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.

Day 7 - Genesis 22-24

For the longest time, my general response to the "God-testing-Abraham-by-telling-him-to-kill-his-son" story was that it must have been excruciating for Abraham to go through something like this, and must have been an unspeakable relief for him when God stopped him and said "don't worry about that, here's a sheep instead."

Many people will point to this episode as proof of God's cruelty, insensitivity and arbitrary authoritarianism, but I've never believed that. I just don't see a way that this story could possibly have ended with Isaac dying.