Craig wrote an article on the historical reliability of the Bible for the Exploring God website, focusing on the periods of Abraham and the patriarchs, 2 Kings, and the Gospels. (The available historical evidence to examine these passages in the Bible increases from one discussion to the next.)
The article is available at:
http://www.exploregod.com/is-the-bible-reliable-paper
Category Archives: Genesis
Blessing Pharaoh—Genesis 47
Although we often retell the stories in Genesis, sometimes we neglect an important detail. When the aged shepherd Jacob came into Pharaoh’s presence, he blessed him (Gen 47:7). Of course, hailing rulers with blessings was not unusual, but Genesis is emphatic. Jacob blesses Pharaoh again at the end of his visit (47:10), framing this interview with Pharaoh. Genesis expends six verses on this short interview, far more than it offers, for example describing Abraham’s death, so the interview and blessings are important. The sort of blessing (cf. 14:19; 27:23; 28:6; 32:29; 48:15) or prayer (20:7, 17; cf. 25:21; Exod 8:28) that appears here is the sort offered by one with special divine favor.
Pharaoh’s respect for the patriarch
We might expect one with special favor before the gods to offer such a blessing, but pharaohs themselves were considered divine. Would not Jacob’s emphatic act thus seem presumptuous to both of them (cf. Heb 7:7)? I do not think so. Pharaoh was in awe of the special wisdom that Joseph had from God (Gen 41:38), and might well wonder about the kind of family in which he grew up. Age was respected in antiquity and longevity was seen as a divine blessing; Pharaoh thus asks the age of Joseph’s obviously aged father (47:8).
Jacob reinforces Pharaoh’s awe by mentioning (indeed, complaining) that his old age of 130 years so far was small compared with the longevity of his ancestors (47:9). Truly this family was divinely blessed! After all, 110 was considered an extremely blessed old age for Egyptians (and this is the longevity later ascribed to Joseph, 50:26). By pointing to the greater longevity of his ancestors, therefore, Jacob merely increases for Pharaoh the mystique of this holy family of Joseph that has great power with the living God.
That Pharaoh would be awed by someone less renowned than himself is not surprising. In my own life I think of some people, often obscure in the eyes of the world, whose divine insights for me have proved accurate, or who seem gifted and eager to pray for me. Grateful and impressed with their walk with God, I count it a blessing to learn from what they have learned from God himself, and to receive their prayer support. This pharaoh (in utter contrast to the later pharaoh who tries to prevent Israel’s exodus from Egypt) recognizes a divine blessing on Joseph’s household and is pleased to honor it. Yet even the later Pharaoh, when God humbles him, will ask for Israel’s leaders Moses and Aaron to bless him (Exod 12:32).
Perhaps it is especially important for us to recognize that blessing Pharaoh is something God wanted Jacob to do. Jacob is now fulfilling his divinely appointed role: the nations are blessed in Abraham and his seed (Gen 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 27:29), and Jacob, like his son Joseph, becomes a conduit of God’s blessing to Egypt. Sometimes Christians see our role in the larger culture as adversarial, sometimes because of conflicts forced upon us; but ultimately we must seek to be a blessing to the cultures where God has placed us.
Jacob’s restored confidence
We can also learn from how Jacob’s behavior here contrasts with some of his behavior earlier. (Against what some scholars have argued, it is valuable to learn from biblical characters’ behavior; Paul felt that how God worked among people, and how they responded, offers examples for believers of subsequent eras; 1 Cor 10:11.)
After Joseph’s disappearance, Jacob grew anxious about risking his remaining son of his favorite wife. He had lost Rachel and Joseph, so he was terrified about losing Joseph’s full brother Benjamin (Gen 42:36, 38; 43:14; 44:20)—a fear that nearly kept him from getting Joseph back. Despite the passage of years, Jacob’s determination to keep mourning for Joseph (37:35) continued to shape his behavior. The one whom he would have most hoped to bless (48:15-22; 49:22-26) is now gone, and those who knew him best felt that the loss of Benjamin would kill him (44:22, 30-31, 34).
Today we might speak of Jacob having posttraumatic stress syndrome or something similar. We should sympathize with Jacob’s broken heart, not condemn him for his lack of omniscience. But whereas Abraham had been willing to relinquish his beloved son at God’s command yet received him back (22:2-3, 10-12), Jacob cannot let go of the son whom he lost—whom, by God’s grace, he will nevertheless get back.
But now that Jacob has learned of Joseph’s survival and even flourishing, he regains the hope that God’s past promises had always offered him. God speaks to him, assuring him that it is all right to go down to Egypt for now (46:2-4). This assurance was important. Jacob would have passed on to his children God’s affirmations to the patriarchs that God had called them to the promised land. He would have also communicated the warning that Abraham received that his descendants would be abused in a foreign land (15:13-14). Jacob will soon bless and prophesy some of the future for each of his children (48:19; 49:1-32). Now that he recognizes how much God is with him, Jacob acts in his true identity as an intermediary of God’s blessing.
Are we like Jacob?
Many of us are like Jacob. Too often we put more faith in our past experiences of suffering or in others’ opinions than we do in our identity shaped by God’s promise of our destiny. God has called us to be his children, in whom he will delight forever. He has promised us an inheritance in his kingdom forever. He has made us new in Christ, if we depend on Christ as our savior and lord. Like Jacob, I sometimes let past sufferings shape my fears. Yet I do often find it easier to remember my identity when I am encouraged.
The truth was the truth all along, however; all the time that Jacob was mourning for Joseph, God was preparing to fulfill his promise for Jacob’s line precisely through Joseph. This observation is not meant to condemn Jacob or ourselves; Jacob had every reason to grieve, given his limited knowledge of the situation. People in the Bible died just as people die today, and God fulfills his promises in a wide variety of ways. As Paul says, “we know in part” (1 Cor 13:9); our perspectives, like Jacob’s, are incomplete. The observation is simply meant to remind us that God’s perspective, unlike ours, is perfect. God’s perspective toward us is based on our identity in Christ and destiny with him, and God invites us to share his perspective toward us (Rom 6:11; Col 3:1-3).
Jacob’s blessing
At one time, Jacob had lost much of his hope. He had loved Joseph for seventeen years (Gen 37:2), and then lost him (37:32-35). But not only does God provide sustenance for Jacob and his entire household through this temporary loss (47:7-8), but God graciously grants Jacob seventeen more years with Joseph at the end of Jacob’s life (47:28). In the end, Jacob experiences God’s faithfulness. If we serve God truly, we will also experience his faithfulness, some in this life, and certainly fully in the world to come.
Those nations who blessed God’s servants would be blessed; but those who cursed God’s servants, such as the Pharaoh whom Moses later confronted, would be cursed. God freely offers blessings to peoples, but many choose curses instead. Because we are spiritual children of Abraham, we too should be conduits of his blessing to the peoples among whom we live in this age.
Craig Keener, Professor, Asbury Seminary
The Bible and rape
Steve and Celestia Tracy travel from the U.S. each year to provide ministry to women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who have endured rape and sometimes sexual mutilation at the hands of militias there. Some of these women were young girls; some were mothers violated in front of their own children. The heartbreak that Steve and Celestia report is overwhelming, but they endure malaria and other hardships because the need for counseling and healing is so great.
Democratic Republic of Congo has one of the world’s highest reported rates of rape; one study in 2011 even suggests 400,000 rapes occurring there per year, or more than 45 per hour. According to this study, about 12 percent of the women in Congo have been raped by outsiders; 22.5 percent suffered sexual violence from partners. Although rape is more common in the war-torn east, it is reportedly common throughout the country; although the majority of victims are female, males are also sexually assaulted. Fearing HIV, a number of husbands have abandoned their wives when the wives were violated by soldiers.
Not only in Congo, but elsewhere in the world many, especially women and children, suffer traumatic sexual abuse, sometimes at the hands of those closest to them (for example, in the case of children suffering incest). Although the proportion is lower than in Congo, rape happens often in the United States as well.
It is important for victims of these crimes not to be left to feel alone; most of all they need to be reminded that God is on their side. What they have suffered is not their fault. God is near the broken but far from the proud.
Although God is on the side of the rape victim, some rape victims have been made to feel the opposite. Nearly two decades ago, when I was a fairly new seminary teacher, a student told me about a teenager in her congregation who had been gang-raped. Aside from the trauma of physical and psychological violation, this young woman had been saving herself for marriage and felt devastated morally. At the time, we were studying in class the story of Amnon’s rape of Tamar, and my student went back to assure the young woman that she remained a moral virgin in God’s sight.
That the Bible sets a high standard for sexual purity should motivate the Bible’s readers to take sexual violence all the more seriously—and to leave the blame only with the responsble party.
The Bible offers a few examples of rape, always portraying it as a horrendous crime. In 2 Samuel, David’s sin unleashed suffering on his household, beginning with Amnon’s rape of his half-sister, after which he despised her (2 Sam 13:1-17). Tamar so lamented her virginity that she never married (13:18-19), though as a king’s daughter she would have retained many suitors. Tamar’s brother Absalom avenged her by killing Amnon; while Absalom went too far (and may have had additional motives: his older brother Amnon stood one step closer to the throne than Absalom was), the narrative portrays graphically the devastation of rape.
Earlier, Dinah’s brothers had avenged her rape by killing the rapist and (to avoid retaliation) all the men in his community (Gen 34:1-31). Again, this went too far (see Gen 49:5-7), but it illustrates how seriously siblings took the responsibility to provide their sisters protection from sexual predators.
Jesus tells us that Israelite law fell short of God’s eternal ideals (Mark 10:5); those laws nevertheless at least limited some abuses for ancient Israelite society. In Israel, if a man violated a virgin, and her family refused marriage, the man had to pay a dowry equal to that of virgins (Exod 22:17). This helped to provide for her future marriage to someone else (in a society where most men preferred to marry virgins) and helped to restore some of her honor. Because she had not invited what happened to her, she remained a moral virgin. Likewise, if one could not know either way whether the woman was forced or not, she was to be given the benefit of the doubt and the case treated as rape (Deut 22:25-27). There are many elements of Israelite law that we would view as inadequate for us today, but at the least this principle may be safely inferred from it: a person who is raped is recognized as a terribly violated, innocent victim who deserves protection and support.
The good news of Christ liberates from sin. But Christ is also good news to those who have been sinned against, because Jesus suffered not only for us but with us. When he was unjustly executed, his death pronounced judgment on the miscarriages of justice and the oppression of the innocent in this world. To those who have been wounded against their will, he reminds you: It was not your fault. His own nail-pierced hands offer healing and new life.
Craig Keener is author of Paul, Women & Wives: Marriage and Women’s Ministry in the Letters of Paul, and an article, from which this post is adapted, in the Missionary Seer. With his wife Médine, who is from the smaller Congo, he coauthored a pamphlet on this subject used among rape victims in Francophone Africa.
Rebekah’s deceit in Genesis 27
Some readers have accused both Isaac and Rebekah of equal fault in favoring their sons (Esau and Jacob respectively; Gen 27:1-10). But in context of the entire book of Genesis, the motives of the two parents are quite different. Isaac favors the elder son (25:25; 27:4), but the whole patriarchal line suggests that God does not always choose the elder son (21:12; 49:3-4), and paternal favoritism produces problems (37:4); Jacob himself finally learns and practices this in his old age (48:14-20). What are Rebekah’s motives? The clearest clue the text itself provides is in 25:22-23: she had sought God, and God had told her that the younger would prevail. In contrast to Isaac, Rebekah acts on the basis of a word from God. Further, Esau had married pagan wives and sold his birthright, with apparently no sense of responsibility for the call on this family to be God’s blessing to the earth (25:31-34; 26:34-35). In a culture where the husband’s will was law and Isaac was blind to God’s choice, Rebekah took the only route she knew to secure God’s promise.
Genesis is full of accounts that underline for Israel the miracle of their blessing and existence–three barren matriarchs (18:11; 25:21; 30:22), royal abduction or threatening of matriarchs (12:13; 20:2; Isaac repeated his father’s example–26:7), and so on. Elsewhere in Genesis someone other than the patriarch makes a choice, nevertheless leaving the right land to the patriarch (13:9-13; 36:6-8). In the context of the themes the entire book emphasizes, it is consistent to believe that God worked through Rebekah’s deception, as he worked through a variety of other means,
This is not to say that the deception was God’s preferred means to accomplish this, though he sometimes blessed deception when it would save human life from unjust oppressors (Ex 1:18-21; Josh 2:5-6; 1 Sam 16:1-3; 2 Sam 17:19-20; 2 Kings 8:10; Jer 38:24-27). As Jacob stole his brother’s birthright through deception, so he is deceived through two sisters. When Isaac asked Jacob his name, he lied to get the blessing (Gen 27:18-19), hence incurring his brother’s murderous anger (27:41). His mother promised to send for him when it proved safe to return (27:45), but apparently she died in the meantime hence could not send for him, so when he is returning he expects that Esau still desires to kill him (32:11). Thus he struggles all night with the Lord or his agent, and he is confronted with his past. This time, before he can receive the blessing from God, he is asked his name and must tell the truth (32:26-27; and then gets a new name–32:28), in contrast to the time he sought his father’s blessing (27:18-19). But God was with Jacob even in spite of himself; he met angels both going from (28:12) and returning to (32:2) the land. In this story, though Isaac outlives Rebekah, she was the one with the greater perception of God’s purposes for their descendants.
Judah’s punishment in Genesis 38
In his attacks on Christianity, South African writer Ahmed Deedat complains that the Bible is full of pornography and that Genesis 38, the story of Judah and Tamar, is a “filthy, dirty story.” Did the Bible include this story simply to satisfy base interests of ungodly readers? Or have Deedat and others missed the entire point of the story?
The story can be summarized briefly, after which we will quickly see a moral lesson in it. Judah has three sons, Er (38:3), Onan (38:4), and Shelah (38:5). When God killed Er for sinful behavior (38:7), his younger brother Onan automatically inherited Er’s responsibility to raise up offspring for his brother’s name. Some cultures where women cannot earn money practice widow inheritance, where another brother takes over the deceased brother’s wife. In the cultures around this family, however, normally a brother would simply get the widow pregnant, so that she could have a son who would receive her first husband’s share of the inheritance; this son would in turn support her in her old age.
But Onan spills his seed on the ground, and God angrily strikes him dead (38:9-10), as he had struck his brother before him. Why did Onan “spill his seed”? And what was so sinful about him doing so? The firstborn (in this case Er) normally received twice as much inheritance as any other brother; if Onan raised up a son for his brother, that son would be counted as his brother’s son and would receive half the inheritance, leaving only a quarter for Onan and a quarter for Shelah. But if Tamar could not become pregnant, Onan would receive two-thirds of the inheritance and Shelah one-third. Onan was greedy, and cared more about the extra inheritance than about honoring his brother and providing for Tamar. God defended Tamar’s honor, because he cared about Tamar. The text teaches us about justice.
But the story goes on. Judah, fearing that allowing his sons to sleep with Tamar is leading to their deaths, refuses to give his final son to Tamar. In some of the surrounding cultures (though never in later Israelite law), if a brother were unavailable, a father was considered acceptable; so Tamar takes matters into her own hands. She disguises herself as a prostitute, knowing what kind of person Judah is; then she allows him to impregnate her, but keeps his signet ring so she can later prove that he is the father (38:18).
When Judah learns that Tamar is pregnant, he orders her to be executed. This reflects a double standard practiced in many cultures: the idea that a man can have sex with anyone (as Judah slept with what he thought was a prostitute) but a woman cannot. But God has no double standard: sin is as wrong for a man as it is for a woman. Tamar sent him the signet ring, forcing Judah to release her and admit, “She is more righteous than I” (38:26). That was the moral of the story: Judah was immoral and raised two immoral sons, and now is caught in his guilt. By challenging the double standard of his culture, the writer argues against sin. This is not a “dirty story” at all!
But whole-book context shows us more. The chapter directly before chapter 38 is chapter 37, where Judah takes the lead in selling his brother Joseph into slavery. In chapter 38, Judah’s lifestyle of sin finally catches up with him, and he suffers for it! He sold his father’s son into slavery; now he loses two of his own sons to death. The chapter after 38 is chapter 39, where Joseph resists the sexual advances of Potipher’s wife, despite the penalty he faces for doing so. Joseph does not practice a double standard: he lives holy no matter what the cost. And a few chapters later, God rewards Joseph for his obedience; he becomes Pharaoh’s vizier, and the agent through whom God can actually rescue the very brothers who sold him into slavery. And when Joseph is exalted, Pharaoh gives Joseph his signet-ring (41:42)–inviting us to remember Judah who lent his to what he thought was a prostitute (38:11). The larger story has a moral: those who live sinful lifestyles may prosper in the short run, but eventually they suffer; by contrast, those who remain faithful to God may suffer at first, but in the end they will be blessed.
This, however, is not the end of the story. Although Judah took the lead in selling his half-brother Joseph into slavery, Judah learned from his mistakes. Later he takes responsibility for Joseph’s full brother Benjamin before their father Jacob (43:8-9), and for his father’s sake takes responsibility for Benjamin before Joseph (44:16-34). Judah is ready to become a slave himself to keep Benjamin from becoming one–and this is what convinces Joseph that his brothers finally have changed. The final moral of the story, then, is one of forgiveness and reconciliation, and the faithfulness of God who arranged events to bring it all about. Ahmed Deedat did not read far enough to understand the story!