E389 Navigating The Bible: Genesis

[Music] this is a salac Church podcast in the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth with that single sentence thus unfolds the Bible the word of God in the beginning of History Genesis the first of 66 books of the Bible takes the reader on an incredible journey from the creation of the universe to the creation of man to the fall of Man to an ark that survives a global flood to a childless man who God promised would have Descendants outnumbering the Stars to a man who wrestles with God to a young man who goes

from being a slave and prisoner to the second in power of all of Egypt but Genesis isn't just a series of historic accounts it is an introduction to who God is to the gospel message and to his NeverEnding love for us his NeverEnding love for you there are themes in Genesis that resonate throughout all of scripture in truths in this book that can impact and change your life today to introduce us to the Book of Genesis I'm joined by Dr Andrew Steinman Dr Steinman is a recently retired Professor from Concordia University Chicago an author of

many books including a commentary on Genesis my name is Jason weand in this is navigating the Bible Genesis all right Dr Andrew Simon thank you so much for joining me today as we uh start this navigating The Bible series talking about Genesis well good to be here with you and I hope we have a good conversation I have no doubt we will so so for each of these uh episodes talking about the books of the I want to start with the basic details just and we can approach this kind of assuming maybe people are diving

in for the first time and they just want to know how do I read Genesis it's the first book of the Bible what am I getting myself into so let's start with the basic details so I'm going to ask it this way do we know who wrote this book and when they wrote the book yes uh we do have a good idea of this despite the fact that some Modern liberal Scholars want to doubt it um the Bible is pretty clear that Moses wrote the entire penit the first five books of the Bible uh so

that would include Genesis um now the case for Genesis um is weaker than the other books because everything in Genesis takes place before Moses was alive yeah so he obviously had to have sources to do this um but like I said the Old Testament is pretty clear that the law of Moses as they call it is was written by Moses U the one place that we can be very clear that Moses wrote Genesis is actually a reference by Jesus in the New Testament uh when he talks about um Moses um and uh circumcision and he

talks about Moses writing about circumcision in Abraham's day well that's clearly a reference to the Book of Genesis so we have it from our Lord himself yeah that Moses wrote this uh so taking our cue from the other books of The petuk Exodus through Deuteronomy those couldn't have been written before uh the Israelites left Egypt yeah so it's likely that Genesis also was written after the Israelites uh left Egypt now I would date the um Exodus to 1446 BC Moses death the 1406 BC so we've got a 40-year window there uh where Genesis could have

been written and I would probably think it was written closer to the uh earlier date than the later date okay so that gives us that time we know and we can have some confidence in knowing that Moses was the one who wrote Genesis so how does knowing that how does knowing that what we know about Moses affect how we read Genesis well I think it it FS us uh with Genesis in a number of ways one is that uh we can see that Moses is not just kind of ending with Genesis but he's clearly building

up to something that's going to continue on into the book of Exodus and and further so that is one important way that um reading Genesis we kind of read it as a prologue to what's going to come next yeah another thing that I think is important is we read it as a very foundational book for the Bible Moses is the kind of we might say the founding prophet of the Old Testament certainly the founding prophet of Israel um Abraham is sometimes called a prophet in the Bible but you know Moses is the is the big

prophet of the Old Testament so this gives a certain weight to uh all of the penet and especially to Genesis because Genesis is the book that introduces us to things it introduces us to Creation it introduces us to Israel's Patriarchs it introduces us um to God's Great promises so um all these things come from the pen of Moses and Moses gives a certain weight to Genesis that probably no other prophet of the Old Testament could give so this next question might be a little tricky with a book like genesis because there's so much involved but

how would you describe Genesis in one sentence Genesis is the story of God's dealing with Humanity beginning with creation and running through to the founding of the people of Israel and that's a great one- sentence description and it hearkens back to the point that you made a little bit earlier about Genesis being this prologue in this fact that we think of Moses as the author who's who who's going to be writing about Exodus and all of the experiences of the Israelite tribe you have this story of Genesis really sets everything into motion so I I

I think it's it's it's so fascinating to think about it in that perspective of of this prologue not only to all of history but specifically talking about Israel in that time too so so so how could you describe the narrative flow of this book for us how could you walk us through kind of the basic narrative structure of Genesis yeah so Genesis is a book that continuously Narrows down its focus you know so it starts with a wide Focus the creation of the universe can't get much wider right you know in the beginning God created

the heavens and the Earth and then quickly it Narrows down to just the Earth and tells us what God did uh in those first six days to create things on earth uh once we get to Adam and Eve uh we follow a little bit about Adam and his sons but the next thing we know we're following a particular line of Adam that takes us down to Noah and we focus out of all Humanity on Noah who has three sons and Noah and his sons and their wives survived the uh great flood and then um we

learn about what happens uh to Noah's sons in Genesis chapter 10 which is often called the table of Nations is tells us what happens to these various Nations that come from hamem and japheth but then we narrow it down and follow the line of Shem and that line of Shem comes down to Abraham and so we narrow it down out of all the sons of Noah to Abraham then we follow Abraham Abraham has a couple Sons Ishmael and Isaac but we narrow it down to Isaac we follow Isaac Isaac has two sons Jacob and Esau

we narrow down to Jacob and we follow Jacob and his sons down to the end of the book of Genesis so it's a it's a book that has a a story line that keeps narrowing our Focus until we hit the people of Israel that's a really neat way to think about it I don't think I've ever really thought about Genesis as this kind kind of grand funnel that's going from this big picture big picture and just taking you smaller smaller smaller smaller until you're following this this single family through to the end of Genesis 50

and that's really an interesting way to really talk about it I love it yeah I I think it's it's important to to understand what's going on because you know the author Moses will tell us a little bit about what happens to these other people he tells us a little bit about what happens to Esau he tells us a little bit uh about what happens to you know other kind of Sidelines but he always comes back to spend most of his time on this major narrowing down to the people of Israel so so what is the

major theme that we should take away from Genesis and and and I should ask how does knowing this theme how does this focus of this theme affect our reading of Genesis well I think the great theme of Genesis actually comes in chapter 3 after the fall into sin God makes a promise and he tells Eve that she's going to have a seed a a descendant who will come and Crush Satan's head this is the promise the first promise in the Bible of the Gospel that we find in the New Testament with Jesus Jesus is the

one who's going to come to crush Satan's head and the theme of Genesis is following This Promise through the generations the promise is given first to Adam um obviously the promise has to flow through Noah he's the only one in his generation that survives but the question becomes which son of Noah well very obviously it's the son Shem uh and that leads to his descendant Abraham and Abraham gets the promise in you all the nations of the earth will be blessed and of course that blessing for all the nations comes in Abraham's great son Jesus

and that promise is repeated to Isaac and it's repeated to Jacob and at the end of the book we find out which son of Jacob is going to bear that promise and that happens in Genesis 49 the kind of the penultimate chapter where Jacob prophesies that it's going to be given to Judah and of course we know that the great king of Israel in the Old Testament David is from the line of Judah and Jesus we know in the New Testament is often called son of David so the promise of redemption that comes to fruition

in Jesus when we hit the gospels in the New Testament is really the theme I think that runs like a golden thread throughout the entire book of Genesis and and what this what this adds to us too is we have this creation story and this story of these early peoples going through from on through Noah and through Abraham all this and but what is makes this so unique is we're seeing this personal relationship that God has with his people because what we can see from other creation stories is we can see a Universe being made

a world being made and then you can you know read about histories of people but what is is so unique and so so true and special about the way that God sets up this world is it's not just you know it's not just the winding up of the world and letting it go instead we see God making promises with his people we see God having personal relationships with these people we see people wrestling with God you know we see this this this through line of trust and relationship and love that these these people have with

their Creator God that same Creator God we read about in Genesis 1:2 and we see them continue to move through this line and that just sets up the whole Arc of human history is a relationship between God and people yes and I think it's important to see then that Genesis is showing us that uh God's choosing of Abraham is not for Abraham's sake it's for the sake of everyone everyone's going to be blessed in you all nations of the Earth will be blessed God's choosing of Isaac and Jacob and ultimately of the people of Israel

is not just for their benefit but for the benefit of all who come to know Jesus and believe in him uh and so it it's not because they Abraham is so special we'll maybe we'll get a chance to talk about Abraham a little bit later uh Abraham has his flaws too it's because of God's love for Abraham that makes so special it's because of God's love for Israel that makes them so special because through Israel will come the Savior for all people of all Nations I may have stepped on this a little bit but the

next question I wanted to ask is what does Genesis teach us about God well it it teaches us a number of things I mean obviously the earliest chapters teach us all about God's power he can just speak and things come into existence yeah um and so it shows us you know God is all powerful uh and going to accomplish all things even just by speaking it uh but it also shows us I think more importantly a God who is loving and gracious when Adam and Eve sin he doesn't leave them in their sin immediately he

comes with a promise of a savior um when Abraham or Isaac or Jacob's sin he doesn't leave them in their sin he comes after them with his gospel prom he guides them to be with him and it shows us that this same God deals with us in the same way he he can deal with us with his law and his judgment if he needs to but way the way he really wants to deal with us is through his mercy and Grace which again comes in full flower when we get to the New Testament we see

Jesus so we see a God who is is powerful a God who is righteous and and judging but a God who most of all wants to be gracious and merciful and bring people to himself in his mercy so that they can be with him in eternity and I think you know the gospel message is not just something we find in the New Testament we find it already in the Book of Genesis yeah it's so important to combine these TR these two truths about God that God is all powerful and wants to respond to us in

kindness in Mercy in Grace so that we can trust that he is merciful because he is all powerful those two work together so well in tandem if he wasn't all powerful then we would have to question whether he could be all merciful and if he wasn't all merciful then we can you know try to question his goodness and power and all the so all these attributes of God Speak so well together and we see these emerge through Genesis through the very beginning of the Bible yes and and I think that's very important I think you

know sometimes um especially new Christians people who haven't read the Bible a lot um don't know to read it with kind of an eye to God's mercy it's easy to read about you know God who's a god of wrath and Punishment and he can be that it can be very uh hard on Sinners but uh we need to realize that the message of the Bible ultimately brings us to the gospel promises and um for new Bible readers I think they need to learn to read the Old Testament as well as the New Testament that way

it's easy to find it in the uh New Testament because once we see Jesus everything becomes much clearer but it's already there in the Old Testament uh and it's there at the very first book of the Old Testament it sets the tone for the rest so what does Genesis teach us about us about people well it it teaches us first of all that God made human beings special uh if you can't get out of the first chapter of Genesis without finding that God makes Adam and Eve the crown of his creation he gives them dominion

over you know it says the beasts of the field and the birds of the air um the the the crown of God's creation is Humanity so it teaches us right away that you know we were created to be special to God but then it also teaches us about our sinfulness because Adam and Eve disobeyed God they became flawed and all of their children and descendants are also similarly flawed sin is now become that's so attached to us that I think sometimes we don't even realize how attached to us it is um and so we it

teaches us we need to stand humbly before God uh because we do not deserve any of this grace and mercy that he showers on us and yet he gives us to it to us all the time so I think it it tells us um that you know daily we need to come to God in Repentance knowing that our sins are many probably even many more than we even realize but that God is always willing to reach out to us forgive us our sins for Jesus sake um and in Genesis you know you can't get out

of the third chapter without finding this terrible curse of sin that besets all of us yeah um but also God's great commitment his eyes are always on that commitment to overcome our sin through his promise in Jesus Christ even just just that basic reminder that is so important of what Genesis teaches about how loved you are how loved humanity is that God loved us so much to to make us to intimately make people as we read about in the early chapters and then as you as you so put the idea that we could sin that

we could fall that we could break that relationship with God and yet he doesn't just then start over right then he doesn't just leave and go do something else instead he is still wanting to be intimately involved with his creation that's just such a testament to how loved you are that it's it's so worth that reminder because so often often we can find ourselves cloaked in shame and guilt and all of these things which is a result of our Brokenness and it's it's a a bodily response to that Brokenness that we feel but at the

same time knowing what we see in from the very beginning that's going to carry through all 66 books is just how Loved You Are by that same all powerful God we talked about earlier and who approaches us with the same mercy and Grace we talked about earlier that is all a response to how much he loves us yeah and and and I think you know once when we keep that in mind it keeps us from from being um too arrogant about our our own situations yeah um because you know when you when you read about

these people in the Book of Genesis you know even the best of them Noah and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph they all have their faults uh and that reminds us we have our faults too and um like them God loves us which is a great segue because you mentioned a few of these people so it's like you knew that the next question I was going to ask you was about certain people from the Bible it was perfect so I asked you if you could if you could take a couple of people that we

see in Genesis and highlight what we can learn from their lives yeah well I think um maybe the three most important people in Genesis are Abraham Jacob and Joseph so let's start with Abraham um interesting fellow you know he's a pretty much an old man when we really meet him I mean he's introduced in chapter 11 we learn about the birth of Abraham and his two brothers uh in that chapter but we really don't meet him till we get to chapter 12 and Abraham is is already an old man and God calls him and says

leave your Homeland go to wherever I tell you um and Abraham does it so we see first of all that Abraham is a great man of Faith he doesn't even know where God is telling him to go he just goes follows and God ends up taking him to the land of Canaan and when he gets in the land of Canaan God makes a promise uh to him again and Promises him that he will give him that land and that land of course will become the land for his descendants to live in but we also see

a man who uh despite the fact that he has great faith is just like us and his faith waines at times and so already in chapter 12 after he's shown this great faith in God he goes down to Egypt and God has promised to protect him he he's told Abraham whoever blesses you I will bless whoever you know disrespects you I will curse but Abraham somehow wavers a little bit in that faith in God's promise and so he says to his wife Sarah uh say you're my sister uh because you're a beautiful woman and I'm

afraid if the the Egyptians see that you're my wife they'll kill me to get you now Abraham obviously is not fully trusting that promise that God gave him to protect him uh and the interesting thing is we learn if we read carefully in Genesis he's not asking her to tell a complete lie she is his half sister MH they have the same father different mother so it's not quite a lie but it's not really the whole truth yeah it's a little bit of a thing yeah it's a little bit dodgy right so I mean we

see this with Abraham and in fact we see him repeat this again back in the land of Canaan when he comes back to the land of Canaan with a man named aimc he does the same thing twice why because he's got a weak spot God has promised him that all the nations of the earth will be blessed through him and and he knows this means he has to have a son but he doesn't have a son yet and so he's this weak spot Sarah's gonna bury him a son but he's he's very nervous about that

right and in fact it this will go on for a number of years until finally God does give him a son uh and uh very clearly Abraham uh is a man who uh of great faith but like us has his weak spots and he has his doubts nevertheless the the kind of the highlight of the Abraham story comes near the very end of his life When God says to him take your son your only son Isaac which is an interesting thing because Isaac's not technically his only son he's already had Ishmael but as far as

God's concerned he's the only one that counts because he's the son of the promise and so he says take your son your only son Isaac and sacrifice him and so Abraham complies he does we don't hear him arguing with God asking God what's this about and you've got to wonder well if he kills Isaac as a sacrifice how the promise going to be fulfilled yeah well this tells us something else about Abraham's faith I think it tells us and the writer to the Hebrews in the New Testament makes the same conclusion it tells us Abraham

believed God was so powerful he could even bring someone back from the dead and so he's willing to sacrifice his son Isaac and we know what happens he gets up on the mountain uh he raises a knife over Isaac about about to plunge it in and God stops him and says you know now I know you fear me that Abraham has this great fear that is respect love and faith in God and um here is is kind of the highlight of the story where Abraham believes in this powerful God that even can bring people back

from the dead when I when I taught Old Testament I would always tell my students you know any other Miracle you read about in the Bible is just God's Little parlor trick compared to bringing some one back from the dead you know the the great miracle is the resurrection yeah we have previews of it in the Old Testament where a couple times people are brought back from the dead but the permanent bringing someone back from the dead of course is Jesus rising from the dead with the promise that we too someday will rise and so

Abraham has that same Faith uh and so you know he's the first person uh that we should think of and in fact there's more words about Abraham in the Book of Genesis than any other person uh next I would go to Jacob uh skip over Isaac Isaac's an important person but he's almost kind of a link to the next person which is Jacob uh and Jacob we find is an interesting uh fellow to say the least he's very much a trickster he's learned the tricks from his his uh grandfather Abraham who you know played a

trick on Pharaoh down in Egypt she's my sister and by the way Isaac learned from his father and did the same thing yeah and now uh Jacob becomes the trickster and he tricks his father into giving him the great blessing instead of giving it to Esau a story we read about um very early on in in the story about Jacob M as the story transitions really from Isaac to Jacob uh Esau of course his older brother is upset about this because Esau was the one that Jacob wanted to give the blessing and Esau very much

wanted it and he threatens um to kill Jacob because of this and so Jacob has to flee to the land of um his ancestors where Abraham came from U but there he's going to get a wife in fact he's going to get two wives uh when he's there um and interestingly enough the trickster gets tricked right he works seven years to get Rachel and Uncle laan tricks him and gives him Leah instead and he has to work another seven years to get Rachel so um the trickster gets tricked uh something very interesting uh but Jacob

turns out to be a man who uh maybe starts with a weak Faith but grows uh as he was leaving the land of Canaan we have the famous story of so-called Jacob's Ladder which is probably actually a staircase MH uh where God promises to bring him back to that land um Jacob goes uh to the land of his uh uncle laan gets a wife has children is there 20 years and finally comes back and when he comes back we get the famous story of Jacob wrestling with God it's actually he wrestles with a man we

learn later on in the story it's revealed to us that Jacob believes he's wrestled with God and I I think he's right yeah um and God um makes uh him another promise to strengthen him at that point and gives him a new name Israel to remind him of that promise so we see a man who grows in faith and I think one of the things we see with Jacob as he grows in faith is that um God can do the same thing for us we may start out weak and uh we may start out with

not a great faith in God but God can work with us he can strengthen our faith and he can help us grow in that Faith throughout our life just like Jacob does uh Jacob of course eventually is tricked by his sons when they sell Joseph into slavery and they think they make him think that um you know Joseph is dead yeah and so he Mourns for Joseph but then the story focuses this on Joseph and as it focuses us on Joseph we see a very remarkable man now Joseph again is not without his flaws he

has these dreams early on these two dreams that eventually are going to be fulfilled because he the dreams basically are about the fact that his brothers and even his fathers going to come and bow down to him he's going to be greater than them yeah um but here we kind of see one of Joseph's flaws he's the he's the young kid um with his brothers and yet he's bragging to them and you can tell the brothers resent it doesn't quite know when to keep things to himself yeah right yeah you know he's he's got to

brag a little bit too much a little bit too proud of himself maybe so Joseph um gets sold into slavery because of his brother's jealousy but God remembers his promise Joseph who is a very faithful highest man um lives with uh God in his life and so he prospers first as a slave in Egypt and then when he is unjustly thrown in jail he prospers in the jail and eventually uh is recommended to Pharaoh when Pharaoh has a dream he can't interpret and Joseph interprets the dream and and doesn't take credit for it no longer

is he bragging he's says to Pharaoh it's God who can interpret dreams he's really giving God the credit for the interpretation so we here again we see a man who's kind of grown a little bit in his faith um so Joseph is there in Egypt we get the the famous story of Pharaoh's dreams that say there's going to be seven years of plenty and seven years of famine in the land of Egypt and Joseph advises him to store up the excess during the first seven years so that they can make it through the next seven

years and when the famine strikes it strikes not just Egypt but also the land of Canaan where uh Joseph's brother and father are and of course this is going to eventually lead to their being reunited yeah um but I think the greatest thing about Joseph actually comes in the last chapter of Genesis after Jacob dies Joseph's brothers say among themselves um we could be in trouble here now Joseph's in charge of everything in Egypt he's the pharaoh's right-hand man um and so they come to him and say you know please forgive us for what we

did to you and Joseph says to them am I in the place of God basically saying if God wants to punish you he can do it but I'm not going to do it I will take care of you and your children um so Joseph probably is is a great example of how we should forgive others um he shows us a man who has grown so much in his faith that even when his brothers did about the second worst thing you can do with the person what's the only thing worse is maybe uh you know to

commit murder yeah um they sold him into slavery and yet here is Joseph who not only forgives his brothers but promises to take care of them um what a great story about our capacity to forgive when God strengthens us I don't believe Joseph could have done this on his own he did it because God was in his life the Holy Spirit indwelt him in a way that he could rise to the occasion and forgive even this great thing that his brothers did against him and I think it reminds us too of the power of God

in our lives that should move us to be loving and forgiving like our heavenly father is loving and forgiving so so these are like three Titans of the faith that we just talked about Abraham and Jacob and Joseph I wanted to ask is there is there like a a side character is there like a a smaller person a person that we see in Genesis that you're like hey look out for this person they don't get the credit that they nor get but man this is a person that when you read about them I want you

to take a little bit of note about them yeah well I think that person is Judah okay one of Joseph's brothers yeah now Judah is the fourth son of Jacob um and the last part of the Book of Genesis seems to be all about Joseph but there's a hint that it's not just all about Joseph that Judah is important too so we learn about Joseph being sold into slavery the very next chapter leaves Joseph and is all about what happens with Judah um Judah gets married he has children um there's a problem with the children

eventually we find out that Judah ends up um having relations with his daughter-in-law although he doesn't know at the time she's the daughter-in-law she's disguised herself uh and we get this interesting story about the the uh birth of two of judah's sons Zarah and Paris um and that that happens right after we read about Joseph being sold down into Egypt and in the next chapter it returns to Joseph and we go on with the whole Joseph story but something interesting happens when Jacob's sons have to go down to Egypt to buy Grain and the second

time they go down Joseph has taken brother Benjamin or not brother Benjamin he's he's threatened to take brother uh Benjamin captive but instead um he takes another son captive right and so to buy that son back out what are they gonna do how are they G to get him out as as captive well it's Judah that says send Benjamin down Joseph the guy in Egypt he doesn't know he's Joseph at this point the guy in Egypt said if you don't come down with Benjamin uh you're not going to get any grain again and so they

run out of grain they're desperate it's Judah who convinces his father to give him kind of custody of of Benjamin even though Judah doesn't want to give him up the firstborn son Ruben couldn't convince his father you would think if anybody could convince his father be the firstborn son but no it's Judah instead uh and so they go down take Benjamin eventually they learn that this man is Joseph he has them all come down into Egypt Jacob and his family and it's interesting that who does Jacob send ahead of him to kind of prepare things

with Joseph it's Judah so Judah again becomes kind of important he's the he's the the you know the front man who goes in before the rock star comes in yeah right and then in chapter 49 Jacob is dying he's on his deathbed he calls his sons in saysi going to prophesy and tell you what's going to happen and he starts with the firstborn Reuben doesn't go so well for Reuben because of what Reuben did he slept with one of his father's wives not a good deal um and then he goes to the next two sons

Simeon and Levi doesn't the doesn't go too well for them either because of what they did they they killed uh the people people of sheam in their rage and then he comes to Judah and he says Judah you your brothers will praise and then he goes on to give the promise to Judah and this promise to Judah of course is that the uh promised savior that we first uh hear about back in Genesis 3 is going to come from the line of Judah yeah uh and so Judah becomes very important in fact this is the

last time we're going to see the the promise of the coming Messiah until we get to David when it's further narrowed down who in the tribe of Judah David and we're going to have to go all the way to the book of Samuel before that happens yeah so you can see how important Judah is here even though he seems to be kind of a minor character in this bigger story about Joseph at the end of the book of Genesis oh I love it thank you for that that's a great note so keep an extra eye

out for Judah especially when you get to the second half of Genesis and you're reading through that whole story keep an eye out for Judah now I wanted to I wanted to ask because I think it's important especially if you've never read all through Genesis and you're like after this conversation why wouldn't you want to start reading through Genesis but I want to acknowledge that there's a couple of uh tricky things to read in Genesis you start reading and you're like what are these Nephilim then you start King and then you keep reading and you're

like why is God flooding the Earth and you keep reading and you're like Sodom and Gomorrah what's happening so for people who get stuck a little bit on these kind of sticky parts of Genesis what advice can you give them to encourage them to don't give up you know don't put it down don't start to write off Genesis but to keep going yeah well I think we have to keep a couple things in mind and I think this is good maybe some of these are good for wherever you're reading in the Bible I think one

of the things is is Genesis is not designed to answer every question we might have about what happens in many cases it's giving us broad brush Strokes especially in the first 11 chapters yeah um it's giving us broad brush strokes and it doesn't seek to explain everything so when you get to something you go that's a little mysterious well it just is even Bible scholars who have studied Genesis their whole lives sometimes have a little bit of uh difficulty with these things sure so don't let that stop you because the Bible is not there to

answer all our questions it's there to tell us about the God who loves us and created us and so I think that's especially true in some of these questions about Genesis you're going to have questions about things people have come up with answers but the answers you know are a little dodgy at times sure um you know so I think that's that's one thing we have to keep in mind yeah I think the other thing we have to keep in mind is Genesis is trying to give us enough information to flesh out the background without

always giving us the details of the background I think it's kind of like sometimes if you go to a play you know they have that background set up there yeah so you can tell you know kind of the physical setting of what where the play is supposed to be taking place and that particular scene but if you look closely at the set you know it's it's just a general thing it's not it doesn't tell you exactly everything you might want to know about that place where the scene takes place and Genesis does that a lot

it sets a lot of background stuff it tells us about the descendants of Esau but it doesn't give us a whole lot of information it's just kind of background stuff okay we know the descendants of Esau are around yeah know um it's background stuff uh and so I think we have to realize that um especially when Genesis is giving us kind of background information it's not trying to um paint a detailed picture it's it's again trying to to give us the setting so we understand the setting but we're supposed to focus on the major narrative

not the background so I think that's another reason not to give up because you can you can kind of go down a rabbit hole with some of these things that are um you know just part of of the background yeah and you have to stop and say oh okay this tells us part of the background the the Nephilim story really tells us about Sin is still around yeah you know um and we might have questions about who the Nephilim are or how this whole thing played out but really the whole point of the story is

to say sin's still a problem it hasn't ended just because do you know but it's still around and so I I think that's very important when reading the book you don't get bogged down and asking questions about things that quite frankly Genesis is not designed to answer yeah it's almost like yes each of the trees is beautiful there can be so much you know interesting and Beauty in the trees but don't miss the forest for the trees yes that's a great note so so for as we are wrapping up this this conversation on Genesis I

wanted to ask you what is what is something that everybody should know that maybe they don't about this book what is something in all of your time spent with Genesis that you found so fascinating that you everybody should know this about Genesis yeah well this is kind of a maybe you're going to think a little nerdy note no that's all right please you know us Scholars are kind of nerds anyway um there's a guy named Eber okay in the book you meet him in the genealogy that leads us up to Abraham uh when we're in

chapter 11 now this guy actually is mentioned a lot of these guys in the genealogies they're only mentioned in genealogy and nowhere else this guy if you if you look up he's mentioned several times uh in the Book of Genesis and he actually gives his name to a people the Hebrews now it's interesting that this comes up Abraham is called a Hebrew and Joseph is called a Hebrew the Hebrew slave yeah he's called okay um so this man is kind of uh important now not all Hebrews are Israelites okay you could be descended from Eber

and not eventually from the line of Abraham and still be a Hebrew okay and that's probably what's being signal when they say Abraham the Hebrew he's part of a larger group right and the same thing with Joseph they know about Hebrews down in Egypt because they call him the Hebrew slave so this guy Hebrew is kind of lurking around in the Book of Genesis and we still use this word Hebrew today yeah and it's kind of a tribute to this guy who interestingly enough is the 14th man listed in the line that leads from Abraham

or from from Adam to Abraham so you know Seven's an important number in the Bible yeah from Adam to Abraham we have a very interesting guy at number seven okay and then we have this other interesting guy at number 14 um so the sevens are important tens are important too by the way Noah is 10 Abraham is 20 there you go okay so uh this guy Eber gets a little attention from Moses but it's easy for us to read over it yeah how funny okay Eber you get your shout out here oh I I love

it well Dr Simon thank you so much for helping to walk us through Genesis I really appreciate it we would you do me a favor would you mind praying for anybody listening right now who is about to Embark in Genesis or maybe want to dive into it for with with fresh eyes in a new way I I would love it if you could pray for people who are walking into Genesis okay let's do that thank you Lord God Heavenly Father we pray that through the words of the Book of Genesis you would speak with your

Holy Spirit to the hearts of all who read it open up the words of Holy Scripture so that they might see your love for all mankind in Jesus Christ throughout the entire Bible especially as they read the book of Genesis help them to learn of your love that overcomes all sin help them to see how you worked in the lives of people in the past as an example of how you wish to work in our lives also we pray that you would help them see the promise of Jesus here this we ask in the name

of our Triune god father son and holy spirit amen amen Dr Simon thank you so much for your time really appreciate it thank you [Music]