Oh Man have we got catching up to do!

So I have many many many days to recap.  We have been reading but I have been too tired to blog so this is going to be a long one!

Genesis 32-35

Jacob decides he needs to make peace with is brother Esau so he sends a slew of gifts for him (200 female goats. 20 male goats, 200 ewes, 20 rams, 30 female camels with their young, 40 cows, 10 bulls, 20 female donkeys, and 10 male donkeys) He splits them into 3 groups and sends them each with a servant to butter up Esau.  Then he follows behind his 3 sets of gifts. In Genesis 32 Jacob wrestles with God and God changes his name to Israel.  Jacob names this place Peniel (means face of God).  I love how everything gets named like this so far, kinda cracks me up, but I guess it is good to help us remember the things God has taught us.  Anyways, Jacob finally meets up with Esau (Gen 33), who embraces him with a hug and tells him he is crazy for sending all of these gifts.  So Esau tells Jacob (still not calling him Israel interestingly) to come with him, but Jacob says his kids are young and can't travel that fast, so he will follow but slower.

In Genesis 34 we have the story of Shechem  in the land of Canaan.  Jacobs Daughter Dinah is out visiting women in the area when the local prince sees her, thinks she is beautiful, takes her and rapes her!  Jacob finds out about this, and lets just say he is less than thrilled (drama, drama, drama!) Shechem thinks he can convince Jacob that he should marry Dinah (I am sure he was excellent husband material)  Jacob tells him he can't marry her because he is not circumcised, but if the whole town gets circumcised than they will marry all of their daughters off to them towns people. So the King and the Prince go to the town counsel with the brilliant idea that they should all get circumcised, the counsel agrees and all of them men in the town get circumcised. (stick with me this is where it gets good!)  So 3 days pass, the men are feeling horrible and Jacob's sons come into the town and kill them all!  They also take all of their animals and take all of the wives and children as captives. Jacob finds out about this and is mad because now all of the canaanites would be mad and will come and 'crush' them.

Genesis 35: Jacob heads to Bethel, has everyone get rid of their idols, God appears to him, names him Israel. In v 16-27 Rachel goes into labor and dies right after giving birth to Benjamin and Jacob builds a huge monument at her grave. So when I looked up the "stone monument" I figured it would be a little pile of rocks, oh not even close! This is what it looked like in 1976 (after several repairs, but still!)

Genesis 36 - the Genealogy of Esau: sorry I am not going to recap this for you.  You can read it if you are really interested, I will mention who is related to who as it becomes important.

Genesis 37 On to Joseph and his sweet dreams
A preview:

From Susan Govatos

I have always loved the story of Joseph, probably ever since my mom played in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. Basically Joseph is a favorite son of Jacob, because he was Rachel's son (one of 2) One night Joseph has a dream that all the bundles of grain bowed down to him. He tells his brothers (actually his 1/2 brothers), and they get all hurt about it and say that he thinks he is going to be their king.  So they devise a plan to kill him, then they decide this is too harsh so they just sell him into slavery and let their dad think he was killed by animals by brining back his coat.

Next we have another scandal (man is the Bible filled with these!) Genesis 38:

Judah moves out, gets married and has 3 sons.  He marries his first son (Er) to Tomar, but Er is "a wicked man in the Lord's sight" so he takes his life.  Judah tells his next son (Onan) to marry Tomar and give his brother a heir, but Onan does not want to give his brother a heir so he sleeps with her but "spills his semen on the ground" so she does not get pregnant.  The Lord considers this evil so he kills Onan.  Judah then tells Tomar to go live with her parents until his youngest son is old enough to marry, but he has no intention of letting her marry this son because he does not want him to die as well.

Years pass and Judah's wife dies and he makes no move toward marrying Shelah (the youngest) off to Tomar, so she takes matters into her own hands.  She poses as a prostitute, propositions Judah, and gets pregnant (she also gets his cord and walking stick as proof).  Judah finds out Tomar is pregnant and calls for her to be killed, but she pulls out the cord and walking stick and he realizes it was he who impregnated her!

When Tomar goes into labor she has twin.  One baby's arm comes out first and the midwife ties a red ribbon around his wrist, but then he pulls it back in and the other brother is born.  So the baby that came all the way out first was named Perez (means breaking out) and the baby with the red string is named Zerah (meaning scarlet)

Genesis 39 - back to Joseph

Joseph goes to live in Potiphar's house in Egypt (the captain of the guard for Pharaoh), he is an awesome servant so he moves up quickly.  Potiphar's wife thinks Joseph is a good looking guy so she hits on him when her husband is not home. Joseph declines her and she is so offended that she takes his cloak as he runs away and uses it to tell her husband that Joseph was trying to sleep with her.  Potiphar believes his wife and has Joseph thrown in jail. Joseph is super awesome in jail too so he is put in charge of all of the prisoners. (Joseph is such an awesome example of being a good worker for the Lord)

Genesis 40

Joseph is still in jail and interprets 2 different dreams from 2 of Pharaoh's former servants.  He tells the Cup-Bearer that he will get his position back in 3 days, and the chief baker that Pharaoh will kill him and the birds will eat his flesh. He asks the Cup-Bearer to remember that he interpreted the dream for him.  Both of his dream interpretations come true, but the Cup-Bearer forgets about Joseph (I don't know how, what a lame "friend")

Genesis 41

2 years pass since Joseph interpreted the dream for the Cup-Bearer.  Pharaoh starts having crazy dreams and no one knows what they mean.  All of the sudden the Cup-Bearer remembers about Joseph and Pharaoh brings him out of prison to see if he can interpret his dream.  Joseph tells him that there will be 7 years of prosperity and 7 years of famine and they need to save up grain for the 7 years of famine or they will die.  Pharaoh decides to put Joseph in charge of this plan since he is so smart.  Joseph creates such a stockpile and the famine is so severe that people from all over the world come to get grain from him.

Genesis 42: Joseph's brothers come to Egypt for food

will post more later....

Day something....1/11/11

okay, so the wagon went off the road a little bit but we are back on and reading away (caught up for 3 days:)   So the past 3 day's readings were scandalous in todays standards.

Genesis 25 - 31.
Sarah has died and Abraham has taken another wife named Keturah...although the first verse calls her his wife, every other time that she is mentioned about 4 more times, she is referred to as a concubine...not sure why this is.  Anyways, she and Abraham have many more children (including Isaac) in order to further the world's population and then Abraham dies and is buried in a cave.

The next section talks about Isaac and how he pretended that his wife was his sister while they were in a foreign place, and the king finds out and gets mad that he lied and said she was his sister (sound familiar??) Before Isaac dies he wishes to bless his firstborn son with prosperity, however Jacob fools his father into thinking he is Esau and steals the blessing himself.

Jacob is told to go to his uncle's house and to marry one of his daughters (his cousin?), so he starts traveling and then Jacob has his intense dream on his way there, involving a stairway to heaven (wasn't there a TV show about that? oh no, it was Highway to Heaven...    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_to_Heaven)

Jacob makes it to his uncle's place and proceeds to kiss his cousin and tell his uncle that he wants to marry her in order to sleep with her....direct to the point. They make a deal that Jacob needs to work 7 years for his uncle then he can marry his cousin. He does the time and when it comes time to marry Rachel, his uncle did the bait and switch and gave him the less desirable cousin to sleep with (it was dark and he had been waiting 7 years, it's understandable) Jacob is angry (obviously) and his uncle says, well I will give you the cousin you really want, you just have to work another 7 years for me without pay. Jacob agrees to this (she must have been a babe) and so 7 years later he marries the attractive cousin. Then comes the time to have kids, the attractive one is unable to bear children because God is keeping it from her, and so Jacobs other wife has 4 or 5 kids before Rachel (attractive one) gets upset that she cant have kids, so what does she do? She has her servant marry Jacob so that her team can have kids...then his other wife provides her servant in order to bring more children, then God decides that Rachel can have kids also......sounds almost like the Maury Povich show, but it seems that Jacob has the funds to provide for his 4 wives and all their kids......sheesh. This reality seems very strange in today's world as the people with many wives are considered as sinning, not sure if God said enough is enough, or if he decided that this was sinning after all, or what these people were thinking. Oh, and before we get to the next part, the wives are out in the field and the unattractive one (Leah) finds some Mandrakes in the field and Rachel wishes to have some of these Mandrakes for herself...I know you are thinking, "what the heck is a mandrake???" well I had the same thought, so I looked it up..."A mandrake is a plant of the Nightshade family used primarily for its anaesthetic and supposedly magical properties. It is closely related to the deadly nightshade or belladonna and can cause delirium and hallucinations if ingested in sufficient quantities. The mandrake is also said to act as a fertility aid for women." So we now have included drugs in our story as well!

Ultimately Jacob and his wives decide that they have overstayed their welcome (as their wealth...sheep and goats...) has increased greatly over their uncle/father/father-in-law's wealth) and they steal away without anyone knowing...seems hard to do getting 30 people and sheep and goats and camels out without dad finding out....dad does find out 3 days later, and provides chase because someone stole his gods....I guess we haven't had the 10 Commandments yet huh...dad goes through everything they own looking for these gods and cant find it, well Rachel (the attractive one) has them stashed in her camels-back and tells her dad, oh I cant get off my camel because I am on my period (so we have idols, lies, stealing...makes for a great story, but I think they had a lot of sheep to sacrifice for their sins!) Jacob doesnt know that the gods are under his wife, and tells his father in law uncle that he is off his rocker and they don't have them...so they make a covenant and name the place after their covenant, and after spending the night on the mountain they went their separate ways.

My take on this is that those Old Testament people of the Bible are crazy! We have laws against that kind of stuff today, and I've got to say I am pretty glad about that!

outie

Today

1/7/11 Genesis 21:8-24:67 & Genesis 11:32

Today we read about Abraham's commitment to God's covenant. Abraham took Isaac up the mountain to sacrifice him just as God had instructed him. At the last moment, the Angel of God appeared and told him to not kill Isaac, but that he had made good on his end of the covenant. A ram that got caught in a bush (bad day to be the ram) was sacrificed instead. 

Also, Sarah died. Abraham had to buy land to bury her in, and Isaac married his cousin. It was weird that Abraham insisted that he not marry a woman from where they were living but instead marry someone in the family.....and millions of people on the earth came from this cousin's marriage. This brings up the point about the Father Abraham song...is everyone on the earth a descendant of Abraham, or just "many nations" as the Bible says.....if not everyone is a descendant of Abraham, then I think the song is flawed......"Father Abraham had many sons, many sons had Father Abraham, and I am one of them and so are you...." maybe I am not a son of Abraham, and neither are you (???) I guess we will need to wait for Heaven to find out.

outie

D here:

What an amazing act of faith by Abraham.  This is the second major act of faith that sticks out to me (the first being Noah)  Can anyone think of another major act of faith that happened before this?  Also it is nice to see he is pulling his act together.

I found trading cards online! Lets get trading!

3 days of reading

So I know you all thought we quit already, sorry will be disappointed.  We did do our reading, but we were too tired to blog it up.

January 4 Genesis 11:1-14:27 & 1 Chronicles 1:24-27

This reading was mostly genealogy, which I am sad to say I still often skim over, then I am confused later on as to who these people are.  Do I learn my lesson this time around? Nope, luckily for me there is still much more genealogy to go.

In Genesis 12:10-20 we read about Abram and Sarai going to Egypt and Abram telling the Pharaoh that she is his sister. This perplexed me, he says he is doing it so they won't kill him and take his 'beautiful' wife away.  P says it is so he can extort money from them. I pretty much let this one slide as being an odd little encounter, until we got to January 6 (something to look forward to).

January 5 Genesis 15:1-17:27

The major verse from this passage for me was the first one:

¹ Some time later, the Lord spoke to Abram in a vision and said to him, “Do not be afraid, Abram, for I will protect you, and your reward will be great.”


Abram is concerned that he will not receive blessings because he does not have a son, but God assures him that he will have as many descendants as there are stars in the sky. Yet Abram still is worried and impregnates his servant.  God comes back and makes a covenant with him that he will have descendants, and he still is unable to trust.  Gosh I love the old testament.  It is such a picture of our lives even today.  We give something to God, tell hi, we trust him and then turn around and try to do things ourselves (just wait until January 6th's reading)  I am so frustrated with Abram right now, yet it is exactly what I do myself.

Oh and Abram now = Abraham and Sarai now = Sarah. Also, God wants men to be circumcised to show their covenant with God. This is supposed to happen on the 8th day, oops we dropped the ball on that one. P wants to know how they performed this procedure back then, I want to know how traumatic it must have been for the men who had to be "retrofitted".

January 6th (The day you have all been waiting for!) Genesis 18:1-21:7

Highlights:
The LORD appears and tells Abraham that Sarah will have a son.  Sarah laughs at this, when the confronts her about it she denies laughing.

Abraham sticks up for the righteous people in Sodom so the angels remove Lot and his family from Sodom before they destroy it.  God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah because the people are evil.

Lot's daughters get him drunk and bear children from him so they can carry on the family lineage.  Apparently their children will be problems for Israel in the future. I can kinda see why they did this bit can't at the same time.  According to my study Bible it was bad news if you had no descendants.  I know this issue comes up again in future stories.

Now for the best part.........Abraham deceives Abimelech Genesis 20:1-18

When I first started reading this part I thought I had gone back in my readings instead of forward.  Abraham doesn't trust God again and lies to try to keep his family together.  I reiterate “Do not be afraid, Abram, for I will protect you, and your reward will be great.” So frustrating!


We wrap up this section with the birth of Isaac When she was about 90! I hoped on Wikipedia (because everything on there is absolutely true) to check on how old people have given birth lately, and he is the story:

Age 67 to 70

• 2008: Omkari Panwar gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, in India via emergency cesarean section at the age of 70. The babies weighed 2 pounds each. Omkari became pregnant through IVF treatment, which she and her husband pursued in order to produce a male heir. Omkari has two adult daughters and five grandchildren. Omkari does not have a birth certificate, her age has been estimated by her claim that she was nine years old when the British Raj left India in 1947. In response to hearing that she'd possibly broken the record for world's oldest mother, Omkari stated, "If I am the world's oldest mother it means nothing to me. I just want to see my new babies and care for them while I am still able."^[94]

• 2008: Rajo Devi Lohan gave birth to a daughter at the age of 70. Lohan's health soon deteriorated and she claimed she had not been informed of any dangers. Her doctor said, "Even though Rajo's health is deteriorating, at least she will die in peace. She does not have to face the stigma of being barren. She had an ovarian cyst that was causing her problems but that has now been removed. The IVF treatment is completely safe. Rajo is an old woman and her life expectancy was only about five to seven years."^[95]

All I have to say to that is "No Thank You!!"

Well this was a long one. I will try to keep up better!

P is asleep and he didn't proof this, hopefully I didn't say anything too crazy!

Day 2: Still on the wagon!

Well we have not given up yet! (and as a bonus P has officially joined in on the blogging below!)

January 3: Genesis 7:1-10:32 and 1 Chronicles 1:8-23

This portion dove much more into Noah.  Somehow I never realized that God told Noah to take animals for eating and sacrifice in addition to the pairs needed for procreation.  I wonder if this has ever been used for a case for being a carnivore.  I thought during the last reading that it was interesting that God told Adam and Eve to eat anything in the garden except from the tree of good and evil, but I did not see a spot where He mentioned eating animals and I wondered if this was a case for being a vegetarian.  Just read a couple of commentaries online and they point to people eating meat as a result of the fall.  This is an interesting point, not sure if I agree with it, but that could just be selfish because I want to continue to eat meat.

Also Genesis 9:5 - never saw this one before, although I probably have never actually read this before either.

“And I will require the blood of anyone who takes another person’s life. If a wild animal kills a person, it must die. And anyone who murders a fellow human must die. ⁶ If anyone takes a human life, that person’s life will also be taken by human hands. For God made human beings in his own image." 

Soooo.....is this a case for the death penalty, and where does turning the other cheek come in? Well I guess that is probably more about forgiveness and enemies?  Good news! We will get to this passage later anyways, that will give me time to reevaluate.

P here blogging it up....interesting that the water came up from the earth as well as falling from the sky (Genesis 7:11) from what I remember learning as a child, I only remember the rain part of it. Also, is the water that flooded the earth A. in the polar ice caps. B. in cloud cover. C. underground. D. All of the above (as well as in space due to space shuttle waste evacuation).  Additionally, the cursing of Canaan in Gen 9:24, does the curse stop with Canaan or are his descendants cursed as well? Should he have covered his father up rather than telling his brothers about his father's nakedness? I assume the conversation wasn't "hey dad's in there drunk and passed out, we should do something about this!" probably more along the lines of "hey the old man is sooooooo wasted and naked, you should see the wrinkles on his 610 year old body!"  Also, from what I understand is where people stopped living hundreds of years and lived to max out at 120 years....the sun has come out today....to expedite death, fantastic. That is all, back to work.

outie

Day One - Already Behind

So I received The One Year Chronological Bible NLT for christmas, and my husband and I are using it as a starting off point to read the entire Bible this year.  We got back from a trip yesterday and forgot our plan to start reading so today we read 2 entries. My plan for my blog is to give a quick thought on each of the readings.  Anyone want to read with us?

January 1 Reading Genesis 1:1-3:24
Genesis 3:16
   Then he said to the woman,

   “I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy,
      and in pain you will give birth.
   And you will desire to control your husband,
      but he will rule over you.”

I found the second part of this passage to be interesting because so many women have a difficult time submitting to their husband (myself included sometimes) and God straight up says it is because of our sin nature.  How interesting, but how it makes so much sense as well.  The devil does not want us to have successful relationships and therefore thrives on this kind of struggle within a marriage.

January 2 Reading Genesis 4:1-6:22 & 1 Chronicles 1:1-4

Genesis 6:3

³ Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not put up with^[a] humans for such a long time, for they are only mortal flesh. In the future, their normal lifespan will be no more than 120 years.”

So we finished this reading and I said to P "what did you find most interesting from this section?" His reply was "God won't let people live to more than 120 years". Somehow I missed this so I had him point it out to me and indeed he was correct.  Taking advantage of the digital age we live in I googled it and thought I had discovered that this was in fact the case.  When I sat down to write this I double checked and my first assumption of 115 years 252 days was the oldest known person was only for the US, bummer! Turns out there are 2 people who lived over 120 years! Knowing the God does not lie I set out to find out what this passage meant.  Turns out 120 years is a reference to the time period between verse 3 and Genesis 7:6 when the flood began (Thank you Bible Track for this info)

Tomorrow we read about the flood.  P is nudging me that it is time for bed now.