Joseph's family transformed through suffering

I guess what I was most touched by this year was how love grew up in the relationships in this family as the years passed and their understanding deepened. How much Joseph loved Benjamin, how Jacob said he would go to his grave mourning over Joseph (all those decades later when the famine drove them to Egypt, Jacob was still mourning the loss of his cherished son), and how dearly Jacob loved Benjamin, all he had left of Rachel.

And how the brothers had actually grown to love their father, finally understanding that it would kill him if he lost Benjamin too- how Reuben offered his two sons if anything happened to Benjamin—remember how Reuben had planned to come back and rescue Joseph from the well? But he didn’t have the guts to stand up to his brothers to their faces, and now he seeks redemption. Now he is a father himself and he understands what he did to his own father by letting them do away with Joseph. And he offers his own two sons in Benjamin’s place. Remember also that Jacob named him Benjamin-son of my right hand, reminding everyone how important he was to him. And then Judah took personal responsibility for Benjamin and made good on his promise when he offered himself as a substitute for Benjamin. . . a foreshadowing of the Lion of Judah, substitution for us all.

How obtuse I was all these years till this (2002), not realizing how carefully Joseph had set up the test to find out whether his brothers had softened their hearts over the years, whether they would sacrifice Benjamin as readily as they had rid themselves of Joseph.

When Judah made his plea to Joseph (not yet knowing his true identity-and realize that there would be no way to know how his heart had changed if he did know Joseph’s identity- how would we know whether his motive was pure? This is why the tests are so poignant and pivotal-Jospeh wanted to hear the brothers tell the narrative from their perspective-he wanted them to tell the story so that he could see who they were, who they had become, through their narratives).

When Judah made his plea, he said, “His brother is dead, and he is the only one of his mother’s sons left, and his father loves him,” (44:20b). Here I began to weep. (And I had recently lost a dear, dear friend and watched her father lose her five years after he lost her mother).

Judah continues, in verse 30. . “If the boy is not with us when I go back to your servant my father and if my father, whose life is closely bound up with the boy’s life, (31) sees that the boy isn’t there, he will die. . . please let your servant remain here as my lord’s slave in place of the boy. . . (34) No!! Do not let me see the misery that would come upon my father.”

Those boys did suffer from their crime. They had to watch the agony of their father all those years. And Judah cries out for compassion on his father, and on himself, not to have to see how much more agony would be wrought for his father and how it would destroy him. Judah was shining—the love that had grown in his heart was shining brightly and everyone could see it. Here I cried a lot, and re-typing it now I am crying again. Perhaps before I had watched my friend dying of a horrible cancer, I didn’t have the depth of experience with grief that would cause this story to take on this infinitely more meaningful and powerful understanding for me.

This time Judah’s cry pierced my heart and I understood. As I had never understood those hundred other times this story was presented to me. It is not clear how Judah or the others actually felt towards Benjamin himself, but perhaps it does not matter so much. They loved their father, and this meant that they made choices motivated by love about who and what Jacob loved most. Love for one person calls you to love those that they love, as Love for God calls you to love His cherished humanity . . . You cannot love the One without loving the other.

Finally, at the end of Genesis, the point. The point of the whole book perhaps, perhaps of the whole human project. . When Jacob died and the brothers still feared retribution from Joseph, Joseph said, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children. And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.” (50:19-21) And I don’t think Joseph was strutting now. As his brothers had learned to love by loving whom their father loved, Joseph had learned to love his brothers through humility, as well as by protecting them.

There is so much of the gospel in this narrative. A beloved son’s life is taken, but in the taking, their salvation is won. After the taking, watching Jacob’s heart aching, the boys became so aware of their sin. They knew what they deserved. But they had also learned to love through this horrible ordeal. They sought redemption. Reuben offered his sons, Judah offered himself, both foreshadowing the sacrifice of Christ.

And in the end, Jacob lived his last days in the presence of all 12 of his living sons and his one daughter. And they were all in position now to spend 400 years gestating and becoming a great nation, to emerge from its chrysalis in the Exodus. Indeed, what Satan meant for evil, God meant for good.

You cannot catch Him by surprise. You cannot sin so much that He is not still able to take deviance, death, decay, disease or disaster and transform them into something beautiful and glorious, weaving them into the exquisite tapestry of His extravagant love story with humanity. He is ready to weave you in. He's just waiting for your consent. You have not because you ask not. . . (oh, do I detect schema from the book of James working itself into Genesis? Weird how that happens . . . (: ). Ask and you will receive.

And that’s just one or two layers of the Joseph narratives. But let’s move on for now and leave that for the next time you read Genesis.

Reframing the Joseph Narratives- Putting some stuff in perspective

It was the Joseph narratives today (January 1, 2002), that caught me utterly by surprise. Same old story, same old version (NIV), same old study Bible for the last four readings notwithstanding, I wept all the way through them, tears streaming down my face. I guess what I was most touched by was the Love throughout the various relationships—in some cases love that emerged later after lovelessness had wreaked horrible wounds in the soul of this family, in the soul of each member.You’ve heard the story many times,

But if you’re like me, you seriously missed the main point. True, there are many, many important points in the story, many life lessons to be gleaned. And maybe you missed it because the people who told you the story had missed it, too.

Start by thinking about the relational dynamics in this family. Can you imagine being the son of the wife who was not loved? To feel that you were NOT enough to satisfy your father because your mother was not enough to satisfy him, something over which you had no control, like the circumstances of all our births. And loving your mother, and seeing her unloved by your father. . . hm, some of us actually know that acute pain. And it is more painful yet when, like a dear friend of mine, your father left you and your mother when you were still a child, and went and married another woman and became the father of somebody else’s son. You left me to become someone else’s father???!!! That pain must be like a stake right through your heart.

Only in Jacob’s family, both wives and sets of children all lived together, right there all under one roof (or tarp, as it were), and let me tell you, this was no Brady Bunch, no "blended family,"-- you had to SEE him loving someone other than your mother, and loving her children more than you, every day of your life. Now that puts things in perspective. Those boys have been maligned throughout history, I feel, in the way the story is told and interpreted.

Those boys had such deep, deep holes in their hearts. And they were powerless to fill them. Imagine how hard they must have worked to try to get their father’s approval, to try to make him love them. And to find that your best was never good enough to make him love you. You were powerless to heal the wound in your family. And in your powerlessness, and all that pain which you were obliged to pack away in your bones, all that suppressed rage. . . you were a murderer waiting to happen. (Kind of foreshadows the great great…great grandson of Joseph, Moses, when he saw the injustices done to the brothers he loved. . . but I digress, just a little sneak preview for later(: ).

This was the context in which the boy with the amazing technicolor dream coat lived and walked, and very probably, strutted. You might even have come to think throwing him in the well was too good for him. If you had to hold your tongue and watch somebody else take all the love you so desperately desired. Yes, I believe there was some bottled up bitterness (and bitterness bites! It bites everybody involved).

So there's some orientation to chew on. . . I'll get to the complicating actions in the next installment. But I'll give you a hint, God loved Leah's sons just as much as He loved Rachel's, and He had a plan to actually use that spoiled boy to save the lives of the sons of the rejected wife, to save them and make them the fathers of millions. And to finally bring love that would bridge the divided house. Oh, and to make Jesus the descendant of one of Leah's sons, not Rachel's Joe Cool (whom God also dearly loved, I'm just saying, God likes poetic justice).

To be continued. . .

Rachel's Quest for Wholeness

And then there's Rachel. She doesn't have to strive for her husband's love, which has always been freely available to her. She does strive against her sister, though, jealous of her fertility. Interestingly, she turns her anger on her husband saying, "Give me children or I'll die!" (30:1), which, unsurprisingly, begets anger from Jacob who points out that only God can open her womb.

After offering her own maidservant, Bilhah (ok so we have Zilpah and Bilhah, do you think they were twins? (: ), Rachel gets an adopted son, Dan and says, "God has vindicated me; he has listened to my plea and given me a son" (30:6). And on the birth of the second son through Bilhah she says, "I have had a great struggle with my sister, and I have won," (30:8), naming him Naphtali, meaning 'my struggle'.

I'm not sure how she means she won, since at this point Leah has four biological sons and Rachel only has two surrogate sons. When finally she has her own son Joseph she says, "God has taken away my disgrace," and, "May the Lord add to me another son." This is about respect and shame. In her cultural context, there was so much shame in being barren.

When Rachel finally has Benjamin, late in life, she dies in childbirth, naming him Ben-Oni, "son of my trouble," (though Jacob changes this to Ben-Jamin, "son of my right hand.") And the only equivalent to a birthquote is the midwife's, "Don't be afraid, for you have another son," (35:17).

You notice from the verse references that these birth vignettes are scattered through out the text, so you have to search for them when you start to see the pattern (or are looking for the patterns you know must be there, because that is the way God is--and His Word has so many layers of meaning to discover). You're welcome for my hunting them down for you. (:

You may also stop to think about how weird it would be, not only to have your husband have a second wife who was part of your household, but to have that second wife be your sister?? And if Leah was the oldest and she was plain, and Rachel was the youngest, and she was beautiful, you can imagine that there were years of painful strife long before they had to share the same husband. Rachel was probably a little spoiled growing up, and she was definitely spoiled by Jacob. Motherhood tends to suck the selfishness out of you. . . I am not a mother, but I see how selfish I am relative to my friends who are mothers. So Leah had more years to purify her heart, I think, in this way.

I cannot imagine bringing that strife into a marriage and then having the love of your husband and your ability to give birth be your bargaining chips as you strive for significance anywhere outside your very particular unique purpose given to you by God Himself.

Neither Rachel nor Leah seems to have a very happy life, even though each has what the other believes will make her happy.

You might not have seen these patterns on your first cursory perusal of Genesis. And it is only the beginning. (: There is so much more in that same book, in those same verses, even. Buried treasure waiting to be found by those hungry enough to dig for it.

Leah's growing pains. . .

Women don't take up a lot of the Old Testament. Although it is important to notice that the Hebrews were extremely progressive among other cultures of their time in allowing women to own land, be mentioned in genealogies, etc. One venue they do get to speak out from in scripture is that of the birth quote (there's probably a fancier term for that somewhere; this is mine). I had read the Bible several times before I really noticed this amazing little micro-genre. One interesting study is just going through scripture and looking at who had miraculous/angel-announced births (which you will notice ended with Jesus). And another study to go through all the births that give the name of the baby and why the mother named it what she did-something autobiographical usually. (Remember Ichabod? The glory has gone out. Look that one up for poignancy).

Anyway, Leah, the unlucky, unloved, unlovely wife. Her husband had to be tricked into marrying her. How much would your heart break at the fury of your husband the next day when you were not who he wanted to be married to. Leah's story is eked out every few years with birth of each new son.

1) Reuben ("See, a son!") 29:32. And she says, "Surely my husband will love me now!"
Maybe having this son will change his feelings for me. . .

2) Simeon (one who hears) 29:33. "Because the Lord heard that I am not loved, He gave me this one too." Wow, how much pain does that reveal. Maybe he won't love me now either, but God blessed me because of my broken heart.

3) Levi (Attached) 29:34 "Now at last my husband will become attached to me because I have borne him three sons." Now it sounds like Leah has finally given up on winning her husband's affection through her fertility. . . and something beautiful happens.

4) She gives birth to Judah (Praise) 29:35 and she says "THIS TIME I WILL PRAISE THE LORD." She has turned from looking to her validation from her husband to connecting directly with God. And perhaps she begins to look at her children as ends in themselves, gifts from God, not means to her husband's heart.

Now, let me just pause to do a little Hallelujah dance. Zoom in on this and think. The oldest son is always given all the honors and birthrights, yes? You'll find out as you read on that Reuben and Simeon made God and a lot of other people really really mad after Dina's assault. Levi at least gets to be the father of the priests for a few thousand years. But JUDAH. Judah is the ancestor of Jesus (and David, first of course). So Two Huge Points here:

1) When Leah's heart totally yielded to God, she gave birth to the man whose descendant would give birth to the Son of God.

2) Jesus did not descend from Rachel, the favorite wife. He descended from the wife who was rejected!

There's an even cooler reason for Judah to be the ancestor of Jesus which I will get to when we get to Joseph (also, btw, not the ancestor of Jesus, just to reiterate (: Jesus did not descend from the favorite)

5) Now she "has a baby" through her concubine Zilpha, and names him Gad (Good fortune) 30:10,11

6) And another via Zilpha, Asher (How Happy I am! The women will call me happy!) 30:12,13 (and I don't even want to think about what it was like to be Zilpha)

Leah may also be succumbing to a motive of competition with Rachel, whose loveliness and lovedness seem to leave Leah empty handed even now. Still, with her maidservant-borne children, she continues to focus on gratitude rather than wistfulness toward her husband.

After a spate of barreness, apparently, Leah is able to conceive again when she so poignantly "hires" her own husband by giving Reuben's mandrakes of the day to Rachel. Mandrakes are a root and they kind of resemble hips and legs and were regarded as fertility 'enhancers.' Her seventh and eight sons come from her own womb.

7) Issachar (Reward) 30:17, 18 "God has rewarded me for giving my maidservant to my husband."

8) Zebulun (Honor) 30:19,20 "God has presented me with a precious gift. This time my husband will treat me with honor because I have borne him six sons."

So her feelings seem to progress as
1) I can win his love
2) He doesn't love me so God will comfort me with a child
3) At least maybe he will feel some bond toward me as the mother of his 3 sons.
4) I give up on my husband; I will praise God.
5) Eh, a child is good thing.
6) Motherhood is good-other women will see me as happy and blessed-they will esteem me.
7) This child is a reward for my good deed (I'm not sure I follow how giving the maidservant to her husband was a good deed bearing on Issachar's birth, since it was her own womb that bore him--I would have expected her to mention the mandrakes).
8) This child is a precious gift AND I should receive honor (if not love) from my husband

In her search for identity, it seems that Leah tries the role of wife, but it does not fulfill her need for meaning. She tries the role of mother and finds her greatest fulfillment here. In some ways her identity is the cut out as the complement (or the negative?) of Rachel-Rachel is what Leah is not, Leah is what Rachel is not. In the end, like many people, Leah seeks out respect, which is a cousin if not a child of Power, in lieu of love, at least in her identity visavis her husband.

And about Rachel I will write in my next post.

Some Notes on Genesis and reading the whole Bible through

In one way reading the Bible is like reading any other great piece of literature-your understanding of it deepens and is enriched the longer you live, the more you see and learn and feel. . . the years layer your schema ever more densely, drawing connections from everything to everything else. When you read the Bible through for the first time, you are just surveying the land.

You get your bearings, figure out which way is East, which mountains are next to which lakes, where are the hot springs, where is the soil rich and where is it lying fallow. But every time you read it again you bring more to the text before you from the text of your own life, the text that you and God have been writing together, your own story. The Bible is The Story and yours will become a part of the The Story of God and His glorious works. So your life creates this enormous resource for understanding scripture, but scripture itself is another enormous resource for understanding each part. The more you read of the whole, the more you understand each part. You begin to recognize images and ideas from other books and chapters that shed light on the one you are currently viewing.

On your second reading you may notice, for example, that the Gospel of John begins by echoing the beginning of Genesis. In the beginning, God. . . In the beginning,was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Very purposefully the author draws your attention back to the bedrock of Judean dogma. John is telling you that his writing is a continuation, a cohesive part of the whole, not a breaking away, not a totally new "religion." You will find glorious patterns woven all the way through the old testament and the new, like an other worldly tapestry of staggering beauty. I always think it is like looking at one of those three dimensional pictures. You have to study it for a bit before you can "see" the image, and when you see it, it is glorious--it's so obvious now, and so beautiful, but it would not be seen if you gave it only a glance to 'prove' itself to you.

Genesis is a great place to start since it is the beginning of the Bible and describes the beginning of Earth and mankind. It's amazing how many of the central and celebrated OT narratives are all compressed in the book of Genesis. 1) Creation 2) The Fall 3) Cain & Abel 4) Noah and the Ark 5) The Tower of Babel 6) Abraham-Called out of a foreign land to become father of nations, Sharing his lot with Lot (actually giving Lot a lot more), Lying about his wife being his sister in the early days when his faith was small Trusting God for a child well past his and Sarah's fertile years, Having a son with a concubine, trying to "help God out", Angels appearing and announcing the birth of a son in his old age, Naming him Isaac, which means Laughter, both because his mother laughed at the angels' announcement and because he brought so much laughter into their lives, he was the promise of God made manifest, Being asked by God to sacrifice his son to prove that he loved God more than he loved God's gift to him, and God, seeing his love and obedience and faith, stepping in to provide a sacrificial substitute, a foreshadowing of God sacrificing His own son so that Abraham and the rest of humanity would not have to sacrifice theirs, or themselves.

Finding Isaac a wife from the "old country", Isaac's twins, Jacob and Esau, and God's choice of Jacob though he was the younger by a few minutes, and though he was a devious self-interested schemer. God chose Jacob like he chose us, not because WE are good, but because HE is good. And yet the poetic justice that Jacob the cunning is out-deceived by his father-in-law into marrying a woman he did not love before he could marry the one he did. Rachel and Leah and all the strife between women who want both children and the love of their husband, and whose birth quotes encapsulate each woman's new stage of thinking and trusting and loving with the birth of each new child. All kinds of escapades with Jacob and his 12 sons and 1 daughter (including her rape and her brothers avenging it, literally overkill) Benjamin is born and Rachel dies, and the jealous brothers (sons of the rejected wife) throwing Joseph in a well and then selling him into slavery, The roller coaster of Joseph's life, lifted up, cast down, lifted up, cast down, lifted up, cast down. . . (reminds me of my own!) probably because God wants to make the point that we do not make ourselves successful, He allows it, or not, should he choose to remind us that we are nothing without Him, The salvation of Abraham's tribe through Joseph's rise in Egypt. . . what Satan had meant for evil God turned to glorious good. Ok, I lost count. (:

One of my study Bibles mentions that Genesis spans a larger period of time than the rest of the Bible combined. I prefer and highly recommend reading each book of the Bible in ONE sitting. Don't forget that the entire Bible can be read aloud at a normal speaking pace in fewer than 80 hours! It is not daunting that it is "long," it is daunting that we must think so clearly and reflectively, that we must ask Him for illumination in a way we need not ask in order to read a modern day novel, that we must study to understand the context. That we must read it again and again to understand the rhythm of the whole majestic symphony. It is daunting because it is not the word of man, it is the Word of God.

When I made the journal entry that I am typing from in 2002, it took me four hours that day to get through Genesis, but mainly because I got so excited seeing the patterns in the birth quotes of Jacob's wives and having to color code and lay it all out in an elaborate chart so I could look at the patterns more closely (there are a lot of other stories packed in between births). This was the first time I think I noticed that this custom of recording (orally or in writing) a quote from the mother at the birth of a child (male children only?) is a pattern which pervades the Bible and has meaning in itself; I will present that story in my next entry. (: