Bible Difficulties (22 page)

What concept of immortality is implied in "gathered to his people" (Gen. 25:8) and

"slept with his fathers" (2 Kings 11:43)? Is there a connection with Jesus' depicting
the deceased Lazarus in Abraham's bosom (Luke 16:22)?

The expression "gathered to his people" clearly implies something more than the mere proximity of corpses in some common tomb-vault or graveyard. Abraham was conceived of as joining his deceased loved ones in some sort of fellowship or personal association.

Since Israel's neighbors all believed in the persistence of the soul after its departure from the body (so the Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians, and Homeric Greeks), it would be very surprising indeed if the Hebrews alone disbelieved in the conscious existence of the soul after death. Highly significant in this connection is King David's statement about the little son whose death had just been announced to him (2 Sam. 12:23): "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me." In other words, David knew the infant's life would not return to his body so that he could resume his existence among the living. But David fully expected that he would go to join that little child after he himself passed away.

Again, "go to him" does not imply mere physical nearness to the deceased in their tombs. Asaph, David's contemporary, affirmed in Psalm 73:24 the following: "Thou shalt guide me [O God] with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory"--which seems to mean the glorious presence of God in heaven. There is a similar implication in Psalm 49:15: "But God will redeem my soul from the power of Sheol, for He shall receive me."

One thinks of Enoch, who after three hundred years of fellowship with the Lord was taken (the same verb
laqah
is used in both passages) from this life, without leaving his body behind.

The expression "slept with his fathers" (1 Kings 11:43), which occurs quite frequently in connection with royal obituaries, seem to refer to the status of the believer's body as it awaits revivification in the grave--much like the term "fall asleep" is used occasionally in the New Testament of deceased believers. This expression contained within it a happy expectation that the dead body would someday be awakened once more. Isaiah 26:19

states: "Your dead will live; their corpses will rise. You who lie in the dust, awake and shout for joy, for your dew is as the dew of the dawn, and the earth will give birth to the departed spirits" (NASB).

In the light of the story of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:19-31), there can be little doubt that Jesus believed that the souls of both the wicked and the just lived on in the life beyond and that the humble believer like Lazarus went to a place of blessed comfort and rest where Abraham was. Thus our Lord confirmed the trust of the Old Testament saints, who affirmed, "In thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures 92

forevermore" (Ps. 16:11), which follows that great resurrection verse: "For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption" (v.10).

How many wives did Esau have, and who were they?

Genesis 26:34 tells us that at the age of forty, Esau married two Hittite women--Judith, daughter of Beeri, and Basemath, daughter of Elon. Since Genesis 36 does not mention Judith at all, we can only conclude that she bore Esau no children; whether she was barren or died young is uncertain. Nevertheless, Judith was wife number one.

Wife number two was, as stated above, Basemath. But since Genesis 36 refers to her as Adah, it would seem that she bore that name as well. (Examples of men and women bearing more than one name are quite numerous in the Old Testament, both among Israelites and among Gentiles.) Since Esau later married a daughter of his uncle Ishmael, who was likewise named Basemath (apparently a common name in the Edomite region back in those days; Solomon also gave that name to one of his daughters [1 Kings 4:15]), it became expedient to call the former Basemath by her other name, Adah. She bore him one son, Eliphaz (36:4).

Wife number three was Oholibamah, daughter of Zibeon, a Hivite. We are given no information as to when he married her or under what circumstances. We only know that her father's name was Anah, the son of Zibeon. (Zibeon was therefore her grandfather rather than her father--as one might have gathered from Genesis 26:34. Hebrew has no technical term for grandparents or grandchildren; it simply uses the terms for "father " or

"mother" for grandparent and "son" or "daughter" for grandchild.) Presumably Esau married Oholibamah before he married Ishmael's daughter Basemath. By Oholibamah Esau had three sons: Jesuh, Jalam, and Korah--in that order.

Wife number four was Basemath, daughter of Ishmael, who bore him just one son, Reuel (
Reù'el
, probably pronounced "Raguel"--the same name as that of Jethro, Moses'

father-in-law [cf. Exod. 2:18; Num. 10:29]). It should be added that this Basemath also had a second name: Mahalath (cf. Gen. 28:9). But apparently she (or Esau) preferred Basemath (with its fragrant connotation, in the masculine form
bosem
, of "balsam"), for so she is always referred to in Genesis 36.

This, then, constitutes the full list of Esau's wives and the sons they bore to him. Esau is also referred to in Genesis 36 as "the father of Edom" (Gen.36:9, 43), but in this case

"father of" is equivalent to "founder of"--just as Jacob was the founder of the nation Israel.

Perhaps it is worth noting that the recurrence of favorite or fashionable names is reflected throughout Genesis 36 as characteristic of that Horite-Hivite culture into which Esau married down in the Edomite region. There are at least five examples of this, including the two wives named Basemath just mentioned.

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First is Anah, the son of Zibeon, mentioned above as the father of Oholibamah. The Masoretic text actually reads
bat
("daughter of") both in Gen. 36:2 and Gen. 36:14. But this appears to be a scribal error for
ben
("son of"), because all the other parents referred to in these genealogical chains are always male rather than female (perhaps the scribal abbreviation for B-N [
ben
] was so close to B-T [
bat
] as to be confusing). It is highly significant that the Samaritan Hebrew text here does read B-N ("son of") rather than B-T

("daughter of"), and the Greek Septuagint (LXX) and Syriac Peshitta do the same. We note also that in v.24 a
son
of Zibeon son of Seir (Gen. 36:20) was given the name Anah.

While it is not uncommon for a nephew to be named after his uncle (which is what Anah son of Zibeon the Hivite would be to him), it is most unusual for a nephew to be named after his
aunt
. Therefore we conclude that the older Anah was indeed male rather than a female.

Second, the name Zibeon, as just noted above, was originally borne by the grandfather of Oholibamah, the wife of Esau. So far as we know, there was no blood relationship between Zibeon the son of Seir the Horite and Zibeon the Hivite, except by a distant in-law relationship, perhaps, through their common connection to Esau through marriage.

Third, the name Oholibamah was borne not only by the daughter of Anah who married Esau but also by a daughter of the younger (nephew) Anah (36:25). These were names that tended to recur in the same family line.

Fourth, the name of Timma was borne by the daughter of Seir who became a concubine to Eliphaz, the son of Esau by Basemath-Adah (Gen. 36:12, 22). It was also the name of a descendant of Esau whose paternity is not given but who is listed as a "chieftain" of Edom in a later generation (Gen. 36:40). In this case, then, a male descendant was given the same name as a related female of an earlier century. Another remarkable example of this was a later chieftain of Edom named Oholibamah (v.41). This last example is all the more remarkable since it ends with the feminine -
ah
, which is not often to be found in a man's name. (The numerous masculine names ending in -
iah
--Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, etc.--are not feminine endings at all but a shortened form of Yahweh, the covenant name of God.)

One other pair of names is nearly identical: Dishon and Dishan (Gen. 36:21). Names that end in -
an
in Aramaic, Arabic, or Akkadian generally appear as -
on
(by the so-called Canaanite shift, which tended to round off an original long a as an o in Hebrew and the other Canaanite dialects). Seir seems to have had a great fondness for this name pattern and hence used it on two different sons of his with a mere difference in the final vowel.

When was Rachel given to Jacob--after Leah's bridal week or after the fourteen-year contract with Laban had been completed?

From Genesis 29:27 it seems quite clear that Rachel was given to Jacob seven or eight days after his marriage to Leah: "Complete the bridal week of this one," Laban said to Jacob, "and we will give you the other also for the service which you shall serve with me for another seven years (NASB). It is true that the word rendered "bridal week" literally 94

means only "week" (or even "heptad"); yet it is also true that apart from Daniel 9:24-27, it is not demonstrable that this word ever means anything other than a week of days in the Old Testament.

The subsequent narrative strongly suggests (in Gen.30) that the two sisters were competing with each other simultaneously in the matter of childbearing, and that Leah was carrying off all the honors in this context, until finally, after years of trying, Rachel gave birth to Joseph. Not until after that event is mention made of the final period during which Jacob worked to earn livestock rather than wives (Gen. 30:25-32; Gen. 31:38).

How could God bless the conduct of Jacob and the lying of Rachel (Gen. 31)?

The evidence is very slight indeed that God "blessed the lying of Rachel." As a matter of fact, she did not live a very long time after the episode at Gilead but died at childbirth, while being delivered of her second child, Benjamin (Gen. 35:16-19). This could have allowed her only a few years of life after her useless and pointless theft of her father's household idols--which must have ended up with all the other idols carried about by Jacob's household, under the oak tree near Shechem (V.4).

As for the "conduct of Jacob," God continued to bless him, despite his devious and crafty ways, because He saw in him the makings of a true man of faith. It was only God's own providence that enabled Jacob to overcome the devious deceptions practiced on him by Laban, who foisted his eldest daughter on him (probably after making him so drunk that by the time he got to bed he could not tell one woman from another) instead of giving him the girl he really loved. After fourteen years Laban had left his son-in-law penniless, and had entered into an agreement about wages during Jacob's final six or seven years with him--with the hope and expectation of overreaching him and keeping him poor. As Jacob said to Laban, in their confrontation at Gilead: "I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you changed my wages ten times. If the God of my father...had not been for me, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed" (Gen. 31:41-42, NASB).

Jacob was not simply expressing his own viewpoint. Genesis 31:12 records the statement of God's angel: "I have seen all that Laban has been doing to you" (NASB). It is clear from the following verses that Jacob's use of striped branches to induce controlled breeding among the sheep was prepared by God and made effectual for the purpose in the interests of fairness and justice. It is true that in this case the overreacher, Laban, was himself overreached through the wise maneuvers of Jacob, who finally learned how to cope with him. Only in this way could Jacob have built up an estate and thus had wealth to transfer to his ancestral home when he and his family could finally get away from Padan Aram and settle at last in Palestine.

Laban's complaint that Jacob acted unfairly by not telling him he was planning to leave, thus denying him a chance to stage a farewell banquet, could hardly have expressed his true intention. He loudly protested that he was kindly disposed toward them all and would have given them a royal sendoff, but there is no evidence whatever that he would 95

have done so. On the contrary, Jacob had good reason to fear him and to keep his intended departure a carefully guarded secret; thus Jacob said to him, "Because I was afraid, for I said, `Lest you would take your daughters from me by force'" (Gen 31:31, NASB). There is no reason to doubt that he would have done so, for vv. 1-2 make it clear that Laban had developed considerable suspicion and hostility toward Jacob because of the attrition of his livestock. It was sheer hypocrisy for him to claim that he would have granted them a gracious dismissal.

To sum the matter up, it is true that Jacob never notified his father-in-law about his intended departure; and in that sense Jacob deceived Laban the Syrian, by not telling him that he was fleeing. Nevertheless he told no overt lie, so far as the biblical record goes; and he withheld information concerning his imminent departure only because he was positive that Laban would never let him go voluntarily. He would have been sure to compel him to remain with him even after tensions and hostilities had arisen between Jacob and Laban's sons (Gen. 31:1) and the atmosphere had become too tense for Jacob to remain there in safety and harmony. The withholding of information is not quite the same thing as lying. (Jesus certainly committed no sin by choosing to remain silent in front of Herod Antipas in Jerusalem [Luke 23:9]. In that sense He withheld information from Herod, information Herod would have appreciated.) The unusual circumstances dictated to Jacob the wisdom of departure without prior notification; otherwise they never could have gotten away, and God's promise to Jacob in Genesis 28:15 would have failed of fulfillment. Therefore the answer to the question "How could God bless the conduct of Jacob?" is "Because God is just and faithful to His children, even His less-than-perfect children."

Why is Genesis 31:49 referred to as the Mizpah "benediction"? Was it really
intended as a blessing; or was it an expression of mistrust between Laban and
Jacob, involving an appeal to God to ensure that both parties kept their agreement
with each other?