How true is the saying: “The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbor.” When Joseph, eldest son of Jacob and Rachel, bursts on the scene, he is already 17 years old. Like his father, grandfather Isaac, and great-grandfather Abraham before him, he spends his days out under the hot Middle Eastern sun, […]
Read More… from August 23, 2021 — Three Strikes, You’re Out!
God promised Abram that his children and grandchildren would multiply. Here’s the proof! We won’t linger longer on Genesis chapters 35 and 36. They are largely genealogies, beginning with a restating of Jacob’s dozen, since Benjamin, the last, has finally been added. The chapter ends with Jacob and Esau meeting again, this time at the […]
Read More… from August 20, 2021 — Look At All Those Children!
It was not one or the other, but both. And Jacob’s last boy would be the feistiest of them all! Rachel gives this lesson its title in her own words, taken from Genesis 30:1, “Give me children, or else I die!” That’s long before she bore her first son, Joseph (v 24). Almost prophetically, she […]
Read More… from August 19, 2021 — “Give Me Children, Or Else I Die!”
There isn’t much flat land in life! Thankfully God is the God of both valleys and mountains. Genesis 35 is a pivot point in the ongoing saga of the family that God selected to bring blessing to the whole world. Its many fits and starts tells us much of both the saving and sustaining grace […]
Read More… from August 18, 2021 — The God Of Bethel Comes Through Again!
Here’s a story within a story, a prototype of the history of the Jewish people in miniature. With relief we begin Genesis 35: “Then God said to Jacob, ‘Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there; and make an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you fled from the face of Esau’” […]
It’s a putrid world, a moral dump. But by grace we can emanate a sweet aroma of Christ today. The city of Shechem, first place in the Land visited by Jacob’s clan, lay in ruins. One can only imagine the wailing of widows and orphans, with not a man of them left to bury the […]
It’s never a good excuse when we have messed up to say, “Well, something had to be done!” We’re not sure how long Jacob and his family camped at Succoth, but we are told he “built himself a house” there (Gen 33:17). Eventually they did cross the Jordan and headed up a natural corridor to […]
Read More… from August 13, 2021 — Serious Trouble At Shechem
Even Jesus instructed His disciples that there are times when it was good to “rest a while.” Esau, with his men and addition of livestock, heads south along the Eastern Plateau towards Mount Seir. Jacob and his expansive household move due west, coming down from the Gilead Dome into the Jordan Valley by way of […]
The family reunion won’t last long, but long enough for reconciliation and a new beginning! After the joyful meeting between the once adversarial brothers, Jacob convinces Esau to accept his peace offering. Esau continues his gracious ways, inviting Jacob’s family to travel with them back to his settlement in “the land of Seir” (Gen 32:3). […]