Commentary on Genesis

On Genesis, Part 21: The Call of Abraham

The chronology of Genesis is quite important to us, since if the chronology conflicts with ancient history, from things which we can know with certainty from archaeology and ancient records, then we cannot defend the historical validity of Genesis. But if we carefully piece together a chronology from Biblical, archaeological and historical sources, as we hope to have done here, then we may establish the fact that the Biblical chronology does not conflict with ancient history, and therefore we can defend Genesis as being historical – so long as it is understood to be historical only within the context of the Adamic race, which is the White race. Doing that, we may also better understand the state of the world out of which Abram had been called. So in our last presentation here, The Tower of Babel, we hope to have demonstrated as facts both the date of the flood of Noah as having been several hundred years before the earliest records of the Sumerian language, and that there are no records of other languages which precede the division of languages described in Genesis chapter 11, an event which is stated to have happened in the days of Peleg.

So our date for the flood, as we can best reckon it, is about 3187 BC. The popular sources we have cited for the earliest appearance of the Sumerian language places it about 2900 BC. Our date for the life of Peleg is that he was born around the 2793rd year of Adam, and died about the 3132nd year of Adam. This places his life, as we reckoned it, to have been from about 2656 BC to 2317 BC, and the popular sources date the earliest record of the Akkadian language to 2500 BC, very close to the middle of that period and therefore with all certainty reflecting the truth of the statement that “in his days was the earth divided”, as we read in Genesis chapter 10 (10:25). No other Western or Near Eastern languages are attested before these, in spite of conjecture concerning findings such as the so-called Vinča symbols or other ancient relics. However concerning those things, we must also bear in mind that the Nephilim have an unbroken history in the Near East and in Anatolia which is of far greater antiquity than that of the original Genesis chapter 10 Adamic nations. Apparently, what we know as Sumerian may have also been their language. The cities of Sumer and the Levant had various kings from among the Nephilim, such as Gilgamesh or Og of Bashan. We hope to discuss the presence of the Nephilim further when we encounter passages which mention them in Genesis chapters 14 and 15.

On Genesis, Part 22: The Sojourn

As we have calculated and presented it in our Genesis chronology, some time around 1880 BC the patriarch Abraham was called by Yahweh to leave Haran, which we believe, for reasons we explained in our recent presentation on The Call of Abraham, was evidently his ancestral homeland before his father had moved to Ur. In Haran, Abraham had also been given many promises by Yahweh, or at that time, simply God Almighty, the one true God who could not have been known to him previously. However this had actually transpired we can only imagine, but Abram, as he should be called at this point, must have readily been convinced that this god who had spoken to him is the true God, because he is portrayed as having immediately acted in accordance with His calling.

In a sense, Abram was very similar in certain ways to his ancestor Noah. Noah had overcome a world of sin which was inundated by water. Abram in turn was chosen to overcome a world of sin which was inundated by lies. As Paul of Tarsus had explained in Acts chapter 17, Yahweh God had “26 … made from one every nation of men to dwell upon all the face of the earth, appointing the times ordained and the boundaries of their settlements,” which is a reference to the division of nations seen here in Genesis chapters 10 and 11, for which “27 to seek God. If surely then they would seek after Him then they would find Him…”, yet it is evident that none of them ever sought Him up to the point at which Yahweh had called Abraham. Ostensibly, Abraham was chosen as a vessel to carry the heritage of Adam through a deluge of lies. While Noah was an example of the importance of preserving the genetic purity of the race of Adam, Abraham was called as an example of the importance of seeking the Will of God and, once it is found, of maintaining the Word of God within that race. But while we cannot know whether Abraham had sought God, it is clear that he became obedient to God once he was addressed by Him.

On Genesis, Part 23: The Wild West

In our last presentation of this Genesis commentary we discussed The Sojourn of Abram, who had departed from Haran and travelled through Bethel, or ancient Luz, even as far as Egypt, upon which leaving he had returned to Bethel. Doing this, we also speculated as to why he may have been settled in the land of Canaan, apparently because at least most of the city-states of the region were subject to the Egyptians. So Abraham and his descendants would remain under the Egyptian sphere of influence, if not directly under Egyptian control, until the time of the Exodus. Ostensibly, that would shelter them from the turmoil of the rise and fall of the Canaanite empires to the north and east which was about to transpire over the subsequent centuries, namely those of the Hittites, the Hurrian Mitanni Kingdom, and the Babylonian empire of the Amorites.

As the Akkadian empire of the 3rd millennium BC had weakened, a host of contenders sought to take its place, such as the dynasty of the Gutians, and the so-called fifth dynasty of Uruk, and the so-called third dynasty of Ur, which came to the end of its rule shortly before the birth of Abram. But these aspiring empires were all short-lived, and as the Hittite and Hurrian kingdoms began to rise to the status of empire, the Amorites had exploited the opportunity of a power vacuum to become influential in Mesopotamia, where they established themselves in Babylon and rose to assume the so-called First Babylonian Empire. That is how academics refer to the Babylonian empire of the Amorites, and although in the past we ourselves have preferred to use that designation for the empire of Nimrod, here in this Genesis commentary that would only cause confusion. The later Babylonian empire of Nebuchadnezzar was at least mostly Chaldaean in substance, and during the time of the Amorite dominance even most of Babylonia had apparently remained ethnically Kassite, or more commonly in English, Chaldaean.

On Genesis, Part 24: The Victories of Abraham

In our last presentation in this commentary on Genesis, we left Abram in The Wild West as the kings of Elam and Mesopotamia had pillaged Sodom and Gomorrah. Where the supposed defenders of those cities were faced with the prospect of battle, we read that “the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and fell there [in the valley of Siddim]; and they that remained fled to the mountain.” So in their end, the depraved Sodomites proved to be cowards, and could not stand before the formidable invading armies. There it was also evident, that Sodom and its companion cities were not considered a part of the land of Canaan, but had been subjects of the kings of Mesopotamia, who at this time were themselves subject to the king of Elam, according to the account as it is presented here in Genesis chapter 14. That Elam had subjected the kings of Mesopotamia at this time is apparently something that the secular records have not revealed. However as we also explained, the history of this period in the 19th century BC is incompletely represented in surviving records. The only way in which any of the history of distant antiquity can be known is with the discovery and deciphering of ancient inscriptions.

But even without ancient inscriptions to support any particular event described in the Bible, we hope to have exhibited thus far in our Genesis commentary that the Scripture certainly is reliable, once it is properly correlated with what we can know from the historical and ancient records. Wherever there is ancient history which can be known, the knowledge does not conflict with the words of Scripture, and more often than not, supports Scripture. While the churches have never properly made the necessary correlations, all those who claim that the Bible is not historical are liars. Moses was not a fool writing fairy tales. Rather, he was educated as a prince in Egypt, and his books were respected for 2,000 years, as attested to in the words of Manetho, Hecataeus of Abdera, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo of Cappadocia, Flavius Josephus, and there is no reason to disrespect him today. While critics may find fault in each of those men, they were nevertheless serious scholars and historians of their own time, who were in turn respected by Christian scholars in Europe for many centuries. Attempts to discredit this history are only a couple of centuries old, and they all have one source: the Jewish culture of critique through which Jews have sought to subvert and deconstruct everything of value in European Christian society. But the pompous arrogance and abject ignorance of churchmen over those same centuries have failed to defend Christianity from the constant onslaught of Jewish propaganda, and now all of Christendom is in peril. But of course, the words of Moses are also upheld by Yahshua Christ. So even at the precipice of Sodom and Gomorrah, the substance of the unconditional promises of Yahweh God inform us that until the very end Abram shall remain victorious.

On Genesis, Part 25: The Vanquished

In our last presentation in this Genesis commentary we had discussed The Victories of Abraham and how, with Yahweh God as his Shield, as we read in the opening verse of this 15th chapter of Genesis, the patriarch was able to overcome the kings of Elam and Mesopotamia, to rescue his nephew Lot and recover his estate, to gain the blessings of Melchizedek the king of Salem, and also to overcome the king of Sodom and dispense of his goods without having profitted from the Sodomites. That in itself should also be an example to us, as Sodom is once again prevalent in our society today. [I know, it is a pun, but it is an appropriate pun.] All of these things were personal victories for Abram, which were made possible only because he had been granted the mercy and favor of Yahweh God.

Doing that, Yahweh had once again made several additional promises and an unconditional and one-sided covenant with Abram, where Yahweh had placed all the burden of fulfillment on Himself, while requiring nothing of Abram. This is made evident where it is described that His essence had passed through the pieces of dead sacrificial animals in the manner in which ancient covenants had been made. We had established that this was a binding covenant and described its significance from several ancient sources. The first of these was a letter of official business by an official in the government of ancient Mari in what is now Syria. While the letter itself is difficult to date, Mari is generally said to have flourished from about 2900 to 1759 BC, so the letter probably predates the time of Abram. Then we cited an oath given to be made by soldiers of the ancient Hittite empire, which thrived for several centuries beginning shortly after the time of Abram. Then, after citing a recollection of oaths described in Homer’s Iliad, which recounts events from about the beginning of the 12th century BC, we cited a Hittite treaty which is dated to the 14th century BC, and finally, an event from Scripture which is recorded in Jeremiah chapter 34, which described men of Judah who had bound themselves to an oath in the same manner which Yahweh had done here in Genesis chapter 15. All of these witnesses together serve to prove that our interpretation of this chapter is certain: that the covenant which Yahweh gave to Abram, that his seed which would come from his own loins would become a people as numerous as the stars and ultimately inherit the earth, is absolutely unconditional and shall indeed be fulfilled on those same terms, “as it is written.” When Yahweh instructed Abram to do something, Abram had acted only because he believed that Yahweh would do these things for him, and he was successful in all of his endeavors.

On Genesis, Part 26: The Vanity of Ishmael

As we had discussed while having seen The Victories of Abraham in Genesis chapter 15, Abram was given great promises by Yahweh God, who also made many of those promises while binding Himself alone in an unconditional covenant, which is a sure sign that they shall be fulfilled regardless of the deeds of men. Among these is a promise that his seed would ultimately displace the current inhabitants of the land which he had been promised. Those inhabitants were listed as ten tribes of people, five of which were descended from Canaan, at least in part, which are the Hittites, Amorites, Girgashites, Jebusites, and Canaanites, these last whom, for reasons we have already stated, we would venture to identify more specifically as the Sidonians. The other five tribes were not descended from Canaan, and ostensibly, they were not even descended from Adam through Noah. The origins of two of these tribes are known from Scripture, which are the Kenites and the Rephaim. They are the descendants of Cain, and a particular family of the Nephilim. While the other three are unknown, it cannot be assumed that they are of Noah, since the purpose for the genealogies and the writing of this history in this manner was so that the children of Israel in the time of Moses could know the nature of their enemies and be able to identify them as they come to possess the land which Abram was promised, as opposed to the identification of their surrounding kindred nations who are listed in Genesis chapter 10. For that reason, we must account the Kenizzites, Kadmonites and Perizzites as having been aboriginal, and also related to the ancient Nephilim, as the meanings of some of their names also suggest. That same assertion would also be true of the Zuzims, or “roving creatures” who were mentioned in Genesis chapter 14.

So ostensibly, it is for this reason that Yahweh had instructed the children of Israel to completely eradicate or drive out all of these ten tribes, because, as we have also documented in our presentation on The Vanquished where we discussed these tribes, the Canaanites had a proclivity to practise miscegenation, which is race-mixing, with their neighbors, and these tribes were all dwelling together in Canaan for at least six hundred years until this point where Abram is promised their displacement. So in essence, and regardless of what we may think of Canaan himself, considering the circumstances of his birth, the Canaanites were breaking that same law that Adam and Eve and the children of Adam had transgressed in Genesis chapters 3 and 6, which is not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Their first fathers were given this law by Yahweh God, and they have no real excuse for not keeping it, except that they had forsaken Him at a much earlier time than this.

On Genesis, Part 27: A Father of Nations

Discussing Genesis chapter 16 we described The Vanity of Ishmael, which shall continue to be manifest as we proceed through these subsequent chapters, and as we hope to discuss later in this commentary on Genesis, it is also manifest in history unto this very day, once his descendants are properly identified in the modern world. In that last presentation, we had postulated that the first aspect of Ishmael’s vanity was that he could never fulfill the role for which Abram and Sarai had believed he would be born, which was to be Abram’s heir, the seed of the promises which Abram had from God. So while the plan for his birth had originally belonged to Sarai, Yahweh God clearly had another plan, as we shall see here in Genesis chapter 17, and here His plan shall finally be fully revealed to Abram and Sarai. This is another example of many in Scripture, that Yahweh provides information to men only on a need-to-know basis, as He sees fit, and in any event, the actions of men fulfill His will whether or not that process can ever be perceived by the men themselves. The prophecies exist only so that men may look back and see that Yahweh is God.

As we proceed here, Ishmael continues to be a subject of Genesis and shall remain in our discussion, and while Hagar had already received a promise of her own, that her seed through the unborn child in her womb would become a great nation, here we shall see that Abraham was destined to be a father of many nations, and Ishmael had no share in that promise or in subsequent related promises. Another aspect of the vanity of Ishmael, the fact that all of his seed would apparently be, or become, bastards, we may not discuss again until later chapters of Genesis, where both his descendants and those of Esau are described in Genesis chapters 25, 28 and 36.

On Genesis, Part 28: Speculative Altruism

In our last presentation of this commentary on Genesis, which was titled A Father of Nations, we hope to have illustrated at least some of the cohesion between the promises of Yahweh God to Abraham which Moses had recorded in Genesis, and the interpretation and application of those promises in the ministry of Paul of Tarsus which are recorded in at least several of his epistles. Paul, having professed that his struggle was for the twelve tribes of Israel and the promises which Yahweh God had made to the fathers, which he interpreted “as it is written”, referencing the very promises to Abraham which are found in these chapters of Genesis, had clearly taught that the Gospel messages of the promises of redemption and mercy and eternal life in Christ were pertinent to the children of Israel alone [1]. Then, in relation to the covenants of God, Paul also explained that they too were exclusively for the children of Israel, an Israel which he himself had described as his “kinsmen according to the flesh” [2].

So Paul is certainly a witness to the exclusivity of the New Covenant with the children of Israel, and he had told the Romans, in an epistle which was demonstrably written before his arrest in 58 AD, “that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world”, and later in that epistle, concerning the Gospel of Christ, he asked a rhetorical question and made another profession where we read: “17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. 18 But I say, Have they not heard? Yes verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.” [3] Here are two professions from Paul’s epistle to the Romans, that in his time the Gospel of Christ had already been disseminated throughout what he had perceived was the entire world. Yet at this time, there is absolutely no evidence of any Christians outside of the Roman world, and the other apostles, those who were not with Paul, were still in Antioch or with James in Jerusalem [4].

On Genesis, Part 29: The End of Sodom

As it is first recorded in Genesis chapter 18, Yahweh God had purposed to destroy Sodom for its sins, and when Abraham learned of that purpose, he plead for the Sodomites, having imagined that at least some of them were righteous, and he petitioned God on that basis, that the righteous not suffer for the sins of the wicked. So Abraham bargained with God, and asked him not to destroy the place for the benefit of fifty righteous men. When Yahweh agreed, he continued to bargain, all the way down to ten men, and Yahweh had nevertheless agreed, where it is recorded that He had said “I will not destroy it for ten’s sake.” With that the record of the exchange ends, and now here in Genesis chapter 19, we see that Yahweh did indeed destroy Sodom, permitting only Lot and his family any opportunity to escape. So evidently, there were not even ten righteous men among the Sodomites, and for that reason we described the altruism of Abraham as having been merely speculative, because Abraham imagined that a portion of them were righteous, but he had little direct experience to make any judgement in the matter.

The famous geographer of the early 1st century AD, Strabo of Cappadocia, did not work exclusively from first-hand accounts, but relied on the reports of others, especially of sailors and other travelers, since he probably could not have traveled by himself the entire broad world which he had labored to describe in writing, which had stretched from Britain and Ireland in the west to the Indus River in the east. He also frequently cited older writers, verifying or amending their descriptions of diverse places, and he mentioned many of those writers whose works are not lost. So, pertaining to Sodom, in the 16th book of his Geography he confused the Dead Sea with what the Greeks had called Lake Sirbonis, the Serbonian Bog on the Mediterranean coast west of Gaza which appeared to be more of a lake to early travelers. [1] But aside from that misidentification, which is evident where he named places such as Masada, he was clearly speaking of the Dead Sea. So he had described the asphalt produced by the lake, or sea, and the fires below the water which produced it [2], and then he wrote that:

On Genesis, Part 30: The Consequences of Covetousness

Most modern White Europeans, whom today are often led to believe that they live in a post-Christian society, still take for granted the Christian values with which they were raised, or at least, with which their grandparents and great-grandparents were raised, without any conception of the degree of depravity which was prevalent throughout much of the pre-Christian or non-Christian worlds. Yet those Christian values, which had been shared by Europeans for well over a thousand years, have become ingrained within us through generations of childhood education and practice and they remain in us and in our laws even if we may no longer consider ourselves to be Christians. Then, with the advent of colonialism from about the 15th century, Europeans brought those values with them, by which they had governed all of their colonies abroad, as well as having transmitted them to the non-White races whom they had also come to govern. The non-White races, however, and especially the negro races, do not maintain them very well in post-colonial modern society, and in fact, they never really submitted to Christian values even when they were governed by them. Today, any Negros in Africa who maintain any semblance of Christian values do so only as long as there is wave after wave of White missionaries or international church officials dispensing rewards for their good behavior.

When I was a child, before 1970, there were no pickup bars because women were not permitted in most bars. Some bars had a back room with dining tables, even if they did not serve food, in which women were permitted if they had a man to escort them. Those rooms had separate entrances, and signs above or near the back door would explicitly label it a “Ladies Entrance”. Otherwise any ladies entering through the bar door or without an escort would never be served. My father could take me, even at five or six years old, through the front door to sit at the bar, but he could not take my mother. Back then, my father had also taught me not to even speak to a girl unless I had been introduced to her by her parents. And I would never think of making a sexual advance towards any girl. At least most, if not all, of the other boys I knew were raised with those same values. But then, of course, we were also instilled with other basic Christian values, such as not to steal or lie or abuse those weaker than ourselves. At least most of the other boys disdained perverts, and especially Sodomites, and if they did not disdain them they dare not make any mention of it or they would also become the targets of the same chastisement which the Sodomites had been.

On Genesis, Part 31: The Seed of Inheritance

At the beginning of our last presentation, The Consequences of Covetousness, I had recounted many aspects of my own personal perspective of recent historical events, and then mentioned some of the earlier circumstances which helped to facilitate those events, in order to show that when a society falls, it is typically a long process which has many inducements. There are several old adages which are relevant to this discussion. The first one that comes to mind is the saying that “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, as the empire peaked nearly 900 years from the traditional date of the founding of the city, from 752 BC to the time of Trajan at the beginning of the 2nd century AD. Likewise, our modern Christian society also took nearly as many centuries to develop following the spread of the Gospel of Christ. But it is also said that “Rome didn’t fall in a day”, and just as the Roman empire was hundreds of years in the making, its slide into oblivion at the hands of the Huns, Goths and Vandals also took several centuries, and there were many significant earlier events which helped facilitate its fall.

So perhaps an older Roman of the time of Caracalla may have noticed the decay of the empire which was already evident, and lamented the days of Marcus Aurelius or Commodus. But perhaps an older Roman in the days of Aurelius had lamented the time of Hadrian or even of Trajan. Every century had its own peculiar troubles, and in hindsight perhaps it is sometimes easier to look back and see why they had developed. Yet centuries after Rome fell, there were Europeans who upheld its traditions and its values, and clung to them in their everyday lives. While this was especially evident in the Roman Catholic Church, and not always for the better, it is even evident outside of the Church, until the time that Church itself had adopted and perpetuated many of its aspects.

On Genesis, Part 32: Digging Deeper

In this second half of Genesis chapter 21, Abraham is found digging wells, and he and his servants must have dug at least a few wells before they finally dug one which they would keep. So it is with Christians, that they should be digging wells, but they should not necessarily keep all of them. In other words, Christians should be digging into the scriptures, both Old Testament and New, rather than simply believing some pastor or priest, and as Paul had written in Romans chapter 12, the Christian should be “2 … transformed by the renewing of [his] mind, that [he] may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” If anything conflicts with the Word of God, it should certainly not be kept. Therefore, discussing the first half of Genesis chapter 21, which describes the birth of Isaac and the sending off of Ishmael for the benefit of Isaac, we sought to better understand the Christian Gospel of the New Testament by reviewing the manner in which Paul of Tarsus had explained the fulfillments of those promises to Abraham which are ultimately realized in Yahshua Christ. Doing that, we found that in Paul’s letters he upheld the exclusion of both Ishmael and Esau from The Seed of Inheritance as it is also described in Genesis, and that exclusion would naturally include all of their descendants, something which Paul had also explained in Romans chapter 9 and Galatians chapter 3.

Many modern Christian denominations dismiss the Old Testament as a Jewish book, imagining that it pertains to Jews and not to Christians. However that is not how the apostles of Christ had treated the scriptures which we now know as the Old Testament, and they frequently asserted that it pertained to Christians, but not to those who would remain in Judaism. The differences in these perspectives are resolved only in the understanding that the Old Testament truly pertains to all of the twelve tribes of Israel, not merely to Judaeans, and only small elements of two of those tribes were ever called by the name Judaean, which is the original source word for the modern words Jew and Judaism. Ten of those twelve tribes had long before been scattered abroad, along with a great portion of the remaining two, who were never called Jews. The word Jew is not directly from Judah, but from Judaea, which was a multiracial province of the Roman empire, and as Paul wrote in Romans chapter 9, “6 … For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel”, and therefore he prayed only for his “3 … kinsmen according to the flesh.” Likewise, Christ had told His adversaries “26 But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you”, as it is recorded in John chapter 10.

On Genesis, Part 33: The Dedication of Isaac

In Genesis chapter 21 we had last seen Abraham at Beersheba, where he had made an oath with Abimelech. The only details we have of the contents of the oath were expressed in the words of Abimelech, where we read: “23 Now therefore swear unto me here by God that thou wilt not deal falsely with me, nor with my son, nor with my son's son: but according to the kindness that I have done unto thee, thou shalt do unto me, and to the land wherein thou hast sojourned.” That is an oath of mutual respect and general cooperation which would also have been passed down to each man’s descendants. Then, before the oath was sealed, Abraham added the stipulation that Abimelech acknowledge the digging of the well at Beersheba by Abraham, so that Abraham could keep it, and that was ensured by the grant of the seven ewe lambs which Abimelech had accepted. But it becomes evident much later, in Genesis chapter 26, that the Philistines of Gerar had transgressed the terms of the oath. When that happened repeatedly, Isaac returned to Beersheba, where he seems to have found refuge. Although apparently he had never sought any recompense for the transgressions of the Philistines.

Now the events described in this chapter of Genesis, chapter 22, are highly scrutinized and also highly criticized by various parties who are critical of Christianity, because they describe the near-sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham at the command of Yahweh his God. However we would describe this event as the dedication of Isaac, rather than as the sacrifice of Isaac, because the sacrifice was never completed, yet it nevertheless resulted in the dedication of Isaac to Yahweh God by his own father, who had the authority to do so. Then, as for the critics, they are generally ignorant of the seeming cruelty of the ancient world which surrounded the Biblical patriarchs, and they wrongly judge this event by modern standards of society, which have themselves developed out of Christian morality, rather than judging the event by the ancient standards of society under which the patriarchs had actually lived.

On Genesis, Part 34: More Than a Hole

In the last presentation in our commentary on Genesis, which was titled The Dedication of Isaac, we had described the sacrifice of Isaac in that manner because it was not a sacrifice at all. Rather, it was a dedication, and Yahweh God never truly intended to have Isaac sacrificed in the first place, because He had already made promises to Sarah concerning the fate of the son which she had born when she was ninety years of age. Therefore Abraham, confident in the fact that Yahweh would keep his promises, seemed to have been relatively untroubled by the demand that he sacrifice his son, and proceeded to fulfill that demand without any qualms or objections. Doing that, he acted with absolute faith and a degree of obedience which throughout history has only been surpassed in the sacrifice of Christ Himself. The act of sacrifice for the reasons which Abraham was willing to comply with it, and for the reasons for which Christ had submitted to it, is in itself a profession in the eternal existence of the Adamic spirit and the ability of Yahweh God to resurrect that spirit from beyond death.

In the ancient world, fathers had property rights over their wives and their children, and the authority to determine their fates so long as they lived. In ancient Rome, these rights were codified into law as the Patria potestas, or Paternal power, wherein only the family patriarch had any rights in private law, only he had lawfully held all of the family property regardless of who in the family had earned it, and he even had the power of life and death over his children. Furthermore, he had that authority until he died, since there was no concept of an age of majority, or adulthood, as there is in Western society today, and while fathers could grant emancipation to a son, their daughters were typically consigned to the control of another man through marriage. If the daughter remained unmarried, when her father died she fell under the authority of her eldest brother. [1] So Abraham had every right to consign his son to his God, and in accordance with ancient custom, when a man placed something on an altar and dedicated it to a god, the object – or even a person presented at the altar – became the property of that god. When Abraham placed Isaac on the altar and dedicated him to Yahweh, he essentially relinquished to Yahweh his paternal rights over his son. That is also an act of sacrifice, as Isaac was dedicated by Abraham to the service of Yahweh, at the explicit request of Yahweh. A father had a right to do this in the ancient world, just as he had a right to expose an infant, if he so chose to do such a horrible thing, or to place a son or daughter up for adoption, or to sell one into slavery.

On Genesis, Part 35: A Proper Marriage

Discussing Genesis chapter 23 and the cave in Hebron which Abraham had purchased from the Hittites in order to bury his wife, we made an analogy by cross-referencing a statement concerning Abraham, and especially Sarah, which is found in Isaiah chapter 51. Perhaps the analogy was not decent, or appropriate for children, but it is nonetheless true. As it is in Isaiah, we can look at all of our mothers as a figurative pit from which we had emerged, as Sarah was described in that manner. Then we could only pray that our fathers are rocks like Abraham, who seems never to have wavered in his faith, and for that reason alone he was considered righteous by Yahweh God. But that does not mean that a woman is a mere pit, and in the end, as we also continued our analogy of the cave which Abraham had bought, all men also ultimately end up in some sort of pit, or at least, they all return to the dust and ashes from which they were made. However a proper woman is certainly more than a hole, and the grave is also More Than a Hole, at least for the children of Yahweh. So for that reason especially, both our women and our deceased ancestors should be venerated, because Yahweh shall once again raise all of those who have maintained the sanctity of their race out of the pit. It would be appropriate to repeat the analogy when we contrast Jacob and Esau in light of the actions of Rebekah, but perhaps we shall leave it here.

Now, coming to Genesis chapter 24, we have already discussed the first few verses of the chapter, in order to describe what should have been the first example to Esau as well as to all of the future progeny of Isaac. The example made here should have been followed by all of the seed of Abraham and Sarah, if they had indeed venerated and honored their ancestors, since if they seek the righteousness of God they are instructed to “1 … look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged. 2 Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him”, as it is written in that chapter of Isaiah. The only way we can look unto them is to examine these accounts and consider the lessons which they offer, and the only way we can honor them is to imitate them, having learned from those lessons. Sarah knew that the son of a bondwoman should not have any shared inheritance with her son, and Abraham knew that Isaac should marry a woman of his own race, a woman who was much more than a mere hole, because thereby a man would only be committing fornication rather than being engaged in a proper marriage.

On Genesis, Part 36: The Children of the Flesh

In Genesis chapter 24 we observed A Proper Marriage and the lengths to which Abraham had gone in order to assure a fitting wife for his son Isaac. But here we must also note the lengths to which Yahweh God had gone in order to demonstrate, both for Abraham himself and as an example to Christians, that Abraham should also have had children born from his own proper wife, from a woman of his own kindred, an heir who was fitting to receive the inheritance and the promises of God. So in spite of the birth of Ishmael by a bondwoman, who was also apparently a descendant of Adam, Isaac was the son of the promise, and in Isaac would Abraham’s seed be called, as Paul of Tarsus had later explained, in Romans chapter 9 and in Galatians chapter 3.

But Abraham, with all of his noble spirit, was also only a man with his own fleshly desires, urges, and needs. So in accordance with those, there was not only the child who was born to him which was of the Spirit, which is, the son born in accordance with the promises of Yahweh God, but also children of the flesh, born after the desires of man. When the promises were made to Abraham it was clear that he would have an heir, but not heirs, and that was the express will of Yahweh found in Genesis chapter 15 where Abraham had tried to appoint a replacement heir, having thus far had no son of his own, and we read: “3 And Abram said, Behold, to me thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir. 4 And, behold, the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir.” Abraham could not substitute his servant for an heir from his own bowels, and therefore neither can anyone else make any such substitution.

On Genesis, Part 37: The Incontinence of Men

In our last discussion in Genesis, The Children of the Flesh, we hope to have fully elucidated the meaning of the words of Paul of Tarsus where he wrote in Romans chapter 9, as it is in the Christogenea New Testament, and he said: “8 That is to say, the children of the flesh, these are not children of Yahweh, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.” Saying that, Paul then went on to describe the promise to Sarah, and then to Rebekah, whereby he illustrated the fact that only Jacob was ultimately the heir of Abraham, and out of all of the children of Abraham, the promises of God are given only to Jacob’s descendants. This was also the same illustration which he made in a different manner in Galatians chapter 3, an epistle which he actually wrote about two years prior to his having written Romans. Now from this point on in Genesis, Ishmael and the sons of Keturah are removed from the picture, and all future history, Biblical and otherwise, would revolve around the descendants of Jacob and Esau, as Jacob had merited the birthright which his older brother had despised, although after he lost it, Esau had hated his brother and wanted it back.

So the Edomites became predominant in Judaea in the centuries leading up to the ministry of Christ, and even today the descendants of Esau still think that they can have back the inheritance, in a rather indirect manner. But they never shall attain it, since they are all bastards, and the works of men are vanity in the eyes of God. But this dynamic nevertheless drives world events to this very day, as the Edomite Jews have forever been plotting to dominate and destroy Christians so that they may have the world to themselves, and this observation is true in spite of the fact that both parties are generally oblivious to this truth. In Romans chapter 9, where Paul had continued his discussion of the issue concerning the seed of Abraham, he compared Jacob and Esau, and described the descendants of Jacob as vessels of mercy, but the descendants of Esau as vessels of destruction. Doing all of this, in Paul’s epistles he was not innovating, but rather he was instructing Christians as to how the will of Yahweh God which was expressed in Genesis affects the Christian world, as the Word of God has not and does not change. To this day, the children of Esau and Ishmael and the others are still excluded from the promises of God, and they always shall be excluded, along with any other races who were not of Abraham or even of Adam in the first place.

On Genesis, Part 38: The Rejection of Esau

Then Isaac had twin sons, Jacob and Esau, but neither would both of these sons share in the inheritance of their father, so the number of heirs was ultimately narrowed to one of them, and out of his eight sons and many more grandsons, only Jacob would inherit the blessings of Abraham. Like Sarah before her, Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau, had also conceived with a promise, where she was told, as it is recorded in Genesis chapter 25, that “23 … Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.” There it is fully evident that Jacob and Esau would have very different destinies, even though they were both in the loins of their father when he was dedicated on the altar to Yahweh. So they both belonged to God, as Paul wrote of them much later, in Romans chapter 9, and asked “21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?” From there, he proceeded to explain that from one lump there had been created vessels of destruction, but from the other there had been created vessels of mercy, and these are Esau and Jacob and their respective descendants.

But the path to dishonor and destruction was made by Esau himself. His father Isaac was unmarried until he was forty years old, and had taken a wife only as soon as he had learned that his own father Abraham had procured a wife for him. Then Isaac had evidently remained content with that one wife for his entire life. His brother Jacob would remain unmarried, as we shall see here in this chapter and subsequent chapters of Genesis, until his father Isaac had sent him to Haran with instructions to take a wife from the house of his mother’s kindred. Many people seem to assume without studying, that Jacob was a young man when this happened, but in truth, he was seventy years old, which we shall discuss later. Then once Jacob arrived in Haran, when Rebekah’s brother Laban had laid upon Jacob a heavy burden in exchange for a wife, Jacob complied, choosing obedience to his parents rather than rebelling and returning to Palestine.

On Genesis, Part 39: In the Hands of Yahweh

In Genesis chapter 25, there is a description of a pregnant Rebekah suffering from the struggle of the baby in her womb, where Yahweh God had answered and told her that there were two nations in her womb, representing two distinct peoples, and that the elder would be subordinate to the younger. Much later, in Malachi chapter 1, Yahweh announced that He had loved Jacob, and hated Esau. But from the time they were born, Yahweh had no exchanges with Esau, while Esau evidently had never sought God. Apparently, Yahweh permitted nothing which would cause him harm, but gave him every opportunity which Jacob also had been afforded, and he only harmed himself by his own choices. So it is fully evident that Yahweh’s words to Rebekah were prophetic, but He did not express His hatred for Esau until long after Esau himself had exhibited the behavior and the attitudes for which he was hated, in the words of the prophet Malachi.

In the closing verses of that same chapter, there was an event recorded where Esau had sold his birthright to Jacob for a measly bowl of soup. That act was a vivid demonstration of the fact that Esau had despised his birthright rather than having cherished it, since in a time of discomfort, he was willing to give it away in exchange for so little. Esau, having hungered, had no thought nor care for the God who could feed him. Then in Genesis chapter 27 we had seen the rejection of Esau, and the reasons for his rejection were stated explicitly on two occasions. The first of those is in the description of Esau’s wives by Moses where at the end of chapter 26 he wrote “34 And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite: 35 Which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah.” So if Esau lost his birthright, it is a direct result of this grief which he had caused his parents, as he had taken wives of the people from whom Abraham had admonished his own servant not to procure a wife for Isaac, for which he had even bound that servant to an oath.

On Genesis, Part 40: The First Stones

When Abraham had received his promises from God, and the accompanying unconditional covenants, Yahweh God had committed the world of his time to the eventual dominance and ultimate possession of Abraham’s seed. But not all of Abraham’s seed would share the same fate. Ishmael, the oldest son, would become a considerable nation, but he would be entirely pushed out of the inheritance in favor of Isaac. Later, the six sons which Abraham had with Keturah would be pushed out in a similar manner. Then of the sons of Isaac, Esau and Jacob, the one would despise his inheritance and ultimately lose it to his brother, although he declared that he would seek revenge against him, by which he may have even imagined that he could have it back.

Esau was a worldly man who sought to carve out his own destiny apart from his father and his God. But the other son, Jacob, had committed himself into the hands of his father and his God, and apparently it was for that reason that he had never taken any initiative to plan for his own future. Jacob was the obedient son who worked for his father’s estate, rather than worrying about his own, and who waited patiently for any reward that may come, rather than seeking his own profit or adventure. For his patience, he was rewarded, and he was told that if he fulfilled his father’s wishes then it would be he alone who would inherit the blessings and promises of Abraham. This was all within the plan of God from the beginning, as Yahweh had spoken to Rebekah his mother. Then, in Jacob’s vision of the ladder which is recorded in Genesis chapter 28 where he was on his journey to Padanaram, Yahweh God Himself had confirmed those words of Isaac. Perhaps it is symbolic, that Jacob laid his head on stones to sleep, and in his dream he saw a vision of his own descendants ascending to and descending from heaven. Those descendants had already been destined to be the stones in the Kingdom of God.