Transcript
A (0:00)
Foreign.
B (0:06)
Hey, this is Shelby and Scott with a year in the Bible with daily grace. We're going through the book of Genesis, and today we're in chapters 34 through 36. We said it so many times, but a lot going on in these chapters. Scott, in some tough things in these chapters. Can you break this down for us?
A (0:24)
Yeah, this is not an easy situation section to read. You know, in the case with chapter 34 with Dena, it's just. It's just a tough chapter to get through for a lot of reasons. Chapter 35 may not just strike us as interesting. There's a lot of details in a brief genealogy, and then chapter 36 is one big genealogy about Esau. So, you know, there's a lot of directions we could go with these chapters, but I think it might be helpful to just really zero in on in Genesis chapter 35. So back in Genesis 28, God had appeared to Jacob in a dream at a place called Bethel. This is when he was fleeing Esau. He's about to leave the promised land. And God had promised in that moment to bring him back to this land. And. And God is now calling Jacob. He has returned. He's calling him to return to that spot, to Bethel, and to build an altar there for him. And so Jacob is. His family has gotten pretty big. A lot of. A lot of children, and they set out for Bethel. And once again, God appears to Jacob there. And he confirms. There's several things that happen here where God confirms things that, for one, that he has a new name. This actually happens back in chapter 32, I believe it was. The name is Israel. And this is when he. He got this name, when he wrestled with God. God confirms here that he is God Almighty. El Shaddai, an important name for this family. It's the name God used appeared to Abraham in Genesis, chapter chapter 17. Excuse me. He tells Jacob again that he is going to give the land that had been promised to Abraham and Isaac. He says that kings are going to come from this family. And he tells Jacob to be fruitful in multiply. And so, you know, God has kept his promise, all his promises to Jacob of bringing him back to this land. And we have this assurance here that God's just going to keep blessing this family, keep fulfilling his promises to this family, even across generations and generational transitions. Position is really a big feature of chapter 35.
B (2:27)
Yeah. So I know we've got a genealogy going on there, but there's also important things happening through that. Can you explain that a little bit to us?
A (2:35)
Yeah. So you start to see one generation kind of die off. You see this in a few ways. You've got Rebecca's nurse, Deborah, who dies. Isaac, Abraham's son that he had waited so long for. He. He passes away. And incidentally, Shelby, I love this poignant moment where Jacob and Esau bury their father together. I think that's just another beautiful testimony to how these brothers had reconciled after everything they had been through. And. And then Rachel, who is Jacob's favorite wife, she dies giving birth to her final son, Benjamin. And interestingly, Jacob's mother, Rebecca, she. There's no mention of her here, so, you know, it's probable that she died. I mentioned this a couple episodes ago While he spent 20 years with his Uncle Laban. She probably died during this time. We just don't. We just don't know for sure. But she's not mentioned here. So we. We get this generation that's fading out and another generation right behind them emerging. And so you see that here with the. The list of Jacob's 12 sons. So they're all listed. This is important because this is. They're going to become the twelve tribes of Israel. So these are very, very important people. Just in the biblical story at large, they're also going to play a huge role in the Joseph narrative, which we actually start tomorrow. So. Yeah, but, you know, these are broken people still. I say they're important, but as we've seen, that doesn't mean they're not messy and they're not broken, because we're going to see a lot more brokenness still in Genesis. But again, you know, to kind of repeat this note, God takes the brokenness of this world and brings good out of it. He advances his purposes through broken people.