Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Bible Reading Challenge - Week 3 Day 2 Genesis 29-33

Our reading challenge for the day is Genesis chapters 29-33. I'll hit a few highlights. You make comments too and fill in the gaps. What strikes you as specially significant?

Rather than break up by chapter, I read the whole passage and looked for the big point. See how Jacob begins as the deceiver who tries to take advantage of every situation he can. He seems selfish. Yet over the years, he finally starts to see that he doesn't win anything by himself. By the time he has departed from his twenty years' service to Laban, he is realizing that though he wants to take credit for his prosperity, the credit really belongs to God. When he is about to meet up with his brother again he has a stroke of realization. He has become a great prosperous man, a fact which weighs on him heavily. He could lose a great deal and begins to have concern about the well-being of his family and flocks. God rewards him by meeting with him, letting him struggle all night, and having Jacob realize that he is not the master of his own destiny. Thus empowered, Jacob is re-named Israel and carries on into his ancestral land where he will be much more the kind of man God appoints him to be.

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