Tomorrow, as we continue our journey through the bible, we will be leaving the Book of Genesis. During our brief time in this book, we explored the stories of creation, the fall of humanity, and the establishment of the covenant between God and Abraham. However, as I mentioned in my post on Monday, the book of Genesis is considered to be "the Old Testament in miniature." Therefore, it is essential that we have a sense of the overall purpose and message of this book. After the near sacrifice of Isaac (see my blog entry below), he ultimately married Rebekah and they had two sons, Jacob and Esau. Jacob, later to be renamed Israel, had twelve sons, who later established the twelve tribes of Israel. One of Jacob's son was named Joseph. The book of Genesis ends with the story of Joseph and his twelve brothers in Egypt. In fact, the very last word of the book of Genesis is the word "Egypt," thus linking Genesis to the continuing story of God's people in the book of Exodus, which we will begin tomorrow. As we will see, the experience of God's people in Egypt is first one of acceptance and prosperity, but things quickly turn against God's people and they are made to serve as slaves. The story continues tomorrow...
It's hard to comprehend the story of Abraham and Isaac, yet easy to see the parallel of Jesus and humanity as mentioned in your blog.
ReplyDeleteAnd then later, in the lineage of Abraham, we learn that one of Isaac's sons, Jacob (Israel) had twelve sons, who later formed the twelve tribes of Israel, which Bill finds interesting as a numbers person, that Jesus had twelve disciples.
Yes...there is definitely a parallel between the 12 disciples and the 12 tribes of Israel. In many ways the early Church understood itself as the new Israel and Jesus as the new Moses who was sent to free the captives from their bondage to sin, much the same way Moses freed the Israelites from their bondage in Egypt. I will probably write more about this when we get to the New Testament. Thanks for you comments!
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