March 14th, 2020

Last week the Old Testament text was Genesis 12:1-9, and I tried to be helpful by focusing on the intricate structure of Genesis 11-25. This week I was thinking that it might even more helpful to look at the larger structures that are surrounding that text, especially since the Old Testament text for this week is from Exodus [17:1-7]. And just how do those two books connect to each other?

I had mentioned that the book of Genesis has been divided into two parts of dissimilar sizes. The first, short part helps to set the stage for the larger, second one. The first part of essentially chapters 1-11 contains five mentions of ‘generations’, something that makes something more. Here are their occurrences (with very literal translations):

     ‘These are the generations of the heavens and the earth, when he created them in            that day, Yahweh [the Lord] God made the earth and the heavens (2:4).’

     ‘This is the account of the generations of Adam, when in the day God created man in        the likeness of God, he made him (5:1).’

     ‘These are the generations of Noah…(6:9a).’

     ‘And these are the generations of the sons of Noah…(10:1a).’

     ‘These are the generations of Shem…(11:10a).’

It seems that there does not have to be five occurrences of this phrase. The generations of Shem could have been included under the generations of the sons of Noah, since Shem was a son of Noah. But five is an important number. (There are often five books in different sections of the Old Testament.)

The point has also been made quite often that the heavens and the earth do not have generations like a person does. But this first occurrence, the way it is explained, does help the reader or listener to look for the literary structure of repeating something in a reverse order. That happens many times in the Old Testament, but this especially happens in Genesis. The order of the phrase, ‘the earth and the heavens’, is extremely rare in the Old Testament. Usually it is in the order of ‘the heavens and the earth’, as it is the first time it is mentioned. It happens in both orders to help a person see those intricate structures.

It could also be said that the rest of Genesis, essentially chapters 12-50, contains five similar mentions of ‘generations’.

     ‘And these are the generations of Terah…(11:27a).’

     ‘And these are the generations of Ishmael, son of Abraham, whom Hagar, the                    Egyptian, maidservant of Sarah, bore for Abraham (25:12).’

      ‘And these are the generations of Isaac, son of Abraham...(25:19a).’

      ‘And these are the generations of Esau, that is, Edom (36:1).’

      ‘These are the generations of Jacob (37:2a).’
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I started that list by saying that ‘It could be said’, to give a hint that there is something more that could be said regarding the entire thing. In short, there is another occurrence of ‘these generations’. In the chapter devoted to Esau, the following is also said: ‘And these are the generations of Esau, the father of Edom (36:6).’

Why devote two occurrences of this word to a person and a race of people not too highly thought of in the Old Testament? It may be to make the only other appearance of this phrase into a total of twelve occurrences, instead of having only a total of eleven.

There happens to be one more occurrence of ‘these generations’ within the entire Pentateuch, something in Numbers 3:1. Here is the text: ‘And these are the generations of Aaron and Moses on the day when Yahweh spoke with Moses on Mount Sinai.’

Now that seems a little unusual to speak of Moses talking with Yahweh on Mount Sinai, when that happened most famously in the book of Exodus. But this is very close to a midpoint between the start of Exodus and the end of Deuteronomy.

Midpoints are important because they give an order and a structure to the work. (Remember that the Old Testament people did not have the structure of chapter and verse as we do.) All the generations that happened in Genesis are very important. And the story continues to be very important. God did not have to start all over again, although he was pretty close to doing that at various times. So many more wonderful details will be coming in the future.
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God knows what he is doing. And he is doing a good job. His generations ultimately generate some very good things. And he likes to use a big number like twelve to show how often his blessings overflow.