Old Testament for August 13, 2023

Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. took this photograph of Butterfield’s mosaic depicting Joseph being sold into slavery. The mosaic is in the chapel of Keble College chapel in Oxford.

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

The tales of the ancestors of the Israelites continues with the story of Joseph.  He is the fourth generation removed from Abraham, the family patriarch, and he is one of eleven sons and one daughter of Jacob as our story begins.

Just a word of backstory.  Jacob has returned to Canaan after a twenty-year sojourn at Haran in Mesopotamia (Genesis 31-32).  He has managed to avoid reprisals from his embittered brother Esau, and even managed to find reconciliation with him.  And his identity has been changed — Jacob’s name is now Israel, after his night-long struggle with the Angel of Yahweh. 

However, Israel’s family situation is still… complicated.  He has two wives — the sisters Leah and Rachel. And he also has two additional “servant” wives — Bilhah and Zilpah, who are the servants of Rachel and Leah respectively.  Each of his four “wives” has borne children to Israel, in a kind of competition between these “sister wives.”

For the sake of simplicity, here are the twelve, with a number assigned to indicate birth order:

Leah was the mother of the oldest, Reuben (1). Leah also gave birth to Simeon (2), Levi (3), Judah (4), Issachar (9), Zebulun (10), and Dinah, the only daughter (11). 

Bilhah, Rachel’s servant, gave birth to two sons in Rachel’s effort to compete with her sister Leah — Dan (5) and Naphtali (6). 

Zilpah was pressed into service as “breed stock” by Leah when she thought she couldn’t bear any more children. Zilpah bore Gad (7) and Asher (8). 

When Rachel finally was able to bear a child, Israel was now an old man.  Her son Joseph (12) was the twelfth child sired by Israel up to this point.  Rachel bore another son for Israel — Benjamin (13) — and she died in childbirth.

If this all sounds a bit competitive and even dehumanizing, it is.  The servants of Leah and Rachel were treated as mere breeders for their mistresses’ strange rivalry.

Our story picks up when Joseph is seventeen years old, working as a shepherd with his ten older brothers. And we again see strong evidence of family dysfunction.  Joseph is a tattletale, bringing an evil report on his brothers back to their father.  And Israel plays favorites, with predictable results:

Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age, and he made him a coat of many colors. His brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, and they hated him, and couldn’t speak peaceably to him.

We speculate that Joseph was also Israel’s favorite son because he was Rachel’s first child.  Rachel was the true love of Israel’s life. Joseph and his younger brother Benjamin must have been physical reminders of his beloved Rachel.

Joseph’s brothers highly resented him. And his coat of many colors certainly didn’t help. To make matters worse, Joseph has two extraordinary dreams that suggest he will one day be preeminent over all of his brothers and even his own father — and Joseph has the nerve to blurt out the details of his dreams of superiority to his whole family!  Even Israel is taken aback by Joseph’s apparent audacity:

“What is this dream that you have dreamed? Will I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves down to you to the earth?”  His brothers envied him, but his father kept this saying in mind (Genesis 37:10-11).

Now, the plot thickens, as the cliche says.  Israel’s sons are feeding the flocks in Shechem.  Israel is now encamped in Hebron, which is in a valley nestled in the mountains, where Sarah, Abraham, Isaac and Rebekah were buried. Hebron was about sixty-seven miles south of Shechem, which was in the central highlands of Canaan.  Presumably it was good pastureland for sheep.  (It should be remembered that traveling sixty-seven miles while driving a massive flock would take much longer than driving it on the interstate.)

Israel sends his son Joseph on an errand to find his brothers.  Presumably, Joseph has been kept home close to “dad” up to this point.  Is Israel sending his son to spy on his brothers, or to supervise them, or simply to check on their welfare? He seems to be simply asking Joseph to determine the well-being of his brothers, and the flock:

He said to him, “Go now, see whether it is well with your brothers, and well with the flock; and bring me word again.”

But when Joseph makes this long trip, he can’t find his brothers. They have moved on.  A stranger directs him to seek them at Dothan, which is about eighteen miles to the northwest of Shechem.

We get a pretty clear picture of what happens next.  The brothers see Joseph coming from a distance.  Perhaps they are high on a hill and see him climbing toward them.  And they have plenty of time to talk as they see him coming from afar.   They conspire against their hated brother:

They said to one another, “Behold, this dreamer comes.  Come now therefore, and let’s kill him, and cast him into one of the pits, and we will say, ‘An evil animal has devoured him.’ We will see what will become of his dreams.”

We are witnessing a premeditated crime of murder in the making!  Fortunately for Joseph, a cooler head prevails.  Reuben, the oldest brother of them all (and the son of Leah), intervenes.  He finds an alternative that can spare his much younger brother:

Reuben said to them, “Shed no blood. Throw him into this pit that is in the wilderness, but lay no hand on him”—that he might deliver him out of their hand, to restore him to his father.

Reuben is seeking to appease the envy of his brothers, while still saving Joseph’s life.  To be thrown into a dark, damp well would be a chastening experience, to be sure — but at least he would be alive!

They act quickly when Joseph arrives — they strip him of his coat of many colors. Joseph is lucky.  The well has no water.  He won’t drown!

While Joseph languishes at the bottom of a dark well, the brothers sit down to their meal — perhaps feeling a little festive now that their nemesis has been “brought down a peg.” They can eat, happily knowing their brother is in the pit.

But the plot thickens even more.  Apparently Reuben has gone away to tend the flock, or some other task.  He is not present when the boys hatch their next conspiracy.  A caravan of Ishmaelites riding camels from Gilead with spices and balms and myrrh comes near.  We are reminded that the Ishmaelites are related to the sons of Israel — they are distant cousins descended from their mutual grandfather Abraham.  Gilead was the mountainous region to the east of the Jordan River.

These Ishmaelites were merchants who were trading and selling their spices in Egypt, the center of political and military power and the cultural center of civilization at that time.  These Ishmaelites could be expected to bargain for anything worth selling. Or anyone.

It is Judah who suggests that the brothers shouldn’t kill Joseph.  Why not make a profit from this good looking, smart-alecky teenager?

Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood?  Come, and let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites, and not let our hand be on him; for he is our brother, our flesh.”

The narrative is just a little confusing.  Judah’s brothers heed his advice, but the text tells us:  

Midianites who were merchants passed by, and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. They brought Joseph into Egypt.

The Midianites were also descendants of Abraham, like the Ishmaelites and the sons of Israel.  The Midianites were descendants of Keturah, the woman Abraham married after Sarah died (Genesis 25:1-2).

Did the brothers negotiate with some Midianites to pull their brother out of the well, and then sell him to the Ishmaelites on their behalf? If so, perhaps this gave them some “deniability” so they could say to their father — we had nothing to do with it!

We note the price of the sale of Joseph into slavery — twenty pieces of silver.  This was notoriously the price of a slave.  And we note that many centuries later, the life of a distant relative of Joseph’s (Jesus) would be sold out for thirty pieces of silver.

APPLY:  

Once again, we see the honesty of the Scriptures when it comes to describing even the Biblical patriarchs.  The brothers of Joseph, who will become the ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel, are deeply resentful of their brother.

From a family perspective, there is a serious lack of emotional health in Israel’s attitudes.  He not only is partial to Joseph, he advertises this favoritism by giving him a splendid coat.  And Joseph compounds the problem by boasting to his family of his dreams of superiority.

This reminds us that God works through very fallible people in order to accomplish his purposes.  We will find, if we follow the tale of the slave Joseph into Egypt, that God uses even these horrible circumstances to bring good out of evil.  And perhaps these circumstances will even smooth off some of the rough edges of Joseph’s narcissistic character.

RESPOND: 

One needn’t be a student of Murray Bowen’s Family Systems Theory to conclude that Israel’s family is dysfunctional.

• Thirteen different kids by four different women, who also lived under the same roof (or tent canopy).
• A father who enmeshes one of his sons so deeply that his other sons come to hate their brother!
• A son who is so narcissistic that he brags about his superiority in front of these very brothers!
• And brothers whose moral compass permits them to seriously consider killing their brother, and have no qualms about selling him into slavery!

On the one hand, all this actually reassures me that even as weird and dysfunctional as my family sometimes may be, we’re not as bad as Israel’s family!  And Israel was the father of a great nation and a founder of a great dynasty which would be the focus of the entire Hebrew Bible, from Genesis to Malachi!  And even more comforting, despite all of these rivalries, enmeshments, and conspiracies, God kept his covenant with Israel.

So, when I read about the tale of Joseph and his brothers, I am reminded that this is only a snapshot, a frame, in the greater story. My Dad used to have a sign on his desk — Please be patient. God isn’t finished with me yet.  God wasn’t finished with Joseph or his brothers yet.

Lord, families are so meaningful to us, and yet they can be so dysfunctional, and even hurtful! But no matter how painful our childhoods may have been, you aren’t finished with us yet. Help us to trust you even when we feel that we have been betrayed and enslaved by our family systems.  Amen.

PHOTOS:
“Joseph sold as a slave” by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.

Old Testament for July 16, 2023

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Genesis 25:19-34
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

The generational torch is passed from Abraham to Isaac, and then to Isaac’s sons, Jacob and Esau:

This is the history of the generations of Isaac, Abraham’s son. Abraham became the father of Isaac. Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Paddan Aram, the sister of Laban the Syrian, to be his wife.

However, in this family history, there is a crisis.  Rebekah was barren.  Given the promises of Yahweh to Abraham, that his descendants would be as many as the stars, this is serious.   But when Isaac intercedes with Yahweh, Rebekah finally conceives twenty years after their marriage, when Isaac is sixty.

Not only does she conceive, she is carrying twins!  But hers is a very difficult pregnancy.  Perhaps this is a premonition of the sibling rivalry that is to come:

The children struggled together within her. She said, “If it is so, why do I live?”

We are told that she goes to inquire of Yahweh — we aren’t told how or where she goes. But she does receive an answer, in the form of a prophecy:

Yahweh said to her,
“Two nations are in your womb.
Two peoples will be separated from your body.
The one people will be stronger than the other people.
The elder will serve the younger.”

These twins aren’t merely brothers who fuss the way brothers often do. They represent two nations — Esau becomes the ancestor of the Edomites, and Jacob will come to be known as Israel. And though Esau is the first-born, he will be overshadowed by Jacob.

Though they are twins, the two brothers couldn’t be more different.  Obviously, they are fraternal twins, not identical.  When Esau was born, he was covered with red hair.  And the wrestling match that began in Rebekah’s womb continues even as the boys are born:

After that, his brother came out, and his hand had hold on Esau’s heel. He was named Jacob.

Their extreme differences grew as they grew.  Esau grows up to be a robust and skillful hunter who loves the outdoors.  He was his father’s favorite because he brought him venison.  Rebekah was partial to her Jacob.  We get a picture of him as a contemplative man:

Jacob was a quiet man, living in tents.

The tension between the two brothers intensifies one day when Esau has been out in the field.  Perhaps he has been unsuccessful in a hunt, or he’s been working in the fields — he’s famished.  Jacob has been boiling a stew of lentils, and Esau asks for a bowl.  Jacob seizes the opportunity to take advantage of his older brother’s plight. (As an aside, the Biblical writer suggests that this red stew becomes the basis for Esau’s nickname Edom, or Red — although we might speculate that the fuzzy red hair that covered him at his birth might have something to do with it! Perhaps Esau was a redhead).

Jacob slyly says to Esau, in just the taunting way a brother might:

 “First, sell me your birthright.”

The birthright is the right of primogeniture ­— the right of the first-born son.  This is the right of inheritance Jacob is asking for!

The repartee between the two could have been playful, but not between these two brothers.  Esau is short-sighted, and perhaps a little naive about his brother’s intentions:

Esau said, “Behold, I am about to die. What good is the birthright to me?”

Jacob reveals just how earnest he is — he withholds the stew until Esau swears to him first.  In a culture where a man’s word is a contract, this is no light thing.

Esau swears, and gets his bowl of stew and some bread — and we are told:

He ate and drank, rose up, and went his way. So Esau despised his birthright.

APPLY:  

At its heart, this is a story that most of us can understand.  It is a family story.  A childless couple yearning for children.  A troubled pregnancy.  The sibling rivalry of two brothers who couldn’t be more different.

It is in and through such families that God chooses to work — to answer prayers, and make promises of a legacy to come, and even to fulfill his plans in spite of the character flaws of such brothers as Jacob and Esau.

What is refreshing about the Biblical record is its realism and honesty.  Isaac and Rebekah remind us of yearning couples that we know.  Jacob and Esau remind us of feuding brothers.  This reminds us that God works through families, and through people, just like ourselves!

RESPOND: 

Some years ago I took a course on Family Systems Theory.  I found it fascinating.  It was based on the theories of Dr. Murray Bowen.  He believed that human interactions are based on interlocking systems that reduplicate the traits of family interactions — whether they are biological families, clubs, churches, military platoons, or even larger political systems.

In the story of Jacob and Esau, I can identify some of the principles of Family Systems Theory that occurred long before Dr. Bowen’s theories.  One of those concepts is triangling — this is what happens when two members of a family seek to resolve the tensions they may have with one another by shifting their focus to a third member of the family.   The tension between Jacob and Esau is exacerbated by the enmeshment they experience from their parents — Jacob enmeshed by his mother Rebekah, and Esau enmeshed by his father Isaac.  These are triangles that interlock — and eventually result in what Bowen might call emotional cutoff ­— when Jacob is forced to leave his home altogether.  But — that’s another story for another Bible study.

The point is that the Biblical stories are our stories.  And the fulfillment toward which history moves is, at its heart, the story of becoming God’s family.

Lord, our families are dysfunctional — but you work out your plans and purposes within even our dysfunctional families.  And we look forward to the consummation of your kingdom — which is described as the ‘wedding supper of the Lamb.’  In heaven we will experience the perfection of your family. Thank you! Amen.

PHOTOS:
“Esau and Jacob” by Giovanni Andrea de Ferrari is in the public domain.

Old Testament for August 9, 2020

Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. took this photograph of Butterfield’s mosaic depicting Joseph being sold into slavery. The mosaic is in the chapel of Keble College chapel in Oxford.

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

The tales of the ancestors of the Israelites continues with the story of Joseph.  He is the fourth generation removed from Abraham, the family patriarch, and he is one of eleven sons and one daughter of Jacob as our story begins.

Just a word of backstory.  Jacob has returned to Canaan after a twenty year sojourn at Haran in Mesopotamia  (Genesis 31-32).  He has managed to avoid reprisals from his embittered brother Esau, and even managed to find reconciliation with him.  And his identity has been changed — Jacob’s name is now Israel, after his night-long struggle with the Angel of Yahweh. 

However, Israel’s family situation is still….complicated.  He has two wives — the sisters Leah and Rachel. And he also has two additional “servant” wives —  Bilhah and Zilpah, who are the servants of Rachel and Leah respectively.  Each of his four “wives” has borne children to Israel, in a kind of competition between these “sister wives.”

For the sake of simplicity, here are the twelve, with a number assigned to indicate birth order:  Leah was the mother of  the oldest, Reuben (1). Leah also gave birth to Simeon (2), Levi (3), Judah (4), Issachar (9), Zebulun (10), and Dinah, the only daughter (11).  Bilhah, Rachel’s servant, gave birth to two sons in Rachel’s effort to compete with her sister Leah — Dan (5) and Naphtali (6).  Zilpah was pressed into service as “breed stock”  by Leah when she thought she couldn’t bear any more children. Zilpah bore Gad (7) and Asher (8).  When Rachel finally was able to bear a child, Israel was now an old man.  Her son Joseph (12) was the twelfth child sired by Israel up to this point.  Rachel bore another son for Israel — Benjamin (13) — and she died in childbirth  (If this all sounds a bit competitive and even dehumanizing, it is.  The servants of Leah and Rachel were treated as mere breeders for their mistresses’ strange rivalry).

Our story picks up when Joseph is seventeen years old, working as a shepherd with his ten older brothers. And we again see strong evidence of family dysfunction.  Joseph is a tattle-tale, bringing an evil report on his brothers back to their father.  And Israel plays favorites, with predictable results:

Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age, and he made him a coat of many colors. His brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, and they hated him, and couldn’t speak peaceably to him.

We speculate that Joseph was also Israel’s favorite son because he was Rachel’s first child.  Rachel was the true love of Israel’s life. Joseph and his younger brother Benjamin must have been physical reminders of his beloved Rachel.

Joseph’s brothers highly resented him. And his coat of many colors certainly didn’t help. To make matters worse, Joseph has two extraordinary dreams that suggest he will one day be preeminent over all of his brothers and even his own father — and Joseph has the nerve to blurt out the details of his dreams of superiority to his whole family!  Even Israel is taken aback by Joseph’s apparent audacity:

“What is this dream that you have dreamed? Will I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves down to you to the earth?”  His brothers envied him, but his father kept this saying in mind (Genesis 37:10-11).

Now, the plot thickens, as the cliche says.  Israel’s sons are feeding the flocks in Shechem.  Israel is now encamped in Hebron, which is in a valley nestled in the mountains, where Sarah, Abraham, Isaac and Rebekah were buried. Hebron was about sixty-seven miles south of Shechem, which was in the central highlands of Canaan.  Presumably it was good pasture land for sheep.  (It should be remembered that traveling sixty-seven miles while driving a massive flock would take much longer than driving it on the interstate.)

Israel sends his son Joseph on an errand to find his brothers.  Presumably, Joseph has been kept home close to “dad” up to this point.  Is Israel sending his son to spy on his brothers, or to supervise them, or simply to check on their welfare? He seems to be simply asking Joseph to determine the well-being of his brothers, and the flock:

He said to him, “Go now, see whether it is well with your brothers, and well with the flock; and bring me word again.”

But when Joseph makes this long trip, he can’t find his brothers. They have moved on.  A stranger directs him to seek them at Dothan, which is about eighteen miles to the northwest of Shechem.

We get a pretty clear picture of what happens next.  The brothers see Joseph coming from a distance.  Perhaps they are high on a hill and see him climbing toward them.  And they have plenty of time to talk as they see him coming from afar.   They conspire against their hated brother:

They said to one another, “Behold, this dreamer comes.  Come now therefore, and let’s kill him, and cast him into one of the pits, and we will say, ‘An evil animal has devoured him.’ We will see what will become of his dreams.”

We are witnessing a premeditated crime of murder in the making!  Fortunately for Joseph, a cooler head prevails.  Reuben, the oldest brother of them all (and the son of Leah), intervenes.  He finds an alternative that can spare his much younger brother:

Reuben said to them, “Shed no blood. Throw him into this pit that is in the wilderness, but lay no hand on him”—that he might deliver him out of their hand, to restore him to his father.

Reuben is seeking to appease the envy of his brothers, while still saving Joseph’s life.  To be thrown into a dark, damp well would be a chastening experience, to be sure — but at least he would be alive!

They act quickly when Joseph arrives — they strip him of his coat of many colors. Joseph is lucky.  The well has no water.  He won’t drown!

While Joseph languishes at the bottom of a dark well, the brothers sit down to their meal — perhaps feeling a little festive now that their nemesis has been “brought down a peg.” They can eat, happily knowing their brother is in the pit.

But the plot thickens even more.  Apparently Reuben has gone away to tend the flock, or some other task.  He is not present when the boys hatch their next conspiracy.  A caravan of Ishmaelites riding camels from Gilead with spices and balms and myrrh comes near.  We are reminded that the Ishmaelites are related to the sons of Israel — they are distant cousins descended from their mutual grandfather Abraham.  Gilead was the mountainous region to the east of the Jordan River.

These Ishmaelites were merchants who were trading and selling their spices in Egypt, the center of political and military power and the cultural center of civilization at that time.  These Ishmaelites could be expected to bargain for anything worth selling. Or anyone.

It is Judah who suggests that the brothers shouldn’t kill Joseph.  Why not make a profit from this good looking, smart-alecky teenager?

Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood?  Come, and let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites, and not let our hand be on him; for he is our brother, our flesh.”

The narrative is just a little confusing.  Judah’s brothers heed his advice, but the text tells us:  

Midianites who were merchants passed by, and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. They brought Joseph into Egypt.

The Midianites were also descendants of Abraham, like the Ishmaelites and the sons of Israel.  The Midianites were descendants of Keturah, the woman Abraham married after Sarah died (Genesis 25:1-2).

Did the brothers negotiate with some Midianites to pull their brother out of the well, and then sell him to the Ishmaelites on their behalf? If so, perhaps this gave them some “deniability” so they could say to their father — we had nothing to do with it!

We note the price of the sale of Joseph into slavery — twenty pieces of silver.  This was notoriously the price of a slave.  And we note that many centuries later, the life of a distant relative of Joseph’s (Jesus) would be sold out for thirty pieces of silver.

APPLY:  

Once again, we see the honesty of the Scriptures when it comes to describing even the Biblical patriarchs.  The brothers of Joseph, who will become the ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel, are deeply resentful of their brother.

From a family perspective, there is a serious lack of emotional health in Israel’s attitudes.  He not only is partial to Joseph, he advertises this favoritism by giving him a splendid coat.  And Joseph compounds the problem by boasting to his family of his dreams of superiority.

This reminds us that God works through very fallible people in order to accomplish his purposes.  We will find, if we follow the tale of the slave Joseph into Egypt, that God uses even these horrible circumstances to bring good out of evil.  And perhaps these circumstances will even smooth off some of the rough edges of Joseph’s narcissistic character.

RESPOND: 

One needn’t be a student of Murray Bowen’s Family Systems Theory to conclude that Israel’s family is dysfunctional.

• Thirteen different kids by four different women, who also lived under the same roof (or tent canopy).
• A father who enmeshes one of his sons so deeply that his other sons come to hate their brother!
• A son who is so narcissistic that he brags about his superiority in front of these very brothers!
• And brothers whose moral compass permits them to seriously consider killing their brother, and have no qualms about selling him into slavery!

On the one hand, all this actually reassures me that even as weird and dysfunctional as my family sometimes may be, we’re not as bad as Israel’s family!  And Israel was the father of a great nation and a founder of a great dynasty which would be the focus of the entire Hebrew Bible, from Genesis to Malachi!  And even more comforting, despite all of these rivalries, enmeshments, and conspiracies, God kept his covenant with Israel.

So, when I read about the tale of Joseph and his brothers, I am reminded that this is only a snapshot, a frame, in the greater story. My Dad used to have a sign on his desk — Please be patient. God isn’t finished with me yet.  God wasn’t finished with Joseph or his brothers yet.

Lord, families are so meaningful to us, and yet they can be so dysfunctional, and even hurtful! But no matter how painful our childhoods may have been, you aren’t finished with us yet. Help us to trust you even when we feel that we have been betrayed and enslaved by our family systems.  Amen.

PHOTOS:
“Joseph sold as a slave” by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.

Old Testament for July 12, 2020

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Genesis 25:19-34
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

The generational torch is passed from Abraham to Isaac, and then to Isaac’s sons, Jacob and Esau:

This is the history of the generations of Isaac, Abraham’s son. Abraham became the father of Isaac. Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Paddan Aram, the sister of Laban the Syrian, to be his wife.

However, in this family history, there is a crisis.  Rebekah was barren.  Given the promises of Yahweh to Abraham, that his descendants would be as many as the stars, this is serious.   But when Isaac intercedes with Yahweh, Rebekah finally conceives twenty years after their marriage, when Isaac is sixty.

Not only does she conceive, she is carrying twins!  But hers is a very difficult pregnancy.  Perhaps this is a premonition of the sibling rivalry that is to come:

The children struggled together within her. She said, “If it is so, why do I live?”

We are told that she goes to inquire of Yahweh — we aren’t told how or where she goes. But she does receive an answer, in the form of a prophecy:

Yahweh said to her,
“Two nations are in your womb.
Two peoples will be separated from your body.
The one people will be stronger than the other people.
The elder will serve the younger.”

These twins aren’t merely brothers who fuss the way brothers often do. They represent two nations — Esau becomes the ancestor of the Edomites, and Jacob will come to be known as Israel. And though Esau is the first-born, he will be overshadowed by Jacob.

Though they are twins, the two brothers couldn’t be more different.  Obviously, they are fraternal twins, not identical.  When Esau was born, he was covered with red hair.  And the wrestling match that began in Rebekah’s womb continues even as the boys are born:

After that, his brother came out, and his hand had hold on Esau’s heel. He was named Jacob.

Their extreme differences grew as they grew.  Esau grows up to be a robust and skillful hunter who loves the outdoors.  He was his father’s favorite because he brought him venison.  Rebekah was partial to her Jacob.  We get a picture of him as a contemplative man:

Jacob was a quiet man, living in tents.

The tension between the two brothers intensifies one day when Esau has been out in the field.  Perhaps he has been unsuccessful in a hunt, or he’s been working in the fields — he’s famished.  Jacob has been boiling a stew of lentils, and Esau asks for a bowl.  Jacob seizes the opportunity to take advantage of his older brother’s plight. (As an aside, the Biblical writer suggests that this red stew becomes the basis for Esau’s nickname Edom, or Red — although we might speculate that the fuzzy red hair that covered him at his birth might have something to do with it! Perhaps Esau was a redhead).

Jacob slyly says to Esau, in just the taunting way a brother might:

 “First, sell me your birthright.”

The birthright is the right of primogeniture ­— the right of the first born son.  This is the right of inheritance Jacob is asking for!

The repartee between the two could have been playful, but not between these two brothers.  Esau is short-sighted, and perhaps a little naive about his brother’s intentions:

Esau said, “Behold, I am about to die. What good is the birthright to me?”

Jacob reveals just how earnest he is — he withholds the stew until Esau swears to him first.  In a culture where a man’s word is a contract, this is no light thing.

Esau swears, and gets his bowl of stew and some bread — and we are told:

He ate and drank, rose up, and went his way. So Esau despised his birthright.

APPLY:  

At its heart, this is a story that most of us can understand.  It is a family story.  A childless couple yearning for children.  A troubled pregnancy.  The sibling rivalry of two brothers who couldn’t be more different.

It is in and through such families that God chooses to work — to answer prayers, and make promises of a legacy to come, and even to fulfill his plans in spite of the character flaws of such brothers as Jacob and Esau.

What is refreshing about the Biblical record is its realism and honesty.  Isaac and Rebekah remind us of yearning couples that we know.  Jacob and Esau remind us of feuding brothers.  This reminds us that God works through families, and through people, just like ourselves!

RESPOND: 

Some years ago I took a course on Family Systems Theory.  I found it fascinating.  It was based on the theories of Dr. Murray Bowen.  He believed that human interactions are based on interlocking systems that reduplicate the traits of family interactions — whether they are biological families, clubs, churches, military platoons, or even larger political systems.

In the story of Jacob and Esau, I can identify some of the principles of Family Systems Theory that occurred long before Dr. Bowen’s theories.  One of those concepts is triangling — this is what happens when two members of a family seek to resolve the tensions they may have with one another by shifting their focus to a third member of the family.   The tension between Jacob and Esau is exacerbated by the enmeshment they experience from their parents — Jacob enmeshed by his mother Rebekah, and Esau enmeshed by his father Isaac.  These are triangles that interlock — and eventually result in what Bowen might call emotional cutoff ­— when Jacob is forced to leave his home altogether.  But — that’s another story for another Bible study.

The point is that the Biblical stories are our stories.  And the fulfillment toward which history moves is, at its heart, the story of becoming God’s family.

Lord, our families are dysfunctional — but you work out your plans and purposes within even our dysfunctional families.  And we look forward to the consummation of your kingdom — which is described as the ‘wedding supper of the Lamb.’  In heaven we will experience the perfection of your family.  Thank you! Amen.

PHOTOS:
“Esau and Jacob” by Giovanni Andrea de Ferrari is in the public domain.

Old Testament for August 13, 2017

Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. took this photograph of Butterfield’s mosaic depicting Joseph being sold into slavery. The mosaic  is in the chapel of Keble College chapel in Oxford.

Start with Scripture:

Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28

CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

The tales of the ancestors of the Israelites continues with the story of Joseph.  He is the fourth generation removed from Abraham, the family patriarch, and he is one of eleven sons and one daughter of Jacob as our story begins.

Just a word of backstory.  Jacob has returned to Canaan after a twenty year sojourn at Haran in Mesopotamia  (Genesis 31-32).  He has managed to avoid reprisals from his embittered brother Esau, and even managed to find reconciliation with him.  And his identity has been changed — Jacob’s name is now Israel, after his night-long struggle with the Angel of Yahweh. 

However, Israel’s family situation is still….complicated.  He has two wives — the sisters Leah and Rachel. And he also has two additional “servant” wives —  Bilhah and Zilpah, who are the servants of Rachel and Leah respectively.  Each of his four “wives” has borne children to Israel, in a kind of competition between these “sister wives.”

For the sake of simplicity, here are the twelve, with a number assigned to indicate birth order:  Leah was the mother of  the oldest, Reuben (1), Simeon (2), Levi (3), Judah (4), Issachar (9), Zebulun (10), and Dinah, the only daughter (11).  Bilhah, Rachel’s servant, gave birth to two sons in Rachel’s effort to compete with her sister Leah — Dan (5) and Naphtali (6).  Zilpah was pressed into service as “breed stock”  by Leah when she thought she couldn’t bear any more children. Zilpah bore Gad (7) and Asher (8).  When Rachel finally was able to bear a child, Israel was now an old man.  Her son Joseph (12) was the twelfth child sired by Israel up to this point.  Rachel bore another son for Israel — Benjamin (13) — and she died in childbirth  (If this all sounds a bit competitive and even dehumanizing, it is.  The servants of Leah and Rachel were treated as mere breeders for their mistresses’ strange rivalry).

Our story picks up when Joseph is seventeen years old, working as a shepherd with his ten older brothers. And we again see strong evidence of family dysfunction.  Joseph is a tattle-tale, bringing an evil report on his brothers back to their father.  And Israel plays favorites, with predictable results:

Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age, and he made him a coat of many colors. His brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, and they hated him, and couldn’t speak peaceably to him.

We speculate that Joseph was also Israel’s favorite son because he was Rachel’s first child.  Rachel was the true love of Israel’s life. Joseph and his younger brother Benjamin must have been physical reminders of his beloved Rachel.

Joseph’s brothers highly resented him. And his coat of many colors certainly didn’t help. To make matters worse, Joseph has two extraordinary dreams that suggest he will one day be preeminent over all of his brothers and even his own father — and Joseph has the nerve to blurt out the details of his dreams of superiority to his whole family!  Even Israel is taken aback by Joseph’s apparent audacity:

“What is this dream that you have dreamed? Will I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves down to you to the earth?”  His brothers envied him, but his father kept this saying in mind (Genesis 37:10-11).

Now, the plot thickens, as the cliche says.  Israel’s sons are feeding the flocks in Shechem.  Israel is now encamped in Hebron, which is in a valley nestled in the mountains,  where Sarah, Abraham, Isaac and Rebekah were buried. Hebron was about sixty-seven miles south of Shechem, which was in the central highlands of Canaan.  Presumably it was good pasture land for sheep.  (It should be remembered that traveling sixty-seven miles while driving a massive flock would take much longer than driving it on the interstate.)

Israel sends his son Joseph on an errand to find his brothers.  Presumably, Joseph has been kept home close to “dad” up to this point.  Is Israel sending his son to spy on his brothers, or to supervise them, or simply to check on their welfare? He seems to be simply asking Joseph to determine the well-being of his brothers, and the flock:

He said to him, “Go now, see whether it is well with your brothers, and well with the flock; and bring me word again.”

But when Joseph makes this long trip, he can’t find his brothers. They have moved on.  A stranger directs him to seek them at Dothan, which is about eighteen miles to the northwest of Shechem.

We get a pretty clear picture of what happens next.  The brothers see Joseph coming from a distance.  Perhaps they are high on a hill and see him climbing toward them.  And they have plenty of time to talk as they see him coming from afar.   They conspire against their hated brother:

They said to one another, “Behold, this dreamer comes.  Come now therefore, and let’s kill him, and cast him into one of the pits, and we will say, ‘An evil animal has devoured him.’ We will see what will become of his dreams.”

We are witnessing a premeditated crime of murder in the making!  Fortunately for Joseph, a cooler head prevails.  Reuben, the oldest brother of them all (and the son of Leah), intervenes.  He finds an alternative that can spare his much younger brother:

 Reuben said to them, “Shed no blood. Throw him into this pit that is in the wilderness, but lay no hand on him”—that he might deliver him out of their hand, to restore him to his father.

Reuben is seeking to appease the envy of his brothers, while still saving Joseph’s life.  To be thrown into a dark, damp well would be a chastening experience, to be sure — but at least he would be alive!

They act quickly when Joseph arrives — they strip him of his coat of many colors. Joseph is lucky.  The well has no water.  He won’t drown!

While Joseph languishes at the bottom of a dark well, the brothers sit down to their meal — perhaps feeling a little festive now that their nemesis has been “brought down a peg.” They can eat, happily knowing their brother is in the pit.

But the plot thickens even more.  Apparently Reuben has gone away to tend the flock, or some other task.  He is not present when the boys hatch their next conspiracy.  A caravan of riding camels loIshmaelites aded with spices and balms and myrrh come near.  We are reminded that the Ishmaelites are related to the sons of Israel — they are distant cousins descended from their mutual grandfather Abraham.  Gilead was the mountainous region to the east of the Jordan River.

These Ishmaelites were merchants who were trading and selling their spices in Egypt, the center of political and military power and the cultural center of civilization at that time.  These Ishmaelites could be expected to bargain for anything worth selling. Or anyone.

It is Judah who suggests that the brothers shouldn’t kill Joseph.  Why not make a profit from this good looking, smart-alecky teenager?

Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood?  Come, and let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites, and not let our hand be on him; for he is our brother, our flesh.”

The narrative is just a little confusing.  Judah’s brothers heed his advice, but the text tells us:  

Midianites who were merchants passed by, and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. They brought Joseph into Egypt.

The Midianites were also descendants of Abraham, like the Ishmaelites and the sons of Israel.  The Midianites were descendants of Keturah, the woman Abraham married after Sarah died (Genesis 25:1-2).

Did the brothers negotiate with some Midianites to pull their brother out of the well, and then sell him to the Ishmaelites on their behalf? If so, perhaps this gave them some “deniability” so they could say to their father — we had nothing to do with it!

We note the price of the sale of Joseph into slavery — twenty pieces of silver.  This was notoriously the price of a slave.  And we note that many centuries later, the life of a distant relative of Joseph’s (Jesus) would be sold out for thirty pieces of silver.

APPLY:  

Once again, we see the honesty of the Scriptures when it comes to describing even the Biblical patriarchs.  The brothers of Joseph, who will become the ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel, are deeply resentful of their brother.

From a family perspective, there is a serious lack of emotional health in Israel’s attitudes.  He not only is partial to Joseph, he advertises this favoritism by giving him a splendid coat.  And Joseph compounds the problem by boasting to his family of his dreams of superiority.

This reminds us that God works through very fallible people in order to accomplish his purposes.  We will find, if we follow the tale of the slave Joseph into Egypt, that God uses even these horrible circumstances to bring good out of evil.  And perhaps these circumstances will even smooth off some of the rough edges of Joseph’s narcissistic character.

RESPOND: 

One needn’t be a student of Murray Bowen’s Family Systems Theory to conclude that Israel’s family is dysfunctional.

• Thirteen different kids by four different women, who also lived under the same roof (or tent canopy).
• A father who enmeshes one of his sons so deeply that his other sons come to hate their brother!
• A son who is so narcissistic that he brags about his superiority in front of these very brothers!
• And brothers whose moral compass permits them to seriously consider killing their brother, and have no qualms about selling him into slavery!

On the one hand, all this actually reassures me that even as weird and dysfunctional as my family sometimes may be, we’re not as bad as Israel’s family!  And Israel was the father of a great nation and a founder of a great dynasty which would be the focus of the entire Hebrew Bible, from Genesis to Malachi!  And even more comforting, despite all of these rivalries, enmeshments, and conspiracies, God kept his covenant with Israel.

So, when I read about the tale of Joseph and his brothers, I am reminded that this is only a snapshot, a frame, in the greater story. My Dad used to have a sign on his desk — Please be patient. God isn’t finished with me yet.  God wasn’t finished with Joseph or his brothers yet.

Lord, families are so meaningful to us, and yet they can be so dysfunctional, and even hurtful! But no matter how painful our childhoods may have been, you aren’t finished with us yet. Help us to trust you even when we feel that we have been betrayed and enslaved by our family systems.  Amen.

PHOTOS:
“Joseph sold as a slave” by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.

Old Testament for July 16, 2017

Start with Scripture:

Genesis 25:19-34

CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

The generational torch is passed from Abraham to Isaac, and then to Isaac’s sons, Jacob and Esau:

This is the history of the generations of Isaac, Abraham’s son. Abraham became the father of Isaac. Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Paddan Aram, the sister of Laban the Syrian, to be his wife.

However, in this family history, there is a crisis.  Rebekah was barren.  Given the promises of Yahweh to Abraham, that his descendants would be as many as the stars, this is serious.   But when Isaac intercedes with Yahweh, Rebekah finally conceives twenty years after their marriage, when Isaac is sixty.

Not only does she conceive, she is carrying twins!  But hers is a very difficult pregnancy.  Perhaps this is a premonition of the sibling rivalry that is to come:

The children struggled together within her. She said, “If it is so, why do I live?”

We are told that she goes to inquire of Yahweh — we aren’t told how or where she goes. But she does receive an answer, in the form of a prophecy:

Yahweh said to her,
“Two nations are in your womb.
Two peoples will be separated from your body.
The one people will be stronger than the other people.
The elder will serve the younger.”

 These twins aren’t merely brothers who fuss the way brothers often do. They represent two nations — Esau becomes the ancestor of the Edomites, and Jacob will come to be known as Israel. And though Esau is the first-born, he will be overshadowed by Jacob.

Though they are twins, the two brothers couldn’t be more different.  Obviously, they are fraternal twins, not identical.  When Esau was born, he was covered with red hair.  And the wrestling match that began in Rebekah’s womb continues even as the boys are born:

After that, his brother came out, and his hand had hold on Esau’s heel. He was named Jacob.

Still, the boys couldn’t be more different.  Esau grows up to be a robust and skillful hunter who loves the outdoors.  Esau was his father’s favorite because he brought him venison.  Rebekah was partial to her Jacob.  We get a picture of him as a contemplative man:

Jacob was a quiet man, living in tents.

The tension between the two brothers intensifies one day when Esau has been out in the field.  Perhaps he has been unsuccessful in a hunt, or he’s been working in the fields — he’s famished.  Jacob has been boiling a stew of lentils, and Esau asks for a bowl.  Jacob seizes the opportunity to take advantage of his older brother’s plight. (As an aside, the Biblical writer suggests that this red stew becomes the basis for Esau’s nickname Edom, or Red — although we might speculate that the fuzzy red hair that covered him at his birth might have something to do with it! Perhaps Esau was a redhead).

Jacob slyly says to Esau, in just the taunting way a brother might:

 “First, sell me your birthright.”

The birthright is the right of primogeniture ­— the right of the first born son.  This is the right of inheritance Jacob is asking for!

The repartee between the two could have been playful, but not between these two brothers.  Esau is short-sighted, and perhaps a little naive about his brother’s intentions:

Esau said, “Behold, I am about to die. What good is the birthright to me?”

Jacob reveals just how earnest he is — he withholds the stew until Esau swears to him first.  In a culture where a man’s word is a contract, this is no light thing.

Esau swears, and gets his bowl of stew and some bread — and we are told:

He ate and drank, rose up, and went his way. So Esau despised his birthright.

APPLY:  

At its heart, this is a story that most of us can understand.  It is a family story.  A childless couple yearning for children.  A troubled pregnancy.  The sibling rivalry of two brothers who couldn’t be more different.

It is in and through such families that God chooses to work — to answer prayers, and make promises of a legacy to come, and even to fulfill his plans in spite of the character flaws of such brothers as Jacob and Esau.

What is refreshing about the Biblical record is its realism and honesty.  Isaac and Rebekah remind us of yearning couples that we know.  Jacob and Esau remind us of feuding brothers.  This reminds us that God works through families, and through people, just like ourselves!

RESPOND: 

Some years ago I took a course on Family Systems Theory.  I found it fascinating.  It was based on the theories of Dr. Murray Bowen.  He believed that human interactions are based on interlocking systems that reduplicate the traits of family interactions — whether they are biological families, clubs, churches, military platoons, or even larger political systems.

In the story of Jacob and Esau, I can identify some of the principles of Family Systems Theory that occurred long before Dr. Bowen’s theories.  One of those concepts is triangling — this is what happens when two members of a family seek to resolve the tensions they may have with one another by shifting their focus to a third member of the family.   The tension between Jacob and Esau is exacerbated by the enmeshment they experience from their parents — Jacob enmeshed by his mother Rebekah, and Esau enmeshed by his father Isaac.  These are triangles that interlock — and eventually result in what Bowen might call emotional cutoff ­— when Jacob is forced to leave his home altogether.  But — that’s another story for another Bible study.

The point is that the Biblical stories are our stories.  And the fulfillment toward which history moves is, at its heart, the story of becoming God’s family.

Lord, our families are dysfunctional — but you work out your plans and purposes within even our dysfunctional families.  And we look forward to the consummation of your kingdom — which is described as the ‘wedding supper of the Lamb.’  In heaven we will experience the perfection of your family.  Thank you! Amen.

PHOTOS:
“Esau and Jacob” by Giovanni Andrea de Ferrari is in the public domain.