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today's reading - Noah/Ham and Lineages
Sat, 01/10/2009 - 21:35
In Genesis 4:26b I love that it says that at that time men began to call on the name of the LORD.
In Genesis 6:3 it is interesting that the Lord said that man's days will be 120 years. In comparison to the pre flood years where Methuselah is mentioned as the oldest person to have lived......969 years. Quite a difference in the life spans.
In Genesis 9:18-27 I found it interesting that it was Ham's descendants (Canaan) who are cursed for looking at his father's naked body, and not Noah himself who became drunk and was naked. Do you think that the pre-flood and post-flood "wine" was different? And that Noah did not intend to become drunk with the wine? Or was something else going on here?
What are your thoughts?
Sun, 01/11/2009 - 03:10
#1
Ham and Noah
Yvonne, I have always wondered why we see the heavy consequences falling on Ham but seemingly no consequences falling on Noah for Noah's exposing his body in his drunken state. Perhaps the problem for Ham was not that he saw his father, but that he went and told others of what he saw, bringing a loss of dignity and respect to his father. Compare that to the reaction of his other sons, who backed in slowly and covered their father's nakedness and shame. And perhaps the consequences are there for Noah as well -- just not as clearly. Noah's consequences could be seeing something horrible happen to one of his own children due to the fallout from his own poor choices and his own sin. That would be tough to live with. It would be one thing to really mess up, but to have that mistake gravely affect the path of your child would be almost unbearable.
Sun, 01/11/2009 - 01:31
#2
Reading 1
My husband and I started the reading tonight. 16 pages went by fast but I must confess... I skimmed/skipped over a lot of the names. I have a hard time reading about lineages especially when the names are difficult to pronounce. I did, however, enjoy reading the Bible in this way (not the skipping, but reading it as a book/story rather than attempting to grasp every single detail).
Sun, 01/11/2009 - 03:46
#3
Lineages
Sally, yes, the lineages can be tedious. Let your eye go from name to name quickly, skipping over "the son of... the son of...the son of..." verbiage. But be alert for a change-up. For example, in Gen. 5 where you see this long listing of "he lived...became a father...he died/ he lived...became a father...he died" all of a sudden when we hit Enoch, the pattern changes and adds the detail that "Enoch walked with God, then he was no more, because God took him away." Enoch is one of only two people the Bible mentions who never experienced death but that God took from being alive as a human here on earth straight to heaven -- the other one being Elijah. So if you skipped this geneology listing, you would have missed a real jewel!
Also, just wanted to mention the reason that the genealogies/lineages are here. It was very important because in Gen 3:15 we see God revealing that there would be an individual from among the woman's seed who would deal a death blow to Satan -- "he will crush your head." (This we know is Jesus Christ.) As we progress, more and more prophecies are revealed regarding the coming of this one who would destroy Satan. He would be from the seed of Abraham, the son of Issac, the son of Jacob, the tribe of Judah, the family line of Jesse, the house of David, etc. -- around 322 prophecies are given in the OT regarding the coming one. So they kept meticulous lineage records. And of course Jesus fulfilled every single one of these prophecies -- in fact, 29 prophecies were fulfilled in one 24-hr period from Jesus's betrayal to his burial.
And what I think is so cool is that once we reach the New Testament, you will see Matthew 1 start out with the geneaology of Jesus Christ (repeated in Luke) and then we NEVER AGAIN SEE ANOTHER GENEAOLOGY IN SCRIPTURE! Because it is finished! Jesus fulfilled them all and, therefore, no need for another genealogical record to be recorded in scripture. And then historically in 70 A.D. we see Titus march into Jerusalem and destroy Solomon's Temple, where all of these meticulous records were kept. So today, the Jewish people refuse to recognize Jesus as "the promised one" yet they have no genealogical records to turn to to prove the lineage of a person they one day might say is "the one." Talk about a conundrum!
Wed, 01/21/2009 - 17:55
#4
great observation!
I had never really thought about the fact that we see no more lineage in scripture after Jesus Christ in Matthew. It was done. Fulfilled. So amazing.