“The Female Heroine”

Genesis 22:20-24

 

We are reading through the book of Genesis. At this point in the narrative we are wrapping up the story of Abraham. Yahweh decided to create a covenant with Abraham which included two promises: one of seed and one of land. Up to this point we have been focusing mostly on the seed portion of the promises. We read last week how Abraham passed the major exam by surrendering his future seed to God and then God gave it back, and even more so, by reaffirming the promise given back in Genesis 12, verse 3b,

 

“and all peoples on earth

    will be blessed through you.”

 

After the surrender of Isaac, God said, Genesis 22, verse 18,

 

“and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”

 

The seed drama has been resolved. Now, what about the land drama? Abraham continues to age and at this point, well into his hundreds, he has no land. We will cover that point in a few verses next week. 

 

For today, immediately after the high point on the mountain, we read a mini genealogy. If you are like me, you might be thinking, “This seems odd. Why did the narrator put these names here?” 

 

Verse 20 begins with, “Some time later” or following all that has happened up to this point, someone reports to Abraham about Milkah, do you remember Milkah? You might recall that her name means, “Queen.” Remember Queen? 

She was the woman who had married Abraham’s brother Nahor. Abraham left them behind a long time ago. Well, Milkah has managed to bore sons to Abraham’s brother. Hooray! Having children at that point in time was an Eden theme, life, a blessing! The messenger provides Abraham with the names of these sons, 

First - Uz

Second - Buz

Third - Kemuel - There’s a parentheses explaining to the reader that Kemuel is the father of everybody you’re going to read about later in the story who are called the Arameans. 

Fourth - Kesed

Fifth - Hazo

Sixth - Pildash

Seventh - Jidlaph

Eighth - Bethuel - Oh, there’s something you should know about Bethuel, he became the father of Rebekah. 

The narrator has stayed true to the patriarchal set up of the day and managed to record the eight sons of Nahor, because boys matter most in this way of accounting. Yet, notice how the author was able to slip in the name of Rebekah, at the end, as a climax, a special location because she is going to have a key role in the stories to follow. 

 

The genealogy continues because Nahor happened to have a concubine, and his second wife’s name was Reumah and she bore him four more sons. Do the math! Abraham’s brother was busy having 12 sons of his own. In fact, he’s ahead of his brother’s 12 sons which demonstrates that God was blessing Abraham’s family over in the east, in Mesopotamia as well. They may not be the main focus but they are part of the family and they are not forgotten.

How do these four sentences fit in the story? Why are they here? We need to take a macro look at how this narrative has been set up. We need to go back to chapter 11 of Genesis where we began our adventure with Abrahram. We were given the genealogy of Abram’s family, beginning with the generations of Terah, Abram’s father who had three sons, Abram, Nahor and Haran. Haran died, but Abram and Nahor took wives. Abram’s wife’s name was “princess” and Nahor’s wife was Milcah, which means “queen.” From that point on we have been reading about the life of Abram, now Abraham, and we return to what’s been happening in Mesopotamia. Abraham’s story has been bookended with two genealogies of Abraham’s family.

 

The first bookend of Abraham’s family involved a call for Abram to leave, Genesis 12:1, 

“The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.”

 

Check this out, at the end of the seed drama, we are introduced to the family back in Mesopotamia, in the meantime they have been blessed with 12 sons and oh, by the way, one daughter, Rebekah, that if you mix the Hebrew letters of her name it will spell “blessing,” mentioned right in the middle of those sons. No coincidence my friend. And what is even more interesting is that in just a few chapters, this woman, whose name looks like the word “blessing” with the letters turned around, is going to be the key to the blessing coming to fruition back in the land. She will be given a similar choice as Abraham was back in the beginning of his venture. The narrator is letting us know that in these four verses. 

Rebekah will face her own test of faith, just like Abraham. This is the narrator’s way of hinging the story together. In one way, we are winding down the story of Abraham and opening up the introduction to the narrative to come. 

 

At this point I want to try and give an overview of how the whole book of Genesis has been designed. We have just read a paragraph of the genealogy of Abraham's brother, and discovered he had 12 sons and Rebekah, next we read that Sarah will die, and there will be a burial. Then we will read a long story of how Abraham’s servant goes back to Mesopotamia to meet Rebekah and bring her to Isaac. Then Abraham marries a third wife and gives birth to a whole bunch of other sons, who turn out to be enemies of his descendants over time. 

 

But Isaac and Rebekah are singled out as the chosen and blessed ones. 

Abraham will soon die and we will get a genealogy of Ishmael’s descendants. The next major part of Genesis provides the generations of Isaac which begins the Isaac and Jacob story. Genealogies, our favorite texts to read, right? But here’s where these genealogies are fascinating. This section and the wording of the sections is mirrored at the next hinge story in Genesis, which is the transition from Jacob to the story of Joseph and the brothers. At that hinge we get a story of the death and burial of Rachel, who is Jacob’s wife, which will be followed by another list of the chosen one’s children. Followed by Isaac’s death and guess where he is buried. In the same exact cave as Abraham. I bet you can guess what comes next! There will be a list of the non-chosen’s genealogy, just like Ishmael’s. See the pattern. 

The book of Genesis is all about the seed of the woman. 

 

From the moment of conflict between the chosen humans, who by the way weren’t created first, the animals were created before them. Even though the animals came first, it’s the humans that were the chosen ones. Since the beginning the younger one has been chosen to rule over the older one. The snake doesn’t like it!

Here is Genesis in a nutshell. 

 

> There are dramas about the chosen and the non-chosen. 

> There are rival brothers and wives and sons and daughters.

> Then comes some sort of crisis or conflict.

> When a transition of generations arises there is a follow through of one person, then we are given a genealogy so you can backtrack and follow another person.

> At this point in the story we are passing the torch to the next generation, which will include more genealogies. 

 

It’s all about the seed. The promise of the blessing is the main thread throughout, promising victory over the snake and of a restoration of the Eden blessing. Somehow, one family line keeps getting singled out and given special focus. Which might lead one to think, “Oh, this is a story about the good guys and the bad guys.” Not so simple. It turns out the non-chosen are consistently going to play the role of heroes of faith. 

 

Let’s start with Rebekah, who begins the significant motif of non-chosen female heroines who save the day when all the men around them mess things up. 

Rebekah:

• She comes from one of Abraham’s non-chosen brothers
• She becomes the crucial link
• She must leave her family, just like Abraham was asked to and go to a land she had never been to, without her family, or else the whole thing would fall apart
• Oh, by the way, her name sounds like the word “blessing” with the letters swapped around

 

Oh, as for the heroines, it’s not like they are straight forward characters. In fact they are quite complex. There’s Leah, the unloved wife who becomes the mother of Judah. She actually gives the Messianic line. The Messiah comes from the non-chosen. Tamar, a Canaanite woman, who’s abused and mistreated by Judah ends up saving the seed through deception and treachery. 

Then we have Pharaoh's daughter, who from out of nowhere is the one who rescues Moses.  Don’t forget Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute and Deborah who was in jail. There's a long list. Today’s genealogy presents us with Rebekah, the first heroine to save the blessing and save the story from crashing and burning, with God’s provision and direction of course. 

 

Check in time.

 

Here’s where I want to step out of ancient Hebrew and take a look at how our culture views these characters. Most of us grew up in the church and remember the stories told to us as children about these Biblical characters. Think back. Most of the stories we were told held up these characters primarily as models for imitation. Which is great…. when they were trusting God. The problem is, each of these characters were human and they were as much negative as they were positive. 

Take Rebekah, sure she chose to follow God’s call, she left everything she knew and loved and followed some slave to his master to be married to his son. But we will also read how she tricked her husband in his old age in order to ensure her favorite son received the blessing. The narrator provides us with her full complexity as a human, even if the children’s book authors may have skipped some parts of the story. 

 

Why do we tell our children only the good stories and shy away from the more disturbing ones?

 

I think it’s because we want our children to model the good behavior and we think if we tell them about the bad behaviors they may model them. Good theory, but in reality, when it comes right down to it, our children will do good things and bad things whether we like it or not. 

I suggest, instead of presenting them as models we present them as mirrors. All the characters in the Bible should be used as mirrors for self-reflection. When I read about all of the things a character does, good and bad, I see the characters as human, rather than super models. We should use this mirror idea for our personal reflection and also for our community reflection. I would even go so far as to say we could use this mirror idea for our culture as well. Think about it, every Biblical character we have truly encountered, except Enoch, could be a mirror of something admirable and also something really terrible. It’s that complexity that we need to own and understand for ourselves. 

 

As a teacher I would remind my students, “You’re not bad. You may have made a bad choice, but that doesn’t make you bad.” We each make good choices and we each make bad choices. 

The amazing thing about the characters in the Bible is that when their hearts are in line with God, when they follow what God tells them, they become heroes regardless of what they have done or said. That is the definition of grace.

 

Lord’s Supper