Seriously, the initial bits of Jacob's trip away from his family are filled with lying, cheating, shagging, deceit, and other stuff of a generally insidious nature. When I stay 'zoomed out', I have to admit I battle to see anything more in these first parts of the story than examples of how selfish human nature is. Richard Dawkins would agree I'm sure!
Jacob's uncle tricks him to marrying his older daughter (c'mon over cuzzin!), gets him to work for free in order to have the second daughter, and then tries to wangle his way out of paying Jacob an agreed wage. Leah and Rachel vie for first place in the household whilst wanting to scratch each other's eyes out, and Jacob is kept occupied (willingly) making the maids his wives offer him pregnant. Talk about a pink ticket! The sons they have are all given Zulu names like "Look-it's-a-boy", "Vindication", "Lucky" and "Happy". Jacob also experiments in genetic engineering by setting up a method to get patchy sheep from plain ones, although I doubt science could reproduce his experiments.
There are some interesting bits in here, but since I promised myself I'd read this as broadly as possible, so I'm just going to keep looking for the reasons these stories have been kept in the bible (hey I'm skeptical but the christian in me has to think there's a reason for all these stories right?). Stay tuned..........
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Hey, I'm reassured by these stories of how many bad choices were made by the people in Jesus' lineage. At least God shows His human side - by including stories of "normal" people doing "normal" things? If I were God and making a record for humanity, I would have made this part more of a by-line. But it does make you think that He had a reason for including them - even if its only to make Ross feel better about his bad choices?
ReplyDeleteI think you are right Rosski. It makes me feel a bit better too, and I feel we can still work things out with God, just like these people did.
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