Genesis 41-50, Exodus 1-4

The grand sweep of Genesis concludes in Egypt as Joseph talks his way out of trouble, interpreting the Pharaoh's dreams and attaining a position just below him in importance.  Joseph's brothers come to him and he hides his true identity from them, repeating another pattern in the Bible to this point.  He pushes it just far enough to have his kid brother Benjamin placed in the position God had Abraham place Isaac.  Different circumstances, same general need to play the ultimate test.

The points I really want to stress, however, are how Joseph and his brothers echo Cain/Abel and Jacob/Esau and even the later Moses/Aaron, and just perhaps Jesus, whose single existence comprised the dual nature of God and man.  Which of the two sides wins in the struggle?  The point is never really the victory, because victory is sometimes not even possible, but rather to strike a contrast between them, and illustrate God's relationship to man and therefore man's relationship to God.  More narrowly, Joseph may simply be called a predecessor to Jesus, how he relates to the Pharaoh, how he represents both himself and his people.  His people, by the way, who continue to live, by choice, in exile, but always preferring in personal matters their own.  By the end of Genesis, Jacob has died and then Joseph dies, but not before, as Jacob has done before him, prophesying about the future, or in other words the fulfillment of the covenant God has been making with Abraham and his descendants for all prosperity and a land to call their own.

Then begins the second book of the Bible, Exodus, and with it a swift contrast in the fortunes of Hebrews in Egypt.  The old pharaoh who came to rely so favorably on Joseph has passed away and the new one greatly fears the shear number of Hebrews living within his kingdom, so he subjugates them rather than allow his fear of a revolt or uprising to come to pass.  Like Jesus later, all the male offspring become subject to genocide, but the Hebrews prove crafty and avoid the inevitable fate of their kind, saving their little boys, and of course famously in the case of Moses.

He's sent in a basket down the river and ends up in the Pharaoh's palace, and grows up a regular Joseph, until he remarks on the oppression of his own people, and then goes into exile, finds his birth family, and then incidentally runs into a bush lit by an angel and then inhabited by God, who charges him with the salvation of the oppressed Hebrews, who are suddenly keen to begin looking for that promised land.  He doesn't feel up to the task of doing the speaking for himself, so he asks if it's okay that his brother Aaron do it for him.  God says it's okay.

The way God presents himself is a key difference, by the way, between Exodus and Genesis.  God even gives himself a name, which is later translated for simplicity's sake to Yahweh, although the basic statement is that he is God because he's the only being in creation who's always "is."

What's really notable here is how definitive the transition from Genesis to Exodus really is.  Although the circumstances around Joseph serve as a bridge, Exodus makes no attempt at the same kind of genealogical comprehensiveness as Genesis.  Moses is left pretty much to appear at random.  He is descended from Levi, marking the first point this particular son of  Jacob is considered significant, much less in a positive light.  

It's just as if Exodus originally stood apart from Genesis, or that it was composed first and Genesis second, like a prequel, to explain where the Hebrews came from in the first place and how their faith developed, or a justification for the new emphasis on finding a homeland, which makes Genesis to become the first work of prophecy in more ways than one in the Bible, assuming there's an equal chance it developed first.  It seems as if Moses came about independently, certainly within the awareness of the Abrahamic tradition but separate from it, which is why in the early parts of Genesis some knowledge is implied whereas in the later parts it's inferred.  Moses is the start of the Jewish traditions still practiced today.  That's why the first books of the Bible are dedicated to him so completely, even Genesis, where he doesn't even appear.  The way Christians view the Old Testament is how Jews view Genesis in regard to Moses.  He's the whole reason anyone should care about it.  Pretty shocking, when you consider how significant most of that material is, at least culturally.

Genesis 21-40

The action picks right back up with Abraham and Sarah, those crazy old founders of the whole Jewish faith, and the birth of Isaac.  You'll remember that Abraham has previously had a child with the handmaiden Hagar.  Ishmael temporarily reaches a bad end after they're both cast out of paradise, run out of water, and Hagar believes they'll both die, but then God shows up and reiterates that all's well in this family line.

The Philistines enter the picture for the first time, however, as Abraham transports the family to live among them.  Then follows one of the most famous episodes in the whole Bible, in which God tests Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his own son Isaac, in what Christians would later suggest is the template for Jesus.  Then Sarah dies and makes agreements with the Hittites to use their land for her burial.  It's the first time we really get to see how respected Abraham is by others.  They quickly acquiesce.  Next he barters with Mesopotamians through a proxy for Isaac's future bride, who turns out to be Rebekah.  Abraham in turn takes another bride, Keturah.  You are probably not familiar with her name because she's not really significant otherwise.  And anyway, Abraham is dead himself very soon after in the narrative.

Things become interesting again when you realize that Isaac's sons Jacob and Esau are basically a new version of Cain and Abel, and although you may be familiar with certain inheritance shenanigans Jacob and his mother pull, it's perhaps more intriguing that these brothers manage to make peace with each other despite everything.

A name that keeps popping up in these passages is the Philistine Abimelech, who first interacts with Abraham and then later Isaac.  He is perhaps a representation of significant individuals outside of the people we're really supposed to care about.  Around this time, Isaac pulls the same trick his father did, calling Rebekah his sister rather than wife, thinking it'll make things easier.  But Abimelech is no fool.  He correctly surmises that if he treated Rebekah as Isaac's sister rather than wife (to be fair, the whole idea was that Rebekah, like Sarah before her, is incredibly beautiful, and therefore would make every man jealous and therefore uncooperative), he would be falling into sin, like a trap.  So Isaac agrees that it was a bad idea.

Around this time in Genesis, names that are supposed to mean something start being explained better, perhaps because these are known entities to the first recipients of the stories, so they're more reminders than things they were supposed to have learned, such as in the case of the name Eve from earlier.

Abimelech also begins to represent those people outside the line of Abraham who understand what's going on faith-wise.  They're outsiders acknowledging God, in other words.

Jacob is set up for his own bride, but first experiences the first prophetic vision of the Bible, the famous Jacob's Ladder episode.  He soon meets and falls for Rachel, although her father makes marrying her incredibly difficult, to the point where he accidentally marries her older sister Leah first, and then has to marry Rachel later.  Because Jacob clearly prefers Rachel, Leah is rejected, but God intervenes by making her womb far more fertile, leading to plenty of offspring and in fact most of the twelve sons who helped found the twelve tribes, including Judah.  Rachel eventually has Joseph, however, as well as Benjamin.  Joseph of course is the most significant of these children.

Laban, Rachel and Leah's troublemaking father, causes Jacob great anxiety, and in fact a full-blown crisis in which he undertakes great preparations for an all-out confrontation, or at least to avoid one.  Laban, for the record, manages to find peace with Jacob all the same.  Jacob has another apparent crisis concerning his brother Esau, but they make peace, too.  During this, he wrestles with God.  I believe it's traditionally described as wrestling with an angel, but as I read it Jacob literally wrestles with God himself, perhaps the last of the notable face-to-face interactions (and then some!) with the Creator.

Although it might also be notable that this section seems to indicate that not only were these people aware of other gods, worshiped by others, but found no great struggle in knowing they existed alongside God.  The real point is that God is God Almighty, or other words the supreme divine being (read the First Commandment again if you're wondering how accurate this interpretation is).

Rachel's daughter experiences a rape, leading to holy vengeance on the part of some of Jacob's sons, although after Jacob has already made peace with the culprits, who don't intend to convert to the faith of Abraham.  It's the first time a clear distinction is made between a community that will and a community that won't.

God renames Jacob Israel.  He also personally smites a few people dead.

The Joseph-and-his-special-gift-of-the-coat episode occurs, which angers his brothers, leading to their plans to get rid of him.  He winds up in Egypt, but not before his brothers convince Jacob that Joseph is in fact dead.  I suppose it only figures, because Jacob was himself previously guilty of trickery.  It's also worth noting that in Egypt we hear the term Hebrew for the first time, that being what the Jews were known as at that time, so Abraham's faith was now fully established.  Joseph winds up in prison after refusing to give in to the Pharaoh's wife's sexual desires, but this leads to his experiences with the same kind of prophetic abilities as his father and thus one of the defining themes of the Old Testament, which is revisited in the New Testament.