Genesis

Kyle Mardon

Humm 220

Genesis

            The book of Genesis focusses on the creation of man and of the expansion of man under God’s covenant. Genesis begins with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The chapter focuses on how Eve is tricked by the snake to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge and then give some to Adam. The two realize they are naked and immediately hasten to clothe themselves before God arrives. When God learns that they have disobeyed him he makes it so childbirth would be a painful process for Eve and all women and banishes Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. In this section Adam and Eve demonstrate the human thirst for knowledge and the curiosity to defy the rules in the quest for that knowledge. In some ways this section demonstrates some common qualities that all humans share.

            After their banishment from the Garden of Eden they gave birth to their son Cain followed by Abel. One day in anger Cain killed Abel and makes him “a fugitive and a wanderer of the earth”. Cain went forth married and produced offspring, including Noah (pg.4). When God saw how wicked man had become he decided to flood the earth sparing only Noah and his descendants. In this section the violence that Cain demonstrated when he jealously murdered his brother was shone in most of his descendants requiring God to annihilate their evil from the world.

            Of Noah’s descendants were Abram, who went with his wife Sarai and his nephew Lot in following God’s orders to the land of Canaan. While in Canaan, Abram ventured to Egypt and angered the Pharaoh after it was revealed that the woman he claimed was his sister was really his wife Sarai. After he left Egypt as a very rich man, Abram and Sarai settled in the area. However Abram’s wife, Sarai, could not provide him any children so instead she had her Egyptian maid, Hagar, conceive her husband child instead. Later after Abram spoke with God his name became Abraham and Sarai became Sarah. God allowed Sarah to conceive a child, who would be called Isaac as God had instructed. This chapter was surprising since Abraham and Sarah were always portrayed to me as being good and the qualities I have seen in this section, such as infidelity and jealousy, are not exactly what I would call good.

            Further away in Sodom two angels arrive, whose mission is to destroy the city for its outcry. But before this is done the angels spare Lot, Noah’s nephew, and his daughters and take them away from the city. After fleeing  Zoar Lot went up into the hills with his daughter where both of them got their father to consume wine and impregnate them, resulting in them giving birth to their fathers children. In this section; I wondered why did the city need to be destroyed, surely there was another solution to get these men to change their ways instead of simply killing them.

Meanwhile Sarah gave birth to Abraham’s son Isaac, after which she had her maid, Hagar, banished since Sarah now had her own child and had no further need of hers. God decided to test Abraham and ordered him to take his son Isaac up to the Land of Moriah and sacrifice him. Abraham passed the test when he was willing to sacrifice his son, whom he did not have to sacrifice on the order of an Angel. In exchange for passing his test God blessed Abraham and multiplied his descendants.

After Sarah died Abraham decided that he needed to find a wife for his son Isaac and sent out his servant to his homeland to find and wife for his son and bring her back to Canaan. So the servant left and after arriving in his master’s homeland prayed to God to assist him in his quest. God answered his prayer and the servant found Rebekah and brought her back to Canaan to become wife to Isaac. In the final sections I found it unnerving that Rebekah would so willingly go with a strange man to a land she had never been to be married to someone she had never met. In today’s society such an occurrence is unheard of. While I find it hard to believe that such events that were told in Genesis actually happened, I am not yet prepared to declare that it is false.