In some ways this series on the first eleven chapters of Genesis had its origin in a very bad sermon I was subjected to over twenty years ago, in which the preacher basically told the congregation that we’d all be better off ignoring Genesis 1-11 because God doesn’t become recognizable as the God of the Bible until the call of Abraham in Genesis 12. At the time I was in my most ‘fundamentalist’ phase, so this message infuriated me; but even as I thankfully grew out of this phase only a year or two after I heard this ‘sermon’, its attitude that these first eleven chapters had nothing to offer us today has never sat right with me. And I hope this series has demonstrated that, whatever else we may say about these stories, they all have clear messages, which remain just as relevant for us today as they were to their original audiences.
Today’s post will have two goals. First, to look at the final piece of this section of Genesis, and second to use that text as a jumping off point to offer some concluding thoughts on the series as a whole.
Integrated Summary
Genesis 11.10-32 brings the first section of the book to a close. In one final genealogy, it bridges the gap between the primeval biblical pre-history and the call of Abraham. In so doing, it rapidly narrows the scope of the narrative, from the global to the national. From here on out, Israel will be the primary, and generally solitary, focus of the Old Testament. But this narrowing in scope is, paradoxically, the start of a bigger story; for it’s in Abraham that the true drama of biblical salvation history begins.
Because of this, the text serves as a perfect ending to this section of Genesis. For these eleven chapters set the scene for all that follows. After a ‘very good’ beginning in creation, we see the persistent tendency of humans to go astray. We’ve seen three stories of humans overstepping their created limitations and challenging God — in grasping after the knowledge of good and evil, in surpassing their created lifespan, and in centralizing power to rival God and inhibit God’s blessing for humanity to fill the whole earth. We’ve also seen three stories of humans breaking fundamental relationships: between husband and wife, between brother and brother, and between father and son. All of these stories of break down have had big consequences for humanity, and yet each has been tempered by grace: God gave skins to Adam and Eve to wear as clothing, marked Cain for divine protection, preserved life through the Ark, and restated humanity’s original blessing and mandate. And now here at the end, we have the greatest sign of grace of all: The call of Abraham, who will become the patriarch of the people God will use as the primary vessel for divine activity, truth, and blessing — a blessing that will encompass once again the whole world.
Text
For the full text of Genesis 11.10-32, please check out the Bible of your choice or follow the link here.
The genealogy follows a very specific pattern: Name of patriarch and age at birth of his heir, years lived after this birth, and statement of fathering other sons and daughters. Just as we saw with earlier genealogical material, the three major textual traditions of the Old Testament (the Masoretic Text, Septuagint, and Samaritan Pentateuch) offer different ages for the various figures (Carr).*
Experience & Encounter
When reading this final genealogy, I’m immediately reminded of Genesis 5 and its message of divine blessing through continuity. But as little as was said about most of the people in that text, even less is said here. These aren’t even recognizable names until the very end. This is a genealogy on fast-forward, intent on getting us to the end as quickly as possible. The end not only introduces us to Abram and Sarai (the future Abraham and Sarah) and migration of their family into Canaan, but also to the essential drama of the next few chapters: Sarai is childless – a very strange detail to include in what has otherwise been a very by-the-books genealogy.
Explore
A few questions come to mind here:
- What is the connection between this genealogy and those in Genesis 5 and 10?
- Is there anything that can be said about the origin of Abram’s family in “Ur of the Chaledeans”?
- What is the signification of Sarai’s childlessness?
Genesis 11.10-32 among the Genealogies
For some basics of ANE genealogy, check out my post on genealogy as a genre of literature, as well as the post on Genesis 5 from this series. It’s interesting to me that the genealogical material in Genesis is broken up by often surprising stories in which things go sideways for humanity. This has the effect of juxtaposing “the pervasive, if inarticulated, air of pessimism about the seemingly incorrigible nature of man” with the blessing and continuity of the generations (Sarna (1989) 85). So the Cain and Abel story is followed by the lines of Cain and Seth the flood story is followed by the table of nations, and the tower of Babel story is followed by the line of Shem here.
Genesis 5 ended with a description of Noah and his sons. Genesis 11.10-32 picks up right where Genesis 5 left off, with Noah’s son Shem, and seems to have likely been a continuation of the source material for that genealogy. It even follows the basic pattern of chapter 5, only omitting the total years lived and death notice in the main Hebrew textual tradition (Sarna (1989) 85 (Both the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint traditions include the death notices, heightening the similarities with Genesis 5)). Both texts are also arranged around the number ten, with Noah the tenth generation from Adam, and Abraham the tenth from Shem (Sarna (1989) 84, Brueggemann). So again, this marks Abraham off as special, and as Genesis continues, we find out why.
With its remarkable lack of internal commentary or digression, this genealogy’s clear intent is purely to point ahead to Abraham (Carr). It covers some of the same ground as the ‘quasi-genealogical’ table of nations in chapter 10, but whereas chapter 10 was about “the multiplication, spread, and vastness” of humanity, the genealogy here narrows its interest to one single family (Brueggemann). This marks a transition in the book of Genesis and in the Bible as a whole. Up till this point, it’s been a story of God and the nations, but from Chapter 12 on it becomes the story of God and Israel (Brueggemann).
Ur of the Chaldeans
When it arrives at Abraham’s family, the genealogy mentions they were living in “Ur of the Chaldeans.” Ur, a site in what is now southwestern Iraq, is one of the earliest human cities on record, dating into the fourth millennium BCE. The Chaldeans, or Kasdim in Hebrew, were a specific people group closely related to the Arameans from northwest Mesopotamia. They did eventually settle in Ur, but not until hundreds of years after the purported events of Genesis 11 (Sarna (1989) 87). So the text as we have it now is either an anachronism reflecting a later time (and therefore an aid to help its original readers place Ur rather than telling us something about Abraham’s own cultural background), or it is talking about a different Ur, closer to the Chaldeans’ original homelands. Sarna notes that there was in fact such a site in upper Mesopotamia, not far from Haran, which becomes a central location in the patriarchal narratives (Sarna (1989) 87). This is an intriguing possibility, since many of the names in genealogy are associated more with northwestern Mesopotamia than the southeast (Sarna (1989) 87). This is a question that is likely unanswerable and thankfully it doesn’t really matter. But it’s interesting nonetheless!
Sarai’s Childlessness
Even here in the genealogy, the text can’t help but comment that Sarai is childless. Abraham and Sarah’s struggles to conceive a child become a major plot of the next few chapters of Genesis. So this detail is included as a kind of cliffhanger, foreshadowing the central drama of what follows. So, the up-and-down, topsy-turvy. story of Genesis 1-11 ends in a place of hope — the regular course of the succession of generations leading to Abraham — but also suspense — that regular course is now threatened by infertility.
Expand
So, we might say our study of Genesis 1-11 ends in a place of threatened confidence. It’s confident because, from the Bible’s perspective, despite all the ways humanity has been going off the rails, the birth of the people of Israel is right around the corner. It’s threatened because infertility could snuff them out before they are established (Brueggemann).
But by narrowing the scope of the story as it does, from the story of God and the world to God and Israel, this text also reminds us of that other, broader story. That story takes a back seat for much of the rest of the Bible, but it’s still there working in the background (Amos 9.7, Ezekiel 16.3). And the two are indelibly linked, because, even God’s specific promise to Abraham in chapter 12 is intended to bless the whole world — the world created and declared to be “very good” by God, the world re-created after the flood, and the world God wants to see blessed by human occupation. So it’s not just a simple movement from the general to the particular, but rather the interplay between them that’s important (Brueggemann).
Genesis 1-11 sets the stage for the appearance of Israel in the world. It does through a series of stories — generally based on earlier, sometimes contradictory, and often foreign material, and connected at times by only the thinnest of narrative threads — that combine to describe the basic circumstances of human existence: On the one hand, the theological reality that, God is one, in control, and willing to do whatever it takes to provide for creation, even when it goes astray; and on the other hand, the ethical reality that humanity has in fact gone astray, breaking faith — husband against wife, brother against brother, and son against father, and beyond.
This dynamic of God’s faithfulness and human faithlessness established in these stories sets the stage for everything that follows. And the answer comes in the call of God, first to Abraham, then to his descendants through the leadership of Moses and the voice of the prophets, and again to the whole world through Jesus of Nazareth. This call always reminds us, in every generation:
Hear O Israel the LORD our God, the LORD is one. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your strength; and you shall love your neighbour as yourself.
What is the answer to humanity’s theological predicament? To know, acknowledge, and accept that God is God. What is the answer to humanity’s ethical predicament? To love one’s neighbour as oneself.
Matthew Root 