“Meditating on Scripture”

Genesis 37:2a

 

I’m sticking with my theme of why we should read the Old Testament. Today my objective is to help you realize how important it is to “meditate” on God’s Word, rather than to “just read it.” Before we go any further I want to explain what I mean by “meditate.” Many of us when we hear that word, “meditate” immediately picture someone sitting crosslegged on the floor with their eyes closed and breathing deeply. Maybe we could add the repeating of a few choice phrases and try to put our bodies and minds into a relaxed state. That is all fine and good, but not what I have in mind when it comes to reading Scripture. Let’s go to Psalm 1 where we are told something about meditating on God’s Word. 

Blessed is the one

    who does not walk in step with the wicked

or stand in the way that sinners take

    or sit in the company of mockers,

but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,

    and who meditates on his law day and night.

 

I don’t know about you, but I used to take the verse literally. How exhausting! I tried reading the Bible and re-reading it, reading it in different translations and thinking about what I read until I became bored stiff. 

Then, I learned how to use Scripture to enlighten other Scripture. I remember how excited I was at the age of 16 when someone gave me a concordance and I was able to look up how many times a particular word was in the Bible. I haven’t stopped using it since. Although, today I don't have to lug around a book that is 8 inches thick, I can access it on-line for free. Meditating on Scripture is different from deciding the meaning of a verse or section of Scripture on its own or based on what we, a 21st century reader, might think. It means, you ponder over it in relation to the context it is in and to other Scripture. 

What’s going on around the verse? Where does that word or phrase appear in other verses or books of the Bible? What does it mean in those other instances? The author, namely God, has gone to painstakingly hard work to put this narrative together in amazingly intricate ways. Each story connects to another. By meditating on what we read, we begin to see the connections creating a unified story that leads to Jesus. We have one of the greatest love stories ever written right here! 

 

Before I get started with my meditation exercise,  I want to provide a quick overview of what will happen in this first section. 

 

Joseph, the favored son was given a special robe, signifying royal rule. He has two dreams that lead to a spiral of deception, down into a pit, a descent to Egypt, down into prison. While in prison he has two more dreams, out of prison there are two more dreams and he becomes elevated with another robe. In the center of all this we will read a bizarre story about Judah and his ancient sex scandal, which is positioned there to provide a riddle or literary puzzle. Isn’t ancient Hebrew exciting to read?!

 

As we begin the first part of the story of Joseph and his brothers, which covers chapters 37-41 in Genesis, today we will be focusing on the first sentence, Genesis 37:2a. 

Let’s begin by reading this sentence from various translations:

- “And these are the birth-generations of Yaaqov.” - translated from ancient Hebrew

- “These are the records of the generations of Jacob.” - NASB

- “This is the account of Jacob’s family line.” - NIV

- “This is the story of Jacob.” - The Message

- The Living Bible excludes it all together.

- “These are the generations of Jacob.”- King James

This is the second sentence of this chapter. Here is a case where our modern chapter divisions and verse divisions, although they help us locate verses, sometimes get in the way of the actual divisions that occurred in the original manuscripts. This little phrase gets insignificantly placed as verse two of a chapter when in the original manuscripts it was a macro chapter divider that has been used throughout the Genesis scroll. Now I will demonstrate a form of meditation with the use of this one sentence. 

 

This particular phrase appears only 12 times and 10 times it is identical, marking out the sequence of generations throughout the whole book. 

 

The key word in this sentence, generations, is the Hebrew word, “toledot,” which is a noun that comes from the root word, “to birth,” “give birth to.” 

So a simple translation would be, “the birthings,” or “These are the birthings of… and then the name.   

Let me give you examples of some of the other 10 similar birthing phrases. The first one appears in Genesis 2:4, right after the seven day creation narrative you get the phrase, “these are the birthings of the skies and the land.” That’s a curious statement. The skies and the land gave birth to things? Well, actually when you think about it we read that God summons forth the animals from the ground, and He makes humans from the ground. So in fact, the skies and the land gave birth. This becomes the pivot sentence between the seven-day creation and the Eden story. What follows are the Adam and Eve stories. As soon as they give birth to their two sons there is a conflict, one is chosen and one is not chosen. 

From this point on there is a separation between the two and we end up with a lot of genealogies that trace the separate lines leading us to Genesis 5, verse 1, (one of the 12 verses we are tracing), translated, 

 

 “This is the written account of Adam’s family line.” 

 

A new genealogy traces the chosen son’s lineage through Adam all the way to Noah. Noah has three sons with a long genealogy that separate out the chosen line from the two non-chosen ones. Which leads us to the next appearance of the phrase.

 “These are the birth generations of Noah,” 

which will continue down 10 generations establishing a pattern, 

- the elevation of the chosen one, 

- failure, 

- separation of brothers, 

- follow the non-chosen one off, 

- followed by the chosen line. 

The pattern replays itself over the course of Genesis 11, to the end of the scroll. Where we find ourselves right now. 

 

This all boils down to the scroll providing us the tale of two seeds. It goes like this:

- There’s the seed that God chooses out of each cycle of creation, 

- There’s a failure, 

- Followed by de-creation, 

- Leading to the chosen one who becomes the birth of a new creation. 

This all began with the humans and the snake. 

 

Let’s take a quick look back at day six of creation. Bible trivia - Who is the firstborn on day six? 

 

“Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.”

 

First we have the land birthing living creatures, there’s the slot the snake fits into. The second born on day six were, 

“Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness,”

 

Then what does God do, but make the second born, rule over the first born. The one that was created first was not the one elevated to rule, it was the second one that God gave that power to, 

 

“so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” 

 

That’s where the pattern began. The first created doesn’t like it, rears its ugly head and he manages to get Adam and Eve to fail. 

 

The next set of first and second born are Adam and Eve’s sons. Their son Cain, the first born, gets angry when God accepts his younger brother’s sacrifice and not his. God has a conversation with Cain and warns him that sin is crouching at his door, but that he had the ability to rule it, but Cain doesn’t. Cain let’s sin rule him the way Adam and Eve let the snake usurp their rule and rule them. 

 

You can go right down the line and see all the descendants that are singled off, Cain, Japheth, Ishmael, Esau and they all go and dwell in the east, they build cities or tent camps and when you pay attention to their genealogies they all start marrying each other. 

 

One could begin to think it’s a story of the good guys versus the bad guys. When actually, we discover times when the chosen one acts like the non-chosen one, like the time Abraham and Sarah abused their Egyptian slave, Hagar. What did God do with Hagar and Ishmael? He saved them and said, “I will bless them and make them into a great nation.” Then we have a chosen one who straight out of the womb was acting like a snake, snatching his brother’s heel. We will read how he manages to remain a deceiver and trickster right up to the day he dies. 

 

We have discovered that the heroes come from both seeds and the bad people come from both lines. There is no “A” Team here. God has His chosen ones but then He puts them in very precarious situations where they will have to face choices and tests to see how they will respond to the status and responsibility they have been given. 

It has become significant to recognize which family line each character comes from, but it isn’t a given as to how they will behave. What it has shown us is that family lines are significant and provide a marker for what we should be looking for next in the narrative. 

 

The plotline began at the core of Genesis 1. 

- God created man and woman as co-rulers and stewards of creation.

- The deception of some dark, mysterious power at work in the garden appears

- Adam and Eve allow their authority to be usurped by an animal that lures them into animal like behaviour towards each other

- Now the man rules the woman as if she is an animal, and the woman is going to distort her desire into deception

- Followed by every generation of Genesis playing out the same pattern, abusive men and deceptive women or sometimes abusive women and deceptive men.

What a mess!

 

Yet, God gave a promise, Genesis 3:15, within the lineages there will be some snake-like and some are image-of-God-like, and there will be a lot of hostility between them. But…. there will emerge a seed who will bring an end to the snake, but that chosen one will suffer a wound by the snake at the same time. 

 

This all came about by looking at just one line of Scripture. This information came about by “meditating” on it. Instead of simply reading it, you pay attention to where else the unique phrase occurred. You recognize a pattern. 

For this phrase, it’s all about the promise of someone who is going to come to undo what each generation keeps making worse as you continue through the story. 

 

Check in time. 

 

What does it mean to say that Scripture is designed as meditation literature? 

 

The Holy Bible is an amazing piece of literature. Even more amazing, we have it translated into our language and can read it. When we read what the Psalms think about God’s Word. We are encouraged to meditate on it day and night. When you approach the Scriptures this way you realize that you are on a journey. It’s a journey that throughout your whole life, we have a set of texts that seem like if you read them, you think you understand them, but half the time when you read them you end up with more questions. 

Then the longer you sit with them, you discover design cues, and you find resolution to those questions. Only to discover that you have grown and changed and you soon discover you have new questions that arise. The lack of resolution is meant to drive us further into learning, understanding, and into trusting and following the author who is calling to us and speaking to us through the text. 

 

Hebrews 4:12

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

 

Unfortunately, the way most North American evangelicals teach and preach from the Scriptures it’s as if the Bible is solely for self-improvement or to extract quick life principles. 

They rarely suggest one meditate or mull over the Scriptures. It’s almost like they are preparing students for a test, they provide three points, and then throw in an application. 

 

Rather than approaching the Scriptures like a rule book or like an encyclopedia where you go, oh, I just need an answer to this, then go and find the answer, I encourage you to approach the Scriptures as a more meditative type of literature. 

 

Even the New Testament, although it may seem simplistic on one level with what looks like ethical demands and claims, in essence it contains literary masterpieces. The Sermon on the Mount for example is a triad, with the middle piece having triads, designed up in triads. At the center of the center is the Lord’s Prayer, which itself has two triads, 

which is our address to our Father and then to us. Then take the letters of Paul. Upon first reading one rarely manages to get all that he has written. He wrote to living people in congregations that he had been a part of and whom he deeply cared for. His principles were established from his deep understanding and meditation of the Hebrew scrolls he had memorized and understood. 

 

Meditation takes repetition as well as choosing to see from another perspective rather than our own. When we read and reread and discover the same phrases in different settings we begin to see from the perspective of the author and we begin to take off our lenses and see what the author intended. The only way to put on God’s lenses and read Scriptures through His eyes is to slow down and mull over what is written and why. 

 

Not for one minute do I want to suggest that this is easy. In fact, for me it is often quite difficult. Slowing down for one thing and not expecting revelation every time I read but learning to soak in the words I am reading takes practice. But like any sort of new practice, months of a set of repetitions works into your muscle memory and you begin to do it automatically. Just like learning to shoot free throws. Once you have practiced shooting them 1000 times a week, and keep getting them in, your muscles just do it automatically. 

 

Today’s sentence about the birth cycle sets the scene for our own lives. We too fit right into the melody of our parents and their parents. Many of us recognize the failures and successes that we have are replays of our parents before us. The prayer is that our children will learn and mimic more of our successes than our failures. 

By prayer and the grace of God, they will. 

 

Let’s pray.