Category: Genesis
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Blood Covering
Leviticus 4 lays out the ritual of the sin offering, which deals with “unintentional” transgressions – the sin of wandering or being led astray. This is not the high-handed sin of open rebellion and refusal to repent. In this offering, the primary element is the blood, which covers the sin of the people. It’s important…
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Thine only son
God’s call to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac did not come in a vacuum. It is set within a greater context of all God’s prior dealings with Abraham. In chapter 12, “Yahweh said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I…
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Decreation, recreation, and covenant renewal
Genesis 6 sets up several patterns that show up repeatedly throughout scripture and throughout history. The first is a pattern of compromise. The line of Seth, through whom the covenant extended as a replacement for faithful Abel, began to compromise and take wives from among the descendants of unfaithful, murderous Cain. The line had become…
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World view
In his book, Christ, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, Leonard Vander Zee establishes the Old Testament world view as one “founded on the assertion that this world is God’s creation. The Old Testament begins in Genesis 1 with a great hymn of praise to the Creator. As each succeeding stanza of the hymn unfolds the…
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No one answered
Ahab, king of the northern kingdom of Israel, had married Jezebel, a Canaanite sorceress and daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians. Together, they sought to restore Canaanite Baal worship in the land of Israel. Ahab built a temple and an altar to Baal and Jezebel killed the prophets of Yahweh. This is a great…
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Firstborn
Jesus is the greater Jacob who receives the inheritance and blessing of the firstborn son when the “elder” brother Adam rejects it, exchanging it for a handful of food.
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Clothed with nakedness
Psalm 132 contrasts the faithful priests of God who are clothed with righteousness with the enemies of the king who are clothed with shame. My five year old observed a link between the ones clothed with shame here and the shame of nakedness in the garden. I think it fits. After the fall, Adam and…
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Wrestling God
The story of Jacob wrestling with God in Genesis 32 is difficult to get a handle on. The narrative is interrupted rather abruptly by Jacob wrestling with this man who just appears from nowhere. It’s the only time that this word for “wrestling” is used and the only place where someone has this kind of…
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The face of God
The passage in Genesis 32 of Jacob’s encounters with God and Esau is tied together by repeated uses of the word face, which most English translations almost completely obscure. When Jacob is preparing his gift to send ahead by the hand of his servants to Esau in verses 21 and 22, a more direct rendering*…
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Creation and redemption
Ben Merkle points out that in Psalm 33, “David looks at God’s power in creation and concludes that ‘all his work is done in truth’ and that ‘the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.’ The triune God is our maker, creating and upholding all things by the power of his Word and…