Genesis 34–36

Genesis chapter 34, open your Bibles there, please. We're making our way through the Book of Genesis here on Wednesday night. The Old Testament on Wednesday, the New Testament on Sunday morning, as we go chapter by chapter and verse by verse. This is an interesting chapter in the Bible, rather dark, I would have to say. And it reminds us something about the people that God chooses to work through. One thing we see as we go through and learn about Jacob's family is, they were, man, I tell you, they were far from perfect. And we see the grace of God operating even in the midst of it. This chapter begins in verse 1 sounding very innocent by saying,

I'll have you pause there for just a moment because, as I said, that sounds very innocent. It sounds like, she just was going out in an act of social courtesy and making herself known to some of the women of the surrounding area. But the fact of the matter is, this is a first and very dangerous step for Dinah to take, in fact, any young woman. Although God had given the land of Canaan to Abraham and his descendants, the Canaanites were still living in the land, and because of that, they posed a very real and present threat to the people of God, to Jacob and his family, the worshipers of the one true God. Because the Canaanites, as you know, were very pagan in their ways and they lived in a very highly immoral society. That was just the fact of the matter. And the very fact that they allowed Dinah to venture out among the women of the land was a failure on Jacob's part, we'll just say it right out there. It doesn't say that, but I'm telling you, that is the case. Because it is the responsibility of the father to protect his daughter. He is tasked with that responsibility to bring that kind of physical, spiritual, emotional protection to his family and to maintain that protection. And allowing Dinah to go out was a very foolish thing to do.

We don't know exactly how this happened, but we know that it was dangerous because the very next thing we read in verse 2 is that,

The Hebrew word that the ESV translators translated as, seized, literally means, to afflict or to oppress. But in this case, it carries a sexual connotation. Sometimes we don't know the connotation of the word unless we see the context. And because we're told that he lay with her, we know that it is a sexual connotation involved here. In other words, he raped her, okay, just to be blunt. And because promiscuity was very common in that society, any single young woman who was traveling without any kind of accompaniment, she would be, she would just be considered an object of legitimate pursuit for any man. And that was just the way it was, that was the culture. And it was not a crime, unfortunately, in the culture, for a man to take advantage of a woman. He would not be prosecuted in any kind of a law way because it was a lawless society in that sense. So it goes on to say in verse 3,

Now that's an interesting statement, isn't it? It says he raped her on the one hand, but it also says his soul was drawn to her. And what we learn by this statement is that Shechem's actions, although criminal and immoral, his was not a hate crime. This was a crime of passion, this was a crime of lust, right? A crime nonetheless. But at least we know what his goal was. He wanted her in his life. And it goes on to say,

Now, once again, I'm not trying to suggest that this is any kind of a godly form of love that Shechem has for this girl. Certainly, this is not a pure love, this is a carnal kind of love. This is a physical type of love that he has for her at this moment. But it says in verse 5,

I have to admit, this is somewhat of a curious response for Jacob to have. We're not really sure why he chose to wait until his sons returned from their work with the livestock, but it says in verse 6 that,

Several things interesting about this passage. Obviously their response is something we would expect. This is the first time, by the way, in the Bible, that Israel is referred to in a national sense. The fact that they say that, “because he had done an outrageous thing in Israel.” That's the first reference. Israel is just a person at this point in time and yet, his entire family, his entire clan makes up that group of people that are known by that name. I want to emphasize here, as we look at the response of Dinah's brothers, that they had every right to be angry, they had every right to be indignant about what happened to their sister. But I also want to repeat that the men of this family bear some element of responsibility, and that's not being addressed here, and it's not going to be addressed, but it needed to be addressed. And I believe it needs to be addressed in our understanding of the situation as we remember the role of the husband, particularly, and the men of the family, to bring that level of protection to the family. So there was a clear lapse here for the men. Verse 8 goes on and it says,

When he promises to give them a bride price, that would be, back in those days, the equivalent value of the loss of the woman's labor for the family. A young woman would be very helpful to the family and the labor that she would give to them. And since she's going to get married away now and go into the home or supposedly, into the home of another man, that labor is going to be lost. And so the bride price would be given to a father to compensate for the labor that he would lose by marrying off his daughter. Now, as we read on here in verse 13 and following, we're going to see a response from the sons of Jacob. And it's obvious that this response was given to Hamor and Shechem when Jacob was not around because,

So, here's what they're deceitfully suggesting in this deceptive scheme they're attempting to lure Shechem and his father, in fact, their whole city, for that matter, into agreeing to their terms to join them in their circumcision. Now, remember, circumcision was the covenant sign given to Abraham as the sign of the covenant that God had made concerning the promise that He would give them the land and the righteousness that was his by faith. When they are suggesting to these individuals that they must be circumcised, this is just, they're just blowing smoke because they're not sharing anything about what God said to Abraham. They're not even really explaining the whole thing. They're just saying, this is important to us and unless it's important also to you, and you submit to this particular right, we'll have nothing to do with you. But it says in verse 18,

Now, I want you to read in the very next verse, because here, Hamor, he exposes what I think are probably his true intentions in these next comments. He says in verse 23,

So it seems that wealth is either his main objective in this whole thing or he felt like the issue of wealth was the only thing that was going to convince the men of the city. Which may be in fact more likely because they probably don't care if Shechem gets the girl or not, I mean, he's not their son. Maybe wealth was the only way Hamor thought he could get through to these guys anyway. Verse 24 says,

You have to admit, you're a little surprised by this. First of all, just in the account of this story but second of all, you think, oh, that was kind of dumb. Well, first of all, for them to all be circumcised on the same day, because that's going to put all the men in a compromise situation where nobody is going to be left in any sort of a protective role. And it's interesting, isn't it that whereas Shechem, violated Dinah because she was unprotected, these men have devised a scheme so that the men of the city will be unprotected. And that's exactly what their goal in this whole thing is. And we're told in verse 25,

This is what was really going on. These two sons of Jacob and most likely they had other men with them from their particular family. Keep in mind, some of these sons of Jacob are grown and no doubt even married with their own families by now. They literally waltz into the city while all the men are essentially laid up and can't move, and they slaughter all the men of the city while they're in this physically compromised condition. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. And it says in verse 26,

And furthermore, in verse 27, we read that, “The sons of Jacob came upon the slain and plundered the city, because they had defiled their sister. 28 They took their flocks and their herds, their donkeys, and whatever was in the city and in the field. 29 All their wealth, all their little ones and their wives, (meaning all their women) all that was in the houses, they captured and plundered.” So they took all the remaining people from the city after they killed all of the men and you have to wonder, how does that even work? To waltz in there and to just grab everybody and cart him off. I mean, what do you do with all those people? Do they just get integrated into your family? Do they get into integrated into your clan? I imagine that probably happened with some of them at least, but, wow!, seems like just a crazy sort of a situation. Well, eventually Jacob of course, is going to find out about what his boys had done and that's what we read in verse 30, because it says, “Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land, (in other words, I’ve become a stench to the people of this land, he says) the Canaanites and the Perizzites. My numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household.”” So here you see Jacob is accusing his sons of placing the whole family in danger from the inhabitants of the land hearing about this and deciding that Jacob and his family are a threat to all of the people so they need to band together and come against them. Verse 31, it ends by saying, “But they said, “Should he treat our sister like a prostitute?” Which is a really, really, dumb excuse. I mean, the answer to the question is obviously no, he shouldn't have treated our sister like a prostitute of course. But the crime that Shechem committed, while being clearly a crime of immorality, did not warrant those two men murdering all of the men of the city. Because those men had nothing to do with what Shechem did to their sister. They were in fact innocent and so while the initial reaction of Simeon and Levi to their sister's situation was correct in the sense that they recognized it as an immoral act and an act of wickedness. And it's important that we do that people, it's good of us to be able to say that's wrong, that's immoral. Still, the way they chose to deal with it was just as wrong, was just as wrong as Shechem's actions. And as we like to say, sometimes, and I'm sure you've heard before, two wrongs never make a right. That's absolutely true. It may not be in the Bible, but it's absolutely true. There is a proverb that covers this story a little bit.

I want to show you up on the screen from Proverbs chapter 16. It says,

Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city. Isn’t that interesting? We think about somebody who's mighty, who's strong enough to take a city and we think, wow that's pretty cool. But the Proverbs say that if somebody is slow to anger and he can control his passions and his feelings, he is a mightier man than he who can take a city. It's tough, isn't it? Being able to control your emotions. Our emotions can so easily just run away with us and cause us to do such ridiculously stupid things that we end up paying for a long time to come. I mean, I've sat down with married couples many times in the past and even in my own marriage, I've seen where just a moment's emotional passion can cause us to say something that might take seconds to come out of our mouth, but years to overcome just because we carelessly just say something that we wouldn't have otherwise said in a time of emotional control. So that's one of the reasons why James, right, it's what he does. Let me show you this on the screen from James chapter 1, he said,

…let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; (and here he tells you why) for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. The righteousness of God is not advanced by your anger. There is such a thing as righteous anger. We see Jesus expressing righteous anger at times. When He came into the temple and they were buying and selling and the only place that the Gentiles could even come to pray, that's as close as they could get was the outer courts and yet the Jews were using it to buy and sell. And Jesus was angry, He drove them out. That's righteous anger. I'm not sure I've ever felt righteous anger. I’m really not sure. I don't think I'm that righteous to have ever really, I've been angry lots of times. I don't think my anger has ever really had any sort of a positive effect. And it's something that we have to be very careful to express. I love how James says, let every person be quick to hear and slow to speak. I've often heard it said that's one of the reasons why God gave you twice as many ears as you have mouths. You have 2 ears saying, essentially, God saying to you, do that more than the speaking part. And I think that's probably a lot of wisdom there. So Lord help us to hold our tongue. It's tough, it's tough because the more you give into an emotional response, you guys know the easier it is to give into that emotional response, whatever it is: anger, fear, lust, all those sorts of things. The more you give in, the easier it is to give in. Which is one of the reasons why when I was a kid, I remember my parents telling me that when we got mad, we had to learn to express our anger in a positive way. In other words, have a positive outlet. And my parents would say, here's a cardboard box, go out in the garage and rip it to shreds but just don't do something in a negative sort of a way. And I remember as a kid thinking, well, that's smart, that's wise. And then I grew up and I started reading the Bible and I realized it was not so smart. Because the Bible says that he who gives full vent to his anger is a fool. (Proverbs 29:11) It doesn't say how he gives full vent to his anger. It doesn't say whether he rips up a cardboard box, or whether he goes out and shoots someone to death. Because frankly, and this is one of the things that C.S. Lewis argues about in his book, Mere Christianity, if you've read that book. He basically talks about a homeless man who gets angry and people laugh at him as he expresses his anger on a park bench and he talks about a general who gets angry and blows up a village. And he says they're both guilty of the exact same thing, and that's giving into their passion of anger. And we think that one of them did a crime because he hurt other people and that's true from a worldly standpoint, it is true. That is more of a crime but what they did to themselves is the same. Don't think that if you just go out and rip a cardboard box, or punch a hole in the wall, or slam a door, that's better than punching somebody in the face or worse. It's not better as far as you. You hurt yourself equally by giving full vent to your anger and that's what the sons of Jacob did here. They gave full vent to their anger and it was a very foolish thing to do.

We get into chapter 35 and we see in verse 1, it says,

And it appears by the way, because we saw this earlier, that he was on his way to Bethel, that this is where God really intended Jacob to go in the first place. But He says there,

Now, first of all, I want you to notice some interesting things. You might see that phrase, put away the household gods that are among you and you think, well, what are their household gods doing with Jacob's family? They're supposed to be godly people. Well, frankly, they're not completely a group of godly people. But remember, they've taken all these people from the city of Shechem, all these women, all these children, they've taken these people and they're probably part of their group because you'll notice it says in verse 2, now “Jacob said to his household,” that must be his blood relatives. But it goes on to say, “and to all who were with him.” So there's a large group now that's with Jacob and his family. And there's still a lot of pagan influence in that family. You can take people out of their pagan influence, but you can't take the pagan influence many times out of the people. And so he says, “Put away the foreign gods that are among you.” In other words, he's telling them to prepare themselves. He even tells them to change their garments and purify themselves. By the way, changing their garments, that was a symbolic action that anticipated putting off the old way. It went along with putting away the foreign gods. In other words, you put away the foreign gods and you change your clothes and it signifies turning over a new leaf like we would say, all right. That's what he's essentially telling them to do, embracing something new. And he says,

Hey, can I just…? First of all, isn't that a really cool way to refer to God? I know it's a little bit verbose, but it's still cool, isn't it? He says, “the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I've gone.”

What if we all adopted that way of referring to God? I mean, again, it would get a little cumbersome because every time you talk about God, you'd have to say this long thing. But wouldn't it be interesting if that just became part of our vocabulary and not just our vocabulary, but our belief. I mean, think about it, “the God who answers me in the day of my distress.” Maybe if you just stopped right there, who do you believe in? I believe in the God who answers me in the day of my distress. And by the way, He's also the God who's been with me wherever I've gone. Yeah, that's my God. I mean, just a reminder, just the reminder of saying that over, and over again, and over again. The God who answers me on the day of my distress. David referred to his God that way. It says, verse 4,

In other words, he buried all the idols, all their jewelry that was obviously associated with the people's pagan worship, buried them all in the ground. That's symbolic as well. Verse 5 is particularly interesting. It says,

And that passage gives us some interesting insight into the situation and the God we serve. First of all, it gives us, it really is an inference to us that the people of the land were in fact trying or planning to get together and attack Jacob and his family for what had happened there in the city of Shechem. And yet we see here, God coming to their rescue. God put a terror in the hearts of the people. So whatever plans they were considering in attacking Jacob, they said no, no, no I don't think we can overcome them. And they said, no, we're not going to do that. And you look at that situation and you say, wow! Why in the world, when there was so much guilt in the family of Jacob, I mean, murdering an entire town male population, and now God works on their behalf? Are you kidding me? You look at that and you're thinking, that's ridiculous. That's not…, it doesn't sound like justice at all. Well, the fact of the matter is, it's grace, that's what it is. And remember, grace is undeserved favor.

Jacob and his family did not deserve God's protection, and yet they got it. And you know what? You're going to find out one day that God gave you a lot of protection that you didn't deserve too. And that's grace, that's grace. I think we can all relate to those times in our lives when our failures, our actions and stuff left us vulnerable. And in normal circumstances, what Jacob's sons did would have left them extremely vulnerable to the attacks of the local peoples. Isn't it incredible though, when we mess up, it seems like when we mess up the worst and we make ourselves vulnerable to attack, God still doesn't abandon us. He still doesn't abandon us. He continues to pour out His grace when we least deserve it. I think about my own life, some of the dumbest, most ridiculous, foolish mistakes I've made in my life, and how immediately afterward I saw the most incredible expressions of God's goodness and grace, which I did not deserve in the slightest. And yet He poured it out. Why? Because He's a God of grace and mercy. And that's the only explanation that you can have for it. When you receive that kind of grace from God, you don't walk around haughty thinking, well, I got this thing dialed in, I guess I got God wrapped around my little finger. No, no, not at all. It's humbling, it's humbling. You walk away saying, I deserve to die. I deserve the worst punishment and He just blessed me. Verse 6 goes on and it says,

Which means, Oak of Weeping. And you can see by this that Jacob has now been, he's come together with his father and mother's family because Deborah would have stayed obviously with Rebecca and Isaac. It says in verse 9 that,

And we talked about all the meanings behind that when we dealt with that chapter of Jacob wrestling with God.

--- “11 And God said to him, “I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come from your own body. 12 The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you, and I will give the land to your offspring after you.”” Boy, talk about grace. “13 Then God went up from him in the place where he had spoken with him. 14 And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he had spoken with him, a pillar of stone. He poured out a drink offering on it and poured oil on it. 15 So Jacob called the name of the place where God had spoken with him Bethel.” Or Beth-el, meaning the House of God “16 Then they journeyed from Bethel. When they were still some distance from Ephrath, (and that's the ancient name for Bethlehem, it says) Rachel went into labor, and she had hard labor. 17 And when her labor was at its hardest, the midwife said to her, “Do not fear, for you have another son.” 18 And as her soul was departing (for she was dying), she called his name Ben-oni; (which, by the way, means, son of my sorrow, or Ben-o-ni) but his father called him Benjamin.” Or Binyamin, which is son of my right hand. “19 So Rachel died, and she was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem), 20 and Jacob set up a pillar over her tomb. It is the pillar of Rachel's tomb, which is there to this day. 21 Israel journeyed on and pitched his tent beyond the tower of Eder.” And then a very short comment is inserted here which tells us that, “22 While Israel lived in that land, Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father's concubine. And Israel heard of it.” And that's all we're told at this particular point, although we're going to hear more about this later. You'll remember that Reuben is the firstborn. It says he just, he basically slept with his father's concubine. And although Reuben's actions could have been governed purely by lustful desires, there could have been something more to it than that. Because we know that a way of commandeering someone's authority was by commandeering his concubines. You might remember that when Absalom rose up against his father David, while David was on the throne Absalom, as a show of dominance over his father, pitched a tent up on top of David's palace and slept with all of his concubines just to make a public demonstration of his dominance over his father. And so that was the sort of a thing that happened. And it was, again, it was a way of expressing domination and that could have very well been Reuben's intent being the firstborn son, we don't know. Either way, we're told here that Israel heard of it and we're going to find later that Reuben's actions will cost him the inheritance of the firstborn that he was otherwise entitled to. And it goes on to say, we're at the very end of verse 22. “…Now the sons of Jacob were twelve. 23 The sons of Leah: Reuben (Jacob's firstborn), Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun. 24 The sons of Rachel: Joseph and Benjamin. 25 The sons of Bilhah, Rachel's servant: Dan and Naphtali. 26 The sons of Zilpah, Leah's servant: Gad and Asher. These were the sons of Jacob who were born to him in Paddan-aram.” And as we read through this again, we noticed that none of these guys are particularly impressive from a spiritual standpoint. It's very plain as we read through the Book of Genesis that God's continued blessing upon Jacob and his family had nothing to do with their actions, really. It was God's faithfulness that is seen here, which is purely a work of grace. “27 And Jacob came to his father Isaac at Mamre, or Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron), where Abraham and Isaac had sojourned.” So he's finally reunited specifically with his father, Isaac. And it says “28 Now the days of Isaac were 180 years. (that’s a long time) 29 And Isaac breathed his last, and he died and was gathered to his people, old and full of days. And his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.” Now, we're going to very quickly look at chapter 36 because we're not going to read through the whole thing. Because chapter 36 is really just summed up by the very first verse that says, “These are the generations (or if you will, the descendants) of Esau (that is, Edom).” We've been dealing with the chosen line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob up to this point. But now we're just going to very briefly look at the generations that were born to Esau, which is the unchosen line. And quite honestly, this chapter concerning the family of Esau is really just stressing for us two points that we'll see here. First of all, that Esau and all of his sons were born in the land of Canaan and secondly, Esau's other name was Edom. And that's really the point that's being --- made in this chapter. And we know that, from his lineage, the Edomites came. And the Edomites, I'm sure were often troublesome to Israel. Probably one of the most famous Edomites other than Esau himself is in the New Testament and that's Herod the Great. He is not referred to as an Edomite there because the Greek version of Edomite is, Idumeans. And Herod the Great was Idumean and he was a descendant of Esau. So, as we look briefly here at the life of Esau, verse 2 tells us most of what we need to know. He “Esau took his wives (it says in verse 2) from the Canaanites: (it names them there) Adah the daughter of Elon the Hittite, Oholibamah the daughter of Anah the daughter of Zibeon the Hivite, 3 and Basemath, Ishmael's daughter, the sister of Nebaioth.” And you'll remember by the way, that Esau's choice in wives gave his parents quite a bit of grief. And then it begins to talk about some of the children, “4 And Adah bore to Esau, Eliphaz; Basemath bore Reuel; 5 and Oholibamah bore Jeush, Jalam, and Korah. These are the sons of Esau who were born to him in the land of Canaan. Then Esau took his wives, his sons, his daughters, and all the members of his household, his livestock, all his beasts, and all his property that he had acquired in the land of Canaan. He went into a land away from his brother Jacob.” And the reason is given in verse 7, “For their possessions were too great for them to dwell together. The land of their sojournings could not support them because of their livestock. 8 So Esau settled in the hill country of Seir. (and it says again) (Esau is Edom.)” And then the rest of the chapter, there isn't a lot there to take note of. It says, “9 These are the generations of Esau the father of the Edomites in the hill country of Seir.” And then just the remainder of the chapter is just the historical lineage and honestly, it's just a list of really tough to pronounce names. I will note here if you look at down to verse 12, it says that, “(Timna was a concubine of Eliphaz, Esau's son; she bore Amalek to Eliphaz.) These are the sons of Adah, Esau's wife.” That Amalek that you're seeing there in verse 12 will give birth to the people known as the Amalekites, and they would be enemies of Israel for many years to come. And then verses 13 down to the end of the chapter, just a lot of names. I'll let you go through those. The end of verse 43 says, “…these are the chiefs of Edom (that is, Esau, the father of Edom), according to their dwelling places in the land of their possession.” I'll let you read all those fun names in your own Bible reading time. How about that? There you go and that's where we're going to stop for tonight. Let's close in prayer. Father, we thank you tonight for these chapters. We thank you, Father, for the ministry of grace that we see here in the Old Testament as you blessed and protected your people, even though they didn't deserve it. And we're thankful, Lord, that you treat us the same way. That you do not treat us as our sins deserve. And we're thankful Lord, that you are a God of mercy and a God of grace. And we're thankful for that perpetual spring of forgiveness through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who did the work that we could not do. And Lord, we rest, not in our works, but in His. His work, that finished work upon the cross. And we're so thankful, Lord, that we are saved by trusting in the work of our Savior and not in the work of our own flesh. Thank you, Father, for your goodness to us. We praise you and worship you, in the name of Jesus Christ, your son, amen. Amen. God bless you. Have a good rest of your evening.