Rest

I read Exodus 16 at the start of my busy week.

21 Each morning everyone gathered as much as he needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away. 22 On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much—two omers for each person—and the leaders of the community came and reported this to Moses. 23 He said to them, "This is what the LORD commanded: 'Tomorrow is to be a day of rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD. So bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil. Save whatever is left and keep it until morning.' "

24 So they saved it until morning, as Moses commanded, and it did not stink or get maggots in it. 25 "Eat it today," Moses said, "because today is a Sabbath to the LORD. You will not find any of it on the ground today. 26 Six days you are to gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will not be any."

27 Nevertheless, some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather it, but they found none. 28 Then the LORD said to Moses, "How long will you refuse to keep my commands and my instructions? 29 Bear in mind that the LORD has given you the Sabbath; that is why on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Everyone is to stay where he is on the seventh day; no one is to go out." 30 So the people rested on the seventh day.

Vs. 27 stuck with me during this week where I had so much to do each day that I would rarely have time for lunch, or a break or anything. I was submerged in work! But God thinks it is important that we rest. That He rests. (not that I think considering the current state of the world that He gets time to rest!)

That we are such creatures of habit, that even if there is nothing to do, we want to do something!

The pace that I kept this past week will not continue. A number of the sections of my course are complete. My copycheck work is complete. I still have a lot of work with the marks, but I'm hoping to gear down for next week :)

Plagues

I just finished reading about the different plagues that occurred in Exodus as Moses asked Pharoah to release the people. Each time he said he would and each time he didn't and then something else bad happened. And it happened so many times! But it does show that when things are bad, we often want relief, not real change.
I am pretty impressed with Moses' patience with Pharoah as Pharoah kept deceiving him and Moses just kept on with the plagues. I would have been pretty annoyed with Pharoah and probably given him a piece of my mind!

What the...?

Sometimes when reading the Bible I get stopped by a what the... verse. This one is pretty odd. It's in Exodus 4. The background is that God tells Moses to go to Egypt and talk to pharoah. Moses is a bit reluctant but he goes to his father in law and asks for permission to go to Egypt and then takes his wife and kids and is on the way when verse 24 happens:

24Along the way at a [resting-] place, the Lord met [Moses] and sought to kill him [made him acutely and almost fatally ill].

25[Now apparently he had failed to circumcise one of his sons, his wife being opposed to it; but seeing his life in such danger] Zipporah took a flint knife and cut off the foreskin of her son and cast it to touch [Moses'] feet, and said, Surely a husband of blood you are to me!

This was the least puzzling translation that I read, but it's still pretty puzzling. If God had issues with Moses, why didn't He discuss them with Moses when He was talking to him about other things?

ETA: I found an interesting answer at http://www.gotquestions.org/kill-Moses.html
Question: "Why was God going to kill Moses in Exodus 4:24-26?"

Answer: The sin of Moses in Exodus 4:24-26 is not stated explicitly, but the surrounding events give substantial clues as to the nature of Moses’ transgression. God had instructed his messenger to warn Pharaoh to free Israel, or risk losing his firstborn son (Exodus 4:21-24). Moses had been specially groomed by God for eighty years for this mission, and now the time for action had come.

Moses was to lead his people out of Egypt, and to be an example to Pharaoh’s house, to the nation of Egypt, and to all the nations that heard of those happenings (Exodus 18:10-11; Joshua 2:10-11). Accordingly, Moses’ personal life had to be in order before he could direct the spiritual lives of the Hebrew people. It seems that Moses had neglected to administer the sacred rite of circumcision, the act that symbolized the Almighty’s covenant with His chosen people.

Perhaps this was the result of pressure from his surrogate Midianite tribe. It is also possible that he was persuaded by Zipporah not to circumcise his son, since she apparently found the practice revolting (4:25). This would explain her violent outburst; she felt that she had saved her husband from death by shedding the blood of her son. Whatever the cause, Moses’ outstanding sin made him unfit to serve as a spiritual leader, and the situation had to be rectified before he could carry out his mission effectively. Indeed, as soon as Zipporah performed the act, the Lord “let him go.” In summary, God was going to kill Moses because Moses was supposed to teach the Israelites God's Law - yet Moses was not obeying God's Law himself.

End

I finished Genesis last night. It ended with the death of Jacob and Joseph. And I was impressed with the time that they gave their mourning. For Jacob, it took 40 days to embalm him, then they mourned him for 70 days, then they travelled to Canaan to bury him. While in Canaan they observed a 7 day period of mourning with loud and bitter lamentations. Then they travelled back to Egypt.

Joseph

I am now finished the story of Joseph. I am also reading a book about Joseph (have been for a few months now!) called 'God meant it for good' by Kendall. It's been a good book, so far. In a way I didn't feel like writing anything about Joseph here because the book is so good, and what more could I write? But I really like Joseph, so I thought I'd write a bit. The Bible really allows you to see his progression from a teenager with crazy dreams, to a dream interpreter, to the ruler of Egypt (second only to Pharoah).
As a teenager he has the crazy dreams about his family bowing down to him. Which did turn out to be prophetically true. And while Joseph seems to get a kick out of it as a teenager, when he grows up and it actually happens, I don't think it was as fun as he thought it was going to be! It actually caused him a lot of turmoil. And not only does he have the dreams, but he tells his family the dreams. And they (obviously) don't like what the dreams seem to be saying, so it creates turmoil there too.
I relate to this because I have a lot of crazy dreams. Though most of them are not as easy to interpret as Joseph's first dreams. I do get where Jopeph is coming from because when you have a "God dream", it's pretty exciting/scary and it tends to stick with you all the time. I do understand why he told his family. He probably couldn't keep it in.
I try to carefully analyze who I should share my dreams with. Well, I do post pretty much all of them on my dream blog, but it's a pretty crazy blog that I don't really think that many people read. I think Bob and my mom read it! But I feel that the people who read it are safe people. And there are safe people (like Al) that if I had a dream about him/his family/Rustle that I have no problem sharing. If I get a dream about a specific person, I try to analyse- am I just supposed to pray about this, or tell the person. Like last night I had a dream about someone and I don't really understand what it means and the person is not someone who I've ever talked about dreams with before. So right now, I just pray about it. It may be that the person would understand the dream if I told them, but I would just wait and see in conversation if there is a way to bring it up in a non-threatening manner or not!

The next phase for Joseph is where God helps him interpret dreams. And Joseph does give the glory to God, where as a teenager, he wanted it for himself.
When I read about the interpretation, it makes me think that over the years he had a lot of dreams himself and God was teaching him to interpret that way.

And then the last phase is as ruler of the land. He must have been a pretty likeable guy because Pharoah seems pretty pleased with the guy he pulled out of prison. And that Joseph is a pretty smooth financial operator. During the famine years he collected all the money, livestock and land from the people of Egypt. (and I think made them servants after that?) He took everything for Pharoah! That's some finacial management of a country!

The heart of man

Before I decided to have a go at the whole Bible, which I have done before- but it was over 10 years ago, the last time!- I mainly stuck with reading the New Testament and the Prophets like Isaiah. After getting through about 37 chapters of Genesis, I realize why- the old testament seems to show the heart of man- and it isn't very pretty. The New Testament seems more about God's heart.

But the OT has some puzzling entries. Maybe partly due to translation, partly due to it really being a puzzle. But that's what is fun about the OT.

Like Genesis 35:22

21 Israel moved on again and pitched his tent beyond Migdal Eder. 22 While Israel was living in that region, Reuben went in and slept with his father's concubine Bilhah, and Israel heard of it.

And that is the end of that account. But, what happened when Israel heard of it? We are left to imagine on our own.
I am not sure of the timeline as things seem to jump around a lot. Did this happen before or after the brothers sold Joseph?
In Genesis 37, Reuben doesn't seem to have been there when his brothers sold Joseph:

29 When Reuben returned to the cistern and saw that Joseph was not there, he tore his clothes. 30 He went back to his brothers and said, "The boy isn't there! Where can I turn now?"

And he seems to be the only one concerned about what is going on with the situation. Concerned about Joseph. Maybe more concerned about his dad.
Maybe he was off with the concubine WHILE they were selling Joseph. Ha ha.
But it just seems odd that he seems to be the one with the most respect for his father and yet he also disrespects him.

Switching over to Esau's line in Genesis 36. I thought it was interesting how in vs. 10-14 it lists the sons and in vs. 15-18 it lists the chiefs and the lists are pretty close to identical. It reminded me that God sees us as his children, but also as his warriors.

Deception continued

As we move on we see Isaac use the same lie as his father:

7 When the men of that place asked him about his wife, he said, "She is my sister," because he was afraid to say, "She is my wife." He thought, "The men of this place might kill me on account of Rebekah, because she is beautiful."

8 When Isaac had been there a long time, Abimelech king of the Philistines looked down from a window and saw Isaac caressing his wife Rebekah. 9 So Abimelech summoned Isaac and said, "She is really your wife! Why did you say, 'She is my sister'?"
Isaac answered him, "Because I thought I might lose my life on account of her." (Genesis 26)

Now, I'm thinking this is a different Abimelech than the one that Abraham lied to. If it was Abimelechs' son, that would be funny, as it would be history repeating itself with a younger generation!

Then in Genesis 31, Isaac's son Jacob wants to leave Laban, who he had been working for (who had also dealt deceitfully with Jacob- giving him Leah as a wife instead of Rachel whom he asked for):

19 When Laban had gone to shear his sheep, Rachel stole her father's household gods. 20 Moreover, Jacob deceived Laban the Aramean by not telling him he was running away. 21 So he fled with all he had, and crossing the River, he headed for the hill country of Gilead.

Is running away the best solution? Jacob had to travel with women and children, probably making him an easy target for Laban to catch up to (which he does- and likely only survives because God protects him).

But what is up with Rachel? Why would she steal the idols? That would seem to indicate that she did not have the same faith as Jacob? Maybe she felt an attachment to them from childhood.

There seems to be some measure of deception in everyone's life. That humans by nature are to some degree deceptive. That they can't 100% trust God. And yet God still loved them and chose them and redeemed them.

But then there is Genesis 22:12, where God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and he comes close, but God says:

"Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son."

I think that after all Abraham went through to get a son, he might have been more reluctant! Our children are gifts from God :)