Jacob I loved, Esau I hated!

by AIRVIEW1 30 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  teejay

  But Frenchy,

  I didn't say the bible was worthless.

  I simply think that the puzzle AIRVIEW posed at the beginning, one that I had long mulled myself, points to an inescapable deficiency in the text, and it's not the only one. There are other passages (and you may know of some) that make it impossible to harmonize a loving, compassionate, fair and just god with some of the things he did... or allowed. Even imperfect humans have a hard time accepting such behavior in other humans and don't easily abide by it. I'd hate to think that such behavior could be said to be "godly."

  I don't believe the bible is inspired—I even question the existence of a God—but even when I was a "believer" some scriptures forced me to simply say, "Hey, if Jehovah is who I think he is, that scripture ust *can't* be true."
• 

  AIRVIEW1

  Frenchy,
  I don't know about you but I feel better knowing that there is a GOD who has a plan for our good and is in complete control. If we are the masters of our own fate or destiny....then who needs a GOD?
  Of course when something really really bad happens everyone begins to look to GOD for answeres. I am reassured by knowing that GOD loved the world so much that he sent his only begotten SON that WHOSOEVER places his trust in him will not be dissapointed. It seems to me that GOD will step in and overide someones will when it interfears with his plan, such as in the case of the christian killer Paul.
• 

  Frenchy

  Teejay:
  I may have misunderstood your comments. I agree with you on the very puzzling and seemingly contradictory statements of the Bible and I am the first to say that it is both baffling and disturbing to me when I read them.

  "Hey, if Jehovah is who I think he is, that scripture just *can't* be true."

  Yes, I know exactly what you mean by that and I have the same reaction when I read those passages. As a witness I believed that all things written in scripture could be understood. After all look at all those Watchtower volumes sitting on my shelf explaining them! Now I am of the opinion that much of scripture cannot be understood and that this is by design. I don’t think the Bible is deliberately misleading us by its omissions but rather causes many of us to simply look harder and deeper.

  Airview:
  I believe in God and I believe Him/Her (God has no sex) to omnipotent and omniscient. I believe that God as a ‘plan’ for us. It is not reassuring for be to believe that “He devised a plan to save some for his own glory and others he just simply lets them stay under the condemnation of the fall…” I do not think there is anything ‘simple’ at all about God’s plan.

  “If we are the masters of our own fate or destiny....then who needs a GOD?” I’m not sure I follow your line of reasoning here but are you suggesting that we have no choices?
• 

  GinnyTosken

  The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman discusses the stories of the patriarchs, including Jacob and Esau. If the authors are correct, these stories were intended to be allegories about tribes, nations, and political disputes.

  "Yes I have loved Jacob but I have hated Esau" appears to fall into this pattern. These words first appear in an "oracle" from Malachi and are an interpretation of the political histories of Israel and Edom.

  I have loved you, says the LORD. But you say, "How have you loved us?" Is not Esau Jacob's brother? says the LORD. Yet I have loved Jacob but I have hated Esau; I have made his hill country a desolation and his heritage a desert for jackals. If Edom says, "We are shattered but we will rebuild the ruins," the LORD of hosts says, "They may build, but I will tear down, until they are called the wicked country, the people with whom the LORD is angry forever.

  --Malachi 1:2-5

  Below is a sample of the book. Information in [ ] has been added by me.

  The relationships of Israel [by Israel, the authors mean the northern 10-tribe kingdom] and Judah with their eastern neighbors are also clearly reflected in the patriarchal narratives. Through the eighth and seventh centuries BCE their contacts with the kingdoms of Ammon and Moab had often been hostile; Israel, in fact, dominated Moab in the early ninth century BCE. It is therefore highly significant--and amusing--how the neighbors to the east are disparaged in the patriarchal genealogies. Genesis 19:30-38 (significantly, a J text ["J" meaning the Jahvist thread, believed to have been influenced by southern priests from Judah]) informs us that those nations were born from an incestuous union. After God overthrew the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot and his two daughters sought shelter in a cave in the hills. The daughters, unable to find proper husbands in their isolated situation--and desperate to have children--served wine to their father until he became drunk. They then lay with him and eventually gave birth to two sons: Moab and Ammon. No seventh century Judahite looking across the Dead Sea toward the rival kingdoms would have been able to suppress a smile of contempt at a story of such a disreputable ancestry.

  The biblical stories of the two brothers Jacob and Esau provide an even clearer case of seventh century perceptions presented in ancient costume. Genesis 25 and 27 (southern, J texts) tell us about the twins--Esau and Jacob--who are about to be born to Isaac and Rebecca. God says to the pregnant Rebecca: "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples, born of you, shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger" (25:23). As events unfold, we learn that Esau is the elder and Jacob the younger. Hence the description of the two brothers, the fathers of Edom and Israel, serves as a divine legitimation for the political relationship between the two nations in late monarchic times. Jacob-Israel is sensitive and cultured, while Esau-Edom is a more primitive hunter and man of the outdoors. But Edom did not exist as a distinct political entity until a relatively late period. From the Assyrian sources we know that there were no real kings and no state in Edom before the late eighth century BCE. Edom appears in ancient records as a distinct entity only after the conquest of the region by Assyria. And it became a serious rival to Judah only with the beginning of the lucrative Arabian trade. The archaeological evidence is also clear: the first large-scale wave of settlement in Edom accompanied by the establishment of large settlements and fortresses may have started in the late eighth century BCE but reached a peak only in the seventh and early sixth century BCE. Before then, the area was sparsely populated. And excavations at Bozrah--the capital of Late Iron II Edom--revealed that it grew to become a large city only in the Assyrian period.

  Thus here too, the stories of Jacob and Esau--of the delicate son and the mighty hunter--are skillfully fashioned as archaizing legends to reflect the rivalries of late monarchic times.

  See also http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=3587&site=3

  Ginny
• 

  GinnyTosken

  Frenchy,

  I have, and still do, often wonder about that passage. What was the basis for God's love of one and hatred of the other when neither had done anything to warrant such a reaction?

  Isn't the answer in the Bible itself? We are "pots of clay," and God may arbitrarily do with us as he wishes:

  As it is written,

  "I have loved Jacob,
  but I have hated Esau."

  What then are we to say? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means! For he says to Moses,

  "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
  and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."

  So it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy. . . .

  You will say to me then, "Why then does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?

  But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will what is molded say to the one who molds it, "Why have you made me like this? Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use?

  --Romans 9:13-21

  Sounds to me like the same answer used in Job--"I'm bigger and more powerful, so shut up and don't question my authori-tay."
  
  Ginny
• 

  AIRVIEW1

  No im not saying we don't have a choice I am saying the bible seems to record that God does what he wants to do and doesn't do what he doesn't want to do. This is pretty much what you would expect from an Almighty God. If God likes you...then you get his favor...if he doesn't ...then you don't get his favor. He must have liked the whore of Jerico who hid the spies because even tho she was the town whore God liked what she did in hiding the spies and left her wall standing and put her name in the Hebrew chapter 11 hall of faith.
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  GinnyTosken

  Reasoning along Biblical lines, it seems to me that if I happen to be a lump of clay designed for "dishonorable use," I would actually be resisting the will of God if I tried to act honorably.

  Ginny
• 

  teejay

  AIRVIEW1,

  You bring up a good point, ANOTHER pet peeve against god that I have, in mentioning S/Paul.

  God intervened in that one's life and that intervention (supposedly) turned Paul's life around. God didn't have to do that. Christianity flourished under ancient Roman rule where persecution continued unabated for centuries. Paul could have continued to oversee the killing of Christians with negligible effect on Christianity as a whole.

  For some reason, God/Jesus (whoever) chose to reveal himself to an individual and that revelation had a profound effect. Wouldn't such a 'divine' revelation also positively impact the lives of many of the rest of humanity if god stepped off of his high horse and did so?

  Have you read the postings of our friend AGuest (Shelby)? If not, God speaks to Shelby. Well... God don't speak to teejay and never has. After more than four decades of life (admittedly, barely a twinkling of an eye to God) I have seen no lightning bolts, heard no voices audibly or otherwise, seen absolutely no tangible evidence of a god at all. (for more of my thoughts on this, see http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=8379&site=3 ) In my opinion, the fact that Saul 'saw the light' and benefited from it means NOTHING. Most humans would instantly benefit when hearing/seeing some believable evidence in a living god.

  You asked Frenchy: If we are the masters of our own fate or destiny....then who needs a GOD?

  My answer: Good question!!

  For bible believers, in Jesus' day and through him, God raised a couple from the dead and cured a few sick people. Since then, examining the record of history, what has god done for mankind? How is one's faith in God bolstered when all... ALL... of the improvements made in the areas of medicine, social and political injustice, prediction of damaging geophysical calamities, etc. is being made by right-hearted HUMANS? Where has God *been*? Locked in the bathroom? Smiling when there are advancements and shrugging his shoulders when there isn't? Who knows, and that is my point.

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  Now I am of the opinion that much of scripture cannot be understood and that this is by design. I don’t think the Bible is deliberately misleading us by its omissions but rather causes many of us to simply look harder and deeper.

  Frenchy,

  A believer cursed with a rational mind is eventually forced to reach this conclusion. As a thinking skeptic, for me it's just another huge oddity, puzzle, thing that makes you say, "hmmm..."

  If the bible is not to be understood, if it's simply meant (in part) to keep humans mentally challenged/occupied over millennia, then where is its true value other than that?

  If it's meant to be understood, it could be way less ambiguous (<---- understatement of the decade). If, for my daughter, my aim is to leave behind a record of me and a guide for successful living—AND THAT'S ALL SHE'LL EVER HAVE—I will make damn sure to write clearly in words she will understand.

  Sure, some of the issues I discuss in the document will be ones she could not understand as a two-year-old, but by the time she reached womanhood and beyond, my words--every one of them--would gradually take on useful meaning. Loving her more than life itself, I would want her to make the most of her life and would have zero interest in muddying her mind with useless puzzles and mysteries that I knew she would never understand.

  But hey! That's me.
• 

  AIRVIEW1

  Yes Ginny can a lepord change his spots?
  What would Gods mercy be for if he could not extend it to one of his dishonorable clay pots that asked for it?
• 

  Frenchy

  Sounds to me like the same answer used in Job--"I'm bigger and more powerful, so shut up and don't question my authori-tay." –Ginny

  Then there are the passages where God actually allows humans to reason with him such as was the case with Lot, his rescinding his judicial decree upon Nineveh, and in some of his dealings with Moses.

  Reasoning along Biblical lines, it seems to me that if I happen to be a lump of clay designed for "dishonorable use," I would actually be resisting the will of God if I tried to act honorably.

  Exactly. That’s why I don’t subscribe to the idea that God has pre-ordained us in one direction or the other.

  Airview:
  If God likes you? What does that mean? Doesn’t Peter tell us that God is impartial? That salvation is open to any and all? The account of Rehab allows me to perceive that God, while not condoning wrongdoing, is able to see past what a person does and what a person is. It’s not about his liking “the town whore” as you put it.

  Teejay: “Most humans would instantly benefit when hearing/seeing some believable evidence in a living god.” Good point. This something else that has both troubled and confused me for a long time. I keep asking God to: “Please let me know something. You’ve done it in the past why can’t you do it again, not for me alone but for all of us.”

  If the bible is not to be understood, if it's simply meant (in part) to keep humans mentally challenged/occupied over millennia, then where is its true value other than that?

  I don’t believe that the Bible is ‘meant not to be understood, period’ for then it would be mere foolishness, contrived nonesense. We cannot understand it fully because at our stage of development we are simply incapable of understanding it fully, just like your mention of your young daughter not being able to understand the legacy you are leaving to her. I believe it is so designed as to cause us to search diligently for the meanings, SOME of which we will definitely find and understand.

  I once said (okay, maybe more than once) that you will find exactly what you’re looking for when you go looking in the Bible. You want controversy? It’s there. You want contradictions? You’ll find that too. You want inspiration? It’s there too. It’s in the looking. Motives are established, personalities more clearly defined. I think that it’s doing its job marvelously. Some are angered by it, others have had their lives saved by it, many ridicule, and lots of us read and wonder.