A. Marie Silver

A. Marie Silver

Genesis & The Generation Gap – Part 2

If you’re new to this blog series, please read this first.

 The Tower of Babel

Many, many, many, many, many, many years later descendants of Noah settled somewhere….I’m not sure where. They decided they were going to build a tower that would allow them to bypass God and go straight to Heaven. Not sure why they thought that was going to work but it makes for an interesting story.

God saw what they were doing. When I think of the expression He wore, I think of this:

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To prevent them from working together as a team, he gave everyone a different language. Because they couldn’t understand each other, they couldn’t work together to build the tower. Then, God scattered them all over Earth and this is why we have different languages today.

via GIPHY

Abram & Sarai

Abram is a descendant of Noah. He married Sarai and they moved to Egypt. Sarai’s beauty was the stuff legends are made of. Abram was afraid that the men in Egypt would kill Abram so they could marry Sarai. His solution: they told everyone that they were brother and sister.

Eventually the truth came out about Abram and Sarai. Fortunately, neither one of them died as a result of the lie. Life moves on. Sarai isn’t able to conceive and she wants her husband to have an heir so she makes her slave have sex with Abram.

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Then the slave gets pregnant and Sarai is extremely jealous and becomes cruel toward her slave. So the slave runs away.

Eventually God blesses Sarai with a child, Isaac. God decides Abram’s faith must be tested so He instructs Abram to sacrifice his son. Abram is all set up to do just that when God stops him and rewards him for his faithfulness.

Also, at some point in time God renamed Abram to Abraham; and Sarai to Sarah. There was an explanation for this but I don’t remember what it was and now I can’t find it. If anyone reading this knows, please tell me in the comments.

Jacob

Jacob is Isaac’s son. He has a brother Esau. Esau is technically older than Jacob but since they’re twins, their age difference is negligible. Except maybe not during biblical times when the oldest child is the one who is supposed to receive the father’s blessing. In this case, Esau was the child Isaac was supposed to bless. Rachel, Isaac’s wife, favors Jacob over Esau. She wanted Jacob to receive his father’s blessing.

Near the end of Isaac’s life, he lost his eyesight. Rachel took advantage of this and tricked Isaac into giving his blessing to Jacob.

The blessing consisted of three parts:

1. The promise of land and fertility
2. The promise of domination
3. Something about curses I don’t understand. It’s chapter 27:29 and it reads: May those who curse you be cursed and those who bless you be blessed.

Isaac did figure out that he was tricked and did bless Esau but once a blessing is given it can’t be retracted. So Esau was blessed with a good life but not the life Jacob was now destined for.

I have no idea why I have a gif of Ryan Gosling in this blog post. I put it in a week ago so that I wouldn’t forget it and now I can’t remember why. I could take it out but that wouldn’t be any fun.

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Jacob Gets Married

Jacob met Rachel, a woman of great beauty. She was the younger of two sisters. Jacob asked for her hand in marriage and her father agreed provided that Jacob work for him for seven years. Jacob agreed.

Jacob married Rachel. Or so he thought. His bride wore a veil over her face and it was dark when they consummated their marriage. The next morning he woke up and discovered that his father-in-law tricked him into marrying Leah, Rachel’s older sister.

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And now I remember what the Ryan Gosling gif was for. Awesome. Moving along.

Jacob’s father-in-law told Jacob that it was customary for the older sister to wed first.

He agreed to let Jacob marry Rachel also, provided that Jacob work for him for another seven years. Jacob agreed. Eventually, he and Rachel married and eventually, they gave birth to a son. Joseph.

Joseph

The story of Joseph is probably my favorite in the book of Genesis. I’d say it’s my favorite story in the entire Bible, but I haven’t read the entire Bible yet.

The reason I love this story is because it parallels life’s ups and downs. Joseph has a good life. He’s adored by his father. His brothers hate him (so maybe this part isn’t so good.) They conspire to kill him. But Joseph’s brother Reuben had a concern.

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He didn’t think killing Joseph was such a good idea.

via GIPHY

Instead of killing Joseph, they sold him into slavery. Eventually he wound up in Egypt – a slave to one of the pharaoh’s top officials. So now Joseph’s life isn’t so great.

The pharaoh’s official saw that Joseph was blessed by God and put him in charge of his household. Life is getting better for Joseph.

Then the chief’s wife tried to seduce Joseph. He refused her so she accused him of attempted rape.

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Joseph was thrown into prison. Life wasn’t great for Joseph but because God blessed Joseph, he wasn’t sentenced to death like other rapists normally are.

Eventually he found favor among the prison guards and was put in charge of the other prisoners. Life isn’t great for Joseph but it’s getting better.

During his time in prison, Joseph meets two prisoners who have troubling dreams they can’t interpret. Joseph has a gift for dream interpration. He tells one dreamer that everything is going to be okay and he tells the other one that his death his imminent.

The survivor of the dreams is supposed to remember Joseph to the pharaoh but forgets. So Joseph has to spend more time in prison.

Times goes on and the pharaoh has two troubling dreams. He calls people from all over, looking for anyone who can tell him what the dreams mean. The prisoner who had been with Joseph finally remembered to tell the Pharaoh about Joseph.

Joseph interprets the dreams, warning the pharaoh that a seven-year famine is coming. Joseph instructs the pharaoh what to do to protect his people and the pharaoh listens. Also, the pharaoh makes Joseph his second-in-command. The only person higher in Egypt than Joseph is the pharaoh.

Joseph is eventually reunited with his father and his brothers. He forgives his brothers and ensures that they are well taken care of during the famine.

Genesis ends with the death of Joseph.

But as I said this was my favorite story in Genesis because no matter how awful life was for Joseph, he was never alone. God was always with him and eventually everything turned out well. I think this is a nice reminder that even in our darkest times, we’re never alone.

And that is the conclusion of today’s blog.

Thanks for shopping Snark, Sass, & Sarcasm! I’ll see you next time.

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A. Marie Smith

Your short bio telling the story of why you are a writer and the things that you think are important.