Some thoughts about Rebekah

Just as Sarah is the ideal wife, the story about Rebekah in Genesis 24 shows what it means to be the ideal daughter.  She is fair and chaste (v 16), respectful (v 18) eager to serve and hardworking (v. 19-20).  She accepts the Lord's will and sacrifices her own (v. 58).  Later we see that she has her own faith enough to inquire of the Lord about her unborn children (25:22).  

So how do we reconcile her virtuousness with the story of her deceiving her husband to secure the birthright for Jacob? Every time I have studied this story in the past, study guides and Sunday School teachers have suggested that she did what she had to fulfill the revelation she received at the time the twins were born that "the elder shall serve the younger".  That never really set well with me.  Is deceiving your husband and including your son in that deceit ever a good idea?  One of my pod casts suggested another way to look at it.  Maybe Rebekah was trying to fulfill the prophecy given to her earlier, but she went about it the wrong way.  The result of her and her son's deception was a rift in the family, and Jacob's need to exile himself from his home for a long of time. Rebekah essentially lost her son, and Jacob, who participated in the deceit, ended up being the recipient of trickery, when Laban made him marry Leah first when he wanted Rachel. I kind of like the idea of this as a cautionary tale.  If you dish it, it comes back to you.

That being said, it is also a tale of redemption.  Yes, Esau wants to kill his brother, and Jacob has to flee to preserve his life, but it all works out in the end.  Jacob finds his true love in Haran, and gains an additional wife and many flocks in the process. Somehow the experience and time apart heals the family and Jacob and Esau are reconciled once Jacob returns. 

In some ways Rebekah reminds me of Eve.  Yes, she transgresses, and the transgression has immediate negative consequences, but the Lord is able to turn her transgression into something good. 

More about Sarah

The following ideas about Sarah are not based on any podcast.  I am sure someone has thought of this idea before, but it didn't show up in any of the podcasts I listened to this week, so take it all with a grain of salt.  Still, I think the idea is compelling and if I were still in college, I would certainly write a paper about it for a Old Testament or Women in Scripture class.

This idea started to develop when my husband and I read in Genesis 20 when Abraham tells Sarah to say that she is his sister again, and Abimelech want to take her as his wife.  All the podcasts I listened to suggested that this was just another version of what happened when Abraham and Sarah went into Egypt.  But I asked myself, what if it isn't.  What if it is an important story that the editors included in the narrative on purpose.  I also thought about what I talked about in my last blog, how Sarah represents the ideal Hebrew wife.  What is Sarah's life foreshadows what will happen to the entire House of Israel?  What if her story is a way for the editors of the Pentateuch to reassure the House of Israel that they will rise again after their Babylonian captivity and that the Mesiah will eventually come?

A chronology of Sarah's life

Let's look at the important events in the life of Sarah. We first hear about her when she marries her cousin, Abram. They have to travel to Egypt to escape a famine.  Sarah is taken into Pharaoh's household to save her husband's life, and then is released because people in Pharaoh's household get sick.  When Abraham leaves, he somehow gets to keep the bride-price and is very enriched.  

They travel back to the land that was originally promised to Abraham.  Sarah and Abraham don't produce a child, so Sarah gives Hagar, a non-Israelite, to Abraham as her surrogate.  The situation turns out to be less than satisfactory.  Sarah wants to cast out Hagar and Ishmael, but they are reunited for a little while. 

Sarah is given to Abimelech to wife as Abraham's sister, but she is released when Abimelech has a dream about her.  When Abimelech lets her go, he maintains a good relationship with Abraham and gives him a place to build a well and eventually to bury Sarah.  

Finally, after all hope is past for Sarah to have an heir, she finally has a son.  Just when Isaac is about to be old enough to take over the family leadership, The LORD tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Abraham is obedient, but the LORD intervenes and God provides his own sacrifice instead.  Isaac follows in the path of his father and keeps the covenant.  Ishmael and Hagar are cast out and leave the family permanently. A few years after Isaac's birth, Sarah dies, and Abraham marries a new wife and has more children. Isaac, however, carries on the birthright and is the keeper of the covenant. 

So are you seeing the parallels with the history of the House of Israel?

 Abraham, in this instance, represents God.  The House of Israel, represented by Sarah, enters into a covenant relationship (marriage) with God.  According to the covenant Sarah will have a child through which all the nations of the world will be blessed (the Messiah).  Before that happens, the House of Israel has to travel to Egypt to escape a famine.  The Egyptians find them desirable and take possession of them as slaves.  They are freed after the Passover, when Pharaoh's household is struck with sickness. They leave with the spoils of Egypt.

They travel back to the place that Abraham was originally given by the LORD, but the seed of Abraham is corrupted when it mixes with the non-covenant people of the land (Hagar).  The more corrupt part is split off and there is contentions between the 10 tribes and the two tribes (Hagar and Sarah).  The House of Israel is taken into bondage again during the Babylonian captivity but are saved with Cyrus has a dream that they should be restored to their homeland. They build a temple (well) and reestablish their inheritance (burial place).

Finally, after all hope of the promised Messiah seems gone, He is finally born, but just as he is reaching full adulthood he is sacrificed. Instead of being the end of his life, however, the sacrifice confirms his place as the true heir of the covenant. With the covenant in place, the LORD invites gentiles to join into his family.  

The parallels are not perfect.  In history the 10 tribes break off before the Messiah is born, but in the story of Sarah, the birth of the Isaac causes the final break-up of the family. Plus, you can't get too particular about the details.  Egypt is Egypt, but Abimelech is not the king of Babylon.  Still, I think the parallels are too many to be an accident.  I think the original scholars who assembled the Pentateuch portrayed the events in Sarah's life intensionally to shadow the history of the house of Israel and fortell the coming of a Messiah who would be sacrificed to save Israel. If you think of the writings of the prophets at the time of the captivity, they are always comparing the house of Israel to a bride.  (Jeremiah 3:20, Isaiah 50:1, Isaiah 54:6-8, Hosea 3:1-3 to name a few)  Maybe the idea of Sarah as a type of the House of Israel was a common theme back then because the people saw Sarah's life as a type of their own history. Or maybe after the compilers of the Pentateuch drew attention to the parallels between Sarah's life and their cultural history, the prophets picked up on the imagery. I don't know the details of the time line well enough to establish which was the egg and which the chicken.  Still, I think it is all a cool idea.

The Strange Parts of Genesis 12-17

 In the Come Follow Me reading for this week there are two parts that stand out because they are kind of strange.  Rather than avoid them, I decided to to further research about them and I discovered some great information and insights.  Both my insights came from videos by Tim Mackie.  The first was his one on the Pentateuch that I watched several weeks ago, and the other from his video about covenants. 

Sarai's Sacrifice

The first strange story is the one found in Genesis 12:11-20 when Abram and Sarai were coming to Egypt because there was a famine in Canaan.  Abram is worried that, because Sarai is so beautiful, Pharaoh will kill Abram and take Sarai to be his wife.  He therefore asks Sarai to tell the Egyptians that she is Abram's sister.  She agrees, and is taken by Pharaoh's agents into his harem, in preparation for her becoming Pharaoh's wife.  While she is in the harem, Pharaoh's house is hit with a plague, and Pharaoh figures out it is because of Sarai, and that she is really Abram's wife. He returns Sarai to Abram and asks him to leave Egypt, sweetening the deal by letting Abram keep the bride price he had been paid when Sarai was given to Pharaoh.  So what is up with this story?  A lot of people don't like it because Abram, the archetypal prophet, appears to be willing to sacrifice his wife to protect himself.  

To understand this story you have to remember that the Pentateuch was probably assembled and edited during the Babylonian Captivity as a way for the Jews to maintain their cultural identity.  While Adam and then Noah are portrayed as the founders of the whole human race, Abram is the founder of the house of Israel. The name, Abram, even means "great father."  As the founder, he becomes the example of how faithful members of the House of Israel are supposed to act. Likewise, Sarai, whose name means "my princess" is the archetype of the ideal wife and faithful daughter of Israel. The quality that the stories of these original parents emphasize is their obedience.  Abram shows his obedience by leaving his homeland, traveling wherever God leads him, and ultimately being willing to sacrifice his son Isaac just because God asked him to.  Sarai also shows amazing acts of obedience.  She is, in this story, willing to sacrifice herself and her marriage to Abram to save her husband's life. Later she offers her handmaiden to Abram in order that he might have children, since she was barren.  There are similarities between her sacrifice in becoming engaged to Pharaoh, and Abram's sacrifice of Isaac.  In both cases they are being asked to do something that is normally considered to be against the commandments--Abraham, infanticide, Sarai, adultery. Their sacrifices seemed to go contrary to the receiving the blessings that God had promised Abram, i.e. that he would have a large posterity.  Sarai couldn't help Abram have descendants if she were married to Pharaoh, and Abram wouldn't have posterity as the stars in the sky if he killed Isaac before Isaac had any children.  Both Sarai and Abram made their sacrifices willingly, and in both cases the Lord intervened to save them from the fate they feared.  The LORD sent a plague to stop Pharaoh from marrying Sarai, and he sent an angel to stop Abraham from sacrificing Isaac.  Because both were willing to sacrifice in these ways they were seen as fitting founders and examples for the House of Israel.  

The halving of the sacrificial animals

The other strange passage in Genesis 15: 8-18. Abram asks for assurance that he will inherit the land of Canaan as the Lord promised.  The LORD then tells him to take several different kinds of animals and cut them in half.  He was then to take the two halves and lay them apart from each other in a line, to make a pathway down the middle. Abram does as he is asked and goes into a dream trance.  While he is dreaming, the LORD shows him what will befall his posterity and then causes a magical lamp to pass between the pieces of animals.  Afterward, it says that the LORD made a covenant with Abram.  So, what is up with the butchered animals?  Out in the desert it would have been vile to have dead carcasses bloody and laying out where flies would have swarmed them.  Why would that give Abram any kind of assurance that God would fulfill his promises?

Well, it turns out that this was a recognized ritual signifying a binding covenant.  There is a reference to it in Jeremiah 34: 18-20.  Two people who wanted to make a very serious binding would slaughter animals, split them in half, and lay the halves in rows to make a path.  Then those who were making the covenant would walk between the carcasses and swear that if they ever broke the covenant, they would be allow themselves to suffere the same fate as the dead animals on either side. It must have been a very impactful kind of ceremony. Tim Mackie said that this kind of covenant has even been found in other ancient texts.  

The interesting thing is that the covenant was with Abram and his descendants, but Abram did not walk between the carcasses as one would expect.  Instead the LORD sent "a smoking furnace and a burning lamp" between the carcasses instead. It is as if the LORD was suggesting that he knew Abram's descendants would not keep up their end of the bargain, but that God would send something or someone to be sacrificed in Abram's place, represented by either the furnace or the lamp (I don't know which). But who would be the one to be sacrificed when Abram's descendants failed to keep the covenant? I don't know how Jews answer that question, but for a Christian, it has a very significant answer.  Of course, Jesus did sacrifice himself because of the sins of the House of Israel, and all of us. 

So the two most strange parts of this week's reading have really cool meanings if you can find them.

Noah: so many symbols

 It was such a joy to study the story of Noah this week.  I got so many insights from the different podcasts I listen to. (see previous post)  I also had a couple of my own. Here are the things that impressed me this week.

The Flood as a reverse Creation:

I while ago, I blogged about a bunch of the symbols in the creation.  During the creation God made order out of chaos.  In the story of the flood, God reverses that ordering.  In the creation, God separated the water beneath from the water above.  In this story, he opens the heavens and unplugs the "deep" (exact same word in both the Noah and Creation stories) and lets chaotic waters once again consume the land. In the creation, God separates the water and lets the dry ground appear. Here he gradually lets the waters consume the dry ground until even the hills are covered. If you had a cartoon of the creation story, ran it backwards, and added an ark, you would pretty much have a video of the flood.  It even says in Genesis 1 that it was the waters that brought forth the moving creatures and the birds (Gen 1: 29).  If you see that in reverse, you see the waters reclaiming living things.  

Once everything is "uncreated" by the flood, the waters recede and Noah becomes the new Adam within a new world.  Genesis 8:13 states that they emerged from the ark on the 601st year on the first day of the first month. The 600 harkens back to the 6 days of creation.  The first day of the first month suggests a new beginning. The Lord told them to "be fruitful and multiply" (Gen 8:17) just as he had commanded Adam and Eve. Noah built an altar, just like Adam did when he left the garden of Eden.  The people and animals that were in the ark were those who listened to God's commandments.  After having almost all of Adam's posterity go astray, God is trying to establish a new people who will be obedient to him.

Noah as symbol of hope for the house of Israel.

Many scholars think that the Pentateuch was first compiled as a unified document during the Babylonian captivity as a way for the children of Israel to maintain their cultural identity. The people of Mesopotamia where the Jews were held captive had the story of Gilgamesh which contained a flood narrative.  Whoever compiled the Pentateuch reshaped that story into a form that validated the identity of the house of Israel as a chosen people and gives them hope for restoration. Even Noah's name mean "comfort" in Hebrew, and the Jews needed comfort. The house of Israel, like Noah, probably felt like they were surrounded by swirling forces of evil.  A castastrophic event had taken away from them almost everything they had ever known.  Now they only had their families and their religion to cling to.  The hope was that Israel would survive the exile and return to Jerusalem to start a new life as a faith community.  How would their spiritual life be saved? By an ark. The same word used for the Ark in the story of Noah, is used for the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant contained symbols of God's love and care of the House of Israel; a sample of manna, Aaron's rod that budded, and the clay tablets Moses received from the Lord. Noah's Ark symbolized God's saving power.  Both arks were tokens of God's covenant with this people that if they were obedient, he would watch over and care for them.  These would have been very important and sustaining messages for the children of Israel as they were captives in Babylon.

Noah as a symbol of hope for all of us

The most powerful realization I had this week (and this not from a podcast) was that the story of Noah reflects what happens sometimes in our own lives.  Sometimes something happens that suddenly changes everything about our lives.  It might be a death of a family member, or a disabling injury. It might be a sudden loss of a job or the unexpected end to a marriage. Sometimes (though not always) it may be the result of something we have done that is not in accordance with God's will.  These catastrophic events can act, like the flood did, as a kind of reboot to our lives.  If they come about by our own sin, they can act as a cleansing that breaks the ties between an old life and a new life. Even when the disaster is not caused by our own actions, it can still spiritually refine us. One podcaster I listened to pointed out that there didn't seem to be any way to steer the ark.  Noah was left to trust that God would lead the ark where he wanted them to go. When a sudden life changing event happens, the best course is to do exactly as Noah did. He drew his family around himself and held tight, with faith in ark (the covenants) the Lord had directed him to make and with reliance that the trial would take him where the Lord wanted him to go. 

Podcasts

 I thought it was important to mention the podcasts I listen to each week.  I gain a lot of insight from them, and I don't want the reader to think the things I blog about all came from me.  So here are the podcasts I listen to

Book of Mormon Central by the Maxwell Institute
BYU Maxwell Institute Podcast

Come Follow Me Insights with Taylor Halverson and Tyler Griffiths
Talking Scripture with Mike Day and Bryce Dunford 
Unshaken Saints by Jared Halverson