[Music] Adam and Eve had two sons Kane and Abel they both bring offerings before God and although Kane is the firstborn God turns his face towards Abel and he shows Abel favor so Cain gets angry about this and you can imagine him thinking God what's wrong with my offering and aren't I the firstborn don't I deserve your favor God's response to Cain is essentially you're assuming that there's no exaltation for you too just because I went to the lowest one first and so now you've got a choice whether you will do good or not do good based on this moment and be careful because there's an animal at the door moral failure is like an animal but just like I called your parents to rule over the animals and they didn't they let an animal rule them you have a chance to rule this inner animal and what you gonna do we know how this story ends pain lets the Croucher within take over he murders his brother in Cold Blood and in spite of this God surprisingly shows him Mercy just like God didn't enforce the death penalty in the moment on his parents because he said on the day you eat of it you'll die and in the day they eat of it they're exiled to the realm of death but they don't die so in the same way God comes to the murderer which in the rest of the Torah it's a capital crime and God not only forgives Cain but also sets a sign on him that seven times over he will protect Cain's life from anybody who might want to kill him Kane's story is Humanity's story when we don't think we get what we deserve we plot and we take it for ourselves even at the expense of others and so so we can stop and we can empathize with Kane I mean it's hard to be in a place where God's face doesn't seem to be shining on you it's hard to see others succeed when you fail especially when it seems like you've done nothing wrong and some of us out there have it really bad I mean every day is hard and God's face seems so far away but Jesus walked around and said things like blessed are the poor blessed are the meek blessed are those who hunger and thirst for things to be put right if you know my father and what he's up to in the world you know that that is the most blessed fortunate place you could ever find yourself and God's generosity can meet you even there very counter-intuitive today timaki and I continue on the theme of the firstborn I'm John Collins and you're listening to Bible project podcast thanks for joining us here we go [Music] okay so we're doing firstborn and yeah we're gonna talk about the generations of families in Genesis 4 and following and how it relates to the theme but I've I've had some time since we've had the first few conversations and maybe kind of summarize and reflect a tiny bit great I love it when you summarize and reflect always turns into good things well I think the main thing is when we were finishing our conversation on the serpent and humans and the connection of the firstborn there which if I could summarize is that God created the host of Heaven the Elohim the rulers above the rulers above yeah first they were created first day four day four and they rule the skies and then you've got these creatures that are land creatures that are even created after the animals right the beasts yeah day five is Sky flyers and the water swarmers yeah and the day six you've got like the land animals land animals yeah and then the last on the scene right are humans right but then it leads up to this punch line where God says that humans are His Image both male and female and they get to rule the land and the Sea and the creatures that even go right up to that's right all the creatures all the creatures in these other Realms too and so then we get to the serpent who is this creature it's a beast but it's not quite just a beast and we looked at a lot of the literature in the second temple period where people are examining the motives of the snake and and we also looked at later Reflections on the character of the snake in the prophets yeah okay they also see uh malevolent spiritual reality at work there right specifically in Isaiah and Ezekiel and so in true meditation literature form as you think about this story you realize that there was something going on with the firstborn theme which is the ones who came first who actually should have more Authority actually are more kind of Glorious beings yeah have to deal with these like late comers who they don't deserve to rule as much as they get to rule these land creatures and so there's this Envy and there's this rivalry so one of the things that stuck with me and I think I mentioned at the very end and I just want to tag it again if there's something more there which is one of the great mysteries in life is the problem of evil why is there evil and what is it what is evil yes yeah what and why yeah if God is good and he created a good world he ordered it he created creatures to rule on his behalf in His image the humans in His image the host of Heaven in his the word is an image but it's uh yeah sign or symbol they're a sign or symbol of him then where does evil come in to the picture and so this doesn't answer the question but it's an interesting like way into the question I've never gone this route before which is to say this creature who introduces mistrusting God and introduces evil essentially yeah doubt in the goodness of God doubt in the goodness of God and introduces Disobedience yeah yeah the possibility of asserting one's own identity even though all creation is depended every millisecond on the generous power of God there's a Temptation for rational image-bearing creatures that have a sense of self-identity to begin to imagine themselves as staking out some realm of Independence yeah acting independently of the will of God and no coincidence that in the garden story it's all about truth and deception in other words even when you're deceived you're acting and on what you think is true this is interesting meditation that goes all the way back both in classical theist Traditions Christian Jewish and even in later Islam the evil isn't a thing like goodness is a reality of God's Own nature and being but rather evil is the deprivation or the subtraction of ultimate goodness yeah that's interesting so it's an absence yes Loosely famously said it's a truly parasitic reality it's a shadow that has no true existence unto itself except that is a real lived experience of peeling off of God's goodness and doing what's good in your own eyes I think that's the imagery of the story so anyway but your point is well that's what is evil correct so right I'm kind of interested in what this theme is telling us about why is evil yeah because the motive here is Envy yes yeah that's right and the reason for the Envy is because God elevated yeah a lowly creature that's right and gave them power yep and so here's my question as we continue on in this theme we're going to continue to see God elevating the lowly and giving them power yes it's just something about the nature of God and it seems like if we would have to believe that if God is good then this impulse to do that is a good impulse yeah to give good gifts to those of high and low status he gives yeah he gives gifts to the Elohim above but then he also gives it to these dirt creatures and so God's generosity hmm towards it's like the parable in Matthew yeah it's hard not to all of a sudden realize that many of The Parables of Jesus are about this yeah yeah where yeah everyone gets paid the same no matter when they started working yeah that's right like there's that one [Music] um it doesn't feel right I just read that story to my kids and immediately they're like that's not right that's not fair the guy who showed up in the last hour of work he gets the same amount totally that's not fair yeah that's right so there's something about the generosity of God that strikes in us this like wait a second that's not fair is there something there around the why of evil that like hmm we can't handle God's generosity and this it kind of just frustrates us and it makes it flusters us it makes us envious and it just then our reaction to generosity creates yeah yeah I mean that's what happened with that's right the snake I mean that's why he's there yeah or that's what we're saying based on all the repetitions and developments of the rivalries that are rooted in Envy over the one God has elevated because it's not the one that's socially ought to be elevated if you read those patterns and reflect on the garden narrative in light of that that's exactly all these details pop there and I think that's how the Hebrew Bible Works which is why Ali second temple Jewish writers saw the snake as it displaced firstborn so to speak who's just ticked about it yeah so that's a great meditation so I want to understand what the heartbeat is for you this Insight is that the thing that disrupts the Peace of a firstborn figure is that God is overly generous to those who you think shouldn't deserve it or yeah to someone who has status yeah and is glorious in some sense which is good yeah God created you that way that's good yes yes but he also created creatures and people who don't you have that I was just driving my boys back from soccer practice through a part of town that's you know a little more run down and there was a guy just hunched over big just you know you know that kind of where it's just like your body just gave out and you're completely like gravity is just slamming you down and he's Wheeling this thing and he's just disheveled and I'm just thinking to myself that could be my body like that's his lived experience that's his body it likely will be your body and hopefully what I'm like 98 I got like three more months left that could be my buddy yeah and that feels so lowly and God wants to in God's generosity he wants to find a way to like Elevate everyone and there's a sense of like this immediate thought of like well I'm better than that guy yeah yeah sure and is there something to meditate on which is like that impulse of not being able to deal with how generous God is to all people no matter their status yeah that just yeah we just can't handle it and because we can't handle it then the turf wars begin the deceptions begin the violence begins this isn't the complete answer to evil but it's just an interesting like way into it that I've just never yeah contemplated before it's it's definitely one of the biblical stories main like diagnoses of what's wrong with us yeah as we'll see as we dive into the Canaan Naval story in this conversation that's exactly what's at the center of it and you're right I remember I don't have very many memories of preschool or kindergarten but I remember one of them is really Vivid where there was a kid in my class and we became we were fond of each other and became friends and then I remember there was another kid in the class and he had a Star Wars action figure from The Empire Strikes Back the snow monster called the Wampa and uh he brought it to school and I had one too and so then it was this kind of special connection with this kid too and I remember coming home that day talking with my mom what an interesting memory saying like I don't know what to do because I like so and so and we've been playing at recess but now so and so brought his Wampa and I want to play with him and I there's not enough friendship for two because like in my somehow in my my mom has reminded me of this throughout the year you don't have time to be friends with both somehow in my mind it was like a it was what do you say a limited limited resource yeah the ability to care about someone to care about somebody and I what I don't remember was the conversation with my mom or what happened I just remember that crisis yeah what felt like a crisis and what my mom has recounted to me was it was that first moment where you're trying to bring your kids into the reality of the a generous spirit that hosts and cares for people in your life it is a finite resource but you've got a way more than you could possibly imagine you can be friends with more than one person and that's maybe a silly memory yes but it is this truth that it's possible when it comes to love and generosity there's this inexhaustibility to it when it's done in a spirit of love where you're just like there's more there's more and that's for finite creatures because we run out of actual time on our calendars and calories in our body yeah emotional bandwidth and all of that so imagine what it means to talk about an infinite source of generous love as the host of all reality but what that will mean is that I might perceive how God plays generous toast to another creature as um yes creating some dissonance and the question this is the question of the Kane and Naval story what a perfect tee up but it is also the question put to the sky rulers and the land rulers is it like well is it true that if God you know raises up the lovely that he does not also put on high the high and he's generous to them too I think that's kind of the question is can it be both and can there be two you know exalted ones at the same time and I guess human psychology finds it really difficult to think that everybody can win yeah I don't know I'm mixing many metaphors but I was actually thinking about that memory the other day so that's why it's in my mind but I think that's kind of the question that's a great reflection let's take that insight and I think it will really illuminate the Dynamics of this what we're going to call it the second cycle of the inversion of the firstborn pattern even though it's the Cain and Abel story is the first time it actually is about siblings and a firstborn sibling but that's I think that's exactly what the narrator wants us to focus on that question what happens when God is too generous and it starts to make some firstborn son's angry what do you do [Music] [Music] thank you let's just dive in to the story of Cain and Abel Genesis chapter 4 verse one now the human yes but we're the in front of it which means it's yeah interesting the Adam the Adam the Adam knew his wife Java or Eve so the human knew his wife life and she conceived and she gave birth to Cayenne that's how you say his name in Hebrew Cayenne Cayenne Cayenne yeah oh man this is a deep rabbit hole we don't have time yeah so deep of a rabbit hole it's so cool but we we really don't have time his name is spelled with the letters that are similar to the word like metal smithing metalsmith just interesting but also he does represent the city boy right yeah he's going to build the first city and then he's going to have descendants who are the first metalsmiths later on I forget if it's yaval Yuval or tuval Kane one of those I love that and then what life says when she gives birth to Cayenne if she does a word play on his name where she says I have created a man with Yahweh and what that means and what she means by create it's so rad and the word create there is spelled with the letters of cayenne's name oh okay which is this another aspect of the word play but whether her words are neutral or if there's something funky or even arrogant going on there that's the rabbit hole that's super interesting but the point for our conversation is cayenne's the firstborn and then she gave birth to his brother hevel if if you wanted to chase down that rabbit hole do you go down it in your class with Adam to Noah yes oh yes there's a class yep in classroom yep Bible project classroom project classroom yeah you teach yeah this story in the course Adam to Noah and you go down there at home right yeah until at least kind of map out the options and what's going on what did eve mean what you said I have created a man a man with Yahweh with Yahweh yeah yeah because uh always you look compare different English translations and you'll find a wide variety of renderings which is always just a good radar signal yeah like there's something yeah something going on there for the point is just two brothers one's the first one's the second Cayenne means metalsmith hevel which is able is translated able into English but it's the same Hebrew word used for Vapor or wind oh is it the same in Pebble Ecclesiastes oh yes really yeah and it's for sure because yeah he's here one literally one sentence he's gonna be dead in about three sentences so it's really oh my God okay so the point is we got two brothers because that doesn't have all means it means heavily means like a vapor Vapor here one moment yep emphasis on it's here one second gone the next so heavil however was a shepherd of animals yeah so you got one part of his Dad's job from Eden which is like take care of oversight and animals Kane I'll start using the traditional English pronunciation Kane was a worker of the ground okay so this is the other part of its Shepherd a farmer Shepherd and farmer Adam and Eve are doing both in the garden now they're split between their two kids and we said Kane's the city boy but in the ancient world yeah the cities were built around Farmland correct so to be a farmer is to be a city boy city boy yeah that's right and to be a Shepherd is to be the shepherds are out in the way Hills they're rural they're more rural the farmers are Urban okay that's right no that hasn't happened yet though okay because the city's not built because they're all just living right outside the Gate of Eden as we'll see okay now it came about at the end of some amount of days however many of the narrator doesn't say that Kane brought from the fruit of the ground and offering to Yahweh Brad that's cool you know his parents you know wrong Yahweh disobeyed the word of God they were exiled from the garden though as we'll learn not from Eden the land of Eden they're still there in this story but they're apparently sitting outside or near the Gate of Eden and you know you bring your offerings to pay homage to give honor to the Creator so there's Cain doing his thing and you're like rad Noble active surrender surrender what's valuable honor the Creator who gave it and we're supposed to also be reflecting on if they're outside of the gates of Eden there's this if I'm an Israelite I've got a ritual where I go outside the gates of the Holy place that's right and I bring sacrifices yes the altar in the courtyard of the Tabernacle or the temple is right by the door going into the holy of holies holy place in the holies of the Sacred Space which is decorated like a garden yeah like a Garden of Eden yep so he brings his offering and it's a food offering which is a legitimate offering in ancient culture and in the in Leviticus in Leviticus Hebrew Bible yeah it's Leviticus chapter two it's all about it it's like awesome so that's Kane firstborn offers his offering and then verse 4 now Abel he also brought from the firstborn of his flock and from their fatty portions so he comes next he also so that it's clear that Cain's firstborn offers first in the story a legitimate and good offering Abel comes and of course remember Kane's a farmer Abel brings an offering from you know his area of responsibility which is animals but what he brings is from the firstborn that's key appearance of that word the first point of the flock firstborn of his flock yeah yep so the first oldest first to reach maturity of the flock and to bring the firstborn of your flock is the most valuable offering you can bring and then there's this little detail and from the fat portions which is it's like Abel's red Leviticus because is bringing the prime most honorable precious forms of offering which is the firstborn and including the fat portions which are uniquely yahweh's in the later history so what's fascinating is we're not given any insight into the motives of the characters they both bring good offerings but just on an objective level they both bring legitimate offerings it seems like it's setting up the sense of like but one was like more Primo yeah total absolutely I mean yeah and you get that from reading the rest of the Hebrew Bible especially the Torah that the firstborn and the fat are like the the most precious offerings it's not that Keynes is bad it's that Abel's is more valuable and those are the only details given in the text that could point in a direction of why Yahweh does what he does next because the next line is in Yahweh gazed or looked put his attention put his attention on Abel and his offering but upon Cain and his offering he did not gaze okay so we talked about how if this is about God's generosity and there's enough for everyone here it kind of feels like God actually limits his attention yep to one and not the other so why yeah why would God do that like what's going on here yeah it's a great question it feels like a test um feels like a test interesting let's keep reading okay I think the narrator answers that question unfortunately it depends on how it gets translated whether or not you'd see the answer very clearly okay so next is Kane's response there was hot anger to Kane he heated up with anger I've been there yes exactly right and his face fell which is a unique figure of speech in the Hebrew Bible you can kind of feel it if your face is low mm-hmm it's kind of sadness sadness frown that's an interesting turn of phrase okay his face fell and then Yahweh said to Cain why is there hot anger in you why has your face Fallen question you always ask cane a question now if you do good won't there be exaltation and if you don't do good at that door sin is a Croucher and its desire is for you but you can rule it and that's okay never says anything just the story moves on to the murder after this so this is typical Hebrew Bible super dense kind of riddle like but verse 7 I God's response is a riddle if you do good won't there be exultation stop there because that's what we're talking about yeah Cain did something good yes he brought a good offer that's right he wasn't exalted like God didn't even pay at least first I see it's about there's a puzzle here of like would God eventually gaze upon Kane too it's the question I had of so if God exalts my little brother is there any exaltation for me too um uh that's the test is like is God it's actually the it's if I give my attention to my new friend my new Star Wars buddy is there gonna be enough for my old friend from my old friend too yeah that's it does generosity God's generosity have an exclusive limit and What God Says is listen I gave my attention to the offering of your younger brother he offered the firstborn and for sure that's a little kind of narrative hint this to the Dynamics here the firstborn and the fat so my attention went to him first but if you do good isn't there exaltation for you too so first of all Kane is forced with a choice a test now of whether he will do good or not good and this is a part of how the narrative the vocabulary is setting up this test of Cain's decision as a parallel whereas the analogy to his parents Choice before the tree of doing good and not good or knowing good and not good so I think this is all coming back to your first reflection I think what this little line of God's question is actually put his his finger on exactly what you were sensing hmm in the Eden story is that right I think so so if you do good I was taking that as hey I know you did good and I know it doesn't feel like you've been exalted but you will be um there's enough generosity to go around I just didn't go to you first and I know that feels unfair because you're the first born but that's not how I work I don't work off of that kind of schema yeah but my schema can be trusted and there's enough generosity for everyone yeah in a way that doubt of God's generosity extending further than I might imagine is the same doubt that the snake was trying to introduce right to Adam and Eve can God be trusted yeah is he really good yeah did God really say and no actually he you won't die it's that God has more to give but that he doesn't want to give you like that's what the snake's after which is also kind of true like God has more to give that he isn't giving them yet exactly that's true yeah yeah but the question is does that mean he's never yes I mean this has been our long term puzzle about the Eden narrative is humans need the ability to discern good and bad they need them to have responsibility and rule the world right so they have to get it somehow yeah and the question implied in the narrative is how do you take it or do you wait to receive it from God's can you trust God's method and timing of his generosity yeah that's it the method and timing of his generosity because we have our own our own idea of how it should work the method should be on the firstborn I get it first yeah yeah and I get it when I need it right that's kind of like our assumption yeah and God from the get-go is kind of like nope I work on a different yeah schedule Yeah a different method yeah and get used to it and trust that there's enough to go around yeah you will be exalted yes yeah if you do good you got a choice before you right now about how you're going to respond to the fact that I divvied out my favor first to the lower one your younger brother younger brother that's naughty little younger brother totally yes and so I think God's response to Cain is essentially you're assuming that there's no exaltation for you too just because I went to the lowest one first and so now you've got a choice whether you will do good or not do good based on this moment and be careful because there's an animal at the door and sin is a Croucher that's what you mean yeah it's good it's a crouching animal but it's sin which is the word for moral failure moral failure is like an animal is a beast wants you but just like you I called your parents to rule over the animals and they didn't they let an animal rule them you have a chance to rule this inner animal that's crouching and what you gonna do sin is a Croucher that's such a great translation well it's interesting because sin this is a grammar thing sin is a feminine noun grammatically in Hebrew but the word Croucher is a masculine participle it's not a verb sin is crouching it's in our most of our translations sin is a thing crouching it's a Croucher a Crouch sin is a Croucher yeah it's interesting anyway it's a design pattern parallelism between Cain and his parents and the decision they faced and here it's sin in this anger of envy that becomes the snake whispering in his ear [Music] thank you [Music] so do you feel like we've put our finger on it I love it it's right there it's right there it's right there okay so Kane kills his brother Kane spoke to his brother Abel oh okay we're gonna read it and it came out when they were in the field the cane rose up to Abel his brother and he killed him and hevel was hevel and hevel is here one second and gone the next yeah and so God comes just like he came to his parents and he asked the same question where are you where are you at yeah in the garden after Adam and Eve hit the fruit they hid yep and God always like where are you because where are you and here he comes the Cane's saying where's Abel your brother and just like Adam and Eve blame shifted I don't know the woman gee no the snake and so Kane he like tries to dodge it he's like I don't know I don't know why am I responsible for my brother and so you know the blood from the ground so on but I think for our point we can kind of close our meditation on this or try and bring it to a fine point should we talk about how he goes and becomes the well oh well here's something interesting as we're talking about God's generosity oh God becomes extremely generous to Cain after this exactly right just like God didn't enforce the death penalty in the moment on his parents Adam and Eve because he said in the day you eat of it you'll die and in the day they eat of it they're exiled to the realm of death but they don't die Adam lives like eight centuries so in the same way God comes to the murderer which in the rest of the Torah it's a capital crime yeah and God not only forgives Cain but also sets a sign on him rabbit hole that's a sign on him that seven times over he will protect Cain's life from anybody who might want to kill him and so Cayenne is exiled East of Eden he Exiles Cain but he like protects him protects him forgives him and protects in the Exile yeah the one who has received yahweh's gifts and has made a foolish decision about good and bad with the responsibilities God gave him I mean the the most foolish decision you can make is killing another image of God yeah exactly and God doesn't treat him according to his sins to use the language Psalm 103. so super generous continuing to be super generous so it's interesting if you do good won't you be exalted and if you do bad I'm still gonna be generous yeah yeah oh dude and you know what's rad is that the word for exaltation is the word to pick up and carry yeah to take up it's also the same word used to forgive oh really it's the word NASA or NASA is how you oh yeah NASA is to to pick up okay and so it can which is a great way to remember it exactly yeah for NASA Rockets so it can be used in many ways because it's such a basic to pick up yeah okay it can mean to exalt up pick up and put up on high but when you say to pick up or carry someone's sins that's a standard Hebrew phrase to forgive them interesting so it's kind of this double potential meaning of if you do good won't there be exaltation and he doesn't do good and God still nasas if you do good won't there be NASA yeah lifting up and he doesn't do good but God's still in the sauce in terms of forgiving it's anyway it's kind of a cool word play wow so yeah that's right so he continues to be generous as you wouldn't expect it and what Cain does with that generosity as he goes out into exile all of a sudden he has a wife because he knows his wife just like his dad new Eve and brought about him and his brother so now Cain knew his wife whoever she might be and she conceived and gave birth to hanuk or Enoch and then Cain went and built a city and he called the name of the city Enoch after the name of his firstborn son yeah so he goes and he builds the city named after his you know his firstborn so the narrator doesn't say this is good bad or indifferent he doesn't Supply motives but as we're going to see this has uh it's foreboding okay because we just go instantly into a genealogy that goes down seven generations from Adam and ends us with the guy named Lemak and limek goes against God's image of God design of a man and a woman the two become one and in that way partner as an image of God and Lemak gets greedy and he takes two wives Ada and Zilla and then they have all these kids and then Lemak sings this poem where he sings about this man that he murdered for wounding him and he says you know my ancestor Cain God forgave exalted him even though he murdered him so I'm going to claim God's mercy for myself if Cain was protected by God seven times over than me Lemak uh 77 times hmm so here now is somebody who's rewriting God's mercy into like self yeah what do you say self-advantage a license of yeah revenge and yeah Power yeah this is interesting so we've been saying part of the problem of evil is that we can't handle God's generosity when it's given to people we don't think deserve it and then here it flowers kind of into a new thing which is we then take God's generosity yeah and we twist it yeah so that gives us license to yeah that's right the selfish things we want to do what's good in our eyes it's another way of not being able to handle God's generosity yeah totally yeah isn't that interesting yeah no this is a big it's great undercurrent for this conversation that's what Genesis for it's all about so what happens that genealogy that we just went that went from Adam to Cain to this guy Lemak goes through seven generations and it ends with this guy Lemak who has three sons when you turn to what we call chapter five you find another genealogy that stems from the Sun that Adam and Eve had after Abel's murdered after Abel's the next thing is we're told that Adam and Eve have a son in the place of Abel and they call him Seth which means placed or set and what Eve says is God has placed or set for me a new son and then the genealogy starts going through so if chapter four is tracing Cain's genealogy yeah that like culminates in this it's the genealogy of the disgruntled envious murderous firstborn and that leads to limic the king who's now just like a murderous yeah polygamous city of blood just murderous yeah a distorted image of God's generosity chapter 5 comes back and it reboots and it reminds us that Adam and Eve were made in the image of God and then the lineage starts going through Seth and it's fascinating it goes through 10 Generations Seth who's the third born Seth who's now the Third born yeah and that's the family that God is gonna provide the seed of the woman through which we haven't the seed of the woman who's going to crush the snake that's a hole thing that we haven't talked about well yeah well I guess it's important because it's like why we're gonna start talking about God choosing over and over who to give the blessing to yeah that's right and so like there's a logic there yep that's why God's choosing a family to carry a blessing that's right the logic is he's going to raise up from among the humans this is when Adam and Eve or exiled a future descendant of from the woman who will strike the snake while also being struck by it and you're also told that the snake is going to have Offspring along with the woman and you're like well how's that going to happen how is this yeah why do I care about baby snakes yeah baby snakes until you read the story of Cain and Abel and you're like oh that's how a human becomes a snake oh when the Beast inside takes over when the sin is a Croucher at the door and you allow it to rule you instead of you ruling it this was our son of man video um yeah where the sin and the snake become joined as these powers that can that's right turn a human into a snakeling whoa and so Kane and then his lineage down to Lemak become this like human sneaky line and then Genesis 5 kicks us back and restarts literally goes back to the first words of Genesis 1 and 2 about God making male and female In His Image and then it's it gives a birth line from Adam as if Cain doesn't exist we've just we've written him off and wherever that future seed snake crushing see the woman's gonna come from it's going to come from now the Third born the real death the real latecomer and that's what Genesis 5 is about it's a genealogy and it takes 10 Generations leading all the way up to the 10th son Noah and Noah also has three sons and so you get these parallel genealogies of through cane you get seven generations that lead to Lemak and history Sons that's a city of blood and then you get the line of Seth which is 10 generations and the tenth Sun Noah has three sons yeah and what's confusing is there's some similar names in both genealogies yes like some are identical and others like Enoch the yeah King's firstborn is like the seventh born oh yeah there you have it yep who's the famous Enoch who goes to like just gets beamed up to God yeah totally through Kane you get Adam to Cain to Enoch to irad to mehuya El to the methusa El to lemek and his three sons next chapter you go from atom to Seth to enosh which is another Hebrew word for human then you get Canon which is spelled with the same letters as Kane's name then you get Mahala looks like Kenan yeah it looks like Keenan that's right which is actually kind of a yeah then you get mahalal which is he's the fifth generation from and that sounds so much like it sounds which is the fifth generation from Adam through Kane yeah then you get Jared who spelled almost identically to the fourth generation of Kane erod then you get Enoch the famous Enoch who gets taken and he was not for God took him and that's the same name as Kane's firstborn son yeah Enoch then you get Methuselah the oldest human in the biblical story and the letters of his names were just swapped around with methusia El the sixth generation from Kane and then it you get two lemaks you get another limbic another Lemak and then you get Noah so what's interesting is some people have thought oh actually there may be just two oral traditions of the same genealogy right that are being preserved here okay and that may or may not be true but narratively the narrative is going to Great pains to separate these two lineages and I think the rhyming of all the names is painting them as these inverted mirrors of them none of other words it's hard to tell the lineage of the snake and the lineage of the woman apart oh interesting they're going on Parallel tracks that's how it feels when you read it it's so hard to keep track yeah the name similarities are a literary strategy to show that the seed of the snake and the seed of the woman are hard to tell apart and even though you think in the narrative it's clear separation of lines the rest of Genesis is going to go on to show that anybody can become a snake that's interesting and you can unbecome a snake and become a human image that's what the story of Jacob is all about he's born a snake but God tries to turn him into a whoa throwing all these little nuggets in here anyway so what's interesting is that what's implied is you know what's up with all these generations of the story of the firstborn we don't really know but what is interesting is God is choosing the Third born Seth from Adam and Eve and making that the future line of the seed of the woman because that's the main genealogy that's going to get traced throughout the rest of Genesis which leads us to the three sons of Noah and let's just you could spend a long time here but I think we can just kind of show the similarities to what we just looked at [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] so I I guess one question you could start with is you know when God comes to Noah Noah is the 10th Generation from from Adam from Adam vsf through Seth's one yep all right the Third born correct the Third born and what God does is he comes to Noah and says the end of All Flesh has come up before me this is a response to the spreading of violence through Cain Lemak the Nephilim which we haven't talked about but these violent Warriors born of a cosmic disruption that story has happened that's already happened in Genesis was that inserted after the genealogy of Seth it's right after the genealogy okay so you get three stories of violent blood Spillers from Cain to Lemak to the nephilims okay and God's response is he looks at the land and is ruined because of violence and innocent blood being shed everywhere and so when God says the end of All Flesh has come up before me it's both word plays and similar language to when God said the blood of Abel your brother is crying out and it has reached me so now it's like we have many generations of violent humans spilling innocent blood and What God Says is I am going to accelerate or bring about their ruin with the land the land is going to rebel against this human violence and that's going to take the form of the flood so is this interesting question of Noah becomes as it were the chosen Sun from these two lineages to be the vehicle for preserving life for his family and for the animals like a new Adam and Eve so there's no other rival sibling for him to be compared to right okay but you do have two lineages I see on the stage right now in the story and God chooses the line through the Third born Seth and then makes Noah the new human that he's going to preserve and make the seed of a new Humanity so we could explore that more but it's just interesting kind of way the story's carried forward but what I want to focus on is where another sibling rivalry in firstborn rivalry comes into play and that is in Noah's Three Sons a story about Noah's Three Sons so Noah comes out of the Ark this is in chapter 9 verse 18 Genesis the sons of Noah who came out of the Ark were Shem ham and japheth okay now there's details that aren't given here yet it's true Hebrew Bible Style where it's going to be another riddle story and then little details will get seated to you later that will help you understand what happened here because you don't know their birth order you're just given their name kind of assume their birth order I suppose right yes and then what you're going to find out later is listing them Shem ham and yaphet is not their birth order okay what you will find out jfus is the oldest Ham's the youngest and Sham is the the middle middle child okay so Three Sons were Shem ham and Yafit and ham was the father of a guy named Kanan that's going to be important super important super important but here is just a little like aside yeah it's like okay why am I being getting that information from these sons of Noah all the land was scattered now Noah began Noah had a beginning in the beginning Noah became a worker of the ground like uh yeah like Abel yeah and like Adam oh yeah in the beginning oh this guy became a worker of the ground so Adam was the first worker of the ground okay and then but he was also a ruler of the animals true true okay all right his job got split between his two sons and Noah picks up Kane's job a farmer becomes a worker of oh Kane is the worker Kane's the worker correct yep sorry yep yep but it's just interesting Kane Noah in the beginning of Noah he After the flood he became a worker of the ground any plants a garden Vineyard wonderful that's what God did so now Noah is doing what God did yeah yeah and he drank the fruit of the vine right he consumed the fruit of the garden and he lost his mind he just got hammered and he uncovered himself in the middle of his tent and ham the father of Canaan remember remember he saw the nakedness of his father and he reported it to his two brothers outside and Shem and yaphet they took a garment cloak and laid it on their shoulders the two of them and they walked backwards covering the nakedness of their father and pay attention their faces were always facing backwards so that the nakedness of their father they did not see the Noah woke up from his wine and he knew what his youngest son had done to him him and what we're told is that ham saw the nakedness of his father yeah totally and then what happens is Noah utters three little poems of a blessing and curse on his sons it's a curse on Canaan not on him on Kanan like a descendant of ham and you're told that he's going to become a Perpetual servant to his brothers or slave he's going to be lower than his brothers so interesting is he's the youngest he's the younger but as at least I'm going to try and point out I think this is a story about the younger trying to usurp and take the place of the the oldest okay so Kanan hams the Senate will be on the curse and he said Blessed Be Yahweh the Elohim of Shem and let Canaan come under him as a servant and may Elohim in large yaphet it's and yaphet's name means enlarge it's the word play okay in large a guy named enlarge and let him dwell in the tents of Shem and let Canaan become his servant as well that's the cryptic riddle-like story so okay so functionally though japheth the oldest yeah is now no longer the one in charge of in the brothers yeah among the brothers yeah he is going to dwell in the tents of shins Shem gets the Eden blessing Shem is now the leader yep well he's he's the one who gets the blessing yeah and actually he said Blessed Be Yahweh the Elohim of Shem so Yahweh who's the source of all blessing is going to be associated with Shem the middle child okay and yaphet the older japheth the older one you're not excluded you'll get in on the blessing you know but you'll do it by associating yourself with your younger brother uh that's a hard pill to swallow yeah so notice we have with three sons now we're innovating the way things get inverted here so it's the middle Sun that's elevated and gets the blessing and then you got this younger son yeah who pull in some kind of power move here now where do you get that okay so the power move is this buried in this phrase to look upon the nakedness of your father so this is in another classroom class that we have called from Noah to Abraham and we have a whole session on this but that phrase is used uniquely elsewhere in the Torah we talked about it in our journey through the Torah oh yeah that's right yeah it's the phrase to have sexual intercourse with to look at the nakedness to look upon the nakedness or expose the nakedness is a Hebrew shorthand in the Bible for to have sexual intercourse with also the nakedness of your father is a phrase describing it's a way that a man's wife is referred to in Leviticus 18 and the Leviticus chapter 20. and so there's a phrase that says Don't expose the nakedness of your father she is your mother your father's wife the nakedness of your father is a way to refer to taking advantage of your father's wife correct because presumably if he goes into the tent of Noah it's the tent of Noah and his wife hmm now why there's an ambiguity and why it's so riddle like I think is intentional and look up the class and you can go deep down the rabbit hole but notice that it is The Offspring of ham that suffers the consequences for Ham's decision so why are we talking about the descendant of ham because if he took advantage of his father sexually curse be Kanan there wouldn't that wouldn't produce a child but what happens is that a child coming from Ham is put into position of curse so you think this story is about ham using the opportunity for his father being blackout drunk essentially yeah to try and assume the position of alpha male in the family by Sleeping with his father's wife and what's interesting is this pattern will be repeated in the story of lot and his daughters hmm it's all hyperlinked to the scene interesting and that because that story is so disturbing it's about daughters sleeping with their dad by getting him drunk and all the language of that story is adapted from this one and the story later on in Genesis 35 of Reuben who is Jacob's firstborn when Jacob's favored wife Rachel dies Jacob goes and he rapes this is the collection of the most disturbing stories for me in Genesis it is yes and it's about Jacob's firstborn son trying to usurp the position of alpha male in the family by Sleeping with his dad's servant wives so what here it's important is that it's the younger who'd also it's not the youngest getting elevated it's the middle child yeah because okay this is important super important in this theme of the firstborn there's going to be kind of two streams of this theme and one is where God will Elevate the younger or the latecomer that doesn't seem fair yeah but now there's a new stream beginning which is the younger trying to find a way to exalt themselves just be sneaky and crafty and a serp yeah the blessing or the right of the firstborn to get it for themselves to get it for themselves yep and in this case through sexual abuse yeah and we're gonna see that theme continue yes as well yes so first let's just note what a disturbing story this is yeah it's also brutally honest about real human motives and behavior right and in this case it's God hasn't exalted Shem yet in the story this is Ham's move he makes this first move to become alpha male and he abuses his father and I think his mom in the process he's willing and so underneath that through the design patterns we're back to that reflection that this is the mindset what motivates somebody to do something somebody must be so insecure so afraid so wounded hmm that becomes rational to them to think for me to get ahead in life it will be worth it to do this to another human or to my mom and dad I mean that's yeah the psychology being explored here and what it brings about is curse and Destruction for his family and what God does is counter hams whatever just motivating him by elevating his older brother but not the firstborn so it's this it's developing and complicating all the themes but as we do it we're still exploring yeah this portrait of human nature and the problem of evil yeah yeah is in one sense that we can't handle God's generosity towards people who are we don't think deserve it the problem of evil is also that when we don't think we have the status we deserve or should want yeah that's right that we can't handle waiting on God's generosity and so we take yeah we take control in our own terms which leads to violence to take and do what is good in our eyes yeah and it becomes a lot about status I mean this this theme is about status yes that's right and how do we handle status and power yeah and this is back to maybe the old adage about you know the bully on the playground is more than likely the most fearful and insecure kid out there yeah and that's very common I think human mental Habit to overcompensate for our inner fears by asserting ourselves in ways that hurt ourselves and other people and that's what's underneath the story now you don't see that on the surface at a first reading it's when you read all the later stories that hyperlink back to this one that do fill out character mode is more and then you come back to it and you can begin to see that's why we were told that ham was the father of Canaan and that's why this odd language is used and also notice that it's about seeing the nakedness which is what Adam and Eve saw when they did what was good they saw that they were naked yep yeah so here we're also creatively using that language of the Eden story but now connect those two stories now it becomes even more sad and tragic because it's a figure of speech for sexual abuse oh one more thing it's no accident that in the next chapter is a genealogy about the three sons and you get the genealogy from ham and lo and behold who is his descendant a guy named Nimrod who goes and builds the Second City in the story of the Bible so ham the one so before it was Cain the firstborn this time it's ham Third born the youngest yes yeah and you follow a genealogy in which someone builds a city that becomes a big mess yeah Babylon and just as in the flood God confronted the city of Bloodshed that was spilling blood everywhere so in the scattering of Babylon in Genesis 11 God confronts the Second City of man that is trying to reconnect Heaven and Earth on idolatrous terms and that's a whole other rabbit so not only is the like the evil that comes out of a city because of the firstborn not trusting in God's generosity it's also because of the youngest yeah you can't handle yeah their status and tries to do their own Maneuvers yeah that's right and so the lineage of ham unleashes snake-like evil back into the world because Nimrod then is yeah the Builder of Babylon and Assyria which are like the two big bad Empires alongside Egypt and Egypt is also a descendant of him oh really yeah that's it yeah all the big baddies he's the ancestor of the three big bad empires in the biblical story The wreak havoc everywhere so this is the biblical author's way of doing both sober meditation on human nature but then also through these lineages trying to say that when humans don't trust God's generosity and I think he here I'd appreciate they brought this up God's timing and method of sharing and including people generously and when humans get impatient where we feel that I've been left out of the party that there is no exaltation for me too that's when you get humans beginning to ruin ourselves and the people around us and that is the meditation here it's like a sad hmm it's a sad diagnosis of human impatience and inability to think that God can truly be generous with everyone yeah and it is hard to imagine how God can be generous with everyone no you can really relate to this and it's interesting how relatable it is and to then take that thought and go wait is that is that what opens up to um Hmm this thing that I hate yeah interesting which is violence yeah and the Croucher sin the Croucher because when we see it out in the world right you see the big Baddie taking advantage of someone or you see yeah a bully beating up on a kid or you see someone being treacherous and sneaky and taking something that's not theirs when you see it from afar you're just like man that yeah it's just that's horrible yeah yeah but then to realize how hard it is for me or for any human to be in a position that just doesn't feel fair and to have the perspective and the trust just be like and it's okay right now like God will make all things right God will take care of me yeah yeah like that's just like one of the hardest that's so hard so hard yeah where my thoughts land is on the nine announcements of blessing that Jesus makes in The Sermon on the Mount but all the realities that he names are naming people in circumstances that look like the opposite of the good life yeah the poor and spirit right the unimportant the people who hunger and thirst for justice in the world but if you hunger and thirst means by definition you're not in a position to get it or create it and it's painful for you striving to make peace at being in a position where you're in between other people at conflict like these are all really unenviable positions and Jesus says if you know my father and what he's up to in the world you know that that is the most blessed fortunate place that you could ever find yourself and God's generosity can meet you even there it's very counter-intuitive yeah I wish the Bible had something to say to all people in all places about human nature and the purposes of God in the world Tim being snarky nah it's remarkable look we just looked at two of the most riddle like strange stories in the Old Testament yeah and here's where we landed because I think that's what these stories are about all right where are we next yeah so I think where we're going next is I just want to connect going forward in the story we'll finish by looking at the next four generations in Genesis which once God chooses another 10 Generations after Noah which leads you to a guy named Abraham and then there's four generations of God inverting the first four generations of Abraham four generations from Abraham Isaac to Jacob to Jacob's 12 sons and in every generation there is a not identical but some kind of creative subversion where God keeps exalting the late comer or the lowly over the person you think deserves that in the firstborn and each time it deepens the set of meditations on human nature so we've been looking at that's what we're going to look at next thanks for listening to this episode of Bible project podcast next week we continue this theme on the firstborn and we explore the story of Abraham so this is cool scene where it's a chance where Abram could pull rank on his nephew and choose the plot of land now he doesn't know where and what exactly but he just knows that God's settlement give this land and he's super open-handed and he lets his nephew go first it's the theme of a firstborn or sibling rivalry even though it's about a uncle and nephew but this is really a beautiful portrait of what happens when you really truly believe there's enough for me and for my siblings today's episode was produced by Cooper Peltz with the associate producer Lindsay Ponder edited by Dan gummel Tyler Bailey and Frank Garza kanawoo provided the annotations for our annotated podcast in our app Bible project is a crowd-funded non-profit and we get to make a lot of cool stuff this podcast videos Seminary level classes our app it's all free because it's already been paid for by thousands of people just like you so thank you so much for being a part of this with us hi this is Alyssa and I'm from Palm Beach Florida this is noimi and I'm from the Philippines Bible project we use Bible project as a resource in our Bible study at school and in my own independent study I first heard about the Bible project in 2016 when I started college and I'm actually about to graduate in two days I use the Bible project for understanding certain areas or subjects in scripture a little bit better my favorite thing about the Bible project is how comprehensive it is it breaks down language and culture but also always ties back each individual area or subject to the whole Bible we believe the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus we're a crowdfunded projects by people like me find free videos study notes podcasts classes and more at bibleproject.com [Music] [Music]