Wednesday, April 7, 2010

To the Promised Land

During these chapters, I noticed that each generation lives a little less than the previous one, but they give no explanation at all. As each father gives children, they satr dying a little younger each time. Just like the Bible said:
"These are the generations of Shem: Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood: It all starts with Shem, "And Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years, and begat sons and daughters. And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years, and begat Salah: ... And Peleg lived thirty years, and begat Reu: And Peleg lived after he begat Reu two hundred and nine years, and begat sons and daughters...  And Serug lived thirty years, and begat Nahor: And Serug lived after he begat Nahor two hundred years, and begat sons and daughters. And Nahor lived nine and twenty years, and begat Terah: And Nahor lived after he begat Terah an hundred and nineteen years, and begat sons and daughters. And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran." (Genesis 11:10-26)

I also noticed that God broke his promise of not interfering with humans after the flood. First he caused everyone to speak different languages, so they wouldn't live together and conceive great achievements like the Tower of Babel. That's very jealous of God! He ruins man in all ways possible so they can live under his dominion. Obviously, since Adam ate the apple of good and evil, God fears the human possibility of destroying the world, and therefore tries to inhibit man's ability to create.

He also broke it again by sending Abraham to "the promised land". Why does God want Abraham to go to this land so much? He shows so by saying:
"Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." (Genesis 12:1-3). It seems God wants to start over with a new nation. He already failed with the descendants of Adam starting with Cain murdering Abel. He killed all of their descendants in the flood except for Noah and his family. Apparently, he doesn't trust them too much, since he gave them different languages so they couldn't understand each other, and hence had to be dispersed across the land. Now he wants Abraham to go to this Promised Land and maybe make a country of God's followers. He blessed him and his following generations (unlike Adam to which he cursed for eternity) so they could thrive in this land he promised to Abraham if he decided to go there. Apparently God doesn't want to give up on humans yet. He still has some hope that at least one human turns out to be what he expected when he decided to create humans so they could rule the Earth (Genesis 1: 28).

No comments:

Post a Comment