“Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams” (Gen 37:19–20). There it is: “brotherly love” on display, for everyone to see!
The sons of Jacob, who became the sons of Israel, and then gave their names to “the twelve tribes of Israel”, as we saw in an earlier blog, are terrible role models. They show us fraternal jealousy and hatred at its worst. The story offered by the lectionary for this coming Sunday, Pentecost 11A, pulls no punches (37:1–4, 12–28). These sons could be mean!
We have left behind the stories of the three patriarchs of Israel, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their wives, the four matriarchs Sarah, Rebekah, Leah, and Rachel—although Jacob is still alive, and he will figure in some of the final scenes of Genesis in chapters 46 and 48—50. We turn our attention to Joseph, who had been born to Jacob’s wife Rachel, after years of waiting.
Only after his first wife Leah had given birth to six sons and a daughter, did Rachel give birth, as God “heeded Rachel and opened her womb” (Gen 30:22). As a sign of the passing of her barren state, Rachel declared, ‘God has taken away my reproach’; and we read that “she named him Joseph, saying, ‘May the LORD add to me another son!’ (Gen 30:23). That son, Benjamin, came years later, although Rachel tragically died giving birth (Gen 35:16–20).
We meet Joseph in the passage offered by the lectionary, which notes that, as he grew, Joseph was the favoured son (Gen 37:3). Of course, this fostered the jealousy of his brothers, who “hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him” (Gen 37:4). And so the scene is set for the problematic sequence of events that ensues, as his brothers initially plot to kill him (Gen 37:19–20), before Reuben intervenes (Gen 37:21–23).
We have already seen that the ethical standards of the people in these ancestral stories leaves something to be desired. Cheating, stealing, rape, incest, murder, and double dealing appear to be par for the course. Yet these brothers who plot to kill Joseph are the men who give their names to the tribes of Israel—names that are given pride of place in the priestly garments (Exod 1:1–4; 28:9–12, 21, 29; 39:6–7, 14) and in the later history of the people (1 Chron 2:1–2).
That these stories of their murky ways of operating have been preserved, passed on, and preached on with regularity, is quite remarkable! Perhaps we should reflect that human beings have always been flawed? Or that we should well expect that the ethical standards and cultural practices of our time are different from what held sway in past eras?
And perhaps we need also to note—and take caution from the observation—that this particular incident, selling Joseph for twenty pieces of silver, has fed into the unhelpful stereotype of the Jews who are always and in every way concerned about money. It’s a stereotype that has fed the burgeoning antisemitic attitude and actions of people throughout the Middle Ages, past the Enlightenment on into the modern age—culminating, of course, in the horrors of the Shoah (Holocaust) in Nazi Germany.
Back to the story of Genesis 37. That the brothers plot to kill Joseph, and are only dissuaded by the intervention of Reuben (Gen 37:21–23), is clearly a mark against them. That Judah then suggests that they sell him to a passing caravan of Ishmaelites (Gen 37:25–28), whilst it saves the life of Joseph, is yet another mark against the brothers.
Christian readers will perhaps compare the “twenty pieces of silver” that was paid for Joseph (Gen 37:28) with the thirty pieces of silver paid to Judas for handing Jesus over to the authorities (Matt 26:15). However, a number of passages in Hebrew Scriptures provide a more fitting contrast to the price paid for Joseph.
Abimelech, in his unsuccessful attempt to install himself as king in Israel, took “seventy pieces of silver out of the temple of Baal-berith with which [he] hired worthless and reckless fellows, who followed him” (Judg 9:4). So twenty pieces are significantly less.
And the story is told in Judges about when the lords of the Philistines bribed Delilah with eleven hundred pieces of silver to hand over Samson to them (Judg 16:5; 17:1–5), and in the Song of Songs the (poetically-exaggerated) claim is made that Solomon expected a thousand pieces of silver from each of the keepers of his vineyard (Song 8:11). So twenty pieces pales into utter significance, by comparison. Was Joseph worth so little.
The irony is that Israel as a whole is identified with reference to Joseph at a number of places in the Hebrew Scriptures. Both narrative texts and prophets refer to the whole nation as “the house of Joseph” (Josh 17:17; 18:5; Judg 1:22–23, 35; 2 Sam 19:20; 1 Ki 11:28; Amos 5:6; Obad 1:18; Zech 10:6).
The psalms sing of “the descendants of Jacob and Joseph” (Ps 77:15) and bring petitions to God, “Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock” (Ps 80:1). Psalm 81 places Joseph alongside Jacob and Israel: “it is a statute for Israel, an ordinance of the God of Jacob, he made it a decree in Joseph, when he went out over the land of Egypt” (Ps 81:4–5). The name of Joseph was revered in the ongoing traditions of Israel.
So let us treasure and reflect on this story, in which Joseph is sold off to foreign travellers. His life had been saved from the plotting of his brothers by a compassionate intervention by one of their number; but he is taken off into Egypt—for what fate?
*****
Reading the story chapter-by-chapter, as it appears in Genesis, we don’t yet know the significance of Egypt (other than the account of the time that Abram and Sarai spent in Egypt in Gen 12:10–13:12). But people hearing the story when it was written into the scrolls, after the return from Exile, would know of the time of slavery spent by their ancestors in Egypt, when “the Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, and made their lives bitter with hard service” (Exod 1:13–14). They know the ominous threat that lies over Joseph at the end of this week’s story: “they took Joseph to Egypt” (Gen 37:28).
That fate is symbolised by the note in the immediately following verses, that the brothers of Joseph dipped his coat into the blood of a slaughtered goat and brought it back to Jacob. When Jacob recognized the coat, he concluded that “a wild animal has devoured him; Joseph is without doubt torn to pieces” (Gen 37:33). Jacob mourned for many days; despite the best efforts of his family, “he refused to be comforted, and said, ‘I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning” (Gen 37:35).
The narrative leaves Joseph with the tantalising comment that he was sold by the Midianites to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s officials (Gen 37:36), before veering off to tell a long story about Judah and Tamar (Gen 38). The question remains: what fate awaits Joseph?
The book of Genesis is dominated by people whose stories are told because they have shaped the self-understanding and identity of the ancient nation of Israel. Written in the form that we now have them by the priests who had held the stories of Israel through the decades of Exile, those stories comprise oral tales, told and retold over centuries before that Exile, remembered and passed on because they offered insights into who the people of Israel had become—committed, resilient, crafty, and faithful.
The stories are dominated by the men—Adam and Noah, Abraham and Isaac, Jacob, and his twelve sons, most notably Joseph. Indeed, the closing chapters of Genesis contain a series of poetic blessings on those twelve men, who are remembered as “the twelve tribes of Israel” (Gen 49), before recounting a key familial reconciliation, the death of the great partriarch Jacob, and then the death of his son Joseph (Gen 50). We have heard these stories, from the second Sunday after Pentecost (Gen 12) through to the tenth Sunday after Pentecost (Gen 32).
In these stories, the men dominate. There are, to be sure, women who also play key roles in the stories that are collected into this first narrative book. Sarah and Hagar get a place in the story alongside Abraham. Rebekah is there, with Isaac; and Leah and Rachel too, with the manipulation of their father Laban and the lust of their husband Jacob. Here we have the four great matriarchs of Judaism, arrayed alongside their husbands: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob with Leah and Rachel. The stories told give insight into the characters of these women; they serve as role models in the ongoing story of Israel.
There are also servants co-opted to produce children when the matriarch looked like she would not reproduce: Hagar, Zilpah, and Bilhah—important women, but not included in the traditional list of matriarchs. They take their place in the story largely because of the male offspring they produced. And when we come to the twelve sons of Jacob, there are wives who are noted, but nothing further is revealed about them—except for Asenath, the wife of Joseph.
But who have we missed, in the stories from Genesis which have been offered by lectionary over the past few months? Seven women, or groups of women, should be noted. In this post, I will deal with those who appear in the section of Genesis which is dominated by Abraham and Isaac (Gen 12:1—28:9). The women in the chapters beyond this, which tell the story of Jacob and his sons, and especially of Joseph, that will be considered in a later post.
1 The wife and daughters of Lot
First, there is reference to the wife and two daughters of Abraham’s son-in-law, Lot. Lot is noted in the genealogical material listing the descendants of Terah, his grandfather (Gen 11:31). Lot accompanies Abram and Sarai and “all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran” as they journeyed to Canaan (Gen 12:5); he then moves with them into the Negeb, en route to Egypt (Gen 13:1).
We learn that “Lot chose for himself all the plain of the Jordan, and Lot journeyed eastward”, and so “Lot settled among the cities of the Plain and moved his tent as far as Sodom” (Gen 13:11–12). There is no mention of any female associated with Lot in any of these instances. However, after Abraham entertains visitors who stay with him at Mamre, as they are travelling to Sodom (Gen 18:1–16), and then after Abraham debates with God about the threat to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 18:17–33), Lot is visited by “two angels” (Gen 19:4).
He offers them hospitality; but the people of Sodom call for Lot to release those two people “so that we may know them” (Gen 19:5). So Lot offers, in their place, his “two daughters who have not known a man” (Gen 19:8). This is the first indication that Lot was married with children; and the way his virgin daughters are offered as sexual objects for the people of Sodom is a horrifying introduction to them!
So, warned by these “two angels” to leave the area, Lot hesitates (Gen 19:15–16). What they say to Lot is the first reference to his wife: “get up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or else you will be consumed in the punishment of the city” (Gen 19:15). They also advise him, “do not look back or stop anywhere in the Plain; flee to the hills, or else you will be consumed” (Gen 19:17). Lot leaves Sodom, but “Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt” (Gen 19:26). And that is how she is best known—not by her name, not as the daughter of her father, but as Lot’s wife, who was turned into a pillar of salt.
Dr Tamar Kadari, writing in the Jewish Women’s Archive, notes that in a later rabbinic text, this woman is given the name Idit, and a story is told about her reluctance to obtain salt from her neighbours, as Lot has requested. This becomes the reason for her punishment, being turned into a pillar of salt. Another text she cites, attributed to Rabbi Eliezer, says that Lot and his wife were actually saved from the destruction of the city; but there were two married daughters who had remained in Sodom, so she looked behind her to see them for the last time. When she did this, she saw the back of the Shekhinah (the Divine Presence), and so she was transformed into a pillar of salt.
Lot’s daughters went with Lot into the hills nearby; the biblical text describes their devious acts of making their father drunk and both having sexual intercourse with him, thereby producing two sons, Moab and Ben-ammi (Gen 19:30–38). From these two children of incestual rape (of a man, by his daughters, no less!), the despised Moabites and Ammonites descended. Of these people, none are permitted to enter God’s assembly (Deut 23:3; Neh 13:1–2) and good Israelites were later forbidden to marry them (Ezra 9:1–2). Those prohibitions explain the awful nature of these aetiological tales about Lot’s family.
Lot, his disobedient wife, and his aggressively incestual daughters, certainly provides a stark tale (none of which is included in any lectionary offering!). The anonymous women in the story are certainly strong characters. Their actions are told to explain the character of near neighbours with whom the Israelites later had difficult relationships. We remember these women, but perhaps not for the usual reason we seek to remember characters in the biblical text.
Next, there is the sombre tale of Dinah, the sole female child of Jacob, birthed by Leah after the six sons she had produced (Gen 30:21). This story is told in Gen 34, after Jacob, after he had left Laban in Paddan-aram, had encountered his brother Esau, after a long period of separation (Gen 33:1–17). Jacob and his family settled in Shechem in Canaan, where he bought land and erected an altar (Gen 33:18–20).
Dinah was raped by a man who bore the name of the town, Shechem (Gen 34:2)—but immediately “his soul was drawn to Dinah … he loved the girl and spoke tenderly to her”, and asked his father to be married to her (Gen 34:3–4). Was it possible that a relationship that was formed on the basis of crass selfishness and the forceful expression of power could develop into one shaped by love and respect? The text seems to hint …
However, what ensues is a tale of family revenge for the dishonouring of Dinah. When the sons of Jacob came in from their work in the fields, they were, quite rightly it would seem, “indignant and very angry, because [Shechem] had committed an outrage in Israel by lying with Jacob’s daughter, for such a thing ought not to be done” (Gen 34:7).
Shechem’s princely father, Hamor, attempted to negotiate, but the words of the brothers were deceptive (Gen 34:13–19). They convinced Hamor that they were “friendly with us” and he, in turn, persuaded “the men of the city … at the gates of the city” to “agree with them, and they will live among us” in peace (Gen 34:20–23), on condition that the men of the city be circumcised—which they were (Gen 34:21).
But the sons of Jacob (remember, these are the men who are honoured in ongoing Israelite and Jewish traditions as the venerable men who have their name to the twelve tribes of Israel) then pounce: “two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, took their swords and came against the city unawares, and killed all the males”, including Hamor and Shechem (Gen 34:25). They “took Dinah out of Shechem’s house, and went away” (Gen 34:26).
Then, “the other sons of Jacob came upon the slain, and plundered the city … they took their flocks and their herds, their donkeys, and whatever was in the city and in the field” (Gen 34:27–30). This massive over-reaction was to avenge the fact that “their sister had been defiled” (Gen 34:27). Their father, Jacob, was unimpressed; “you have brought trouble on me”, he said, “by making me odious to the inhabitants of the land”, lamenting that “my numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household” (Gen 34:30).
What did Dinah make of this wholescale, and out-of-proportion, revenge attack? She is silent—indeed, she is absent from the text from verse 26, when her brothers removed her from the house of Shechem. In contrast, we hear their voice loud and clear, in their riposte to their father: “should our sister be treated like a whore?” (Gen 34:31). Nothing will dissuade them of the “rightness” of their actions. Men, standing up for women, by acts of violence and destruction; women, absent from the story, as their honour is defended. It is a sorry tale.
Writing on the biblical text in the Jewish Women’s Archive, Professor Rachel Adelman observes that the narrative “is rife with gaps and ambiguities, in which Dinah’s silence and the divide between father and brothers loom large”. The story, she posits, presents “the impossibility of integration with the Canaanites in the land”—the story of Dinah and Shechem demonstrates that this produces disastrous results.
Furthermore, Dr Adelman notes that “boundaries of identity are forged through negotiations over the destiny of the young woman’s body”—in other words, the silent, debased, raped female is the fulcrum around which the identity of the nation of Israel is shaped. “In the context of the honor-shame socio-cultural milieu, the daughter’s voice hardly matters. Even when the Hivites are willing to remove the Israelite symbol of “disgrace” (the foreskin) from their male bodies in order to intermarry with Jacob’s family, their status as the tainted ineluctable “other” remains.”
Then, Dr Adelman observes that “contemporary feminist readers seek to reclaim the voice of the silenced Dinah, to reassert her own agency and even desire to be with Shechem … alternatively, if she was raped, her own pain and anguish must be heard over the violent clamor in defense of male honor.” Dare we listen carefully, to hear that silent female pain, over the noise of male revenge?
Dr Tamar Kadari, also writing in the Jewish Women’s Archive, observes of Dinah that “the Rabbis present her as possessing many positive qualities, as was fitting for the daughter of the progenitors of the Israelite nation.” They attempt to rehabilitate Dinah by recounting her later marriage—one account has her married to Job, because she is a “shameless woman [ha-nevalot]” (Job 2:10), which they connect with the shame [nevalah] of Dinah (Gen 34:7).
Another explanation is that Dinah married her brother, Simeon. Dr Kadari explains the rabbinic midrash: “a son was born from this union, “Saul the son of a Canaanite woman” (Gen 46:10); Dinah was the ‘Canaanite woman’, because her behavior was like that of the Canaanites.” A final claim is that Dinah, impregnated by Shechem, gave birth to Asenath, who was transported to Egypt and raised by the barren wife of Potiphar. And then, along came Joseph!
But that is skipping ahead; more on Asenath in the next blog on this topic.
A group of women are noted and indeed named in association with Esau, the brother of Jacob. The narrative first notes that “when Esau was forty years old, he married Judith daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath daughter of Elon the Hittite; and they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah” (Gen 26:34–35). The note of family discord is not unusual in these ancestral narratives! But who is the “they” in this comment? Just those wives of Esau? Or is Esau himself included? It depends on how patriarchal and sexist we think the text is.
Next, we are told that “when Esau saw that the Canaanite women did not please his father Isaac, Esau went to Ishmael and took Mahalath daughter of Abraham’s son Ishmael, and sister of Nebaioth, to be his wife in addition to the wives he had” (Gen 28:9). So Mahalath joins Judith and Basemath as named wives of Esau.
Later genealogical listings offer the names of Adah, Oholibamah, and Basemath, but not Judith. First, we learn that “Esau took his wives from the Canaanites: Adah daughter of Elon the Hittite, Oholibamah daughter of Anah son of Zibeon the Hivite, and Basemath, Ishmael’s daughter, sister of Nebaioth. Adah bore Eliphaz to Esau; Basemath bore Reuel; and Oholibamah bore Jeush, Jalam, and Korah. These are the sons of Esau who were born to him in the land of Canaan.” (Gen 36:1–5).
Then, after Esau took his family and “settled in the hill country of Seir; Esau is Edom” (Gen 36:8), we learn that “these are the names of Esau’s sons: Eliphaz son of Adah the wife of Esau; Reuel, the son of Esau’s wife Basemath” (Gen 36:10). Only two wives are noted at this point.
The text continues, “the sons of Eliphaz were Teman, Omar, Zepho, Gatam, and Kenaz. (Timna was a concubine of Eliphaz, Esau’s son; she bore Amalek to Eliphaz.) These were the sons of Adah, Esau’s wife. These were the sons of Reuel: Nahath, Zerah, Shammah, and Mizzah. These were the sons of Esau’s wife, Basemath. These were the sons of Esau’s wife Oholibamah, daughter of Anah son of Zibeon: she bore to Esau Jeush, Jalam, and Korah.” (Gen 36:10–14). So three wives are named in this final passage.
Sadly—as is often the case—these genealogical listings focus on the male descendants. Whether any daughters were born, or survived beyond birth, is not stated. The gender bias is clear; we hear only about the sons. And we know nothing about the life of most of these men in the subsequent generation—and in association with them, the women married to them or any sisters they had; nothing is revealed by the text. So many questions; so little information!!
As a family historian, this is a familiar problem: tracing the male line is easier than connecting in the females, men are mentioned more frequently in published sources, many women remain mute and invisible in the family story. It takes effort and intention to retrieve even a little of them for our attention. Let us at least attend to the women included in the stories that are told, and honour them for the roles they played and the contribution they made to the larger story.
On 6 August 1945, at 8:15 am, a nuclear weapon which had been given the ironic name “Little Boy” was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The bomb was dropped from an American B-29 plane, the Enola Gay. A number of military units were located nearby, including the command centre for the defence of all of southern Japan.
Three days later, on 9 August 1945, at 11:01 am, another nuclear weapon was dropped from another American B-29 plane, the Bokscar, onto another Japanese city, Nagasaki.
In the months before August, Tokyo and Yokohama and other cities had been extensively fire-bombed, but no one could have imagined the devastation of the A-bombs. It has been estimated that these two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, on the day and in the weeks immediately following the bombings. There are many other deaths that took place in the years afterwards, as well as many, many accounts of diseases, which have been attributed to the fallout from the nuclear bombs.
These two incidents remain the only use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict. They come to the fore of our attention in August each year, as the anniversary rolls around. This year, however, it may well be more focussed, because,of the recent release of the movie Oppenheimer, which tells the story of Robert Oppenheimer, who was the driving intellectual force behind the development of the technology that enabled nuclear power to be exploded in such a destructive way.
Also involved in that process was Mark Oliphant, an Australian scientist, who some commentators believe was the person that guided Oppenheimer from his theoretical scientific pursuits into this applied field of using physics for human warfare. See
This year, in remembering these two bombings and the subsequent damage caused by them both, I have explored some online resources relating to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the ongoing impacts of those two terrible bombings.
On one online page, creative writer Marie Neil writes about the personal impact of warfare: “Increasingly, we realise war is not even about soldiers – the greatest casualties are always civilians – just like the atomic blasts all those decades ago. Returned men and women, damaged beyond recognition suffering the extremities of loss and bereavement.
“They do not get over it, or move on, or get closure. Survivors with grievous wounds often chose suicide, others clung to another existence, a shadow of their previous life. There were soldiers who had accidents or illness and died without getting near a battlefield.” It is a never-ending roll of casualties, spread across the world.
In commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the dropping of bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki almost a decade ago, TIME Magazine curated a selection of testimonies from survivors in both cities, recounting their experiences in 1945. It makes for sober reading.
A scene in Nagasaki after the bombing
YASUJIRO TANAKA (in Nagasaki)
“I lost hearing in my left ear, probably due to the air blast. More than a decade after the bombing, my mother began to notice glass shards growing out of her skin – debris from the day of the bombing, presumably. My younger sister suffers from chronic muscle cramps to this day, on top of kidney issues that has her on dialysis three times a week. ‘What did I do to the Americans?’ she would often say, ‘Why did they do this to me?’”
SHIGEKO MATSUMOTO (in Nagasaki)
“At 11:02am, the sky turned bright white. My siblings and I were knocked off our feet and violently slammed back into the bomb shelter. We had no idea what had happened. As we sat there shell-shocked and confused, heavily injured burn victims came stumbling into the bomb shelter en masse.
“Their skin had peeled off their bodies and faces and hung limply down on the ground, in ribbons. Their hair was burnt down to a few measly centimeters from the scalp. Many of the victims collapsed as soon as they reached the bomb shelter entrance, forming a massive pile of contorted bodies. The stench and heat were unbearable. My siblings and I were trapped in there for three days.”
A scene in Hiroshima after the bombing
FUJIO TORIKOSHI (in Hiroshima)
“I heard my mother’s voice in the distance. ‘Fujio! Fujio!’ I clung to her desperately as she scooped me up in her arms. ‘It burns, mama! It burns!’ I drifted in and out of consciousness for the next few days. My face swelled up so badly that I could not open my eyes. I was treated briefly at an air raid shelter and later at a hospital in Hatsukaichi, and was eventually brought home wrapped in bandages all over my body.
“I was unconscious for the next few days, fighting a high fever. I finally woke up to a stream of light filtering in through the bandages over my eyes and my mother sitting beside me, playing a lullaby on her harmonica. I was told that I had until about age 20 to live.
“Yet here I am seven decades later, aged 86. All I want to do is forget, but the prominent keloid scar on my neck is a daily reminder of the atomic bomb. We cannot continue to sacrifice precious lives to warfare. All I can do is pray – earnestly, relentlessly – for world peace.”
INOSUKE HAYASAKI (in Nagasaki)
“The injured were sprawled out over the railroad tracks, scorched and black. When I walked by, they moaned in agony. ‘Water… water…’
I heard a man in passing announce that giving water to the burn victims would kill them. I was torn. I knew that these people had hours, if not minutes, to live. These burn victims – they were no longer of this world.
‘Water… water…’
“I decided to look for a water source. Luckily, I found a futon nearby engulfed in flames. I tore a piece of it off, dipped it in the rice paddy nearby, and wrang it over the burn victims’ mouths. There were about 40 of them. I went back and forth, from the rice paddy to the railroad tracks. They drank the muddy water eagerly. Among them was my dear friend Yamada. ‘Yama- da! Yamada!’ I exclaimed, giddy to see a familiar face. I placed my hand on his chest. His skin slid right off, exposing his flesh. I was mortified. ‘Water…’ he murmured. I wrang the water over his mouth. Five minutes later, he was dead.
“In fact, most of the people I tended to were dead. I cannot help but think that I killed those burn victims. What if I hadn’t given them water? Would many of them have lived? I think about this everyday.”
My colleague Chris Walker has written wisely, in reflection on war and the great damage it causes: ‘Let us then be peacemakers following the way of Jesus. Jesus himself rejected the way of the sword. At his arrest he told his disciples to put away their swords. He followed the way of suffering love and did not resort to violence. Even on the cross he cried out, “Father forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).’ See
“Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds” (Matt 14:22). And then, “early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea; but when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, ‘It is a ghost!’, and they cried out in fear” (Matt 14:25–26).
Both incidents come from the Gospel passage which is offered in the schedule of lectionary readings for this coming Sunday (Matt 14:22–33). The first excerpt, telling of a crossing of the Sea of Galilee by boat, reports a liminal experience, as the disciples cross over from one side of the lake to the other side. The second excerpt tells of a thin place moment, when the eyes of the disciples are opened up to see Jesus in a new way. Both liminal experiences and thin place moments are important in the Christian life. And often they are interconnected and occur almost simultaneously, as in this story.
Liminal experiences occur at times of transition, when we move from one place to another. The word liminal comes from the Latin word līmen, which means “a threshold”. Technically, that is the place that marks off one space from another. Its origin was the strip of wood or stone at the bottom of a doorway, which was crossed in entering a house or room.
The thresh is the place where one treads as one enters a room. So the threshold is where you take hold of the thresh, where you put your foot as you walk into a new room or new place. Anthropologists define liminality as “the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a ritual”. It is the moment when participants no longer hold their preritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete.
Sociologists say that in the liminal stage of a rite, participants “stand at the threshold” between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way, which completing the rite establishes. I wonder how that might apply the story of Jesus sending his disciples away, across the lake, while he went “up a mountain” to pray. Why has he sent them on ahead of him? What kind of experience was he anticipating that they might have, without him?
The concept of liminality was developed in the early twentieth century sociologists. It was applied particularly to religious rituals marking the movement of a person from one stage to another. More recently, usage of the term has broadened to the political and cultural arena, alongside the religious or faith area.
During liminal periods of all kinds, the experts tell us, “social hierarchies may be reversed or temporarily dissolved, continuity of tradition may become uncertain, and future outcomes once taken for granted may be thrown into doubt. The dissolution of order during liminality creates a fluid, malleable situation that enables new institutions and customs to become established.”
[I found this on Wikipedia, which references the source as Agnes Horvath, Bjørn Thomassen, and Harald Wydra, Introduction: Liminality and Cultures of Change (International Political Anthropology 2009). Accessed 18 March 2019.]
That’s where the disciples found themselves, as they sailed across the lake, pushing from land on one side of the lake, heading towards the land they could see on the other side, but on the water, in the midst of the lake: in a liminal moment.
And the liminal moment is precisely where change takes place, where a new reality can be experienced. In liminal moments, a thin place might be experienced. Is that what happened to the disciples on the lake, as they saw a figure walking towards them? A figure that they recognised as Jesus—for when “the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, ‘It is a ghost!’ And they cried out in fear” (14:26).
In the Celtic world, thin places are those places where the veil between this world and the otherworld is porous. They are places where human beings on the earth sense that they are standing in a place where the sky opens up, as it were, and they are drawn into a strong connection with the world beyond—with the spiritual realm, with the place where the deity is, with heaven, if you like.
The thin place is the place where the thick, dividing barrier between “heaven” and “earth” is lessened, where it becomes thin—a place where a person feels that they could reach out and “touch God”.
Thin places are often experienced where there is a sense of mystery in the landscape, or where there is a deep sense of belonging to the land as a sacred place, a sense of being so deeply earthed, yet at a place, paradoxically, which opens up to reveal something of a transcending reality, enabling contact beyond the immediate time and place. This is particularly the case among peoples whose connection to place has remained unbroken through the ages—indigenous people in Australia, in the United States and Canada, and Celtic people in Ireland and Scotland.
For the disciples, the Sea of Galilee was familiar territory. Indeed, four of them had made their living by fishing in that sea before they encountered Jesus and responded to his call to “follow me” (4:18-22). Would they have regarded that sea as a thin place where they could encounter God? Perhaps it had become a holy place for them, as they carried out their daily tasks, and felt that the difference between themselves and the sea was falling away?
Earlier in Matthew’s narrative, the disciples had been in a boat with Jesus on the sea (8:23), when a dramatic experience took place. Crossing the sea, a huge storm whips up the water. Mark’s earlier account had described this as a lailaps, a ferocious wind (Mark 4:37); Matthew modifies his version, such that the disturbance of the water was explained as being due to a seismos, an earthquake (Matt 8:24).
In both versions, the sleeping Jesus is woken, and he stills the storm (Mark 4:39; Matt 8:26). Seeing this, the disciples have an epiphany; the moment has opened up a new insight into Jesus for his disciples, as they utter the words, “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” (Matt 8:27). In asking this question, the disciples are alluding to Psalm 107, which affirms of God, “he made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed” (Ps 107:29–30). In like manner, another psalm praises God that “you rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them” (Ps 89:9).
The question of the disciples is rhetorical; it is clear that when Jesus stills the storm, he is manifesting divine powers. Indeed, Matthew’s reworking of the story to introduce the earthquake links this “thin place” experience with other moments in the story of Jesus when the divine interposes into human life—as Jesus dies on the cross (27:51, 54), as soldiers keep watch at the tomb (28:2), and at the predicted “beginning of the birth pangs” at the coming “end of the age” (24:7–8).
That moment on the sea, in the midst of the earthquake-indicted storm, is a liminal experience that functions like a thin place for the disciples; the reality of God’s presence is glimpsed by the disciples. So it seems that on the second journey across the lake to “the other side” (8:18; 14:22), another thin place experience takes place for them. The ferocious wind and the battering of the waves places them, once again, in a precarious situation. Did they have in mind the earlier experience,when Jesus stilled the storm? The terra that leads them to exclaim” it is a ghost” (14:26) suggests that they were quite discombobulated.
Jesus had sent the disciples on across the lake ahead of himself, while he took time to go “up the mountain by himself to pray” (14:23). Jesus, of course, is often up a mountain in Matthew’s Gospel: early on, when he is tested by the devil (4:8); then as he teaches his disciples (5:1–8:1), after he had cured many people beside the Sea of Galilee (15:29), and when he is transfigured (17:1–9); and in the very final scene of the Gospel, after his resurrection (28:16–20).
The mountain, in earlier stories, had been the place where Moses engaged with God (Exod 19:3–25), where Joshua is appointed to succeed Moses (Num 27:12–23), where Solomon builds the Temple (1 Ki 5:5; 6:1–38), where Elijah experiences “the sound of sheer silence” (1 Ki 19:11–18), and where generations of faithful Israelites worshipped the Lord God (Ps 99:9). In Matthew’s narrative, Jesus is on the mountain to draw near to his Father—to find his own thin place, as it were.
So this narrative has elements that invite us to consider our own faith journey; to reflect on the liminal moments in that journey, when we have moved from one place, through a transition, into another; and to ponder when it was that we felt closest to God, to the extent that we were at a thin place, where we could reach out and touch God. The story we hear this coming Sunday, a story about Jesus and his disciples, invites us yet again to ponder our own story.
The church is alive and well. In recent years, Uniting Mission and Education, working within the Synod of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory of the Uniting Church in Australia, has supported a project in which good news stories of thriving congregations are told through professionally-produced videos. The Signal Box has just completed the sixth video in this series, Transforming Connections, featuring the mission and ministry of the Tuggeranong Congregation in the southern suburbs of Canberra.
Under the energetic leadership of the Rev. Elizabeth Raine [my wife], the Tuggeranong Church Council has charted a deliberate course to make a difference in the wider Tuggeranong community—to be the “salt of the earth” in southern Canberra. “I am a change agent”, says Elizabeth, with great honesty; “I won’t just come in and do the ‘status quo’.” The video, which shows the results of this approach, can be viewed at https://www.nswact.uca.org.au/resources/our-story-future-directions-video-series/
In this video, we learn how deliberate connections have been fostered with a number of community groups in the area. Kirsty and Liz speak about the flourishing with SeeChange Tuggeranong, which has seen regular events with a focus on sustainability. In recent years, the Congregation has also participated in local ACT community events such as Floriade Reimagined and SouthFest, and hosted the Canberra SleepBus for a period of time.
Jenny and Anne represent the fine team of volunteers in the Red Dove pop-up Op Shop. Wearing their “volunteers uniform” (which has the words of Micah 6:8 as the motif for the shop), they speak about the reinvigoration that has taken place, as the team has focussed on both living and sharing the good news—the Gospel—that drives the enterprise. As well as providing recycled clothing and goods at very reasonable prices, there is an environmental plus: “Jesus would be horrified with all this clothing going into the tip”, Anne says. That marks one of the many ways that the Congregation is working to reduce their carbon footprint on the earth.
Within the Congregation, another group continues to provide its weekly Emergency Food programme and the Lunchtime Conversation group. Quite a number of people within the Congregation take part in the weekly visit to Karralika, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre in the Tuggeranong Valley, to offer a “God space” to residents. Leonie and one of the former residents speak in the video with joy and hope about the positive impact that this ministry offering has had over many years.
Bill Lang, a member of the Church Council, is responsible for communications for the Congregation. Under Bill’s leadership, the website has been upgraded, regular Facebook posts are made about activities of the church, and short seasonal videos are posted on the Tuggeranong Uniting Church (TUC) website at https://tuc.org.au. Bill also edits and uploads videos of the weekly online Bible Studies which are offered throughout the year—they can be accessed in the TUC YouTube Library at https://www.youtube.com/@tuggeranongunitingchurch4795/playlists
Bill has been a member at Tuggeranong for many decades, and in the video he speaks about the ways the Congregation has adapted and developed through into the contemporary period. The online presence of TUC, through website, Facebook, and Instagram, is a key to the growth of the Congregation. Another longterm member Liz talks about the TUC Girls Brigade ministry that has been offered over the years.
Supporting the Congregation in its development, Canberra Region Presbytery Minister Andrew Smith talks in the video about the importance of informed, enthusiastic leadership—from ministers as well as from key lay leaders. “Elizabeth’s leadership has been really important”, Andrew says; “she has enabled them to see differently, to imagine differently for what church might be”.
“Canberra has a higher proportion of same-sex couples than any other city according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics”, Elizabeth Raine comments, “and TUC offers a safe space for the many Christian LGBTQI people who report poor experiences with churches and Christianity in general.” A monthly Rainbow Christian Alliance, which has been a part of the Congregation for eight years, has broadened its membership in recent years, spreading beyond gay and lesbian people to include growing numbers of people who are trans, intersex, and asexual. Three members of the Rainbow group speak in the video about their experiences of being accepted and valued within a faith community.
The local Greens MLA, Jonathan Davis, who himself identifies as gay, is a friend of the Congregation. In the video, he speaks about how he finds the Tuggeranong Community to be a welcoming space for him—unlike many other faith spaces where he has felt awkward or unwanted.
A monthly Messy Church under the name of Fam@4 now meets at 4pm on the 4th Sunday of the month, providing a time for younger folk to enjoy craft, worship, and eat a meal together. The video shows one of the regular intergenerational worship services which are held at key moments on Sunday mornings. Inevitably the church is filled with people of all ages, craft activities, vibrant music, with lots of colour, energy, and caring relationships growing. Pentecost is always a blaze of red; Christmas offers opportunity for joyous celebrations!
The Rev. Sharon Jacobs recently began a placement as the Relationships and Growth Minister, a newly-created position funded substantially by the Synod Growth Fund. Sharon is focussing her 50% role on developing the Congregation’s work with families and children, as well as supporting and growing the leadership and membership of the Rainbow Christian Alliance.
She works alongside Elizabeth Raine, whose experience in transitional ministry and understanding of how systems work has undergirded the way she has encouraged, enthused, challenged, and grown the many aspects of the life of the Congregation. The video offers dramatic and encouraging glimpses into the development and growth that has taken place.
And there is a stunning drone shot of the recently-completed mural on the large western wall of the church building which looks out across Comrie St to the regional Erindale Shopping Centre. The joy and colour of the symbols in the mural offer an inviting facade to those who pass by each day. The church is known and valued within its local community—and the many connections that have been made, and are being made, are truly “transforming connections”. They are transforming for the community; and they are transforming for the Congregation.
The church is alive and well. In recent years, Uniting Mission and Education, working within the Synod of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory of the Uniting Church in Australia, has supported a project in which good news stories of thriving congregations are told through professionally-produced videos. The Signal Box has just completed the sixth video in this series, Transforming Connections, featuring the mission and ministry of the Tuggeranong Congregation in the southern suburbs of Canberra.
Under the energetic leadership of the Rev. Elizabeth Raine [my wife], the Tuggeranong Church Council has charted a deliberate course to make a difference in the wider Tuggeranong community—to be the “salt of the earth” in southern Canberra. “I am a change agent”, says Elizabeth, with great honesty; “I won’t just come in and do the ‘status quo’.” The video, which shows the results of this approach, can be viewed at https://www.nswact.uca.org.au/resources/our-story-future-directions-video-series/
In this video, we learn how deliberate connections have been fostered with a number of community groups in the area. Kirsty and Liz speak about the flourishing with SeeChange Tuggeranong, which has seen regular events with a focus on sustainability. In recent years, the Congregation has also participated in local ACT community events such as Floriade Reimagined and SouthFest, and hosted the Canberra SleepBus for a period of time.
Jenny and Anne represent the fine team of volunteers in the Red Dove pop-up Op Shop. Wearing their “volunteers uniform” (which has the words of Micah 6:8 as the motif for the shop), they speak about the reinvigoration that has taken place, as the team has focussed on both living and sharing the good news—the Gospel—that drives the enterprise. As well as providing recycled clothing and goods at very reasonable prices, there is an environmental plus: “Jesus would be horrified with all this clothing going into the tip”, Anne says. That marks one of the many ways that the Congregation is working to reduce their carbon footprint on the earth.
Within the Congregation, another group continues to provide its weekly Emergency Food programme and the Lunchtime Conversation group. Quite a number of people within the Congregation take part in the weekly visit to Karralika, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre in the Tuggeranong Valley, to offer a “God space” to residents. Leonie and one of the former residents speak in the video with joy and hope about the positive impact that this ministry offering has had over many years.
Bill Lang, a member of the Church Council, is responsible for communications for the Congregation. Under Bill’s leadership, the website has been upgraded, regular Facebook posts are made about activities of the church, and short seasonal videos are posted on the Tuggeranong Uniting Church (TUC) website at https://tuc.org.au. Bill also edits and uploads videos of the weekly online Bible Studies which are offered throughout the year—they can be accessed in the TUC YouTube Library at https://www.youtube.com/@tuggeranongunitingchurch4795/playlists
Bill has been a member at Tuggeranong for many decades, and in the video he speaks about the ways the Congregation has adapted and developed through into the contemporary period. The online presence of TUC, through website, Facebook, and Instagram, is a key to the growth of the Congregation. Another longterm member Liz talks about the TUC Girls Brigade ministry that has been offered over the years.
Supporting the Congregation in its development, Canberra Region Presbytery Minister Andrew Smith talks in the video about the importance of informed, enthusiastic leadership—from ministers as well as from key lay leaders. “Elizabeth’s leadership has been really important”, Andrew says; “she has enabled them to see differently, to imagine differently for what church might be”.
“Canberra has a higher proportion of same-sex couples than any other city according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics”, Elizabeth Raine comments, “and TUC offers a safe space for the many Christian LGBTQI people who report poor experiences with churches and Christianity in general.” A monthly Rainbow Christian Alliance, which has been a part of the Congregation for eight years, has broadened its membership in recent years, spreading beyond gay and lesbian people to include growing numbers of people who are trans, intersex, and asexual. Three members of the Rainbow group speak in the video about their experiences of being accepted and valued within a faith community.
The local Greens MLA, Jonathan Davis, who himself identifies as gay, is a friend of the Congregation. In the video, he speaks about how he finds the Tuggeranong Community to be a welcoming space for him—unlike many other faith spaces where he has felt awkward or unwanted.
A monthly Messy Church under the name of Fam@4 now meets at 4pm on the 4th Sunday of the month, providing a time for younger folk to enjoy craft, worship, and eat a meal together. The video shows one of the regular intergenerational worship services which are held at key moments on Sunday mornings. Inevitably the church is filled with people of all ages, craft activities, vibrant music, with lots of colour, energy, and caring relationships growing. Pentecost is always a blaze of red; Christmas offers opportunity for joyous celebrations!
The Rev. Sharon Jacobs recently began a placement as the Relationships and Growth Minister, a newly-created position funded substantially by the Synod Growth Fund. Sharon is focussing her 50% role on developing the Congregation’s work with families and children, as well as supporting and growing the leadership and membership of the Rainbow Christian Alliance.
She works alongside Elizabeth Raine, whose experience in transitional ministry and understanding of how systems work has undergirded the way she has encouraged, enthused, challenged, and grown the many aspects of the life of the Congregation. The video offers dramatic and encouraging glimpses into the development and growth that has taken place.
And there is a stunning drone shot of the recently-completed mural on the large western wall of the church building which looks out across Comrie St to the regional Erindale Shopping Centre. The joy and colour of the symbols in the mural offer an inviting facade to those who pass by each day. The church is known and valued within its local community—and the many connections that have been made, and are being made, are truly “transforming connections”. They are transforming for the community; and they are transforming for the Congregation.
When the priests of Judah returned to their homeland after decades in exile, they wrote down their ideal as to how the people should worship God and honour God in their lives. An integral part of that system of worship was the offering of the tamid, the daily sacrifice, “two male lambs a year old without blemish, daily, as a regular offering; one lamb you shall offer in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight.” (Num 28:3). The importance of offering a perfect lamb, without any blemish, was paramount.
In parallel with that, every priest also needed to be “perfect”, with no sign of blemish—“not one who is blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long, or one who has a broken foot or a broken hand, or a hunchback, or a dwarf, or a man with a blemish in his eyes or an itching disease or scabs or crushed testicles”, according to Lev 21:16–24. Yoiks!
Jesus, of course, picks up on this notion of perfection when he counsels a wealthy young man who claims that he keeps all the commandments, “if you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” (Matt 19:21). This “counsel of perfection” was then developed by the evolving Christian tradition, specifically impressing upon candidates for the priesthood their need to aspire to that perfection, through vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience.
My own church, the Uniting Church in Australia, fortunately does not require its ministers to be chaste, or even poor—although we do ask for a good measure of obedience. But the image of Ministry which sits firmly with me as the primary one is not that of “being perfect”; rather, it comes from a story in the ancient sagas of the people of Israel—a story about when Jacob wrestled with a man all night.
In this story, one of the patriarchs of Israel, Jacob, “wrestled with him until daybreak; and when the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.” (Gen 32:25). This is the story which the lectionary provides for our consideration this coming Sunday (Gen 32:22–31).
It is in this story that Jacob, the “supplanter”, is given the new name Israel, “he wrestled with God”. The patriarch Jacob, who would give his name to the people Israel, limped, because of the all-night struggle that he had at this ford in the river. One of my teaching colleagues once wrote a paper in which he developed the image of the minister as the limping priest of God. And so it has been, for me; awareness of my own limping, my emotional and psychological wrestling which has caused psychological and emotional limping, has been an important aspect of my own exercise of ministry.
I have reflected on this personal struggle and my consequent “limping”, with the help of some good company, at
I like to think that gaining insight into my own limping, as difficult as that has been, has enabled me to walk with others as they limped, to understand their pain, to provide compassionate companionship along that way. And, sometimes, to hope that people would come to understand their own limping, and see how it had thrown things out of alignment, and how they might attend to that, and rectify wrongs that may have been occasioned by their limping, their distorted walking patterns, their imperfect ways of operating—even as I regularly reflected on my own walk, my own limping, and how that, in turn, impacted the way that I ministered.
This story of the night-long wrestling and the resulting lifelong limping of the patriarch of Israel was not, of course, an account of an historical event. Like all the stories of incidents involving the patriarchs and matriarchs (Abram, Sarah, and Hagar, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob, Leah, and Rachel, and Joseph) these ancient stories were woven together at the time of Exile for Israel.
They formed an extended narrative that provided a foundational saga for the exiled people, yearning for release from their captivity, a return to their homeland. The saga formed a national mythology, weaving together previously isolated stories that had been passed down from generation to generation, shaped and reworked by skilled storytellers. Together, they created a tapestry that represented the resilience and the hope of the peoples.
Exile in Babylon was a time when the people of Israel, as a whole, had been limping. Invaded and conquered, captured and transported, relocated to an alien landscape amongst a foreign peoples speaking an unknown language and practising strange customs, the people were dislocated, out of joint, and so they limped in their daily lives. (See expressions of their grief in Lamentations, and their anger in Psalms 42–43, 44, and 137.)
The story of Jacob—wrestling with an unknown stranger, struck at the hip, experiencing dislocation, walking with a limp—resonated strongly with them. It was told and retold as “their story”, an oral expression of their personal and national angst. It reminded them that, even in the midst of struggle and opposition, they were still, like Jacob, able to “see God face to face” (Gen 32:30).
*****
That deep level of the myth told and retold by ancient Israelites resonates still with us, today. Opposition and oppression, struggle and the fear of defeat, do not impede the possibility that we might, indeed, “see God face to face”. The story of Jacob at Penuel reminds us of this, and provides a resource for thinking about our own lives, the lives of those we know who are facing challenges, and striving (as Jacob was) to make sense of these experiences.
Jacob wrestled with a man, who turns out to be God. Paul talks about a “thorn in the flesh”, given to him “to keep me from being too elated” (2 Cor 12:7)—although he attributes this to the work of Satan, rather than God. Elsewhere, he encourages the Romans to “be patient in suffering” (Rom 12:12), and informs the Philippians that God “has graciously granted you the privilege … of suffering with Christ” (Phil 1:29).
Paul himself knows about suffering. He catalogues quite a list of what he has endured: imprisonments, floggings, five times being lashed “forty lashes minus one”, three times “beaten with rods”, stoned, becalmed, and shipwrecked; he feared “danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters”, and suffered “in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked” (2 Cor 11:24–31).
From those many experiences of suffering, Paul is able to affirm that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts” (Rom 5:3–5). It seems that God is able to work through those difficult experiences—“all things work together for good for those who love God” (Rom 8:28). Suffering, therefore, is integral to God’s work with us.
When Luke, decades later, reports the commissioning of Paul, he reports the divine word to Ananias to tell Paul: “I myself will show you how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16). The narrative that follows places Paul in danger in a number of times; in looking back over his missionary activities, Luke has Paul note that he was “enduring the trials that came to me through the plots of the Jews” (20:19), and foreseeing that in the future “the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and persecutions are waiting for me” (20:23).
In the narrative that follows, Luke notes that Paul is kidnapped (Acts 21:27), beaten (21:30–3; 23:3), threatened (22:22; 27:42), arrested many times (21:33; 22:24, 31; 23:35; 28:16) and accused in lawsuits (21:34; 22:30; 24:1–2; 25:2, 7; 28:4), ridiculed (26:24), shipwrecked (27:41), and bitten by a viper (28:3). The list correlates strongly with Paul’s own words in 2 Cor 11, noted above. And beyond this, Paul has indicated that “after I have gone, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock” (20:29). Opposition and persecution is endemic in the early stages of the Jesus movement.
Yet all of this takes place under “the whole purpose of God” (20:27)—the overarching framework within which Luke has told the story of Jesus and the movement that grew from his preaching and activities. Luke, like Paul, understands suffering as integral to God’s working in the world. It is a hard message to hear when we are in the midst of the turmoil engendered by suffering; it may be possible, with hindsight, to look back on that suffering and see how good did, in the end, eventuate from it. It seems he was able to see “the face of God” in all of that, as Jacob did long ago at Penuel.
That’s what this story of the wrestling Jacob offered the people of Israel, long remembered from the past telling of stories, now taking on a deeper and more central significance as they returned from the decades of suffering in exile in a foreign land. Out of suffering, something amazingly good is able to emerge. May this ancient story of wrestling and limping, of striving with God and so seeing God “face to face”, offer us the same encouragement in our lives, today.
My post about this week’s Gospel passage is once again indebted to conversations that I have had with my wife Elizabeth about this story, and the surrounding material, in Matthew’s Gospel. She has undertaken much careful research into the way that Matthew redacts his Markan source.
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The story that the lectionary invites us to hear this coming Sunday (Matt 14:13–21) is Matthew’s account of “the feeding of the five thousand”, a much-beloved miracle of Jesus. It is also one of a handful of miracle stories that is narrated by all four canonical Gospels (Mark 6:30–44; Matt 14:13–21; Luke 9:12–17; and John 6:1–14).
The set-up for this story is that Jesus and the disciples are surrounded by a large crowd, time is drawing on, and there appears to be no food to eat. The punchline for the miracle is that, whilst at the start there was “nothing but five loaves and two fish”, by the end,,after “all ate and were filled”, there were “twelve baskets full” of leftovers!
For John, the feeding takes place “on the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias” (John 6:1), before Jesus and the disciples cross the Sea of Galilee, back to Capernaum (John 6:16–17). Mark, however, locates this feeding in Jewish territory, after the first trip that Jesus had made to the Decapolis, on “the other side” (Mark 4:35—5:21). Matthew and Luke follow Mark in locating this scene in Jewish territory.
Then, following Mark, Matthew recounts a second feeding, of four thousand, which Mark locates on the Gentile side of the lake (Mark 8:1–10). The geography in Matthew’s narrative of this scene (Matt 15:32–39) is, as we shall see, somewhat vaguer; the incident is, however, the same in most details as that found in Mark. Luke omits all mention of this second feeding, as does John.
The number fed is consistently reported in all four accounts as being five thousand—although there are variations here. John offers this figure as an approximation of the whole crowd present (John 6:10). Mark and Luke both specify that those fed were men only (Mark 6:44; Luke 9:14), whilst Matthew teases out the implications: “those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children” (Matt 14:21).
Mark notes that Jesus organised the crowd in smaller groups, sitting on “green grass” (Mark 6:39), noting that “they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties” (Mark 6:40). Matthew simply notes that they sat on grass, colour not specified, and makes no reference to sitting in groups (Matt 14:19). This is typical of the way that Matthew omits much of the detailed narrative colouring that Mark regularly reports—such as the groups on the green grass.
So Matthew’s account is somewhat shorter than Mark’s account (seven verses in Matthew, ten verses in Mark). Both accounts, as well as Luke’s version, report the actions of Jesus as he “looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people” (Mark 6:41; Matt 14:19; Luke 9:16).
This sequence clearly reflects the liturgically-developed pattern (repeated religiously in eucharistic settings over the centuries) of the last supper of Jesus: “he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them … then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it” (Mark 14:22–23 and parallels; and see also 1 Cor 11:23–25).
The pattern is missing from John’s account, which simply notes that “Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated” (John 6:11). John’s Gospel omits any specific report of eating at that “last supper”, focussing rather on the washing of feet and discussion of Jesus’s imminent departure (John 13).
Johannine allusions to eucharistic practice appear later in chapter 6, after a long sequence of midrashic exposition by Jesus, around the theme of “the living bread … that came down from heaven” (John 6:22–59)—a discourse that we learn, at the end, is set “in the synagogue at Capernaum” (John 6:59)—back on the side of the lake from whence Jesus had departed (John 6:16).
*****
All four stories contain the significant detail that “all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets” (Matt 14:20; see also Mark 6:43; Luke 9:17; John 6:13). Now twelve was an important number for the Jewish people; perhaps the twelve baskets are symbolic for the Jewish people? In which case, we might ponder how much of the story is symbolic, and how much “actually happened”?
To think a little about twelve … There were 12 sons of Jacob (Gen 49:1–28), then 12 tribes of Israel (Deut 27:12–13). On the table in the Tabernacle were placed 12 silver plates, 12 silver dishes, and 12 golden plates (Num 7:84–89), and the breastplate of the priest contained 12 precious stones (Exod 28:21) as emblems of the 12 tribes as they camped round about the Sanctuary. Moses built an altar at the foot of Mount Sinai with 12 pillars (Exod 24:4) and Joshua had the people take 12 stones from the River Jordan to be placed as a memorial to their entry into the land (Josh 4:1–10).
As the story continues in the Gospels, Jesus chose 12 apostles as his inner circle (Mark 3:13–19 and parallels in Matt 10 and Luke 6; and John 6:67–71). Jesus indicates that this signified the link between his movement and the traditions of Israel (Matt 19:28; Luke 22:30; and see James 1:1). And when Jesus feeds the great crowd of 4,000 people beside the Sea of Galilee (Mark 8:1–9), there are twelve baskets of bread left over (Mark 8:19).
And in the final dramatic visions written about the promised future by the aged seer John, the number 12 figures prominently. We see this first in the vision of a woman wearing a crown with 12 stars (Rev 12:1). The number then appears in the architecture of “the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God” (Rev 21:10), with its 12 gates with 12 angels and the names of the 12 tribes (Rev 21:12), and its 12 foundations with the names of the 12 apostles (Rev 21:14). Finally, there are 12 pearls on these 12 gates (Rev 21:21) and 12 fruits on the tree of life (Rev 22:2).
Is the emphasis on 12 in this narrative in Mark 6 and Matthew 14 and the other gospels deliberately underlining the Jewish setting, and pointing to the centrality of Jewish matters in the story? It’s a fascinating thought, which is strengthened by the observation that in the accounts of the feeding of the 4,000 (Mark 8:1–10; Matt 15:32–39) there were “seven baskets full” (Mark 8:8; Matt 15:37).
Mark locates this scene “on the other side” of the Sea of Galilee. In this Gospel, Jesus had just been “in the region of the Decapolis” (Mark 7:31), and after this feeding, he returns to Jewish territory on “the other side” (Mark 8:13).
Matthew removes any reference to Jesus being in the Decapolis; after the journey by sea that Jesus undertakes with his disciples to “the other side” (Matt 14:22), Jesus apparently returns immediately to Genessaret, on the western (Jewish) side of the lake (Matt 14:34), and has gone “up the mountain” beside the Sea of Galilee, where “he sat down” (Matt 15:29). That is a strong clue that Jesus is on Jewish territory, teaching and healing.
For Matthew, the second crowd that Jesus feeds is entirely Jewish. For Mark, the crowd that was being fed most likely included many Gentiles, as well as Jews who lived “on the other side”. The significance of seven has been the focus of attention for many interpreters (does it refer to the seven gentile nations which were in the land of Canaan? the seven days of creation? or the seventy nations, 7×10, that are listed as “the nations” at Gen 10:1–32?) Whilst the symbolism of twelve is clear, the symbolism of seven is less obvious.
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Each account of the feeding of the 5,000 also notes that, as well as the five loaves, there were two fish provided for distribution to the crowd (Mark 6:38; Matt 14:17; Luke 9:13; John 6:9). Only Mark notes that the twelve baskets of leftovers included fish as well as “broken pieces” of bread (Mark 6:41). Interestingly, in Matthew’s account of the feeding of the 4,000, “a few small fish” were provided along with the seven loaves (Matt 15:34).
Mark’s account, presumably known to Matthew, did not mention this detail. Was Matthew unconsciously harmonising the narratives of the two feedings? Certainly, a fish would become an important symbol used by the early Christians (and still seen today) to mark their identity. The Greek word for fish, ichthus, written in capitals as IXTHUS, was used as an acronym to signal faith in Jesus: I (Iēsous, Jesus), X (Christos, Messiah), TH (theou, of God), U (huios, Son), S (sōtēr, Saviour).
Of the four accounts, only John notes that the loaves of bread had been made from barley (John 6:9), perhaps evoking the story of the twenty loaves of barley provided to Elisha to feed a hundred people (2 Kings 4:42–44). And only John included the detail, much beloved by flowery preachers, that the five loaves and two fish were provided by a boy (John 6:9). It adds a simplicity to a wonderfully impressive miracle, perhaps. However, in each of three Synoptic accounts, those loaves and fish simply appear from within the crowd.
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Finally, we turn to the way that this feeding story is introduced by the evangelists. All four evangelists note that a large crowd was gathering: “many were coming and going … [Jesus] saw a great crowd” (Mark 6:31, 34; Matt 14:13–14; Luke 9:11; John 6:2, 5). In John’s account, the presence of this “large crowd” leads Jesus simply to ask a straightforward logistical question, “where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” (John 6:5).
In the Synoptic accounts, it is the disciples who get worried about the numbers present, and advise Jesus to “send the crowd away” so that they can get provisions elsewhere (Mark 6:36; Matt 14:15; Luke 9:12).
In two of the Synoptic narratives, however, the crowd has previously drawn words of compassion from Jesus. Mark reports that “he saw a great crowd and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things” (Mark 6:34). Matthew simply notes that Jesus “had compassion for them and cured their sick” (Matt 14:14). It’s a neat pastoral touch, I think, to have Jesus healing, rather than teaching, with this large crowd.
The lack of food at hand signals that the scene is set well away from the towns and villages that Jesus frequented. Indeed, in Mark’s narrative, Jesus had intentionally taken his apostles into a boat and moved away into “a deserted place” (Mark 6:31); Matthew follows Mark in this regard (Matt 14:13). In the biblical tradition, the wilderness plays a pivotal role in the story of the Israelites, freed from captivity in Egypt, yearning for the promise of land and safety still ahead of them.
The wilderness was the place where the character of Israel was forged. It was in the wilderness, throughout that long period of wandering, that they had encounters with the divine, that their identity was shaped, that their foundations as a nation were laid. The stories told in Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy tell of thirst and hunger in the wilderness, encounters with snakes and other trials—as well as the giving of the law, on Sinai, a mountain in the middle of the wilderness.
The journey through the wilderness figured in the songs of Israel. It is regularly recalled in the Psalms (68:7, 78:15-20, 40, 52, 95:8, 106:14-33, 136:16) as well as in various prophetic oracles prophetic oracles (Isaiah 40:3-5, 41:17-20, 43:19-20, Jer 2:6, 31:2-3, Ezekiel 20:8b-21, Hosea 13:4-6, Amos 2:9-10, Wisdom of Solomon 11:1-4) and occasional narrative references. The exodus from Egypt and the subsequent wilderness wandering, provided the foundational story for Israel, from long ago, and still through into the present.
The wilderness was where Israel met God; where Israel’s commitment was tested; where Israel’s faith was shaped. That is where, in the narratives of Mark and Matthew, Jesus expresses his compassion for the crowd and feeds “five thousand men, besides women and children” (Matt 14:21).
Luke, by contrast, has Jesus take his followers to “withdraw privately to a city called Bethsaida” (Luke 9:10), whilst John reports that Jesus “went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples” (John 6:3), adding the note that “the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near” (John 6:4)—the second of three Passovers in this narrative (John 2:13; 6:4; 11:55).
The four accounts differ in remarkably few details, overall, indicating either that there was a high level of memory retention by those who told and retold the story orally, before the Gospels took written firm; or else, that some kind of manuscript with an account of this incident (as well as some other stories) was known amongst the followers of Jesus at a relatively early stage of development of the Gospels. Either way, it is an intriguing and informative narrative for us to reflect on this coming Sunday.
“Hear a just cause, O Lord; attend to my cry”, the psalmist cries (Ps 17:1). The expectation that God will act with justice is crystal clear in this psalm; the psalmist expects vindication from God (v.2), who will “show your steadfast love” (v.7), who will “rise up, confront [and] overthrow” the wicked (v.13). “As for me”, the psalmist concludes, “I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake I shall be satisfied, beholding your likeness” (v.15).
Other psalms make it clear that justice is integral to God’s being. “The word of the Lord is upright … he loves righteousness and justice” (Ps 33:4–5). “The Lord works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed” (Ps 103:6); “the Lord loves justice, he will not forsake his faithful ones” (Ps 37:28); “the Lord maintains the cause of the needy and executes justice for the poor” (Ps 140:12).
One psalmist provides a fulsome description of how this works in society, declaring that they place their trust in “the God of Jacob … who keeps faith forever, who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry … who sets the prisoners free [and] opens the eyes of the blind … [who] lifts up those who are bowed down … [who] watches over the strangers, upholds the orphan and the widow” (Ps 146:5–9). This resonates with other prophetic texts and with the mission that Jesus later undertook.
That God will act with justice is an expectation that is found again and again throughout the pages of Hebrew Scripture. The prophet Amos places justice and righteousness at the heart of God’s intentions for Israel, prioritising them over any ritual actions of worship (Amos 5:21–23). In like manner, the prophet Hosea declares that God “desires steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hos 6:6).
According to the narrative books recounting earlier stories, justice had been the key quality of the prophetic messages given to Israel over a number of centuries before these prophets. Moses and the elders he appointed had a responsibility to judge the people (Exod 18:13–27). This was continued by men and women designated as judges in the book of Judges.
Over time, the role of the prophet arose, as judges gave way to kings; the prophet was called to hold the king to account (for instance, Nathan at 2 Sam 12). This then expands so that the prophetic voice speaks truth to all the people, persistently calling out for justice. Amos sounds this central motif: “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24). Micah repeats and expands it in his powerful rhetorical question, “what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8).
Praying that God’s ways of justice and righteousness may be evident in the king is a repeated motif in the psalms. “Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king’s son; may he judge your people with righteousness and your poor with justice” (Ps 72:1–2). “Mighty King, lover of justice, you have established equity, you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob” (Ps 99:4).
“Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne”, another psalmist sings (Ps 89:14); “happy are the people … who walk, O Lord, in the light of your countenance … who extol your righteousness” (Ps 86:15–16). Prayers for justice to be lived out in the society of the time are also found at Ps 10:17–18; 37:5–6; 106:3; and the whole of Psalm 112 offers a song in praise of “those who conduct their affairs with justice”, who exude the best of the character of God: “they are gracious, merciful, and righteous” (Ps 112:4).
The oracles placed at the start of the book of Isaiah sounds the importance of living with justice: “wash yourselves, make yourselves clean … cease to do good, learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow” (Isa 1:16–17). The powerful “song of the vineyard” (Isa 5:1–7) concludes with the wonderful Hebrew wordplay, which reinforces this theme: so, “he expected justice (mishpat) but saw bloodshed (mispach); righteousness (tsedakah) but heard a cry (seakah)” (5:7).
What follows is a searing prophetic denunciation of the ills of society: the excesses of a debaucherous elite, the oppressive state of the lowly (5:8–23). The prophet yearns for the coming of a royal child who will rule the nation “with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore” (Isa 9:6–7). A later prophet whose oracles are collected with those of Isaiah likewise looks for “my servant … my chosen … [who] will bring forth justice to the nations … he will faithfully bring forth justice … [he will] establish justice in the earth” (Isa 42:1–4). Again, the resonances with the later story of Jesus are evident to Christian readers.
A little later than Isaiah, the prophet Zephaniah declares that “the Lord is righteous, he does no wrong; every morning he renders his judgement, each dawn without fail” (Zeph 3:5). Prophets in exile repeat this vision. Jeremiah instructs the nation to “execute justice in the morning and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed” (Jer 21:12; 22:3; 33:15). Ezekiel advises that “if a man is righteous and does what is lawful and right … he shall surely live” (Ezek 18:5–9; 34:11–16). Zeph 3:5).
And in the last prophetic book (in the order familiar to Christians), the prophet Malachi asks, “where is the God of justice?”, and answers his own question with a description of “the messenger of the covenant” who will execute justice “like a refiner’s fore and like fuller’s soap … he will purify the descendants of Levi … until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness” (Mal 2:17—3:4).
This prophetic cry continues into the New Testament, as justice is placed at the centre. Jesus calls for justice (Matt 23:23; Luke 11:42, 18:1–8)—at times, we find it rendered as “righteousness” in his sayings (Matt 5:1–12, 20; 6:33, 21:28–32). This, of course, is the way that it appears in the letters of Paul, where the righteousness of God is the action that we experience when God implements justice in our lives (Rom 3:21–26, 4:1–25; 2 Cor 5:16–21).
Both the manifesto for mission that Luke highlights at the start of the public activity of Jesus (Luke 4:18–21) and the climactic parable of the sheep and the goats that Matthew places at the end of the public teaching of Jesus (Matt 25:31–46) draw strongly from Old Testament insights. Both demonstrate the priority that Jesus gave to practical actions of support, care, and advocacy within ordinary life—precisely what justice is!
Jesus highlights the judgement executed by God (Matt 8:10–12; Luke 13:28–30) and told a number of parables of judgement—particularly those collected in Matthew’s Gospel (Matt 13:36–43, 47–50, 22:1–14, 24:44–25:46). These stories use the threat of divine judgement as a warning against sinful injustice and as a spur to righteous living. Underlying these warnings is the fundamental principle that God’s justice undergirds all (Matt 12:17–20; Luke 18:1–8).
“Hear a just cause, O Lord; attend to my cry”, the psalmist cries (Ps 17:1). The expectation that God will act with justice saturates the books of Hebrew Scriptures and flows on into the books of the New Covenant. Justice is at the heart of what we believe about God; justice is to mark the lives that we live by faith. May it be so.
The stories we are following in the sagas of ancient Israel, during this season after Pentecost, come from a different time, a different place. They reflect different cultures, with different customs, and seemingly different moralities. And they certainly depict the women at the centre of these stories in ways that we would recoil from, if we were to tell stories in our own time, place, and culture.
“Leah’s eyes were lovely, and Rachel was graceful and beautiful” (Gen 29:17). That’s how we are introduced to the two women, sisters, daughters of Laban, who figure in the story offered by the lectionary for this coming Sunday (Gen 29:15–28). Could a more patronising and sexist introduction be given to these two characters? Descriptions of women on the basis of their outward appearance are sure to disturb and anger contemporary readers of this story; judging a woman by her appearance is not a sensible way to proceed!
More than that, however, we find that the older male protagonist in this story, Laban, appears to have very dubious ethical standards. He does not seem to act in accord with the propriety that we, today, would expect. Jacob had been instructed by Isaac “not marry one of the Canaanite women” but rather to take a wife from “one of the daughters of Laban, your mother’s brother” (28:2). Jacob is under instruction; what role does Laban play?
On arrival at Haran, or Paddan-Aram, in “the land of the people of the east” (29:1), Jacob early on indicates his interest in Laban’s daughter Rachel, kissing her (29:11). When Rachel then conveys to her father the fact of his family’s connection to theirs, Laban greets him with joy: “surely you are my bone and my flesh!” (19:14). From that, we might expect honest behaviour will follow.
Jacob flags his interest in Rachel; Laban promises her to him in exchange for seven years of work (29:15–20). Writing in My Jewish Learning, Dr Kristine Henriksen-Garroway, Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, observes that “to marry a woman, a man had to first pay her father a מֹהַר (mohar), ‘bride-price.’ Although Laban allows Jacob to marry Rachel before working off his debt, she only has her first child at the end of the seven-year period.
Dr Henriksen-Garroway explains, “Jacob wishes to marry Rachel, but he has no land or money to speak of; he is a guest in Laban’s house. Marriage is not free, so he offers his own labor as the bride-price (mohar/tirḫatum). While the text makes no mention of his being betrothed first, Jacob’s need to wait until the bride-price is paid in full in order to marry Rachel fits with biblical and ancient Near Eastern practice.”
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So Jacob marries Rachel and works for Laban for seven years; after which time, Laban craftily provided Leah as the woman with whom Jacob slept (29:21–22). The language suggests that it is sexual union that is to the forefront of Jacob’s mind (“give me my wife that I may go in to her, for my time is completed”, 29:21), so his lack of awareness appears due to this focus. Had he not slept with Rachel in those seven years?
The NRSV, following the KJV, renders the words of Jacob in this crass manner, “that I may go in to her”. The NIV reports Jacob as saying, “give me my wife; I want to make love with her”; the NASB says, “that I may have relations with her”; and the NLT is much more demure with “so I can sleep with her”.
Whatever translation is used, it is clear that events are driven by the libido of Jacob. He was the “supplanter”, who gained his birthright by bargaining with his brother and deceiving his father. But his time has come; as we read on in the story, it is clear that Laban has always been intent on deceiving Jacob.
Citing local customs, Laban claims that “giving the younger [daughter] before the firstborn” in marriage was a custom that was “not done in our country” (29:26). Laban manipulates matters so that Jacob, still besotted by Rachel’s grace and beauty, is willing to submit to a further seven years of working for Laban, in order to secure Rachel as his wife, even though he is now married to Leah, who had lovely eyes. Jacob trusts Laban—but why? He has already been deceived once by him.
So, he needs to work for Laban for another “week (of years)”. The text is very matter-of-fact at this point, simply recounting that “Jacob did so, and completed her week; then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel as a wife” (29:28). Dr Henriksen-Garroway notes that “the requirement for Jacob to ‘pay’ to marry Rachel fits with the basic sequence of marriage steps assumed in the Bible and ancient Near East”.
In her further exploration of ancient Israelite marriage customs, she notes that “when a girl’s father agreed to a union between a suiter and his daughter, the suiter often did not have the bride-price handy. This may be one reason for the betrothal period, what the rabbis call ʾerusin (from the root א.ר.שׂ). The girl’s betrothal to the man made her unavailable to other men, but she still lived with her father until the man paid the bride-price.”
This explains Jacob’s seven years of working whilst betrothed to Rachel, who continued to live with Laban, before Laban deceitfully gave him Leah (29:18–20). It also explains the further seven years of working before he actually is given Rachel in marriage (29:27–28). What trust Jacob had—believing Laban, even after that first act of trickery. Would he do the same yet again? Perhaps, as he seems to have had only two daughters, Rachel would be “supplied” to him second time around.
Dr Henriksen-Garroway offers further explanation: “when we look at Laban’s agreement carefully, we can see that he never explicitly accepts Jacob’s proposal or mentioned which of his daughters he is offering”, citing the vagueness of Laban’s earlier comment, “it is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man; stay with me” (29:19).
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So, after Jacob had worked his second term of seven years, this time actually for Rachel (29:28), another matter-of-fact statement follows in the NRSV: “Jacob went in to Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah” (29:30). Once again, other translations use the euphemisms we have earlier noted, in order to soften the crude physical depiction into a more relational understanding.
Yet the story is crassly sexualised—consummating the marital relationship is at the heart of events. Although, to be fair, the production of an heir is an important focus in ancient societies, and an heir for Jacob is necessary to fulfil “the promise that the Lord made on oath … to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob” (Deut 9:5; Exod 32:13). This promise was first announced to Abraham—“I will make of you a great nation” (Gen 12:1, reiterated at 22:17)—then repeated to his son, Isaac (26:4–5, 24) and to his grandson, Jacob (28:13–14; 32:12). So the story continues with a sequence of event that show how this eventuates.
Like his grandfather and his father, Jacob finds that his wife, Rachel, is barren (29:31). In subsequent years, Leah bore him four sons, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah (29:32–35), and Rachel’s maid Bilhah bore him two sons, Dan and Naphtali (30:4–8), and Leah’s maid Zilpah then bore him two more sons, Gad and Asher (30:9–13), and then Leah bore him two further sons, Issachar and Zebulun (30:16–20) as well as a daughter, Dinah (30:21).
Six boys and one girl, in seven years: Leah fulfils the primary expectation of fertile women in ancient Israel—producing children. That the majority are males is even better! And it is noteworthy that, as Dr Henriksen-Garroway observes, “a wife who cannot produce children might even feel the need to give her husband a surrogate to produce children for her (Gen 16:2, 30:3, 9), since otherwise, they are not fulfilling their function as wife”.
As Leah produces children for Jacob, Rachel remains barren—a stigma in ancient societies, an indication amongst Israelites that God has chosen not to “open her womb”. Barrenness is attributed to the action of God, for he had previously “closed fast all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah” (20:18). Perhaps the fact that Jacob had not yet paid off his debt to Laban meant that God would not act to provide a child to this union?
It is only after the seven children had been born to Leah, and the seven years that Jacob was working towards marriage with Rachel had been completed, that we then read, “then God remembered Rachel, and God heeded her and opened her womb; she conceived and bore a son … and she named him Joseph, saying, ‘May the Lord add to me another son!’” (30:22–24).
Later still, after fleeing from Laban and returning at last to Canaan, Rachel becomes mother to a second son, Benjamin (35:16–18), although sadly she dies during this childbirth. Ironically, Benjamin was the only one of “the twelve sons of Israel” (Gen 35:22–26; Exod 28:21; 39:14; 1 Ki 18:31) who gave their names to the regions of Israel (Num 26:52–56) to have been born in that land.
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And the one daughter, Dinah, of course has no place in “the twelve tribes of Israel”, named after the twelve sons (by four different women!) that Jacob produced (Gen 49:1–28). Despite the fractured nature of their origins—twelve boys from four mothers, two of whom took fourteen years and one deceitful trick for Jacob to secure—these twelve sons gave their names to “the twelve tribes of Israel” throughout the ensuing saga (Exod 24:4; 28:21; 39:14; Josh 3:12; 4:8; 1 Ki 18:31; Ezra 6:17).
Dinah’s own fate is sombre; she is raped by “Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the region”, who when he saw her, “he seized her and lay with her by force” (34:3). He then wishes to marry her, and negotiates to receive the blessing of the men of the city at the gates of the city, who curiously agree, subject to the one condition “that every male among us be circumcised as they are circumcised” (34:22).
However, before this can be finalised, the dishonouring of Dinah is enacted by two of her brothers, Simeon and Levi, who “killed Hamor and his son Shechem with the sword, and took Dinah out of Shechem’s house, and went away”, only to be followed by “the other sons of Jacob [who] came upon the slain, and plundered the city, because their sister had been defiled” (34:25–29).
Jacob is unimpressed at their violent actions; but the reposte of the brothers cannot be answered: “should our sister be treated like a whore?” (34:31). As a result, the whole family returns to Bethel, in southern Canaan (35:1), where Jacob will have a significant religious experience (35:9–15), and his name is changed to Israel.
And the new name of the father, as well as the names of each of the twelve sons, live on throughout the stories told and the scrolls written in Israel—and on through into today.
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The image on the front of this post is Jacob accusing Laban for having given him Leah instead of Rachel, a colour lithograph by L. Gruner, after N. Consoni, after Raphael (1483–1520), from the Wellcome Collection, a free online museum and library.
An Informed Faith 