Genesis 27:39-40
2008.Sep.19 20:00
The Blessing on Esau
Read Genesis 27:39-40 | Full Chapter
Then Isaac his father answered and said to him, "Behold, away from the fertility of the earth shall be your dwelling, And away from the dew of heaven from above. "By your sword you shall live, And your brother you shall serve; But it shall come about when you become restless, That you will break his yoke from your neck."
(Genesis 27:39-40, NASB)
Isaac has agreed to give Esau a blessing, after Jacob stole the intended blessing via deception. For whatever reason, Isaac considers his blessing on Jacob to be a done deal with which Esau is just going to have to live. One of the key points in the blessing of Jacob is that he would “be master of [his] brothers” (Genesis 27:29, NASB). Isaac, who is apparently too far gone to figure out with which of his kids he is talking, must remember this element of the blessing, because his blessing of Esau includes such an acknowledgement.
The blessing also says that Esau and his descendents will live with some trying elements. In particular, they will not live on particularly fertile land, and that they will have to be warriors. This isn’t all bad. First, the quality of Esau’s (and Jacob’s for that matter) is never mentioned. Happiness is not the concern of this blessing, but rather material success. Ability, likewise, is not mentioned. So, Esau’s father has not cursed him to unhappiness; I could say that he has rather blessed Esau with an alternative. “Life will have some difficulties, son, but you can thrive in this situation.” For Esau, survival by sword, instead of agriculture, might well be a blessing.
But there’s yet one more huge element. “It shall come about,” says Isaac, “when you become restless, That you will break his yoke from your neck.” Life, yes, will be full of challenges. Subject of your younger brother, your success will not be as easy. And, yes, you will even accept this for a time. But only for a time. There’s always the temptation to cry out “How long?” The Bible has several instances of this question. But there’s also the hope that what Esau lost by his foolishness will be ultimately restored.
Genesis 1:13-19
2006.Apr.11 21:38
God fiddles with light
Read Genesis 1:13-10 | Full Chapter
In which God apparently decides that the light should be gathered into large burning balls of gas, and reflected off of at least one large ball of dust. Hee hee, funny one God, time to take your meds…
So, remember back in verses 3 through 5? God creates light, separates it from darkness and calls the former day and the latter night. I guess all that playing with plants (can you say opium?) gave him an idea. The light should come from something! But what? I know, nuclear reactions! Yay! In that he assumedly already got gravity going (what did the earth orbit?), nuclear reactions shouldn’t seem that odd. So, he makes the stars, including our favored sun, and the moon, which reflects the sun’s light, visible during most nights. He does this for four reasons, that is, real reasons, not the opium:
- To give light to the earth (17)
- To separate the light from the darkness (18)
- To be signs for seasons, days, and years (14)
- To govern the day and night (18)
Each of these reasons reveals the importance which God places on light and its counterpoint darkness, and continues to create finer distinctions.
The various light sources give light to the earth and separate light from darkness. These two things have already been done, earlier in the chapter, but now those roles are the responsibility of the stars, moon, and various other cosmic entities. Instead of simply “there is light”, there are the givers of light. We can see, but now we know why we can see. God does not want us just to know that there is goodness, but that there is a source of goodness, that in the larger sense, there are not just distinctions, but sources thereof.
God furthermore creates the methods for determining and recording time. He designs to "”let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years”" (Genesis 1:14, NASB) , bringing to mind when the Psalmist exhorts God to "”teach us to number our days / That we may present to You a heart of wisdom”" (Psalm 90:12, NASB) . God is timeless, by all appearances, yet he sets in motion for us to recognize times and seasons, to view our lives within a progression, and mark that time. Time necessarily relates to mortality. We are constrained to a brief span. Without God, we are under the control of time. Yet, when we recognize time, and learn to number our days, to realize the briefness of its span, we grow in wisdom. We can see where our claim to godhood must end, and how Jehovah is above this constraint and offers us a way out of it. It is one more step towards that great distinction of life/death, righteousness/sin, with God or set against him. We also see, by numbering our days and those of the species, the cycles of failure as humankind tries to establish its own godhood and destroys part of itself.
While we are not able to govern time, God does give the sun and moon a governance thereover. He shows us again the foolishness of our pride. The sun and moon, their positions, determine days and seasons. We, in all our intellect and self-reliance, cannot do that. These objects, one of burning gas, one of dust, do something we cannot. And yet we claim godhood and cling to that claim, a claim which keeps us from our friendship with the one true God who actually, really loves us. The opium, again? I’m pleased to say it’s not.
