Welcome to the One Great Story!. George B. Thompson
about human responsibility and accountability?
But life would go on anyway, although it was plagued soon enough by strife and murder. We also remember hearing something about Cain and Abel, Eve and Adam’s sons. Cain killed Abel because Abel’s offering to God was accepted, but his was not (Gen 4:2–8). The famous question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” comes from this episode. Yet, even though Cain was driven away, God promised to protect him (Gen 4:15). Thus, judgment and mercy appear together, more than once, in the earliest of biblical episodes. The Bible also demonstrates, early in its first book, an interest in connecting dots between persons and generations. A genealogy in chapter 5 leads from Adam to a character who then dominates the following five chapters, Noah.
Again, we are dealing with an episode from The Story that is fairly well-known, at least in some of its main elements. Things on earth were not going as the LORD had intended. The story says that “the wickedness of humankind was great” and that humans cared only about evil things (Gen 6:5). (This won’t be the last time we hear about this issue before The Story is over!) So God decided that it was time to end the whole business, by eliminating all people, all animals, and all birds. There was only one glimmer of hope in the whole situation, which was this fellow Noah. Noah was “a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God” (Gen 6:9). He must have stood out like a sore thumb! So, as many of us remember, God called on Noah to prepare for a devastating flood by constructing a water-worthy vessel that would carry Noah’s family and pairs of all creatures safely.
We also remember something about rain falling in torrents, the ark floating as the waters rose to cover even mountaintops, the report of complete destruction, and months of subsiding waters (Gen 7:6–24). Once Noah and his family were able to disembark, God commanded them to unload the ark so that the creatures could repopulate the earth (Gen 8:13–19). Noah then constructed an altar and worshipped the LORD, who decided never to do that again. God blessed Noah’s family, as when the first humans were created (Gen 9:1; compare 1:22, 28). God set up a covenant with Noah and his family, using the rainbow as a sign of protection for all creatures on earth (Gen 9:8–17). This covenant brought an upbeat conclusion to an otherwise harsh episode: the Creator has not given up on the human enterprise.
The rainbow is a sign that the Creator has not given up on the human enterprise.
Life started over again. Genesis lists Noah’s three sons—Shem, Ham, and Japheth—and their progeny for a couple of generations each. This list also shows interest in details such as who ended up where and how certain peoples and places became settled—“in their lands, with their own languages, by their family, in their nations (Gen 10:5c; compare 10:20, 31–32).” Chapter 10 seems, in part, to set up the circumstances for the next episode, about the tower of Babel (Gen 11:1–9). Like the other episodes that precede it, the Babel incident appears designed to explain something significant and universal about the general human condition, framed in the setting of the prehistoric Near East. Such is the function and resounding power of the literary form known as “myth,” once we understand it in this way.
In this legendary episode within The One Great Story, all people spoke one language (but compare the verses noted above in Gen 10) and had traveled to a location that looked good to them. They decided to build a city there, including a tower that would go far up into the sky—actually, “the heavens,” where ancient cultures often imagined the gods to dwell. God, the LORD, did not like that idea, commenting (perhaps to the heavenly council) “this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing . . . will now be impossible for them (Gen 11:6cd).” So God intervened, by “going down” and strewing the people every which way (“over the face of all the earth” [Gen 11:8]), which meant the end to their construction project. Hence, the people’s effort to go up to heaven (“Come, let us build ourselves . . . a tower with its top in the heavens” [Gen 11:4]) becomes set in contrast with God’s action in response (“Come, let us go down, . . . ” [Gen 11:7]).
The name “Babel”—“Gate of God”—is used here as a play on the Hebrew verb balal, which means “to confuse.” This episode, coming as it does following the great flood and repopulation of the earth, explains in an epic way how human beings kept trying things that went beyond God’s intentions for them. Peoples and nations are flung across the world, far from each other, unable to communicate or understand each other. The divine purpose and hope waits again to be realized.
The Babel story explains in an epic way how human beings pursue things that are beyond God’s intentions for them.
The Story continues: yet another genealogy completes the chapter, filling in the names of several of Shem’s descendants, all the way to a fellow named Terah, who lived in a Mesopotamian city called Ur. Terah had three sons, one of whom died young. Terah then moved from Ur with one of his surviving sons to another city, known as Haran. Then Terah died there in Haran, and Genesis says nothing else about it. What happened to his family? Ahh! We have heard their story already—that of Abram/Abraham and Sarai/Sarah.
Looking at the sequence of these mythical episodes early in Genesis, we can see how they are linked within this composite narrative. God, Creator of all that exists, had something wonderful in mind for Creation, but the humans went astray early on and brought pain and hardship on themselves. It got to a point at which God decided to get rid of the whole mess. And yet, God didn’t want to give up on one character who still was devoted, so God spared that character, Noah, and his family, so that the Great Idea for Creation could stand another chance of working. After the Flood, God made a covenant with Noah and marked it with the rainbow in the sky. Sadly, though, things started getting out of hand again, many generations later. The humans again sought to become more than they were meant to be, by building a tower that would reach to the entrance of divine abode. God was not pleased with their intent and therefore dispersed them hither and yon. As the human generations continued, one line produced a man in whom God apparently had high hopes. His name was Abram, and his wife was Sarai.
Twins! Oy, What Trouble!
The second major chapter of The One Great Story continues through Abraham and Sarah’s “only son,” Isaac. He married Rebekah after Sarah’s death, and Rebekah became pregnant after Isaac prayed about her being “barren” (Gen 25:21). Rebekah hardly could have imagined what would transpire! She gave birth to twin boys, the second one with his hand on the first one’s heel as they were born (Gen 25:25–26). What a great metaphor for the brothers’ lives! They contended with each other for years, while their parents played favorites between them. Esau, the eldest, was a hunter and his father’s favorite. Jacob, the one who “takes by the heel,” was more of his momma’s boy.
Because, in those days, inheritance went from the father to the eldest son, the first twin born received the favored birthright. In the case of Jacob and Esau, however, the younger twin outwitted his outdoorsy brother, tricking him out of that birthright (Gen 25:29–34). In the meantime, Isaac became wealthy through agricultural pursuits, although he moved around to some extent. He expressed his devotion to the LORD, whose favor for Isaac was acknowledged even by the king of the Philistines (Gen 26, esp. vss. 23–31). We will hear more about rivalry with the Philistines in later chapters of The Story.
Pause to Reflect As some of the episodes in Genesis suggest, marriages in that time and place often were arranged for the benefit of the families involved. Given this context, what do you think is the significance to The Story that Isaac is reported to have “loved” Rebekah (Gen 24:67c)?
Speaking of rivalry, things got worse between Isaac’s twin sons. Their father had become old and could not see well anymore. He asked Esau to make him a tasty meal from game that he would kill, after which Esau would receive Isaac’s blessing. That blessing would overturn Jacob’s tricking Esau out of his birthright. Rebekah overheard Isaac and quickly arranged with Jacob to prepare his own meal for him, one that he could take into his father by pretending to be Esau. She rigged up a “costume” of Esau’s clothing and lambskin and dressed Jacob in them. When Jacob went into his father with the meal and the costume, he fooled his father into granting him the blessing. Esau returned with his meal just moments after Jacob left their father’s tent. Isaac and Esau both were very upset when they figured