Tag Archives: Genesis

It’s Never Cool to be Emo

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What You’ve Missed…
* Jacob moves to Egypt.  He gives his final blessing for all twelve of his sons before he dies.  (It’s actually pretty dramatic and theatrical.  Richard Roeper would probably consider it a bit over the top, but then again, he didn’t think Snakes on a Plane was that great either, so what does he know?)
* Joseph mourns his father, then he dies.  (Very UNdramatically I might add.  Booooo.)
* Genesis ends.  (One down, sixty-five to go.)

Day 19
Daily Reading: Job 1-4

Yup, you read that right.  We jumped from Genesis to Job.  (Keep in mind this is a chronological Bible…and apparently scholars believe the story of Job takes place around the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Basically it’s a, “Meanwhile, over at Job’s Ranch…”  type of situation.)

So, the first couple of chapters of Job are pretty nuts.  For starters God is bragging to Satan about how awesome Job is.  How he’s a man of integrity who stays away from evil. Did you catch that?  God is bragging about Job!  Think He still does this?  I like to think God brags about me from time to time.  (I mean, if you saw how incredibly humble I am, you’d be pretty impressed too.)  Anyway, Satan says he wants to test Job, and God ALLOWS it (under the condition Job is not harmed physically.)  You’d think God would tell Satan to get lost, that Job (who God claims to be the finest man on the Earth) is off limits.  But that doesn’t happen, and Satan goes off to do his thing.

Satan has a bunch of crazy desert raiders steal and kill all of Job’s livestock and servants.  Then a powerful wind comes in, knocking down the house where ALL of Job’s children were partying, killing everyone inside.  (Thinking ahead to parenthood, I’m tempted to use this story to scare my possible future teenage daughters away from parties.  “Remember what happened to Job’s children honey?  They partied.  And they died.”)  After all the dust has settled, and Job realizes he’s lost nearly everything in his life, he worships God, reminding us that the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh awayeth.  (Job’s attitude is hard for me to accept, seeing as I get pretty upset at little things.  Like when I lose a game of Words With Friends…which is all the time.  I’m making grumbling sounds I don’t know how to adequately write out right now.)

Cut back to heaven and God is still bragging about Job and Satan is still really annoyed by it, so he gets God to agree to another test for Job.  This time God says Satan can do anything he wants, except kill him.  So Satan covers him in boils from head to toe.  (Now, I don’t mean to cause division, but I’d imagine Job would have a hard time reading Your Best Life Now in this condition, especially if he’d heard God say all this suffering was cool by Him.)

Seriously…God is simply allowing Job’s life to turn to complete crap overnight.  He doesn’t console him, or promise him it will get better.  He doesn’t reach in to save him or heal him or anything.  He just let’s Job suffer.  And this is a man He loves.  A man He brags about!  What the heck God?  I mean, the whole “God gives and God takes away” thing is great in theory…but if this is what it looks like in the practical sense, well, I don’t know how I’m supposed to really handle that.  (I like the first part waaaay more than that second part.)  And I really like the idea that, “His ways are not our ways” but I like it when it helps me to keep on keepin’ on when I can’t explain things for myself.  But here…God’s way is to let someone He loves simply suffer.  I mean, I guess it’s a test for Job, but still…I like the “His ways aren’t our ways” deal when it’s convenient, not…inconvenient.  I like it when it makes things easier, not harder.

Anyway…so Job finally shows that while he may be God’s favorite, he’s still totally human.  After sitting around in silence with his friends for seven days, wallowing in his misery, he finally explodes into the most depressing speech ever, cursing the day he was born.  He actually says he wishes he’d been born dead.  How much more depressing, morbid, and emo can you get?  Eat your heart out George Bailey, this guy can outwhine you any day of the week.  (I mean the character from It’s a Wonderful Life, not my friend George Bailey, who shares the same name, and who in fact, is pretty optimistic about most things.)

As the suffering continues, Job’s buddy Eliphaz tries to encourage his friend, reminding him to be confident in God.  He reminds Job that God is just and powerful.  He encourages him to take heart and endure.  But I doubt Job really listens to him because with a name like Eliphaz, well, let’s just say I bet Job thinks he’s more like Elispaz than anything else.  (To be honest, I don’t know Job’s response.  I haven’t read that far yet.)

Eliphaz…that poor guy. I bet middle school was tough for a guy with a name like that.

Get Ready to Rumble!

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What You’ve Missed…
* God tells Jacob to go back to his homeland in a dream that features a lot of horny goats.
* Laban (the father-in-law) gets all angry and yells at Jacob who gets all whiny and yells at Laban.
* The men resolve their differences the same way my brothers and I did on long family car trips…they drew an imaginary line between themselves and agreed not to cross into each others’ territory.  (I hope it worked better for them, because that line only lasted about three seconds in our family.)
* Jacob and his thousands of animals, thirteen children and four wives, all head home.  (Speaking of long family trips…this sounds miserable, and without a Stuckey’s in sight.)

Day 12
Daily Reading: Genesis 32-35

In sixth grade I took nine weeks of Latin.  I don’t remember much of anything during that time, mostly because I spent that period punching myself in the face because of the horror that is Latin.  The rest of the time I was lost in thought puzzling out how some of my classmates had found a way to start growing facial hair.  However, in the few seconds I did pay attention, I remember the teacher telling us all about the Greek gods…and how they came down to Earth to mess with people.  They would sleep with them, fall in love with them, torture them or even fight them.  I remember thinking it was ridiculous that people used to actually believe that stuff.  Well, just like the rest of middle school, turns out the joke was on me.

Apparently Christianity has its own crazy story of God coming down to find someone to pick a fight with.  One night Jacob is hanging out all alone when out of nowhere a dude walks up and just starts fighting him for no reason.  Apparently this is the cultural norm at the time because Jacob goes along and wrestles the guy all night long without ever asking what they’re fighting about.  As morning approaches the mystery attacker realizes he isn’t going to win.  So what does he do?  He pulls out the mother-of-all pressure point moves and touches Jacob’s hip, wrenching it out of its socket.  If this were me you’d better believe I’d immediately be in the fetal position, which, let’s be honest, I probably already would’ve been in anyway…but not Jacob…the dude isn’t even phased.  He continues to wrestle so hard, he gets other guy cry “uncle”.

Short story even shorter, turns out the guy was God.  (Did you catch that?  Jacob got God to cry “uncle”.  I can barely handle a pair of jumper cables, and this guy got God to cry “uncle.”)  God goes on to bless Jacob and gives him a new name saying, “From now on you will be called Israel, because you have fought with God and with men and have won.” (Gen. 32:28)

So let me get this straight.  Jacob is doing his thing, and God walks by and just…jumps him?  He’s sees Jacob and decides to just start wailing on him?  And even though he clearly has Mortal Kombat fighting capabilities, he lets Jacob win?  Then He gives him a blessing (along with a serious limp)?  Why?  What is God doing here?  It all just seems so…unnecessary, so…bizarre.

And why is the Bible so casual about the whole thing?  This is God, the Almighty Creator, allowing himself to literally be manhandled by some regular Joe Schmo.  Why is the author not having his mind completely blown?  This is THE Pay Per View fight of the millennium, and it comes across as an amusing anecdote that probably turned Jacob into the ultimate one-upper.

And if this was God in the form of a man…was it Jesus that was wrestling?  Could He just not wait a couple more years for WWE and simply had to come on down to get His wrestle on?  Was the point to show us He can dominate us whenever He wants, but that His real desire is to interact with us?  To roll around in the dirt, gettin’ into the nitty gritty with us?

I just don’t know what to do with this, other than be glad it wasn’t me because the last time I was in a fight was with Duane Terry in seventh grade where we both threw one punch, we both missed, and we both decided to call it a draw.  And that was the best I could do against an uncoordinated seventh grader…let alone God.

(On a completely separate note…for some interesting reading check out Genesis 34.  It’s insane.  Two of Jacob’s sons wipe out all the men of a nearby town because the prince raped their sister.  The best part is before they killed everyone, Jacob’s sons made the men circumcise themselves first.  C’mon, that’s just mean.)

The Original Sister Wives or Baby Mama Drama

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What You’ve Missed…
*Abraham turns 100 and his wife Sarah finally has the baby she’s been praying for and names him Isaac.
*God later tells Abraham to kill Isaac, his only son, as a holy sacrifice.  (I’d have a hard enough time sacrificing my dog if God asked.)
*At the last minute God stops Abraham.  Turns out it was just a test, and Abraham passed.  (I immediately become grateful for the SATs for the first time ever.)
*Everything God promised to Abraham, he also promises to Isaac.
*Isaac marries Rebekah and has twins, Esau and Jacob, one of which may be an Ewok.
*To wrap things up, turns out Jacob is totally shady, and kind of a complete jerk, when he tricks his blind and elderly father by having Isaac give him God’s blessing which was supposed to be given to his brother Esau.  Also, his mom helped him formulate this whole plan. (I always had a feeling that a mother’s second child was always her favorite.)
Day 10
Daily Reading Genesis 28-30:24

So Jacob is wandering around figuring out his life when God promises him the same things He promised his father Isaac and grandfather Abraham; tons of descendants, tons of land, blessings, yadda yadda yadda…Jacob seems pumped about the whole deal.

Later Jacob goes to visit his uncle Laban and ends up meeting his cousin Rachel who turns out to be a foxy, foxy lady.  Real foxy.  The Bible actually goes out of its way to tell us that this chick is not just beautiful, but has a bangin’ body.

“Rachel had a beautiful figure and a lovely face.”  (Gen. 29:17)

Jacob knows what he wants, and he wants Rachel.  He agrees to work for Laban for seven years in exchange for Rachel.  Now, there are tons of fine women out there in the world today…and I don’t know a single dude who would work for seven years, without pay, to have one as a wife.  Clearly Rachel had it goin’ on!  So seven years passes and Jacob is ready to get busy.  He approaches his uncle and gets straight to business saying, “I have fulfilled my agreement, now give me my wife so I can sleep with her.”  And so he does.

SURPRISE!  Turns out ol’ Laban pulled a fast one on his nephew and sent Jacob his oldest daughter Leah instead (who Jacob doesn’t really care for, probably because she had  “dull eyes”, which I imagine is the Bible’s polite way of telling us Leah was about as attractive as a cow).  A week later Laban gives Jacob Rachel as his second wife (and gets Jacob to agree to another seven years of work.  How hot was this chick?)

And it is at this point that the two sisters, Leah and Rachel, battle it out hardcore for their husband’s affection.  There’s more outrage happening here than Chuck Liddell could ever muster up in a UFC match.  And how do these two women fight for Jacob’s affection?  By having as many of his kids as they can.  Let the Great Middle Eastern Baby Battle Begin!

Turns out Rachel can’t have kids, and Leah can…giving Jacob four kids and taking an early lead.  But filled with jealousy, and not to be outdone, Rachel has Jacob sleep with her maidservant who produced two kids for Jacob.

Rachel – 2
Leah – 4

Leah seems to be hitting a dry spell, so she has Jacob sleep with her maidservant who gives him two more sons.

Rachel – 2
Leah – 6

God jumps in Leah’s corner, bringing her out of the dry spell and provides Jacob with two more sons and a daughter.

Rachel – 2
Leah – 9

Finally God throws a little compassion Rachel’s way and she becomes pregnant for the first time, giving Jacob a son named Joseph.

According to my count, the final tally is:
Rachel – 3
Leah – 9

Ding!  Ding!  Ding!  We have a winner!  And it’s Leah by six kids!

Even though Leah won the World’s Greatest Birthing Contest of all-time, Jacob still always loved Rachel more.  Which just goes to show that ladies, if you want to impress your husband, shootin’ out kids left and right may not be the best approach.   (Unless you’re a member of Sister Wives, in which case this is probably your favorite Bible story.)  I’d just suggest letting your husband play Xbox from time to time, and easing up on all that nose hair trimming commentary.  Oh, and more make-outs.  Dudes love the make-outs.

(Final note: As I look back over this story…I have come to the conclusion that all of Jacob’s fourteen years of hard work for one woman paid of in spades.  This guy ended up with women not only fighting to sleep with him, but offering him more women to sleep with on their behalf.  Maybe it’s time I re-examine my work ethic.)