The New Interpreter's® Bible One-Volume Commentary

GENESIS

DENNIS T. OLSON

OVERVIEW

The book of Genesis brings together stories about the beginning of the world and humanity (Gen 1–11) with stories about the beginning of the particular people of Israel and their earliest ancestors (Gen 12–50). As such, Genesis is important in setting God's interaction and concern with God's specially chosen people, Israel, within the broader universal horizon of God's interaction and concern for all humanity and all creation.

Genesis 1–11 recount God's good creation of the heavens and the earth as well as repeated incidents of humans disobeying God, hurting fellow humans, and being discontent with what they are—human creatures tied to the earth. The several human rebellions are followed by devastating consequences, but also by God's continued blessing of humanity and divine acts of mercy and restraint. However, as the reader reaches the end of Gen 11, it is clear that the world and humanity have not been restored to the harmony and goodness that God had intended for God's creation in Gen 1. God's several attempts to deal with humanity as a whole prove less than fully successful. Thus, God moves to try a new strategy.

In Gen 12–50, God's new venture involves the selection of one special family within all the families of the earth who would become the vehicle of God's blessing of all the other families of the earth (Gen 12:3). God focuses on the family of Abraham and Sarah, the ancestors of the people of Israel. Genesis 12–50 is primarily a series of family stories involving Israel's ancestors and their interactions with other nations. The ancestors originate in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), travel to Canaan (modern-day Israel/Palestine), and then move back and forth among the lands of Canaan, Egypt, and Mesopotamia.

Most modern scholars agree that the book of Genesis developed through several stages of collecting, writing, and editing over hundreds of years, sometime between the 8th and 5th centuries BCE. In this period, Israel was forced to reflect on its role as God's chosen nation as it interacted with the successive empires, cultures, and religions of Assyria, Babylon, and Persia as well as other neighboring nations. In particular, Israel's experience of forced migration from the promised land of Judah and the destruction of the holy city of Jerusalem by an army of the Babylonian empire in 587 BCE evoked a definitive reexamination of its core traditions and self-understanding as the people of God among the other nations of the world. The Babylonian exile, however, only solidified and sharpened what ancient Israel had learned earlier and continued to learn at various points throughout its history. God had chosen Israel from among the nations. God would stay committed to God's people, even though Israel was a young nation in comparison to the older and more powerful empires of the world. God would continue to bless Israel's ancestors, even though they often endured severe struggles, suffering, and near death, all of which appeared at the time to contradict God's promises to God's people. In the end, Genesis proclaims, God will be faithful.

OUTLINE

I. The Creation of the World and the Beginnings of Humankind (1:1–11:32)

A. Two Stories of Creation (1:1–2:25

1:1–2:3. The First Creation Story— The Heavens and the Earth

2:4–25. The Second Creation Story—The Garden of Eden

B. Two Disobedience Stories (3:1–4:26)

3:1–24.Adam and Eve—The First Act of Human Disobedience

4:1–26. Cain Murders Abel—The Second Act of Human Disobedience

C. Ten Generations from Adam and Eve to Noah (5:1–32)

D. Breaking the Boundary Between Divine and Human—The Birth of Giants (6:1–4)

E. The Flood Story (6:5–9:29)

6:5–22. God Reveals to Noah the Plan for the Flood and the Ark

7:1–8:19. The Great Flood

8:20–9:17. God's Promise and Covenant with Noah

9:18–10:32. The Descendants of Noah

F. The Tower of Babel and the Confusion of Human Language (11:1–9)

G. The Family Line from Shem to Abraham (11:10–32)

II. The Family Stories of Israel's Ancestors (12:1–50:26)

A. The Family Stories of Abraham and Sarah and Their Son Isaac (12:1–25:18)

12:1–9. God Calls Abram with a Promise of Blessing

12:10–20. Abram and Sarai in Egypt: The First Wife-Sister Story

13:1–14:24. Abram's Generosity and Care for His Nephew Lot

15:1–21. God's Covenant with Abram: Descendants and Land

16:1–17:27. The Promise: From Abram-Hagar-Ishmael to Abraham-Sarah-Isaac

18:1–19:38. God's Promise Repeated, God's Justice Demonstrated

20:1–18. Abraham and Sarah in Canaan: The Second Wife-Sister Story

21:1–21. The Arrival of Isaac and the Sending Away of Hagar-Ishmael

21:22–34. Abraham Reconciles with the Canaanite King Abimelech

22:1–24. God Commands Abraham to Sacrifice His Son Isaac

23:1–20. Abraham Buys an Expensive Piece of the Promised Land

24:1–67. Isaac Obtains a Wife, Rebekah, from Family in Mesopotamia

25:1–18. Abraham's Death and the Descendants He Leaves Behind

B. The Family Stories of Isaac's Son, Jacob (25:19–36:43)

25:19–34. The Twins Jacob and Esau: Birth and Rivalry

26:1–33. Isaac and the Philistine King Abimelech: Echoes of Abraham

26:34–28:9. Jacob Steals the Blessing of the Elder Esau and Flees

28:10–22. God's Blessing of Jacob at Bethel

29:1–31:55. Jacob and Laban: Jacob Prospers in Mesopotamia

32:1–33:17. Jacob Wrestles with God and Reconciles with Esau

33:18–34:31. Rape and Revenge: Jacob's Daughter Dinah

35:1–29. Jacob's Return to Bethel: Birth and Death

36:1–43. The Family Line of Esau

C. The Family Stories of Jacob's Sons: Joseph and Judah (37:1–50:26)

37:1–36. Joseph and His Brothers: Dreams and Schemes

38:1–30. Judah and Tamar: Deception, Death, and New Life

39:1–23. Joseph and Potiphar's Wife

40:1–23. Joseph and the Two Dreams of the Prisoners

41:1–57. Joseph and the Two Dreams of Pharaoh

42:1–43:34. Joseph and His Brothers: Two Encounters in Egypt

44:1–34. The Test: Judah Offers Himself as a Substitute for Benjamin

45:1–28. Joseph Reveals Himself to His Brothers

46:1–47:31. Jacob and His Sons Join Joseph in Egypt

48:1–22. Jacob Blesses Ephraim and Manasseh, Sons of Joseph

49:1–33. Jacob's Deathbed Blessing of His Twelve Sons

50:1–26. Jacob's Death and Joseph's Forgiveness of His Brothers

DETAILED ANALYSIS

I. The Creation of the World and the Beginnings of Humankind (1:1–11:32)

The opening chapters of Genesis describe God's continuing commitment to sustain and bless God's good creation and its inhabitants, including all human beings. God does so in spite of human disobedience and wrongdoing that leads to broken relationships between humans and God (Gen 3), humans and one another (Gen 4; 6), and also humans and non-human creation (3:15, 17–19; 9:1–5). The stories of Gen 1–11 contain elements that are mythic in character and not part of our normal human experience: a talking snake (3:1), human lifetimes that last nearly a thousand years (5:5), divine beings called sons of God who come to earth and procreate with humans (6:1– 4), a catastrophic worldwide flood (7:17–24), and a time when all people of the world spoke only one language (11:1). Although some of these elements may seem strange and otherworldly, the stories of Gen 1–11 use these and other elements to explore profound and enduring truths about reality and the interactions of God, humans, and the world.

A. Two Stories of Creation (1:1–2:25)

The Bible begins by placing two different stories about the creation of the world side by side in Gen 1 and 2. These two versions arose at different times in Israel's history. Most scholars argue that the date of the composition of the creation story in Gen 2:4–24 is earlier than the composition of the creation story in Gen 1:1–2:3. Indeed, the earlier creation story reflects the first part of an extended tradition that weaves intermittently in and out of the book of Genesis. Some scholars understand this earlier tradition, sometimes termed by scholars as the Yahwist tradition (abbreviated as J from the German spelling Jahweh), as extending not only through Genesis but intermittently throughout much of the Pentateuch (the five books of Genesis-Deuteronomy). Other scholars would deny such a view, arguing instead that this earlier tradition exists only in Genesis. For our purposes, we will refer to this earlier set of traditions in Genesis as the non-Priestly tradition, differentiated from the later Priestly tradition which begins in Gen 1 and then extends into Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers.

The later creation story in Gen 1:1–2:3, the Priestly version, likely came together in its present form at a later time than the Gen 2 creation account, probably during or after the Babylonian exile of the sixth century BCE. The key differences between the Priestly (P) creation story and the earlier non-Priestly creation story include the following: the divine name (God in P; LORD God in non-P); the state of the world before creation begins (watery chaos in P–1:2; dry desert in non-P–2:5–6); the order or sequence of what is created (six days with man and woman created together at the same time as the last of the creatures in P; the man created first, then the animals, and finally the woman in non-P); the mode of God's creating (by divine words of command in P–1:3, 6, 9; by God forming, planting, making in non-P–2:7, 8, 19, 22); the arena of creation (cosmic with the heavens and the earth in P; a smaller scale and localized garden of Eden in non-P); the portrayal of God (in full control, orderly, and transcendent in P; more intimate, hands-on, and experimental in non-P); and in literary style (a carefully ordered framework of seven days with a litany of repetitions in P; a more haphazard narrative of trial and error in non-P).

This pairing of two different creation stories at the beginning of Genesis illustrates a characteristic mode by which Genesis often renders truth. Genesis frequently sets up a dialogue among a variety of voices and stories that provide different but complementary angles of insight into a given event, theme, or relationship. Genesis thereby invites the reader to see a fuller truth by holding different but complementary viewpoints together at the same time.

1:1–2:3. The First Creation Story—The Heavens and the Earth. The first version of the creation story (Gen 1:1–2:3) begins with the world as a dark and formless void that hangs over primeval waters of chaos (the deep). God's wind (ruakh), which can also mean spirit or breath, enters into this dark and empty chaos, joined with a divine word of command, Let there be light (v. 1). This spirit/wind coupled with God's command begins to create out of the earlier chaos an ordered, interdependent, and organic system that sustains life, goodness, and a balance of work and rest. Creation happens in Gen 1 within the framework and structure of a seven-day week. During the first three days of creation, God creates three broad regions into which God will later place their proper inhabitants: light/darkness, sky/sea, and dry land (1:3–13). God then creates the occupants of each region. The sun, moon, and stars inhabit and rule over the regions of light and dark (Day Four). Sea creatures (including the great sea monsters) and birds inhabit the sea and sky (Day Five). Animals and humans occupy the dry land (1:14–31).

The creation story slows down and spends some time on the creation of the human, providing important insights into the nature and vocation of the human within God's creation. First of all, God commands, Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness (1:26). God is speaking here to other heavenly beings, reflecting the ancient motif of a heavenly community of divine beings (1 Kgs 22, Job 1, Ps 82, Isa 6). God's motivation for creation is not because God is lonely in the universe. Rather, creation involves God's desire for deepening and broadening the community of relationships that already exists in the divine realm. In creation, God's pre-existing experience of community spills over into a new arena and dimension, the realm of time (created by the alternation of light and dark, day and night) and space (the various ordered regions of sky, sea, and land).

Second, the human is created in God's image or likeness (1:26), reflecting a practice among ancient Near Eastern kings who erected stone statues or images of themselves throughout their realm as an extension and reminder of the king's dominion over the region. Given this background, humans are called to be living images or likenesses of God and extensions of God's dominion over all the earth. God entrusts humans with responsibility to exercise their dominion (1:28) in God's image of care and concern for all creation, including its most vulnerable members (see the model of a good Israelite king's dominion in Ps 72:8–14).

Third, humans are created together in community from the very beginning with both genders reflecting the image of God: in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them (1:27). The image of God is neither exclusively male nor female but somehow encompasses both (cf. Deut 4:16).

Finally, the humans are the last in the series of created regions and creatures, all of which God evaluates as being very good (1:31). Although each part was pronounced good earlier (1:4, 12, 18, 21), it is only when the whole community of interdependent creatures and parts work together to foster life and blessing that God pronounces it all as very good. Creation is good, but it is not perfect or without continuing threats of chaos, disorder, and brokenness. The primeval waters of chaos were pushed by God's great dome (1:6–7) to the edges above and by the land below, but the threatening waters do not disappear. The waters of chaos remain as an element of the created order and will return later in the Genesis narrative in the flood narrative (Gen 7:11). God's world does not appear as a perfect paradise but rather as a very good creation (1:31).

After six days of work, God rested on the seventh day and hallowed it (2:2–3). This text is cited as the explanation for one of the Ten Commandments in Exod 20:8–11, mandating that the seventh day of every week be set aside as a day of rest and no work. The Sabbath in the Priestly tradition is anchored in creation so that the requirement of regular sabbath rest is built into every creature, both humans and animals, both Israelites and non-Israelites (your son and daughter . . . the alien resident in your town . . . your livestock–Exod 20:10). By resting on the Sabbath, God willingly enters into and becomes subject to the created framework of human time that God has just created. This becomes the first instance of God's gracious accommodation or self-limiting for the sake of God's creation. God's example also becomes a pedagogical model that promotes a healthy balance of work and rest, care of creation, and worship of the Creator.

2:4–25. The Second Creation Story—The Garden of Eden. Genesis 2:4 contains a recurring formulaic sentence that marks the beginning of new sections throughout Genesis: These are the generations of (sometimes translated as these are the stories of or these are the descendants of: Gen 2:4; 6:9; 10:1; 11:27; 25:19; 37:2). Here it marks the beginning of a second creation story that has its own additional heading: In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens (cf. Gen 1:1).

This second creation account begins with the image of a dry desert or wilderness. Like the waters of chaos that began the creation story in Gen 1, the wilderness is a frequent biblical image of a fearful place of chaos, evil, and death (Isa 21:1–3; 43:15–21). Two things are required to turn this dry desert into a flourishing garden of life: water and someone to till the ground. A stream appears and waters the ground (2:6). Meanwhile, the Lord God forms a man ('adam) from the dust of the ground ('adamah). The verb forms is a verb used of a potter who molds clay and portrays God's intimate involvement in the creative process. The Hebrew word play between man ('adam) and ground ('adamah) signifies the bond between the earth and the human earth creature who was created from the dust and who, in death, will return to dust (Gen 3:19). What distinguishes the human is that God breathes into the human lump of clay "the breath (ruakh) of life, and only then does the human become a living being." Life is an intimately given divine gift with every human breath a reminder of the giftedness of life.

God's hands-on interaction continues in Gen 2:8–9 with God planting a lush garden of beauty and bounty in Eden. Two fruit trees stand at the center of the garden, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. These two trees will come into play later in the narrative (Gen 2:17; 3:1–7, 22–24). The garden of Eden is not a vacation resort for the human but a workplace in which the human exercises a vocation: to till and keep the garden (2:15). Alongside this vocational responsibility is also freedom (you may freely eat of every tree–2:16) mixed with one limiting prohibition (but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall [the Hebrew is emphatic—add 'surely'] die–2:17). This combination of positive responsibilities, negative limits, and wide freedoms sets the stage both for the exuberant joys as well as the deep tragedies of human existence, the knowledge of good and the knowledge of evil.

The Lord God evaluates the garden and its human caretaker and realizes that something is lacking. It is not good that the man should be alone. God recognizes that the human is an inherently social creature, in need of a helper as his partner (2:18). The Hebrew word for helper ('ezer) does not imply one of lower status or an inferior assistant. Rather, the helper in the Old Testament is often someone of an equal or higher status in comparison to the one being helped. God is often called a helper to those in need elsewhere in Scripture (Ps 10:14; 54:4).

God begins by creating all the animals and inviting the human to name them and thereby define their essence or character (2:18–20). God welcomes the human as a co-creator with God. However, the animals fail to address fully the human yearning for community. As a result, God tries another strategy. God puts the human to sleep, takes out one of the human's ribs, and forms the rib into a second human being, a woman (2:21–22). Instantly, the man recognizes in the woman the fulfillment of the deep yearning for relationship as he joyfully proclaims: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh . . . she shall be called Woman ('ishshah) because she was taken out of Man ('ish)" (2:23). Bound together in an intimate and trusting relationship, the two humans become one flesh, naked, open, vulnerable, trusting, and not ashamed (2:24–25).

B. Two Disobedience Stories (3:1–4:26)

Without warning, the idyllic scene of human community and love in the lush garden of Eden at the end of Gen 2 is suddenly and irrevocably shattered in the two paired stories of disobedience and murder that follow in Gen 3 and 4. The two chapters contain a number of verbal and thematic parallels that bind them together. Thus, for example, both stories in Gen 3 and 4 portray the lure of sin as a crafty animal (the shrewd serpent in 3:1–5; an animal lurking at the door in 4:7). The woman's desire for the man (Gen 3:16) parallels sin's desire for Cain (4:7). God asks the humans in both stories, Where? (3:9; 4:9). Phrases such as cursed is/from the ground 3:17; 4:11), when you work the ground (3:18; 4:12), and east (of the garden) of Eden (3:24; 4:16) are repeated in both narratives. The father (Adam) and son (Cain) share a number of similarities. Both give in to temptation and sin. Both seek to shift blame to someone else (the woman Eve, Abel). Both in the end try to blame God for their actions (Adam–the woman whom you gave to be with me–3:12; Cain–Am I my brother's keeper? [implying no, God is]–4:9). The key difference between Adam and Cain is that Adam is overly passive and silent in Gen 3 while Cain is overly aggressive and violent in Gen 4.

3:1–24. Adam and Eve—The First Act of Human Disobedience. The story of the serpent's temptation of Adam and Eve in Gen 3 does not so much explain the origins of sin and evil in the world as depict the enduring realities of the human condition. Genesis 3 explores the humans' yearning to go beyond the limits within which they were created, leading in a series of steps to temptation, transgression, and unforeseen consequences that flow out of such transgressions. All of this occurs within the context of the judgment of God but also the even stronger mercy of God.

The serpent in the garden is one of God's own creatures, excelling in being more crafty than any other wild animal (3:1). The serpent is not portrayed as Satan or an alien creature that has invaded the garden. The serpent simply asks questions and makes claims that appeal to the seeds of a yearning or suspicion that seem to be already present in the woman's mind. The serpent assures the woman that she would not die from eating the forbidden fruit. She would only gain knowledge, have her eyes opened, and would become like God, knowing good and evil (3:5). The woman is lured by the special fruit, its attraction as good for food, its beauty as a delight to the eyes, and its capacity to make one wise (3:6). She takes the fruit and then eats it (3:6).

What comes next is a bit of a surprise. She gives the fruit also to her husband who was with her. The man was presumably present with her all along during the dialogue with the serpent. Without question or comment, the text simply says, and he ate (3:7). Here it is clear that the story does not intend to implicate the woman alone as uniquely at fault for the act of disobedience in the garden. Both the woman and the man were present with the serpent, and both are held accountable for their action and receive consequences for their transgression of the limits that God had set for their own good. By eating the fruit, their eyes were indeed opened, as the serpent had promised. However, their eyes were not opened to some glorious knowledge of a divine nature but rather to the mundane awareness that they were naked, ashamed, and now in need of clothing to hide behind.

The intimacy of God's presence in the garden (Gen 2) continues in Gen 3 as God appears, walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze (3:8). For the first time, the humans hide from God. As God often does in the Bible, God comes looking for God's rebellious people. God interrogates the humans and discovers the transgression. The man refuses to accept responsibility, blaming instead the woman but also ultimately blaming God: the woman whom you [God] gave to be with me, she gave me fruit (3:12). The woman in turn blames the serpent. God then describes the consequences that will flow out of transgression of human limits. The serpent loses his legs and becomes a creature repulsive to humans (3:14–15). The woman will experience increased pain in childbirth and inequality in her relationship with the man (3:16). The man will find his labor more difficult and his relationship with the land far more complicated (3:17–19).

God curses the serpent (3:14) and the ground (3:17) but not the humans themselves. God's mercy emerges as God exchanges the prickly figleaf clothing that the humans had made themselves (3:7) for softer garments of skins that God makes for them (3:21). Moreover, although God had said that the humans would surely die on the very day they ate of the forbidden fruit (2:17), God rescinds the immediate death penalty by allowing them to live. Eve becomes the mother of all living (3:20). At the same time, however, God imposes a limit on the length of human life by sending the humans forever out of the garden of Eden lest they eat of the other tree, the tree of life, and live forever (3:22–24). Adam and Eve will live long enough to have children in order that the human race may continue, but they themselves will not live forever. They will go back to the ground from which they came: you are dust, and to dust you shall return (3:19; see 2:7).

4:1–26. Cain Murders Abel—The Second Act of Human Disobedience. The phrase that begins the chapter, now the man knew his wife Eve, signifies in this case the intimate knowledge of sexual union. Adam had earlier named Eve (3:20), and now Eve takes her turn and names a man, her son Cain whom she acknowledges as a gift from God (4:1). God continues to bless the humans in spite of their disobedience. Eve also gives birth to a second son, Abel.

Abel grows up as a sheep herder, and Cain is a farmer. They offer sacrifices to God, and God accepts Abel's animal offering but not Cain's grain offering. The text is not interested in explaining why God chose the sacrifice of Abel (the younger son) but not the sacrifice of Cain (the elder son). Rather, the text portrays the human reality that human envy, jealousy, and shame often lead to violence. Cain lures his brother Abel into the field and kills him. God appears and interrogates Cain about his brother's whereabouts. Cain claims not to know, asking God, Am I my brother's keeper (3:9). The question is a cynical one, implying that God bears the responsibility if anything has happened to Abel because God is traditionally supposed to be the one who keeps or guards God's people (Ps 121:5; Isa 27:3).

Abel's spilled blood cries out to God from the ground (3:10). Human and animal blood was understood in ancient Israel to contain the life force of an individual and thus was considered sacred. Thus, any spilling of blood was a matter that cried out for God's attention (Deut 12:23–24; Lev 17:10–14). The consequences for the farmer Cain are disastrous. The ground from which Abel's blood cried out will no longer produce food abundantly (4:11). Moreover, Cain will be forced to migrate from his land and be a fugitive and wanderer in foreign lands, rendering him vulnerable to attack, abuse and the possibility of blood revenge for his murder. However, in God's mercy, God places a protective mark on Cain that signi-fies that anyone who kills Cain will be avenged seven times over (3:15). God mercifully spares Cain from the death penalty for his murder, not enforcing the law of equal consequences found elsewhere in the Old Testament: an eye for an eye, a life for a life (Exod 21:24; Lev 24:20; Deut 19:21).

A new generation is born after Cain. Some humans begin to build cities (3:17), some herd sheep (4:20), some make music (4:21), and some become metal workers. The diversification of human culture and vocations is a sign of God's hidden activity of blessing. Lamech is a descendant of Cain who also exemplifies the continuing negative and violent side of the human condition as he boasts of initiating a spiral of violence by killing a man who had wounded him, promising to avenge anyone who tries to hurt him not just seven times (as with Cain) but seventy-seven times over. For him, violence and vengeance have no limits.

C. Ten Generations from Adam and Eve to Noah (5:1–32)

The listing of ten generations in Gen 5 provides a connecting bridge between the story of Adam and Eve (Gen 2–4) and the next major story of Noah and the flood (Gen 6–9). The genealogy in Gen 11:10–26 will trace the line from Noah's son Shem to Abraham. The family tree in Gen 46:8–27 lists in successive generations the descendants of Abraham's grandson Jacob. The listing of generations illustrates the specific working out of God's blessing and human obedience of God's command to be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth (Gen 1:28).

D. Breaking the Boundary Between Divine and Human—The Birth of Giants (6:1–4)

Thus far in Genesis, humans have tried to become like God (3:5), one human murdered a brother (4:8), and another human pledged an increasing spiral of violence and revenge against anyone who threatened him (4:23–24). The erosion and fracturing of God's good creation (1:31) steps up a notch with the short story about the transgression of the created boundary between heaven and earth. Divine beings called the sons of God come down to earth and engage in sexual unions with daughters of humans, creating a super race of giant legendary warriors called Nephilim (Heb.: Fallen Ones). Later in Israel's story, Israelite spies will claim to have spotted the giant Nephilim warriors fighting for the Canaanites in the land of Canaan (Num 13:32–33). Some later Jewish and Christians interpreters of the Bible expanded on the story of the Nephilim, associating them with the origin of Satan or the devil as a rebellious fallen angel who waged war against God's people. In the present text, however, this breach of a boundary between heaven and earth is a sign of cosmic rupture and another threat to God's created order.

This breach of the divine-human boundary causes God to limit the life spans of humans even further, from an average of 800–900 years in Gen 5 to a maximum limit of 120 years in Gen 6:3. Later biblical tradition will speak of a normal limit of 70–80 years (Ps 90:10). The spread of sin and violence in creation correlates with the advancing power of death and mortality in human lives.

E. The Flood Story (6:5–9:29)

The increasing violence, corruption, and breakdown among humans result in God's decision to try a new strategy. God decides to start over with a remnant of all the species of non-human creation along with a man named Noah and his family. Noah will build an ark in which his family and pairs of all creatures will be spared while the rest of humanity and all other land creatures will be destroyed in a worldwide flood.

A number of variations, doublets, and other tensions in the story of Noah have suggested to many scholars that two originally distinct versions of the great flood story in Gen 6–9 have been woven together to form the present combined narrative. The style and elements of these two versions seem to correspond to the Priestly tradition that is evident in Gen 1, on one hand, and to the non-Priestly version that appears in the Gen 2 creation story, on the other. Unlike Gen 1–2 where the P and non-P accounts are juxtaposed and separate, the non-P and P accounts in Gen 6–9 are interwoven. The combination of the two versions of the flood (Priestly and non-Priestly) into one narrative provides a way of preserving the richness of divergent traditions about the flood while also maintaining a single story line, albeit with some tensions. Ancient Israelite writers likely borrowed and adapted some elements of the biblical flood story from an earlier epic tradition of a great primeval flood that had roots in Mesopotamia where major destructive floods actually occurred in ancient times. Archaeologists have uncovered multiple older Mesopotamian versions of an ancient flood story, e.g., in the Atrahasis myth and the epic of Gilgamesh, which contain numerous elements similar to the biblical account of Noah and the flood.

6:5–22. God Reveals to Noah the Plan for the Flood and the Ark. Two separate introductions to the flood story stand side by side, one Priestly version in 6:9–22 and a non-Priestly version in 6:5–8 and 7:1–5. The non-Priestly version emphasizes the wickedness of humankind and the thoughts of their hearts as only evil continually (6:5). Wickedness for the non-P version focused on the inclinations of the human heart. The non-Priestly portrait of the LORD is also highly interior, emotive, and regretful: The LORD was sorry for creating humankind and it grieved him to his heart (6:7).

The Priestly version emphasizes a broader cosmic corruption including all flesh and the whole earth: Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence . . . all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth (11:13). God resolves to destroy all flesh . . . along with the earth (6:13). Corruption for P infects the whole creation—everything that is on the earth (6:17). Corruption is seen not so much in the interior life of humans but in outward acts of violence (6:11, 13). In the Priestly portrait of God, there is no mention of God's emotional life. God seems more resolved and in control: I have determined to make an end of all flesh (6:13).

God establishes a covenant in which God promises Noah, his family, and all the ark's creatures that God will keep them alive (6:18–19). Noah's obligations in this covenant is to build the ark and to collect two of every kind of animal, male and female, onto the ark. The content of the covenant will be expanded in more detail after the conclusion of the flood in 9:8–17.

7:1–8:19. The Great Flood. Two versions of the great flood are combined with one another. In the non-Priestly version in 7:12, the flood is the result of a forty-day rain. In the Priestly version in 7:11, the flood results from the fountains of the deep from under the earth gushing forth from below and the windows of the heavens being opened from above, letting in the waters of chaos that God had earlier pushed up and back with the dome that formed the sky in the Priestly creation story (Gen 1:6–7). In the Priestly version, this swelling up of the waters of chaos lasts 150 days (7:24).

The most important verse in the whole flood story occurs in 8:1: But God remembered Noah and all the animals that were with him. This divine remembering involves recalling the covenant promise that God had made earlier in 6:18, a promise to save their lives and through them to establish and populate a new creation. The image of God making a wind (ruakh, wind/ breath/spirit) blow over the flood waters recalls God's wind blowing over the primeval waters of chaos in the Priestly creation story in Gen 1:2. As the waters recede, Noah sends out a series of birds until one bird does not return, indicating that the bird has found dry land; the flood is over. God then commands Noah and all his passengers to disembark from the ark in order to be fruitful and multiply on the earth, a reassertion of God's original command in the Priestly creation story in Gen 1:28. A new creation has emerged.

8:20–9:17. God's Promise and Covenant with Noah. The flood story concludes with two accounts of God's promise to Noah: a non-Priestly version (8:20–22) and an expanded Priestly version of God's covenant (9:1–17). In the non Priestly promise, Noah builds an altar and offers burnt offerings to God of every clean animal and bird that was on the ark. The Lord smells the pleasing odor of the sacrifices and responds with a promise to never again curse the ground because of humankind. The Lord had earlier cursed the ground because of Adam (Gen 3:17) and Cain (Gen 4:11). Moreover, God promises never again to destroy every living creature as I have done (8:21). God resolves to preserve the life-giving rhythms of seedtime and harvest, summer and winter, day and night that sustain food production and life. God has learned that the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth (8:21), and not even a drastic purification of humanity through a flood could erase this evil inclination. God will need to learn how to work with humans whose inner inclinations are evil from youth, since God has also committed to keep the human experiment alive and to continue to bless it.

The Priestly version of God's promise and covenant at the end of the flood story in 9:1–17 repeats the life-affirming divine command in the Priestly creation account in Gen 1:28: be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth (9:1). But this new creation after the flood in Gen 9 also bears a shadow side. In the Priestly creation story, humans were granted an exclusively vegetarian diet (Gen 1:29). In Gen 9, humans are allowed to eat the meat of animals and birds (just as I gave you green plants, I give you everything–9:3). However, humans are not to eat any flesh with its blood because the blood of a creature is understood to contain the essence of its life (9:4). Thus, later laws will prescribe that the blood of any animal slaughtered for meat must be drained from the animal into the ground before the flesh is eaten as a sign that all life, human and animal, belongs ultimately to God and should be returned to God (Deut 12:23–25). The taking of life, and especially the taking of a human life, is a serious threat to the sanctity of life and the purity of a community for in his own image God made humankind (9:6). Thus, the taking of any life is a matter of sacred and divine concern. This idea is related to the Priestly concern for the violence of humankind at the beginning of the flood story (6:11, 13). God in effect concedes that humans will continue to be violent and to shed the blood of others even in this new post-flood world.

In spite of this prospect of continuing human violence, God pledges to renew the covenant first made with Noah at the beginning of the flood (6:18). Never again will God destroy the earth with a flood (9:8–12). God places the rainbow in the sky as a sign of this covenantal promise, a visual aid by which God will remember this covenant that God had made between me and all flesh that is on the earth (9:17). In this way, God enters into a covenant relationship with all creatures of the earth, marked by the visual sign of the rainbow. Just as human life is precious because humans are made in the image of God, so the life of all the earth's creatures is precious because God is in a covenant relationship with them.

9:18–10:32. The Descendants of Noah. Noah has three sons and from them the whole earth was peopled (9:18). Shem is pictured as the ancestor of the Semitic people who will come to include the people of Israel (see 10:21–31). Ham is the ancestor of the Hamitic peoples, including Egypt and other territories under Egypt's control, which included Canaan at some points in its history. Thus, Ham is portrayed as having a son named Canaan (see 10:6–20). Japheth is associated with the peoples who were north and west of Canaan in Asia Minor, Greece, and the coastland of the Mediterranean (see 10:2–5).

There is immediate evidence that the flood was not a successful strategy for eradicating human corruption. Just as the flood story had begun with an enigmatic and brief story about sexual irregularity with sons of God transgressing creational boundaries with daughters of humankind (Gen 6:1–4), so the flood story ends with another enigmatic and brief story about sexual impropriety with Noah and his sons. Noah makes wine, becomes intoxicated, lies naked in his tent, and his son Ham (father of Canaan) sees the nakedness of his father (9:22). Seeing the nakedness of another person may suggest some form of incest or other sexual taboo (Lev 18:6–8, 24–30). When Noah discovers what Ham had done, Noah curses Ham indirectly by cursing Ham's son Canaan and condemning him and his descendants to become slaves to Shem, an allusion to Israel's eventual conquest of the Canaanites in the book of Joshua. The curse of slavery imposed on the Egyptian/African Ham and Canaan has tragically and wrongly been used by some in the history of biblical interpre tation as justification and warrant for American slavery of African Americans and for the oppression of other colonized peoples.

The segmented genealogy in Gen 10:1–32 lists the three sons of Noah and all their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren who represent diverse nations and peoples of the ancient Near East. These segmented genealogies serve throughout the book of Genesis to keep the larger family of all humankind in view as part of God's continuing concern and care even as the narrative will increasingly focus its attention on one particular family line of Abraham and Sarah and their descendants who will become God's specially chosen people, Israel.

One name in Gen 10 deserves special mention. Genesis 10:8–12 describes a legendary warrior named Nimrod of the land of Shinar, which is another name for the land of Babylon or Babel, the empire responsible for the destruction of the city of Jerusalem and the exile of much of its population in 587 BCE (10:10). Nimrod is also credited with building the great city of Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire, which conquered the northern kingdom in 722 BCE (10:11–12; see Mic 5:5–6 where Assyria is described as the land of Nimrod). Thus, Nimrod is an ancient figure who represents in Israel's cultural memory the military might of the two highly militarized and oppressive empires under which Israel suffered as a nation, both Babylon and Assyria. This imperial allusion will form important background to the story of the tower of Babel, which is set in Nimrod's land of Shinar (11:2).

F. The Tower of Babel and the Confusion of Human Language (11:1–9)

The listing of the spread of nations among the various lands of the known world in Gen 10 sets the stage for the story of the tower of Babel in Gen 11. The opening verse pictures an idyllic scenario: the peoples of all the earth communicated with ease, all speaking the same language (11:1). All the earth's people migrate together and settle in the land of Shinar, another name for the land of Babylon (10:10). This is the land associated with the first mighty and legendary warrior Nimrod, an icon of imperial militarism (10:8–12). The world community decides to build a great brick city and a tower with its top in the heavens and thereby make a name for ourselves (11:4). In a Babylonian context, the tower to the heavens may allude to tall, pyramid-like structures called ziggurats, which ancient Babylonian priests would ascend to offer sacrifices to their gods. In this story, however, the humans do not seek to praise the name of their gods but to make a name for themselves. They fear being scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth (11:4); however, what they fear is precisely what will happen to them at the end of the story (11:9).

Ironically, the Lord must come down from the heavens to see the supposedly enormous building project that the humans believe reaches to the heavens (11:4–5). The Lord notes that they are all one people with one language, a unified world community, and now nothing they wish to do will be impossible for them (11:6). The larger literary context of Gen 1–11 suggests that God does not feel threatened or jealous of the humans' city and tower building. Rather, God's concern is what humans, unbridled by necessary restraints on human inclinations and power, will do to one another. The disobedience of Adam and Eve and their desire to move beyond their human limits to be like God (Gen 3:5) led to the next generation's horror of sibling murder as Cain killed his own brother Abel (4:8). The violence spiraled in Lamech's boast of unrestrained violence against anyone who hurt him (4:23–24). The chaotic breaking of boundaries between heaven and earth in the Nephilim story (Gen 6:1–4) created a super race of giants and military warriors, legendary purveyors of violence. God's desire to limit the violence of humans against other humans was a key reason for God's sending of the flood to try to start over with a new world (6:11, 13). In Gen 10, the land of Shinar is the land of Nimrod, the legendary warrior and fighter associated with the imperial powers of Assyria and Babylon in ancient Israel's past.

Thus in the tower of Babel story, God sees humanity again pushing against its limits toward an imperial consolidation of power. There is nothing inherently wrong with humans wanting to have a name for themselves. God will grant a great name as a gift to Abram in the very next chapter (12:2). However, God knows from long experience with humans that the human yearning and inclination to be something other than human, to be like God, to leave earth and transgress the boundary of the divine, leads inevitably to suffering, abuse of power, violence, and oppression. The land of Shinar, the land of Nimrod, Babylon, and Assyria all represent the potential horrors of unrestrained empires that drain their client states of wealth, dignity, people, and spirit. This is what God fears in Gen 11: with the consolidation of military and political power in one empire, nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them (11:6). Their imperial unity will only result in the exponential growth of suffering, oppression, and violence.

In response, the Lord proposes to other heavenly beings in the divine council (let us go down, see Gen 1:26) that they confuse the humans' language and scatter the humans abroad across the face of the earth (11:7–8). Divided now by language, culture, and territory, the humans abandon the building of their great unified city and tower. The place is called Babel which in the Babylonian language originally meant Gate of God. However, the biblical storyteller associates the name Babel with a Hebrew verb meaning to confuse (balal), because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth (11:9). Ancient Israel's long and tortured history with many different empires (Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece) demonstrated the truth of the tower of Babel story. Empires would rise and seek to unify diverse nations and peoples under one purpose and power. However, God would ensure that every empire would eventually fall to ruin as God judged and limited the inevitable tendency of empires to abuse their power, oppress their citizens, and overextend themselves with unbridled military violence.

G. The Family Line from Shem to Abraham (11:10–32)

The genealogy in Gen 11:10–32 begins with Noah's son, Shem, and extends for ten generations (the same number as in Gen 5), ending with Abram and his wife, Sarai. Abram and Sarai will become the originating ancestors of the people of Israel (later called Abraham and Sarah; 17:5, 15). Thus, the genealogy in Gen 11 represents the transition from stories involving all humanity (Gen 1–11) to stories focused on the one family line of Abraham and Sarah and their descendants, who will become the nation of Israel (Gen 12–50).

The genealogy includes notes about two very difficult family circumstances that will continue to haunt the family line of Abraham and Sarah across their generations. In 11:28, a parent (Terah) experiences the death of a son (Haran). The premature death or threat of the death of a son in the line of Abraham and Sarah will reappear at several points in Gen 12–50 (22:2; 27:41; 37:29– 36; 38:6–11). The second genealogical note is that Abram's wife, Sarai, was barren; she had no child (11:30). Sarai's barrenness will be another major theme and source of suspense throughout the Abraham-Sarah stories in seeming contradiction to God's promise that Abraham would be the father of a great nation of innumerable descendants (12:2; 17:6). The motif of the barren wife will reappear with Rebekah (25:21) and Rachel (29:31). These two family tragedies—death of a child and barrenness or infertility—exemplify obstacles through which God must work to remain faithful to the promises that God has made for this family line. These challenges also serve as metaphors for the ongoing struggles and tragedies of the people of Israel throughout its history. National tragedies like the split of the northern and southern kingdoms (1 Kgs 12), the Assyrian conquest and exile of the northern kingdom and many of its people (2 Kgs 17), the Assyrian destruction of many of the villages and cities of southern Judah (2 Kgs 18–19), or the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple and the exile of many of its people (2 Kgs 24–25) often seemed to contradict God's promises of blessing, life, and becoming a great nation, all promises that God will make to Abraham and Sarah and their descendants (Gen 12:1–3).

II. The Family Stories of Israel's Ancestors (12:1–50:26)

Genesis 1–11 related the primeval history of God's interactions with all humanity and all creation, stretching from the beginnings of the heavens and the earth (Gen 1:1) to humanity's failed attempt to unify itself in the tower of Babel story (Gen 11:1–9). In order to protect humanity against itself, God ensures that humanity remains divided into different cultures and language groups with their power and capacity to do harm limited and restrained by being scattered among many different nations and peoples. Beginning in Gen 12, however, God embarks on a new and more positive strategy. God focuses divine efforts to bless humanity by concentrating on one chosen family line, the family of Abraham and Sarah. God will work in and through this one family with the ultimate aim of blessing this family and also thereby blessing all the families of the earth (Gen 12:3). The interactions between the family of Abraham and Sarah and the other nations will be mixed, sometimes positive and sometimes quite negative and tragic. But along the way, Genesis will provide glimpses of blessing, peacemaking, reconciliation, generosity, and forgiveness between families and nations that hold out the hope and promise of a longer range trajectory toward which God seeks to bring humanity and the whole of creation (Gen 13:1–18;18:16–33; 21:22–34; 33:1–11; 50:15–21; see Isa 2:1–4; 11:1–9; 19:23–25; 56:1–8; 65:17–25).

A. The Family Stories of Abraham and Sarah and Their Son Isaac (12:1–25:18)

Two complementary themes weave and in out of the diverse stories that make up the Abraham-Sarah cycle of family stories in Gen 12–25. One theme is the promise that Abraham would become a great nation with a promised land and many descendants, more than the stars of the heavens (12:1–3, 4–9; 13:15–17; 15:5–7, 18–21; 17:1–8; 22:15–18; 23:1–20). A second recurring theme is the alternation between blessing and curse in the many interactions between the family of Abraham and other nations and peoples. The interactions are often positive (12:3; 13:1–18; 14:17–24; 18:16–33; 21:22–34; 23:1–20; 24:1–67), but they are also often tinged with judgment, conflict, or suffering (12:10–20; 14:1–16; 15:12–14; 16:1–6; 19:1–29; 20:1–18; 21:8–21; 23:1–20).

It should be noted that Abram's name will eventually be changed to Abraham, and Sarai's name will be changed to Sarah (17:5, 15).

12:1–9. God Calls Abram with a Promise of Blessing. Abram's father Terah lived in the city of Ur in southern Mesopotamia and had intended to migrate to the faraway land of Canaan with his family. Terah, however, had only reached the city of Haran in northern Mesopotamia when he died (11:31–32). In 12:1–9, God commands Terah's son Abram to go from your country and your kindred and your father's house in Mesopotamia and migrate to the land that I will show you. In effect, God instructs Abram to fulfill his father Terah's failed plan to travel and settle in Canaan. If Abram obeys, God promises to make Abram a great nation, to bless Abram, and to make his name great. Ironically, a great name was what the Babel tower builders had wanted to make for themselves (11:4). In 12:2, God promises to make Abram's name great as Abram responds to God's command and leaves behind his homeland and extended family. God promises to bless other peoples and nations that bless Abram, and God will curse other nations that curse him. These promises to Abram are not only for the benefit of Abram, but they are part of God's plan for the benefit of all humanity with whom God has been working in Gen 1–11: in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed (12:3). Abram immediately obeys God's command and travels to Canaan, lured by the promise of great blessing (12:4).

12:10–20. Abram and Sarai in Egypt: The First Wife-Sister Story. Abram and Sarai migrate from Canaan to Egypt in search of food in order to escape the famine in the land of Canaan. Generations later, Abraham's descendants will do the same thing when Jacob's sons go down to Egypt because of the famine in Canaan (41:53–42:3). Abram and Sarai are aliens in Egypt and thus do not have the same legal or social protections as natives (12:10). As a result, Abram worries that when the Egyptians see that Sarai is a woman beautiful in appearance, they will take her as a wife and kill Abram. A fearful Abram instructs Sarai to deceive the Egyptians and tell them she is Abram's sister and not his wife. Abram is willing to endanger his own wife so that it may go well with me and that my life may be spared (12:11–13). Abram had just received God's promise that God would bless Abram and make him a great nation (12:2–3), but Abram seems not to trust fully in God's blessing and protection in this instance.

As Abram had feared, the Egyptian Pharaoh sees Sarai's beauty and takes her into his house. As a result, the Lord afflicts Pharaoh's house with great plagues, causing Pharaoh to send Sarai out of Egypt after discovering she was Abram's wife (12:17–20). The plagues and flight out of Egypt prefigure the plagues and God's rescue of Israel in the exodus out of Egypt in the time of Moses (Exod 11:1). A similar wife-sister story will occur again with Abraham and Sarah in 20:1–17 and with Isaac and Rebekah in 26:6–11.

13:1–14:24. Abram's Generosity and Care for His Nephew Lot. Abram had just endangered his wife, Sarai, as well as Pharaoh and the other Egyptians by telling the Egyptians that Sarai was not his wife (12:10–20). This problematic story about Abram's interaction with another nation is paired with a more positive portrait of Abram and the nations in Gen 13–14. Lot, Abram's nephew, will become the ancestor of the nations of Moab and Ammon; these nations will become neighbors to the Israelites on their eastern border (19:30–38). Thus, Abram's generosity to Lot, Abram's rescue of Lot when he was kidnapped by the kings of Shinar, and the blessing of the Canaanite kingpriest named Melchizedek in Gen 13–14, become examples of Abram being a blessing to all the families of the earth (12:3). This close pairing of different kinds of encounters with other nations and cultures, some positive and some negative, will be a recurring literary motif throughout the book of Genesis.

The Lord reaffirms the promise that the land of Canaan in all directions (north, south, east, and west) will belong to Abram and his descendants (13:14–15). The Lord also confirms the earlier promise of many descendants to Abram, specifying that they will be as many as the innumerable grains of dust on the earth (13:16). God will repeat the promise later, using the stars of heaven as the visual aid of the promise of innumerable descendants (15:5).

15:1–21. God's Covenant with Abram: Descendants and Land. The phrase that begins Gen 15, After these things, occurs in two other places in Genesis, one at the beginning and one at the end of Gen 22 (22:1; 22:20). The two texts of Gen 15 and Gen 22 form a dramatic theological pair within the Abraham cycle of stories. On one hand, Gen 15 emphasizes God's willingness to lay God's future on the line to fulfill the promise of land and descendants to Abraham. On the other hand, Gen 22 emphasizes Abraham's willingness to lay his own life and future on the line in obeying God's command to offer up Isaac, his only son.

The Lord appears to Abram in a vision and reassures Abram that his reward will be very great (15:1). The elderly Abram complains that the Lord's earlier and more specific promise of many descendants (12:2; 13:16) has yet to be ful-filled. The Lord reassures Abram that he himself will have a child of his own. The Lord takes Abram outside and invites him to count the stars of the heavens, adding the wry comment, if you are able to count them (15:5). The Lord promises that Abram's descendants will be as innumerable as the stars of the nighttime sky.

The scene concludes with a theologically freighted assessment that falls into two parts. Part one affirms that he [Abram] believed the LORD (15:6a). This affirmation supports the traditional portrait of Abraham as a person of great trust in God's promises (Gal 3:6–9). The second part is rendered in the NRSV as and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness (15:6b). This is one possible way of translating the Hebrew text, and reflects the way in which the apostle Paul used this text in his argument that trusting or believing in the promise of God is what makes a person righteous rather than works of the law (Rom 4:1–15; Gal 3:6–18). However, the Hebrew of Gen 15:6 is somewhat more ambiguous and reads literally, he [Abram] believed the LORD; and he [either the LORD or Abram] reckoned it to him [or to himself] as righteousness. In other words, it is possible to understand the verse as affirming that Abram believed the Lord, and that Abram was convinced (reckoned to himself) that the Lord had acted rightly with him by promising him many descendants.

Although Abram may be satisfied with God's assurance that he will indeed have a child and heir, Abram immediately raises doubts about the Lord's second promise that Abram would be given the land of Canaan. (15:8–9). Abram remains a person of doubt and skepticism, demanding an additional sign of assurance from God. In response, the Lord performs an ancient ceremony of covenant-making, demonstrating how far God is willing to go to fulfill the promise of land to Abram. The Lord instructs Abram to slaughter a number of animals, cut them in half, and lay each half of the animals opposite to the other with a pathway between them. After a terrifying vision of Abraham's future descendants being in slavery for 400 years and the Lord returning them to the land of Canaan, the covenant-making ceremony proceeds with a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch moving down the pathway between the split animal carcasses (15:17–21). Fire frequently represents the presence of God in the Bible as it does here (Exod 3:2; 13:21; 19:18). The fire and smoke passing between the animals signifies God's oath to Abram that if God does not fulfill the promise of giving the land to his descendants, then God will be split in two like these animals (see Jer 34:18). God lays God's own future on the line as assurance that God's promise will be fulfilled. Whatever act of faith and obedience that Abraham may do in the future (Gen 22:1–19) will be grounded in this prior promise of God, guaranteed by God's dramatic pledge to Abram in Gen 15.

16:1–17:27. The Promise: From Abram-Hagar-Ishmael to Abraham-Sarah-Isaac. Abram had been assured by God in Gen 15 that Abram himself would be the father of a child and that his descendants would one day possess the land of Canaan. In Gen 16–17, the narrative lens widens to determine who will be the mother of this child. Abram's wife, Sarai, continues to be barren (11:30; 16:1). An ancient custom allowed a barren wife like Sarai to choose