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.