Too Many Things To Put In A Title

In all these chapters some things really stood out like: Preference, treatment of women, Gilgamesh, cheating, and that wrestling with God has happened physically and not only mentally. I had heard parts of the stories that were exposed to us in this chapter and after reading them I have a better understanding of how the God I believe in came to become the God he is now.

The first moment preference is shown is with Isaacs’s sons. Isaac preferred Esau over Jacob but their mother Rebekah prefers Jacob over Esau. The impression I got form Jacob was that he was a total cheater while his brother was a “cleaner soul”. Still his reasoning for being favored were very entertaining: “And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man”. I couldn’t help thinking about Gilgamesh and Enkidu in this part just because one was better than the other just because he looked less hairy aka more civilized. I don’t really understand the whole competition between brothers, being an only child and all, but I think jealousy is always in the mix and how you want more attention than others. I believe that Jacobs’s ways were wrong and his punishment of being banished was a good way in a sense to ensure his safety from the wrath of his brother.

Gilgamesh also came into my thoughts when Jacob is sleeping and God shows him the stairway to heaven. The reason I thought about Gilgamesh was because also in that story, Gilgamesh’s Gods communicates with him through dreams. I guess everywhere dreams are the way to go, I mean it’s easy you just disturb someone’s dreams to put in your own to give them a subliminal message you hope they understand. I give points to God though, for not hiding his message but actually explaining it.

While I was reading the story about Laban and Jacob I realized I had heard the story somewhere else. There is this really good movie/musical called “A Fiddler on the Roof” and they speak about this part of the text in the movie. I had never heard the full story but after reading this I get the crazy expressions the guy got when he said: “the moral of this story is to never trust your employer”.

With Jacob and Laban, after completing all his time of working, I thought that what Laban was doing was pure blackmail. He completely played Jacob by marrying him to his other daughter so that he would have to work more. The funniest part about this tale was how God change the animals being born just so Laban wouldn’t get anything but Jacob would take it all:

“And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink.And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and And Jacob did separate the lambs, and set the faces of the flocks toward the ringstraked, and all the brown in the flock of Laban; and he put his own flocks by themselves, and put them not unto Laban's cattle.And it came to pass, whensoever the stronger cattle did conceive, that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the cattle in the gutters, that they might conceive among the rods.But when the cattle were feeble, he put them not in: so the feebler were Laban's, and the stronger Jacob's.”

Women are treated like cattle here. To square deals out the men would offer their women to get out of trouble:

”The soul of my son Shechem longeth for your daughter: I pray you give her him to wife.And make ye marriages with us, and give your daughters unto us, and take our daughters unto you.And ye shall dwell with us: and the land shall be before you; dwell and trade ye therein, and get you possessions therein.”

God didn’t help either, Instead of making the women richer and giving them land he just gave them a better reproduction system so that their husbands could have “children as many as the stars in the sky”. Where is the justice? Not only do all the sons get turned into kings but the women still get to multiply and not become queens. It also annoys me how God has the ability to “open wombs” and close them. I mean that is a total violation of privacy! Still the women don’t help themselves either. They have the mentality that “being fruitful and multiplying” is all they can do. When I read this I thought about this story my mom told me about how girls in some public schools in the States raise their social status by getting pregnant. It isn’t just about the fact that you got pregnant, to raise your status the higher in power is the guy you sleep with, the more your status rises. I think the women of the time had to prove themselves to their husbands and also felt they had a social status to maintain by giving birth and giving birth.

Something that made me laugh was the deal about being bretheren only if the others gor circumcised:
“But in this will we consent unto you: If ye will be as we be, that every male of you be circumcised; Then will we give our daughters unto you, and we will take your daughters to us, and we will dwell with you, and we will become one people.”
So apparently to square issues and “fit in with the crowd” circumcision was a must. I guess I found this funny just because of the absurdity of it all. I mean I’m not going to stop being friends with Billy just because he isn’t circumcised or, I m not going to sign that contract for billions of dollars just because the guy giving me the money isn’t circumcised. Man how times have changed!

All in all in these chapters I learned that relationships work out and forgiveness is part of life. The last point I want to touch is Jacob wrestling with God. An expression about “wrestling” with God in your head exists I think. It was interesting to see how it would be like in real life. In the end I think that the message was that even though you fight with God he will never stop being with you. You are never alone and God is always with you no matter how hard you wrestle to get him off your back.