Genesis 10
In an echo of a command earlier in Genesis (Genesis 1:28), God had told Noah and his sons, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth” (Genesis 9:1). Once again God’s Word has creative effectiveness. Chapter 10 sets out a kind of verbal map of the ensuing world. With God’s continuing sovereignty of nations, we should understand this description not as any set ethnic delineation. On the contrary, this table of nations foreshadows the world of interconnectivity that the nation of Israel would be called to bless. Although this chapter doesn’t make for obviously exciting reading, it is very impressive for the vision of an interconnected, dynamically-related world from and under the Lord. The peoples who repopulated the world after the flood would do well to treat one another with respect, along with the father (yesterday’s post) who set them in relation with one another in the world.
Prayer:
God, please send a wake up call from heaven to those nations stirring dangerously in their illusion of individual destiny. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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5 comments:
why are only the sons mentioned? why not the daughters?
sometimes poets and singers are our modern day prophets. take patti smith, for example.
re: "the vision of an interconnected, dynamically-related world from and under the Lord."
continuing with yeterday's thought about how our interpretation/eperience of the Word is filtered by our limited human abilities and experience, i want to say that i am continually delighted and sureprised by your positive and inclusive filter.
this idea of israel as the nation "called to bless" "the world of interconnectivity" differs greatly from fellow christians (and others) who see israel as the place to bring about armageddon.
I think the reason why only sons are mentioned is because the society out of which the literature comes is thoroughly partiarchal - but later on at least Ruth gets a mention in Matthew 1, which ends with Mary. Maybe I'm reading to much into this last bit, but I find it interesting that Mary ends that genealogy not as Joseph's wife, but rather it's "Joseph, the husband of Mary." - and that could lead back into the kind of discussion back around the da Vinci code, where we acknowledged that for too long (and still in some circles) the church remained willingly patriarchal, contrary to the spirit and content of Jesus' ministry, in which women were very prominent and in many instances the heroes (humanly speaking), while the men tended to be weak, indecisive, and downright cowardly.
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