In Genesis 47:13ff, there's this little, passing, almost throw-away line describing how the people of Egypt indenture themselves and their land to Pharaoh, under Joseph's direction because the famine is severe and otherwise they'd starve. Joseph says, basically, "become Pharaoh's indentured servants, and I'll give you food so you don't die." The whole thing gets me scratching my head because, on the one hand, Joseph is not himself Egyptian--he's a Hebrew--and on the other hand, under the terms of God's covenant with Abraham (Joseph's grandfather), Joseph should be a blessing to the people, treating them with compassion, not, essentially, brokering their slavery to Pharaoh. The head scratching gets worse because, of course, the next book of the Bible (Exodus) opens with the Hebrew people themselves in slavery to Pharaoh. It all makes you think: could their slavery actually be the result of the system of slavery that Joseph is instituting here? Or put differently: if Joseph had treated the Egyptians with compassion here, perhaps his own people would not have become Pharaoh's slaves, in the next chapter of the story. From all that head scratching comes this thought: could it be that when God's people fail to sow the seeds of compassion today, those fields we neglect will be overgrown with the weeds of bondage, that we ourselves have to struggle with, tomorrow?
From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (XVIII)
In Genesis 45:22, Joseph does something that strikes me as kind of odd. He's just been reunited with his brothers, he's sending them back to fetch Jacob, their dad, and it says: "He gave each of them changes of clothes, but to Benjamin (the youngest brother, his own mother's son) he gave five changes of clothes and 300 pieces of silver." I call this strange because this is, in one sense, exactly what started the whole Joseph-and-his-jealous-brothers saga. Dad gave Joseph, and Joseph alone, an amazing technicolor dream coat, and his brothers hated him for his favoured position. And here, at the end of the story, Joseph does (essentially) the same thing with Benjamin. It could be a test, actually: if Joseph wants to see if his brothers have indeed changed, what better way to do it than by re-setting the circumstances that led to their original fall? No wonder he tells them in verse 24, not to quarrel on the way.
Of course, if it is a test, it's a test for us, too, I think. Because I'll have to admit, my first thought on reading this is: hey, that's not fair! Shouldn't they all get the same? But then it occurrs to me that, in thinking that, I'm sort of standing with Joseph's jealous brothers back in Chapter 37, plotting against him because he received something they didn't. From there, my mind moves on to this thought: could our inability to celebrate it when God blesses others with things we don't have--our inability to celebrate God's generosity, simply because we weren't the recipients of it (if indeed we are unable to do so)--could that be the real sin of covetousness that Commandment Number 10 is warning us against?
Put differently, could one of the signs that we truly are growing in the Lord be the ability simply, sincerely, and joyfully to celebrate it when the Lord pours blessing into the lives of others, even if we ourselves aren't the recipients?
From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (XVII)
The other day I was thinking about an interesting line in Genesis 46:3-4. It's right before Jacob goes down to Egypt to be reunited with Joseph, and on the way he goes to Beer-Sheba to worship "the God of his father Isaac." God meets him in a vision and says, "Don't be afraid to go down to Egypt for I will make you a great nation there; I will go down with you and I will bring you up again." It's a very encouraging verse, or at least it should be, for two interlocking reasons.
First, if you know your Old Testament history, you'll know that, in a way, Jacob's journey to Egypt has trouble written all over it. After a generation or two, they're gonna become slaves in Egypt, and they'll need God to bring them out with signs and wonders (a.k.a. the Book of Exodus). Jacob has no idea this is in store, necessarily, and whatever else this meeting with God is about, here, before he goes to Egypt, it suggests to me this important truth: just because things get hard—Book-of-Exodus-slavery-in-Egypt hard, even—just because the situation looks bleak, it doesn't mean you're not in step with God. The people of Israel might have looked at their circumstances in Egypt and thought, somewhere along the way we must have got off track with God's plan for us, 'cause look how hard it is right now. But Genesis 46:3-4 cuts that thought off at the pass: even before Jacob went down to Egypt God met him and said, "Go, and I'll go with you..."
Which brings us to the second point. In Exodus, when the people cry out to God in their distress, you sort of get the impression that God wasn't there up till then, that he'd gone AWOL and was only showing up at that moment. But Genesis 46:3-4 cuts that one off too: as bleak as it seemed in Egypt, God gave his word that he was going with them; and however much it may have looked like he was on hiatus in Exodus 2:24-25, the fact is, he hadn't gone anywhere. Nor has he abandoned you or I, even in our darkest moments.
From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (XVI)
In Genesis 39 we find the story of Joseph being sold into Egypt. It's interesting to me how, as one of God’s chosen ones, Joseph’s very presence among the Egyptians (despite the fact that they were his oppressors) resulted in blessing for the Egyptians. In 39:5 it says the Lord blessed Potiphar *because* of Joseph; in verse 6 it says Potiphar lived with not a care in the world after he put Joseph in charge. You actually see this all over the Old Testament, once you start looking for it: the very presence of God’s Chosen People translates (or should translate) into blessing for the surrounding nations. Don’t believe me, read Genesis 12:3, or Jeremiah 29:7. It’s there in the New Testament, too (anyone want some salt to go with that earth?) Anyways, I think there’s supposed to be Josephesque (Josephish? Josephene?) pattern to Christian ministry. Because in both the real and the metaphorical sense, we, too, are people in exile, citizens of heaven sojourning in a land not our home. And the question is: does our exile here result, like Joseph’s did, in blessing for our neighbours (and to turn the crank one more twist, what if those neighbours were our oppressors, as Jospeh’s were his?).
From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (XV)
In Genesis 33:20, it says that Jacob, after his wrestling match with God (chpt 32) and his meeting with Esau (chpt 33), travels down to Shechem in Canaan, and when he arrives he builds an altar to God and calls it: El Elohe Israel. In Hebrew, El Elohe Israel means "Mighty is the God of Israel" (or possibly: God, the God of Israel).
This strikes me as a big deal. Only a chapter earlier God had named Jacob "Israel," so this is a relatively new handle for him; and before he left Canaan, he promised that if God brought him back safely, then "the Lord shall be my God" (28:21). And if you read closely, you'll notice that up until now, he's never called God his God; it's always been "the Lord, the God of my father, Abraham and Isaac" (or some variation on that). But now, finally, as he arrives back home after years of running from and wrestling with God, Jacob-- now called Israel (the one who has striven with God)-- Jacob builds an altar to "the God of Israel." No longer is the Lord simply the God of Abraham and Isaac; now he is Jacob's God, too.
It occurs to me that all of us, at some point or other, need to build an altar to El Elohe Israel, in a metaphorical sense; that is to say: we all need to come to this place in our lives where God stops being, simply the God of our "fathers"-- our parent's God, our family's God, our tradition's God-- and we "own" Him in a personal way, like Jacob, it seems, did that day.
From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (XIV)
In Genesis 27 we have the story of how Jacob tricked his father Isaac into giving him his brother's blessing. Over the course of the many thousands of years that this story's been told and re-told, the profound drama that’s going on here has maybe worn a bit smooth for us. Jacob has just perpetrated the most appalling fraud imaginable (really: imagine tricking your blind father, on his death bed, into signing a forged will that gives you the whole inheritance and cuts your brother out of the deal...) an appalling fraud, like I say, instigated by his own mother, who loved him more than his brother (again, try to imagine it...), and immediately after this, while Isaac his father is sitting there blindly assuming that he’s just blessed Esau, it says, “Jacob had hardly gone out from the presence of his father when Esau came in from his hunting...”
When you slow down to visualize this scene, the tension is almost palpable: the liar leaves just as the hot-head arrives. What stands out to me in all of this is just how messed up Jacob’s family is. A mom who hates one son and loves the other, two brothers who despise each other, one a bully, the other a cheat, a weakened dad caught in the middle: it’s the quintessential dysfunctional family.
But maybe there’s good news, here, too, because this is the family that will give birth to God’s Redemptive History. It will start, in fact, with them, and it won’t stop until their great-great-great-great-fifty-times-great Grand Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, sprouts beautiful from their family tree. Of course, Isaac’s family is hardly the only dysfunctional family in history (not by a long-shot), but if God could bring Jesus out their messed up family, what can’t he do with ours, if we will give them to him?
From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (XIII)
It's interesting how God sometimes uses tiny, seemingly random details in the text to put his finger on things for you, spiritually speaking. In Genesis 24:11-20, Abraham's servant is looking for a wife for Isaac (at Abraham's behest), and as he's standing beside a well near the city of Nahor, he prays for a sign. "When the girls come out to draw water, if I ask for a drink, the girl who offers not only to give me a drink, but also to water my camels, may it be that she's the one you've chosen for Isaac."
It was just an offhand thought, but it got me wondering, how big a deal would it be for a girl to water all this guys' camels; so I did some basic math. Genesis 24:10 says that he had a caravan of 10 camels specifically, and according Google, a thirsty camel can drink up to 40 gallons of water (they had just made a 400 mile trek from Canaan to Haran, so they were probably pretty thirsty). But even if they were only half thirsty, we're talking about 200 gallons of water to water all 10 camels. We know that when Rebekah arrives, she's carrying her water pitcher on her shoulder, so it probably wasn't more than 5 gallons, which would have weight about 40 pounds. What this means is that, for Rebekah to water all 10 camels, it would have taken somewhere between 40-60 trips to the well. Even at a rate of one trip every 5 minutes, we're talking 3-4 hours.
In other words: the sign this servant of Abraham asked for was: God, let the girl you've chosen for Isaac be someone willing to spend 3-4 hours of grueling manual labour, watering the camels of a perfect stranger, and let her offer to do this freely without being asked. And this is the very sign God provides: Rebekah waters the camels just exactly the way Abraham's servant prayed it. And here's where God put his finger on something for me: because this is, when you stop to think about it, a remarkable request for an incredible sign, and yet it's what the servant asked for and it's what the Lord provided.
I gets me wondering if sometimes we low-ball our expectations of God, if we don't ask his Spirit often enough to confirm the path we're meant to take, and if, even when we do seek God's direction on this or that step, we too often limit the possibilities based on our ho-hum common sense of what is or isn't likely to happen. I mean: Good gracious, no one's gonna drop everything and spend the next 4 hours sweating over camels of a perfect stranger, are they? May God give his people the un-common sense to look for his hand and follow his lead into the least likely possibilities of life with him.
From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (XII)
In Genesis 21:1-21 we find the heat-breaking story of Abraham's concubine Hagar and Ishmael her son, sent into the desert of Beersheba because of Sarah's jealousy. I'm fully prepared to accept the risk that I'm reading way too much into this here, but it strikes me as curious that in Genesis 21:16, when Hagar in her desperation abandons Ishmael under a shrub to die, it says that she "sat down opposite from him, about a bowshot away." And then in 21:20, after God's saved them both, it says (and it's this really random, throw-away line), it says, Ishmael grew up and became an archer. The connection between these two verses is even clearer in Hebrew, because the word for "bow," qesheth appears in both.
When he was just a child, his mother abandoned him and then sat down a "bow-shot" away to weep; when he grew up, he became a "bow-shooter" for a living.
I'm not sure what that means, if anything, but I love mulling over these weird details in the Bible. Maybe it means nothing. Or maybe it means that the Bible gets it, how the emotional traumas we experience as children actually do leave their mark on us, and in strange, subtle ways they set a course for our lives as adults. If I was given to flights of exegetical fancy I'd say something like this: As a lad, Ishmael almost died in the desert with his traumatized mom only a bow-shot out of reach, and he'd spend the rest of his life shooting a bow, haunted by the memory of that event and trying desperately to close the distance that once separated him from her. If nothing else, it gets me wondering, what events from my childhood might actually still be playing out for me in the decisions I make and paths I choose to walk.
From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (XI)
In Genesis 21:11-20, we read the powerful story Abraham's concubine, an Egyptian girl named Hagar, who bore his first son, Ishmael. At the instigation of his jealous wife Sarah, Abraham sends his concubine Hagar and Ishamel away. They're out into the desert with a bottle of water and a bit of bread, and things are looking desperate. It says: "When the water was all gone, she left her son under a bush, to die, and then went on a little way and sat down weeping." Death, it seems, is just around the corner for these two.
But then God appears to Hagar and promises to deliver them from their plight ("Do not fear," says the angel, "For God has heard the lad's cries ...") God sets her back on her feet, and then it says-- and this is the part I find so powerful-- it says: "God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water, where she filled the skin and gave Ishmael a drink."
That's all it says, really, and it's kinda mysterious: was the well always there and she just never noticed it before? Was it hidden and God pointed it out to her? Did it just appear, miraculously in that moment? I don't know. But whatever happened, God opened Hagar's eyes to see his deliverance right there in front of her, when she couldn't see it before.
It gets me wondering, how often have I been in what seemed at the time a desperate place, and God's deliverance-- his life-saving well in the wilderness-- was right there in front of me, only I couldn't see it for what it was? May each of us have our eyes opened, like Hagar, and especially when we're in places like Hagar was that day, may we have our eyes opened to see the deliverance of God for what it is, and where it is.
From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (X)
In Genesis 19:1-10, Abraham and the Lord have a long discussion about the fate of the city of Sodom that I find challenging and convicting. In a nutshell, God tells Abraham that he intends to destroy the city because of its wickedness, and Abraham intercedes: "What if 50 righteous can be found in it?" God says, "Then I'll spare it for the sake of 50 righteous." So Abraham says, "What if only 45 can be found." Again God says: "For the sake of 45, I'll spare it." And on they go: for 40? for 35? Abraham gets all the way down to ten people. And God agrees, that for the sake of 10 people, he'd spare the city.
And then, Abraham leaves off interceding for the city at 10. Some of this depends on how you interpret verse 18:33, but it seems to me like Abraham stops there before God does--at least, he doesn't say, "What if 5? What if 3? What if only one righteous person could be found?" (Incidentally, if Lot and his wife had 2 sons, 2 married daughters, 2 sons-in-law and 2 unmarried daughters (which is what I count in vv. 19:8-14) then it could very well be that Abraham had a specific 10 in mind).
This is a bit of a random observation, and I realize there are a lot of theological implications in a question like this, that a blog post isn't the best place to unpack, but at the very least it got me wondering: Am I at all like Abraham, and ready to give up interceding for my city before the Lord is ready to stop hearing my intercessions?
From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (IX)
In Genesis 16, we find one of the most mysterious and also one of the most encouraging stories in all of Genesis: the story of Abraham's handmaiden, Hagar. As an Egyptian among Hebrews, a woman among men, and a slave girl among the wealthy, Hagar is quite literally at the bottom of the social totem pole (if it doesn't raise a lump in your throat in verse 4, when Sarai and Abram force Hagar into surrogacy, so that Sarai can "build a family through her," you're not reading closely enough).
Anyways, Hagar flees into the wilderness and collapses near a spring of water, alone, abused and abandoned, and that's where YHWH meets her. He comforts her and sends her back to Abram, but not before telling her to name her forth-coming child Ishmael. "Ishmael" in Hebrew means "God has heard", as in, God has heard the cries of this broken-hearted outcast. But then Hagar turns around and actually names God. This is a big deal: not even Abram dared to give God a name; nor will Moses do it later on in the story (Exodus 3:13). It is, actually, the first time in the Bible that any human being makes so bold as to name him.
And what a human being! An abused, abandoned Egyptian slave girl. And what a name she gives him: "El Roi." In Hebrew the name means "The God who sees." YHWH tells Hagar, "I'm the God who hears," and then Hagar ups the ante, "Then you're also the God who sees."
"Now I've seen", she says,"the God who sees me... in my hurt and isolation... in my oppression and need ... in my despair .... You are the God who sees all that."
Amen.
If you're in a place today at all like Hagar was that day, then know that there is one who not only hears, but sees. In that sense, we are all "Ishmael" to him-- "Heard by God"-- and he is our El Roi.
From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (VIII)
In Genesis 15:1, God addresses Abram and gives himself a name that the wandering nomad of the Faith can know him by. He says, "Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield, your very great reward." It's a fascinating line, actually, because just previously, Abram named God (when speaking to the King of Salem), by calling him "El Elyon (God Most High) the creator of heaven and earth." In just one chapter after this, Hagar will call Him El Roi, the God who sees. In Chapter 17, He will introduce himself as El Shaddai (God Almighty). And on it goes, until Moses finally says, "What's your name, God?" and God gives him the covenant name that we get YHWH from: I AM WHO I AM.
My point is just that the naming of God is a really big deal in Genesis, and here, in Genesis 15:1, is the very first time God names himself: I am "You Protector, Your Very Great Reward," he says. Well, it's not quite a name exactly, but it's close enough for our purposes, because in the Hebrew Bible, God's names and God's character are intricately intertwined. At the very least, one of the first things Abram finds out about God, as he comes to know him is that a) God is the Great Protector, his shield and that b) in this protection Abram will find his Very Great Reward.
And it leaves me thinking: Do I trust the protection of God over my life so intimately that I could name Him the way He names himself, as The Very Great Reward? That is to say: Do I trust him enough that his presence is really all the reward I need, or hope to get out of life?
From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (VII)
There's this story in Genesis 14, where Abram rescues his nephew Lot from the hands of a king named Amraphel, and three other kings allied to him, who had taken Lot captive in battle (it's a long story). In the process of rescuing Lot, however, Abram ends up helping out the King of Sodom, who was Amraphel's sworn enemy. To thank him, the King of Sodom graciously offers to let Abram take all the spoils from the battle he's just won. Surprisingly, Abram won't take a cent. Why? Because he doesn't ever want it to be said that Sodom (or any other earthly king) made him rich. Instead, he wants those bragging rights ("I made Abram prosperous") to go to God and God alone.
It gets me thinking: am I living my life, conducting my business, doing my ministry, and so on, in such a way that it's clear, or would be, to anyone who took the time to "look at the books" (so to speak), that all I am and all I have I owe to God and no one else. There is a way to live, do business, do ministry, even, that relies on "the way of the world" for its prosperity, and there's a way that waits patiently and depends entirely on the Lord. Abram took the later. May we all have the grace to follow his example.
From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on the Book of Genesis (VI)
The other day I was reading Genesis 12:1, where God calls Abram out of Haran. I've read it many times before, but this time I was using the most recent NIV translation, and noticed something I hadn't before: verse 12:1 reads, "The Lord had said to Abram, leave your country and go to the land I will show you." It caught me a bit, because the translation I remember reading (an older NIV version) was always, "The Lord said to Abram..." but between the last edition of the NIV and this one, the translators must have felt that the Hebrew verb there, 'amar (it's in the Hebrew imperfect tense) is better translated with an English perfect, not an English past.
The Lord had said. (I checked other translations and the KJV also goes with "had said" whereas the NASB, ESV, and others go with "the Lord said.")
I don't want to make an interpretive mountain out of a verb-tense-mole-hill here, but the reason it struck me is simply this: if the verse is better translated as "had said," it implies that Abram's obeying the Lord and leaving Haran may not have followed immediately and directly upon the Lord calling him out. To get a feel for this consider the difference: "I told my kids to do the dishes and they did them" or "I had told my kids to do the dishes and they did them." The difference is subtle but not negligible. In the second case, it's not as clear that the dishes were being done after the request, only that a) a request was made, and b) at some point the request was followed.
So what? Well: it just got me thinking that sometimes, the fulfillment of God's call on our lives doesn't follow nicely and immediately and smoothly and seamlessly after he makes the call. The Lord had called Abram to leave Ur (v.1) and (at some point, presumably...) Abram left (v.4).
This is encouraging especially for any of us who feel or have felt at times, that God's call on their life has stalled out, maybe, or that it's not coming to fruition in as timely a way as they had hoped. Be patient. Who knows, actually, who much time passed between Abram's call and his leaving Haran? But also be challenged: before the Lord's call could see its fulfillment, Abram had to get off his backside and start packing for parts unknown...
From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (V)
The other day I was reading Genesis 10:10-21, and I kept noticing this recurring phrase that piqued my curiosity. It's giving all the generations of Noah's sons after the flood, and it keeps saying, "These are the sons of .... according to their clans, and languages, and territories and nations ..."
It stands out to me for two reasons: a) in Genesis 11, right after all this, it's going to tell the story of the Tower of Babel, and it'll start by saying that everyone had only one language and a common speech (in contrast to what it's saying here in Genesis 10); and b) all this diversity of clans, territories and languages in Genesis 10 seems to be happening in fulfillment of God's blessing, back in Genesis 9, when he told Noah's family, to multiply on the earth and increase upon it (9:7).
In other words, God's heart, it seems, is for a rich, variegated, wide-spreading, culturally diverse family of human beings filling the earth. And whatever else was wrong with it, the problem with the building project of Babel was that it was forcing humanity into stark, sterile homogeneity.
It makes me think about the importance of cultural diversity among God's people, and the ways church ministry can either promote or discourage the kind of nation/tribe/language/cultural variety we see in Genesis 10. Because it's not just Genesis where we see it. If the Book of Revelation can be trusted on the matter, it's what we'll experience on the last day, too: we'll be part of "a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb" (Revelation 7:9). Churches that enjoy the Genesis 10 blessing of rich, difficult, but joyful cultural diversity are getting, I think, good practice here on earth for that Heavenly day.
From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (IV)
In other words, he saw the ground was dry on day one, month one, but had to wait 2 months (approximately) before God told him to come out. I'm just speculating, but I expect it was agony for Noah, waiting those 57-some-days in the Ark, staring day after day at the dry, inviting mountainside of Mt. Ararat, but not yet released from the Ark to go enjoy it. This is a bit of an allegorical reading, I admit, but it got me thinking about the times in my life when "the ground" so to speak, of what God's doing in my life, "looks dry," but God's not ready, yet, for me to step out onto it. Sometimes in ministry, for instance, or in my family life, maybe, or in my long-range-life-planning, let's say, it may look like God's opportunity is right there, dry as a bone and shining in the sun, and just waiting for me ... and yet, God hasn't yet said to me, like he did to Noah: "'Okay, now, step out of the Ark and into it."
May we all have both the wisdom and the patience of Noah, today, as we wait to be "released from the Ark" (again, so to speak, whatever "waiting in the Ark" may mean for you or I today). May we, like him, have the wisdom to know when the time's right to step out, and the patience to wait until it is.
From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (III)
There's a spot in Genesis 7:18 that I wonder about every once in a while. It's at the start of Noah's flood, and it says, "The water prevailed on the earth, and the ark went on the face of the water." If you grew up with the same Sunday-School flannel graphs as I did, you've probably heard this story any number of times: God sent a flood and the flood covered the surface of the earth. But, of course, that's not exactly what it says. Literally it says "the water prevailed on the earth," and that's what gets me wondering.
If you want really to get what's going on in this verse, you sort of have to understand how people in the ancient world thought about creation-- what it was and how it happened. In most cosmogenies (stories about the origins of the cosmos) in the ancient world, creation happens when the gods (or a single god) fights a battle against chaos. The god defeats chaos, and creation is the outcome of chaos' defeat. You see this in the Enuma Elish, the Atra Hasis, Psalm 89 and elsewhere.
Usually in these ancient creation stories, chaos is represented by either a) a sea monster, or b) the sea itself. For an ancient writer, the waters of the sea are the most potent picture imaginable for the chaos that was before the world was created. (This, incidentally, helps us get why, in Genesis 1, before God gives the earth form and content, all we have is water, darkness, and God's Spirit hovering over the surface of the deep. Flood water=chaos and creation=God's crushing defeat of said chaos.)
With this background in mind, I can't help but wonder if it wasn't a very intentional word choice there, when Genesis 7:18, says that the flood water "prevailed" over the earth. The Hebrew verb there for "prevailed" is actually a battle verb (gâbar); the idea is that God is allowing the chaotic flood waters to "win" the upper hand in the "battle" for creation. But even so, the text is quick to point out-- even though it looked like chaos was winning--still, God's people moved over the surface of the water, albeit terrified, probably, but safe in the ark.
I don't know what you think of when you think of "chaos"-- chaos so intense and destructive that the best image for it is the monstrous, overwhelming water of the sea-- but I have some things in mind for myself. And the good news of Genesis 7:18 is that, even when that chaos looks like it's prevailing-- winning the battle-- and creation itself is coming undone because of it-- God can and will carry his people over the surface of it all, with the promise of New Creation on the other side.
From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (II)
I think the first three chapters of Genesis some of the most beautifully crafted passages in the whole Bible. Genesis 2:25 ends by saying that the man and the woman were naked (‛ârôm) but not ashamed. And then 3:1, the next verse says that the serpent was the most "shrewd" (‛ârûm) creature of all those God had made.
It's so curious: in the Hebrew, the word for "shrewd" that's used there derives from the same word as the word for "naked" (i.e. both come from the same root word). At the end of the passage, when he sees them in fig leaves, God will say, who told you you were "‛ârôm"? Who else but that "‛ârûm" serpent who deceived us? (In other words, there is a profound connection between the serpent's nature as "cunning" (ârûm) and the way he exposes us to shame in our "nakedness" (ârôm).)
There's another layer to this, though. In 3:8 it says that Adam heard the sound of the Lord walking in the "cool of the day." Whar's interesting to me, though is that in Hebrew, it uses the word "ruach" there to describe the "cool of the day." Literally, God was looking for Adam in the "day's ruach." That stood out to me, because the word "ruach" is one of those multi-layered words in the Bible. It can mean "spirit" (like it does in Genesis 1:2 or Job 27:3). It can mean "breath" (like it does in Psalm 104:29). Or it can mean "wind" (like it does in Genesis 8:1).
It seems like here it's meant as "wind"-- God came to Adam in the "breezy" part of the day (?). But it's a strange phrase, and it's the only place I'm aware of where "ruach" is used to mean "the cool of the day" like this (my Hebrew-Scholar friends are sincerely invited to chime in here). What it makes me wonder is this: healing for Adam and Eve's shame over their nakedness is found (or at least a covering for it, until the ultimate healing is made available) by encountering God in the "day's ruach"-- the cool of the day, if we're thinking about it in terms of the story line; the "spiritual time of the day," if we're thinking about it in terms of its implications for us.
Do we have a time of the day, each day, that we would describe like that-- the "ruach of the day"? What I mean by that is: a time of the day that is set aside as sacred, where our spirits encounter his Spirit, and it's so centering and rejuvenating and peaceful, that it's sort of like walking with a good friend in the evening's cool after a long hot day of toil?
May God encounter each of us like that, on a daily basis, and may those encounters heal in us any lingering shame or fear or hiding that's still happening for us because of that first, ancient brush with the serpent's "ârûm-ness."
From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (I)
It's always struck me that Genesis 2:18 is the first time in all the Bible when God says that something "isn't good." The verse stands out all the more starkly because throughout Chapter 1, God kept saying things were good-- the sea and dry land (1:10), the sun, moon and stars (1:18), the sea creatures and birds (1:21), and the beasts of the field (1:25).
But here, for the first time, something's explicitly and specifically not good. And what a thing it is: the 'adam is alone! God forms a human creature, places him in the garden on the mission of imaging God to the world, and in 2:18 we find out that the male 'adam all on his own is not good, not complete, not able to accomplish God's purposes for him.
A couple of incidentals: 1) this explains why the story has God making the female 'adam out of the male 'adam's rib. It's not to suggest that the woman is in any sense inferior or subsequent to the man. It's so we could see the helpless (and according to 2:18 he is, quite literally help-less) male all alone, and recognize with God how not-good that state of affairs is. 2) We have to read this in light of Gen 1:27, where it says that God made the 'adam in his own image, male and female, he created them. On his own the male 'adam can't Image God; it takes male and female together to do that. Rather than being archaically patriarchal, this text actually underscores the man and woman's interdependence in radical ways.
But all that is incidental to my main thought here. Because the solution to this "not-good" situation is for God to give the male a helping hand. And what a helping hand he had in mind! The Hebrew phrase in 2:18 is "etzer chenaged," and a lot of theological ink had been spilled over this one. Literally it means something like "a help that is compatible/fitting/completing and/or equal to him."
Often scholars point out that etzer (help) is the word the Bible uses when it wants to talk about how God is Israel's "help." In other words, the woman is not the man's "help" the way Robin is a "helper" to Batman; more in the way a search and rescue team is a "help" to the lost and stranded hiker. And this morning I find myself deeply grateful for the "etzer chenaged"-- the "fitting help" that God has given me in the many godly women he has placed in my life, who together have kept me from trying to "image God" alone in my "help-less" maleness. But in particular, of course, I'm thanking him for that one woman he caused my heart to cleave to, my wife. Through her help, I've come to appreciate how true the flip side of Genesis 2:18 is, that it is good for the man to be not alone.