Blessings and curses
One strange theme in these early chapters of Genesis is that each time God chooses someone and blesses them, the very next thing they do leads to a curse.
Adam and Eve - at the end of chapter 1 God blesses Adam and Eve; in chapter 3 they eat the fruit and the earth is cursed.
Noah - in chapter 9 God gives a similar blessing to Noah; the other half of that chapter relates how he got drunk and cursed Canaan.
Abram - in chapter 12 Abram is told that "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed"; the very next thing that happens is that he pretends Sarai is not his wife which leads to a curse for Pharaoh.
It's interesting that these first heroes are so deliberately presented as fallible.
Comments
Hmm, interesting indeed! The summaries are great for noticing these kind of patterns!
It reminds me of something I remember from Hermeneutics with RBriggs last year. One of the articles I liked (Gary Anderson I think) suggested that the pattern of the OT was much like this, with great high points of covenant/blessing immediately followed by crashing lows. He suggested that the history (including pre-history) of Israel followed the pattern of Sinai: the law is being given on the mountain, while at the same time the golden calf is created below...
Yes! That's what I was seeing - all those characters receive key promises of covenant.
It will be sad to watch this pattern continue, then. I'd not noticed it so clearly before.
22 Aug 2010, 15:15
@biblesummary Just discovering your Blog, great idea! you're doing an awsome job!
I summarised all 1,189 chapters of the Bible on Twitter - one tweet per chapter, one chapter per day for over three years.
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