Summary
The Twelve Tribes
Abram and Sarai, afflicted by the curse of barrenness before receiving the Covenant from God, take matters into their own hands. Sarai gives her young maid Hagar (an Egyptian) to Abram so that Hagar will conceive Abram’s child and Sarai will take the child as her own. When Hagar is pregnant with Abram’s child, she turns resentful toward Sarai, and then Sarai banishes her from the household with Abram’s agreement. Hagar meets an angel while banished, who tells her to return to Abram and Sarai’s service. The angel names Hagar’s son Ishmael and informs her that his line will multiply to large numbers, and Ishmael himself will be a wild, oppositional man.
This calamity, born in human sin, is rectified by God twenty-three years later, when Abram receives the Covenant from God. In support of His family-forming intentions at the root of the Covenant, God breaks the curse of barrenness for Abraham and Sarah, blessing them with a naturally conceived and born son, Isaac. By setting aside Abraham’s line through Isaac with the Covenantal blessing, God disrupts the normal patterns of human societies ordered along traditions of sibling rivalry, primogeniture and maternal naming of offspring. He weighs His chosen leaders based on their real and enduring fidelity to His intentions, as in Adam’s third born son Seth receiving the Covenant imprimatur, Seth (rather than his wife) naming his first born son Enos, and His choice of David, (the least of the sons of Jesse) to lead Israel.
Communication with God in the Covenant throughout scripture has a four-fold structure: God’s call, man’s response, God’s command and man’s sacrifice. When God calls to man, He uses man’s name twice, to bridge across our sinful separation, and address us intimately with His Holy Word. Our appropriate response is an unhesitating agreement to perform God’s will, even if it will be difficult. While God can veil his communication with us if needed to avoid harming our fragile nature, He does not do this when issuing a command. He speaks to us directly and plainly. When God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on an altar, He is testing Isaac’s will to obedience. Abraham recognizes the great gift of being asked to enact God’s will, and forthrightly begins to comply with this otherwise grisly command. When God sees Abraham’s dutiful compliance in the name of sacrifice, He commands him to not sacrifice Isaac, and instead provides a ram in the thicket, so that Abraham may complete the sacrifice to God and enjoy this gift of doing His will with the offering that God has provided.
The fraternal twin sons of Isaac (and Rebekah), Esau and Jacob, profane the Covenantal birthright by exchanging it in a business transaction, giving us another disappointing example of self-corrupting behavior within the Covenantal line of succession. Virtuous legitimacy establishes a graded contrast between the sensually-directed behavior of Esau, and the canny, acquisitive nature of Jacob. Jacob purchases Esau’s birthright with a dish of red lentils for him, effectively renaming Esau as Edom, the name of a later tribe (the Edomites – red people) that will be the enemies of Israel. Jacob alone is allowed to carry the Covenant blessing, being seen as the less corrupt of the twins.
Jacob then fathers 12 sons (patriarchs of the 12 tribes of Israel) by two sisters and two concubines, a miserable polygamous circus of his own making. When he favors his eleventh son Joseph (son of Rachel) with a multicolored coat (presumably a token of the Covenantal blessing), at the expense of his oldest son Reuben, the remaining sons react in murderous rebellion against the bearer of the Covenant, first dropping him in a well to conceal their intention of killing him, but after re-thinking the consequences, selling him to the Ishmaelites (Egyptians). Joseph later rises in Egyptian society, saving both Egypt and his family of jealous brethren from famine. God’s purpose for keeping His Covenant has ironically been fulfilled by the actions of the sinful brethren, foreshadowing the betrayal and death of His son at the hands of his chosen people, which resulted in their redemption and salvation.
Bible Study Notes