Tabitha

“Genesis can hardly be said to end. In it certain things are established—the nature of Creation and the spirit in which it was made; the nature of humankind; how in what spirit the Creator God enters into relation with His human creatures. The whole great literature of Scripture, unfolding over centuries, will proceed on the terms established in th

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“This family, of whom it is uniquely true that they are chosen by God to carry forward His will for humankind, must be as unhappy as any family could be. When we consider what the favor of God can look like, Jacob and his sons should surely be borne in mind.”

Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson, page 206 (talking about the saga of Joseph’s brother

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“This is the epitome of the stories that seem far too ugly to be in the Bible. This is not trickery of treachery at its most abysmal. It should be said, first of all, that the Hebrew Bible does not romanticize the history of the people of create it, to whom it is addressed, and who have preserved it faithfully over millennia. It is as if America ha

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Who are our debtors, literal or figurative, and what do they owe us? Most of us could probably come up with a list. The verse makes us God’s debtors. What do we owe Him? Everything. More than we can conceive of. But a debt is an obligation. The prophets make it clear that sacrifice does not satisfy the Lord’s requirement of us. Doing justice and lo

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“If Jacob had been a little less envious, if Esau had been a little less boorish, this epochal turn of things, this wholly unimpressive moment, would never have entered sacred history. This is an instance of the fact that the covenant is not contingent upon human virtue, even human intention. It is sustained by the will of God, which is so strong a

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“Questions about the covenant of Abraham that complicate its meaning arise from its very beginning. For example, the sign of the covenant is circumcision. Abraham is told that every male in his household must be circumcised, including slaves born in his house and those bought with money. This clearly anticipates the inclusion in the covenant of a c

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“Abram again show little understanding of the nature of God. In imagining his relationship with God as exclusive, he denies respect to these strangers whose righteousness God Himself recognizes, values, and protects.

The moral appears to be that fear of outsiders, which amounts to contempt for them, leads to unrighteous behavior, and also that God i

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“But rationalizing what God does involves the risk of losing its difficulty and otherness to human expectations. His great forgiveness of the first criminal offends people’s sense of justice, unless they can find a way to read vengefulness into the tale. We are instead to learn that mercy is nearer than justice to Godliness, and that mercy can rele

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“The world is suited to human enjoyment—”out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sign”—in anticipation of human pleasure, which the Lord presumably shares. This is an extremely elegant detail. The beauty of the trees is noted before the fact that they yield food. It is a rich goodness that the Lord intended an

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