Saturday Delay

"Good morning. Happy afternoon! Good night. Leave us a message and we'll call you back. I hope you have a nice day, bye! Stop?"

That's the outgoing message on my phone from Sadie, my 7 year old. It was her idea. She said, "Well, we don't know when they're going to call."

Indeed we don't.

Sorry I didn't post day 3 last night - I fell asleep halfway through the reading! Jermaine came in the room to go to bed at 2am and he said he found me passed out with the Bible on my chest. Our dog, Sebastian was curled up next to my netbook [mini laptop]. I think he's fascinated by our electronic devices - he's been known to lick my phone. :)

So, sigh. It's happened already. I've missed a day. I'm seriously tempted to try to do two today to catch up [because, apparently, I'm out of my mind]. But I've decided not to give into that temptation. I knew this would happen. Let's face it, we all did. In fact, I tried to build it into the very fabric of the system when I set out on this venture.

The goal is to finish by the end of October [that way if I'm skipping classwork to write this blog I'll still have time to undo the damage I've done by the end of the semester [Note: if you're reading this and you're one of my professors - I would never do that in your class]].

There are 31 days in August and 31 days in October, I started this with 2 days left in July and the The Bible in 90 Days allows for you to miss two days, sooooo, I have a 6 day buffer. Er, well, make that 5 now. :)

Anyhoo - here we go with The Skinny [warning: It's looong]:
Chapter 29 - Jacob is still running away from his brother. He comes to land of the "eastern peoples". He finds himself in a conversation at a well and the shepherds that he's chatting with turn out to be his relatives! Laban's daughter, Rachel [a shepherdess] shows up and evidently Jacob is excited because he kisses her and starts weeping. Jacob ends up staying with Laban [Abraham's brother's grandson] and they cut a deal. Jacob will work for Laban for 7 years and then he can marry Rachel. 7 years comes and goes and Jacob is ready to do the deed. There's a marriage, but Laban somehow does the old switcheroo and gives Jacob his oldest daughter Leah to sleep with instead. The text exclaims, "When morning came, there was Leah!" [29:25a] Jacob is upset, but stays married to her and Laban decides Jacob can marry Rachel, too, if he works for another 7 years. We are told that Leah's maidservant is Zilpah and Rachel's maidservant is Bilhah. We find out that Rachel is barren. Leah starts popping out boys - Reuben [sounds like Hebrew for he has seen my misery]; Simeon [one who hears]; Levi [attached]; and Judah [praise] - all to win her husband's affections. Chapter 30 - Rachel, who may have been a bit on the dramatic side, sees her sister having all these kids and announces to Jacob, "Give me children, or I'll die!" She has her maidservant marry him and Bilhah gives birth to Dan [he has vindicated] and Naphtali [my struggle]. Leah has stopped having kids, so she panics and has her maidservant bear him some children. Zilpah gives birth to Gad [good fortune or a troop] and Asher [happy]. Then the sisters get in a strange argument - in the end, Rachel gets some of Reuben's mandrakes and Leah gets to sleep with Jacob. Leah gets pregnant three more times: Issachar [reward], Zebulun [honor] and Dinah [the only girl mentioned in the family]. Finally Rachel conceives! She has Joseph [may he add]. The scene shifts: Jacob tries to leave but Laban doesn't want him to, so Jacob dives into a fun science experiment: selective breeding for livestock. He ends up with the healthiest strongest animals in the flock. Chapter 31 - We find out that Laban has not really been treating Jacob well. Jacob decides to leave and so they flee - neglecting to tell Laban. Rachel steals her father's household gods without telling Jacob. Laban catches up to them and God tells him in a dream - "Be careful not to say anything to Jacob, good or bad." There's a confrontation and Laban [careful not to say anything good or bad] simply searches for the gods. Rachel pretends that she can't get up because it's that time of the month and sits on them. Obviously, her father doesn't find them. Jacob and Laban make a covenant and it's all hunky dory again. Chapter 32 - Right at the beginning, Jacob meets some angels and exclaims "This is the camp of God!" He then decides to go and try to reconcile with his brother, but he's majorly freaking out about it. He divides his family into two groups so that if Esau attacks, some may escape. Next there is this awesome scene where Jacob is alone and a man wrestles with him all night. The man could not overpower Jacob so he touches the socket of Jacob's hip, leaving him limping - but still fighting! The man tries to end the fight because it is daylight. Jacob says he will not let him go until he gets the man's blessing. The man changes Jacob's name to Israel [he struggles with God] because he "wrestled with God and with men and [has] overcome." Chapter 33 - A touching scene where the brothers meet at last after 20 years of being at odds. Esau has no hard feelings toward his brother. Chapter 34 - Dinah is violated by Shechem, the Hivite prince. The text says "he loved her and spoke tenderly to her." Dinah's brothers are hopping mad at Shechem because the two weren't married and he's not one of them. He wants to marry her. Her brothers tell him that must get all the males in his family circumcised. But then they attack his unsuspecting city and kill all the men - taking the women and children for themselves. Chapter 35 - God tells Jacob to go to Bethel and again announces that Jacob is to be called Israel. At this point, the narrator begins to use the name. Rachel has a 2nd son, but dies in childbirth. She names him Ben-Oni [son of my trouble] but Jacob calls him Benjamin [son of my right hand]. Out of nowhere we find out that Reuben has slept with Bilhah and that Israel knows. The text shifts gears and lists Jacob's twelve sons. The chapter ends with the death of Isaac at 180 years. Chapter 36 - [I forgot to mention in the last entry - at the beginning of Chapter 28 Esau realizes that his mom and dad would flip if he married a Canaanite woman - so he does [in addition to his other wives]] This chapter is all about Esau's descendants and the tribes they've become. Chapter 37 - Enter the story of Joseph. His brothers hate him because he's his dad's favorite. Jacob gives him a really nice robe. Joseph has a couple dreams that apparently mean his family is going to bow down to him. This makes his brothers so mad that they plot to kill him - except Reuben - he tries to save Joseph. The other brothers then decide they won't kill him - they'll just sell him to some Midianites passing by. They take his robe, put some animal blood on it and take it back to their father, saying that Joseph was killed by a ferocious animal. Meanwhile, the Midianites sell Joseph to Potiphar, an Eunuch [a castrated man] and Captain of the guard in Egypt. Chapter 38 - Tamar is Judah's son's widow [Judah's son - Er - was wicked in the Lord's sight and God put him to death]. As was custom, Judah had his other son, Onan, sleep with her to carry on the family line. But every time he did he "spilled his semen on the ground" so she couldn't get pregnant. God thought this was evil, too, and had him killed also. Judah promises her to Shelah, his younger son when he grows up. Judah's wife passes away. Shelah grows up but Tamar is still not with him, so she pretends to be a prostitute and Judah, not knowing it was her, sleeps with her. She takes his seal and cord as pledge for payment. Later, he tries to pay, but he can't find her. He eventually stops looking because he doesn't want to become a "laughingstock." Then he finds out that Tamar has been a prostitute and is pregnant - he demands she be put to death! She shows him his own cord and seal and he ends up feeling like a fool. She has twins - Perez and Zerah. Chapter 39 - Joseph prospers and Potiphar puts him in charge of his entire household. Potiphar's wife wants to sleep with Joseph but he won't do it, calling it a "sin against God". So she accuses him of trying to rape her and her husband throws him in jail. He prospers in jail and the warden puts him in charge of all the prisoners. Chapter 40 - Potiphar's Cupbearer and Baker end up in jail, too. They each have a dream and Joseph interprets - the Cupbearer will be restored to his position in 3 days. The baker will be hung on a tree in 3 days. Joseph asks the Cupbearer to remember him when he is restored, but he forgets.


Oh, wowsers. Those were some detailed chapters. Let's get right into the wonderment:

I don't know how Laban switched Rachel with Leah. Was Jacob drunk? Was it that dark? Were they twins? Even so, interesting that Jacob got a taste of his own medicine.

I'm at this place in my life where I'm seriously questioning what many in the church teach about women and men and their roles. I don't necessarily want to go into all of that here, but I almost can't read these 12 pages [and a lot of other pages] without mentioning how intensely women were oppressed in biblical times:

• Leah is forced to share a husband with her sister - Jacob loves Rachel, but has no love for Leah.
• If you are a maidservant to a woman who can't bear children, you may have to marry her husband and become his concubine.
• Judah and Tamar's story stinks of double-standards when he demands she be put to death.

But God truly the ultimate Protagonist - using the situations described above to show his mercy, love and respect for women.

I always thought Shechem raped Dinah and that's why her brothers reacted so strongly. And maybe he did. But the text says "he loved her and spoke tenderly to her" which doesn't really imply rape.

Esau's forgiveness really touched me. I got a little teary-eyed.

There is a lot of other really good stuff to talk about, but honestly, I'm spent. I think that's all for now - I may edit this to include more later - though, it's pretty daggone long as it is! The next reading will take us to the end of Genesis [which may be the fastest I've ever gotten through the first chapter of the Bible in my life] - 41:1-50:26.