BEMA 8: Buried in a Genealogy

Transcription Status

14 Apr 22 — Initial public release

14 Mar 22 — Transcript approved for release

Buried in a Genealogy

Brent Billings: This is The BEMA Podcast with Marty Solomon. I’m his co-host, Brent Billings. We’re joined today by Tyler Sesnon, one of Marty’s disciples. Welcome, Tyler.

Tyler Sesnon: Hello. Thank you.

Brent: In this episode, we ask the question the rabbis have asked over the centuries, why did God choose Abraham? Once again, we do have a presentation that goes along with this episode, Episode 8. You find that on bemadiscipleship.com, or in your podcast app of choice. If you can follow along, that’s great. If you can’t, we will try to describe what’s happening for you.

Marty Solomon: Yes. Let’s see here. First of all, this whole episode does start with that question. Rabbis always wanted to know: why did God choose Abram? We’re going to call him Abram until his name changes to Abraham. One of their big questions, why would God choose Abram?

Now for the Westerner, I think that we think, “What an arbitrary question. It doesn’t matter. God chooses who God wants. Doesn’t even matter. He’s the potter. We’re the clay.” The Jewish mind says, “There’s got to be a reason because the story has to be here to teach us. The story has to be here to tell us the kinds of people that God wants to partner with. There must be a reason.”

The typical Bible student probably responds with, “Well, too bad. There is no reason because we meet Abraham in Genesis 12, and God has chosen him. God chooses him. The first words we’re told is, ‘Go leave your father’s household and go to a land that I’ll show you.’ There’s no reason, sorry.” I think the Jewish teacher says, “But that’s not where we meet Abram. You see, we meet Abram in the genealogy that precedes Genesis 12.” There must be something in this genealogy.

Brent: Now we’re talking.

Marty: Yes, that’s right. [laughs]

Brent: That’s where we’re going to get to these genealogies. This is where it starts.

Marty: Yes, indeed. I’m going to go back to Genesis 11, and I want to read starting in verse 27 through the rest of the chapter. That’ll be 11:27 through 32. This is the account of Terah. Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. While his father, Terah, was still alive, Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, in the land of his birth. Abram and Nahor both married. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milcah. She was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milcah and Iscah. Now Sarai was barren and she had no children. Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot, son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans, to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. Terah lived 205 five years, and he died in Haran.

One of the things I want to do is I want to take this section of Scripture — genealogy? Oh man, definitely no treasure buried there — we’re going to start by trying to put this on the presentation and put it on the blackboard in front of you. We’ve got Terah. I’m going to ask Tyler, Tyler’s sitting here. Tyler, go ahead and tell me, as you walk through this phrase by phrase, what you see happening, and we’re going to put it in the presentation in front of us.

Tyler: All right. The first thing I see is that Terah has three sons.

Marty: All right. Terah has three sons, Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Is that correct? Is that what you see?

Tyler: That’s what I see.

Marty: All right. In that order, too. Is that correct?

Tyler: Yes.

Marty: All right. We’ve got Abram, Nahor, and Haran. That will be your first slide of your presentation, these three sons of Terah. Okay. What do you see next, Tyler, when you look at this?

Tyler: Well, Haran has the interesting addition of being the father of Lot.

Marty: Okay. He’s the father of Lot. Haran has a son, the only son and this grandson were told about in Terah’s line. He has a son, Lot. What’s next?

Tyler: While Terah is alive, Haran dies in Ur of the Chaldeans.

Marty: Okay. That’s not only just unfortunate, but it’s an interesting situation in genealogy because you usually don’t die before your father. While Terah is still alive, Haran dies. We’ve depicted that on the presentation in front of you. What do you see next, Tyler?

Tyler: I see Abraham and Nahor get married.

Marty: Okay. So Abram and Nahor take wives. They find wives, and we’re told a little about them. What do you see there?

Tyler: Their names are Sarai and Milcah.

Marty: Whose wife is Sarai?

Tyler: Abraham, or Abram.

Marty: Okay. Abram’s wife is Sarai. Milcah then is married to?

Tyler: Nahor.

Marty: Nahor. Okay. What else are we told about Milcah?

Tyler: Milcah is the daughter of Haran.

Marty: Okay. Anything else?

Tyler: Haran is the father of both Milcah and Iscah.

Marty: Okay. Now when you’re just reading this, it can be a little bit tricky to follow along, but that’s why we put it in the presentation is because once you draw it out, you’re like, “Okay, I’m totally tracking what’s going on here.” This next slide will show you the three sons of Terah, Abram, Nahor, and Haran, who’s now dead and struck out. Then there’s Lot, who is Haran’s son. We are also told that Haran had two other children and he may have even had more, but we’re told about two other daughters, Milcah and Iscah. In the middle of that, we were told that Abram and Nahor took wives. The wife that Nahor took was the daughter of Haran. Do you got anything else in there, or is that pretty much it?

Tyler: No, there’s the big glaring fact that Sarai was barren.

Marty: Excellent. We have a barren Sarai, which is going to be, if you know anything about where the story of Genesis is going, a very, very, very big deal. Sarai is barren. Now, if we were to step back and look at — I’ll just ask this question to either one of you, Tyler or Brent. All right, we’re going to ask that typical question: What problems do we have with this story? What doesn’t work? What seems odd? What sticks out? Whatever you guys got. Give me whatever you’re thinking.

Tyler: Well, looking in front of me right now at the graph here, I see that Abram had the option to marry a wife who wasn’t barren, and he still is married to Sarai. That seems to be a problem for a patriarch.

Marty: Okay. Now, tell me more about that. Why would you say he had the option but didn’t do it?

Tyler: Well, one of them is not married to anybody because Haran’s gone out of the picture here, and so Iscah is left floating around.

Marty: Right. Okay, and Abram is supposed to? Is this sticking out to you because you think Abram should be married?

Tyler: Well, I’m thinking ahead in the story here. At some point, God’s going to tell Abram that he’s going to bless all nations through him, so that could be a problem if he can’t have any kids.

Marty: Right. We’re going to have that problem eventually later in the narrative. That, for sure, is going to be there. Brent, do you see anything in this story that you see?

Brent: I don’t know how much you want me to get into this. I feel like we’re going to talk about this a lot more in the rest of Genesis, but the Epic of Eden talks a lot about this idea of patriarchy, and firstborn, and whatnot. Abram is the firstborn, and yet his wife is unable to conceive, and so who’s going to carry on the line?

Marty: Yes. Who’s going to carry on the line? Even more, you guys are both bringing up the firstborn issue. Even more glaring than that, well, now we’re not told that Haran is married. Are we told about a wife at all in that, Tyler, any wife of Haran?

Tyler: I didn’t see any.

Marty: Okay. There’s no wife mentioned of Haran. Maybe there is no wife. Maybe this son Lot came some other way, which wouldn’t be atypical because you don’t mention women in a genealogy. You just don’t. Women don’t show up in a genealogy unless there’s absolute direct relevance like they’re needed for the story, they’re needed for the genealogy. They just don’t show up. It’s not odd that we’re not told about Haran’s wife, but we want to make sure we’re not jumping to conclusions. Haran, apparently, he has a son, so the assumption is that somewhere he’s married, but what’s wrong with that based on the birth order?

Tyler: Well, if you look at the one, two, three, that order we talked about being important earlier, he’s the last of the three.

Marty: Who would you expect to be married first?

Tyler: Abram.

Marty: Abram. There’s something here in this family that doesn’t make sense. The last born son is the only one that is married and having children, and the first two sons aren’t married at all. I don’t want to dwell here too long, but that’s a problem there. There’s something about this family that isn’t quite following the rules as you would expect it to be followed, culturally. Brent, did you have something else, also?

Brent: Yes, if what you’re saying about women not showing up in genealogies is true, unless there’s an absolutely necessary reason. We’ve got a lot of women in this genealogy, first of all, and some of them were mentioned multiple times. Milcah is over and over, like we’re told a lot about Milcah. Nahor’s wife was Milcah. She, Milcah, again, was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milcah and Iscah. Milcah gets a little triple-mention there, which is weird because I still don’t know why she’s important. Why is she even here?

Marty: Correct.

Brent: Then Iscah, there’s no connection from her to anyone else.

Marty: Correct. I’m really glad you picked up on that. Sarai makes sense because Sarai, as you both have pointed out, is going to be a part of this family of promise. She’s going to be essential to the story, so I can understand why the author is going to include Sarai. What doesn’t make any sense is why Milcah and Iscah are included. Outside of this genealogy, what is the relevance to this? Now, Milcah is going to show up again later in the story, but the one that really doesn’t belong, there’s like absolutely no reason for her to be there is who?

Brent: Iscah.

Marty: Iscah. The rabbis are going to say there has to be a reason why Iscah is in the genealogy. That is a complete addition that absolutely does not need to be here. Milcah would also be one, but the moment you start looking at this paragraph, there’s something else that jumps out to me. When I look at another problem, it’s like the author has the worst case of ADD. The author’s like, “Okay. Then Abraham and Haran took wives, and then Haran married Milcah, and Abram married Sarai. By the way, Milcah was the daughter of Haran who also had another daughter named Iscah. Oh, yes. By the way, Sarai was barren.”

The barrenness of Sarai is not where it ought to be. Tell me about Sarai’s barrenness when you’re talking about Sarai. Why are you waiting until the end of the paragraph to all of a sudden come back to Sarai really awkwardly? That should have been mentioned about two verses earlier than it was mentioned, three phrases earlier than it was mentioned, and it’s all out of order. Why is Iscah even mentioned at all? Completely irrelevant. That’s one of the things that we end up having.

Now, this is one place where, again, the Midrash is going to help us. There’s this brilliant — one of my favorite, one of my absolute favorite midrash in the Jewish tradition. Tells us a long story about Abram leaving his country and his father’s house and all of these things. Then there’s this another long portion of the story where Abram gets thrown in a fiery furnace — which, if you’re thinking of things like the book of Daniel, and I believe you ought to, there’s going to be some connections there, but not today, I digress — but Abram comes out of this furnace and in the midst of this, at the end of this big, long story, and you might remember me saying that a Jewish midrash going to take you around the block in order to make a point that’s right next door. This long story ends with this assertion that Abram marries Iscah, which for somebody reading the story, how’s that even possible?

Brent: The text says he marries Sarai.

Marty: Exactly. The Midrash can’t contradict the Text. What in the world is the author of the Midrash and the teachers of the Midrash trying to tell us? Like, no, our answer to the Midrash is, “No. No, it doesn’t.”

Brent: How is it even possible?

Marty: It’s not even possible.

Brent: It’s so plainly stated that Abram’s wife was Sarai.

Marty: It’s this hovering weirdness. Now, by the way, the one thing that we didn’t talk about that I’m realizing now I’m passing is the fact that Nahor is marrying his niece.

Brent: Oh, yes. I did think of that for a moment. I was going to mention that.

Tyler: That does look more obvious when you look at the graphic.

Marty: The genealogy.

Brent: There’s not a lot of distance.

Marty: Absolutely.

Brent: The same branch of this tree.

Marty: It’s probably worth noting as we pass by that. I think we’re used to, the three of us in this room are used to this story enough that it doesn’t jump out to us in the way it used to. But in this ancient patriarchal world, this is going to be much more expected. You take care of your own family. You take care of your own clan. In fact, you want to marry within your own people group. Now, typically you’re going to marry within a much larger group of people than the handful of people I can put on one slide of our presentation. That is a little close to home, but nevertheless, it wouldn’t be nearly as — it wouldn’t have the stigma that it would have in our culture in order for them to do what they’re doing.

Worth mentioning as we pass over here. When you take this idea where the Midrash says Abram marries the other niece named Iscah, you go back to the Text, and you’re trying to figure out, why did the rabbis teach that Abram marries Iscah? That’s just nonsense. If you dig into the language, the Hebrew language, the Hebraic language, and then the Sumerian language, if you were to say Iscah’s name in a Chaldean tongue, which is where they’re from, they’re from Ur of the Chaldeans, we’re told that twice in this passage. If you put Iscah in a Chaldean tongue, her name means “my princess” or just “princess” to be more accurate. Now, if you look at the translation of Sarai in many Bibles that will actually be in your footnote, you’ll notice that Sarai in the Hebrew means “my princess.” All of a sudden, we stumble upon this idea, if you go to the next slide in your presentation, that Sarai and Iscah may in fact be the same person.

Now, this just raises another question. Why in the world would Abram do this? Why is it buried in this genealogy? What is the story trying to teach us? There’s one more thing that doesn’t jump out to us in the English but would jump out to us in the Hebrew. If you were to look at the story and you were to notice the phrase, “Abram and Haran took wives,” what you don’t realize in the Hebrew is — grammatically, the grammar’s all messed up. What it says is that “Abram and Nahor, he took wives,” which doesn’t work. I’m no English major, but it’s not supposed to be “Abram and Nahor, he took wives.” It’s “Abram and Nahor, they took wives,” but in the Hebrew, it becomes singular.

If you had been paying attention to the Hebrew earlier in Genesis, you would know that this showed up once before. We’ve seen this exact same phrase show up before. It was back in the story of Noah when he cursed Ham’s son, Canaan. What happened was after Ham came out and told his brothers about Noah’s nakedness or what he had done, we’re told that Shem and Japheth take a blanket and they put it over their shoulders and they walk backwards, so that they don’t look at their father’s nakedness, and they place a blanket over their father.

The phrase that’s used is “Shem and Japheth, he took a blanket and they walked backwards.” In the Hebrew mind, what that phrase is trying to say is that you have two or more people. You have a plural amount of people that decide to do a benevolent act together. They decide to do something benevolent together and they are of one mind. They are of one singular mind. Somebody says, “Listen, I think we ought to do this benevolent thing.” The other person says, “I think you’re absolutely right and that’s what we should do.” Then they act together there and they are of one mind. “Shem and Japheth, he took a blanket” because the two of them were of one mind together. Now, in the Hebrew, you would always give the credit to which person do you suppose, Tyler, the first or the second?

Tyler: I don’t know. I would go with the first.

Marty: I think you’re right. In the Hebrew mind, whenever it does this, you give the credit for the idea to the first person mentioned. When Shem and Japheth, he took a blanket, who gets the credit for the original idea in the story?

Tyler: It’s got to be Shem.

Marty: Shem gets the credit for being the one that said, “Hey, Japheth, we got to go cover up our dad. How about we grab a blanket?” Japheth says, “Yes, that’s exactly what we need to do.” They are of one mind as they do this benevolent act for their father. Let’s take the same idea and go back to the story of Abram and apply this. Abram and Nahor, he took wives. We can make probably a couple observations about that. What are you guys seeing? Brent, what do you see there?

Brent: If that’s how it actually reads, is he actually taking multiple wives? Is Abram taking multiple wives?

Marty: [chuckles] There’s that. What if we were to apply the same logic of Noah’s story to the Abram statement?

Brent: It means, Abram says, “Hey, we should get married, my brother.”

Marty: It must be what kind of — so it’s whose idea, you just said?

Brent: Abram’s idea.

Marty: It’s Abram’s idea. He’s mentioned first, but it also must be what kind of an act, Tyler?

Tyler: A benevolent act.

Marty: There’s something behind what they’re doing here that Abram is looking at, Nahor saying, “We got to do this. This is the right thing to do.” What we were…

Brent: Nahor apparently agrees.

Marty: Nahor agrees. They’re of one mind together when they do it. Now, why is Abram and Nahor saying that the benevolent, the right thing to do is to marry their nieces in a patriarchal culture?

Tyler: Because their father died.

Marty: Because their father has died and their father is the sole provider of their sustenance, of what they need, putting food on the table, their protector. He’s the one that’s going to give them away in marriage and arrange their marriage. Their father is everything, and now their father is dead. Abram looks at Nahar and says, “You know what we got to do? We got to marry our nieces so that somebody is there to provide for them. Somebody is there to protect them. Somebody is there to give them dignity,” and it’s Abram’s idea, but then it goes one step further, because if it’s Abram’s idea, now we’re back to Tyler. I thought Tyler was going to head me off at the pass earlier, but I was able to dodge it. What observation did you make earlier, Tyler?

Tyler: If Abraham’s the first mentioned, he’s probably going to choose the wife that’s going to provide him children, and if one of them’s barren, he’s probably not going to marry the barren one.

Marty: Abram, by every stretch of the imagination of the story, is the one who gets to choose. A, he’s the firstborn, B, it was his idea in the first place. Abram is the one who gets to choose which niece he wants. Now, people always want to come back at me and say, “Well, they wouldn’t have known that she’s barren.”

Tyler: How would they know?

Marty: Well, I think the story presumes that they know. A, it tells us she’s barren right up front as a staple. Tyler pointed out one of the most important parts of the story, but the other thing is in an ancient patriarchal culture, when you do the math, Sarai has to be, or excuse me, Iscah, if they’re the same person, has to be older because there’s no way you can make the math work. She can’t be a young girl in this story. That’s not according to Jewish tradition and you couldn’t do that with a literal reading of the text. She has to be older.

Well, in a patriarchal Middle Eastern world, when you menstruate, you’re given away in marriage, the two are almost synonymous. The moment you begin menstruating, the word begins spreading that you’re now available for marriage. That’s just how the ancient world worked. If she hasn’t been married, I have to assume — I’m not a doctor, I don’t know what kind of conditions exist out there — I have to assume that there are ways in this culture that they know she’s barren, she’s not able to give children.

At the very least, this is how the story wants us to read it. The inspired story wants us to read it with an awareness that she’s barren and at no point in the story of Genesis later are we given some shocking like, “Oh, now Abram realizes she’s barren.” It’s a presumption through the entire narrative of Abram. Abram is assuming from day one in the story, the barrenness of Sarai. There’s no story where he’s shocked to become aware that she’s barren. We read this story and we read that Abram takes the barren daughter. Now, what has Abram just done, Tyler, by taking the barren daughter?

Tyler: His family line is done.

Marty: There will be no descendants. This is somebody, and maybe this even speaks to why Haran is married and Abram and Nahor aren’t. This seems to be a family and these guys seem to be sons that don’t seem to have —it’s not “me first.” I think about the story as we’ve talked about Cain, and it was all about Cain’s name and how he could acquire and how he could possess.

I think at the Tower of Babel, the parallel story to Cain, and it was all about making a name for themselves. Here’s a guy who’s not concerned about his name, his name is not going to continue, and that’s not what’s on his mind. What’s on his mind is giving dignity and hope and provision and protection to somebody who doesn’t have those things.

You see at the end of Genesis 1-11, we’re left with this alerting feeling that humanity is hopeless. Nobody in humanity is going to be able to do what God calls him to do. We’re all driven by fear and insecurity, we can’t pull on our image of God-ness, we’re just hopeless, we’re always going to pursue self. Into the story comes — we’re introduced to a guy that, for whatever reason, says, “I’m more interested in somebody else. I know when to stop. I’m not going to be obsessed with my own creativity. I’m going to be obsessed with somebody else and their creativity and their dignity and their name.”

God immediately enters the story and says, “I can work with that. I can work with somebody who’s willing to know when to say enough, to know how to control their desires and lay down their life on behalf of somebody else.”

The Rabbis teach this, this is the kind of person that God chooses to use. This is the back end of the chiasm of Genesis 1-11. This is where the introduction to the narrative begins by meeting somebody who would willingly say, “I know what the right thing to do here is. It’s going to require self-sacrifice, and I’m in anyway,” which is what the entire narrative of the scripture was going to be trying to teach us.

Into this introduction, we begin to be introduced to the characters of the story. These characters tell us something that’s going to ring true throughout all the pages of Scripture, and so we’re invited to be like Abram, to be somebody who knows when to say enough and to pursue others. Good teaching coming out of the Midrash right there. Good stuff.

Brent: I feel like that idea of Abram parallels God at the very beginning. Verse 1 of Genesis 1, God is all this stuff, He doesn’t need anything, but He’s like, “I want to do something for someone else.”

Marty: Absolutely. Abram puts on display and models… Now, Abram is not going to be perfect if you know the story of Abram. He’s going to have his moments, but he has a piece of God that he shows the world. The story also gives us hope because I think it tells us we can get it, we can have a piece of God. We can actually respond the way we’re supposed to respond, it’s not hopeless. We’re not going to be perfect, but we are made in the image of God and it can work. It’s good stuff.

Brent: Well, I think that does it for this episode. If you live on the Palouse, we hope you join us for our discussion groups in Moscow on Tuesday or in Pullman on Wednesday. If you’re in the area but don’t know anything about that, go to bemadiscipleship.com, you’ll see all the details about where those groups are at and you’ll find all kinds of other information about the show. Once again, we do hope you have a chance to check out the presentation we had for this episode. You can find Marty on Twitter at @martysolomon, you can find me on Twitter at @eibcb. Tyler, are you on Twitter?

Tyler: I am, but I don’t use it enough to know what my Twitter handle is.

Brent: Oh, that’s embarrassing.

Tyler: Probably something like @thesezdawg.

Brent: Oh, yes. Well, maybe if you end up being a guest on another episode in the future…

Tyler: I’ll come prepared.

Brent: At this point, I don’t know if that’s looking good, but maybe we can get that information out there.

Tyler: I’m not technological enough to come back, apparently.

Brent: All right, well, anyway, thanks for joining us on The BEMA Podcast. We’ll talk to you again soon.