As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age.
Genesis 15:15 (NASB)
The English renders the Hebrew word “bo” here as “go,” and it makes the place of the dead seem far away, like a distant place to arrive after a long journey through life.
But the rabbis say this word more often means “come.” As in, even in death there is nearness to God.
Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
Genesis 15:6 (NIV)
It’s not about faith in doctrine, or faith in a religion, or faith in ourselves. It is specifically about believing a promise God made to us, and living life as though we believe the promise is true.
Now the Lord said to Abram,
“Go from your country,
And from your relatives
And from your father’s house,
To the land which I will show you;
And I will make you into a great nation,
And I will bless you,
And make your name great;
And you shall be a blessing;
And I will bless those who bless you,
And the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
Genesis 12:1-3 (NASB)
Genesis 12 introduces us to the relationship between God and His people by way of a Promise that God makes. God makes the promise. God will keep it.
But this isn’t new. It has always been this way. Even Genesis 1:1 starts with “In the beginning, God…”
First, God.
Sons were also born to Shem, whose older brother was Japheth; Shem was the ancestor of all the sons of Eber.
Genesis 10:21 (NIV)
Jewish commentaries say the phrase “were also born” is a narrative device that’s meant to come after a pause. The readers should wonder if Shem will have children. The writer delays giving the answer.
“Blessed” Noah had no more children, so how will God fulfill his Promise to bless the world? Would the blessing on Shem be the same or something different? And now we have the answer. Shem will also have children.
The imagery is that God has hung up the weapon.
My bow I have given in the cloud, and it hath been for a token of a covenant between Me and the earth; and it hath come to pass (in My sending a cloud over the earth) that the bow hath been seen in the cloud, and I have remembered My covenant which is between Me and you, and every living creature among all flesh, and the waters become no more a deluge to destroy all flesh; and the bow hath been in the cloud, and I have seen it — to remember the covenant age-during between God and every living creature among all flesh which [is] on the earth.’
Genesis 9:13-16 (YLT)
But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.
Genesis 6:18-20 (NIV)
If you’ve followed my posts about the different “kinds of animals” in Gen 1-3, and how we seem to have a picture of Israel (livestock), the Gentiles (the wild animals), and the Enemies of God (the ones that creep), you may see this as prophetic and extremely hopeful.
The way it is written, this covenant appears distinct from the one that occurs after Noah gets off the boat. This one seems… redemptive.
Now Jared lived 162 years, and fathered Enoch…
Now Enoch lived sixty-five years, and fathered Methuselah…
Now Methuselah lived 187 years, and fathered Lamech…
Genesis 5:18, 21, 25 (NASB)Now Lamech lived 182 years, and fathered a son. And he named him Noah, saying, “This one will give us comfort from our work and from the hard labor of our hands caused by the ground which the Lord has cursed.”
Genesis 5:28-29 (NASB)
For the Rabbis, 7 is “perfection,” and 10 is “completion.”
Tenth from Adam, we have another oddity. It’s the first time the name of the son is not immediately shown. Everywhere else, it would have said, “and fathered Noah.” Instead, it pauses. So we, too, must pause.
This is the book of the generations of Adam. On the day when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God.
Genesis 5:1 (NASB)
Genesis 5 starts out mentioning “the book of the generations of Adam.”
It’s the first time we see this word “book.”
It means “book” or “writing,” but it also means “missive” or “instructions.” Like a decree… or a Promise.
And God does not break His promises.
The word is used again later in a story linked to something important: it’s the word used when Sarah drives out Hagar.
And she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”
Genesis 21:10 (NIV)
While we wrestle with Sarah’s unkindness and Abe’s foolishness and Hagar’s slave-status, there’s something that Paul says later about this story that we have to understand. These characters represent something.
For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a divine promise.
Galations 4:22-23 (NIV)
There’s so much talk about “works” and “faith,” and Paul links these concepts to slavery and freedom as it relates to God’s promise to us.
When Sarah demands that Abe “get rid of” Hagar and the boy, she is using this same word of “banishing” as Genesis 3.
The link should be viewed through an eternal lens: God is banishing the slavery of works and our own attempts at attaining status and relationship from the garden. The Garden is Holy.
He’s not kicking US out. He’s kicking out the works of the flesh.
How do we know this?
Because if you read the text closely, God only banishes Adam from the garden, and not Eve, who represents Life. The spirit. The one through whom God promises to bring redemption. Not through through One born of the flesh, but born of the spirit.
And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Genesis 3:22-24 (NIV)