Day 22 – Genesis 30-31
What in the world is wrong with these people? Do they not believe in monogamy????? Again, the Bible records, not promotes. The Bible certainly doesn’t hide the chaos all this infidelity causes!
Mandrake fruit – supposed to promote fertility.
Rachel finally gets a baby!!!! Joseph.
So Jacob negotiates his wages as “all the speckled sheep and goats”. Laban agrees but then takes all the speckled sheep and goats out of the flock before Jacob could begin and basically says, “Good luck, Jacob.” So Jacob makes rods from trees and places them here and there during mating, and voilà, speckled sheep and goats are born. This here is another “lean not” situation for me because I couldn’t make sense of the rods, but the bottom line is that God caused it to happen. The rods aren’t the point. God is. Jacob ends up with the healthiest animals because God saw Laban’s cheating and intervened.
Never heard of a plane tree before….
It’s the Angel of the Lord again! Christophany! He says to Jacob in 31:13, “I am the God of Bethel…”. He’s basically saying, “Hey Jacob. Me again. Remember Bethel? I haven’t forgotten.”
In 31:29 Laban tells Jacob, “It is within my power to do you harm, but the God of your father spoke to me last night…” Just a shameless plug opportunity here. I wrote a Still Waters about this very thing a few months ago. Check it out: Harnessed.
Day 23 – Genesis 32-34
Tara-Leigh does it way better than I do today. Watch her recap. She covers it all!
That’s not to say I don’t have comments, though. 😉
Why does Jacob keep calling himself “your servant” and Esau “my lord” when God already promised that the older would serve the younger? 🤔🤔
Maybe humility? (I doubt it….). I think it was because Jacob was a scaredy-cat 😅 and was trying to appease Esau so he wouldn’t kill him. But that’s just me. People are people. Like Paul McCartney said, “People are the same wherever you go….” That’s probably not the way Paul McCartney meant it, but … that’s how I mean it…
CAGE MATCH!!! 🥊🥊🥊
🤼 Jacob wrestles with God (or the Angel of the LORD?👼), receives the name Israel, and says he saw God “face to face.” But I thought we could not/should not see God’s face, so this passage confuses me. So…. I dug. Consensus says Jacob is merely expressing that he had an extraordinary personal encounter with God and survived it. Albeit….with a hip injury as a daily reminder of God’s power (from just a touch) and as a reminder that God is just….there… at all times.
My eyes glazed over a little in Chapter 33, but this came to my mind. 🚤 Esau offered to help Jacob, but Jacob declined. It reminded me of that old flood story where the man is stranded on top of his house during a major flood. A boat comes by offering help, but the man says, “Nah, I’m good. The Lord will save me!” Then a helicopter comes, and the man says, “Nope. The Lord is gonna save me.” Then the man drowns, gets to Heaven and says, “Lord! Why didn’t you save me?” And the Lord says, 🚤”I sent you a boat and a helicopter….”🚁 Was Esau’s offer one of the ways God was going to provide for Jacob? 🤷
If God changed Jacob’s name to Israel, why does the Bible keep referring to him as Jacob?
Another rabbit hole.🐇 Basically, the text seems to use Israel when emphasizing his role in God’s covenant story, but Jacob is used in other personal/family settings.
And then there’s Dinah. You just gotta read it. Maybe I have this all wrong, but I am not mad at Jacob’s sons at all for what they did. I am not endorsing violence, but I understand it here. “Sometimes you gotta fight when you’re a man…he said this one’s for [Dinah] as he watched the last one fall….” (Kenny Rogers – Coward of the County). I got a lot of my life lessons from Kenny. I’m sure “The Gambler” will show up in these notes at some point…
Day 24 – Genesis 35-37
⭐Tara-Leigh’s God Shot today is superb.
Jacob heads to Bethel – the place where he had the dream about the ladder ascending to Heaven. 🪜
God keeps appearing to these early Bible characters, and I must say, I might be a little envious of it. Is that wrong of me? I want my own Theophany!!!! 🤣🤣 But isn’t that kind of the point? To want it?
God reiterates to Jacob that his new name is Israel. Because apparently Jacob keeps forgetting he has a mission.
Lots of genealogy today. Again, my thoughts are that these are references that historians and archeologists can use to confirm the Bible’s historical accuracy. TLC says the same in her video today, so yay me! I did, however, get a new dog name out of it. Timna. Remember my next dog is going to be Hazo, but he’s now going to have a brother named Timna. And so it shall be, so sayeth the Lord. 🐶😂
Jacob loved Joseph more than his other sons because he was the son of Rachel who he loved. Today he made Joseph the famous coat! TLC says it’s not really a multi-colored coat, but she is not going to steal that dream from me! I will continue to sing it like a boss! Thanks Dolly!🎵😂
Joseph dreamed about sheafs. I had to look up sheaf. It’s pretty much what I thought it was. But my brain starts making SNL skits out of stuff like this. Imagine “Top Gun” and Tom Cruise standing at attention. “Yes Master Sheaf!” 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
🌾➡️🇪🇬 Remember this sheaf dream. In the future, Joseph will one day oversee Egypt’s grain supply during a famine.
Reuben – didn’t want to kill Joseph; wanted to save him from the pit later. Oldest brother. Christ-like image – see TLC’s video.
Judah – didn’t want to kill Joseph but wanted to make a few dollah bills y’all 💰by selling him. Let’s keep an eye on Judah. Judah is pretty important, as you probably already know…. 👀
Joseph was sold for 20 shekels of silver, the going price for a young slave at the time. Jesus was betrayed for 30 pieces of silver, which Exodus 21 says was the compensation paid for a slave who was killed by an ox – hmmmm. Different amounts, but the parallel is hard to miss. Both were betrayed for silver, and both became God’s means of salvation for many.
Day 25 – Genesis 38-40
So much trickery with Tamar and Judah (Joseph’s half brother). I don’t even know what to say here….
Joseph in prison for a lie. I have opinions about “law enforcement”, but we’ll leave them out of this. No wonder God gets frustrated with people. These people are sexually immoral and just complete shysters. None of these people would be my friends.
The Lord was with Joseph through all the different drama. That’s the main thing I got out of today.
Potiphar’s wife called Joseph a Hebrew, trying to insult him.
Hebrew – Hebron (possible connection?). Geographical.
Israelite – refers to lineage. TLC covers this perfectly in her recap today.
“Three days” gotta mean something.
Day 26 – Genesis 41-42
Quick – name a song about dreams!! I got These Dreams by Heart, Dream Chaser by The Judds, Dreamweaver by Gary Wright, and Dreams by Fleetwood Mac….
Remember the dream Joseph had where the sheafs of his brothers bowed down to his sheaf? Yeah. That came true today. His brothers bowed to him in Egypt when they needed that grain.
Joseph interpreting dreams reminds me of Daniel interpreting dreams for Nebuchadnezzar. 👑😮📖
🌾🥖Genesis 41:31 says “the abundance will be unknown in the land” because of the famine that will follow. Some translations say “forgotten” instead of “unknown”. Isn’t that the way it goes? We forget all our blessings as soon as pain comes. We just totally forget all the good. It’s like the blank piece of paper with the single dot on it. What do you see? The dot! The blemish! You don’t see all that clean white space…. we need to change our perspectives sometimes.
Joseph gave his dastardly brothers some grain during the famine, but he secretly gave each of them their money back with the grain. To me, this is a picture of grace that the brothers didn’t earn and couldn’t buy. 💰🌾❤️
Another thought I had about the abundance and the famine and the brothers coming to Egypt… God’s timing. The abundance and famine spanned 14 years. God found a way for Joseph and his brothers to meet again. It just took some time.
Day 27 – Genesis 43-45
I didn’t take any notes today that Tara-Leigh didn’t cover.
Day 28 – Genesis 46-47
I missed the first reference to Elon in 36:2, but here it is again in 46:14! ELON! Wonder if Maye did that on purpose…. 😄
Joseph gave his family property in “the land of Rameses” (47:11).
My Mom took me to an Ramses the Great exhibit in Memphis, TN in 1987 because she wanted me to know things…
Egyptians looked down on shepherds like they were second-class citizens because Egyptians were highfalutin’ city folk. Shepherds were dirty farmers. This worked out in Joseph’s family’s favor because it meant they were separated; thus, Israel’s lineage was protected.
Joseph swore to Jacob/Israel that he would not bury him in Egypt. I thought we were not supposed to swear? “Let your statement be ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no.'” (Matthew 5:37). I dug a little, and basically, Jesus was really condemning manipulative or deceptive oath-making, not every solemn promise…. The “Trust me, bro. God is on my side!” type thing. This oath to Jacob was not manipulative.