Days 8 and 9 - Genesis 25-29

So, I'm not just cramming these two days' readings into one post because I know deep down that it's the only way I'll ever catch up and not lag hopelessly behind for ever more.

At least, not exclusively.

The chapter and verse divisions in the Bible are arbitrary enough. I'd look up when they were first introduced, but Wikipedia is down right now in protest of SOPA, so I'm out of luck. They're old though. Really old. Just not as old as the text itself, and that's important.

You can tell, even without Wikipedia's help, that they were fairly arbitrary, because every now and then you find a place where somebody just simply got it wrong. The ending of chapter 27 is one of those places, but more on that a little later.


I like how efficient the Bible is (usually) when it comes to telling The Story. Abraham is one of the most important  and influential figures in history, but once his time in the story is up, he gets a quick half-chapter summary of the last bit of his life, and on the tale goes.

So long, Abraham. Hello, Isaac.

And, almost immediately, hello next generation. Isaac really gets very little air play himself, and based on the little we have, perhaps there's a reason for that.

Anyway, the story moves almost immediately to the birth of Isaac's twin sons, named Hairy and Supplanter.

No, really. Hairy is the oldest and Supplanter is his little brother. It's a wonder, with Isaac's penchant for naming babies based, apparently, on simple word association games when they're born, that none of his kids, to my knowledge, ended up with names like "Wrinkled," "Noisy" or "FOR THE LOVE OF THE GOD OF MY FATHER GO TO SLEEP"... But I digress...

I've never quite known why Isaac got/gets so little comparative attention. He's just sandwiched between his father and son(s) in the story, and there's really very little that's particularly flattering about his portrayal. Seems to fly... nicely?... in the face of the aforementioned "wishful thinking"/"self-aggrandizing" accusations against scripture and its "heroes."

Moving along, the twins grow up - Esau to be a hunter, Jacob to be "a peaceful man, living in tents," (25:27) whatever that means.

Then we find out that not only does Isaac have an openly favourite son, but he chose his favourite son based on the fact that Isaac likes to eat meat. (25:28) There's a parenting A+ if I've ever seen one. That's "okay" though, because Rebekah makes up for it by favouring the little guy.

I could go through the story of Esau selling his birthright in the family for a bowl of soup, but I think the amount of fail that he demonstrates is better summed up by the following short video:

Another thing that I'd either forgotten or never learned (I suspect to find a lot of these), is that Abimelech is apparently a bit of a sucker as well, and the whole "pretend your wife's your sister so you don't get killed" schtick really runs in the family. (see 26:6-16)

Back to the chapters thing, because that's what's sticking with me at the moment, possibly because these stories are fairly familiar, possibly because I'm sick of trying to rationalize in my head why Jacob, who is clearly conniving, dishonest and greedy, gets to be the one through whom God works his covenant for Abraham's descendants and, through them, the entire world, so I'm just going to just sigh and admit that it's not my department (to say the very least) and move on.

Take a look-see at chapter 27, verses 43-46:

43  "Now therefore, my son, obey my voice, and arise, flee to Haran, to my brother Laban! 44"Stay with him a few days, until your brother's fury subsides, 45 until your brother's anger againstyou subsides and he forgets what you did to him. Then I will send and get you from there. Whyshould I be bereaved of you both in one day ?" 46 Rebekah said to Isaac, "I am tired of livingbecause of the daughters of Heth ; if Jacob takes a wife from the daughters of Heth, like these, from the daughters of the land, what good will my life be to me?"

Notice anything? Even without much context, it seems pretty clear that there's a break there, between 27:45 and 27:46, where the story about Jacob fleeing the completely understandable wrath of his twice-cheated older brother and the start of the "let's find Jacob a wife" story (which also, it must be said, works as a perfect "hide from your understandably wrathful brother in another land where he can't kill you" story). So why not just take 27:46 and make that verse 28:1? I have no idea, but what it does seem to say is that you should be very careful when assigning meaning to the chapter and verse numbers, or anything else do to with the split up of books...

Other random thoughts about these chapters:

• People were more hardcore back then... Jacob uses a rock as a pillow. (28:11)
• It's sort of cool that Esau, who was called a separate nation before he was born, ends up being a contributing factor to the nation of descendants of Ishmael (28:9) Abraham-Isaac-Jacob on one side, Abraham-Ishmael-Esau on the other...