Category: Notes on Genesis

‘For the dread and fear of you shall be upon all the wild animals of the earth…I have put them all under your authority.’ (Gen 9:2) This is a hard saying for those who love animals; we do not like to think of animals being in fear and dread of us, even wild ones, and are pleased to be among […]

‘Now the angel of the Lord found her’ (Gen 16:7). Encountering jealousy from her mistress Sarah after becoming pregnant by her master Abraham, Hagar flees into the wilderness, where she is found by ‘the angel of the Lord’. This is the first occurrence in the Septuagint version of Genesis of the word ‘angelos’, which could also be translated ‘messenger’. This being goes […]

‘The word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.’ (Gen 15:1) The Orthodox Study Bible suggests a Christological interpretation of this phrase by the use of a capital letter (Word), but this may be a case of over-interpretation, for the Septuagint uses the Greek word rhema, not logos; note that the Vulgate goes for ‘sermo’, not ‘verbum’. Interestingly, the ‘word of […]

‘Now Melchizedek the king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was the priest of God most high.’ (Gen 14:18) The mysterious Melchizedek encountered by Abram is referred to in a psalm: ‘You are a priest for ever, according to the order of Melchizedek’ (Ps 110 (109):4); this psalm is prominent in Western liturgy). Building on this, the author […]

‘Get out from your country, from your kindred and from your father’s house, to a land I will show you.’ (Gen 12:1) Abram’s departure from Haran to Canaan stands at the beginning of the patriarchal narratives. His father Terah had led the family from Ur of the Chaldeans to the northwest along Mesopotamia; now, following the death of Terah, God commands Abram to continue to […]

‘So he drank of the wine and was drunk and naked in his house.’ (Gen 9:21) The story of Noah getting drunk, being observed in his nakedness by his son Ham but having his modesty protected by his other sons Shem and Japeth, and on his return to sobriety cursing Ham’s son Canaan, is hard to fathom.  That such a […]

‘Then he sent out a raven, which kept going to and fro until the waters dried up from the earth.’ (Gen 8:7) Disagreeable because of its appearance, its call and its eating habits, the raven (crow) is a hard bird to like. The Law of the Old Testament reckons it among those birds that are an abomination, whose flesh is […]

‘Now the flood was on the earth forty days and forty nights.’ (Gen 7:17; the last three words are in the Septuagint, but not the Masoretic text.) The period over which the flood is said to have occurred a resonant one, for it recalls the forty years the chosen people passed en route from Egypt to the promised land (Ex 16:35), the […]

‘So when the sons of God saw the daughters of men were beautiful, they took wives for themselves of all they chose.’ (Gen 6:2) This is a puzzling sentence. The identity of the beings involved is not clear, for the earliest Greek version seems to have replaced the word ‘sons’ with ‘angels’, and Everett Fox understands them as having been […]

‘Now Adam…begot a son according to his form and image, and named him Seth.’ (Gen 5:3) Adam ‘s third son, born to him when he was extremely advanced in years, is described in terms that recall the relationship of Adam to God expressed by the phrase ‘image and likeness’ (Gen 1:26f), but the order of the two terms is reversed and in the […]