Category Archives: Genesis

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Sleeping with a prostitute part 2: Genesis 38:15-26

Judah and Tamar

In payment for Tamar’s services Judah offers her a young goat (38:17). The expression, “kid from the goats” here is idiomatic Hebrew, but the mention of a goat may recall how Judah and his brothers slaughtered a goat (in that case, belonging to their father’s livestock) to cover Joseph’s disappearance (37:31). No goat, however, will cover Judah’s sin here. That Tamar asks a pledge to guarantee Judah’s promise may have taken him aback (38:17), but Tamar has good reason to secure evidence. Judah has already shown his promises to be unreliable on even more urgent matters by not providing Shelah to Tamar (38:14). (It’s always prudent to be able to document abuse.)

When Judah sends the kid and his friend does not find the prostitute (38:20-22), Judah lets her keep his staff and seal, which would be worth less to her (though not necessarily to him) than the goat. He fears being ridiculed if they keep looking (38:23). It is possible that Judah’s fear of ridicule is partly embarrassment that the prostitute tricked him into giving her his identifying marks. It is also likely, however, that he does not want it to be widely known that he had slept with a prostitute, evidence of which act she now possesses. Even though Judah does not share the scruples articulated later in Scripture, he recognizes the shame in his behavior. Meanwhile, Tamar has taken a big risk. She now had his signet, cord and staff but if she does not conceive and bear a son her ruse will fail. Yet even her pregnancy will constitute a large risk: can she shame her father-in-law into responding justly?

Tamar does conceive, and when Judah learns that his daughter-in-law is pregnant, he demands that she be burned for her offense (38:24). Her death would conveniently resolve his obligation to send his son Shelah to her, but it also probably upheld an honor code (cf. later burning of a priest’s daughter for desecrating his ministry by prostitution, Lev 21:9). Judah wanted no one to know about his own escapades (38:23), but he was especially ashamed to learn of escapades by a female member of his household.

Tamar had, after all, married into his household; that was why he had sent Onan to raise up an heir for his older brother, so that Tamar’s son would receive the firstborn’s inheritance. Undoubtedly Judah and Er had paid a steep bride price for this woman, and she was a woman of status, making alternative arrangements difficult. Yet Judah, though disposing of her like a member of his household, had sent her back to her father’s household (38:11), undoubtedly shaming her. The rest of the narrative will underline the hypocrisy of Judah’s gender-based double standard.

Thus Tamar sends to Judah his staff, cord and signet ring, thereby revealing that he was the one who had impregnated his daughter-in-law, believing her to be a prostitute. Tamar’s invitation to Judah to “examine” the tokens in 38:25 may evoke for the reader Jacob’s sons callously inviting him to “examine” Joseph’s bloodied robe in 37:32. Because Judah, who participated in deceiving his father, experiences deception, he is confronted with his own sin (38:26). Such painful confrontations, however, can help make us better people: Judah does change (see 44:33-34). Judah’s sexual sin contrasts starkly with Joseph’s refusal to sin in the next chapter of Genesis, the subject of our next lesson. (See also http://www.craigkeener.org/judahs-punishment-in-genesis-38/.)

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Sleeping with a prostitute part 1—Genesis 38:1-15

Judah and Tamar

The shift in scene from Joseph to Judah in 37:36—38:1—leaving Joseph just as he is sold into slavery in Egypt—builds suspense, but it also invites a contrast between these two characters, addressed more fully in some subsequent Bible studies. The narrator selects for examination some key points—especially Joseph resisting sexual sin and Judah succumbing to it—out of many years that transpire in this passage.

Gen 38 transpires over a period of enough years for Judah to have three sons, the third to become old enough to marry, and Tamar to become obviously pregnant afterward. The timeline fits the Joseph story well: more than twenty years intervene between Joseph being sold into slavery and Joseph’s brothers traveling to Egypt due to the famine (37:2; 41:46-47, 53-54).

During this time Judah, who was party to his father losing a son, loses a wife and two sons. Judah, who did evil, had a firstborn son who was evil in God’s sight (38:7); Judah, who sold his own brother for silver (37:27-28), had a son so greedy that to increase his own inheritance he refused to provide his deceased elder brother’s household an heir (38:8-10). And while Judah as a widower was unwilling to remain celibate (38:12, 15), he expected celibacy of his young daughter-in-law (38:24), whose childbearing years were being squandered (38:11, 14). Sadly, Tamar also knew enough about Judah’s character to have confidence that, if Judah thought that a prostitute was available, he would want to sleep with her (38:14-16).

I have recounted the morals of Gen 38 more fully in another post (http://www.craigkeener.org/judahs-punishment-in-genesis-38/), so here I merely offer some observations not provided there. For example, because two sons that Judah gave to Tamar died, he fears that his third son might also die by her, perhaps by a curse (38:11). Yet the next verse narrates that Judah’s own spouse died (38:12); but Judah inconsistently does not attribute this death to himself. (In fact, in neither case was it the spouse’s fault. The narrator attributes both sons’ deaths to their own sin; although Genesis does not tie their sin directly to Judah’s immoral example or judgment on him, those appear likelier options in this context than anything wrong with Tamar. Meanwhile, Judah’s own wife’s early death might have been hastened by grief over the death of her first two sons.)

Like his father Jacob sleeping with Leah yet thinking she was Rachel, Judah is deceived; but then, we are not inclined to feel much sympathy for Judah as a character at this point. As Jacob had deceived his father Isaac about his identity, so had Judah, for much more treacherous reasons, helped deceive his father Jacob about his brother Joseph. And whereas Jacob paid a hefty brideprice of seven years’ labor to sleep with his wife, Judah here sleeps with a someone whom he supposes to be prostitute. (The offense would be even worse from the perspective of the story’s usual later Israelite audience. Judah and his friend envisioned her not just as any prostitute but as a cultic prostitute devoted to a deity, the Hebrew term used in 38:21-22, something prohibited among later Israelites; see Deut 23:17; Hos 4:14.)

Context offers further commentary on Judah’s immorality. Jacob’s sons slaughtered the Shechemites because the Shechemite prince raped their sister, but although Jacob’s sons did not go so far as to rape (at least not explicitly; cf. 34:29), they also acted immorally, Reuben sleeping with his father’s wife (35:22) and Judah sleeping here with his son’s wife. Although Judah does not recognize her identity, he would not have committed this offense had he not slept with someone whom he supposed to be a prostitute. Judah knows that such treatment of a woman is wrong; this is how Judah’s brothers complained that Shechem had treated their sister (34:31). (In addition to her being veiled and the intercourse perhaps occurring inside a dark tent, it is possible that Judah was drunk, since he had come for sheep-shearing [38:13], sometimes a time of gaiety and drinking; cf. 1 Sam 25:2, 8, 36.)

The narrative depicts Judah’s sexual behavior here as reprehensible, just as it depicts his act of selling his brother into slavery. But a lifestyle of sin catches up with someone, and Judah is about to be confronted with his own.

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Selling Joseph into slavery—Genesis 37:25-28

Coming from a dysfunctional family does not mean that you will necessarily turn out badly. God used Joseph greatly, and there is no denying that he came from a dysfunctional family. His brothers planned to kill him until one of them decided that it would be more profitable and less impious to sell him into slavery instead. Of course, they do not expect him to survive the latter situation either (cf. 44:20)!

Slave trading in antiquity usually involved prisoners of war, their descendants or persons enslaved without a war. Enslaving free persons not taken in war was viewed as kidnapping, an offense punishable by death both in the later law of Moses (Exod 21:16; Deut 24:7) and some other Middle Eastern legal collections. As someone enslaved for money rather than in war, therefore, Joseph was illegally kidnaped (40:15).

His brothers sold him to a passing caravan of Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver (37:25), the average price of a slave in this era (inflation later drove this to thirty shekels, Exod 21:32). What is striking is the providential timing that both spares Joseph’s life and transports him to an Egyptian household; the caravan is passing the brothers as they sit down to eat after throwing Joseph in a pit (37:25). Even in the midst of Joseph’s suffering and his brothers’ evil activity, God is at work behind the scenes. Knowing the future, God is at work to arrange for the future deliverance of not only Joseph, and not only his family (45:7), but many people in Egypt and the Levant (50:20).

When Judah asks what unjust gain (the meaning of the term for “profit” or “gain” in 37:26) they could get from killing their brother, one might expect him to repudiate unjust gain altogether. Instead, he suggests sparing their brother by selling him to the traders (37:27). Unlike Reuben, Judah does not spare him simply in hopes of later setting him free; he makes a profit. The narrative underlines the participants’ depravity. That these traders are “Ishmaelites” underlines the brothers’ folly; here the free line of Isaac sell one of their own to the putative descendants of Isaac’s slave brother Ishmael. That the traders are also called “Midianites” reinforces the offense: both Ishmael and Midian are names of Abraham’s sons by concubines of some sort, of less status and wealth than the brothers’ grandfather Isaac (cf. Gen 25:5-6; 1 Chron 1:32). (Midianites also frame two narratives together in the Torah: they bring Joseph into Egypt in Gen 37:36 and later receive Moses from Egypt in Exod 2:15-22.)

Admittedly, these might not be literal Ishmaelites. Keeping in mind the recent vintage of Genesis’s Ishmaelites (25:12-17) and Midianites (25:2, 4), it may be more likely that Genesis uses these designations here (37:25, 27-28, 36) more as a social type for nomadic traders than for Jacob’s literal relatives. (That is not because Abraham’s descendants necessarily would shy away from evil behavior such as slave trading; Joseph’s brothers here did not!) The narrator may thus use the designations interchangeably here. Of course, it is also possible that the narrator preserves and interweaves distinct oral memories of two groups, just as Reuben and Judah play somewhat related roles here (37:21-22, 26) and again later in 42:37 and 43:9.

The price for which Joseph’s brothers sold him was the average price of a slave in precisely the era that Genesis depicts, suggesting the precision of oral tradition on this point. Nevertheles, these twenty pieces of silver (37:28) are a small pittance, a bit over two shekels per participating brother, when we consider that Abimelech paid Abraham a thousand pieces of silver (20:16); that Abraham bought land from Ephron for four hundred shekels of silver (23:15), that Jacob bought land near Shechem for a hundred pieces of silver (33:19), and so forth. More astonishing is the grace these brothers later receive, exemplified in returned money in their sacks (probably partly a test to see how much they really valued money; 42:25; 44:1). Joseph later gives Benjamin three hundred pieces of silver (45:22).

Joseph’s disappearance is attributed to being torn by a harmful animal (37:20, 33); the Hebrew term I render “harmful” here (used with beasts in Ezek 5:17; 14:15, 21) could also mean “evil” when applied morally (cf. Gen 6:5; 39:9; 44:4), certainly applicable to the behavior of Joseph’s brothers (50:15, 17, 20).

The narrative withholds nothing in depicting the depravity of Joseph’s brothers—a depravity that will consequently underline the grace they receive. God did not choose this people because they were the most righteous (Deut 9:4) or powerful (7:7), but because of his covenant love toward Abraham (7:8-9). There is hope for all of us, not because of what we have been, but because of God’s great love and because of what God plans to make of us. Joseph behaves honorably in the narrative, but the ultimate hero is God himself.

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Life is the Pits

Thrown into a pit by his brothers—Genesis 37:18-24

How did Joseph’s have time to plot against him once they realized that he was approaching them (37:18-20)? Joseph’s brothers saw him from far away and (37:18); he was coming across a level area and his special coat reaching to the feet (37:3, 23) made his identity conspicuous. For narrative purposes, it may sound as if all of Joseph’s brothers conspired against him (37:19), but that the narrator explicitly excludes Reuben, who is not part of the conversation but overhears (37:21), suggests that the narrator might be emphasizing the participation of all more than did any more detailed story he may have been condensing. Reuben was not with these brothers all the time (37:29-30); probably some brothers had been watching flocks that were spread out.

Ironically, the hostile brothers’ plan to throw Joseph into a pit and then “see what will become of his dreams” (37:20) ultimately serves God’s plan to bring fulfillment to those very dreams (50:20). That Reuben, now perhaps about twenty-four years old, seeks to protect Joseph (37:21), probably reflects him being older and more mature than his siblings. Still, Joseph’s other brothers are not young adolescents. Most are probably in their twenties; only Benjamin was younger than he (30:23-24). (Joseph was probably six when they entered Canaan, and Reuben thirteen; see 30:25-26; 31:41.) Reuben might also hope to win back some of his father’s favor by delivering Joseph safely to him, acting more faithfully than his younger brothers (37:22).

When Joseph arrived, suspecting nothing, his brothers tore his special robe from him (37:23). As is typical for victims of stress, this scene probably reenacted itself repeatedly in Joseph’s mind in months to come. Not only in Joseph’s mind, however, but in his actual experience of life, God will allow subsequent scenes to again evoke this one. Potiphar’s wife later seizes his garment (39:12-13); by contrast, when God exalts Joseph, Pharaoh provides him the best garments (41:42).

And these are only the scenes that Joseph experiences directly. When Jacob sees his beloved son’s torn robe, he tears his own clothes in mourning (37:34; cf. also Reuben in 37:29), as do his sons later when they suppose that slavery awaits Benjamin (44:13). That is, Joseph’s suffering brings grief to his father, and the fear of Benjamin’s suffering and their father’s further grief grieves his brothers. They have long regretted their hasty and hate-filled choice to betray a brother. Yet in Joseph’s forgiveness he later gives each of them changes of clothes (45:22). (Recall that earlier in Genesis God also showed his mercy by making tunics for Adam and his wife, after their fall into sin, in 3:21.)

After ripping off his garment, Joseph’s brothers hurl him into a pit (Gen 37:22-29). This circumstance, too, Joseph would face again; the same Hebrew term also appears more than once for the prison house where he was thrown after being falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife (40:15; 41:14). The Psalmist often praised God for not letting him perish in the pit, sometimes a metaphor in the Psalms for death (Ps 28:1; 30:3; 40:2; 88:4, 6; 143:7).

The narrator might mention that the pit into which Joseph’s brothers threw him lacked water (Gen 37:24) to note that he would not drown there (cf. Jer 38:6), but more likely he narrates this lack of water to suggest that he would die of thirst if left there. (The text might also qualify this because the Hebrew term used here could also refer to a cistern or sometimes to a well; the text thus specifies that no water is involved in this case.) They threw him into a pit in the “wilderness,” presumably so that he would die there without his brothers having to directly shed his blood (Gen 37:22).

The callousness of his brothers is underlined by their activity after stripping him and throwing him into the waterless wilderness pit: they sat down to eat bread (37:25). All this while Joseph was certainly crying out, pleading with them, but they refused to listen (42:21). Eating bread together was an act of bonding and unity (14:18; 18:5; 31:54), though it also was the context of their father’s betrayal of his brother (25:34; 27:17). More ironically still, their survival will someday depend on bread supplied by Joseph himself (41:54-55; 47:12).

We cannot possibly imagine how God could build his chosen people from these brothers, later forgiven by Joseph, without understanding that God is a God of grace. He forgives the guilty and changes them. Their story is also our story, because all of us need forgiveness. And just as Joseph’s forgiveness was a costly act, so it cost God much to forgive those who offended against him so deeply by how we have treated lightly his own Son’s sacrifice for us. Yet because of that sacrifice, his forgiveness is free to all who ask him.

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When bad things happen to good people

Joseph checks on his brothers—Genesis 37:12-17

Jacob had entrusted the flocks to Joseph’s older brothers, but now he sends him to check on their welfare. Joseph had been shepherding with some of his brothers before (37:2), work that could start at far younger than his seventeen years (37:2), and perhaps had been kept home because of conflicts (37:4-11). In any case, Joseph inquiring about their welfare (literally “peace”) offers a stark contrast with the treatment that Joseph will receive at his brothers’ hands.

Concerned about his sons’ welfare, Jacob thus sends Joseph to find out how his brothers are doing near Shechem. Here is what seems a remarkable point in the story, because the ruins of Shechem remind us immediately of his brothers’ violence there in ch. 34—a violence that may foreshadow what awaits Joseph. Figuring out why Jacob feels free to let his older sons pasture there (37:12) and to send Joseph there by himself (37:13-14) is harder to determine. The family knew well the pasturage near Shechem (33:18). Perhaps trouble in the neighborhood of Shechem must have now quieted down (cf. 35:5). Alternatively, perhaps this narrative chronologically precedes Gen 34 (and perhaps Joseph’s dream that includes his mother in 37:9-10 even precedes her death in 35:19). Genesis might choose to keep the Joseph narrative together at the expense of chronology. The information needed to decide on such a matter historically is no longer available to us, but the narrative in its current form presumes that matters had become more quiet. (Joseph was probably six when they entered Canaan, and Dinah only a little older; see 30:25-26; 31:41. If he is seventeen in 37:2, this is eleven years later; still, Dinah was probably only a little older than Joseph, 30:21, so the terrible events in Shechem may have remained more recent.)

But while this was a fairly peaceful period in Canaan, wild beasts remained a possibility, and Jacob’s sending of Joseph in what will become Joseph’s disappearance will haunt Jacob for years to come. That will be why he will fear to leave Benjamin out of his sight (42:38). Any of us who worry about our children’s safety can identify with Jacob, but this is especially true for someone who has endured great loss.

Joseph’s response to his father’s commission, literally, “Behold, I [am here]” (37:13) is the appropriate response for an obedient son to a father’s summons (27:1, 18), just as it is for a human obedient to the Lord’s command (22:1, 11; 31:11). That a man had overheard the brothers discussing their move to Dothan, and found Joseph looking for them (37:15-17), seems providential: God planned Joseph’s difficult encounter with his brothers and made it happen even despite some natural circumstances that could have worked against it. The narrator would hardly have expended such detail on how Joseph learned of his brother’s whereabouts were it not significant. (As for why the man was in the vicinity and had had contact with his brothers, it is not unlikely that some people had resettled, or were at least making use of, the remains of Shechem. Had fugitives simply returned, they would probably have been less than hospitable to Joseph’s brothers, but it is possible that other rural people once oppressed by Shechem have now found a place there. Whether by returned fugitives or by new residents, sites of previous habitation were usually quickly resettled.)

In the same way, the circumstances of our lives are not accidental. Theologians debate whether God plans the details (such as, here, Joseph’s brothers having moved on), but God certainly does arrange matters to bring about his purposes (such as Joseph’s encounter with his brothers, ultimately to save many lives, 45:5, 7). We cannot second guess ourselves, with, “What would have happened if …” We can instead recognize that God has a plan and purpose in our lives and entrust ourselves to him from here forward.

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It wasn’t Joseph’s fault—Genesis 37:2-11

Blaming the victim

Sometimes I hear preachers blame Joseph for his brothers’ enmity. As a father of teenagers, however (and a retired teenager myself), I think this is being too hard on Joseph. Joseph’s brothers later admit their wrongdoing; Joseph does not need to do so. Whatever Joseph’s imperfections, he did not merit what his brothers did to him. In family counseling, it is always helpful to see what each of us can do to make things better. But it is also wrong to blame the victim for something that was not the victim’s fault. Nothing justifies selling another human being into slavery.

Granted, there was likely some dismay about Joseph’s bad report (37:2) against some of his brothers (sons of Zilpah and Bilhah). Yet this report may have reflected his honest appraisal and loyalty to his father’s challenged interests. Moreover, Joseph’s brothers already hated him (37:3-4) well before he revealed his dreams to them. Can we blame a seventeen-year-old, possibly taunted by his older brothers, for sharing his dream (37:5-7), even though it did predictably increase their hatred (37:5, 8)? And again, even if one wants to suggest that he was wrong for sharing his dreams (I think we are expecting too much from a bullied seventeen-year-old on this point), it cannot come close to justifying what his brothers put him through afterward. (That would be something like slashing off someone’s arm because they forgot to say, “Thank you.”)

The source of the conflict was there before Joseph had any say in the matter. Like each of his own parents, Joseph’s father Jacob showed favoritism in a way that sowed conflict among his children (37:3-4; cf. 32:7-8; 33:1-2). Indeed, the brothers subsequently most named in the Joseph story are not the sons of Zilpah and Bilhah (noted in 37:2) but the sons of Leah, who herself felt “hated” (or “unloved,” the same term, in 29:31, 33).

Jealousy and the question of familial peace or conflict play key roles in the narrative. Joseph’s brothers could not speak to him “in peace” (37:4). Nevertheless, ironically, years later, Joseph speaks peace to them (43:23; cf. 44:17); likewise, they attack Joseph when Jacob sends Joseph to check their welfare (the same Hebrew term as “peace”; 37:14); Joseph later also asked about their and their father’s welfare (“peace”; 43:27).

Joseph’s brothers are jealous of him (37:11) as Rachel (Joseph’s mother, Jacobs favorite wife) had been jealous of Leah because Leah had so many children (30:1). These cases of jealousy fit other examples of youthful sibling rivalry in Genesis: Cain versus Abel and Joseph’s father Jacob versus Esau. (Happily these brothers, like Jacob and Esau and like Ishmael and Isaac before them, were on better terms in their later days.)

Joseph’s brothers hate him still more because of his dreams (37:5, 8, 11), yet in Genesis dreams are very important. God had spoken to Abimelech in a dream to protect Rebekah (Gen 20:3, 6) and to Laban to protect Jacob (31:24); he likewise spoke to Jacob in dreams at key moments to ensure his return to the land (28:12; 31:10-11). Joseph’s ability to understand the divine message in dreams would lead to the fulfillment of his own dream (40:8; 41:25, 38).

In Joseph’s dreams, his brothers, depicted as sheaves and stars, would bow to him—something that God eventually would bring to pass, while accomplishing their own survival. (The “stars” in 37:9 might suggest a foretaste of the promise of seed like the stars of heaven in 15:5, 22:17 and 26:4; the sheaves in 37:7 might suggest the subsequent dependence of Joseph’s brothers on him for grain. But these connections could also be simply coincidental, given the limited repertoire of images available.) The dream that includes both his parents (37:9-10) may have taken place before Rachel’s death (35:19), narrated here because it belongs to the larger Joseph narrative; or it may simply reflect the looseness sometimes found in prophetic symbolism, which Genesis’ ancient Israelite audience may have taken for granted.

In any case, it sets the stage for much of the rest of the story. By selling Joseph into slavery, Joseph’s brothers may think that they have thwarted the dreams (37:20); in reality, they have merely set the plan in motion. If we trust that our lives are ultimately guided by God’s calling, it is less important whether others meant something for evil than the purpose that God has at work in us (50:20).

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Why is Genesis 36 about Esau?

Before continuing with Jacob’s line, the narrator of Genesis recounts the subsequent history of Edomites for a number of generations. The writer likewise treats Ishmael’s descendants before moving back to the story of Isaac (Gen 25:12-18); God confirms his promise that nations will come from Abraham, and the narrator lavishly illustrates this with genealogies. Yet in both cases he quickly returns to the chosen line, and although Joseph is the primary hero in the next narrative, from here on the narrator will include genealogies for all the tribes (46:7-27).

Genesis also recounts where Esau settled, lists kings fom his line, and addresses the Horites, all apparently early traditions. Esau had already settled largely in the hill country of Seir (32:3; 33:14, 16). Now, however, he settles there exclusively (36:8), because God blessed both him and Jacob so fully that there was not room for both in the same place because their flocks and herds needed enough land to graze (36:6-7). Shepherds commonly moved their flocks based on season, but those of Jacob and Esau could not occupy the same location at the same time, so Esau preferred to stay close to his normal settlement. Jacob’s flocks would still have to move periodically to find the best grazing (see 37:12-17).

This arrangement probably recalls the arrangement that their grandfather Abram made with Lot in 13:8-9. Here Esau apparently chose where to go (36:6) as Lot had chosen on that earlier occasion (13:11). In both cases, God sovereignly left the promised land for the specially chosen line (for Abraham and for Jacob), reinforcing the narrative’s emphasis on this promise. The first audiences of these stories, waiting to possess the promised land, undoubtedly treasured these memories and passed them on to their descendants. They remind us again of God’s sovereignty and his ability to fulfill his promises, even when the outcome seems to depend on other people’s decisions.

Why would Genesis list rulers and clans from Edom (36:15-19, 32-43)? The narrator could not yet list kings over Israel (36:31; and if the narrator knew of any, it made little sense to narrate them so far ahead of the narrative’s chronology). God had promised kings to Abraham’s line (17:6, 16); the fulfilment of this promise regarding one descendant from Abraham’s line confirms that the more explicit divine promise of a royal line to Abraham’s other grandson (35:11), offered in the previous Genesis chapter, would also be fulfilled. Genesis includes genealogies of Abraham’s ancestors and key descendants (Ishmael and Isaac, and Isaac’s children Esau and Jacob), until reaching the line in which all the children (Israel’s twelve tribes) would be heirs of the promise.

Finally, we may ask why Genesis devotes space to address the Horites. Between the list of earliest Edomite clan leaders (36:15-19) and subsequent Edomite kings and clan leaders (36:32-39) appear Horite leaders (36:20-30); they had lived on this mountain long before Esau (14:6). One of Esau’s wives, Oholibamah, was a Horite princess, daughter of Anah and granddaughter of Zibeon (36:2, 14, 18, 20, 24-25, 29), helping to explain why Esau settled in Seir. Unlike Jacob, who did not intermarry with local inhabitants, Esau did, explaining why tradition preserved the list of Horites. Although Genesis does not explain the outcome, however, Deuteronomy later explains that Esau’s descendants ultimately possessed the Horites’ land (Deut 2:12, 22). (Zibeon the Horite was also a Hivite in 36:2; this seems to be a wider or perhaps overlapping category; cf. 10:17; 34:2; Exod 3:8, 17.)

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Obedience, grief, and hope—Genesis 35:16-29

Jacob faces terrible loss

Jacob obeyed God and returned to the promised land, despite the threat of violence at the hands of both Laban (pursuing him from behind) and Esau (confronting him in the land). You might think that when you obey God, even in the face of difficulty, that immediately things will get better. But that’s not what happened to Jacob, and that’s not always what happens to us. In the midst of grief, though, we can take courage, because God’s promises are faithful. God has a good plan for our future, whether in the short run or the long run.

Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel died in childbirth with his youngest son, and his eldest son committed immorality with Rachel’s maid Bilhah, one of Jacob’s other wives and the mother of two of his sons (Gen 30:4, 5, 7; 35:22, 25). (That probably also effectively ended any further intimacy between Jacob and Bilhah.) The death of Rachel and horrific sin of both his firstborn son and one of his wives were even not the end of Jacob’s sorrow. The narrator quickly moves to a crowning (though presumably not unexpected) blow, the death of Jacob’s father (35:29). Esau and Jacob together buried him (35:29), just as Ishmael and Isaac had together buried their father Abraham (25:9), and Joseph and his brothers would one day bury Jacob (50:7-8).

Jacob’s commitment of his household to God in 35:2-4 and God’s promise to Jacob in 35:9-15, then, were followed by much grief. More grief would follow with the disappearance of Joseph, Jacob’s firstborn and closest tie to Rachel (37:33-35). Someday, however, Joseph would be restored to him (45:27-28), and God would renew his promise (46:3-4). He lived to see God’s faithfulness. Even in the midst of Jacob’s sorrow, the narrator chooses to remind us that Jacob had twelve sons (35:22-26); God was preparing a future for a people who would descend from Jacob.

Often testing obscures for us God’s promises, but in light of eternity, what intervenes will ultimately make glorious sense. We can look back and see how God does keep his promises, and is faithful, even in ways we never imagined.

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Reuben defiles his father’s bed—Genesis 35:22

What’s the moral of THAT story?

Immediately after mentioning Reuben’s immoral act (35:22), the narrator reminds us that Reuben was Jacob’s firstborn through Leah (35:23). This helps explain how Joseph, Rachel’s firstborn who does act more virtuously, later supplants him (49:4). Reuben was undoubtedly quite young at this point and sexual partners outside the camp may have been limited; perhaps exposure to and the assumption of discretion within the household also limited other options within the camp. Bilhah may have also been more available because she was alone in her tent if she could have someone else caring for Benjamin. Bilhah was Rachel’s servant (29:29; 35:25) and Rachel, who had had her own tent separate from Leah’s (31:33), had recently died.

Nevertheless, word leaked out. Reuben may have expected, as firstborn, to inherit Bilhah, his father’s concubine, after his father’s death. Aside from his offense of implicitly presuming upon his father’s decease, however, hearers of this narrative would view lying with one of one’s father’s bed partners as incestuous (Lev 18:8). Perhaps Jacob could have viewed such an action even as dishonoring the memory of his beloved and recently deceased Rachel (cf. 35:25), desecrating her tent if this action occurred there.

We might think the moral of the story is the severe punishment due sexual immorality, except that the punishment here is not so severe after all. Under the not-yet-given law of Moses, the penalty for sleeping with the sexual partner of one’s father was death (Lev 18:8, 29; 20:11); Reuben receives mercy and goes on to play a further role in Genesis, including keeping Joseph from being killed (Gen 37:21-22). Most hearers of the story would not need to be further informed that sleeping with a father’s bed partner was terrible; they would already envision Reuben’s behavior as horrific.

The point then may be more about human depravity and God’s benevolence. The very ancestors of Genesis’s audience, patriarchs of many tribes of Israel, participated in incestuous adultery (Reuben), mass murder (Simeon and Levi), and planned the murder of their brother Joseph, whom God planned as their very deliverer. God did not choose his people because of their great merit or virtue; that remained true in Moses’s time as well (Deut 9:4-8).

The God who made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is gracious and merciful (Exod 34:6-7). He is the God who chooses people like Isaiah or Simon Peter, who acknowledge their sinfulness when confronted with absolute holiness (Isa 6:5; Luke 5:8). He chooses people like Saul of Tarsus, who had been persecuting his own people (Acts 9:4-5). He saves sinners like myself, who boasted against his existence before my conversion. How can someone read the narratives of Genesis and not recognize that this is the God of our Lord Jesus? This is the God who calls and saves not because of our merit, not because we are good, but because he is good, because he is gracious. Sometimes we idealize biblical characters such as the patriarchs as great heroes; but God, and not the humans he used then or the humans uses today, is the real hero.

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God reaffirms his promise to Jacob—Genesis 35:9-12

Fulfilling God’s promise

Sometimes in roundabout ways that I could not have imagined, God has brought my life around to fulfill a specific calling he gave me years ago. We know in part, but beyond our own ability to make anything happen, God often frames periods or events in our lives with a divine inclusio. Often when God is in the process of fulfilling what he has already spoken to us, he brings us back to face it. For one biblical example, God had already called Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9:15-16; 22:14-15, 21; 26:16-18), but when it is time for him to be sent out on his mission more fully the Spirit speaks again (13:2-4).

Another biblical example happens with God’s message to Jacob both when he was leaving the promised land and shortly after his return, at the place Jacob called Beth-El, “House of God.” Indeed, God echoes messages he had also spoken to chosen predecessors of Jacob.

Once Jacob returns to Bethel, where he first met the Lord, God appears to him again and reaffirms the name “Israel” given to him in 32:28 (35:10). God then identifies himself as “El Shaddai” (35:11; cf. 48:3), just as he revealed himself to Abraham (17:1). When Jacob departed for Paddan Aram, Isaac invoked this name to bless him: “May El Shaddai bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you so you become an assembly of peoples” (28:3). Now El Shaddai blesses Jacob directly (35:9) and declares, “Be fruitful and multiply; a nation and an assembly of nations will come from you, and kings will emerge from your loins” (35:11). (For the promise of subsequent kings, which ultimately belong to the promise, cf. 17:6, 16.)

Moreover, God also affirms that Jacob will carry on the promise: he is commissioned to be fruitful and multiply (35:11), as humanity was originally intended to be fruitful and multiply (1:28), a mission/blessing that Noah’s progeny must continue (9:1, 7, framing the blessing), as well as Abraham (17:2, 6; 22:17) and Isaac (26:4, 24). (This particular part of the commission is not unique to the mission of Jacob’s line. In 1:22 and 8:17, God also wanted animals to do this, and such a blessing applied also to Ishmael in 17:20.)

Jacob reframes this commission as a promise in 48:4, suggesting the equivalence of both. God’s call is also his promise, insofar as it implies enablement to fulfill that call. Ultimately, Jacob’s family is indeed fruitful and multiplies in 47:27 and Exod 1:7.

As God also did with Abraham and Isaac (Gen 12:1; 13:15; 15:18; 17:8; 26:3), so God also affirms to Jacob the promise of the land (35:12; cf. 28:13; 48:4), just as in Isaac’s blessing to Jacob (28:4). (Incidentally, for what it’s worth, I personally think the repeated reaffirmations of the land reveal a tradition valued particularly before the conquest of Canaan rather than afterward, although the material Genesis continued to be edited later, as verses such as 36:31 could suggest.)

That a company of “nations” (plural) will come from Jacob (35:11) fits the promise to Abraham (17:4-6), Sarah (17:16), and Isaac (28:3). But whereas Abraham (father of Ishmael, Midian and others) and Isaac (father of Edomites as well as Israelites; cf. 25:23) did beget literal nations, the same can hardly be said of Jacob, unless we count the tribes separately (cf. 48:19, though cf. more crucially 49:10). Thus perhaps this promise refers ultimately to nations being blessed in this chosen line (12:3; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 28:14). If so, the fulfillment came long after the completion of Genesis, but it began long ago and continues as Gentiles from many nations turn to the God of Israel through Jesus the Messiah (cf. 49:10). While we often see the beginning of God’s promises, sometimes an even greater, ultimate fulfillment goes even far beyond our own lifetimes.