part ways, Abram lives in Canaan and Yahweh again comes and gives Abram the land, promises Abram so many offspring they are like dust, and Abram goes to Hebron and built an alter. Then in Chapter 15, Yahweh again visits Abram promising him so many descendants they will be like the stars in the sky, foretelling of their slavery in Egypt but again promising the land of Canaan and encompassing 10 tribes of the area. And in chapter 17 we have God repeating his promises:
“I am God Almighty (El Shaddai) ; walk before me faithfully and be blameless.
2 Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase
your numbers.”
3 Abram fell facedown, and God said to him,
4 “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations.
5 No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have
made you a father of many nations.
6 I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you.
7 I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you
and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God
and the God of your descendants after you.
8 The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner,
I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you;
and I will be their God.”
Then, God establishes the mark; a circumcision on all males that will set the Jews, descendants of Abraham, apart from non Jews.
The Jews are God’s holy people, they will becomes slaves for generations, but in the story of Exodus they come back and conquer the land and the peoples living there – and it’s a lot of land and people they conquer are not just Canaanites anymore, but it’s more like the boundaries of the United Israel founded by King Saul and King David around 1000 BCE: encompassing the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittittes, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Gigashites, and Jebusites as well as the hated Canaanites just like God says to Abram in Chapter 15.
So way back in Genesis you have a picture of what Israel looks like in 1000 BCE and since God mentions to Abraham that kings will be in his descendants, in Chapter 17, there are kings and they and the Judges are there until the Babylonian exile in 586 BCE.
What we have in that story of God that stretches over Genesis is a view of what the history of the people Israel is going to look like, and that story stretches right from the good creation, which didn’t quite work out the way God planned, people being people.
So you get stories like Adam and Eve, then Cain and Abel – think of Abel as Israel the faithful giving proper sacrifice to God and Cain as those dreaded Canaanites and everyone else, it’s chaos and confusion again so you get the Tower of Babel and Noah (again think Israel) and the Flood so that things can get a fresh start.
Then, Abraham, visions and visitations with promises of land and nation, and covenants with the building of alters and proper sacrifice, the story of Abraham and Isaac, Abraham, on Mount Moriah, poised with a knife over Isaac; ready to do God’s bidding when God intervenes with a suitable ram. This story as you can see is not only Abraham being faithful to God but God being faithful to Abraham.
Mount Moriah, by the way, is Temple Mount; where the Jerusalem Temple will be built (957 BCE) by David’s son; Solomon, where God will reside in the Ark of the Covenant which King David has moved from one of the host cities where it was residing in a sacred tent or Tabernacle. This action joined Israel’s major religious object with the monarchy and the city itself into a central symbol of union of the Israelite tribes. By 609 BCE, a mere 300 years, the Temple of Jerusalem becomes the only place of sacrifice in the Kingdom of Judah.
So, all the way in Genesis and the story of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Jacob whose name is changed to Israel (struggles or wrestles with God) and who has ten sons and two grandsons and you get the twelve tribes of Israel, who have moved to Egypt to live with Joseph (the 11th son of Jacob), you keep getting glimpses of what Israel will become.
And, most importantly, you keep getting a God who is faithful to the promise made to Abraham, then Isaac and Jacob – “You will be my people and I will be your God” And the whole story, the whole Pentateuch, is one of Yahweh, over and over again, being faithful, being with Israel, sticking it out when they turn to worship other nations’ gods. Yahweh is faithful to the chosen people, Israel.
And that is a story, Yahweh is faithful to the covenant, that continues to this day. It’s the story of the Jesus, it’s the story of the New Testament, it is the story that is written new every generation in the hearts and minds of people like you and me.
Our God, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, is faithful to us. Lifting us up out of the chaos of the world, bringing us into the bounty and fruitfulness of the Garden, leading us through the desert, bringing us home to land of milk and honey, showing up in the guise of a carpenter’s son, who brings healing and wholeness to a people in need of New Life and Good News.
God is faithful to Israel, God is faithful to Jesus, God is faithful to the covenant and the new covenant written on our hearts.
May it be so Amen
So you know there are lots of ways to read the Bible, and different people, different churches, different denominations read it differently and because the Old Testament is such a foundational book the different religions of the book: Judaism, Islam, Christianity read it, study it and understand it, well, differently.
As well, you can look at the Bible from different perspectives so historically as a history of the people of God, as literature; different genres of story: allegory, myth, parable, history, through a lens called historical criticism which uses several techniques used to discover the historical situation, the sources behind the writings, the literary style and relationships, the date, the authorship, approach to composition, destination, and recipients. Historical criticism seeks to answer a basic question; what historical circumstances does this text refer and out of what historical circumstances did it emerge and, of course, you can read the Bible literally, meaning that the Bible means just what it says and says what it means.
So, when you are me, and you happen on a new perspective from which to read, at least, some of the Pentateuch or the first five books of the Old Testament; you go wow – now, this is interesting, maybe I can learn something I missed seeing and understanding before.
So, I’ve been reading my way through a few books put out by the Bible for Normal People, and the one written on Genesis people by Peter Enns and Jared Byas, was interesting. Well, really, it was like putting on 3D glasses at the movie theater to watch Lord of the Rings - and the butterfly, well it’s a real butterfly coming out of the screen right at you.
Basically, what they reminded me was that the people who were writing these books (Priests and Deuteronomists); those who were collating the stories, writing them down and editing them may only have started doing that during the post exile period (around 539 BCE and later) and that they were doing it within the context of their own time, addressing the problems they were facing.
So, what you have are a lot of Judahites; those who were exiled from Judah to Babylon and fifty years later they are allowed to return to Judah and Jerusalem. Not everyone returns because some people have rebuilt their lives in Babylon and they quite like it. And, oh yeah, the first Temple had been destroyed so even those Judahites who had been allowed to stay – basically the poor, farmers, craftsmen.
So they start at the beginning: Genesis, and they start by telling their story of how their God: Yahweh and Elohim, created the world,, out of chaos God brought order, out of darkness; light, out of mud and dust; human beings. And it was good. Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, Tower of Babel.
So one thing before we get to Abram, I know that when we read the Bible we have it pretty easy because we have chapters and verses but they weren’t written with chapters and verses. unfortunately who ever edited in the chapters in Genesis didn’t really get a good look at it because Genesis all ready had these natural divisions- those lists we usually want to skip over called genealogies!
So Genesis 11:10-31 is Abram’s family tree and we came into the story in chapter 12, God speaks to Abram, mostly importantly for Jews, God makes a covenant with Abram promising him the land of Canaan, and to make him a great nation with lots of people, and to be on Abram side blessing those who help him and cursing those who don’t. Abram agrees by building an alter at Bethel.
This covenant is repeated three more times, so in chapter 13, after Abram and his nephew Lot part ways, Abram lives in Canaan and Yahweh again comes and gives Abram the land, promises Abram so many offspring they are like dust, and Abram goes to Hebron and built an alter. Then in Chapter 15, Yahweh again visits Abram promising him so many descendants they will be like the stars in the sky, foretelling of their slavery in Egypt but again promising the land of Canaan and encompassing 10 tribes of the area. And in chapter 17 we have God repeating his promises:
“I am God Almighty (El Shaddai) ; walk before me faithfully and be blameless.
2 Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase
your numbers.”
3 Abram fell facedown, and God said to him,
4 “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations.
5 No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have
made you a father of many nations.
6 I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you.
7 I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you
and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God
and the God of your descendants after you.
8 The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner,
I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you;
and I will be their God.”
Then, God establishes the mark; a circumcision on all males that will set the Jews, descendants of Abraham, apart from non Jews.
The Jews are God’s holy people, they will becomes slaves for generations, but in the story of Exodus they come back and conquer the land and the peoples living there – and it’s a lot of land and people they conquer are not just Canaanites anymore, but it’s more like the boundaries of the United Israel founded by King Saul and King David around 1000 BCE: encompassing the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittittes, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Gigashites, and Jebusites as well as the hated Canaanites just like God says to Abram in Chapter 15.
So way back in Genesis you have a picture of what Israel looks like in 1000 BCE and since God mentions to Abraham that kings will be in his descendants, in Chapter 17, there are kings and they and the Judges are there until the Babylonian exile in 586 BCE.
What we have in that story of God that stretches over Genesis is a view of what the history of the people Israel is going to look like, and that story stretches right from the good creation, which didn’t quite work out the way God planned, people being people.
So you get stories like Adam and Eve, then Cain and Abel – think of Abel as Israel the faithful giving proper sacrifice to God and Cain as those dreaded Canaanites and everyone else, it’s chaos and confusion again so you get the Tower of Babel and Noah (again think Israel) and the Flood so that things can get a fresh start.
Then, Abraham, visions and visitations with promises of land and nation, and covenants with the building of alters and proper sacrifice, the story of Abraham and Isaac, Abraham, on Mount Moriah, poised with a knife over Isaac; ready to do God’s bidding when God intervenes with a suitable ram. This story as you can see is not only Abraham being faithful to God but God being faithful to Abraham.
Mount Moriah, by the way, is Temple Mount; where the Jerusalem Temple will be built (957 BCE) by David’s son; Solomon, where God will reside in the Ark of the Covenant which King David has moved from one of the host cities where it was residing in a sacred tent or Tabernacle. This action joined Israel’s major religious object with the monarchy and the city itself into a central symbol of union of the Israelite tribes. By 609 BCE, a mere 300 years, the Temple of Jerusalem becomes the only place of sacrifice in the Kingdom of Judah.
So, all the way in Genesis and the story of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Jacob whose name is changed to Israel (struggles or wrestles with God) and who has ten sons and two grandsons and you get the twelve tribes of Israel, who have moved to Egypt to live with Joseph (the 11th son of Jacob), you keep getting glimpses of what Israel will become.
And, most importantly, you keep getting a God who is faithful to the promise made to Abraham, then Isaac and Jacob – “You will be my people and I will be your God” And the whole story, the whole Pentateuch, is one of Yahweh, over and over again, being faithful, being with Israel, sticking it out when they turn to worship other nations’ gods. Yahweh is faithful to the chosen people, Israel.
And that is a story, Yahweh is faithful to the covenant, that continues to this day. It’s the story of the Jesus, it’s the story of the New Testament, it is the story that is written new every generation in the hearts and minds of people like you and me.
Our God, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, is faithful to us. Lifting us up out of the chaos of the world, bringing us into the bounty and fruitfulness of the Garden, leading us through the desert, bringing us home to land of milk and honey, showing up in the guise of a carpenter’s son, who brings healing and wholeness to a people in need of New Life and Good News.
God is faithful to Israel, God is faithful to Jesus, God is faithful to the covenant and the new covenant written on our hearts.
May it be so Amen
