Status Updates From The New English Bible

Oy vay… Leviticus is going to be a hard book to slog through. Lots of splashing of blood on the altar in the first four chapters.

Finished Exodus today. So weird to find that so much of this book are rules and specifications for how to worship and how to build the structures for worship. I always thought Exodus was about the flight of the Israelites from Egypt but that narrative only takes up about 1/2 the book.

It’s interesting how some chapters in the OT are repeated to some extent.

Chapter 24-27 detail the building of the ark of the covenant, the alter and the tabernacle. The OT is an odd mix of narrative and instructions. Ethical and moral instructions make sense in such a book. But I find it a little incongruous to read building blueprint instructions. I think the OT may have been used differently back when it was written than it is now.

I’m into Exodus and the wandering of the Israelites on their way to their promised land. What is dawning on me is how the bible, at least these first two books of the OT illustrate God’s tenacity, commitment, covenant with a fickle people. God remains watchful over them despite their often loss of faith.

Just like real people today.

Finished Genesis today. I found the last chronicle about Joseph interesting. I’d been taught in Sunday School that Joseph was an upstanding person who did right for his people, family and Egyptians. But reading today how he administered the famine, he took everything that Egyptians had in exchange for the grain that he had stored from their prior abundance enslaving them in return. How is that good?!

Seems like brothers have always gotten on each other’s nerves. Just finished the chapter where Joseph is sold to Egyptians. Also, another story where a relative fools another relative into sleeping with them and conceiving a child. Not quite incest as they were in-laws. But still! So much conniving and trickery within families in the OT.

I did not remember learning about the rape of Jacob’s daughter and his son’s slaughter of the rapist’s kin despite agreeing to their terms of circumcising all of their men. They came killed them all while they were healing and in pain from being circumcised. It was all a ruse so they could easily avenge the dishonour of Dinah. The OT is nasty!

What I find interesting in is how many of the Old Testament patriarchs tried to pass off their wives as their sisters out of fear of being killed by their neighbours who coveted their beautiful wives. Also, how many times brothers and sons deceived their siblings and fathers. I didn’t catch this when I was young and being taught this stuff in Sunday School.