This is the longest chapter that we have read yet and there is a lot to talk about. I did some editing on the final product and got it down to a runtime of 29 minutes. This is one of those Rated R chapters; there may be a children’s coloring page of Lot’s wife turning to a pillar of salt; it’s less likely they had a discussion in Children’s Church about the men of Sodom trying to break down the door of Lot’s house.
This chapter is longer than the last and there is a lot to say about this one. Three men visit Abraham – long discussion about who they might be – and they deliver two pieces of information. 1) Sarah will give birth at the age of 90 and 2) Sodom and Gomorrah will be judged for their great sins.
Link to Read the Bible: the LORD for a refresher in the Old Testament name for God.
God has made promises to Abram and in this chapter will establish his covenant with him and give the sign of circumcision. Abram will be known as Abraham, Sarai as Sarah, and the birth of Isaac is promised. This chapter is a little longer than the past couple we’ve read and I felt a lot needed to be said.
Mistakes have consequences. Sometimes you don’t even realize you are making a mistake in the moment, it seems like the right thing to do, but there are still consequences. And sometimes, if you are Abram and Sarai, you make mistakes that change the course of world history and the consequences of your actions will continue to be felt for millennia.
God repeats promises in chapter 15 that were made in chapters 12 and 13. He reveals details about the next 400 years and beyond and Abram believes, an act of faith that God regards as righteousness.
In Genesis 4, Cain killed his brother Abel. I know that but I got my words a little mixed up tonight. Abel offered the more excellent sacrifice which is why he is mentioned in Hebrews 11.
This is the first time we read about Lot getting into trouble and needing to be rescued; it will not be the last. The big thing in this chapter is Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God Most High. Little is said about him and there is much we don’t know but he will be presented in the New Testament as a type of Christ.
If you click the play button and listen to the audio you may not notice a difference between this and the other recordings up to this point. If you download the file to a laptop, cell phone – I don’t know what the other options are these days – you might notice this file is an mp3 while the first 13 chapters were saved as m4a files. Mp3 is a slightly larger format so I want to know if anyone has any issues or if the 25 MB size is going to be a problem. I am running a free version of some recording and editing software; I could save as m4a but that’s a feature that would cost something. I used to have a file type converter but that was years ago; I could probably find something like that again but I don’t want to take a bunch of unnecessary steps if nobody cares. I’m the one that is going to run into problems when I run out of storage space for the blog archives. I would like to someday have all 1,189 chapters available for anyone to listen to at any time.
Abram returns from Egypt, wealthier than he went in. He and Lot have so much stuff between them it is necessary to part ways. It seems innocuous in this short chapter but Lot lands near Sodom and you probably know at least a little something of what happens next.
God makes promises to Abram for the first time in Genesis 12 that will be repeated in Genesis 15. God spoke to Abram in verse 1 and appeared to him in verse 7. Some weirdness happens later in the chapter but what we see in the early verses is the beginning of the history of Israel.
In Genesis 11, we address an apparent contradiction. The Bible does not contradict itself but there are a few apparent contradictions and we will deal with those as we encounter them. Then after a short interruption to describe what happened at the Tower of Babel, we go right back into the genealogy where we left off in chapter 10. I apologize in advance… maybe, if you haven’t played the audio yet… I said begat a couple of times and switched back and forth between begat and fathered. Some of us grew up with chapters full of begats before learning there were modern translations. To be fair, 40 or 50 years ago there were not nearly as many translations in English as there are today.
From time to time as we read through the Bible we will come upon chapters that are almost entirely genealogy. If you thought Genesis 9 had quite a bit then fasten your seat belt. I am not an expert in Hebrew names but many of these will at least be somewhat familiar if you know anything at all about cities, nations and empires in the Old Testament. If you have been with us for a few chapters then hopefully you have developed a routine of some sort. So open your Bible (or app, or web browser, what have you) and let’s read some names I can barely pronounce.
The Master's Table 