From Hopelessness to Beauty

From Hopelessness to Beauty

Lesson 2

December 8, 2024

We are talking about interpreting Genesis as a narrative in its historical context. When we use the word “narrative,” we can also use the word “story.” Although I like the word “story,” I use it cautiously because people can think of fairy tales or fiction or fantasy. A story can be a true story and it can be shaped by its author to communicate certain ideas and values. Narrative does that. It doesn’t just give you a list of facts. It actually shapes what happens to communicate something to the reader or readers. The details are arranged for a purpose.

We left off with this principle that is key in understanding narratives and their purposes – what did the narrative mean to the author’s original audience? I think that’s kind of where we left off last week. If an interpreter is going to be able to answer that question as it relates to Genesis, he needs to attempt to think about what was happening when Moses wrote Genesis.

What’s happening as Moses writes this book? First of all, know that the book of Genesis is written sometime between when the exodus of the people of Israel occurred and the death of Moses. It almost assuredly was written towards the end of Moses’s life and before the people of Israel crossed over the Jordan into the promised land. The reason I say that is that the Pentateuch would have taken a long time to write. So did he write it all during the wilderness wanderings? Did he write Genesis after they went to Mount Sinai? I suspect it’s towards the end of the wilderness wanderings, but the Bible doesn’t say with certainty. But we do know that Moses wrote Genesis before he died. So the book was written before the people of Israel crossed over the Jordan.

Let’s just give ourselves just a simple chronology of events. Remember Joseph? He is a  great-grandson of Abraham. Joseph goes to Egypt. Eventually, all of the brothers and Jacob follow. There’s a promise given that they would return back to the promised land one day. They know that to be true. We pick up in Exodus, and you have the people of Israel under a new king or pharaoh of Egypt who does not know Israel and does not know Israel’s God. And then the Egyptians begin to persecute the Israelites.

God miraculously preserves Moses’ life and sets him apart for the purpose of leading the people of Israel out of Egypt. They go and they receive the law of God at Mount Sinai. Instead of the people listening and heeding the voice of the Lord, they demonstrate how stiff-necked they are and they rebel against the Lord. They did not have faith to enter the promised land so they wandered for 40 years. Two generations of people are allowed to live, but everybody over the age of 20 dies off. Now Moses is at the end of his life, and he finishes up with the book of Deuteronomy. He’s not allowed to go into the Promised Land and you have these people who are now getting ready to go into the Promised Land.

Somewhere in that wilderness wandering we have the writing of the book of Genesis. We should also note that the book of Genesis does not stand alone. It is part of the Pentateuch, which literally means 5 books or 5 scrolls. Those are the first 5 books of the Old Testament–Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. All 5 of these books are written by Moses and all of them are related to each other. You will also sometimes hear these books talked about as the Torah. This is a term that can be used in multiple ways, but often it’s used to describe those first 5 books. Sometimes these first 5 books are called the Books of Moses because he is the author of all of them. But Pentateuch is a term that is often used to describe these first five books and they are related to each other. These 5 books have strong individual themes but they also have strong interdependence.

Let me illustrate this for you. Look with me at Genesis 50. This is the text where Joseph is dying. He offers blessings and he also offers some promises. And the first one occurs in Genesis chapter 50, verse 24:

“And Joseph said to his brethren, ‘I am dying; but God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land to the land of which He swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.'”

Joseph demonstrates his great faith in God’s promises. God would deliver His people and take Israel back to the promised land and it would be theirs to possess. So that’s how the book of Genesis ends with this promise. Joseph died. Now, if you go ahead just a little bit in your Bible to Exodus, this is really a continuation of the story or narrative. Watch how this works. We basically just closed with Joseph dying in Genesis 50 verse 26 and then Exodus 1:1-6:

“Now these are the names of the children of Israel who came to Egypt; each man and his household came with Jacob: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin; Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. All those who were descendants of Jacob were seventy persons (for Joseph was in Egypt already). And Joseph died, all his brothers, and all that generation.”

One thing I want you to understand is that each of these 5 books has its particular emphasis. We’re going to touch on some of those in Genesis. But practically speaking, those 5 books as one really big scroll just wasn’t going to work too well. So you needed to divide things up. What Moses wants to make clear to the reader is that these things are connected. So it’s true, as we say in your notes,  that each book of the Pentateuch has its own central theme. But the interpreter needs to remember that Moses wrote them to be connected as well. 

You can see that in that chart I produced for you: 

They are a unified set of scrolls in many ways. There’s a connection to each one of them, and that’s going to become important as we study Genesis, to see how Moses links what he says in Genesis to later parts of the Pentateuch. And there are important links – links in terms of story, theme, and there are even linguistic links in the grammar of what he does. Moses is a great writer, as most of the Bible writers are. They are actually great authors, and they’re very thoughtful. They sprinkle in things that, if you think through them, you’ll see the connections.

So let’s think about the historical context. Remember what we said about teaching Genesis – we’re trying to give you the tools to be able to interpret the Bible for yourself. When we think about the original readers, assuming the Pentateuch was written at the end of Moses’s life, it was written to people who were one or two generations removed from the miracles of the Exodus.

Let’s remember – God tells the people of Israel to go conquer Canaan.  They didn’t have faith to do so, and God’s judgment was that everyone over the age of 20 was going to die off. Then they spend the next 40 years in the wilderness. During those 40 years, think about the people who were of that generation who were not above 20. How many of them would really remember the Exodus? Well, of that generation, a significant amount – I mean, if you’re 20 and you walk through the Red Sea, that’s going to stick in your mind. It’s kind of like how I remember where I was when 9/11 happened. That’s just going to stick in your mind really well.

If you’re 10, do you remember it? You remember it, but at 10, you’re probably going to misinterpret some details. For instance, talk to somebody who was 9 or 10 years old about 9/11. Let me put it this way – my mom describes the day JFK was shot, and she was a very little girl. Here’s what she remembers about that day – she remembers that the teacher talked about this, and they brought a television into class. When you were a little, little person, you understood the severity of that event but you probably didn’t understand the full ramifications. You might now, and the reason you do is because people later on have told you about the event. In fact, we actually tend to reconstruct past events with knowledge that’s been given to us later. You probably actually think you knew more about that day than you actually did.

Take somebody who’s 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 on the day of 9/11 – they might have some images seared in their mind about the twin towers, but it’s very different than me, who was about 19 or 20 when that happened. That’s really serious to me – there’s a whole bunch of things, newspaper articles, all that stuff.

So we have one generation that’s like that. Some of them remember the Exodus really well. But then you go to the next generation – they’ve been in the wilderness 40 years. You’ve got two more generations of people who have been born. They have never seen Egypt. In fact, what is the totality of their experience up to this point? Not exactly a pleasant thing, right? They have lived every day of their life with manna and quail. God has provided. But that’s all they know. The most they’ve heard is stories from people who were at their oldest 20 years old when they were in Egypt. By the time you get to those little ones, two generations down, maybe their grandparents talked about some things, but they’re stories, not actual experiences for them.

That means they’re going to have a number of questions. See, Moses is about to die – he’s the only constant other than Joshua and Caleb. Moses, who led them and their parents and their grandparents out of the land of Egypt, is going to pass away. What kind of questions might they have?

The people are entering the land of promise. They have not seen the plagues of Egypt. Most of them have not seen the parting of the Red Sea. They have not seen wicked Pharaoh being swallowed up. They would have serious questions, such as–where did we come from? Why do we have the right to have the land? How do we know that God will be with us.? Put  yourself in their shoes. Moses is about to die and he tells them, “Here are five books that are going to be important to you.”  These are answering significant questions for their hearts and minds. These books are helping the people figure out how they feel about all of this. In Genesis we learn where the people of Israel came from. It tells the story about who they are as a people. God called their forefather Abraham from among the nations to create a special people for himself. Abraham had a son, Isaac, who then had a son, Jacob,  who was later named Israel. He had twelve  sons who later became the twelve tribes of Israel. They moved to Egypt where they lived for hundreds of years. And now, here they are. They have the account of how they got to Egypt, how they left Egypt and why they are in the wilderness.

In Genesis we also find the answers to questions like why the children of Israel had a right to the land of Canaan. 

They had the right to the land because God in His grace promised the land first to Abraham, then to his son Isaac, then to Jacob, then to his 12 sons. God makes this very clear in Genesis 50:24 through Joseph – “God will surely visit you, and He’s going to bring you out of this land to the land which He promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

Think about that – you’ve got four generations that have received this promise. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph – all of them declare, God declares, or God declares through them, they would possess the land. So when the first readers receive the book of Genesis, they could know they had the right to enter the promised land because the God of heaven promised to give them the land.

That’s not insignificant. We still wrestle with these concepts today. Even as a nation – remember a little bit of your history – manifest destiny. You know that concept? The US had this concept: we’re going to take the whole swath of land. If you haven’t really studied that concept, if you go through it – I don’t know about you, but there’s parts of that that make me kind of uneasy. Does that verse ever say like, it’s just obvious that it’s our destiny to possess this whole land? Maybe not to the people who were already there. Trust me, I’m not trying to refight these past wars – those are in the past in my mind, but here we are hundreds of years later, and we’re still actually wrestling through this concept.

The people of Israel are wondering – do we have the right to take this land? And they’re going to take it by force. Genesis helps to answer that question. Yes, they do have the right. God promised that. These people are cursed. But also read through Joshua and Judges – you find out that the people of Canaan were terribly wicked and needed judgment.

Now let’s think about how they could know God would be with the people of Israel. Listen to this very carefully – if you look all throughout the book of Genesis, God is the real hero of the narrative. It is God who creates, is God who promises, it’s God who plans, it’s God who judges, it’s God who redeems, it’s God who elects or chooses. If you read Genesis and you come away thinking about how great Abraham was, or Jacob was, or Joseph was, I’m going to suggest that you have read Genesis wrongly. God is the hero of the whole story all the way through.

So we can ask ourselves an important question – do the main characters in the book of Genesis look like good examples all the time?

Let’s start out with Adam and Eve. Let’s just state the obvious for each one of these – how do they come out in this book? They ate the forbidden fruit, clearly disobeyed.

Then who do I have next on my list? Cain–who murdered his brother. Then we’ve got Lamech. Remember him from Genesis 4? He’s a descendant of Cain. What goes on with him? He’s got two wives – first polygamist. He says, kind of paraphrasing here, “You know about the fact that I killed a young man for wounding me?” So he got some sort of revenge, kills him, and then brings up his great-great-great-whatever grandfather Cain and says, “You know God’s going to avenge Cain sevenfold? He’s going to avenge me seventyfold.” This guy is bragging and literally shaking his fist in the face of God.

We’ve got Noah. We like to think of Noah as a great hero. But what’s the last thing that we see of Noah? He experiences some sort of sexual perversion with one of his sons – it’s unclear what that is – and then a curse is issued on Canaan. Not exactly great.

Then we’ve got the Tower of Babel. What’s the fundamental problem with the Tower of Babel? It manifests itself in that rebellion – they gathered into one place when God had said spread out all over the land. They thought they could make their own way to God. They don’t come up looking good.

How about Abraham? There’s a lot good about Abraham, a lot good. There’s a reason why the New Testament talks about him as the father of faith. If you read through the Abraham narrative, Genesis 12 to 25, I would argue you see almost as many failures as you do successes. What were some of his failures? He lied about his wife being his sister – how many times did he do that? Twice. What else? He married Hagar – well, he didn’t even marry her, took her as a concubine, and the fundamental problem of that is he doubted the promises of God.

Those are not pretty pictures. Abraham does many great things, but what about Isaac? How many good things can you find about Isaac? He loved Rebecca, okay, he loved Rebecca, he did that. Yes, we might also argue that on Mount Moriah, when God instructed Abraham to sacrifice his son, we don’t see any sense of Isaac fighting that. We’re kind of reading between the lines there, but it seems to be the case that he laid himself down willingly for that, trusted. So there are good things about him.

But there are actually significant problems with Isaac. He followed in his father’s footsteps and lied about his wife. That’s a big problem. And then a second problem is that even though God had revealed through Rebecca that “the older shall serve the younger,” was Isaac willing to follow what God had said at the end of his life? No – he had favoritism, he loved Esau more than Jacob and loved him to the point that he was going to go against God’s intentions.

That’s what we see. Jacob – a lot of great things, right? But yeah, he’s known as a deceiver, known as the supplanter. That’s his nickname. And you have a lot of questionable things that happen with him and with his twelve sons. He takes two wives and two concubines – there’s just a lot of ugly things that happen in Jacob’s life. When he goes back to the promised land to meet Esau, and he sets out his least important people first. He sends his concubines and their children on ahead, Next he sends his least favorite wife and then his most favorite wife. He’s willing to use his people as his shield, risking their lives. Then he goes last. Somehow this isn’t a good look and doesn’t show off Jacob’s manliness! 

How about Joseph? This is probably the most controversial. He was proud when he was growing up. He kind of bragged to his brothers about what God had told him in his dreams. And he was proud that his father favored him. The whole thing descends into problematic relations with his brothers stemming from those actions. Even Joseph – he’s more good than you see in other characters, but it’s not squeaky clean.

The whole narrative actually emphasizes not just Joseph but the whole of the twelve brothers. The twelve brothers as a unit do not come out looking good. Well, those are the forefathers of all the people who are getting ready to cross into the promised land.

So it becomes very clear all the way through Genesis that God is the one who rescues sinful people and chooses to use them and redeem them. That’s what I mean by God being the hero of the story of Genesis. Now, that is not to say that we can’t ever highlight and note praiseworthy elements. For instance, Eve actually demonstrates faith after her son Cain was murdered when she says she acquired another man from the Lord – I think she actually demonstrates that she believed in the promise of the seed that would come from her to rescue humanity. There’s evidence of that, no doubt that Abraham has praiseworthy elements, Noah certainly – I mean, building an ark for 70 to 100 years, that’s an insane amount of faith.

So those are good things to praise, but at the end of the day, if our hope is in those people, we have misread Genesis. Hope is in God. What does God do continually throughout that book? Taking terrible situations and making good out of them. 

Therefore, this is helpful for the people of Israel. Put yourself in their shoes: when they received the Pentateuch, could they see God’s gracious hand all throughout their forefathers’ lives? God’s gracious act in choosing Israel is a central theme throughout the book. When analyzing Genesis, this should be emphasized, because if you look at their forefathers, there isn’t an obvious reason for God to use them. It’s all about God. 

So when interpreting this book, you should always be looking for that theme: What does it show us about God and His grace? What does it show about how people respond to God’s grace?

One thing I think about is how some Christians sometimes misunderstand much of the Old Testament. This is a perfect example – people will say the Old Testament is just law and the New Testament is grace. That is a fundamentally incorrect way of reading the Bible. While I understand what they mean, in the sense that grace has come in its fullness through Jesus Christ, if you read the Old Testament, specifically Genesis, correctly, you see God’s mercy and grace throughout. This actually makes for great application for us today.

We see God’s gracious acts developed in the genealogies throughout Genesis. When you look at the genealogies, especially after the flood, each person represents vast groups of people. God clearly chose Israel out of all nations. There is a central line from Adam through Seth, Shem, Terah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the twelve tribes. Along the way, there are people whom we might expect to carry forth God’s promises, but they’re not chosen. For instance, Seth is Adam’s third-born. Looking at Abraham, Ishmael is not chosen despite being firstborn – Isaac is. With Jacob, not the firstborn Esau. Even among the twelve tribes, the one promised to produce the king is not the first, second, or third, but Judah. All of this demonstrates God’s unusual ways of bringing about His promises.

The Israelites by the Red Sea would have had serious questions such as: Where did we come from? Why do we have the right to this land? How do we know God will be with us? Put yourself in their shoes – Moses is about to die and leaves them five books that would be crucial to them. These books answered significant questions for their hearts, minds, and emotions.

Genesis teaches where the people of Israel came from. It tells the story of their identity as a people – how God called their forefather Abraham from among the nations to create a special people for Himself. We learn how Abraham had Isaac, who had Jacob (later named Israel), who had twelve sons who became the twelve tribes of Israel. It explains their move to Egypt, their time there, their exodus, and their purpose. It answers important questions about their origins and their right to the land of Canaan.