Help with Discussion Thread: Theological Themes in Genesis 1 — 11

1

Creation and the Fall

Genesis 1–3

There are numerous ways in which the first book of the Bible may be outlined. Perhaps the simplest is:

I. Primeval history (chs. 1–11)

A. The creation (chs. 1–2)

B. The fall (chs. 3–11)

1. The cause (ch. 3)

2. The effects (chs. 4–11)

II. Patriarchal history (chs. 12–50)

A. Abraham (chs. 12–25)

B. Jacob (chs. 26–36)

C. Joseph (chs. 37–50)

This outline accurately reflects the content of Genesis but fails to suggest any relationship between the parts or any progression in emphases. It is preferable to allow Genesis to outline itself and follow the units suggested by the text. These units are readily discernible.

I. The story of creation (1:1–2:3)

II. The generations of the heavens and the earth (2:4–4:26)

III. The generations of Adam (5:1–6:8)

IV. The generations of Noah (6:9–9:29)

V. The generations of the sons of Noah (10:1–11:9)

VI. The generations of Shem (11:10–26)

VII. The generations of Terah (11:27–25:11)

VIII. The generations of Ishmael (25:12–18)

IX. The generations of Isaac (25:19–35:29)

X. The generations of Esau (36:1–37:1)

XI. The generations of Jacob (37:2–50:26)

Thus Genesis is composed of an introductory section, followed by ten more sections, each introduced with the phrase “these are the generations of” (tôlĕdôt). Structurally, then, Genesis divides itself not into two sections (one on primeval history, constituting about a fourth of the book; one on patriarchal history, constituting about three-fourths of the book), but rather into two quite unequal sections: 1:1–2:3 (an introduction) and 2:4–50:26 (composed of ten subsections). And yet the primeval/patriarchal divisions cannot be totally laid aside, for one observes that the first five uses of the tôlĕbdôt formula appear throughout 2–11, and the remaining five appear throughout 12–50 (or to be more exact, in the outline above, II–VI = 2:4–11:26; VII–XI = 11:27–50:26). Although there is no “these are the generations of Abraham,” his appearance at the end of VI (see 11:26) and his dominant role in VII make him a bridge figure between primeval and patriarchal history, between the origins of the nations of the earth and the origins of the chosen nation.

The movement in each of the last ten sections is from source to stream, from cause to result, from progenitor to progeny. That movement is described either through subsequent narrative after the superscription (II, IV, VII, IX, XI) or a genealogy that follows the superscription (III, V, VI, VIII, X).

The result created by this introduction-superscription-sequel pattern in Genesis is that of a unified composition, neatly arranged by the author (or the narrator or editor). Furthermore, the testimony of the text is to emphasize movement, a plan, something in progress and motion. What is in motion is nothing less than the initial stages of a divine plan, a plan that has its roots in creation. From the earth, Adam will come forward. From Adam, Abraham and his progeny will emerge. Eventually, out of Abraham, Jesus Christ will emerge. In the words of VanGemeren (1988: 70), “The toledot formula provides a redemptive-historical way of looking at the past as a series of interrelated events.”

Creation (1–2)

The first thing that strikes the reader of the Bible is the brevity (just two chapters) with which the story of the creation of the world and human-kind is told. The arithmetic of Genesis is surprising. Only two chapters are devoted to the subject of creation, and one to the entrance of sin into the human race. By contrast, thirteen chapters are given to Abraham, ten to Jacob, and twelve to Joseph (who was neither a patriarch nor the son through whom the covenantal promises were perpetuated). We face, then, the phenomenon of twelve chapters for Joseph, and two for the theme of creation. Can one person be, as it were, six times more important than the world?

Nevertheless, our understanding of the Bible surely would be impoverished—rather, jeopardized—without these first two chapters. What are they about? A skeletal outline of the contents of 1:1–2:3 is helpful, as shown in figure 1.

Figure 1

Day

Day

1 light

4 luminaries (sun, moon, stars)

2 heavens

5 fish, birds

3 earth, edible vegetation

6 land animals, man

Day 7 the Sabbath

It is obvious that the first six days fall into two groups of three. Each day in the second column is an extension of its counterpart in the first column. The days in the first column are about the creation (or preparation) of environment or habitat. The days in the second column are about the creation of those phenomena that inhabit that environment. Thus, on day one, God created light in general or light-bearers; on day four, specific kinds of light appear. On day two, God made the firmament separating waters above from waters below; on day five, God made creatures of sky and water. On day three, God first created the earth and then vegetation; on day six, God first made the creatures of land and then humankind. The climax to creation is the seventh day, the day of rest for God. The preceding days he called good. This one alone he “sanctified” (the only occurrence in Genesis of the important Hebrew root q-d-š, apart from the reference to Tamar, Judah’s daughter-in-law, as a “shrine prostitute” [38:21, 22 niv]).

In addition to this horizontal literary arrangement, one can observe a fundamental literary pattern throughout all of Genesis 1. Using the language of Claus Westermann (1974: 7), we note this pattern:

1. announcement: “and God said”

2. command: “let there be/let it be gathered/let it bring forth”

3. report: “and it was so”

4. evaluation: “and God saw that it was good”

5. temporal framework: “and there was evening and there was morning”

An alternative pattern is:

1. introduction: “and God said”

2. creative word: “let there be”

3. fulfillment of the word: “and there was/and it was so”

4. description of the act in question: “and God separated/and God made/and God set/so God created”

5. name-giving or blessing: “and he called/blessed”

6. divine commendation: “and it was good”

7. concluding formula: “there was evening and morning”

The Relationship of 1:1–2:3 (or 4a) to 2:4 (or 4b)–25

Genesis 2:4–25 often has been described as a second creation story, although less so among biblical scholars today. Furthermore, it is suggested that not only is this a second story about creation, but also it comes from a different source than that of Gen. 1:1–2:3. Scholars who embrace the documentary hypothesis believe that the first creation story is the work of an anonymous Priestly editor or editors (P) around the time of the Babylonian exile (sixth century) or immediately thereafter. These scholars believe that the second creation story comes from a much earlier writer, usually designated as the Yahwist (J), an anonymous writer or writers from Jerusalem in the time of David and Solomon (the tenth century). Often, therefore, a scholar who subscribes to this hypothesis deals with the texts in their perceived chronological order of production, discussing 2:4–25 before 1:1–2:3.

There are several reasons for making this distinction. First, there is the different and, at points, contradictory account of the sequence of the orders of creation: the first sequence is vegetation, birds and fish, animals, man and woman; the second sequence is man, vegetation, animals, woman. Second, in the first sequence the exclusive name for the deity is “God” (Elohim), but in the second sequence it is “Lord God” (Yahweh Elohim). Third, in the first sequence God creates primarily by speaking: “and God said, ‘Let there be,’ and it was”—that is, creation by fiat. In the second sequence the emphasis is on God as potter or artisan: “the Lord God formed man of dust” (2:7 rsv); “out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field” (2:19 kjv); “and the rib … he made into a woman” (2:22 rsv). Fourth, in the first sequence the emphasis is on cosmogony: whence this world? In the second sequence the emphasis is on anthropology: whence humankind? Fifth, some interpreters draw a distinction between the poetic features of 1:1–2:3, with its use of stanzas and repetitions, and the narrative prose presentation of creation in 2:4–25.

Thus, the contention is that Genesis presents two originally independent creation stories, about five hundred years apart in origin. This phenomenon of “doublets” we will encounter again in the discussion of the flood story, where the unanimous opinion of literary and source critics is that originally there were two independent accounts of the deluge, again J and P, but with one distinct difference: the redactor (or redactors) of these opening chapters juxtaposed the two creation stories but spliced the two flood stories. As far as I know, attempts to provide a reason for this redactive distinction have not proved satisfactory.

In regard to the creation narrative, is it necessary to posit two mutually exclusive, antithetical accounts? Could 2:4–25 be a continuation of rather than a break in the creation story, “a close-up after the panorama of Genesis 1” (Ryken 1974: 37), or even simply an extended commentary on the sixth day of creation? The order of events in ch. 1 is chronological; the order of events in ch. 2 is logical and topical, from humankind to its environment. It is unnecessary to posit conflicting accounts about when God created human creatures of both sexes (in 1:1–2:3, at the same time; in 2:4–25, first the male and then later the female). As Barr (1998b) has argued, it is quite possible that in Gen. 1:26 God says, “Let us make a man in our image,” and that is followed by “male and [subsequently] female he made them” in 1:27. This seems to be the reading that Paul follows in 1 Cor. 11:7 when he distinguishes between man being the image and glory of God and woman being the glory of man: “A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man” (niv). Most of the information in 2:4–25 is an amplification of 1:26–29. Chapter 1 is concerned with the world, while ch. 2 is concerned with a garden; one is cosmic, the other localized. God’s relationship to the world is in his capacity as Elohim, while his relationship to a couple in a garden is in his capacity as Yahweh Elohim; the first suggests his majesty and transcendence, the second his intimacy and involvement with his creation. Exactly why we must not posit a unity in Genesis 1–2 escapes me.

Theological Themes in Genesis 1–2

What the Themes Teach about God

The most obvious observation is the emphasis in these two chapters on the truth of God’s oneness. Instead of encountering a host of deities, the reader meets the one God. Unlike pagan gods, God has no spouse or consort. What is the significance of this? Can this be the Bible’s way of saying that God’s self-fulfillment requires nothing and no one outside of himself? Indeed, all the resources for self-fulfillment are within him. Everything else in the created order is, on its own, unfulfilled and must look elsewhere for fulfillment. It is God’s oneness that alone makes sense of words such as “universe” or “universality.”

A second truth affirmed by these chapters is that there is a line of distinction between God as creator and humankind as creature that is never effaced. Tracing Mesopotamian chronologies back to their furthest point, as is done in, for example, the Sumerian King List (a document produced by Sumerian scribes shortly after 2000 b.c. that lists the names of rulers from the advent of kingship onward), one discovers that the remote ancestors are divine beings. The distinction between divine and human has been erased. Genesis 1–2 traces the human race back as far as possible and still finds Adam/man. Then comes the gulf. Through Hosea the Lord says succinctly, “I am God, and not man” (Hos. 11:9 niv), and it is said in a context of hope not haughtiness. If Israel’s salvation is in humankind, there is despair. If salvation is in God, there is hope.

A third truth is that God is plural in his nature. Genesis 1:26 says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (rsv.) From an exegetical viewpoint, it cannot be said that this refers to the Trinity. At least six interpretations have been placed on the words “let us” here. One of these is the mythological interpretation. One god, perhaps the chief god, speaks to the other deities and informs them of his intentions or solicits their advice and help in some project, in this case, the creation of humankind as a whole. The contention is that the writer of Genesis 1 failed to expurgate completely the mythological motifs that he was borrowing. Another interpretation is that God is speaking to the creation, the earth. Earth then becomes a partner with God in the creation of humankind and a constituent part of humankind’s composite nature, balancing the divine inbreathing. A third possibility is that God is speaking to the angels, the heavenly court, and thus human beings bear certain resemblances to both God and the angels. This view implies that in the creation of humankind God had assistance from his angels. The fourth interpretation is that this is a plural of majesty—that is, God speaks of himself and with himself in the plural (cf. Gen. 11:7, “Come, let us go down” [niv]; Isa. 6:8, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” [niv]). The very name of God in ch. 1, Elohim, is plural, the suffix -im indicating masculine plural nouns. A fifth possibility is that the expression can be described as a plural of self-deliberation, as in the English usage, for example, “Let’s see, what should I do?” Where we clearly have this, however, the language tends to be first-person singular rather than first-person plural (e.g., “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” [Gen. 18:17 niv]). Sixth, and most plausible to me, is the explanation that sees in the “us” a plural of fullness or plurality within the Godhead. Perhaps God is addressing his Spirit (already mentioned in 1:2). That God is triune is a fact that awaits the preachment of the New Testament revelation.

A fourth truth is that God is moral and holy. To Adam, God said both “you may eat” and “you may not eat.” One of the books most frequently referred to in this area is The Idea of the Holy, by the German Protestant theologian and historian of religion Rudolph Otto. Otto’s book was first published in 1917 and translated into English in 1923. The essential theme of the book is an emphasis on the “holy” as the distinguishing feature of religious experience. To use Otto’s phrase, the “holy” is mysterium tremendum et fascinosum—that is, that which elicits in the worshiper both fear and fascination, “lashed with terror, leashed with longing,” to use the phrase of the poet Francis Thompson.

Important for Otto is his contention that the moral and the ethical are not identical with the holy. What Otto does not address is the fact that God’s holiness gives the basis to his moral demands. The purpose of the Decalogue is to show Israel how to live with a holy God. Even in paradise there is the institution of law.

A fifth truth emphasized in these two chapters is God’s sovereignty and majesty. Effortlessly he speaks the created order into existence, shaping it as a potter produces a masterpiece from clay. At no point does God encounter antagonism or resistance in his work of creation.

Two illustrations will suffice. One is the way in which the emergence of the sun, moon, and stars is delineated. The order of narration in Genesis is interesting: sun, moon, stars. In the Enuma Elish (Creation Epic) the order is stars, sun, and moon. Here, the stars are not created, but are understood to be independent realities; there is a divine aura about them. Another point of interest about the sun and moon in the Genesis account, given the adulation of these luminaries in the ancient world, is that they are simply called “the greater light” and “the lesser light.” Furthermore, the stars are treated with the matter-of-fact observation, almost an afterthought, “he made the stars too.” A final point is that the function of the sun and moon is explicitly spelled out to emphasize their position as servants, given their orders and duty by God.

A second illustration of divine sovereignty is the lack of any reference to God’s confrontation with celestial monsters or opponents, a theme that is prevalent in the Enuma Elish. The closest that Genesis 1 or 2 comes is the reference to the “sea monsters” (1:21). What is of interest is the use of the Hebrew word bārāʾ, occurring in 1:1, 21 and three times in 1:27 in connection with the creation of humans to describe their origin. God “created” them. Whenever this verb is used in the Old Testament, God is always the subject. And the verb is never followed by the accusative of material, unlike, for example, the verbs in “[he] formed man of dust” (2:7 rsv) and “the rib … he made into a woman” (2:22 nrsv). Although it probably goes too far to say that this use of bārāʾ, explicitly teaches creatio ex nihilo, it does indeed lean in that direction. We should also note that Genesis 1 uses another verb for God’s creating, the verb “make” (1:7, 16 [2×], 25, 26). The verb ʿāśâ unlike bārāʾ, often has a human subject. There is something unique about God’s creating (conveyed by bārāʾ), but there is also something similar between God’s making and humans’ making (conveyed by the verb ʿāśâ).

It has long been suggested that the reference in Gen. 1:2 to “the deep” (tĕhôm) is a veiled allusion to Tiamat of Babylonian fame. Even if that is the case, one would be hard pressed to see any obvious mythic allusions in the use of tĕhôm by the Genesis author. Absolutely no idea of the “deep” as the enemy of God emerges from the text. Rather, the “deep” is an inanimate part of the created order. In addition, very strong linguistic arguments militate against the equation of Tiamat and tĕhôm.

And yet there are references in Scripture to God doing battle with the monster. For example, Isa. 51:9 speaks of God cutting Rahab into pieces and piercing the dragon, and Ps. 74:13–14 says that God has broken the heads of the dragons in the waters and crushed the heads of Leviathan. Indeed, Isa. 27:1; 51:9; Ps. 74:13 use the same Hebrew word for “dragon” or “sea monster” as does Gen. 1:21. But the dragon of Isaiah and of the psalm is an adversary of God. The dragon of Gen. 1:21 is created by God and called “good.”

What may be said about these references, outside of Genesis, to monstrous antagonists of God? First, the allusions to Leviathan, Rahab, and the dragons would have to have been intelligible to the hearers of these words in order for them to grasp the forcefulness of the speaker’s point. After all, would the psalmist’s “You crushed the heads of Leviathan” mean anything if the mythical Leviathan was unknown to the audience? We can surmise, therefore, that the people of God were familiar with the mythological literature of their neighbors.

Second, the language and motifs of mythology find their clearest expression not in the opening chapters of Genesis, where one might expect them, but rather in prophetic literature and the Psalter. More importantly, the context in which these “battles” take place is redemption, not creation. For example, cutting Rahab into pieces and piercing the dragon (Isa. 51:9) are parallel with God’s parting of the Red Sea “for the redeemed to pass over” (Isa. 51:10). Similarly, crushing the heads of Leviathan and breaking the heads of the dragons (Ps. 74:13–14) appear in a psalm of lamentation in which the author prays for deliverance from his enemies; the deliverer is God, who is “working salvation in the midst of the earth” (Ps. 74:12 rsv).

The biblical writers deliberately use these mythical allusions not in the setting of creation, but in the context of redemption. There is no evil inherent in the world that God has made. Where is evil conquered? In creation? No! Rather, evil and chaos and disruption are conquered within time, in the redemption of God’s people.

The climax of creation is the Sabbath (Gen. 2:1–3). This episode likewise may be seen as an extension of the implicit emphasis on divine sovereignty and majesty. God’s rest on this day is not to renew his strength after combat with turbulent forces of evil. The day’s purpose is to provide rest for God after a week’s work of creation. Rest supersedes the act of creation. There is silence before creation, before God speaks. After creation there is silence again. This silence God has sanctified (Gen. 2:3).

What the Themes Teach about Humankind

The pattern of creation mostly by fiat in Genesis 1 is broken by the observation that God’s act of creation of humankind is preceded by a collaborative statement and a statement of divine intention (1:26a).

Specifically, we are told that God created humans in his own “image” and “likeness.” This is the only place in the Old Testament where these two nouns appear in connection with one another, and one immediately asks about their relationship. Are they interchangeable, an example of the pervasive penchant for listing synonyms in biblical Hebrew? Two observations may support this. In 1:26, referring to God’s decision to create, both words are used. But in 1:27, which deals with the actual work of creation, only “image” is used. In 5:1, “he made him in the likeness of God” (niv), the Hebrew word for “likeness” is translated in the Septuagint not by the usual homoiōsis, but by eikōn, normally the Greek equivalent for the Hebrew word for “image.”

A second possibility is that the word “likeness” modifies the word “image.” The function of “likeness” then would be to limit the meaning of “image.” Such qualification, it is suggested, helps to avoid the implication that human beings are a precise copy of God. Some credence may be lent to this view by the fact that “likeness” appears in the Old Testament twenty-four times, and fourteen of these are in chs. 1 and 10 of Ezekiel. In these passages the prophet is careful never to say that he saw God or his entourage, but only the likeness of God.

A third suggestion is the reverse of the second one. Thus, “likeness” does not soften the concept about “image,” but rather amplifies it. The human being is not simply an image of God, but a likeness-image. That is, more than simply representative, human beings are representational of the invisible God.

Whatever the best explanation may be on this technical matter, it is plain to see that humankind is set apart from the rest of creation and indeed is placed on a pedestal. Unlike the views of pagan accounts that we will examine, in Genesis humankind neither is created as an afterthought nor is consigned to drudge as a substitute for recalcitrant deities. Manual labor is a God-given privilege, not a sentence or a penalty.

Genesis 1 also affirms that humankind was created to “subdue” and “have dominion” over the earth and over living creatures of the sea, land, and air. Some scholars have suggested, in light of the wording of 1:26, that it is precisely humankind’s domination of the world that constitutes the image of God (although the relation is more a consequence than a definition).

But what does it mean to subdue and have dominion over? The latter verb is used twenty-four times in the Old Testament, normally to denote human relationships: a master over a hired servant (Lev. 25:43); chief officers over laborers (1 Kings 5:16); a king over his subjects (Ps. 72:8); the rule of one nation over another (Lev. 26:17). Several of these passages (e.g., Lev. 25:43; Ezek. 34:4) suggest that dominion is to be exercised with care and responsibility. Nothing destructive or exploitative is permissible. Presumably the same nuance is present in Gen. 1:28. The same verb applied to humankind in 1:28 is applied to the sun and moon in 1:16—“to rule,” respectively, the day and the night—and certainly no concept of indiscriminate or manipulative action is included there. It is not incidental that in Genesis 1 both humans and animals are vegetarians, each being given access to one element of vegetation (1:29–30).

It is remarkable that a large section of the creation story is given over to a separate and distinct account of the creation of woman. By implication Eve is referred to in the “them” and “female” of 1:26–29, with the specific mention found in 2:18–25. Such a separate narration of woman’s creation is without parallel in ancient Near Eastern literature.

The long-overdue emphasis on women’s rights has, in our time, stimulated many scholars to restudy the opening chapters of Genesis for essential clues on the identity of woman and for principles determining male-female relationships. Such a study reveals, as examples, the following. First, both man and woman are made in the image of God (if one reads the creation of the male and the female in 1:27 as synchronous rather than sequential). Sexual identification is irrelevant, certainly not a qualifying factor. Thus the command to rule and have dominion is directed to both male and female. Second, the origins of both man and woman are similar: both owe their existence to raw material—dirt and rib. Neither is actively involved in the creation of the other. Third, woman is described as a “helper fit” for Adam. What Eve is (2:19), the animals are not (2:20). Interestingly, the writer describes Eve with a word that preponderantly is applied to God elsewhere in the Old Testament. The “helper” par excellence is God. The helper who is invoked for assistance normally is stronger than the one who stands in need. Fourth, upon first seeing Eve, Adam says, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (v. 23a rsv). Similar words appear in Gen. 29:14; Judg. 9:2; 2 Sam. 5:1; 19:12–13, where a case could be made for the fact that the phrase “your bone and your flesh” is an affirmation not simply of kinship but of loyalty. Thus the phrase would be the equivalent of our modern commitment “in sickness and in health.” That is, circumstances will not dictate or determine a relationship previously agreed to by both parties, and certainly adverse circumstances will not undermine it.

The follow-up to this also bears examination. A man is “to leave” his father and mother and “cleave” to his wife (2:24). The verb “to leave” may also be translated “forsake” with God as object (as in Jer. 1:16), meaning to terminate a loyalty. The second Hebrew verb, “to cleave,” may also describe one’s covenantal commitment to God (as in Deut. 10:20; 11:22). The marriage relationship is then an oath, a covenant, never an arbitrary relationship of convenience.

A fifth observation about male-female relationships is that quite clearly Genesis sets subordination of the woman to the man not in the context of creation, but in the context of the fall (see 3:16).

I have already suggested that according to Genesis 1 and 2 human beings are unique, set apart from everything else God created. They alone bear God’s image, and they alone subdue. But the same passage of Scripture that underlines the uniqueness of humankind (Gen. 1:26–31) also modifies that uniqueness (Gen. 2:15–17). Human beings are not autonomous, but live under a divine law. There are boundaries, much as there are for the people Israel, whom God puts in their garden, Canaan. As long as one lives in ways that honor God, one remains in the garden/Canaan. But defiance of the boundaries set by God means expulsion from the garden/Canaan.

The man is placed in a garden, “put” there (Gen. 2:8) by God himself. The location of the garden is not easy to fix, but it is to be found “in the east” (Gen. 2:8), a Hebrew word that could also be translated “long ago.” The presence of the Tigris and Euphrates (Gen. 2:14) suggests Mesopotamia. If that is the case, then the first sin (Genesis 3) and the last sin of primeval history (Genesis 11) both had their setting in Mesopotamia. Additionally, Eden, if placed outside the limits of Palestine, is a further illustration of the international and universal emphases within Genesis 1–2. Sailhamer (1995) is one of the few commentators on Genesis who does not place the garden of Eden in Mesopotamia, but rather equates the garden with the land that God later promised to Abraham and to his progeny.

In the garden the man has a dual responsibility: till the soil (Gen. 2:15) and abstain from eating of “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Gen. 2:17 niv). The penalty for transgressing these commands is death, which in this instance could mean mortality, but not necessarily so. If death equals mortality, then it explains why later in the narrative God prohibits further access by Adam and Eve to the tree of life (Gen. 3:22). But this interpretation can be challenged. A close reading of 3:22 suggests another possibility. In what is God’s only unfinished sentence in the Bible (Humphreys 2001: 49), he says, “And now, lest he reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.…” God expels the man from the garden not because of what he has done, but because of what he might do if allowed to remain: eat from the tree of life and become immortal. This suggests that humankind was already mortal. Other understandings of “die” in “on the day you eat of it you shall die” must be proposed. I suggest that “die” means the loss of a relationship of intimacy with God, replaced by alienation from God. Something in the man and the woman dies that makes impossible the continuation of a vibrant walk with God.

No small amount of debate has centered on the meaning of “the knowledge of good and evil.” What does this phrase imply? Can “evil” be inside the garden too? Does the “knowledge of good and evil” designate either omniscience or sexual awakening? Those are the two interpretations most commonly offered by scholars. But there are problems with both, especially the latter, in light of Gen. 3:22. Passages in which the phrase or a similar one occurs may or may not help us determine its meaning in Genesis 2–3. In Deut. 1:39 Moses refers to the second and younger generation of Israelites as “your children who do not yet know good from bad/evil” (niv); that is, they cannot be responsible for their actions because they lack the moral judgment that one expects of those who have reached the point of accountability. In a similar fashion (i.e., speaking of a very young person) Isa. 7:15 speaks of the promised child who “will eat curds and honey by the time he knows enough to reject the wrong/the bad and choose the right/the good.” In 2 Sam. 14:17 the wise woman praises David as one “like an angel of God in discerning good and evil” (niv). So, what is the meaning of the phrase in Genesis 2–3? If we allow the context, rather than possible parallel passages, to determine the meaning, then the interpretation must fit with the emphases of Genesis 3, which is about prohibition, enticement, disobedience, falling away, and death of some kind. One might then suggest that “the knowledge of good and evil” is moral autonomy. In deciding for themselves what is good and proper and what is not, the couple are making themselves the final moral authority for their lives (in a diabolical way becoming their own god) and “stepping out of the position of creaturely dependence and trust in the creator” (Moberly 1992: 24).

Perhaps we should limit ourselves to the observation that in Eden God placed limits on human freedom. As we will see shortly, Genesis 3–11 points out that the act of sin often consists of precisely this: overstepping divinely imposed limits.

The First Verse of the Bible

At least two problems form around Gen. 1:1: how should the verse be translated, and what is its relationship to 1:2 and 1:3–31? First, how should the verse be translated? Two possibilities exist. One is to treat v. 1 as a dependent, temporal clause. The translation then could be, “When God began to create the heaven and the earth …” or “In the beginning, when God made heaven and earth.…” In modern times this translation is as old as Moffatt’s translation (1922), and it is reflected in more recent translations such as the New Jewish Publication Society version, the New English Bible, the translation of Genesis by E. A. Speiser in the Anchor Bible commentaries, and the New Revised Standard Version. Possible support for this rendering appears in 2:4b, which begins with “When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens” (niv), followed by a description of desolation (2:5–6) and then God’s first creative action (2:7).

The more traditional translation renders Gen. 1:1 as an independent clause: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This is reflected in the kjv, rsv, nasb, niv, and jb.

If the first possibility is followed, taking 1:1 as a dependent clause, then the additional facts are that v. 2 is a parenthetical comment, set off by hyphens from what precedes and follows, and that the main clause appears in v. 3, “And God said.…” The result is an unusually long, rambling sentence, which is not unheard of per se but is quite out of place in this chapter, laced as it is with a string of staccato sentences.

As far as the biblical evidence itself is concerned, the problem of translation originates with the first word of the Bible, bĕrēʾšît (kjv, rsv: “in the beginning”; neb, njps: “when”).

In biblical Hebrew nouns are classified, in terms of syntax, as being in either the construct state or the absolute state. For example, in the phrase “word of the Lord,” “word” is in the construct state because it is dependent upon the next word, “the Lord.” It cannot stand by itself and make any sense. A word in the construct state normally does not take a definite article, although an article may be placed in a translation for sense and smoothness. Conversely, “Lord,” in the absolute state, is independent and stands alone. The question is this: is bĕrēʾšît in the absolute or the construct state? If it is absolute, then Gen. 1:1 is an independent clause; if it is construct, then the verse is a dependent clause.

Although this is no relief for the reader, it must be pointed out that grammatically bĕrēʾšît can be defined, as it stands, as being in either the absolute or the construct case. The preference should be given, however, to the absolute case. At least, this is how all the ancient versions understood it. Those opting for the temporal interpretation of the verse point out, in protest, that if this were the case, one would expect a reading barēʾšît. The difference in Hebrew between bĕrēʾšît and barēʾšît is that the latter includes the definite article, “in the beginning.” The objection is not fatal, however. The counterargument for the traditional translation is the observation that time designations in adverbial expressions, especially when the reference is to remote time, do not need the article, seldom use the article, and occur in the absolute state.

Gerhard von Rad (1972: 48), in his celebrated commentary on Genesis, maintains that “syntactically perhaps both translations are possible, but not theologically.” Brevard Childs (1962: 41) contends that “to read verse 1 as a temporal clause does not take seriously enough the struggle which is evidenced in this chapter.” Keeping in mind the pagan emphasis on creation out of eternal and preexistent matter (e.g., Tiamat’s corpse), and the emphasis on confrontation, struggle, and manipulation as antecedents to creation, one cannot miss the fact that the Scripture writer in this opening declaration is repudiating that very concept.

Further confirmation of this is found in the verb employed by the writer in 1:1, bārāʾ. It is used again in 1:21, 27 (3×); 2:3; 5:1–2 (3×); 6:7, and elsewhere in the Bible. Two things may be said about this verb. First, the subject of bārāʾ, is never anyone but God. Therefore, such activity is exclusively divine. Second, whenever this verb is used, its direct object is always the product created, never the materials used as the means in creation. To quote von Rad (1972: 49) again, “It is correct to say that the verb bārāʾ, ‘create’ contains the idea both of complete effortlessness and creatio ex nihilo, since it is never connected with any statement of the material. The hidden grandeur of this statement is that God is Lord of the world.” Childs (1962: 41) observes, “The omission of the accusative of material along with the simultaneous emphasis on the uniqueness of God’s action could hardly be brought into a smooth harmony with the fact of a preexistent chaos. World reality is a result of creation, not a reshaping of existing matter.”

All of this brings us to the second major problem, the relationship of 1:1 to what immediately follows, especially v. 2. At least three major views have been propounded. These are summarized in table 1.

The first view has been called the “gap” or “restitution” theory. An alternate version of this approach is to suggest two distinct creations (without any “gap” or “restitution” emphasis). Verse 1 describes creation out of nothing, the unformed product of which appears in v. 2, and vv. 3–31 describe God’s subsequent creation of the formed world.

Table 1

Verse

Theory 1

Theory 2

Theory 3

1

original creation

original creation

superscription, or summary statement, of everything developed in the following verses. The words “the heavens/the sky and the earth/land” may be a biblical rhetorical device known as merismus, a means of expressing totality through the use of antonyms (e.g., “I’ve been through thick and thin” or “I’ve looked up and down for the paper”). The statement then affirms that all that is owes its existence to God.

2

gap, indeterminable in terms of length—“the earth had become without form and void” (due to Satan’s expulsion from heaven?)

condition of the earth at its inception: formless and void; dark; the Spirit of God moved over the waters

situation before creation, the preprimeval period. Almost cryptically, the words “without form and void, darkness, deep” and “waters” stand alone and without explanation or commentary. F. Derek Kidner (1967: 44) correctly captures the contrast: “The sombre terms of 2a throw into relief the mounting glory of the seven days.” To assume, however, that these terms are reflective of a chaos, outside of God’s creation and antagonistic to his divine plan, finds no justification in the text.

3–31

God’s second act of creation, or the divine act of re-creation

gradual order and symmetry were imposed on the formless cosmos, the movement being from imperfection to perfection, incompletion to completion

sequential narration of creation

Nonbiblical Creation Stories

Every ancient civilization produced its own corpus of mythical literature in which the general topic was either the origins and behavior of the gods (properly called myths) or the exploits of ancient heroes (properly called legends). In the myths the actors exclusively are the gods. In the legends the actors primarily are people, but the gods also assume major roles in the stories.

Of course, not every piece of ancient literature has survived or has been excavated by archaeologists. It is, for example, a moot question whether there was a strong emphasis on creation theology among the Canaanites. That question arises from the fact that no specific creation story has yet been discovered in the literature from Ras Shamra. Ras Shamra, located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, is the modern Arabic name for ancient Ugarit. From 1929 to the present, large amounts of Canaanite texts, to say nothing of texts in other languages, have been discovered there. The general subject of these texts is either economic or political concerns, but a good number of the texts also have had a religious dimension, either myths (Baal and Anat versus Mot or Yamm) or legends (Daniel and King Keret).

It does not need to be debated whether these myths and legends, those produced both inside and outside of Canaan, were known to God’s people Israel. I have already argued that references in the Old Testament to Rahab, Leviathan, and the dragon presuppose an intelligent awareness on the part of the worshipers of Yahweh of the traditions surrounding these suprahuman beings. Furthermore, one section of the Gilgamesh Epic, a Mesopotamian deluge story, has been discovered at the Israelite city of Megiddo.

What do these stories contribute to our knowledge and understanding of the Old Testament? Why should we study them, apart from any information that they may add to our awareness of ancient religions and cultures?

Obviously, one does not need an extensive or even a superficial knowledge of mythology to understand the message of Genesis 1–2. And yet I am persuaded that the implications of the creation story of Genesis emerge most dramatically when it is compared with the creation literature of, for example, Mesopotamia (be that literature Sumerian, Assyrian, or Babylonian). For it is in the comparison of literature having an identical general theme that the distinctiveness of the biblical faith and message appears.

We need to remember that Genesis 1–2 was not produced by the nation called Israel, in the sense that these chapters are the mature reflections of some individual (or individuals) on the questions of origins. Rather, this material is the result of divine revelation, truth that human beings could not know unless it was revealed to them from above.

A study of mythology helps the believer to see how ancient people tried to answer ultimate questions about life and reality without the light of revelation having dawned upon them. Interestingly, the answers provided to those questions by ancient people are not all that different from the answers provided by modern but unredeemed people.

In the study that follows I limit myself to material from Mesopotamia, the Enuma Elish (the first two words in the poem, which may be translated as “when on high”), and pertinent sections of the Atrahasis Epic.

There are several reasons for limiting my study to compositions from that part of the world. First, the stories that I will discuss are among the most remarkably preserved specimens of ancient literature. They are relatively free from problems of translation and from large gaps in the text. Often there are multiple copies, as later generations copied the story out for themselves.

Second, it is precisely these stories from Mesopotamia that are thought by many scholars to provide the source of the biblical material in Genesis 1–2 and 6–9. The scriptural stories, according to this theory, are adaptations of pagan myth with appropriate editorial revisions and deletions. I will respond specifically to this in my discussion of the flood episode.

Third, we know that Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldeans. It is more than likely that the stories that I am about to discuss were part of his upbringing. If nothing else, a knowledge of these particular myths and legends will help us to understand something of the world out of which God called Abraham. The shift was nothing short of radical. That shift was as much theological and philosophical as it was geographical.

The Enuma Elish

As I have noted, there are two stories from Mesopotamia in which creation is a prominent theme. Since its publication in the nineteenth century, the better-known one is the Enuma Elish. Two critical questions, apart from interpretation, are open to debate in any discussion of the Enuma Elish. One is the date of composition, and the other is the degree to which the epic is typical of Mesopotamian (a period covering some three to four thousand years) belief about creation. Is it normative or is it exceptional? Concerning date, two opinions exist. Although no extant copies of the epic are earlier than the first millennium b.c., cuneiform specialists such as E. A. Speiser and T. Jacobsen believe, on the basis of internal evidence, that the epic was first produced in the Old Babylonian period, meaning the early part of the second millennium b.c. (Speiser), or sometime during the middle of the latter half of the second millennium b.c. (Jacobsen). On the other hand, another cuneiform specialist, W. G. Lambert, thinks that the story is not earlier than 1100 b.c. He also states that the Enuma Elish is not typical of Sumerian or Babylonian cosmology, but rather is a sectarian and aberrant account. The Assyrians in the first millennium apparently did not find it aberrant, and so did not hesitate to borrow the epic from the Babylonians, making only such changes as necessary for the story to fit its new milieu (e.g., the hero is no longer Marduk, but the Assyrian god Ashur).

What of the contents of the story? Before the creation of anything there were two divine beings, Apsu, the male divine personification of fresh waters, and Tiamat, the female divine personification of marine waters. Through their mingling (or mating) a second generation is produced, Lahmu and Lahamu, both perhaps to be associated with the silt produced by these waters. Then comes a third generation, Anshar and Kishar, the horizon. And from them comes Anu the god of heaven, and from him Ea (Enki).

The senior deity Apsu is, however, unable to sleep because these younger deities are making too much noise. Over the protests of Tiamat his wife, but at the prompting of Mummu his servant, Apsu plans to remedy the problem by killing these boisterous gods. But before he can implement his plan, Ea places a magic spell on Apsu and then kills him.

Aroused and indignant over her husband’s unfortunate end and spurred on by some sympathetic supporters, Tiamat vows to carry out Apsu’s plan of deicide. She takes as her second husband Kingu.

At this point the major character of the story, Marduk the son of Ea, emerges. He is charged with the responsibility of leading and defending those marked for execution by Tiamat, a challenge that he accepts with the qualification that if he is successful, the gods will make him their head. After being suckled by goddesses, he is ready for battle (theomachy).

Marduk swiftly eliminates Tiamat and captures Kingu and the rest of the entourage. Marduk then splits Tiamat in two, making heaven from one half of her cadaver, and the earth from the other half. The imprisoned gods he subsequently charges with the responsibility of building him a permanent home, Babylon.

Further reflection and an outburst of protest by the employed gods lead Marduk to relieve the gods of this manual work by a second creation, the creation of humankind. He does this by having Kingu killed and using his blood to create humankind. The story concludes with a royal banquet at which Marduk formally receives permanent kingship, and finally the listing of his fifty names, each of which extols Marduk.

The Atrahasis Epic

The second account to be considered is the Atrahasis Epic, dating originally to no later than 1700 b.c., from which the earliest surviving copies come. Though dealing eventually and more extensively with the flood, I will limit myself here to those parts dealing with creation. The epic begins with a description of the world as it was before humankind was created. The three supreme gods had partitioned the universe among themselves. Anu rules over heaven, Enlil over earth, and Enki over all bodies of water. The focus in the epic is on the earth, the overseeing of which is a mixed blessing, more to be endured than enjoyed. Specifically, Enlil is in charge of the gods whose primary job is to dig the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. But as is true also in many modern labor disputes, the employees refuse to work, and they rebel against Enlil to the point where even Enlil is alarmed by the violence of these mutineers, even though they are his own children. Observing how intransigent his children are, Enlil starts to weep and threatens to tender his resignation and retire to heaven to live with Anu.

The arbiter is Enki. He is sympathetic to the complaints of the hard-pressed, overworked gods. His suggestion is to create humankind and thus free the gods from their toil. At Enki’s suggestion the gods kill one of their own, We-ila (the perpetrator of the rebellion?). From his blood and flesh, along with clay, humankind is created, with the help of the birth goddess Nintu(r)/Mami. In appreciation the gods confer on her the honorific title Mistress of all the gods. In all, seven males and seven females are created.

The Epics Compared

There are, of course, other creation accounts in cuneiform literature. I have outlined the two that best parallel the Old Testament. The following observations may be made.

First, the primary function of the Enuma Elish is not to describe the creation of the world or the creation of humankind. At best, that is a subplot. Its primary purpose is theogonic—that is, to explain the origin of the gods, and especially Marduk. How did a relatively minor deity (Marduk) climb from virtual obscurity to become the chief god of Babylon? In that sense the story is an etiology of Babylon’s patron god.

Second, the epic was composed with religious functions in mind. Evidence indicates that the Enuma Elish was recited in Babylon annually at the Akitu festival, the beginning of the new year. Tiamat was associated with the forces of chaos, Marduk with the forces of order. As in the myth Marduk triumphed over Tiamat, so for the coming year the ritual recitation of the text, it was hoped, would go a long way toward guaranteeing the victory of order over chaos in the unpredictable world of nature. The idea is that the right words in the right places at the right times implement the most desirable results. We ought to observe Lambert’s cautious note, however, that too much has been made of the cultic reading of the epic, and that nothing in the content of the story unequivocally implies a specific cultic function.

Third, both stories are set within the framework of a polytheistic system. According to the Enuma Elish, in the beginning there were two gods, Apsu and Tiamat. Marduk, the creator god, is a sixth-generation god. See figure 2.

Figure 2

Apsu and Tiamat

|

Lahmu and Lahamu

|

Anshar and Kishar

|

Anu

|

Ea (Enki/Nudimmud)

|

Marduk

The Babylonians’ portrayal of their gods is interesting. Both epics serve as a window into their concept of gods—origin, character, and destiny. Creation is told in terms of procreation. In the beginning there were two, not one. Through the “mingling” of these partners a part of the created order appears. (In Sumerian there is one word for “water” and “semen.”) Anu, the numinous power in the sky and thus the source of rain, has as his spouse Ki, the earth. Through impregnating her, Anu produces vegetation (and a host of demons and gods). Thus the gods are products of sexual activity, and they are subject by their nature to sexual needs. Pagans could see no future for their world and for their gods apart from a sexual relationship.

The needs, characters, and destinies of the gods are not markedly different from those of humans. Apsu is annoyed because he is deprived of sleep. He is also tossed betwixt and between listening to Tiamat, his spouse, who urges against the plan for execution, and Mummu, his vizier and counselor, who urges its implementation. Faced with mutually exclusive advice, Apsu opts for Mummu’s directive over that of his consort. The god, unable to act independently, is swayed by his counselor.

Apsu, although divine, is subject to magic, and he is successfully immobilized by Ea’s spell and subsequently killed. If myth is the poetic expression of pagan religion, magic is its practical expression, and it can be called on in situations of god against human, human against god, or god against god. The reason for this is the concept in paganism of a realm transcending even the powers of the deities, a realm to which they may be subservient. Israeli scholar Yehezkel Kaufmann called this area the “metadivine.” In this sense no god is sovereign and without limitations, not even Apsu.

Gods can be killed and can attempt to kill simply out of impulsive anger or for self-serving reasons. The attempt to murder may be motivated by revenge (e.g., Tiamat).

Fourth, in the Enuma Elish heaven and earth are not spoken into existence by the creative word of one majestic god, but are formed from the corpse of a slain god, Tiamat. The created order is thus divine, more a “thou” than an “it.”

Fifth, both in the Enuma Elish and the Atrahasis Epic humankind is created to relieve the gods of the necessity of manual labor, a chore that the gods soon complained about and felt was beneath their dignity. In the Enuma Elish humankind is created from the blood of a rebellious god, Kingu; in the Atrahasis Epic it is from the blood of We-ila (mixed with clay). In no sense can the creation of humankind be termed climactic, nor is there any unique dignity conferred on human beings. The human being is created as servant, not as king. Perhaps it goes too far to see a Mesopotamian doctrine of original sin in these accounts, but may not the episodes serve as an etiology to account for humankind’s proclivity to evil? Having been made that way, humankind is therefore the product of an inscrutable determinism.

The Fall (3)

Chapter 3 of Genesis raises tantalizing questions in the mind of the reader, but for these questions an answer is not supplied. For example, no detailed account is given of the serpent at this point. Certainly he is not called Satan. If he is indeed a cosmic antagonist to God, once in the angelic host but now expelled, Genesis 3 does not pause to tell us that. To be sure, the New Testament unequivocally refers to “that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (Rev. 12:9 nrsv; cf. 20:2).

The Serpent

There is uncertainty about the etymological origin of the Hebrew word for “serpent.” The Hebrew word is nāḥāš. Is it to be related to the Hebrew nĕḥōšet, “copper, bronze,” suggestive perhaps of something luminous (“an angel of light”)? Indeed, in the wilderness Moses made a bronze serpent (Num. 21:9), only to have it demolished centuries later by Hezekiah when the image became a fetish and an object of worship (2 Kings 18:4). Or is the word for “serpent” to be related to the Hebrew verb nāḥāš, “to practice divination”?

We should note that information in the Old Testament about Satan, and indeed for the whole world of demonology, is at a precious premium. And for good reason. It is as unlikely that the Old Testament will address itself to this issue at any length as it is that it will address itself in depth to an explication of the Trinity. When one remembers that Israel was surrounded by nations whose religious ideas about supernatural forces included a belief not only in gods but also in hosts of demons, it is easy to see why the Old Testament rarely mentions demonology.

In fact, the word śāṭan is employed in a number of ways (but never in Genesis 3). It refers, surprisingly, to the angel of the Lord, who may be an “adversary” (Num. 22:22, 32); to a person who functions as an “adversary” (1 Sam. 29:4; 2 Sam. 19:22; 1 Kings 5:4; 11:14, 23, 25; Ps. 109:6); to Satan, opponent of God and intruder into the angelic host (Job). In this last category the word occurs eighteen times (fourteen of them in Job 1–2). What is interesting is that in all but one of these eighteen occurrences (the exception is 1 Chron. 21:1) śāṭan has the definite article attached, “the satan.” This indicates that “the satan” is a title, not a personal name. Satan is not who he is, but what he is. He does not merit a name, and in antiquity, not to have a name was to be reduced to virtual nonexistence.

All that the chapter says, then, about this serpent is that he or it was one of the wild creatures that the Lord God had made. That is, the serpent was a created being, neither eternal nor divine. Also, the serpent was unlike any other animal, “subtle/crafty.” This in itself is not pejorative. The same word is used in Proverbs eight times (12:16, 23; 13:16; 14:8, 15, 18; 22:3; 27:12), and translates there as “the prudent [person],” who is contrasted with the “fool” in the first four of these references, and with the “simple” or “naïve” in the remaining four—thus, it suggests a good and commendable quality. It is no wonder that Jesus instructed his disciples to be as wise as serpents (Matt. 10:16).

On the other hand, the word is translated as the “crafty” whom God loathes in Job, another Old Testament wisdom book (Job 5:12; 15:5), the opposite in tone of the passages in Proverbs. Similarly, the feminine counterpart to this word translates as “prudence” in Proverbs (e.g., 1:4), but by contrast in Exod. 21:14 it means “treachery,” or scheming in murder.

It should also be pointed out that the Hebrew word for “subtle” used in Gen. 3:1, ʿārûm, sounds very much like the word for “naked” in the last verse of ch. 2—ʿărûmmîm. No great theological conclusion should be gleaned from that. However, the use in consecutive verses of two words that are written alike and sound alike but mean two different things is an indication of the author’s use of key words to link the narratives. In this case chs. 2 and 3 of Genesis are nicely linked.

The Temptation

If Genesis 3 is unconcerned with amplification about the identity of the serpent, it is equally unconcerned with answering another question that intrigues the modern reader: why did the serpent tempt the woman and not the man, or both at the same time?

It seems fair to assume that the narrator does not intend to have the reader suppose that Adam and Eve are in two different places when the dialogue is in progress. The “you shall not eat” of vv. 1, 3, the “you shall die” of v. 3, and the “you shall not die” of v. 4 are plural verbs. Adam and Eve are the subjects. Also, the kjv rendering of 3:6b is quite clear: “and [she] gave also to her husband with her.” This is to be preferred over the rsv’s “and she also gave some to her husband.” The nrsv blends both: “she also gave some to her husband, who was with her.”

Answers to the question of why it was Eve who was tempted are legion. At one extreme is the view that the temptation aimed initially at the woman is reflective of women as the weaker sex, the one more inclined to engage in fanciful speculation. Thus, the respected scholar Gerhard von Rad (1972: 90) hastens to generalize that it is women more than men who have “shown an inclination for obscure astrological cults” (biblically, is von Rad referring to texts such as Ezek. 8:14?). At the other end of the spectrum are moderate feminists, such as Phyllis Trible (1978: 110), who suggest that in the story as presented Eve is the more challenging of the two. She is theologian-philosopher, aggressive rationalist, and God’s defense attorney all rolled into one. If the serpent can make her capitulate, then her silent, uninvolved mate will follow suit.

The apostle Paul states, “Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner” (1 Tim. 2:14 niv). And in that emphasis Paul correctly lists the chronology of the trespass: first Eve, then Adam. She leads, he assents. But the apostle does not raise the issue of why Eve was tempted first.

The prohibition against eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was directed to the man (2:16–17). Nowhere are we clearly informed about how Eve learned of the prohibition. Presumably she learned of it from her husband, as her dialogue with the serpent (3:1–3) makes it obvious that she knows the prohibition well.

Possibly, then, the serpent chose Eve because she received the command from God only through an intermediary, her husband. One who had received God’s command directly would be less likely to acquiesce. (As an example of this in another context, note who yielded to the temptation to idolatry and built the golden calf: not Moses, God’s spokesman, but the people and Aaron, who received God’s word through Moses.)

It is perhaps something of a surprise that the snake and Eve are able to converse at all without an interpreter. This observation is not made tongue-in-cheek. Granted that there are parallels in ancient literature, such as the Egyptian shipwrecked sailor who, being the sole survivor of a wreck at sea and then cast upon an island, finds himself engrossed in conversation with the island’s lone occupant, a snake. But is the ability of the woman and the animal to converse simply mythological window dressing? Might our modern ability to communicate with pets be a remnant of a situation that once indeed did exist? Sin caused a rupture of Adam’s relationship to God, to Eve, and to the ground. May we include also his relationship to the animal world? How interesting it is that animals are accountable for their actions and behavior (Gen. 9:5). The postdiluvian covenant is made with animals too (Gen. 9:9), not just humankind. Isaiah sees ahead to the messianic age, in which the wolf will become lamblike or the lamb will become wolflike (metaphors for the nations of the world?).

If all of this is incidental, some elements in the text are quite clear and present themselves to the reader with forcefulness and precision. To use J. R. W. Stott’s (1965: 741) outline, we find here:

1. a permission to eat from every tree in the garden

2. a prohibition not to eat from one tree

3. a penalty for disobedience

How does the serpent attempt to undercut all of this? What is the essential intent of the temptation, and how far is it paradigmatic for the rest of the Bible, whenever the actions of the evil one are delineated?

The intent of the temptation is twofold. First, the temptation raises questions in Eve’s mind about the integrity of God. Her mental image of God is attacked. God is portrayed more as fiend than friend. The method is to twist and misquote God’s words in regard to the prohibition: you shall not eat of any tree of the garden. How cruel and vicious of God! The serpent implied, “You may observe them with the eye, work among them with the hands, but not partake of them with the mouth.” In this context we might change the title of J. B. Phillips’s interesting book from Your God Is Too Small to Your God Is Too Mean. Stott’s observation (1965: 743) is perceptive: “God’s provision for Adam and Eve was perfect. They lacked nothing in the Garden of Eden. God knew that their happiness lay in enjoying what he had permitted and abstaining from what he had prohibited. His permission and his prohibition both issued from his sheer goodness and love.” This is what the serpent must distort.

Second, the temptation encourages Eve to declare autonomy, quite apart from any guidance God may have given, which is to be considered absurd and irrelevant. “You will not die; … when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (vv. 4–5 nrsv).

Von Rad (1972: 89) summarizes correctly what these words mean: “The serpent holds out … the independence that enables a man to decide for himself what will help him or hinder him.… God had provided what was good for man, and had given him complete security. But now man will go beyond this to decide for himself.” The temptation, then, is for humankind to overstep its limits. The difference between Adam and Eve in the garden and Jesus in the wilderness is that the former acquiesced to temptation. For Jesus, obedience to the Father’s will was paramount.

What is next after Adam and Eve cross their Rubicon? Shame (v. 7), guile (vv. 8–11), and the search for a scapegoat (vv. 12–13). Then God speaks, not in the dialogue of vv. 8–13, but in a monologue: first to the serpent (vv. 14–15), then to the woman (v. 16), climactically and more extensively to the man (vv. 17–19).

It is, I believe, incorrect to see in these words of God to Adam and Eve primarily a punitive message, as if God is speaking only prescriptively, laying down the law, rather than descriptively: pain in pregnancy, disruption in the family, minimal returns for manual labor. The writer is not picturing God as a petulant deity, sulking, determined to teach these rascals a lesson that they will not soon forget. Like a surgeon who cuts with a scalpel only in order to heal, God initiates a means of redemption to reclaim the prodigals. His plan? To place at the respective point of highest self-fulfillment in the life of a woman and man problems of suffering, misery, and frustration. These “sentences” are not prescribed impositions from a volatile deity. Rather, they are gifts of love, strewn in the pathway of human beings, to bring them back to God. One may recall that C. S. Lewis, while reflecting on the ills and problems in the world, came to the conclusion that his reasons for not believing in God were actually much better reasons for believing in God, and thus was begun Lewis’s pilgrimage into faith and his being “surprised by joy.”

Commentators, in trying to salvage at least a ray of light from this chapter, usually have focused on either v. 21, “the Lord God made for them garments of skin, and clothed them,” or v. 15, sometimes called the prot(o)evangelium, literally, “the first good news.” It is tempting to see atonement in v. 21, or at least to contrast God’s covering with that made by human hands (v. 7). And if this is not atonement, at least it is preservation, a gauge of God’s concern and compassion. Note that God’s act of grace (providing a covering for the delinquent couple) precedes their expulsion from the garden, just as in ch. 4 God’s gracious provision of a protecting mark for Cain precedes his departure from God’s presence.

The First Word of Promise

Genesis 3:15 traditionally has been viewed by Christians as the first word of promise—in a prophetic sense—of deliverance from sin. The provision of a covering for Adam and Eve is immediate atonement. By contrast, v. 15 places atonement in an eschatological context. Its concern is the future, not the present.

Not all commentators, however, endorse the christological interpretation of Gen. 3:15. On the contrary, many biblical scholars eschew any messianic message in the verse. For example, Westermann (1974: 100) attempts to crush under his own exegetical feet all who support the time-honored interpretation, beginning with Luther. For him, such an analysis fails to respect the original meaning of the verse and reads into the text something alien from the author’s intention. For reasons that I will delineate, I find it impossible to follow Westermann and others like him.

The Hebrew verb for “bruise” or “crush” is šûp. Outside of Gen. 3:15 it is found only in Job 9:17, “he crushes me with a tempest” (nrsv), and Ps. 139:11, “let only darkness cover me” (rsv). The serpent will crush the heel of the woman’s seed (a temporary and healable injury), but the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent (a fatal injury).

The older versions of the Old Testament have interesting translations of this verb. The Septuagint translates both occurrences with a verb meaning “to watch, guard (lie in wait for?).” The Vulgate translates the actions of the woman’s seed (“she will …”) with a verb meaning “to crush,” and the actions of the serpent and his seed with a verb meaning “to lie in wait for.”

In the New Testament this verse does not appear anywhere except in Paul’s comment that “the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Rom. 16:20 niv). And it is clear in this text that Paul is speaking not of Christ’s feet, but of the feet of those to whom he is writing (“your feet”), the believers at Rome, and by extension, all of Christ’s followers. Key words and phrases are, however, highlighted elsewhere. In the Old Testament, clustering around David, are the promises of God that David is but the start of something new, something that God will perpetuate through David’s “seed” (2 Sam. 7:12; Ps. 89:4, 29, 36). Anyone who tries to oppose David and/or his seed, God will “crush” (Ps. 89:23, but not the same verb as in Gen. 3:15). In a prayer for the king (Ps. 72:9), the one petition asks that the king’s enemies might “lick the dust” (niv). This is analogous to the king’s enemies viewed as the king’s “footstool” (Ps. 110:1 nrsv). Jesus, the seed of David (Rom. 1:3), and one “born of a woman” (Gal. 4:4 nrsv), “must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet” (1 Cor. 15:25 niv).

There are at least three phenomena in Gen. 3:15 that all too often have been ignored by commentators. And it is precisely the glossing over of these that has resulted in downplaying the messianic import of the verse. First, this is the only place in the Old Testament that the Hebrew word for “seed” or “descendant” occurs with a third-person, feminine, pronominal suffix—“her seed.” The uniqueness of the construction becomes even more apparent in the Septuagint, with its reference to the woman’s sperm (“her sperma”)! (Where is the man, the father?)

In the Old Testament descent is virtually always through the male. The son is the seed of his father rather than of his mother. Exceptions are rare, as in the cases of Hagar’s seed (Gen. 16:10) and Rebekah’s seed (Gen. 24:60), but both references, by context, clearly point to individuals, not an individual. (Eve later will refer to Seth as her “other seed” [Gen. 4:25].)

Second, the Septuagint translation of the “he” in “he shall crush/bruise your head” is the masculine form of the pronoun, whose antecedent is the word “seed,” which is neuter in gender, not masculine. Of the more than one hundred uses of the pronoun “he” in the Greek translation of Genesis, this is the only instance where the “he” does not agree in gender with its antecedent where literal translation is involved. That is to say, the translators could easily have used “it” instead of “he,” as Greek has three genders, unlike Hebrew, which has only masculine and feminine. The Septuagint, then, emphasizes the “he-ness” of the woman’s seed, not the seed’s “it-ness” or “they-ness” in some collective sense (Kaiser 1978: 36–37).

Third, the first part of the verse boldly proclaims that this future confrontation is not an accident of history, an event that catches God unawares. He is actually the producer of this warfare: “I will put enmity between you and the woman” (rsv). It is an event that is as foreordained as the incarnation of Jesus. Interestingly, the passage anticipates not the crushing of the head of the serpent’s seed, but the crushing of the head of the serpent himself: “he shall crush your head.”

For these reasons I believe that any reflection on Gen. 3:15 that fails to underscore the messianic emphasis of the verse is guilty of a serious exegetical error. There is no doubt that the ultimate significance failed to occur to Eve. Did she think that Cain was that promised seed (Gen. 4:1), or maybe Seth (4:25)? Then again, who would care to suggest that Abraham saw the long-range significance of the promise that he was to receive in Genesis 12, a promise that would take at least four hundred years for its implementation, or two millennia for its full implementation? All this is not to say that Gen. 3:15 points to Jesus, and only to Jesus, and leaves out everybody between Eve and Christ when it speaks of “her seed.” The redemptive line of Eve’s seed begins with Seth and climaxes with the Messiah. Alexander (1995: 31) correctly observes that Gen. 3:15 “anticipates the creation of a royal line through which the terrible consequences of the disobedience of the man and the woman in the Garden of Eden will be reversed.”

Thus far I have suggested that in Genesis 3, at least in the second half, God’s concern is redemption. This concern is manifest in the provision of a covering, the promise of a seed of the woman, and the pronouncement of words of judgment that are redemptive and not vindictive in purpose.

Expulsion from the Garden

Is another evidence of this emphasis on redemption to be found in the expulsion of the man from the garden, to which reentry is blocked by cherubim and flaming sword (3:22–24)? Parents are aware that if they have in their home a particularly delinquent youth, say, for example, a son in his late teens or early twenties, perhaps the healthiest thing they can do for that young man, however difficult it may be, is to expel him from the home. Something as simple as a shift in geography in itself can be a motivation for change. Why should we want to abandon our sins if we can retain them and still have the presence of God as well?

So the man is sent out of the garden. But to do what? The answer is provided in 3:23b: “to till the ground from which he was taken” (nrsv). We read in 2:5b that “there was no man to till the ground” (rsv), and in 2:15 we are informed that the Lord put the man in the garden of Eden precisely to fill that void: “to till it and keep it” (nrsv). Thus, we are confronted by a man who is indeed expelled from God’s presence, but who is not barred from continuing the vocation for which he was created. He is still a tiller of the soil, but a soil that now is cursed.

Just prior to the announcement of the expulsion Adam had named his wife “Eve,” a word connected with the Hebrew word for “life” or “living” (3:20). In the context, however, almost every event narrated points to death. Relationships with God, spouse, and soil are fractured. Nevertheless, here is life. Westermann (1974: 104) comments, “Despite man’s disobedience and punishment, the blessing given with the act of creation remains intact … man who is now far from God is always man blessed by God.”

It is interesting that the characters in Genesis 3 are not mentioned again, with the exception of the genealogical reference to Adam in 1 Chron. 1:1, until the New Testament, first in the Lukan genealogy of Jesus (Luke 3:38), then in some of the Pauline Epistles (e.g., Rom. 5:12–21; 1 Cor. 15:22). One might expect the expulsion from the garden to be a paradigm that the prophets would use to drive home their point about the consequences of disobedience, as they did, for example, with the episode about Sodom and Gomorrah. But it was left untouched.

The verses from Paul are, of course, the linchpin in what is commonly called the doctrine of original sin. Both the Old and New Testaments affirm the doctrine (Gen. 6:5; 1 Kings 8:46; Ps. 51:5; Rom. 5:19; Eph. 2:3), but they do not explain it in terms of theological origins. Anyone who is prone to dismiss the idea as medieval, negative, or absurd should recall a comment made by G. K. Chesterton in his biography of St. Francis of Assisi: “There is a bias in man and Christianity was the discovery of how to correct the bias.… It is profoundly true to say that the glad good news brought by the Gospel was the news of original sin” (St. Francis of Assisi [Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1957], 28). Bad news may be good news!

Commentaries and Major Studies on the Pentateuch

Alexander, T. Desmond. 1995. From Paradise to Promised Land: An Introduction to the Main Themes of the Pentateuch. Carlisle: Paternoster.

Bailey, L. R. 1981. The Pentateuch. Nashville: Abingdon.

Baker, D., and T. Desmond Alexander, eds. 2002. Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.

Blenkinsopp, J. 1992. The Pentateuch: An Introduction to the First Five Books of the Bible. New York: Doubleday.

Brueggemann, W., and Hans W. Wolff. 1974. The Vitality of Old Testament Traditions. Atlanta: John Knox.

Campbell, A. F., and M. A. O’Brien. 1993. Sources of the Pentateuch: Texts, Introductions, Annotations. Minneapolis: Fortress.

Cassuto, U. 1961. The Documentary Hypothesis and the Composition of the Pentateuch. Trans. I. Abrahams. Jerusalem: Magnes.

Christensen, D. L., and M. Narucki. 1989. “The Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch.” JETS 32:465–71.

Clines, D. J. A. 1978. The Theme of the Pentateuch. 2nd ed., 1997. JSOTSup 10. Sheffield: JSOT Press.

Emerton, J. A., ed. 1990. Studies in the Pentateuch. VTSup 41. Leiden and New York: Brill.

Fox, E. 1995. The Five Books of Moses. 5 vols. The Schocken Bible. New York: Schocken.

Fretheim, T. E. 1996. The Pentateuch. Nashville: Abingdon.

Friedman, R. E. 2001. Commentary on the Torah with a New English Translation and the Hebrew Text. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.

Gooder, P. 2002. The Pentateuch: A Story of Beginnings. Biblical Studies Series. New York: Continuum.

Guinan, M. 1990. The Pentateuch. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press.

Hallo, W. W. 1991. The Book of the People. BJS 225. Atlanta: Scholars Press.

Kugel, J. L. 1998. Traditions of the Bible as It Was at the Start of the Common Era. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Laffey, A. L. 1998. The Pentateuch: A Liberation-Critical Reading. Minneapolis: Fortress.

Livingston, G. H. 1974. The Pentateuch in Its Cultural Environment. 2nd ed., 1987. Grand Rapids: Baker.

Lohfink, N. 1994. Theology of the Pentateuch: Themes of the Priestly Narrative and Deuteronomy. Trans. Linda M. Maloney. Minneapolis: Fortress.

Mann, T. W. 1988. The Book of the Torah: The Narrative Integrity of the Pentateuch. Atlanta: John Knox.

McDermott, J. J. 2002. Reading the Pentateuch: A Historical Introduction. New York: Paulist Press.

McEvenue, S. E. 1990. Interpreting the Pentateuch. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press.

Montgomery, R. M. 1971. An Introduction to Source Analysis of the Pentateuch. Nashville: Abingdon.

Mullen, E. Theodore, Jr. 1997. Ethnic Myths and Pentateuchal Foundations: A New Approach to the Formation of the Pentateuch. SemeiaSt. Atlanta: Scholars Press.

Murphy, R. E. 1996. Responses to 101 Questions on the Biblical Torah: Reflections on the Pentateuch. New York: Paulist Press.

Nicholson, E. W. 1998. The Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century: The Legacy of Julius Wellhausen. Oxford: Clarendon; New York: Oxford University Press.

Noth, M. 1972. A History of Pentateuchal Traditions. Trans. B. W. Anderson. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Repr., Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1981.

Plaut, W. Gunther. 1981. The Torah: A Modern Commentary. New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

Rendtorff, R. 1990. The Problem of the Process of Transmission in the Pentateuch. Trans. J. Scullion. JSOTSup 89. Sheffield: JSOT Press.

Rofé, A. 1999. Introduction to the Composition of the Pentateuch. Trans. H. N. Bock. Biblical Seminar 58. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

Rogerson, J. W., ed. 1996. The Pentateuch. Biblical Seminar 39. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

Sailhamer, J. H. 1992. The Pentateuch as Narrative: A Biblical-Theological Commentary. Library of Biblical Interpretation. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

VanGemeren, W. 1988. The Progress of Redemption: The Story of Salvation from Creation to the New Jerusalem. Grand Rapids: Baker. Pp. 39–179.

Van Seters, J. 1999. The Pentateuch: A Social-Science Commentary. Trajectories 1. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

Walton, J. H., and V. H. Matthews. 1997. The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Genesis-Deuteronomy. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.

Watts, J. W. 1999. Reading Law: The Rhetorical Shaping of the Pentateuch. Biblical Seminar 59. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

———, ed. 2001. Persia and Torah. The Theory of the Imperial Authorization of the Pentateuch. SBLSymS 17. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

Whybray, R. N. 1987. The Making of the Pentateuch: A Methodological Study. JSOTSup 53. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

———. 1996. Introduction to the Pentateuch. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Wolf, H. 1990. An Introduction to the Old Testament Pentateuch. Chicago: Moody.

Wynn-Williams, D. J. 1997. The State of the Pentateuch: A Comparison of the Approaches of M. Noth and E. Blum. BZAW 249. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Genesis Commentaries and Major Studies

Aalders, G. C. 1981. Genesis. Trans. W. Heynen. 2 vols. Bible Student’s Commentary. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Alter, R. 1996. Genesis: Translation and Commentary. New York: Norton.

Armstrong, K. 1996. In the Beginning: A New Interpretation of Genesis. New York: Knopf.

Arnold, B. T. 1998. Encountering the Book of Genesis. Encountering Biblical Studies. Grand Rapids: Baker.

Boice, J. M. 1982–1987. Genesis: An Expositional Commentary. 3 vols. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Brenner, A., ed. 1993. A Feminist Companion to Genesis. The Feminist Companion to the Bible 2. Sheffield: JSOT Press.

Brodie, T. L. 2001. Genesis as Dialogue: A Literary, Historical, and Theological Commentary. New York: Oxford University Press.

Brueggemann, W. 1982. Genesis. Interpretation. Atlanta: John Knox.

Carr, D. M. 1996. Reading the Fractures of Genesis: Historical and Literary Approaches. Louisville: Westminster John Knox.

Coats, G. W. 1983. Genesis, with an Introduction to Old Testament Literature. FOTL 1. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Cotter, D. W. 2003. Genesis. Berit Olam. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press.

Davies, P. R., and D. J. A. Clines, eds. 1998. The World of Genesis: Persons, Places, Perspectives. JSOTSup 257. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

Fleming, D. 2003. “History in Genesis.” WTJ 65:251–62.

Fokkelman, J. P. 1975. Narrative Art in Genesis: Specimens of Stylistic and Structural Analysis. Assen: Van Gorcum.

Fox, E. 1983. In the Beginning: A New English Rendition of the Book of Genesis. New York: Schocken.

Fretheim, T. E. 1994. “Genesis.” In The New Interpreter’s Bible. Vol. 1. Ed. L. E. Keck et al. Nashville: Abingdon. Pp. 319–674.

Garrett, D. 1991. Rethinking Genesis: The Sources and Authorship of the First Book of the Pentateuch. Grand Rapids: Baker.

Gunkel, H. 1997 [German, 1910]. Genesis. Trans. M. E. Biddle. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press.

Gunn, D., and D. Fewell. 1993. Gender, Power and Promise: The Subject of the Bible’s First Story. Nashville: Abingdon.

Hamilton, V. P. 1990–1995. The Book of Genesis. 2 vols. NICOT. Grand Rapids: -Eerdmans.

Hartley, J. 2000. Genesis. NIBCOT 1. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson.

Hess, R. S., G. J. Wenham, and P. E. Satterthwaite. 1994. He Swore an Oath: Biblical Themes from Genesis 12–50. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker.

Humphreys, W. L. 2001. The Character of God in the Book of Genesis. Louisville: Westminster John Knox.

Janzen, J. G. 1993. Abraham and All the Families of the Earth: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 12–50. ITC. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Jeansonne, S. 1990. The Women of Genesis. Minneapolis: Fortress.

Kidner, D. 1967. Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary. TOTC. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.

Lipton, D. 1999. Revisions of the Night: Politics and Promise in the Patriarchal Dreams of Genesis. JSOTSup 288. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

Millard, A. R., and D. J. Wiseman, eds. 1980. Essays on the Patriarchal Narratives. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns.

Moberly, R. W. L. 1992. Genesis 12–50. OTG. Sheffield: JSOT Press.

Moyers, Bill, et al. 1996. Genesis: A Living Conversation. Ed. B. S. Flowers. New York: Doubleday.

Oden, Thomas C., gen. ed. 2001. Genesis 1–11. Ed. A. Louth and M. Conti. ACCS 1. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.

———. 2002. Genesis 12–50. Ed. M. Sheridan. ACCS 2. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.

Rad, G. von. 1972. Genesis. Trans. J. H. Marks. Rev. ed. OTL. Philadelphia: Westminster.

Radday, Y., and H. Shore. 1985. Genesis: An Authorship Study. AnBib 103. Rome: Biblical Institute Press.

Rashkow, I. 1993. The Phallacy of Genesis: A Feminist-Psychological Approach. Louisville: Westminster.

Rendsburg, G. 1986. The Redaction of Genesis. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns.

Roop, E. F. 1987. Genesis. Scottdale, Pa.: Herald.

Rosenberg, D., ed. 1996. Genesis, As It Is Written: Contemporary Writers on Our First Stories. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.

Ross, A. P. 1988. Creation and Blessing: A Guide to the Study and Exposition of Genesis. Grand Rapids: Baker.

Sailhamer, J. H. 1990. “Genesis.” In The Expositor’s Bible Commentary. Vol. 2. Ed. F. E. Gaebelein. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Pp. 1–284.

Saltzman, S. 1996. A Small Glimmer of Light: Reflections on the Book of Genesis. Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav.

Sarna, N. 1966. Understanding Genesis. Heritage of Biblical Israel 1. New York: McGraw-Hill.

———. 1989. Genesis: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation. JPS Torah Commentary. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society.

Schaeffer, F. 1972. Genesis in Space and Time: The Flow of Biblical History. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.

Scullion, J. J. 1992. Genesis: A Commentary for Students, Teachers and Preachers. OTS 6. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press.

Speiser, E. A. 1964. Genesis. AB 1. New York: Doubleday.

Steinberg, N. 1993. Kinship and Marriage in Genesis: A Household Economics Perspective. Minneapolis: Fortress.

Steinmetz, D. 1991. Kinship, Conflict and Continuity in Genesis. Louisville: Westminster John Knox.

Stigers, H. G. 1976. A Commentary on Genesis. Zondervan Commentary Series. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Thomas, W. H. Griffith. 1958 [1907]. Genesis: A Devotional Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Thompson, T. L. 1987. The Origin Tradition of Ancient Israel. Vol. 1, The Literary Formation of Genesis and Exodus 1–23. JSOTSup 55. Sheffield: JSOT Press.

Towner, W. S. 2001. Genesis. WBComp. Louisville: Westminster John Knox.

Turner, L. A. 1990. Announcement of Plots in Genesis. JSOTSup 96. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

———. 2000. Genesis. Readings: A New Biblical Commentary. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

Vawter, B. 1977. On Genesis: A New Reading. New York: Doubleday.

Vos, H. F. 1982. Genesis. Chicago: Moody.

Waltke, B. K., and C. Fredericks. 2001. Genesis: A Commentary. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Walton, J. 2001. Genesis. NIV Application Commentary. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Wenham, G. 1987–1994. Genesis. 2 vols. WBC 1, 2. Dallas: Word.

Wénin, A., ed. 2001. Studies in the Book of Genesis: Literary, Redaction and Historical. BETL 155. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Westermann, C. 1984–1986. Genesis. Trans. J. J. Scullion. 3 vols. Minneapolis: Augsburg.

———. 1987. Genesis: A Practical Commentary. Trans. D. E. Green. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Wevers, J. 1974. Genesis. Septuaginta: Vetus Testamentum Graecum. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Wheedbee, J. William. 1998. The Bible and the Comic Vision. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 15–126.

White, H. C. 1991. Narration and Discourse in the Book of Genesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Williams, W. G. 2000. Genesis. A Bible Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition. Indianapolis: Wesleyan Publishing House.

Williamson, P. R. 2000. Abraham, Israel and the Nations: The Patriarchal Promise and Its Covenantal Development in Genesis. JSOTSup 35. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

Genesis 1–11

Anderson, B. W. 1977. “From Analysis to Synthesis: The Interpretation of Genesis 1–11.” JBL 97:23–39.

Clines, D. J. A. 1976. “Themes in Genesis 1–11.” CBQ 38:483–507.

Coats, G. W. 1975. “Power and Obedience in the Primeval History.” Int 29:227–39.

Fretheim, T. E. 1969. Creation, Fall and Flood. Minneapolis: Augsburg.

Hendel, R. S. 1998. The Text of Genesis 1–11: Textual Studies and Critical Edition. Oxford: Clarendon.

Hess, R. S. 1993. Studies in the Personal Names of Genesis 1–11. AOAT 234. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag.

Hess, R. S., and D. T. Tsumura. 1994. “I Studied Inscriptions from before the Flood”: Ancient Near Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1–11. Sources for Biblical and Theological Studies 4. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns.

Kikawada, I., and A. Quinn. 1985. Before Abraham Was: The Unity of Genesis 1–11. Nashville: Abingdon.

Krasovec, J. 1994. “Punishment and Mercy in the Primeval History (Genesis 1–11).” ETL 70:5–33.

Mathews, K. A. 1996. Genesis 1–11:26. NAC 1A. Nashville: Broadman & Holman.

Miller, P. D., Jr. 1978. Genesis 1–11: Studies in Structure and Theme. JSOTSup 8. Sheffield: University of Sheffield Department of Biblical Studies.

Oden, R. A. 1981. “Divine Aspirations in Atrahasis and in Genesis 1–11.” ZAW 93:197–216.

Sailhamer, J. 2000. “Creation, Genesis 1–11, and the Canon.” BBR 10:89–106.

Scullion, J. J. 1974. “New Thinking on Creation and Sin in Genesis i–xi.” ABR 22:1–10.

Smith, G. 1988. “Structure and Purpose of Genesis 1–11.” JETS 20:307–19.

Weeks, N. 1978. “The Hermeneutical Problem of Genesis 1–11.” Themelios 4:12–19.

Wolde, E. van. 1994. Words Become Worlds: Semantic Studies of Genesis 1–11. BIS 6. Leiden: Brill.

———. 1998. “Facing the Earth: Primaeval History in a New Perspective.” In The World of Genesis: Persons, Places, Perspectives. Ed. P. R. Davies and D. J. A. Clines. JSOTSup 257. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Pp. 22–47.

Genesis 1–3

Anderson, B. W. 1977. “A Stylistic Study of the Priestly Creation Story.” In Canon and Authority. Ed. G. W. Coats and B. O. Long. Philadelphia: Fortress. Pp. 148–62.

———, ed. 1984. Creation in the Old Testament. IRT 6. Philadelphia: Fortress.

Anderson, G. A. 1999. “Is Eve the Problem?” In Theological Exegesis: Essays in Honor of Brevard S. Childs. Ed. C. Seitz and K. Greene-McCreight. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Pp. 96–123.

Bailey, J. 1970. “Initiation and the Primal Women in Gilgamesh and Genesis 2–3.” JBL 89:137–50.

Barr, James. 1968. “The Image of God in the Book of Genesis—A Study of Terminology.” BJRL 51:11–26.

———. 1972. “Man and Nature—The Ecological Controversy and the Old Testament.” BJRL 55:9–32.

———. 1993a. The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality. Minneapolis: -Fortress.

———. 1993b. Biblical Faith and Natural Theology. Oxford: Clarendon.

———. 1998a. “Was Everything That God Created Really Good? A Question on the First Verse of the Bible.” In God in the Fray: A Tribute to Walter Brueggemann. Ed. T. Linafet and T. K. Beal. Minneapolis: Fortress. Pp. 55–65.

———. 1998b. “Adam: Single Man or All Humanity?” In Hesed ve-emet: Studies in Honor of Ernest S. Frerichs. Ed. J. Magness and S. Gitin. BJS 320. Atlanta: Scholars Press.

Beattie, D. R. G. 1980–1981. “What Is Genesis 2–3 About?” ExpT 92:8–10.

Bechtel, L. M. 1995. “Genesis 2:4b–3:24: A Myth about Human Maturation.” JSOT 67:3–26.

Bird, P. A. 1981. “ ‘Male and Female He Created Them’: Gen. 1:27b in the Context of the Priestly Account of Creation.” HTR 74:129–59.

Blenkinsopp, J. 1976. “The Structure of P.” Bib 38:275–92.

Brichto, H. C. 1998. The Names of God: Poetic Readings in Biblical Beginnings. Oxford: Clarendon.

Brueggemann, W. 1970. “Of the Same Flesh and Bone (GN2, 23a).” CBQ 32:532–42.

———. 1972. “From Dust to Kingship.” ZAW 84:1–18.

Carlson, G. I. 1973. “The Two Creation Accounts in Schematic Contrast.” TBT 66:1192–94.

Childs, B. S. 1962a. Myth and Reality in the Old Testament. SBT 27. London: SCM Press.

———. 1962b. “Adam.” IDB 1:42–44.

———. 1962c. “Eden.” IDB 2:22–23.

———. 1962d. “Eve.” IDB 2:181–82.

———. 1962e. “Tree of Knowledge, Tree of Life.” IDB 4:695–97.

Clark, W. M. 1969. “A Legal Background to the Yahwist’s Use of Good and Evil.” JBL 88:266–78.

Clines, D. J. A. 1968. “The Image of God in Man.” TynB 19:53–103.

———. 1990. What Does Eve Do to Help? And Other Readerly Questions to the Old Testament. JSOTSup 94. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

Collins, J. 1997. “A Syntactical Note (Genesis 3:15): Is the Woman’s Seed Singular or Plural?” TynB 48:139–48.

Dumbrell, W. J. 2002. “Genesis 2:1–17: A Foreshadowing of the New Creation.” In Biblical Theology: Retrospect and Prospect. Ed. S. J. Hafemann. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press. Pp. 53–65.

Ellington, J. 1979. “Man and Adam in Genesis 1–5.” BT 30:201–5.

Firmage, E. 1999. “Genesis 1 and the Priestly Agenda.” JSOT 82:97–114.

Foh, S. T. 1975. “What Is the Woman’s Desire?” WTJ 37:376–83.

Hasel, G. F. 1971. “Recent Translations of Gen 1,1.” BT 22:154–68.

———. 1972. “The Significance of the Cosmology in Genesis 1 in Relation to Ancient Near Eastern Parallels.” AUSS 10:1–20.

———. 1974. “The Polemic Nature of the Genesis Cosmology,” EvQ 46:81–102.

———. 1975. “The Meaning of ‘Let Us’ in Gn 1:26.” AUSS 13:58–66.

Hauser, A. J. 1980. “Linguistic and Thematic Links between Genesis 4:1–16 and Genesis 2–3.” JETS 23:297–305.

———. 1982. “Genesis 2–3: The Theme of Intimacy and Alienation.” In Art and Meaning: Rhetoric in Biblical Literature. Ed. D. J. A. Clines et al. JSOTSup 19. Sheffield: JSOT Press. Pp. 20–36.

Hess, R. S. 1992–1993. “The Roles of the Woman and Man in Genesis 3.” Themelios 3:15–19.

Higgins, J. M. 1976. “The Myth of Eve: The Temptress.” JAAR 44:639–47.

Hoffmeier, J. K. 1983. “Some Thoughts on Genesis 1–2 and Egyptian Cosmology.” JANES 15:34–49.

Hyers, C. 1984. The Meaning of Creation. Atlanta: John Knox.

Jobling, D. 1978. “A Structural Analysis of Genesis 2:4b–3:24.” SBL Abstracts 1:61–69.

Joines, K. R. 1974. Serpent Symbolism in the Old Testament. Haddonfield, N.J.: Haddonfield House.

Kaiser, W. C. 1975. “The Serpent in Genesis 3.” ZAW 87:1–11.

———. 1978. Toward an Old Testament Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Kikawada, I. M. 1972. “Two Notes on Eve.” JBL 91:33–37.

Kimelman, R. 1996. “The Seduction of Eve and the Exegetical Politics of Gender.” BibInt 4:1–39.

Levenson, J. D. 1988. Creation and the Persistence of Evil. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

Martin, R. A. 1965. “The Earliest Messianic Interpretation of Genesis 3:15.” JBL 84:425–27.

Mendenhall, G. E. 1974. “The Shady Side of Wisdom: The Date and Purpose of Genesis 3.” In A Light unto My Path: Old Testament Studies in Honor of Jacob H. Myers. Ed. H. N. Bream et al. Gettysburg Theological Studies 4. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Pp. 319–34.

Middleton, J. R. 2004. “Created in the Image of a Violent God? The Ethical Problem of the Conquest of Chaos in Biblical Creation Texts.” Int 58:341–55.

Miller, J. M. 1972. “In the ‘Image’ and ‘Likeness’ of God.” JBL 91:289–304.

Moberly, R. W. L. 1988. “Did the Serpent Get It Right?” JTS 39:1–27. Repr., in From Eden to Golgotha: Essays in Biblical Theology. South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism 52. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992. Pp. 1–27.

Moran, W. L. 1970. “The Creation of Man in Atrahasis I, 192–248.” BASOR 200:48–56.

Naidoff, B. 1978. “A Man to Work the Soil: A New Interpretation of Genesis 2–3.” JSOT 5:2–14.

Nielsen, E. 1972. “Creation and the Fall of Man: A Cross-Disciplinary Investigation.” HUCA 43:1–22.

Nixon, R. 1994. “Images of the Creator in Genesis 1 and 2.” Theology 97:188–97.

Phipps, W. E. 1976. “Adam’s Rib: Bone of Contention.” Theology Today 33:263–73.

Pinnock, C. H. 1989. “Climbing Out of a Swamp: The Evangelical Struggle to Understand the Creation Texts.” Int 43:143–55.

Provan, I. 2001. “Creation and Holistic Ministry: A Study of Genesis 1:1–2:3.” ERT 25:292–303.

Ramsey, G. W. 1988. “Is Name-Giving an Act of Domination in Genesis 2:23 and Elsewhere?” CBQ 50:24–35.

Ruger, H. P. 1976. “On Some Versions of Genesis 3:15, Ancient and Modern.” BT 27:105–10.

Ryken, L. 1974. The Literature of the Bible. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Pp. 33–42.

Sailhamer, J. 1996. Genesis Unbound: A Provocative New Look at the Creation Account. Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah.

Sawyer, J. 1974. “The Meaning of ‘In the Image of Elohim,’ in Genesis I–X.” JTS 25:418–26.

Shea, W. H. 1977. “Adam in Ancient Mesopotamian Traditions.” AUSS 15:27–41.

Sterchi, D. A. 1996. “Does Genesis 1 Provide a Chronological Sequence?” JETS 39:529–36.

Stitzinger, M. F. 1981. “Genesis 1–3 and the Male/Female Relationship.” Grace Theological Journal 2:23–44.

Stott, J. R. W. 1965. “The Subtlety of Satan.” CT 9:740–44.

Stratton, B. J. 1995. Out of Eden: Reading, Rhetoric, and Ideology in Genesis 2–3. JSOTSup 208. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

Thompson, P. 1971. “The Yahwist Creation Story.” VT 21:197–208.

Toews, B. G. 2002. “Genesis 1–4: The Genesis of Old Testament Instruction.” In Biblical Theology: Retrospect and Prospect. Ed. S. J. Hafemann. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press. Pp. 38–52.

Trible, P. 1972. “Eve and Adam: Genesis 2–3 Reread.” Andover Newton Quarterly 14:251–58.

———. 1978. God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality. OBT. Philadelphia: Fortress.

Vogels, W. 1996. “The Power Struggle between Man and Woman (Gen 3, 16b).” Bib 77:197–209.

———. 1998. “Like One of Us, Knowing tob and raʿ (Gen. 3:22).” Semeia 81:145–57.

Walsh, J. T. 1977. “Genesis 2:4b–3:24: A Synchronic Approach.” JBL 96:161–77.

Waltke, B. 1975. “The Creation Account in Genesis 1:1–3.” BSac 132:25–36, 136–44, 216–28, 327–42.

Weinfeld, M. 1981. “Sabbath, Temple, and the Enthronement of the Lord: The Problem of the Sitz-im-Leben of Genesis 1:1–2:3.” In Mélanges bibliques et orientaux en l’honneur de M. Henri Cazelles. Ed. A. Caquot and M. Delcor. AOAT 212. Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag. Pp. 501–12.

Westermann, C. 1974. Creation. Trans. J. J. Scullion. Philadelphia: Fortress.

Wifall, W. 1974a. “The Breath of His Nostrils: Gen. 2:7b.” CBQ 36:237–40.

———. 1974b. “Genesis 3:15—A Protoevangelium?” CBQ 36:361–65.

Williams, A. J. 1977. “The Relationship of Genesis 3:20 to the Serpent.” ZAW 89:357–74.

Williams, J. G. 1981. “Genesis 3.” Int 35:274–79.

Wolde, E. van. 1998. “The Creation of Coherence [Genesis 1–3].” Semeia 81:159–74.

Woudstra, M. H. 1971. “Recent Translations of Genesis 3:15.” CTJ 6:194–203.

Wright, D. P. 1996. “Holiness, Sex, and Death in the Garden of Eden.” Bib 77:305–29.

Wyatt, N. 1981. “Interpreting the Creation and Fall Story in Genesis 1–2.” ZAW 93:10–21.

2

The Sequence after Creation and the Fall

Genesis 4–11

Genesis 3 sets in motion a series of events that have their roots in the activities in Eden. In ch. 3 the man and the woman sin and thereby violate a vertical relationship: communion with God. In chs. 4–11 people violate a horizontal relationship: fellowship with others. The movement, then, is from cause to effect. What all these malignant activities have in common (Genesis 3–11) is a demonstration of the human desire to be like God. Having once overstepped the limits imposed by God, humankind subsequently surrenders its standards. The results are:

1. fratricide engendered by jealousy—4:8, Cain kills Abel

2. polygamy and retaliation—4:23–24, Lamech

3. titanic lust—6:1–4, sons of God and daughters of men

4. corruption and violence in the earth—6:5, 11–12

5. incest (?)—9:20–27, the curse on Canaan

6. a city with a tower to the heavens—11:1–9, Babel

Undoubtedly the spread of sin is described in these chapters, as these six events testify. In the description of ch. 3, however, we observed a mixture of sin and grace, a divine word of both judgment and promise. I suggest that the same dual emphases continue throughout chs. 4–11. We will see in operation both sin and judgment and grace and promise. Neither the sin of individuals (Cain, Lamech, and Ham) nor of groups (sons of God and daughters of men, the whole earth, and the builders of the city and the tower) eclipses completely the mercy and sovereignty of God. Here too, where sin abounds, grace much more abounds.

Fratricide (4:8)

Obviously, there is no break between chs. 3 and 4 of Genesis. The narrative is to be read as a continuous whole. This continuity is emphasized by the repetition in both chapters of key vocabulary: for example, “and they knew that they were naked” (3:7 nrsv) and “Now Adam knew Eve his wife” (4:1 kjv); “your desire shall be for your husband” (3:16 nrsv) and “sin is crouching at the door; its desire is for you” (4:7 rsv); “and he shall rule over you” (3:16 rsv) and “but you must master it” (4:7 nrsv [the same Hebrew verb as “rule” in 3:16]); “he drove out the man” (3:24 nrsv) and “today you have driven me away from the soil” (4:14 nrsv); “and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim” (3:24 nrsv) and “then Cain … dwelt in the land of Nod, east of Eden” (4:16 rsv).

Interestingly, but not without later parallel, history’s first recorded crime of inhumanity has its context in an act of worship. Two brothers, apparently acting spontaneously, bring to the Lord an offering. Cain offers part of his agricultural produce. Abel, the second-born, presents one of the firstlings of his flock. From here on the story is well known. God accepts the offering of Abel but rejects that of Cain. Unable to graciously accept God’s decision on the matter, Cain gives way to sulking and anger, and eventually he kills his own brother.

The intriguing question is why the Lord accepted the offering of Abel but refused that of Cain. Was it because Abel’s offering involved a blood sacrifice? But the Old Testament allows for nonblood sacrifices when such sacrifices are not primarily expiatory (Leviticus 2; and Lev. 5:11–13 even allows the substitution of fine flour for doves or pigeons for a sin offering in certain circumstances). Even the Hebrew word for Cain’s “offering” is the same as for the “cereal offering” of Leviticus 2.

Did Abel present his best, while Cain offered only what was conveniently available? Is the difference one of attitude in that Abel offered his by faith (Heb. 11:4)? Was Cain’s offering rejected because it was not matched by an inner righteousness (1 John 3:12; Jude 11)? Perhaps this idea is hinted at in God’s question to Cain, “If you do well, will you not be accepted?” (Gen. 4:7 nrsv). Several times, especially in prophetic literature, we are informed that God’s reason for rejecting a sacrifice or an offering was that religious ritual had become a substitute for obedience and holy living.

Can we move backward from the prophets to the incident in Genesis 4 and assume the same inconsistency in the life of Cain that the prophets saw in the lives of their contemporaries? In light of God’s question to Cain in Gen. 4:7, I am inclined to say yes, but one cannot be dogmatic here. Is the Bible perhaps not as wise in its reservations as it is in its revelations?

There is another possible explanation of why God rejected Cain’s offering, and the advantage of this approach is that it unites chs. 3 and 4. (It is common among interpreters to suggest that originally the story of Cain and Abel was separate from the story of Adam and Eve, and the two later were joined only by a fictional genealogy—for why is Cain afraid that whoever finds him will kill him [4:14], and where did his wife [4:17] come from, if at the time he and his parents were the only living humans on the planet?) As Herion (1995) and Spina (1992) have observed, the context of chs. 2 and 3 suggests that God rejected Cain’s offering because Cain offered a gift from the very ground that God had just cursed (3:17). If it is wrong to offer to God what costs the offerer nothing (2 Sam. 24:24), it is also wrong to offer to God that which bears the consequences of God’s curse.

After his sin Cain has the opportunity to talk with God. The dialogue swiftly degenerates into sarcasm on Cain’s part. He answers God’s question “Where is Abel your brother?” with a question of his own: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen. 4:9 rsv).

The answer to Cain’s question is an emphatic no. God never meant for Cain, or anybody, to be his brother’s keeper. “To keep” means “to control, to regulate and rule”—“the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden … to … keep it” (Gen. 2:15 nrsv). Zoos, bees, and prisons have keepers. Here activities must be regulated and supervised. Not without reason is God consistently called in Scripture “Israel’s keeper.” That is his role, for he is their Lord. Cain indeed was called to love and respect his brother, but never was he called to keep his brother.

As with Adam and Eve, the punishment for Cain is banishment or exile from the presence of the Lord (4:16). But again as with Adam and Eve, there is a manifestation of mercy just prior to the manifestation of judgment. Before Adam and Eve are expelled (3:22–24), they are provided with clothing (3:21). Before Cain is expelled (4:16), God places a mark (on his forehead?) to spare him from becoming the victim of someone’s vengeance (4:15). As David J. A. Clines (1978: 63) has noted, “God’s grace … is not only revealed in and after the judgment, but even before the execution of judgment.”

We cannot be sure of the nature of Cain’s mark. As a mark that grants protection, it finds parallels with (1) the blood on the houses that grants protection to the occupants from danger on the first Passover in Egypt (Exod. 12:13); (2) the mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over Jerusalem’s collapse and God’s departure from it (Ezek. 9:4); and (3) the seal on the forehead of the 144,000 faithful (Rev. 7:3). In light of the fact that one of the very first things that Cain does when he departs is build a city (4:17), Sailhamer (1990: 62) suggests that Cain’s mark might be the city he built. As such, Cain’s city would be the first “city of refuge” (cf. Num. 35:9–15; Deut. 4:41–43; 19:1–10; Josh. 20:1–9). These are asylum cities where someone who commits homicide can be protected from blood vengeance until a trial can determine whether the killing was accidental or deliberate. Cain’s homicide seems, however, to be an intentional act. This is seen plainly in the text, particularly in one Hebrew expression: Cain “rose up against” (qûm ʾel) his brother (4:8 nrsv). Deuteronomy 19:11 (right after the “cities of refuge” section [19:1–10]) turns to the matter of intentional murder. It describes the actions of such criminals with these words: “If out of hate someone assaults [qûm ʿāl, lit., ‘rises up against’] and kills a neighbor”—the exact expression used with Cain, except for the insignificant change of the preposition after the verb.

Polygamy and Retaliation (4:23–24)

For the first but not the last time God’s pattern of one man for one woman and one woman for one man breaks down. No particular verse in the Old Testament prohibits polygamy, but the crucial point is that there is hardly any polygamist whose life is not extremely complicated and bruised. Witness Abraham with Hagar and Sarah, or Jacob with Leah and Rachel, or the fiascoes in the lives of David and Solomon.

Added to Lamech’s violation of the marriage pattern is his unchecked penchant for revenge and violence. He glories in macabre statistics (4:23–24).

It is something of a paradox that the descendants of Cain emerge as the heralds of culture and industry (4:21–22), specifically, farming and herding (Jabal), music (Jubal), and metallurgy (Tubal-cain). All are sons of Lamech.

Yet none of these novelties, however noble they may be, restrains humankind’s diabolical tendencies. The announcement of this cultural history comes between the account of Lamech’s polygamy and his spiteful song of revenge. Secular culture, then, is advanced by the line of Cain, but it is through the line of Seth (4:25–5:32) that God’s plan of redemption will move.

Nothing is said about the life span of the descendants of Cain (4:17–22), but for each of the descendants of Seth (5:1–32) a life span is given, and in each case one that is spectacularly long. It is not wide of the mark, I believe, to interpret both the notation of life span and the longevity of those life spans as a reflection of God’s unique blessing on the seed of Seth, as opposed to the seed of Cain. To be sure, none of them escaped death, with the exception of Enoch (5:24), for the possibility of “living forever” ceased with the announcement in Gen. 3:22—if, in fact, it ever existed. Still, the sons of Seth were “being fruitful, multiplying, and filling the earth.” Not only does the notice about life span distinguish the line of Seth from that of Cain, but so also does the constant inclusion of the refrain “and he had other sons and daughters” for the representative Sethites.

The tenth individual in the Sethite genealogy is Noah. His name is connected here with the verb “bring relief or comfort” (5:29). This word is the same Hebrew verb, but in a different form, used in Gen. 6:6–7 to express God’s regret and repentance in regard to the creation and behavior of humankind. Father Lamech predicts—the source of his foreknowledge is not revealed—that his son Noah “shall bring relief from our work and from the toil of our hands because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed” (5:29 kjv).

The language in this verse is reminiscent of language in Gen. 3:17: “cursed is the ground [in 5:29, too] because of you; in toil [the same word as the ‘toil’ of 5:29] you shall eat of it” (nrsv). The curse placed in Adam’s time is now to be lifted, or significantly diminished, in the tenth generation. Genesis 3:17 gives way to Gen. 5:29. A new day is dawning.

The “Sons of God” and the “Daughters of Men” (6:1–4)

Few passages in Scripture have appeared so enigmatic to the interpreter as Gen. 6:1–4. The thorniest problem is the identification of the “sons of God” and “daughters of men.” Again we note that the Scriptures introduce these two groups without fanfare or explanation. No commentary on their origin or specific identification is offered.

Three possibilities for the identification of the villains and victims in the story enjoy popularity among the commentators. First, a number of both modern and ancient exegetes see in the “sons of God” a reference to the descendants of Seth, and in the “daughters of men” a reference to the descendants of Cain. The particular sin is an unfortunate intermingling in marriage between the godly Sethite line and the ungodly Cainite line.

The immediate advantage of this explanation is that it takes cognizance of the material in the immediately preceding chapters, especially chs. 4 and 5, in which the line of Cain is contrasted with the line of Seth. Furthermore, there are some explicit parallels in the activities of Sethites and Cainites and the two groups mentioned in Gen. 6:1–4. For example, the sudden mention of “daughters of men” (6:2) possibly finds its antecedent in the daughters of the various Sethites, the only other reference so far in Scripture to daughters (5:4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 26, 30). Another example of parallelism might be found in the sons of God “taking wives” for themselves (6:2), and the Cainite Lamech, who “took two wives” (4:19).

Pursuing these parallels, however, one quickly observes that they equate the sons of God with the Cainites (the Cainite Lamech took wives for himself, as did the sons of God for themselves), and the daughters of men with the Sethites—the reverse of a time-honored explanation (see Eslinger 1979: 65–73). The objection has been made that this theory is untenable because it must posit one meaning for “man” in 6:1 (humankind in general) and another, restricted meaning for “man” in 6:2 (either Sethites or Cainites). In response I note that it is possible for one word to assume several distinctive meanings within one chapter. I cite as an example 2 Samuel 7—the institution of the Davidic covenant—in which “house” has four different nuances. “House” designates a temple in vv. 5, 6, 7, 13; a palace in vv. 1, 2; a dynasty in vv. 11, 16, 19, 25, 26, 27, 29; and reputation or status in v. 18.

A second interpretation of the narrative suggests that the sons of God are ancient dynastic rulers, and the daughters of men are their royal harems, as inviting to the rulers as was the forbidden fruit to Eve (see Kline 1962; 1978). This interpretation moves the identification from Cainites and Sethites to something more ambiguous: a group of regal individuals whose existence has not yet been mentioned in the opening chapters of Scripture. Presumably, if the sons of God are heads of state, the narrative then would refer to a limited number of individuals. And yet God’s penalty is aimed at humankind. We then would be faced with the imbalance between sin in limited places—but in high places—and judgment that will reach almost cosmic proportions. This is not impossible, however. Witness the seventy thousand who died in Israel because of the sin of their monarch David at the taking of the census (2 Sam. 24:15, 17).

A third interpretation suggests that the sons of God are angels. The expression “sons of God” is indeed a name for the angelic host in Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7; Ps. 29:1; 89:6. The sin then is cohabitation between supernatural and natural beings. Some support for this may be found in Jude 6 and 7 (perhaps also 1 Pet. 3:19–20; 2 Pet. 2:4). If the function of Jude 7 is to compare the immorality and unnatural lust of Sodom and Gomorrah with similar behavior of the angels mentioned in Jude 6, then much credence is lent to this interpretation. On the other hand, if the purpose of Jude 6 and 7 is to provide two illustrations of divine judgment on different forms of sin at the angelic level and the human level, then these two verses have no bearing on Gen. 6:1–4.

Moreover, the reference in Genesis does not appear to be to rape or the indulgence of unbridled lust, but to marriage: “and they took to wife such of them as they chose” (rsv). The sin is not sexual violation, but the establishment of an illicit marital relationship in which the two partners cannot possibly become one flesh. And Jesus reminds us that angels do not marry (Mark 12:25).

It has been suggested that the most serious flaw in this explanation is that the perpetrators of the crime are nonhuman beings, but the recipients of judgment are human beings: “My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years” (nrsv). Although the explanation that the passage refers to angels or divine beings may have some attendant problems, the preceding criticism is not all that forceful. For if we are prepared to decipher an inconsistency and non sequitur here, what will we do with the next few verses in Genesis 6: “The wickedness of humankind was great.… The Lord was sorry that he had made humankind.… ‘I will blot out human beings … people and beasts and creeping things and birds of the air’ ” (6:5–7)? The criminals are human beings. The victims are both humans and animals.

Can we detect here, however faint, a voice of grace? I suggest that we can hear that voice, and the clue is to be found in 6:3: “but their days shall be a hundred and twenty years.” Once again the interpretation of this part of v. 3 is anything but unanimous. There are two possibilities. The 120 years refers either to the diminished life span that God will now impose on humankind or to a period of grace (preceding the flood) in which God’s hand of judgment will be restrained.

Either way, it appears to me that the notation suggests grace. If the reference is to the former—a shorter life span—then it is obvious that this enforcement is not immediate but long-range. Noah, introduced before this episode, lives for 950 years. Abraham’s father, Terah, lives for 205 years, and Abraham himself lives for 175 years. In the Book of Genesis only Joseph fails to surpass the 120-year maximum. God had told Adam that if he ate the forbidden fruit, he would die. He ate, but he did not die immediately.

On the other hand, if the reference is to a period of respite in which God voluntarily restrains himself—an interpretation that I find quite natural—then again grace is easy to discern. A parallel to that exercise of self-restraint on the part of God is Jonah’s message to Nineveh: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (Jon. 3:4 rsv). The best parallel is in the New Testament, 2 Thessalonians 2. Before the coming of Jesus Christ will be the coming of “the man of lawlessness.” The withdrawal of the restraint on this “son of perdition” will release him from his confinement. Until now, however, he is being held in check. Thus the opportunity to receive and offer grace is available.

The Flood (6:5, 11–12)

Paramount in this whole section is the description of the flood. Two well-preserved extrabiblical accounts of an ancient flood are from Mesopotamia: the Gilgamesh Epic and the Atrahasis Epic. Several English translations of these epics, and of other ancient Near Eastern texts, are available in sources such as (1) J. B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (3rd ed., with supplement; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969); (2) W. Beyerlin, ed., Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978); (3) John Walton, Ancient Israelite Literature in Its Cultural Context: A Survey of Parallels between Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990); (4) Victor H. Matthews and D. C. Benjamin, Old Testament Parallels: Laws and Stories from the Ancient Near East (2nd ed.; New York: Paulist Press, 1997); (5) W. W. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger, eds., The Context of Scripture: Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical World (3 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1997–2002); (6) B. T. Arnold and B. E. Beyer, Readings from the Ancient Near East: Primary Sources for Old Testament Study (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001).

The Gilgamesh Epic

Named after Gilgamesh, king of Uruk (Erech in Gen. 10:10) around 2600 b.c., this epic dates to approximately 1600 b.c., according to Thorkild Jacobsen. Gilgamesh is a tyrannical and brutal king, causing deep resentments among his subjects. In order to topple him the people solicit one of their gods to create an antagonist. The one formed is named Enkidu. He is “humanized” or “civilized” only after a week-long spirited orgy with a prostitute. A fight follows between Enkidu and Gilgamesh. It produces neither a victor nor a victim. Rather, the combatants become colleagues, battling all sorts of celestial, maleficent monsters. In the process the mortal Gilgamesh is proposed to by none other than the stunning goddess Ishtar, but he spurns her, primarily because of her poor record in marital fidelity!

Because of effrontery to Ishtar, Enkidu dies, setting off a pathological fear of death in Gilgamesh’s own life. His mind is at least clear enough to recall that one of his ancestors, Utnapishtim, had bypassed death and gained immortality. If Gilgamesh can find Utnapishtim, maybe he can learn the secret and save his own life. A tortuous trip through the various parts of the underworld follows. At last he meets Utnapishtim. And this is the story that Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh.

One day the god Ea tells Utnapishtim that Enlil was preparing to destroy humankind with a flood. Utnapishtim, if he is wise, should build a boat, upon which he is to take members of his family, cattle, some valuables, and professional sailors. The storm begins, and it continues for seven days and nights, only to have Utnapishtim’s boat snag on a mountaintop. After the abating of the waters, he leaves his boat and worships his gods. Subsequently it comes to Enlil’s attention that two mortals have escaped drowning. To finish his job of ridding the earth of humankind, he confers immortality on Utnapishtim and his wife.

But Utnapishtim’s experience is unique and thus produces further chagrin for Gilgamesh. After additional frustrating experiences, Gilgamesh returns to his home of Uruk, resigned to reality. Denied personal immortality, he will at least live on in the minds of his people through impressive Uruk, which he has built. Immortality thus is the work of his hands.

The Atrahasis Epic

I have already traced the Atrahasis Epic through the account of creation. After their creation, humans multiply so swiftly and make so much noise that Enlil has insomnia. He plans to reduce the population with a plague. Suddenly Atrahasis is introduced, who, with the guidance of his god Enki, manages to have the plague averted.

The problem is rectified, but after twelve hundred years the land is “bellowing like a bull.” Enlil’s plan this time is a drought, and once more Atrahasis intercedes and has the drought brought to a speedy end by placating the offended deity. Then the cycle starts a third time, and the punishment this time is a renewal of the drought.

Exasperated that this does not work either, Enlil orders a flood. What follows is much like the Gilgamesh Epic, except that the hero is Atrahasis, not Gilgamesh. On Enki’s advice Atrahasis builds a boat to weather the storm, destined to last seven days and nights. So devastating was the storm and so thorough was the annihilation of humanity that even the gods had serious questions about the sagacity of Enlil’s plan.

After disembarking, Atrahasis, like Utnapishtim, offers a sacrifice to the gods for his preservation, and none too soon, for they have been without food for the duration of the flood. Their source of food, the food sacrifices of mortals, has been dissipated.

Permanent countermeasures are then invoked that will put a ceiling on the ever-increasing world population. The plan is birth control: the creation of some permanently barren women, the creation of a demon whose function is to “snatch the baby away from the lap of her who bore it,” and the creation of several categories of priestesses for whom childbearing is prohibited.

The Epics Compared

A comparison of the Gilgamesh Epic and the Atrahasis Epic with Genesis 6–9 clearly shows similarities in details regarding the catastrophic flood. Does this mean, however, that the Hebrews borrowed and then edited the story from Mesopotamian literature, with only the names changed to protect the innocent? Could not stories be shared by the Bible and surrounding cultures because they are both based on a historical event? Both Scripture and Mesopotamian literature mention a flood because there indeed was a flood.

If so, it is just as interesting, if not more so, to contrast as to compare how two different traditions handled the same material, the same event. Such a contrast reveals crucial differences in mentality and worldview. One of the benefits to the believer who reads mythology is insight into how ancient people answered ultimate questions about life without the light of revelation.

For example, the Gilgamesh Epic is virtually silent about a motive for the flood. The only pertinent line is “That city was ancient, [as were] the gods within it / When their heart led the great gods to produce the flood.” After the flood Ea remonstrates with Enlil: “Thou wisest of gods, thou hero, How couldst thou, unreasoning, bring on the deluge? On the sinner impose his sin, on the transgressor impose his transgression!” (11:179–181). In the Atrahasis Epic it is the noise of the multitudes that triggers Enlil’s anger and vengeance. And most cuneiform specialists are convinced that the words used for noise indicate simply that, not moral turbulence.

Enlil, then, acts out of anger, selfishness, and capriciousness. His judgment is totally punitive; for the masses this judgment certainly is not therapeutic. But can one of the pantheon impose a catastrophe on humankind because of the sins of the latter? After all, the gods themselves fall short of being pure.

Also, it is equally difficult to discern a reason why one mortal is saved. In the Gilgamesh Epic it is Ea who warns Utnapishtim of Enlil’s scheme, and in the other it is the divine Enki who informs Atrahasis. Again the closest that the literature comes to a saving of one who is righteous is in the Sumerian account of the deluge. There, the one saved from drowning is Ziusudra, a pious, reverent king, although even here the nexus between his character and his salvation is not underscored.

Furthermore, the dimensions of the ship built by the heroes are strange: “equal shall be her width and her length”—that is, cubic, as later lines in the epic confirm. Along with his family and animals, the hero takes aboard professional sailors. It is human skill and ingenuity that will keep this ship afloat. In addition, Utnapishtim takes aboard copious amounts of silver and gold, a little nest egg with which to start over if indeed he ever emerges from this nightmare alive.

Finally, both pagan stories lack a clear didactic function. What are they trying to say, and what is the significance of their theme? Does either story intricately involve the reader? The concern of the Gilgamesh Epic is more with Gilgamesh than with Utnapishtim, and more with the former’s epic wanderings than the latter’s escape from drowning. One might conceivably extract from the story this principle: be satisfied with what you have and where you are, and do not try to overstep your limits (Genesis 3?). Precious little, however, in the dialogue of the text firmly establishes this.

The ending of the Atrahasis Epic is even more dour. Having failed three times, Enlil delivers an ultimatum: close the wombs, let any births be stillbirths, impose celibacy. Obviously, this is not a note designed to engender respect in mortals for their gods—fear and suspicion, perhaps, but not love and trust.

The Epics Contrasted with the Genesis Account

Something of the uniqueness of the biblical account can be demonstrated by pursuing the aforementioned four points of contrast into the deluge story in Genesis.

Genesis affirms that the impetus for the flood comes from the sin of humankind. Enough of this has been indicated in the narratives of chs. 3–5 and the first four verses of ch. 6. To this will be added: “the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, … every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually” (6:5 nrsv); “now the earth was corrupt … filled with violence” (6:11 nrsv); “all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth” (6:12 rsv).

Although it cannot be reflected in English translation, in the Hebrew text the “corrupt” of vv. 11 and 12 (2×) is built from the same Hebrew root as the “I will destroy” of v. 13b. Is this one way by which God destroys? Rather than interrupt and impede, he allows the evil started by humankind to run to its inevitable conclusion. Note, for example, “The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Gen. 15:16 nrsv). Similarly, the apostle Paul, in speaking of the expression of God’s wrath against sin, uses the expression “God gave them up” (Rom. 2:24, 26, 28), surely more passive than active, more gentle than raging.

Yet, lest we draw the conclusion that God is simply an unmoved spectator of this morass, we must note that God himself suffers emotional pain: God was “grieved” (Gen. 6:6). How interesting that the Hebrew word here for “pain” in the phrase “and his heart was filled with pain” (niv) is from the same root as the word for the “pain” that Eve will experience in childbirth (3:16) and that the man will confront in his working and attempting to make productive the soil (3:17). Humankind’s pain has become God’s pain! Of course, the pain of the man and the woman is quite physical and an unfortunate consequence of their own misbehavior. God’s pain is the pain of disappointment over the misconduct of humankind. It is significant that God’s first response in Genesis 6 to pervasive sinfulness in his creation is not rage or indignation, but brokenness.

Noah is not spared on the basis of capriciousness or favoritism. On the contrary, he “was a righteous man, blameless … Noah walked with God” (6:9 nrsv; cf. 7:1). Character, either way, does determine destiny.

To be more precise, Noah is told to build not a boat, but an ark (6:14), more a chest than a ship. Its dimensions (approximately 450 ft. × 75 ft. × 45 ft.), far from being nonsensical, are quite worthy of a seagoing vessel. No sailors accompany Noah aboard, nor is there reference to any type of navigational equipment (unless one counts the window in the ceiling through which to see the stars, or the birds as the mariner’s homing pigeons). Salvation will be from God alone. No material possessions are to be packed away either. Noah is no more entitled to this than was Achan.

Far from being a hair-raising but irrelevant story sung around campfires in generations to come, the deluge story relates profoundly to successive generations. First of all there is a retraction by God of the curse placed on the ground (8:21; cf. 3:17), evidenced by the story of Noah’s vineyard, in itself a verification of the abrogation of the curse (9:20–29). Connecting 8:21 with 6:5, Gerhard von Rad (1972: 123) observes, “v. 21 is one of the most remarkable theological statements in the Old Testament: it shows the pointed and concentrated way in which the Yahwist can express himself at decisive points. The same condition which in the prologue [6:5] is the basis for God’s judgment in the epilogue reveals God’s grace and providence. The contrast between God’s punishing anger and his supporting grace … is here presented … as an adjustment by God towards man’s sinfulness.”

This promise is then followed by the institution of a covenant with Noah in ch. 9. What God had once said to Adam (1:28), he now says to Noah (9:1). Thus, there is a second start, a second chance for humankind, albeit with qualifications (9:2–6).

What this covenant does is establish not uniqueness, but precedence. Noah is the first in a series of persons with whom God is making this commitment. What is unrepeatable is the flood (9:11). This covenant is God’s responsibility at the point of maintenance. Note that the rainbow in the sky is for God’s benefit (9:12–17). God almighty writes himself a memo! Such is the extension of this story into the lives of its readers.

Two Flood Stories?

I have had previous occasion to draw attention to the documentary hypothesis of source critics in dealing with the creation account. Genesis 6–9 is an example thought to substantiate once and for all the validity of this approach. A surface reading of Genesis 6–9, say the source critics, demonstrates palpably that these four chapters are not a homogeneous work. Several observations are culled to buttress this idea.

The first category includes blatant inconsistencies. One of these is the number of animals that go aboard. According to 6:19–20; 7:9, 15 (all from P), the number is set at two of every kind, male and female. But 7:2 (J) says that Noah is to take with him “seven pairs” of clean animals, one pair of unclean animals, the male and his mate (“man” and “woman” are the words used here, as in 2:23).

A second example is the mention of conflicting durations for the flood. One section establishes the length as forty days and nights (7:4, 12, 17; 8:6 [all from J]). Another tradition has the flood lasting 150 days (7:24 [P]).

Another example is the nature of the flood. Was it rain from above (7:4, 12 [J]), or was it a bursting open of the subterranean waters (7:11 [P])?

The second category that the source critics cite is a distinctive shift in the use of the divine name. They list these examples:

a. 6:5: “the Lord saw”; also 6:6–8

b. 6:9: “Noah walked with God”; also 6:11, 12, 13, 22

a. 7:1: “the Lord said to Noah”; also 7:5

b. 7:9: “as God had commanded”; also 7:16a

a. 7:16b: “the Lord shut him in”

b. 8:1: “but God remembered Noah … God made a wind”; also 8:15

a. 8:20: “Noah built an altar to the Lord”; also 8:21

b. 9:1: “God blessed Noah”; also 9:6, 8, 12, 16, 17

A third category is that the account points to two different conclusions: (1) Noah’s offering, God’s inhaling of its pleasant odor, and the lifting of the curse on the ground (8:20–22 [J]); (2) God’s blessings to Noah and the institution of the Noahic covenant (9:1–18 [P]).

The fourth category is that the account features two distinctive styles and modes of expression. For instance, God is at one time pictured very much in human terms—he repents, is grieved, inhales a sacrificial odor, has second thoughts; at another point in the story he is pictured as the completely otherworldly, all-powerful supernatural force standing over the world.

The conclusion drawn from all this is that originally there were two flood stories, one traceable to a writer or writers in approximately the tenth or early ninth centuries b.c. (the Yahwist), the other produced about four hundred years later (the Priestly account, ca. 550–450 b.c.). Subsequently the two stories were spliced together by an editor or editors. In the text as we have it, Genesis 6–9 can be divided this way:

6:5–8

J

7:12

J

8:3b–5

P

6:9–22

P

7:13–16a

P

8:6–12

J

7:1–5

J

7:16b–17

J

8:13a

P

7:6

P

7:18–21

P

8:13b

J

7:7–8

J

7:22–23

J

8:14–19

P

7:9

P

7:24–8:2a

P

8:20–22

J

7:10

J

8:2b–8:3a

J

9:1–17

P

7:11

P

Not a few voices of protest have been raised against this division of the flood story, and for that matter the entire Pentateuch, into originally separate sources. The works of modern scholars such as Umberto Cassuto, Cyrus Gordon, and Kenneth Kitchen take the theory to task on several grounds. For Cassuto, such fragmentation of the pericope fails to do justice to the literary structure of the text. Heterogeneity raises more problems than it solves. For Gordon and Kitchen, source division is suspect on the grounds that similar phenomena exist in the ancient literature of the Mediterranean world, but to draw from this a multiple-source theory is ludicrous.

We may make the following observations, particularly concerning the flood section of Genesis.

First, some of the supposedly telltale evidences of confluence in the text may not be all that evident. Are “two pair” and “seven” mutually exclusive? Why cannot the “two” of 6:19–20 and 7:9, 15 be the standard number of animals (a male and female for breeding—even the unclean animals are preserved!) taken into the ark? “Seven” would apply only to sacrificial animals—that is, animals in a category by themselves. Is this solution any less probable than applying “two” to J and “seven” to P? Again, does the text indicate an inconsistency in the duration of the flood, forty versus 150 days? Was not the actual downpour forty days and nights, followed by five months (150 days) of rising water until the water level peaked?

Second, Scandinavian scholar Eduard Nielsen has called into question, on the basis of the principles of oral tradition, the splitting of the flood account. To illustrate, Nielsen points out that 7:9 is, on the multiple-source theory, from P. The reason? The name “God” occurs in this verse, a sure sign of P: “two and two … went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded” (nrsv). But just a few verses later (7:15, ascribed by all critics also to P) exactly the same thing is said, “They went into the ark with Noah, two and two” (nrsv). Duplication in the same document! Anyone who is ready to explain v. 15 as an editorial insertion should first recall Nielsen’s (1954: 98) rejoinder: “It is reassuring and sometimes necessary to have a Redactor up one’s sleeve.”

Third, on the basis of an examination of the grammatical structure of the text, Francis Andersen (1974: 124–26) is able to isolate and identify units that have been scissored by the source critics. Thus, grammatically, 7:6–17 is a unit with a distinct and clearly identifiable structure; yet the documentary hypothesis wants this section to seesaw from P to J and back at least seven times. As Andersen remarks, “If the documentary hypothesis is valid, some editor has put together scraps of parallel versions of the same story with scissors and paste, and yet has achieved a result which, from the point of view of discourse grammar, looks as if it has been made out of whole cloth.”

Fourth, scholars such as B. W. Anderson and G. J. Wenham are convinced that in treating the text of the flood in Scripture we must go beyond the analytical probing (dissect the whole to recover the original parts), beyond the diachronic probing (how did the parts converge to form the whole?), to the synchronic dimensions of the text (what is observable about the final form of the text?). Thus, in scrutinizing the flood narrative, Anderson produces the overall interesting design shown in figure 3.

Figure 3

1. Violence in God’s creation, 6:11–12

2. First divine address: resolution to destroy, 6:13–22

3. Second divine address: command to enter the ark, 7:1–10

4. Beginning of the flood, 7:11–16

5. The rising flood waters, 7:17–24

God’s Remembrance of Noah

6. The flood waters recede, 8:1–5

7. Drying of the earth, 8:6–14

8. Third divine address: command to leave the ark, 8:15–19

9. God’s resolution to preserve order, 8:20–22

10. Fourth divine address: blessings and covenant, 9:1–17

From B. W. Anderson, “From Analysis to Synthesis: The Interpretation of Genesis 1–11,” JBL 97 (1978): 38. Used by permission.

Anderson is not attempting to use this chart in any way to establish Genesis 6–9 as a unified work. It certainly does not rule out originally independent stories. But does not this smoothness in the account raise the possibility that Genesis 6–9 is from one source? After producing his own palistrophe on these chapters, Wenham (1978: 347–48) states, “The documentary hypothesis may yet be defended if one is prepared to posit a most ingenious and thorough redactor who blended J and P into a marvellous and coherent unity.” But is that the more likely explanation? It is, to be sure, a possible explanation. But if we believe that Genesis 6–9 is the result of the editing of J and P together into the flood story, we surely cannot think that the redactor’s work was poorly done and insensitive to blatant contradictions arising from such combining of sources. To do so would be to make the compiler into a postmodernist! And yet this is precisely what many a Genesis commentator has done. As Halpern (1995: 17) has suggested, to treat Genesis 6–9 as an arbitrary, irrational work of redaction is historically untenable in that it suggests that the editors of the Pentateuch were mentally inferior to modern philologians. It is also morally untenable “because the failure of the modern analyst to arrive at a hypothesis securing the dignity of the ancient writer is not evidence of a defect in the ancient editor.”

The Curse on Canaan (9:20–27)

At least two problems are present here: the nature of the crime committed by Ham against his father, and why Noah placed a curse upon Ham’s son Canaan, and not upon Ham himself.

It is true that the drunkenness of Noah is not made the focal point of any exhortation, even though the actions of Ham presumably would not have taken place if his father had been sober. When one recalls, however, that the two explicit incidents of drunkenness recorded in Genesis—here and Gen. 19:30–38—became occasions for the obnoxious, then perhaps the scenarios that follow each incident are sufficient commentary on overindulgence. (One might also compare Laban’s giving to Jacob Leah instead of Rachel in Gen. 29:23. The text does not state how the father-in-law managed this deceit, but more than likely Jacob was so drunk by this time in the wedding celebration as to be unable to distinguish one sister from another. Notice that when he finally wakes up, he says to Laban: “What is this you have done to me?” [Gen. 29:25 niv]. Compare that with “When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him …” [Gen. 9:24 nrsv].)

Ham’s sin is described in v. 22: “[he] saw the nakedness of his father” (nrsv). Is Ham’s sin simply the accidental viewing of his naked father, which subsequently he related to his brothers? The text implies more, for upon awakening, Noah “knew what his youngest son had done to him.” How he knew it was his youngest son we are not told.

The suggestion has been made (see Basset 1971) that Ham’s sin was incest. While Noah was asleep, Ham had intercourse with his mother, and a child, Canaan, was produced by this incestuous relationship. This explains why Noah’s curse is on Canaan. There are two other clarion instances in Genesis of incest: Reuben with his father’s concubine (Gen. 35:22; 49:3–4), and Lot with his daughters, from which relationship sons are born (Gen. 19:30–38).

Support for this interpretation may be found in sections of the Pentateuch that deal with forbidden sexual relations. Leviticus 18 and 20 repeatedly use the phrase “you shall not uncover the nakedness of …” in dealing with cases of possible incest, and the relationship is always heterosexual, never homosexual. Thus, to uncover the nakedness of one’s father is to have sexual intercourse with one’s mother. The verb that is used consistently in these legal sections is “uncover” (see Gen. 9:21 for Noah, who was “uncovered” before the trespass), except for Lev. 20:17, which speaks of “seeing” the nakedness of one’s sister.

Plausible as it is, this interpretation has three problems. First, the story in Genesis presupposes the birth of Canaan before the episode, not as a result of the episode, unless one is prepared to say that the reference to Canaan in 9:18 is an explanatory gloss by the narrator of Genesis that is without chronological significance. That is possible.

Second, taken at face value, the story suggests that Noah was made aware shortly after he recovered from his hangover of what Ham had done to him, and immediately he pronounced the curse on the grandson. The incest theory would necessitate Noah learning of his wife’s pregnancy, the birth of Canaan nine months later, and the imprecation then put on Canaan.

The third weakness in this theory is that it fails to provide a rationale for the actions of Ham’s two brothers, Shem and Japheth. What is involved in their “walking backward and covering the nakedness of their father”? And should we see any parallel between Shem and Japheth covering their father’s nakedness with some kind of garment here and God covering Adam and Eve’s nakedness with some kind of garment in 3:21? By explaining Ham’s action as a case of incest, this can only mean that the brothers refrained from imitating their younger brother’s folly.

The second major problem—why the grandson is cursed—also avoids a watertight solution. I have already mentioned one possibility in the preceding paragraphs: Canaan is the offspring of an incestuous relationship.

One can easily say (see von Rad 1972: 135) that the words “Ham, the father of” in vv. 18, 22 are later insertions by a redactor. This nicely eliminates the problem, but it does so by way of subjective deletion of parts of the text. It was Canaan who saw his (grand)father’s nakedness, and thus it is he who is cursed.

Perhaps the curse is placed on Canaan because he is the youngest son of Ham (10:6), as Ham is the youngest son of Noah (9:24). We have already seen instances in our study of Genesis in which the innocent suffer because of the guilty: the ground is cursed because of Adam and Eve’s sin; if the sons of God are angels, then it is humankind that is punished for the sin of the angels; most animals and birds are drowned in the flood because of the sins of humankind.

This is the only negative event in Genesis 3–11 in which God does not say a word. Or as an extension of that, this is the first time in Scripture that one person places a curse on another person. God has placed a curse, but now so does Noah.

In that word of Noah there is in addition to the curse a word of blessing. What have thus far been divine prerogatives are now assumed by a mortal. Noah’s announcements must have as much validity and carry as much force as similar announcements made by God. By what logic could one understand blessings and curses in God’s mouth as actual decisions but then limit the same words in Noah’s mouth to simple wishes?

Noah’s first word is to Shem: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem” (rsv, alternate translation). Of special interest here is that for the first time in the Bible God is called the God of a particular individual, or the larger group that emerges from that individual. For a parallel to “the God of Shem” we will have to wait until we meet Abraham’s servant speaking of “the God of my master Abraham” (Gen. 24:12, 42, 48).

Crucial to the interpretation of v. 27—“God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem” (rsv)—is the identification of “him.” Is the subject Japheth or God? Is Noah’s prophecy one in which Japheth will dwell in the tents of Shem—that is, the gathering of Gentiles into the fold of God’s people? Or is Noah’s prophecy one in which God himself will dwell in the tents of Shem? The majority of ancient commentators identify “him” as God, while most contemporary writers opt for Japheth (but with little agreement on precisely what the phrase means).

Walter Kaiser (1978: 82) has argued, convincingly to my mind, for the translation “But he [God] will dwell in the tents of Shem.” The prophecy may then be taken as a further narrowing of the family line through which God’s plan of redemption and word of promise are transmitted. Ultimately, this family will produce Abraham.

The Tower at Babel (11:1–9)

Several of the incidents in Genesis 4–11 are bracketed by similar genealogical notes. The account of the sons of God and daughters of men (6:1–8) is preceded and followed by a note about Noah’s three sons (5:32; 6:9–10). The flood account is surrounded by the same reference to Noah’s progeny (6:9–10; 9:18–19). The tower of Babel incident has as its forerunner and follow-up the genealogy of Shem (10:21–31; 11:10–32).

There has been a strong emphasis on the east in these opening chapters of Genesis. The garden of Eden is in the east (2:8). At the east of the garden of Eden God placed the cherubim to block reentry to the garden (3:24). Cain dwells in the land of Nod, east of Eden (4:16). Several of Shem’s descendants lived “in … the hill country of the east” (10:30 nrsv). This story about the tower opens with the migration of people from the east (11:2) to the plain of Shinar. Once again the geographical milieu of our story is placed outside of the land of Palestine.

The sin of the people does not lie in the desire to build a city, which is a neutral, amoral act. It is the motivation behind this undertaking that is most prominent: “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves” (Gen. 11:4 nrsv). This is the pagan concept of immortality. Long after the demise of the artist, the sculptor, the poet, the musician, the architect, and the author, their memory will be perpetuated by their productions. Immortality is based on an achievement. One lives on in perpetuity because of his or her skills.

God does not embrace that idea, however. The narrative reports that the antics of these builders goaded God into action. Their titanic project grinds to a halt when God “confuses the language” and disperses those who insisted on becoming more sedentary. Babel (v. 9), “the gate of God,” had instead become “Babbleville.”

Miller (1978: 27–36) emphasizes that throughout Genesis 3–11 there is a correspondence between the nature of each sin and the nature of the judgment on that sin. For example, the serpent, who seduced Eve into eating what she was not supposed to eat, will have to eat dust for the remainder of its life. Cain, by vocation a farmer, for whom being settled is essential, now becomes a fugitive and a wanderer, thus ending his farming days. In the tower incident in 11:1–9 God’s punishment is directed at both the instrument of sin that made the building project possible, the one language, and at the intention of that sin, to avoid being scattered over the earth. Throughout Genesis 3–11 God’s response to sin and disobedience is never arbitrary. He never reaches blindly into his “bag” of judgment possibilities and randomly draws one out. The similarities between crime and punishment highlight the nature of the trespass and the nature of divine justice at work.

The narrative begins by saying that the earth had “one language and few words.” Does this imply that up until this time the earth had been linguistically uniform? Hardly so! In the “table of nations” in the preceding chapter we are told not once but three times (vv. 5, 20, 31) that the sons of Japheth, Ham, and Shem were divided “by their families, their languages, their lands, and their nations.”

One can see a conflict between these two chapters, as do proponents of the documentary hypothesis. In that system there are two explanations for the scattering of humankind: the P source (ch. 10), in which the scattering is a sign of blessing; and the J source (ch. 11), in which the scattering is a sign of divine dissatisfaction, a penalty.

It is also possible to explain the juxtaposition of these two chapters by suggesting that two different linguistic aspects are in view here. Chapter 10 refers to individual dialects or languages. By contrast the “one language” of ch. 11 refers to a lingua franca, an international language that makes cooperation and interchange possible among people of different languages.

The point of ch. 11, then, as argued by Cyrus Gordon (Before Columbus: Links between the Old World and Ancient America [New York: Crown, 1971], 107, 165–66), would be not that God divided one language into many languages, but that he made incomprehensible the one common language that was understandable to everyone engaged in the building program.

A third suggestion has been offered by Clines (1978: 68–69): “If the material of ch. 10 had followed the Babel story, the whole Table of Nations would have to be read under the sign of judgment; where it stands it functions as the fulfillment of the divine command of 9:1.” This last interpretation has the advantage, in my estimation, as it provides another example of a constant element that we have seen in Genesis 3–11: the voice of God in both judgment and redemption, wrath and mercy. In all things God is working for good, annoyed by the stupidity of some, but swayed from his plan by none. It is possible that if a general statement of the creation of human life (1:26–30) is followed immediately by a more specific account of the creation of that human life (2:4–5), then we may have the same here: a general account of the origins of languages (10:1–32) followed immediately by a more specific account of the origins of that phenomenon (11:1–9).

Genesis 4–11

Andersen, F. 1974. The Sentence in Biblical Hebrew. The Hague: Mouton.

Anderson, B. W. 1978. “From Analysis to Synthesis: The Interpretation of Genesis 1–11.” JBL 97:23–39.

Barnard, A. N. 1971. “Was Noah a Righteous Man? Studies in Texts: Genesis 6, 8.” Theology 74:311–14.

Barr, J. 2003. “Reflections on the Covenant with Noah.” In Covenant as Context: Essays in Honour of E. W. Nicholson. Ed. A. D. H. Mayes and R. B. Salters. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 11–22.

Basset, F. W. 1971. “Noah’s Nakedness and the Curse of Canaan: A Case of Incest?” VT 21:232–37.

Brueggemann, W. 1968. “David and His Theologian.” CBQ 30:156–81.

———. 1971. “Kingship and Chaos (A Study in Tenth Century Theology).” CBQ 33:317–32.

Bryan, D. T. 1987. “A Reevaluation of Genesis 4 and 5 in the Light of Recent Studies in Genealogical Fluidity.” ZAW 99:180–88.

Cassuto, U. 1973. “The Episode of the Sons of God and the Daughters of Men (Genesis vi:1–4).” In Biblical and Oriental Studies. Trans. I. Abrahams. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Magnes. Vol. 1, pp. 17–28.

Christensen, D. 1986. “Janus Parallelism in Genesis 6:3.” HS 27:20–24.

Clark, W. M. 1971. “The Flood and the Structure of the Pre-patriarchal History.” ZAW 83:184–211.

Clines, D. J. A. 1972–1973. “Noah’s Flood. I: The Theology of the Flood Narrative.” Faith and Thought 100:128–42.

———. 1978. The Theme of the Pentateuch. 2nd ed., 1997. JSOTSup 10. Sheffield: JSOT Press.

———. 1979. “The Significance of the ‘Sons of God’ Episode (Genesis 6:1–4) in the Context of the ‘Primeval History’ (Genesis 1–11).” JSOT 13:33–46.

Cohen, H. H. 1974. The Drunkenness of Noah. Judaic Studies 4. University, Ala.: University of Alabama Press.

Cohen, N. 1996. Noah’s Flood: The Genesis Story in Western Thought. New Haven: Yale University Press.

DeWitt, D. S. 1979. “The Historical Background of Genesis 11:1–9: Babel or Ur?” JETS 22:15–26.

Eslinger, L. 1979. “A Contextual Identification of the bene ha’elohim and benoth ha’adam in Genesis 6:1–4.” JSOT 13:65–73.

Fewell, D. 2001. “Building Babel.” In Postmodern Interpretations of the Bible: A Reader. Ed. A. K. M. Adam. St. Louis: Chalice. Pp.1–15.

Fisher, E. 1970. “Gilgamesh and Genesis: The Flood Story in Context.” CBQ 32: 392–403.

Forrest, R. W. E. 1994. “Paradise Lost Again: Violence and Obedience in the Flood Narrative.” JSOT 62:3–18.

Frymer-Kensky, T. 1974. “What the Babylonian Flood Stories Can and Cannot Teach Us about the Genesis Flood.” BAR 4 (4):32–41.

———. 1977. “The Atrahasis Epic and Its Significance for Our Understanding of Genesis 1–9.” BA 40:147–55.

Gruber, M. I. 1978. “The Tragedy of Cain and Abel: A Case of Depression.” JQR 69:89–97.

———. 1980. “Was Cain Angry or Depressed?” BAR 6 (4):35–36.

Halpern, B. 1995. “What They Don’t Know Won’t Hurt Them: Genesis 6–9.” In Fortunate the Eyes That See: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman on His Seventieth Birthday. Ed. A. B. Beck et al. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Pp. 16–34.

Harland, P. J. 1998. “Vertical or Horizontal: The Sin of Babel.” VT 48:515–33.

Harrison, R. K. 1994. “From Adam to Noah: A Reconsideration of the Antediluvian Patriarchs’ Ages [Gen 5, 3–32].” JETS 37:161–68.

Hartmann, T. C. 1972. “Some Thoughts on the Sumerian King List and Genesis 5 and 11b.” JBL 91:25–32.

Hasel, G. F. 1978. “The Genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 and Their Alleged Babylonian Background.” AUSS 16:361–74.

Hendel, R. S. 1987. “Of Demigods and the Deluge: Toward an Interpretation of Genesis 6:1–4.” JBL 106:13–26.

Herion, G. A. 1995. “Why God Rejected Cain’s Offering: The Obvious Answer.” In Fortunate the Eyes That See: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman on His Seventieth Birthday. Ed. A. B. Beck et al. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Pp. 52–65.

Kaiser, W. C. 1978. Toward an Old Testament Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Kessler, M. 1974. “Rhetorical Criticism of Genesis 7.” In Rhetorical Criticism: Essays in Honor of James Muilenburg. Ed. J. J. Jackson and M. Kessler. PTMS 1. Pittsburgh: Pickwick. Pp. 18–32.

Kline, M. 1962. “Divine Kingship and Genesis 6:1–4.” WTJ 24:187–204.

———. 1978. “Oracular Origin of the State.” In Biblical and Near Eastern Studies. Ed. G. Tuttle. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Pp. 132–41.

Lambert, W. G., and A. R. Millard. 1969. Atra-hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood. Oxford: Clarendon.

Landy, F. 1998. “Flood and Fludd.” In Biblical Studies/Cultural Studies: The Third Sheffield Colloquium. Ed. J. C. Exum and S. Moore. JSOTSup 266. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Pp. 117–58.

Larsson, G. 2000. “Remarks concerning the Noah-Flood Complex.” ZAW 112:75–77.

Laurin, R. B. 1978. “The Tower of Babel Revisited.” In Biblical and Near Eastern Studies. Festschrift for W. S. LaSor. Ed. G. Tuttle. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Pp. 142–45.

Levin, S. 1979. “The More Savory Offering: A Key to the Problem of Genesis 4:3–5.” JBL 98:85.

Lewis, J. P. 1994. “The Offering of Abel (Gen. 4:4): A History of Interpretation.” JETS 37:481–96.

Longacre, R. 1976. “The Discourse Structure of the Flood Narrative.” In SBLSP 1976. Ed. G. W. MacRae. Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press. Pp. 235–62.

Merrill, E. 1997. “The Peoples of the Old Testament according to Genesis 10.” BSac 154:3–22.

Miller, J. M. 1974. “The Descendants of Cain: Notes on Genesis 4.” ZAW 86:164–74.

Miller, P. D., Jr. 1978. Genesis 1–11: Studies in Structure and Theme. JSOTSup 8. Sheffield: University of Sheffield Department of Biblical Studies.

Moberly, R. W. L. 2000. “Why Did Noah Send Out a Raven?” VT 50:345–56.

Nielsen, E. 1954. Oral Tradition: A Modern Problem in the Old Testament Introduction. SBT 11. Chicago: Allenson.

Obed, B. 1986. “The Table of Nations (Genesis 10)—A Socio-Cultural Approach.” ZAW 98:14–31.

Paul, M. J. 1996. “Genesis 4:17–24: A Case-Study in Eisegesis.” TynB 47:143–62.

Petersen, D. L. 1976. “The Yahwist on the Flood.” VT 26:438–46.

———. 1979. “Genesis 6:1–4, Yahweh and the Organization of the Cosmos.” JSOT 13:47–64.

Rad, G. von. 1972. Genesis. Trans. J. H. Marks. Rev. ed. OTL. Philadelphia: -Westminster.

Riemann, P. 1970. “Am I My Brother’s Keeper?” Int 24:482–91.

Robertson, O. Palmer. 1998. “Current Critical Questions concerning the ‘Curse of Ham’ (Gen. 9:20–27).” JETS 41:177–88.

Ross, A. P. 1980a. “The Curse of Canaan.” BSac 137:223–40.

———. 1980b. “The Table of Nations in Genesis 10—Its Structure.” BSac 137:340–53.

Sasson, J. 1975. “Word Play in Gen 6:8–9.” CBQ 37:165–66.

———. 1980. “The ‘Tower of Babel’ as a Clue to the Redactional Structuring of Primeval History [Gen. 1–11:9].” In The Bible World: Essays in Honor of Cyrus H. Gordon. Ed. G. Rendsburg et al. New York: Ktav. Pp. 211–19.

Spina, F. 1992. “The ‘Ground’ for Cain’s Rejection: ʾadamah in the Context of Gen 1–11.” ZAW 104:319–32.

Steinmetz, D. 1994. “Vineyard, Farm and Garden: The Drunkenness of Noah in the Context of Primeval History.” JBL 113:193–207.

Tigay, J. H., ed. 1985. The Gilgamesh Epic: Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Turner, L. A. 1993. “The Rainbow as the Sign of the Covenant in Genesis ix: 11–13.” VT 43:119–24.

VanGemeren, W. 1981. “The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1–4 (An Example of Evangelical Demythologization?).” WTJ 43:320–48.

Vervenne, M. 1995. “What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor? Critical Re-examination of Genesis 9:20–27.” JSOT 68:33–55.

Waltke, B. 1986. “Cain and His Offering.” WTJ 48:363–72.

Wenham, G. J. 1978. “The Coherence of the Flood Narrative.” VT 28:336–48.

Wickham, L. R. 1974. “The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men: Gen vi 2 in Early Christian Exegesis.” OtSt 19:135–47.

Wifall, W. 1975. “Genesis 6:1–4—A Royal Davidic Myth?” BTB 5:294–301.

3

Abraham

Genesis 11:26–25:11

Only two chapters are devoted in the opening book of the Bible to the story of creation, and the narration of the fall of humankind from sinlessness into sin is limited to one. Yet the story of Abraham covers thirteen chapters in Genesis, as well as parts of two other chapters. Is there a clue here about the essential purpose of Scripture? Its primary function is not to address itself to philosophical, metaphysical questions that engage, properly, the modern mind. If pressed for a definition of God, or how one can know that God works in history, an ancient Hebrew would give an answer something like one given by jazz artist Louis Armstrong, who, when asked to define jazz, replied, “Man, if you have to ask, you’ll never know.”

The Old Testament is more theological than it is philosophical. How do God and humans ever reach an agreement and become compatible? The answers are in Leviticus and in a substantial part of Exodus. How does God encourage a person amidst the most forbidding circumstances? Look to Joseph’s story. How does God call one person out of anonymity and use that life to challenge and change the world? Consider Abraham’s life.

Still, we do not find, in the technical sense, a biography of Abraham in Genesis. We are unable to trace his life in detail. However, certain events of his life are highlighted, and a particular section of his life is emphasized. Table 2 shows this. We have no information about Abraham for the first seventy-five years of his life, and only minimal information about the last seventy-five years of his life. The crucial twenty-five years are those from Abraham’s seventy-fifth to one hundredth years.

Table 2

Scripture

Age of Abraham

Event

12:4

75

Abraham departs from Haran

16:3

85

Abraham living in Canaan ten years

16:16

86

birth of Ishmael

17:1

99

the covenant

21:5

100

birth of Isaac

23:1

137

death of Sarah

25:7

175

death of Abraham

From Adam through Noah’s progeny (1–11) models of faithlessness have easily outnumbered models of obedience. Abraham is set in contrast to these unpromising individuals. One cannot miss, for example, the contrast between “let us make a name for ourselves” (11:4 nrsv) and “I will make your name great” (12:2 niv). Human machinations contrast with divine initiative, self-promotion with passively receiving God’s promises.

The transition from prepatriarchal to patriarchal history is marked by the opening words of Genesis 12. Hans W. Wolff (1974: 47) correctly categorizes the grammatical parts of the passage:

1. an imperative: “Go!” (12:1)

2. five imperfect verbs, with God as subject: “I will make … I will bless … I will make great … I will bless … I will curse.”

3. one perfect verb: “by you all the families of the earth [Genesis 10–11?] shall be blessed” or “shall bless themselves.” (It is interesting that a promise for the future is put in the perfect. Is one’s future ahead or behind? Does one walk into or back into the future?)

Within these three verses the word “bless(ing),” as verb or noun, appears five times. Wolff (1974: 54) contrasts this fivefold use of “bless(ing)” with the fivefold use of “curse” in Genesis 1–11:

1. 3:14: “cursed are you above the cattle”

2. 3:17: “cursed is the ground because of you”

3. 4:11: “you are cursed from the ground”

4. 5:29: “the ground which the Lord has cursed”

5. 9:25: “cursed be Canaan”

(8:21 uses a different Hebrew verb than do these five)

One might also be inclined to link the blessings of Gen. 12:1–3 on God’s lips with a similar number of blessings in Genesis 1–11: “and God blessed them” (1:22 rsv); “and God blessed them” (1:28 rsv); “so God blessed the seventh day” (2:3 nrsv); “male and female … he blessed them” (5:2 nrsv); “and God blessed Noah” (9:1 rsv). Source critics, however, would not allow the equation because, they maintain, Gen. 12:1–3 is from J, and these five are from P.

What events then follow in Abraham’s life?

1. Abraham travels to Egypt with Sarah because of famine (12:10–20)

2. Back from Egypt, Abraham and Lot must parcel the land between themselves (13:1–18)

3. Abraham rescues Lot from his captors (14:1–17, 21–24), and in the process he confronts Melchizedek (14:18–20)

4. God makes the covenant with Abraham (15), a covenant that is later sealed with circumcision (17); Ishmael is born (16)

5. God judges Sodom and Gomorrah (18–19)

6. Abraham, away from home, again tries unsuccessfully to deceive a king by identifying Sarah as his sister (20)

7. Isaac is born and subsequently offered (21–22)

8. Sarah dies (23)

9. Abraham sends his servant back home to obtain a wife for Isaac (24) (Note that the longest chapter in Genesis deals with the subject of marriage.)

10. Abraham dies (25:1–11)

The Theme of Promise

Our knowledge about Abraham is limited to what we find in Scripture. As is true of the majority of biblical personalities, there are no extrabiblical references to him in any extant literature from the patriarchal age. There are individuals who had (approximately) the same name—for example, at ancient Ebla—a fact that bears witness to the antiquity of the tradition. But none of these persons is the biblical Abraham.

One reference to the patriarch Abraham—or Moses, for that matter—in a cuneiform or hieroglyphic text would be sufficient to squelch much of the speculation that has swirled around these early characters. The absence of such a reference, however, has unleashed the imagination of much of modern scholarship in the search for the “historical Abraham.” Even those scholars who have, based on archaeological discoveries, underscored the authentic cultural background of the patriarchal traditions would not admit that here we have an illustration of pure history. Even for them, historical reporting in its sterling sense does not emerge until the “objective” account of David and his family in the “Succession Narrative” (2 Samuel 9–20; 1 Kings 1–2).

In addition, those critics who have expressed a conservative historical judgment on the patriarchs would also, by and large, affirm that the stories—mixtures of fact and legend or saga—are products of Israel and Judah from the period of the monarchy’s establishment down to the return from exile (1000–500 b.c.). As such, all the narratives about the patriarchs were part of a long oral tradition, and subsequently they underwent a process of collection, revision, and editing in which many of the stories were far removed from their original context and purpose. Compatible with this emphasis is the suggestion that some of the patriarchal stories are sheer inventions of a later age, stories that were artificially set in an earlier period.

This approach obviously minimizes or ignores the crucial role given to the patriarchs in Genesis: to be the initial channels through which God’s promises for the future are launched. In the words of Geerhardus Vos (1948: 67), “If according to the Bible they [the patriarchs] are real actors in the drama of redemption, the actual beginning of the people of God … then the denial of their historicity makes them useless.” Instead, they become either murky figures from an ancient and undecipherable past or parabolic characters (e.g., more like the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable than John the Baptist) from which any generation may extract timeless truths to be applied to its age.

The significant part played by the patriarchs in redemptive history is made most prominent in Genesis by the constant emphasis on divine promise. Everything starts with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but nothing ends with them. All three individuals are means to an end that reaches well beyond their lifetimes. They are catalysts and not conclusions. Thus, we read the accounts of Abraham in Genesis not primarily to gain a perspective on daily life in the second millennium b.c., but to become informed of the promises of God for the future. Ultimately, our interest is prophetic, not historical.

As we will observe, the life of Abraham appears as an interesting amalgamation of faith and folly, movements forward and movements backward. At most points the reader will have no problem in applauding the Abraham of faith. But several incidents will reveal the absence of faith.

What is it that puts both the positive and the negative events in perspective? Gerhard von Rad (1962: 1:167) has answered that question: “The whole has nevertheless a scaffolding supporting and connecting it, the so-called promise to the patriarchs. At least it can be said that this whole variegated mosaic of stories is given cohesion of subject-matter … by means of the constantly recurring divine promise.” Brevard Childs (1979: 151) similarly suggests that the promises provide “the constant element in the midst of all the changing situations of this very chequered history.”

Moreover, these promises are absolute and not conditional. This emphasis shifts the promises away from the idea of a reward (something earned) to the idea of a gift (something unsolicited). We can see this point made rather strongly in 12:1–3, the very first instance of a promise to Abraham (a promise of both blessing and increase). First there is the divine imperative, “Go!” (v. 1). Then comes the divine promise, “I will” (vv. 2–3). Then follows the human response, “so Abraham went” (v. 4). The entire intent of the passage would have been changed radically had v. 4 preceded vv. 2–3. If it had, then the promises could only be read as a result of Abraham’s obedience. The divine word then would have been reduced from an initiating word to a responding word.

Precisely the same structure is found in 13:14–18, the second reference to promise: the divine imperative, “Lift up” (v. 14); the divine promise, “I will” (vv. 15–17); the human response, “so Abram moved his tent” (v. 18). The third reference to promise, in 15:1–6, demonstrates the same: the divine imperative, “Look” (v. 5a); the divine promise, “so shall your descendants be” (v. 5b); the human response, “and he believed the Lord” (v. 6).

This is not to say that Abraham is absolved of all responsibility. He is “to walk before God and be blameless” (17:1). He must “keep the covenant” (17:9). He is to do “righteousness and justice; so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him” (18:19 rsv). A causal nexus between obedience and fulfillment is suggested by “because you have done this … I will indeed bless you … because you have obeyed my voice” (22:15–18 nrsv). The same nuance is present in 26:4–5: “I will multiply your descendants … because Abraham obeyed my voice” (rsv). This last passage, however, promises multiplication of Isaac’s descendants because of Abraham’s, not Isaac’s, obedience!

My point is not that human responsibility is obliterated. After all, even in a unilateral covenant there must be some reciprocity. What if Abraham had not gone out as the Lord told him? What if he had not believed? What if he had chosen consistently not to walk before God and be blameless? What if he had chosen to refuse to offer Isaac? These options must have been open to Abraham unless we are prepared to say that for him, as the chosen of the Lord (18:19), God’s grace was irresistible. My point is that human responsibility is repeatedly subordinated to God’s word of promise.

The first stipulation, in terms of conduct, is placed on Abraham (17:1) only after he has already been, on numerous occasions, the recipient of a promissory word (12:1–3, 7; 13:14–17; 15:1–6, 7–21). In terms of chronology, God’s first word of promise was spoken to Abraham in his seventy-fifth year (12:4). God’s first word to Abraham in terms of conditionality is in Abraham’s ninety-ninth year (17:1), almost a quarter of a century later.

The promises of God to the patriarchs cover the following areas: the birth of a son; the increase of descendants; land; divine presence; blessing. Some of these may occur by themselves (“Sarah your wife shall have a son” [18:10 rsv]; “to your descendants I will give this land” [12:7 rsv]), but normally they occur in clusters. To illustrate, 22:15–18 includes a promise of blessing (“I indeed will bless you” [rsv]); a promise of the increase of descendants (“I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven” [rsv]); a promise of land (“your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies” [rsv]); and a second promise of blessing (“and by your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves” [rsv]).

More promises are made to Abraham than to either his son or grandson. In listing the promise of descendants, David J. A. Clines (1978: 32–33) cites nineteen passages from Genesis. Thirteen of them are directed to Abraham, while there is only one to Hagar (21:18), two to Isaac (26:4, 24), and three to Jacob (28:14; 35:11; 46:3). Clines lists thirteen passages from Genesis about the promise of land. Nine of these are addressed to Abraham, one to Isaac (26:3), and three to Jacob (28:13, 15 [also 48:4]; 35:12; 46:4).

In connection with the promise of land we note variations even in how the promise is given. In 12:7 God will give the land “to your descendants.” In 13:15 God will give the land “to you and to your descendants.” In 13:17 God will give the land “to you.” Even the tense “I will give” in these verses may shift to “I give” (in 15:18, literally, “I have given”).

Abraham, of course, never possessed the land as did the Israelites under Joshua. His “possession” is limited to staking out the land—“Arise, walk through the length and breadth of the land” (rsv)—that his seed one day will occupy. At least that is how we see it in retrospect. There is no indication in any early text that Abraham himself saw it that way. Ostensibly, he was anticipating a more immediate fulfillment of the promise when it was first announced to him in 12:7. Only a divine indication of a four-hundred-year hiatus (15:12–16) put to rest any questions that Abraham may have entertained. On several occasions he does ask God, “Where is my heir?” But never does he ask God, “Where is my land?” For him, living in tents was fully satisfying (Heb. 11:9–10).

It is obvious that most of the promises that God gave to Abraham, and to Isaac and Jacob, could not be fulfilled during the lifetime of the patriarch. This certainly is true for the two promises that appear most frequently, that of a vast number of descendants and that of the gift of land. God begins with Abraham a process whose climax is in the distant future.

But what about Abraham? He has a son, or two, but not a myriad of descendants. He has a tent and wealth, but no land, except for the purchase of a tiny bit of property on which to bury his wife (Genesis 23). And during the last seventy-five years of his life how many families of the earth are blessed in him?

One rich blessing Abraham has. True, he does not have, in terms of personal realization, all the promises of God, but he does have the God of all the promises. God himself is Abraham’s shield and reward (15:1). The giver, not the gifts, is Abraham’s highest reward and his consuming obsession. Not without reason, therefore, is Abraham referred to three times in the Bible as “the friend of God” (2 Chron. 20:7; Isa. 41:8; James 2:23). Worth consulting on this phrase is the study by M. Goshen-Gottstein (1987), particularly his interpretation of why the Septuagint renders the Hebrew active participle (Abraham is one who loves God) as passive (Abraham is one who is loved by God). They enjoyed each other’s company.

Abraham, Man without Faith

Through all the experiences recorded in Genesis 12–25 Abraham emerges as an individual of great obedience and trust. His pilgrimage begins (Genesis 12, “go”) and climaxes (Genesis 22, “offer Isaac”) at the point of being tested by God. In between he appears as the paragon of patience, promised an heir at the age of seventy-five, and willing to wait a quarter of a century before he first gets the chance to change diapers. Like the Suffering Servant whom Isaiah describes (53:12), Abraham makes intercession for the transgressor (in Gen. 18:16–33 he pleads to God for Sodom). Although he does not condone them, he at least tolerates the quirks of his will-o’-the-wisp nephew Lot.

However, all is not perfect. Looming large in Abraham’s story are some questionable activities on the part of this hero. In this way Abraham becomes the prototype for Jacob, Moses, and David, a curious mixture of the sacred and the profane, the lofty and the languid.

Abraham is weak enough to use his wife, Sarah, to save his own life. Caught in a threatening situation, he persuades Sarah to identify herself to the Egyptians as his sister, not his wife (12:10–20). One may explain the tactics of Abraham by appealing, as does commentator E. A. Speiser, to Hurrian documents (a territory where Abraham spent a part of his life [11:31c]) in which marriage is followed by adoption. The woman becomes first wife, then sister, to cement the relationship, and such a reading, of course, “saves” Abraham’s reputation. He is giving Sarah higher status in hopes that the Egyptians will treat her more considerately.

One would be hard pressed to read that into the narrative. Moreover, Abraham’s culpability is enforced by the fact that he is silent throughout the whole episode. He is only listener, not conversationalist. And we must note Sarah’s silence too. She is the first of a number of women in Scripture whom some man is prepared to sacrifice to other men, and the sacrifice usually involves sex (Lot’s daughters [Gen. 19:6–8]; the Levite’s concubine and the owner’s daughter [Judg. 19:23–24]). When Sarah is “taken” (Gen. 12:15), Abraham does nothing. When he hears that his nephew Lot has been “taken” (14:14), he immediately goes into action to retrieve him. To be sure, Abraham obtains wealth (12:16) for his sinister part in the episode, but not as an evidence of God’s blessing. We have not yet gone beyond the “I will bless” of 12:3 to the “Lord had blessed” of 24:1.

Abraham stores away in his mind the strategy used on this occasion, perhaps to be used again if dire circumstances prevail. A second trip away from home provides such an opportunity (ch. 20). This time, among the neighboring Philistines, Sarah once again is prevailed upon to deceive the king and make herself vulnerable for her husband’s sake, notwithstanding the fact that God has told Abraham that his covenant with Abraham is through Sarah (17:15–16; 18:10), and has announced that she will give birth to the promised Isaac (17:19). None of this deters Abraham from being prepared to relinquish Sarah.

Unlike the incident in ch. 12, where it appears, or is at least hinted, that Pharaoh and Sarah had a sexual relationship (12:15b), here adultery is averted before it can begin (20:4a, 6b). Once again Abraham is materially enriched (20:14–16), but primarily as a vindication for Sarah. His philosophy of ethics is unchanged: the end justifies the means. The end? Nothing must happen that will cast a cloud of uncertainty over God’s promises (a great nation, seed). The means? If necessary, use Sarah as a pawn. But that is not God’s view of Sarah. She is as important to God’s plan as is Abraham. Abraham will do what he has to do to save Lot. God will do what he has to do to save Sarah.

Alas, like father, like son: Isaac resorts to the same subterfuge (ch. 26). Robert Polzin (1975: 93) draws attention to the way in which the innocent monarch in each instance was apprised of the woman’s real identity. In 12:17 it is through plagues; in 20:3 it is through a dream; in 26:8 it is through the king’s observing Isaac fondling Rebekah. One is the acting of God in history (the law?); the second is the revelation of God through visions and dreams (the prophets?); the third is through the use of one’s eyes (the emphasis on wisdom?). There is an incredibly large bibliography on these incidents. The reader would do well to explore these studies for further reflections: Niditch (1987: 23–69); Biddle (1990); Ronning (1991); Rashkow (1992: 57–73); Hoffmeier (1992); Alexander (1992); Exum (1993); Eichler (1997).

It may well be that Abraham’s rascality is prompted not simply by a desire to save himself. The larger issue is the promise that God had given earlier (blessing and descendants). First there is the famine in the land. Later Old Testament literature (e.g., Deut. 28:17–18, 22–24) saw famine as a manifestation of God’s displeasure with disobedience. So the first question in Genesis 12 is: will Abraham survive the famine, and if so, how?

The second question in Genesis 12 is: will Abraham survive Egypt? Perhaps Abraham’s own question is: will God’s promises survive? For if there is no Abraham, there can be no subsequent great nation. If that is his thinking at this point, and thus the explanation for his attempted ruse, then Abraham becomes the standard-bearer for many other believers who felt that God needed a little assistance in extricating himself from a potentially damaging and embarrassing situation. In any case, Abraham’s descent to Egypt, caused by a famine in Canaan, and his eventual departure from Egypt with wealth in hand foreshadow Israel’s descent to Egypt, caused by a famine in Canaan, and its eventual departure from Egypt with wealth in hand (Exod. 12:33–36).

The story does indeed illustrate an immediate fulfillment of one part of God’s earlier promise to Abraham: those who curse Abraham, God will curse. Taking another man’s wife, even innocently, has catastrophic repercussions. This one part of the first promise of God to Abraham illustrates an important distinction between the covenant with Abraham and the covenant with Israel at Sinai. In the latter God’s curse is directed at the Israelite who disobeys (see Deut. 27:15–26; 28:15–19); in the former God’s curse is directed at the non-Israelite who attempts to damage God’s covenant people.

Still, the reader of Abraham’s odyssey to Egypt wonders where is Abraham’s Nathan, with his “You are the man” (see 2 Sam. 12:7 nrsv), unless it is Pharaoh himself. Through deceit Abraham has become rich. He exits Egypt with his coffers full, his wife tainted, and without any demonstrable tinge of remorse. To compound the issue, God apparently ignores Abraham’s foolhardiness.

Does divine silence imply divine approval? I suggest that the silence is to be explained not as an insinuation of God’s approbation of duplicity, but by the desired emphasis that the story wishes to make. That emphasis is not to comment on Abraham’s behavior, however despicable it may be, but to use the story as a graphic illustration of divine providence. God’s promise to Abraham cannot be voided even when the greatest threat to that promise is the bearer of the promise.

Not unlike Job, Abraham is both patient and impatient; once relaxing, then fretting; once passive, then manipulative. Still not quite sure that God is able to implement the promise, or at least frustrated because God is not on his timetable, Abraham is prepared to adopt his servant Eliezer as his heir (15:2–3). I recognize that such a contrivance finds analogy in the fifteenth-century b.c. cuneiform texts from Nuzi. In the event of childlessness a slave might be adopted as one’s legal heir. But in the Abrahamic cycle the event becomes simply another illustration of God’s testing of the venerable patriarch.

Similarly, Sarah’s presentation of Hagar to Abraham as a surrogate (16:3) because of her own infertility finds precedent in cuneiform literature. If in the preceding episodes it was Abraham who initiated the scheme, with Sarah as the go-between, here it is Sarah herself who takes the initiative. Abraham, rather than protesting, acquiesces. The Eve-Adam mentality is not difficult to discern (16:2b). Unable to see the long-range implications of their action, Abraham offers no resistance. But we should observe that 16:3 reports that Sarah resorts to surrogacy only after she and her husband had been living in Canaan for ten years; that is, only after they have exhausted their attempts at the normal methods of reproduction do they turn to Hagar. And turning to Hagar, an Egyptian, for a solution to the infertility of a womb parallels other times in Genesis when an Abraham or a Jacob turns to a fertile Egypt as a solution to infertility in the land of Canaan (Duguid 1994). Possibly their mistake is seeing the promise of God not as a privilege, but as an obligation. Instead of saying, “We’re going to have a baby!” they say, “We’ve got to have a baby!” And whenever one sees the fruit of God’s promises as something to be achieved rather than received, all sorts of options present themselves.

What is the sequel? There is obvious divisiveness between Hagar and Sarah. Just as sin separated Adam from Eve, Cain from Abel, Noah from his (grand)son, it now drives a wedge between Hagar and Sarah. Hostility and mutual recrimination loom large, resulting in Hagar’s fleeing her mistress’s home precipitously, and pregnant at that. But in fleeing Sarah, several unique things happen with Hagar. She is the first person in the Bible to whom “the angel of the Lord” appears (16:11a). She is the first woman in the Bible to whom God directly makes a promise (16:11b–12). She is the only person in the Old Testament to give God a new name (16:13). And lastly, her meeting with the angel “is the only encounter between God and a woman that results in a commemorative place name [‘Beer Lahai Roi’ (16:14)]” (Humphreys 2001: 105). More than a decade later the animosity has only intensified, not evaporated (21:9–14). This time Hagar leaves not on her own; she is summarily dismissed together with Ishmael.

This is another narrative seen by critics as a prima facie case for underlying sources. We are told that there are three sources behind the Hagar-Ishmael stories. The text breaks down as follows:

16:1

P

16:4–14

J

16:2

J

16:15–16

P

16:3

P

21:9–21

E

Fundamentally, say the critics, the two stories are in conflict and therefore cannot both be true in their facts. To illustrate, in ch. 16 Hagar is haughty and contemptuous toward Sarah; in ch. 21 she is more victim than villain. In 16:6 Abraham willingly turns Hagar over to Sarah and does not interfere. In 21:11, however, Abraham, far from being passive, finds his wife’s reactions nauseating. He makes sure that Hagar has provisions, albeit meager given Abraham’s wealth and abundant possessions, for physical sustenance for her trek into the wilderness (21:14).

But most palpable of all is the picture we get of Ishmael in ch. 21. By this time Ishmael must be, at a minimum, thirteen years old (17:25). He is born when Abraham is eighty-six (16:16), and Abraham is one hundred when Isaac is born (21:4), which means that Ishmael is fourteen or fifteen. Yet, along with bread and water, Abraham places on the shoulder of Hagar her teenage son (21:14)! Facing certain death in the desert, she “casts” the child under a bush (21:15), a child about to die of thirst. Is this a picture of a teenager or a helpless infant?

In defense of the unity of chs. 16 and 21 and of the consistency between the two I make the following points.

Does 21:14 support the idea that Abraham did indeed load Ishmael onto Hagar’s shoulders? Literally, the verse says that Abraham “took bread and water and gave them over to Hagar, there upon her shoulder, and the child.” Nothing in this translation demands that the child was carried on the mother’s shoulder.

Anyone who is prepared to favor the translation “gave” as meaning “place” or “set” should recall that the same Hebrew word, nātan, also means “to deliver” in the sense of “commit, entrust,” as in Exod. 22:7, 10. Could it be that Abraham is not “placing” the items on Hagar’s shoulder but is “entrusting” Ishmael to Hagar’s guardianship?

The translation “cast” in 21:15 is unfortunate (cf. niv: “put”). Ishmael certainly is not being thrown to the ground, be he infant or adolescent. H. C. White (1975: 287, 302) observes that the Hebrew verb used here, šālak, almost always refers to the placing of a dead body into a grave, if the object of the verb is a person. “They took Absalom, and threw him into a great pit” (2 Sam. 18:17 rsv); “the man was cast into the grave of Elisha” (2 Kings 13:21 rsv); Ishmael “cast them [the bodies of the men he had slain] into a cistern” (Jer. 41:7 rsv). It may also apply to a person who is being placed in what presumably will be his or her grave (Gen. 37:20, 22, 24; Jer. 38:6). What sane mother would throw her feeble child like a ball under a tree?

Abraham, Man of Faith

Although momentarily sidetracked by the lapses described in the preceding section, it is to the credit of Abraham that he rises above these negative experiences. Such experiences were intrusions into and momentary interruptions of God’s plan for his life. It may be more than incidental that almost all the individuals assembled by the author of Hebrews 11 to illustrate faith have somewhere in their life a fatal flaw, and sometimes more than one. Those who adamantly reject God’s will for their life find that their decision is honored. But those who at least stumble and fall forward in the direction of God’s will find a divine resource and promise from God. The mosaic of faith includes the following examples.

Genesis 12. How does God break into a person’s life where there have been few or no John the Baptists to prepare the way? Abraham was cradled in a world of polytheism and idolatry. His father, Terah, appropriately traveled from Ur to Haran, for both were ancient centers for the worship of the moon god Sin. Genesis does not even record as directly and plainly as does Acts 7:2 that God appeared to Abraham when “he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran” (rsv) (unless one translates the “said” of Gen. 12:1 as “had said”).

In a sense, then, God’s voice comes to Abraham without warning. The patriarch is perceptive enough to recognize that voice the first time he hears it. Not only is he perceptive enough to hear, but also he is wise enough to obey: “So Abram went, as the Lord had told him” (12:4 nrsv). Abraham’s adventure is made even more risky because he is merely pointed in the right direction by that voice, given only a minimum of directions and explanations: “Go … to the land I will show you” (12:1 nrsv). The direction is plain, but the destination is unknown.

Genesis 13. Abraham returns to Canaan not because the famine is past, but because he has worn out his welcome in Egypt (12:20). He receives from Pharaoh orders to return to the place from which he came. Does he learn any lesson from his mistake? Are there any indications of subsequent change in his life? Chapter 13 answers those questions affirmatively.

The focus in this chapter is on the strife that developed between Abraham’s and Lot’s herders. There is almost as much material about Lot in these narratives as there is about his uncle. The crucial chapters describing the covenant with Abraham (chs. 15 and 17) are framed by stories about Lot: his herders (ch. 13) and his capture (ch. 14) on one side, and his connection to Sodom and Gomorrah on the other (chs. 18 and 19). At no point does Lot emerge as a worthy and creditable person. More often than not he is an albatross around Abraham’s neck. Lot’s herders cannot “dwell” together with Abraham’s (13:6), but each can safely dwell with the Canaanites and Perizzites (13:7). Getting along together within the family is more difficult than getting along with those outside the family.

In the contention that developed between their employees, Abraham might easily have solved the situation by asserting his authority over his nephew. After all, he was the elder, the head of the clan. Instead, he is content to let Lot choose which pasturage he desires for his cattle.

But what if Lot chooses the land that God is going to give to Abraham? Maybe Abraham needs to be more self-assertive, more insistent on his rights. The matter, however delicate, can be left in God’s hands. No move by Lot can thwart the promise of God. Unfortunately, Abraham had not lived by that philosophy while he was in Egypt.

Genesis 14. In many ways the incident in Genesis 14 is the most unusual one recorded in Abraham’s life. The first half of the chapter—a battle between four powerful kings from the east and five minor kings in the Dead Sea area—is not about Abraham at all. Only the capture of Lot brings Abraham into the narrative. In ch. 13 the emphasis had been on family strife. Here the emphasis is on international strife.

With characteristic brevity the chapter records Abraham’s victory—with the help of 318 “servants”—over these four titanic kings. In theory, the odds were against Abraham with his miniscule army. But God had said to him, “Those who curse you I will curse.” Will God keep that promise? Just as Sarah was “taken” (12:15) by Egyptians—with resulting plagues on the takers—now Lot is taken (14:12) by outsiders (although, to be sure, when Sarah is “taken,” Abraham does nothing, but when Lot is “taken,” he immediately launches a search-and-rescue mission). The consequence for their action is just as devastating as it was for the Egyptians: a humiliating defeat (“and he routed them” [v. 15]) at the hands of a peanut-sized force of fighters.

Even Melchizedek, the king of Salem, gives this quick but accurate analysis of the incident: “Blessed be God … who has delivered your enemies into your hand” (v. 20 nrsv). It is not without interest that the Hebrew word for “deliver” used here (miggēn) is from the same root as “shield” (māgēn) of 15:1. This is another illustration of identical vocabulary used at key points to link individual stories within the larger unit.

From Melchizedek Abraham accepts a minimal gift, a meal, if it can even be called that (v. 18). But the offer of booty from the king of Sodom he refuses (vv. 21–24). God will supply all his needs, but not this way. Once all too eager to accept a purse from Pharaoh, Abraham has now learned to exercise restraint in accepting handouts. For now he is seeking grace, not graft.

Genesis 15, 17. These two chapters describe the actual institution and confirmation of the Abrahamic covenant. For good reason the promises of God to Abraham are more abundant in these two chapters than elsewhere. There is the promise of a son (15:4; 17:16, 19); the promise of descendants (15:5, 13, 16, 18; 17:2, 4–8, 19); the promise of land (15:7, 8, 16, 18–21; 17:8); the promise of blessing (17:16).

It would go too far to describe these two chapters as serious dialogue. Abraham’s conversational role is limited to two questions (15:2, 8; and perhaps surprising is Abraham’s blunt question in v. 8, just two verses after the affirmation of his faith in Yahweh in v. 6) and one exclamatory comment (17:18). By contrast, God speaks repeatedly: “the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision” (15:1 nrsv); “and behold, the word of the Lord came to him” (15:4 rsv); “and [he] said … then he said to him” (15:5 rsv); “and he said to him” (15:7 rsv); “he said to him” (15:9 rsv); “then the Lord said to Abram” (15:13 rsv); “on that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying” (15:18 rsv); “the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him” (17:1 rsv); “and God said to him” (17:3 rsv); “and God said to Abraham” (17:9 rsv); “and God said to Abraham” (17:15 rsv); “God said” (17:19 rsv).

Abraham’s response to these grand promises of God is summed up with this terse declaration: “And he believed [in] the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness” (15:6 nrsv). God’s responsibility is promise and performance; humankind’s responsibility is belief. Von Rad (1972: 185) rightly observes, “Abraham’s righteousness is not the result of any accomplishments.… Rather it is stated programmatically that belief alone has brought Abraham into a proper relationship to God.”

This is not the only illustration of faith in Genesis, but it is the only place in Genesis where there is an explicit reference to faith. We do not read, in so many words, that Isaac, or Jacob, or Joseph believed in the Lord and that such belief was reckoned to them as righteousness. The promises given to Abraham are essentially repeated to Isaac and Jacob. The faith of Abraham is all that is accentuated. The emphasis, then, falls on God’s faithfulness from generation to generation with his renewed promise, rather than upon each successive generation’s appropriation of that promise in faith.

The remainder of ch. 15 is God’s ceremonial ratification of this covenant. After Abraham arranges the animal remains in parallel columns, God himself passes between the two rows in fiery manifestation. The intent of the ritual could hardly be more daring. God is unilaterally obligating himself to Abraham and his seed to the degree that God places himself under a potential curse. Should this God of promise prove to be unreliable, then may his fate be dismemberment, as with these animals (on the significance of cutting animals in two as part of covenant ritual see Jer. 34:18).

It is impossible to know the age of Abraham in ch. 15. Between chs. 16 and 17 there are thirteen years (in 16:16 Abraham is eighty-six; in 17:1 he is ninety-nine). Thus, between Abraham’s reception of the covenant and his own name change and circumcision there is a decade and a half.

The source critics are almost unanimous in their identification of the traditions behind these two chapters. Customarily, 15:1–6 is assigned to E, 15:7–21 to J principally because of the unit’s exclusive use of “Lord/Yahweh,” and 17:1–27 to P principally because of the unit’s exclusive use of “God/Elohim.” In fact, 17:1–27 is the first place in the Abraham story where “God/Elohim” occurs at all, apart from the abbreviated form of Elohim in compound names such as “El Elyon” (14:18–20) and “El-roi” (16:13). So, in the very chapter where Abram becomes Abraham (17:5), Yahweh becomes Elohim. Evangelical scholars typically have countered with the suggestion that the narrative in ch. 17 is not a duplicate of that in ch. 15, but rather is a reconfirmation by God to Abraham of his promises, especially on the heels of the less-than-happy results of Abraham’s cohabitation with Hagar in ch. 16. This reassuring word, sequential to an Abrahamic debacle, recalls another reassuring, reconfirming word to Abraham (13:14–17) after another debacle (12:10–20). Abraham is still not even a father of the son of promise!

There is more here, however, than reconfirmation. Two new items enter the covenant promises in ch. 17. In the first place, Abram becomes Abraham. Only one verse, 17:5, is devoted to this shift. This new name universalizes Abraham’s experience with God. He is to be “the father of a multitude of nations.”

The second new item is the introduction of circumcision. This particularizes Abraham’s experience with God. He is to be the father of the Jews. Six verses are devoted to this innovation (17:9–14), plus five more (17:23–27) for Abraham’s actual circumcision and that of Ishmael and the other males in Abraham’s house.

This mark, indelibly cut into the flesh, now becomes a witness to identity with Yahweh and Yahweh’s people. The connection of circumcision with the covenant is made clear by the emphasis on the body part involved. If circumcision’s significance was merely the cutting or marking of some part of the human body, then something such as cutting one’s hair or piercing one’s nose or ear, or even branding a mark on one’s hand or forehead, would have sufficed. Circumcision, however, “requires a cutting of the part of the body through which God’s promise will be fulfilled” (Goldingay 2000: 9). That the female has no corresponding mark on her body is not to be understood as a reflection of a male chauvinist mentality, as if to suggest that Old Testament religion marginalizes women as covenantally insignificant other than for their wombs. On the contrary, now that two have become “one flesh” (2:24), a mark on only one is necessary.

Clearly, ch. 17 is occupied more with Abraham’s circumcision than it is with his name change. Why is the institution of this rite delayed? Could Abraham’s circumcision have been recorded in ch. 15 instead? I suggest that the chronological gap between the institution of the covenant and Abraham’s circumcision is meant to put divine promise and human obligation in perspective. The latter is subordinated to the former. Circumcision surfaces only once again in Genesis (that of Isaac [21:4]), except for the debacle described in ch. 34. The covenant promises of God, by contrast, continue as a refrain through the rest of Genesis.

Genesis 18–19. Informed of God’s intention to obliterate Sodom and Gomorrah because of the gravity of their sensual and social sins (Gen. 19:1–11; cf. Ezek. 16:49–50), Abraham becomes the intercessor for the transgressor. Rather than rejoicing in evil (cf. 1 Cor. 13:6), Abraham goes boldly to God to plead for mercy, and like the Suffering Servant of Isa. 53:12, he makes “intercession for the transgressors.” Abraham does not urge Sodom to repent; rather, he appeals to God for mercy. And in doing so, his prayers parallel the prayers of other intercessors (Moses: Exod. 32:11–13, 31–34; 33:12–15; 34:9; Num. 12:11–13; 14:3–9; Deut. 9:16–29; Samuel: 1 Sam. 7:5–9; 12:19–25; Elijah: 1 Kings 17:17–23; Elisha: 2 Kings 4:33; 6:15–20; Amos: Amos 7:1–6; Job: Job 42:7–9). The prayer presupposes a belief and faith in a God who is merciful as well as just, compassionate as well as holy, tender as well as stern, a God who, to quote Pascal, “lends to His creatures the dignity of causality.”

Genesis 20. Introduced in ch. 18 to Abraham the intercessor, the reader confronts the patriarch again in a similar role. Because of the prayers of Abraham, the Lord restores fertility to the wife and concubines of a pagan king, Abimelech (v. 17). Apparently, Abraham’s act of duplicity perpetrated against Abimelech does not disqualify him from acting as prophetic intercessor. But is it not ironic that Abraham’s prayers result in the opening of wombs in Philistine women, but still his own wife is unable to conceive?

Genesis 21–22. A quarter of a century of waiting concludes with the birth of Isaac. We have followed Abraham, chronologically, from septuagenarian (12:4) to centenarian (21:5). Despite setbacks, unwise moves, and frustrations, Abraham has never lost sight of the original promise that he received from God: “a great nation” (12:2). The incredible has become real.

But then the incredible resurfaces. Incredible that Sarah may yet need the services of an obstetrician? Yes. Incredible too, at least for Abraham (and maybe for the reader as well?), that God now will ask Abraham to offer Isaac, “your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love” (nrsv)? Yes.

We would like to know something about the time between Isaac’s birth and his being offered. Was he a helpless child, an inquisitive adolescent, or a consenting adult? The Isaac of ch. 22 is referred to as a naʿar (“lad” [22:5, 12]), a Hebrew word that can describe a male from infancy (the baby Moses [Exod. 2:6]), to a teenager (seventeen-year-old Joseph [Gen. 37:2]), to men old enough to serve in such capacities as spies (Josh. 6:23). Indeed, the same word applied to Isaac in this chapter is applied also to the two servants whom the father and son took with them (22:3, 5). Isaac himself carries the wood for the fire (22:6; thus, as it were, “bearing his own cross” [cf. John 19:17]). He is able to ask intelligent questions (22:7).

In his Antiquities of the Jews (1.13) Josephus states that Isaac was twenty-five at this time. Although Josephus does not explain the source of his information, the figure perhaps refers to the minimum age for active military service at the close of the Second Temple period (five years more than the minimum twenty of Scripture [Num. 1:3, 45]). A midrash on Genesis (Genesis Rabbah 56:8) states that Isaac was thirty-seven on this occasion! This figure is based on Sarah’s age of ninety at the birth of Isaac, and her death thirty-seven years later at the age of 127 (Gen. 23:1), precipitated by the false announcement of her son’s death! In any event, the Isaac of this chapter is anything but a child.

In chs. 18–19 we met the loquacious Abraham, trying to make God reconsider, asking questions, demanding answers, becoming audacious. By contrast, here he is silent, passive, following divine directions. Or is he?

Concerning Abraham, George W. Coats comments (1973: 397), “He appears in superhuman, unemotional, somewhat unrealistic dress. He never objects to the unreasonable, slightly insane commandment to sacrifice his son, as the Abraham of Genesis 12 or Genesis 16 most certainly would have done. To the contrary, he seems to move about his grim task with silent resignation, as if he were an automaton.” On the other hand, A. W. Tozer (1948: 25) remarks, “The sacred writer spares us a close-up of the agony that night on the slopes near Beersheba when the aged man had it out with his God, but respectful imagination may view in awe the bent form and convulsive wrestling alone under the stars. Possibly not again until a Greater than Abraham wrestled in the Garden of Gethsemane did such mortal pain visit a human soul.”

J. D. Levenson (1994: 151–53) holds the pleading Abraham of Genesis 18 and the passive Abraham of Genesis 22 together in proper tension. He observes that these two presentations, almost adjacent to one another, “delimit a theology in which human judgment neither replaces the inscrutable God who commands [Genesis 22] nor becomes superfluous within the life lived in faithfulness to him [Genesis 18]. In this larger dialectical theology, both arguing with God and obeying him can be central spiritual acts, although when to do which remains necessarily unclear.” Elsewhere Levenson (1998: 272) suggests that the difference between chs. 18 and 22 is one of context: “The context of Sodom and Gomorrah is forensic, whereas that of the aqedah is sacrificial. In a forensic context the death of an innocent person is an outrage; in a sacrificial context … the innocence of the human victim is no grounds for protest. Abraham raises his voice against God himself at the thought of an unjust execution. He is prepared to offer even his beloved son himself to the same God as a sacrifice. There is no contradiction in the text.” Perhaps one might see a parallel between the behavior of Abraham and Jesus at this point, especially when Jesus is on the cross. Jesus too makes intercession for sinners (Luke 23:34), but he refuses to save himself from the cross, which the crowd urged him to do (Luke 23:35), and which he had the resources to do had he so chosen (Matt. 26:53). This option, however, he expressly refuses to exercise (John 12:27). In other words, both Abraham and Jesus used their unique relationship with God and the influential spiritual power that comes with that relationship to benefit others but not to benefit themselves, to make salvation possible for others but not to save themselves (Moberly 2000: 160).

Chapter 22 is introduced as a testing from God for Abraham. Certainly the patriarch’s faith is being tested (“now I know that you fear God” [v. 12 nrsv]), but it is then only another in a series of divine testings at the point of faith, a faith that was challenged as early as ch. 12: “Go forth!”

Ultimately, the episode is more revealing about God than it is about Abraham. The climax is: “So Abraham called the name of that place The Lord will provide” (v. 14 rsv). The name draws attention to God, not Abraham. It is not “Abraham-has-performed,” but “God-will-provide.” Faith, then, ultimately is based on God’s character and the reliability of his word.

Although Abraham will live a good while beyond this event, and although his life will cover two and a half chapters of Scripture yet to come, never again is there any dialogue between him and God. For the last time Abraham receives the promise of many descendants, the promise of land, and the promise of blessing to the nations in his seed (vv. 15–18).

Genesis 24. God will provide. Abraham discovered this at Moriah. God provided a ram. Will God now provide a wife for Isaac? The longest chapter in Genesis is devoted to answering this question. For Abraham, there is no doubt but that the answer to this question is an unqualified yes (v. 7). Inspired by his master’s faith, the servant too places the search in God’s hands (vv. 12–14 [on the servant see Teugels 1995]). Nothing of chance or coincidence is allowed to intrude. For this union God has “chosen/appointed” a wife (vv. 14, 44). Throughout this incident God is present in the speech of others rather than through his own speech. The narrator speaks of Yahweh (vv. 1, 21, 52), as do Abraham (vv. 3, 7, 40), the servant (vv. 12, 27, 35, 42, 48, 56), Laban (v. 31), and Laban and Bethuel (vv. 50–51). And although it is common and justified to look to the Joseph story in Genesis as a compelling illustration of divine providence in operation, the contribution of Genesis 24 to that teaching should not be overlooked. In its own way Genesis 24 is all about a “Jehovah-jireh” God. God provides an animal to take the place of Isaac although it is a ram (22:13 and see 15:9–10 for another ram) instead of the expected lamb (22:7–8). God provides Rebekah for Isaac. God provides first a sheep, and then a spouse, and both times Isaac is the beneficiary.

Abraham in the New Testament

Surprisingly, the New Testament nowhere explicitly connects Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac with the offering of Jesus. Perhaps the closest analogy is in Paul’s words about how God “did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all” (Rom. 8:32 rsv).

What the New Testament, and especially Paul, does with Abraham is elevate him as the paragon of faith. Involved in a clash with proponents of works-righteousness, Paul refers to Abraham, a pre-Sinaitic (prelegal) model, and then bases his whole argument for justification by faith around his life.

Toward the end of Romans 3 Paul affirms that it is through faith, and faith alone, that one is justified (3:22, 27, 28, 30). Chapter 4 is then a test case of this thesis. Justification is not through works (4:1–8). Justification is not through circumcision (4:9–12). Justification is not through keeping the law (4:13–15). It is by faith (4:16–25). As proof, consider Abraham, who believed and was justified (apart from works, circumcision, and the law).

What is faith, though? How did it operate in Abraham’s case? How is he illustrative of the principle? Paul proceeds to list nine characteristics of Abraham’s faith (4:17–20).

1. It is theistic: “in the presence of God in whom he believed”—a God who gives life to the dead (resurrection) and calls into being things that do not exist (creation). This is precisely what God must do with the womb of Sarah and the loins of Abraham, both of which have lost their capacity to procreate. He must create or resurrect their life-producing power.

2. It is suprarational: “in hope he believed against hope.” Faith is not against reason (i.e., irrational), but it does surpass reason. Behind the human realities of the situation are divine realities. If there is a God, he can do this. This God transcends human resources.

3. It is purposeful: “that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told.” Abraham’s desire is not just a normal urge for a child, but to realize the implementation of God’s plan for his life.

4. It is intelligent and realistic: “he did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body.” Facts are faced, not avoided. But such facts never become dominating or intimidating.

5. It is unwavering: “no distrust made him waver.” Abraham did not hold faith; faith held him.

6. It is well grounded: “concerning the promise of God.” It is not faith in faith, or faith in feelings, but faith in God’s promise.

7. It is strengthening: “he grew strong in his faith.” Character was the by-product.

8. It is worshiping: “as he gave glory to God.”

9. It is assuring: “fully convinced that God was able.”

This is the kind of faith, then, that justified Abraham. It is interesting that in this mosaic of faith Paul nowhere draws specifically on the offering of Isaac. Instead, he concentrates on another major aspect of Abraham’s life, his inability to father a child when both he and Sarah were well beyond child-generating years (see Gen. 18:12), although God had promised an innumerable seed. In a more limited way Paul presents a similar argument to that of Romans in Gal. 3:6–18.

The writer of Hebrews, on the other hand, gives more of an overview of Abraham’s odyssey (11:8–22).

1. By faith Abraham obeyed (v. 8) when he was called, although the final destination of his journey remained unknown.

2. By faith he sojourned (v. 9), living in tents.

3. By faith he offered up Isaac (v. 17), convinced in advance of a resurrection for the son.

The writer of the Epistle of James (2:21–23) also uses Genesis 22 to buttress the observation that in offering Isaac, Abraham was justified by works. He was justified by a faith that works. Works as a merit for salvation? No. Works as a mark of salvation? Yes.

If we are somewhat surprised by Paul’s omission in Romans and Galatians of any clear reference to Abraham’s offering of Isaac as an example of faith, then we must be similarly surprised by the omission in Hebrews of any clear reference to Abraham’s one great act of faith, recorded in Gen. 15:6. There is no “by faith he believed” in Hebrews 11.

There is good reason for the omissions by both authors. Paul uses Abraham’s faith as an illustration of the necessity of faith in becoming a child of God. Hence, he focuses on Abraham’s faith as it relates to the problems surrounding Isaac’s birth.

The writer of Hebrews uses Abraham’s faith as an illustration of faith in the daily walk of the child of God. Hence, he does not focus on one incident at the beginning of Abraham’s pilgrimage, but chooses instead to give a kaleidoscopic view of Abraham’s life, starting with God’s first imperative to Abraham and concluding with God’s last imperative to Abraham.

Genesis 11:26–25:11 (Abraham)

Aitken, K. T. 1984. “The Wooing of Rebekah: A Study in the Development of Tradition.” JSOT 30:3–23.

Alexander, T. D. 1983. “Genesis 22 and the Covenant of Circumcision.” JSOT 25:17–22.

———. 1985. “Lot’s Hospitality: A Clue to His Righteousness.” JBL 104:289–91.

———. 1990. “The Hagar Traditions in Genesis XVI and XXI.” In Studies in the Pentateuch. Ed. J. A. Emerton. VTSup 41. Leiden: Brill. Pp. 131–48.

———. 1992. “Are the Wife/Sister Incidents of Genesis Literary Compositional Variants?” VT 42:145–53.

Andersen, F. I. 1995. “Genesis 14: An Enigma.” In Pomegranates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom. Ed. D. P. Wright, D. N. Freedman, and A. Hurvitz. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. Pp. 497–508.

Andreasen, N.-E. 1980. “Genesis 14 in Its Near Eastern Context.” In Scripture in Context: Essays on the Comparative Method. Ed. C. D. Evans, W. W. Hallo, and J. B. White. PTMS 34. Pittsburgh: Pickwick. Pp. 59–77.

Biddle, M. E. 1990. “The ‘Endangered Ancestress’ and Blessing for the Nations.” JBL 109:599–611.

Blenkinsopp, J. 1982. “Abraham and the Righteous of Sodom.” JJS 33:119–32.

Boehm, O. 2002. “The Binding of Isaac: An Inner-Biblical Polemic on the Question of ‘Disobeying’ a Manifestly Illegal Order.” VT 52:1–12.

Bolin, T. M. 2004. “The Role of Exchange in Ancient Mediterranean Religion and Its Implications for Reading Genesis 18–19.” JSOT 29:37–56.

Bray, J. S. 1993. “Genesis 23—A Priestly Paradigm for Burial.” JSOT 60:69–73.

Brock, S. 1984. “Genesis 22: Where Was Sarah?” ExpT 96:14–17.

Bruckner, J. S. 2001. Implied Law in the Abraham Narrative: A Literary and Theological Analysis. JSOTSup 335. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

Brueggemann, W. 1982. “ ‘Impossibility’ and Epistemology in the Faith Tradition of Abraham and Sarah.” ZAW 94:615–34.

Carroll, J. 1996. “The Story of Abraham.” In Genesis, As It Is Written: Contemporary Writers on Our First Stories. Ed. D. Rosenberg. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. Pp. 71–76.

Childs, B. 1979. Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture. Philadelphia: -Westminster.

Clines, D. J. A. 1978. The Theme of the Pentateuch. 2nd ed., 1997. JSOTSup 10. Sheffield: JSOT Press.

Coats, G. W. 1973. “Abraham’s Sacrifice of Faith: A Form Critical Study of Genesis 22.” Int 27:389–400.

———. 1985. “Lot: A Foil in the Abraham Saga.” In Understanding the Word: Essays in Honour of Bernhard W. Anderson. Ed. J. T. Butler, E. W. Conrad, and B. Ollenburger. JSOTSup 37. Sheffield: JSOT Press. Pp. 113–32.

Davies, P. R., and B. D. Chilton. 1978. “The Aqedah: A Revised Tradition History.” CBQ 40:514–46.

Dozeman, T. B. 1998. “The Wilderness and Salvation History in the Hagar Story.” JBL 117:23–43.

Drey, P. R. 2002. “The Role of Hagar in Genesis 16.” AUSS 40:179–95.

Duguid, I. M. 1994. “Hagar the Egyptian: A Note on the Allure of Egypt in the Abraham Cycle.” WTJ 56:419–21.

Eichler, B. 1997. “On Reading Genesis 12:10–20.” In Tehillah le-Moshe: Biblical and Judaic Studies in Honor of Moshe Greenberg. Ed. M. Cogan et al. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. Pp. 23–38.

Emerton, J. A. 1971a. “The Riddle of Genesis XIV.” VT 21:403–39.

———. 1971b. “Some False Clues in the Study of Genesis XIV.” VT 21:24–27.

Exum, J. C. 1993. “Who’s Afraid of the ‘Endangered Ancestress’?” In The New Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible. Ed. J. C. Exum and D. J. A. Clines. JSOTSup 143. Sheffield: JSOT Press. Pp. 91–113. Repr., in Fragmented Women: Feminist (Sub)versions of Biblical Narrative. Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity, 1993. Pp. 148–69.

Exum, J. C., and J. W. Whedbee. 1985. “Isaac, Samson, and Saul: Reflections on the Comic and Tragic Visions.” Semeia 32:5–21.

Firestone, R. 1993. “Prophethood, Marriageable Consanguinity and Text: The Problem of Abraham and Sarah’s Kinship Relationship and the Response of Jewish and Islamic Exegesis.” JQR 83:331–47.

Fleishman, J. 2002. “On the Significance of a Name Change and Circumcision in Genesis 17.” JANES 28:19–32.

Fox, M. V. 1974. “The Sign of the Covenant: Circumcision in the Light of the Priestly ʾot Etiologies.” RB 81:557–96.

Freedman, R. D. 1976. “ ‘Put Your Hand under My Thigh’—The Patriarchal Oath.” BAR 2 (2):2–4, 42.

Fretheim, T. 1995. “God, Abraham and the Abuse of Isaac.” Word and World 15:49–57.

Gillmayr-Bucher, S. 1998. “The Woman of Their Dreams: The Image of Rebekah in Genesis 24.” In The World of Genesis: Persons, Places, Perspectives. Ed. P. R. Davies and D. J. A. Clines. JSOTSup 257. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Pp. 90–101.

Goldingay, J. 2000. “The Significance of Circumcision.” JSOT 88:3–18.

Goshen-Gottstein, M. 1987. “Abraham—Lover or Beloved of God?” In Love and Death in the Ancient Near East. Ed. J. H. Marks and R. M. Good. Guilford, Conn.: Four Quarters. Pp. 101–4.

Gossai, H. 1995. “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness.” In Power and Marginality in the Abraham Narrative. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America. Pp. 1–23.

———. 1997. “Divine Vulnerability and Human Marginality in the Akedah: Exploring a Tension.” HBT 19:1–23.

Grayson, A. K., and J. Van Seters. 1975. “The Childless Wife in Assyria and the Stories of Genesis.” Orientalia 44:485–86.

Greengus, S. 1975. “Sisterhood Adoption at Nuzi and the ‘Wife-Sister’ in Genesis.” HUCA 46:5–31.

Gunn, D. M., and D. N. Fewell. 1993. Narrative in the Hebrew Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 90–100.

Handy, L. K. 1997. “Biblical Bronze Age Memories: The Abraham Cycle as Usable Past.” BRes 42:43–57.

Hartman, G. 1996. “The Story of Isaac’s Sacrifice.” In Genesis, As It Is Written: Contemporary Writers on Our First Stories. Ed. D. Rosenberg. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. Pp. 139–50.

Hasel, G. F. 1981. “The Meaning of the Animal Rite in Genesis 15.” JSOT 19:61–78.

Hayward, C. T. R. 1990. “The Sacrifice of Isaac and Jewish Polemic against Christianity.” CBQ 52:292–306.

Helyer, L. R. 1983. “The Separation of Abram and Lot: Its Significance in the Patriarchal Narratives.” JSOT 26:77–88.

———. 1995. “Abraham’s Eight Crises: The Bumpy Road to Fulfilling God’s Promise of an Heir.” BRev 11 (5):20–27, 44.

Hendel, R. S. 2005. Remembering Abraham: Culture, Memory, and History in the Hebrew Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hepner, G. 2003. “Abraham’s Incestuous Marriage with Sarah: A Violation of the Holiness Code.” VT 53:143–55.

Hoffmeier, J. 1992. “The Wives’ Tale of Genesis 12, 20 and 26 and the Covenants at Beer-Sheba.” TynB 43:81–99.

Humphreys, W. L. 1999. “Where’s Sarah? Echoes of a Silent Voice in the Akedah.” Soundings 82:491–512.

———. 2001. The Character of God in the Book of Genesis. Louisville: Westminster John Knox.

Janzen, J. G. 1991. “Hagar in Paul’s Eyes and in the Eyes of Yahweh [Genesis 16]: A Study in Horizons.” HBT 13:1–22.

Jensen, R. M. 1994. “The Offering of Isaac in Jewish and Christian Tradition: Image and Text.” BibInt 2:85–110.

Kaminski, J. 2000. “Humor and the Theology of Hope: Isaac as a Humorous Figure.” Int 54:363–75.

Kline, M. 1968. “Abram’s Amen.” WTJ 31:1–11.

Kunin, S. D. 1994. “The Death of Isaac: Structuralist Analyses of Genesis 22.” JSOT 64:57–81.

Kuschel, K.-J. 1995. Abraham: A Symbol of Hope for Jews, Christians and Muslims. London: SCM Press.

Landy, F. 1988. “Narrative Techniques and Symbolic Transactions in the Akedah.” In Signs and Wonders: Biblical Texts in Literary Focus. Ed. J. C. Exum. SemeiaSt. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Pp. 1–40.

Levenson, J. 1993. The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity. New Haven: Yale University Press.

———. 1994. Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence. 2nd ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

———. 1998. “Abusing Abraham: Traditions, Religious Histories, and Modern Misinterpretations.” Judaism 47:259–77.

Loewenstamm, S. E. 1971. “The Divine Grants of Land to the Patriarchs.” JAOS 91:509–10.

Longenecker, R. 1977. “The ‘Faith of Abraham’ Theme in Paul, James and Hebrews: A Study in the Circumstantial Nature of New Testament Teaching.” JETS 20:203–12.

Lundbom, J. R. 1983. “Abraham and David in the Theology of the Yahwist.” In The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth. Festschrift for D. N. Freedman. Ed. C. L. Myers and M. O’Connor. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. Pp. 203–9.

MacDonald, N. 2004. “Listening to Abraham—Listening to Yhwh: Divine Justice and Mercy in Genesis 18:16–33.” CBQ 66:25–43.

Margalit, O. 2000. “The Riddle of Genesis 14 and Melchizedek.” ZAW 112:501–8.

Martin, T. W. 2003. “The Covenant of Circumcision (Genesis 17:9–14) and the Situational Antithesis in Galatians 3:28.” JBL 122:111–25.

Matthews, V. H. 1992. “Hospitality and Hostility in Genesis 19 and Judges 19.” BTB 22:3–11.

Mays, J. L. 2001–2. “ ‘Now I Know’: An Exposition of Genesis 22:1–19 and Matthew 26:36–46.” ThTo 58:519–25.

Mazor, Y. 1986. “Genesis 22: The Ideological Rhetoric and the Psychological Composition.” Bib 67:81–88.

McCarthy, D. J. 1976. “Three Covenants in Genesis.” CBQ 26:179–89.

McEvenue, S. E. 1975. “A Comparison of Narrative Styles in the Hagar Stories.” Semeia 3:64–77.

Miller, P. D. 1984. “Syntax and Theology in Gen XII 3a.” VT 34:472–75.

Moberly, R. W. L. 1988. “The Earliest Commentary on the Akedah.” VT 38:302–23. Repr., in From Eden to Golgotha: Essays in Biblical Theology. South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism 52. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992. Pp. 55–73.

———. 2000. The Bible, Theology, and Faith: A Study of Abraham and Jesus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Moltz, H. 2001. “God and Abraham in the Binding of Isaac.” JSOT 96:59–69.

Muffs, Y. 1982. “Abraham the Noble Warrior: Patriarchal Politics and Laws of War in Ancient Israel.” JJS 33:81–107.

Neff, R. 1970. “The Birth and Election of Isaac in the Priestly Tradition.” BRes 15:5–18.

———. 1972. “The Annunciation in the Birth Narratives of Ishmael.” BRes 17:51–60.

Niditch, S. 1982. “The ‘Sodomite’ Theme in Judges 19–20: Family, Community, and Social Disintegration.” CBQ 44:365–78.

———. 1987. Underdogs and Tricksters: A Prelude to Biblical Folklore. New Voices in Biblical Studies. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

Nikaido, S. 2001. “Hagar and Ishmael as Literary Figures: An Intertextual Study.” VT 51:219–42.

Noegel, S. B. 1998. “A Crux and a Taunt: Night-time Then Sunset in Genesis 15.” In The World of Genesis: Persons, Places, Perspectives. Ed. P. R. Davies and D. J. A. Clines. JSOTSup 257. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Pp. 128–35.

O’Brien, M. A. 1990. “The Story of Abraham and the Debate over the Source Hypothesis.” ABR 38:1–17.

Peck, W. 1976. “Murder, Timing, and the Ram in the Sacrifice of Isaac.” AThR 58:24–43.

Phillips, G. A., and D. N. Fewell. 1997. “Drawn to Excess, or Reading beyond Betrothal [Gen 24; Jos 24].” Semeia 77:25–58.

Polzin, R. 1975. “The Ancestress of Israel in Danger.” Semeia 3:81–98.

Pope, M. H. 1986. “Enigmatic Bible Passages: The Timing of the Snagging of the Ram, Genesis 22:13.” BA 49:114–17.

Rad, G. von. 1962. Old Testament Theology. Trans. D. M. G. Stalker. 2 vols. New York: Harper & Row.

———. 1972. Genesis. Trans. J. H. Marks. Rev. ed. OTL. Philadelphia: Westminster.

Rashkow, I. 1992. “Intertextuality, Transference and Reader in/of Genesis 12 and 20.” In Reading between Texts: Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible. Ed. D. N. Fewell. Louisville: Westminster John Knox. Pp. 57–73.

Rendsburg, G. 1992. “Notes on Genesis XV.” VT 42:266–72.

Ronning, J. 1991. “The Naming of Isaac: The Role of the Wife/Sister Episodes in the Redaction of Genesis.” WTJ 53:1–27.

Rosen, N. 1996. “The Story of Sarah’s Late Pregnancy.” In Genesis, As It Is Written: Contemporary Writers on Our First Stories. Ed. D. Rosenberg. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. Pp. 115–24.

Roth, W. M. W. 1972. “The Wooing of Rebekah: A Tradition-Critical Study of Genesis 24.” CBQ 34:177–87.

Sarna, N. 1982. “Genesis 23: The Cave of Machpelah.” HS 23:17–21.

Schwartz, J. 1995. “Ishmael at Play: On Exegesis and Jewish Society.” HUCA 66:203–21.

Segal, L. 1996. “The Story of Sarah and Hagar.” In Genesis, As It Is Written: Contemporary Writers on Our First Stories. Ed. D. Rosenberg. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. Pp. 125–38.

Shanks, H. 1980. “Have Sodom and Gomorrah Been Found?” BAR 6 (5):26–36.

Sherwood, Y. 2004. “Binding—Unbinding: Divided Responses of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to the ‘Sacrifice’ of Abraham’s Beloved Son.” JAAR 72:821–61.

Steinberg, N. 1984. “Gender Roles in the Rebekah Cycle.” USQR 391:175–88.

Teugels, L. 1984. “ ‘A Strong Woman, Who Can Find?’ A Study of Characterization in Genesis 24, with Some Perspectives on the General Presentation of Isaac and Rebekah in the Genesis Narratives.” JSOT 63:89–104.

———. 1995. “The Anonymous Matchmaker: An Enquiry into the Characterization of the Servant of Abraham in Genesis 24.” JSOT 65:13–23.

Thompson, J. L. 1995. “Hagar: Test, Terror and Tradition.” Perspectives 10:16–19.

———. 1997. “Hagar, Victim or Villain? Three Sixteenth Century Views.” CBQ 59:213–33.

Thompson, T. L. 1974. The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham. BZAW 133. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Tonson, P. 2001. “Mercy without Covenant: A Literary Analysis of Genesis 19.” JSOT 95:95–116.

Tozer, A. W. 1948. The Pursuit of God. Harrisburg, Pa.: Christian Publications.

Trible, P. 1984. “The Desolation of Rejection.” In Texts of Terror: Literary Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives. Philadelphia: Fortress. Pp. 9–35.

———. 1985. “The Other Woman: A Literary and Theological Study of the Hagar Narratives.” In Understanding the Word: Essays in Honour of Bernhard W. Anderson. Ed. J. T. Butler, E. W. Conrad, and B. Ollenburger. JSOTSup 37. Sheffield: JSOT Press. Pp. 221–46.

———. 1991. “Genesis 22: The Sacrifice of Sarah.” In “Not in Heaven”: Coherence and Complexity in Biblical Narrative. Ed. J. Rosenblatt and J. Sitterson Jr. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Pp. 170–91.

Turner, M. D. 1985. “Rebekah: Ancestor of Faith.” LTQ 20:42–50.

Van Seters, J. 1975. Abraham in History and Tradition. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Vos, G. 1948. Notes on Biblical Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Walters, S. 1987. “Wood, Sand, and Stars: Structure and Theology in Genesis 22:1–19.” Toronto Journal of Theology 3:301–30.

Wenham, G. J. 1982. “The Symbolism of the Animal Rite in Genesis 15: A Response to G. F. Hasel, JSOT 19 (1981): 61–78.” JSOT 22:134–37.

———. 1995. “The Akedah: A Paradigm of Sacrifice.” In Pomegranates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom. Ed. D. P. Wright, D. N. Freedman, and A. Hurvitz. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. Pp. 93–102.

Westbrook, R. 1991. “Purchase of the Cave of Machpelah.” In Property and the Family in Biblical Law. JSOTSup 113. Sheffield: JSOT Press. Pp. 24–35.

White, H. C. 1973. “The Divine Oath in Genesis.” JBL 92:165–79.

———. 1975. “The Initiation Legend of Ishmael.” ZAW 87:267–305.

———. 1979. “The Initiation Legend of Isaac.” ZAW 91:1–30.

Wiseman, D. J. 1977. “Abraham in History and Tradition.” BSac 134:123–30, 228–37.

Wolff, H. W. 1974. “The Kerygma of the Yahwist.” In The Vitality of Old Testament Traditions, by H. W. Wolff and W. Brueggemann. Atlanta: John Knox. Pp. 41–66.

Victor P. Hamilton, Handbook on the Pentateuch, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 19–107.