Revelation through a shrubbery

When reading through Scripture, I tend to be drawn to passages where God provides a direct revelation about Himself.  Part of why I love these passages so much is that whenever God reveals Himself to a person (or people), He sets things into motion that shape the character and identity of those to whom He is revealed.  Naturally I love passages like Genesis 3 when God prophetically speaks to the victory of Eve’s offspring over the offspring of the Serpent, or Genesis 12 where God speaks to Abram and radically alters the history of his descendants and all of mankind.  Perhaps I just find it refreshing to see tangible examples of God revealing Himself in a manner that directs history and sustains those whom He chooses. 

One of the most significant examples of God revealing Himself takes place in Exodus 3 with the burning bush.  Moses is forced to leave Egypt after murdering an Egyptian for beating a Hebrew, so he moves to the wilderness, gets married, and tries his hand at being a shepherd.  While tending to his flock, Moses comes upon a bush that burns but is “not consumed.”  As if Moses was not confused enough to begin with, the bush starts talking to Moses.  As God begins to reveal Himself to Moses, He makes a few things very clear: that He is holy, that He is aware of the suffering of the Hebrews and willing to liberate them, and that He intends to bring the Hebrews to their own land.

Apart from these things, I want to focus on one fascinating element of this revelation to Moses.  When Moses asks who he should tell the Israelites sent him, God says the following:

 “I AM WHO I AM.”  “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:

This is my name forever,

And this is my title for all generations.

To me, this statement makes it quite plain that God wants Moses to understand His transcendence.  He creates the link with the ancestors of the Hebrews (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob), and then goes on to explain that He has a plan for their future, and that His name is the same for all generations.  Unlike the fickle and limited gods of the Egyptians, God asserts that He is unchanging and possesses the power to bring about a good future for His people. Many places in Scripture cite God’s faithfulness in the past as evidence of His faithfulness that is yet to come.

 Part of what makes Exodus 3 beautiful is that while God points back to his faithfulness toward the patriarchal figures of the Hebrews, the Exodus itself turns out to be the most dramatic example of God’s faithfulness for future generations.  In the face of conquest from the Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks, the Jews looked back to God’s faithfulness in Egypt with the hope and confidence that He would again be faithful.  Echoes of this confidence show all over the New Testament as well in the writings of Paul, Peter, and John as they look forward to Christ’s final victory at the culmination of human history.  Through Moses’ encounter burning bush, God revealed Himself to be powerful, compassionate, faithful, and unchanging in the past, present, and future. Exodus 3 is truly a wonderful passage because this revelation from God sets into motion motifs that continue in the entire arc of Scripture, serving as an evidence of God’s faithfulness in all times and epochs, and He did all of this through a freaking shrubbery.   Anyone who thinks that God isn’t creative is a total idiot…

Angelic human mutant babies and the heroes of old...

So as the title suggests, I want to deal with one of the weirdest passages in all of Scripture.  It comes from the first few verses of Genesis 6; it is the small section leading up to the flood narrative that comes in the next few chapters.  I will provide the text so that my later comments will make more sense.

When the people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years.” 4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days- and also afterward—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them.  These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.

5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. (Genesis 6:1-6 NRSV)

All right, so what the heck does that mean?  Apparently there is some sort of weird angelic/human intermarrying going on that leads to the production of semi-divine superbabies that wield swords and crossbows (that is an assumption on my part), then God decides to shorten the lifespan of humans, then God decides to wipe out mankind altogether (minus Noah via the flood).  Well, the one consistent thing about this passage is that no one knows what the heck it is really saying.  But I would like to point out a couple of things that stand out to me in this passage anyway.

First, we need to consider the position of those first 4 verses involving the mutant angel/human babies.  They are sandwiched between the genealogy of Genesis 5 and God’s expression of His sorrow for creating humans and decision to “blot out from the earth the human beings” that He created.  So as chapter 5 outlines the family line of Adam and Eve through their son Seth, we hear about a bunch of dudes living to be 800 and 900 years old until we get to Noah.  Immediately after this genealogy we find out about these Nephilim, and promptly we are informed of the wickedness of all humankind (minus Noah) and how God decides to wipe them out.

Whether or not the author of Genesis means to paint a chronological link between the marriage of the sons of God and the daughters of men and the flood narrative, I think their proximity to each other in the text is something worth consideration.  The products of these marriages were “heroes of old, warriors of renown,” does this idea of semi-divine heroes sound familiar to anything in antiquity? O ya, I think it does.  If you aren’t following me, ill give you some names: Achilles, Hercules, Perseus, Gilgamesh, and Theseus (and that’s just a few).  I was tempted to add Miley Cyrus to this list, but I am pretty sure she is more likely to be a robot than a demi-god.  All of these are heroes from the mold of divine/human marriages (or something like that) that typically follow the pattern of using their superhuman strength and ability to achieve glory and renown for themselves.

Perhaps this passage is positioned immediately before the flood narrative to make a statement about the nature of God.  I think it is possible; nay, likely, that the author of Genesis wants to assert that the God of Genesis does not accept the ancient ideal of a hero. In fact, he is repulsed by these spear flinging, man slaying, body-oiling WWF superstars to the point that He regrets creating humans entirely.  It is also possible that I am reading too much into the text, but I think there is a precedent for this throughout Scripture. 

One need turn no more than a few pages to see God choose the lovable trickster Jacob to father his chosen nation instead of Esau, who by description seems to possess all of the major “heroic” qualities by ancient standards.  Esau is hairy enough to make Burt Reynolds proud, he is skilled with the bow and loves himself a good stew.  In all probability, Esau is the kind of guy that eats beef jerky, does bicep curls for the ladies, and drinks mountain dew with his cereal in the morning.  But in spite of these things, God chooses the much weaker, more cowardly brother. 

Another telling example of this theme comes through the severe contrast between Saul and David.  Of these two kings, Saul clearly fits the bill of an ancient hero with his dominating height, physical prowess, and skills with the ladies (although David is not particularly lacking in any of these categories).  But Saul proves himself to wield a supremely self-centered heart and a temper that would make Dennis Rodman and Rasheed Wallace jealous, and incidentally his story is one of the most tragic in all of Scripture.  In contrast to this, while David also displays heroic qualities and prowess in battle, he is not an obvious candidate for kingship in the same vein as Saul.  But this younger brother who spent all of his formative years shepherding his flocks turns out to be a man after God’s own heart.

Perhaps I have been a bit long-winded in forming my argument, but I believe that these things may be partly what Paul has in mind when he says in 1 Corinthians 1 that God chooses the foolish things to shame the wise, the weak to shame the strong, working in “the things that are not—to reduce to nothing the things that are.”  Certainly I do not assume that this text condemns anyone who wields any physical prowess.  But I think the common quality that Esau, Saul, and all the pagan heroes of old display is the relentless pursuit for self-glory and satisfaction by means of their own greatness.  Compare that with great heroes of Scripture like Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and David, who even when they sin, display hearts that are increasingly humble and obedient toward God.

Surely I am making a pretty big leap from these six verses to Esau, Saul, and the ancient heroes of antiquity.  But the link between semi-divine heroes and ancient lore lead me to believe that this text is a display of God’s disapproval of those who use their prowess to bring notoriety and honor to themselves and the ancient narratives that glorified such behavior.  

In the beginning...

Thus starts the enterprise of Reagan’s blog, may God have mercy on all who read…

For those of you who were fans (or victims)of my xanga when I was in high school, perhaps this new blog will translate well.  However, it is my hope that this blog will be more sophisticated and coherent than my blogs of yonder glory days.  My primary reason for starting the blog is credit for my Scriptures I class, but I am hopeful that this can be a useful tool for practicing writing and gathering thoughts and lessons from Genesis through 2 Kings. 

Since this is the first blog, I would like to start by looking at the beginning of Genesis.  In verses 1-3 of chapter 1 it states: “

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “let there be light”; and there was light. (NRSV)

This passage sets a very important precedent for the rest of Genesis and a theme that I see in the entirety of Scripture; namely, that God is active in creation.  There is a great deal that can be said about Genesis 1 defying the creation accounts of the pagan ancient world and establishing there is one supreme God of order and authority, but I want to focus on the simple assertion that God created. God spoke light into existence (and likewise with the rest of creation).  When I look at Genesis, I see this as a reoccurring theme: that when God wants something done in the world, he steps in and initiates the process.  From speaking the world into existence, to prophesying the final redemption of man and the final defeat of the serpent after the Fall, to instructing Noah to build an arc that would allow him to carry on the existence of the human race, to choosing the pagan Abraham (and over time developing his character) to be the father of His people, God actively works in the course of human history.

Much more can said about this, but the one point I want to nail home is that God of Scripture is active within creation.  In the face of the quite common notion that the universe is a closed system with physical laws that cannot be broken, Scripture paints the picture of a God actively working to redeem all that has been broken.  I propose that the whole of Scripture supports this notion, culminating in the work of Christ on the cross. 

This same God that cannot be bound by the laws of physics is still active in the world today.  I believe that we should be greatly encouraged by the idea that the God who created the world is the same God who sent his Holy Spirit to sustain us, teach us how to rightly relate with Him, and do His work in a broken world.  My prayer is that I never take lightly the fact that God was and is still active in the world.

Overly lengthy blog #1,

Completed!