As Sailhamer points out, reshith is the antonym of aharith. Or in English, beginning is the antonym of last. Thus the Torah begins, "In the beginning" (bereshith) (Gen 1:1) and then the poetic climaxes are explained as telling what will happen "in the last days" (beaharith hayyamim) (Gen 49:1, Num 24:14, Deut 31:29). The only other place in the Torah where this phrase is found is Deut 4:30. These reflections are inspired by his article, "A Wisdom Composition of the Pentateuch?" in The Way of Wisdom: Essays in Honor of Bruce Waltke published by Zondervan.

This observation encourages us to see that the protology (words about first things) of Gen 1:1 is written to correspond to eschatology (words about last [or ultimate] things) of the poems following Gen 49:1, Num 24:14, and Deut 31:29. One point stressed at WTS was that the prologue of Genesis (Gen 1:1-2:3) as well as the first book of Genesis (Gen 2-4) is eschatological. But we do not need to look beyond the opening word ("in the beginning") to be pointed to the last days. We are living in the last days now, but the phrase in the Torah pointed first to the days of King David before ultimately to the days of his son and Lord Jesus Christ.

To see how the poems pointed to the King we should observe the intertexuality of the poems (that is, how they are in conversation or even quoting one another). Here I am expanding from discussing the three major poems to include the other prominent poems in the Torah. Sailhamer calls it cross-referencing. He notes, for example that Num 24:9a quotes Gen 49:9b. Speaking of the King from the tribe of Judah, these two poems both say, "He crouched as a lion and as a lioness; who dares rouse him?"

Comparing the major poem in Genesis 49 and the major poem starting in Num 24:15 we can see the king's scepter mentioned with Judah in Gen 49:10 is mentioned in Num 24:17. The advance of Numbers is to note the king will defeat certain people groups. As Sailhamer notes, Gen 10 helps you to identify where these people groups in the Numbers poem fit. In fact, it may be that one reason for the writing of Gen 10 was to explain the groups mentioned in Balaam's poem. These peoples are not mentioned in the surrounding story of Numbers, you have to look at Gen 10 to learn about them. The major poem of Deut 32 mentions the events of Gen 10: "When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the people according to the number of the sons of God" (Deut 32:8). This last poem in Deut 32:10 also uses the word tohu from Gen 1:2.

Therefore, Sailhamer argues that Num 24:24 is showing how the Noahic poetry of Gen 9:27 about Japheth dwelling in the tents of Shem extends to the last days. The Kittim were from Japheth (Gen 10:4). Asshur is one of the sons of Shem (Gen 10:22) and Eber is considered his son too (Gen 10:21).

Sailhamer also says, "In addition, the literary parallels between Deut 33 and Gen 49 are well known. Whole phrases from one poem have been inserted into the other" (p.22). I have noted this previously because Deut 33 is the work of a later hand, but one that borrows from the earlier hand of the Torah. At some point I would like to examine this claim further.

But the point shown here is that "in the beginning" (especially for the purposes of this post, Gen 1-11, the unit that comes before the patriarchal narratives) points us to "in the last days" (Gen 49:1, Num 24:14, Deut 31:29).

Labels: eschatology, japheth, protology, sailhamer, shem

The fourth book begins with the title, "These are the generations of the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham, and Japheth" (Gen 10:1). So this book will be about the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. But interestingly in the opposite order: Japheth, Ham, and Shem from those furthest from Israel to those closest to Israel. Israel descends from Shem through Peleg. But the Shemites (Semites, those who are Semitic peoples) genealogy here traces through Peleg's brother Joktan. The comment "for in his days the earth was divided" (Gen 10:25) refers to the split of the descendants of Shem between elect descendants of Peleg and non-elect descendants of his brother Joktan. This book is about the non-elect descendants of Noah through his sons Japheth, Ham, and Shem. The next book will tell us about the elect line of Shem through Peleg.

Book Four continues with the same pattern as earlier books. Gen 10:2-32 consists of three genealogies with commentary and Gen 11:1-5 is the story of building the tower of Babel. So this entire section we have been calling narrative. Gen 11:6-7 is the poetry and Gen 11:8-9 is the epilogue.

Like the other genealogies we have encountered, noticing the patterns will help us. There are fourteen nations from Japheth (seven times two), thirty from Ham, and twenty-six from Shem for a total of seventy nations. Seventy is a highly symbolic number (being seven times ten) suggesting that the genealogy is highly stylized to make a point through numbers. The text is also in a framework. Each one begins, "The sons of [Japheth, Ham, or Shem]" and each one ends in a similar way "each with his own language, by their clans, in their nations" (Gen 10:5), "by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations" (Gen 10:20 and 10:31). Thus the genealogy will divide these descendants by their politics, language, geography, and ethnicity. Some of these names are people groups, others are people, and some are place names. "Sons of" or "fathered" may indicate political, linguistic, geographical, or ethnic relationships. Two names are repeated Havilah and Sheba. These places may have elements descending from Cush and Joktan. Waltke, citing others, makes these observations. The whole table has a framework, beginning with "Sons were born to them after the flood" (10:1) and ending with "These are the clans of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, in their nations, and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood" (Gen 10:32).

Japheth's genealogy is stylized around sevens. He has seven sons and seven grandsons mentioned. This suggests order. The commentary, "From these the coastland peoples spread in their lands" (Gen 10:5) means to stress their distance from Israel.

The sons of Ham are closer to Israel. There are five sons of Cush and two grandsons through Raamah for a total of seven. This suggests order. Egypt has seven sons (do not count the Philistines as the mention of them is parenthetical) again suggesting order. But Canaan, the son of Ham cursed by Noah in the poetry of the last book, has eleven sons suggesting disorder.

There are two portions of commentary in the Ham section. The first says, "Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man. He was a mighty hunter before YHWH. Therefore it is said, 'Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before YHWH.' The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. From that land he went into Assyria and built Ninevah, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah, and Resen between Ninevah and Calah: that is the great city" (Gen 10:8-12). This is an interesting addition. Nimrod is not numbered among the seven sons. Cush fathered Nimrod could mean, as with all genealogies in Scripture, Cush is the ancestor of Nimrod. He is a mighty man or champion warrior king reminiscent of the giants. His kingdom included Assyria (Ninevah as the major city) and the land of Shinar (including Babel). That is, his kingdom included the two nations (the Assyrians and Babylonians) that would take Israel and Judah into captivity. And Babylon (the land of Shinar, Gen 11:2) is where the Tower of Babel was being built. Thus this addition would be a great assurance to the people during captivity.

The other commentary in the Ham section says, "Afterwards, the clans of the Canaanites dispersed. And the territory of the Canaanites extended from Sidon in the direction of Gerar as far as Gaza, and in the direction of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, as far as Lasha" (Gen 10:18d-19). This commentary deals with the more immediate concern of Genesis about the Canaanites who are under the curse of God and prepares us for the episodes with Sodom and Gomorrah. It is clear based on both comments that the descendants of Canaan are closer than Japheth to Israel and that they are the source of Israel's biggest strife.

The third section includes text before the standard "The sons of..." It says, "To Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the elder brother of Japheth, children were born" (Gen 10:21). Perhaps we should see the number twelve (like the twelve tribes of Israel). Especially when we remember the elastic use of the word "sons" (as this opening phrase alerts us "the father of all the children of Eber" since Eber is not his immediate son but a descendant), Peleg would be the twelfth son of Shem (or better yet Peleg is the fourteenth distinct name if you count Shem and Japeth in Gen 10:21). And for the sons of Eber through Joktan (including Joktan) there are fourteen (seven times two) . This suggests order. So the three sections of the genealogy considered together serve to highlight the disorder of Canaan.

We have already discussed the first comment in the third section "for in his days the earth was divided" (Gen 10:25) though I will have more to say later about it. The second comment in this section is: "The territory in which they lived extended from Mesha in the direction of the Sephar to the hill country of the east." This just means to communicate that they are close to Israel geographically but separated from Israel. This genealogy serves to tie the non-elect Shemites to the story of the tower of Babel.

But while these peoples would all have their own languages this was not originally the case. The narrative tells us that the whole earth had one language and the same words (Gen 11:1). And they decided to build a ziggurat tower climbing into the heavens. So YHWH came down to them in judgment. The stated reason for building the tower was: "let us make a name [Shem] for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth" (Gen 11:4). God was going to make a name (shem) for His people of the line of Shem. But these non-elect descendants of Noah tried to make a name for themselves.

One must confess that this book is one of the hardest in Genesis to understand. The poetry is the most difficult. The increased use of parallelism tips us off that this is poetic. One people//one language. This is only the beginning of what they will do//Nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Let us confuse their language//so they may not understand one another's speech. The middle pair seems to be the focus. What exactly does it mean that God says, "nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them" (Gen 11:6)? It reminds us of the language of the epilogue in Genesis 3 (complete with God's discussion with His "us"). We, God says in His heavenly council, need to stop man before he does something to keep salvation from being possible.

The epilogue begins and ends saying, "YHWH dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth" (Gen 11:8) and "from there YHWH dispersed them over the face of all the earth" (Gen 11:9). The comment in the middle "they left off building the city therefore its name (shem) was called Babel, because YHWH confused the language of all the earth" is interesting. Babel sounds like babbling -- confusion. They had set out to make a name (shem) for themselves but the city gets the name (shem) of confusion. Their plans were frustrated. They never finished the city...as St. Augustine said, "the city never reached the kind of completion that the pride of impious men had dreamed." Or as Waltke puts it, "The Tower of Babel story lampoons this boast [that Babylon is the religious center of the world]. To its founders "Babel" meant "gate/residence of the gods." but the narrator parodies that significance by a Hebrew by-form bll, meaning "confused" (cf. English, "a babel of voices"). Its builders think their temple tower reaches into heaven; it is so low that the Lord has to descend from heaven just to see it!" (178). It is not finished because it can never get them to God.

Chronologically the narrative of Gen 11:1ff, poetry and epilogue belong before the royal genealogy. Thus Ephrem the Syrian, as quoted in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (same source as the Augustine quote above) , said, "Because of their new languages, which made them foreigners to each other and incapable of understanding one another, war broke out among them on account of the divisions that the languages brought among them. Thus war broke out among those who had been building that fortified city out of fear of others. And all those who had been keeping themselves away from the city were scattered throughout the entire earth. It was Nimrod who scattered them. It was he who seized Babel and became its first ruler. If Nimrod had not scattered them each to his own place, he would not have been able to take that place where they all had lived before." This is an interesting attempt at harmonizing the genealogy and the rest of the book. While we should avoid assuming that Ephrem is correct in the details, his impulse is right. We need to remember that the reason the descendants of Japheth, Ham, and Shem in the genealogy live in different places is the result of being dispersed throughout the land after the attempt to build the city and tower of Babel. This division of the land between the seventy nations took place when Peleg was living ("for in his days the earth was divided") and divided Peleg from his brother Joktan (because Joktan was associated with the tower). And it is in this context that Nimrod conquered the lands of Babylon and Assyria and built his empire and built cities in the image of the original Babel. The text is dischronologized because of the structure of the genealogy and the overall structure of title, genealogy/narrative, poetry, epilogue.

The concern of this book is the salvation of the nations. They have been given their inheritance and are governed by God, whether they admit it or not. And the poetic curse is designed to pave the way for their future salvation through the seed of Abraham. This is the salvation accomplished by none other than Jesus Christ. As the author of Revelation tells us, "By your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation" (Rev 5:9) and we see that all authority over every tribe, people, language, and nation had been given to the beast (Rev 13:8) and that an angel had "an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people" (Rev 14:6). The similarity to our book in Genesis is not accidental. For one thing, tribe is the same word as clan. The salvation Jesus accomplished is for the elect of every tribal/clan/political faction, every tongue, every people/nation, and every ethnicity. And this is what the epistles of Paul mean when they say things like "The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people" (Titus 2:11). Paul does not mean that Jesus has saved everyone but that the salvation accomplished by Jesus Christ was for all kinds of people -- people of every clan, language, people, and ethnicity (Jews and Gentiles/nations). (translation used was ESV with minor changes)

Labels: assyria, babylon, election, Genesis, gomorrah, royal genealogy, seventy, shem, sodom, tower of babel, ziggurat

Even though Book Three is much longer than Book Two, it follows the same pattern. It begins with the title "These are the generations of Noah" (Gen 6:9). The book should focus on the descendants of Noah with such a title, but the last book did not record his death so that this book could tell us what happened in the fullness of time. The narrative section begins "Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God" (Gen 6:9). Thus both numbers seven and ten in the royal genealogy of Book Two's narrative are now described as having "walked with God." The narrative of Book Three continues until Gen 9:24. The pattern then finishes out with the poetic curse of Canaan and blessing of Shem (Gen 9:25-27) and an epilogue reminiscent of the pattern found in the royal genealogy of Book Two: "After the flood Noah lived 350 years. All the days of Noah were 950 years, and he died" (Gen 9:28-29).

The narrative follows a chiastic structure natural to a flood story because of the flood rising and receding. In a chiasm the first thing said and the last thing said are parallel conceptually or thematically and the second thing said and the second to last thing said are parallel conceptually or thematically and so forth. Chiasms can be very elaborate or very simple. This one is very complicated. The Scriptures use chiasms as a way to organize stories repeatedly. Sometimes scholars have been tempted to see them where they do not exist. But this story is artificially crafted to maintain the chiasm's structure. We know the chiasm is intentional and not just an accident of flood story-telling because on the way to the climax we see one week described two times (Gen 7:4-5 and 6-10) and in the parallel position after the climax we see three weeks described two times (Gen 8:10-11 and 12-13). The first is one week described as if two weeks by simply repeating that the rain will begin in one week (Gen 7:4 and 10). The second is a time period of three weeks described as if two weeks because there is a week that he waited before sending out the dove (Gen 8:10), he waited another seven days and again sent out the dove (Gen 8:10), and then he waited another seven days and sent forth the dove (Gen 8:12). But clearly the way it is written these three weeks sound like two weeks. So the author wants us to read the story as a chiasm. I am indebted to Tremper Longman III for this observation in his article in Inerrancy and Hermeneutic (see p.142).

The climax of a chiasm is at the center. In the flood chiasm the center is: "But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark..." (Gen 8:1-3). The language of remembering is language for resurrection. The flood story is a death and resurrection story. But this resurrection falls short of the one it points forward to -- as the narrative analogy demonstrates.

The story develops a narrative analogy or recapitulation (Sailhamer shows this) between the creation and fall narratives and the flood story. The flood is a creation-reversal. Thus when the flood recedes we see similarities with the creation story. So we see a new creation. At first the waters cover everything. Then the tops of the mountains were seen (Gen 1:9 and 8:5). The dove brings back a freshly plucked olive leaf (the earth brought forth vegetation, Gen 1:11 and 8:11). God blesses the animals and tells them to be fruitful and multiply on the earth (i.e. Gen 1:22 for birds, Gen 8:17). Man is blessed and to rule over the creation (Gen 1:28b, 9:1-2) and told that he can eat (Gen 1:29, 9:3). Man is told to be fruitful and multiply (Gen 1:28, 9:7). Adam and Noah both have three sons. Adam has Cain, Abel, and Seth (Gen 4:1-2, 25); Noah has Shem, Ham, and Japheth (Gen 9:18-19). YHWH God planted a garden for Adam (Gen 2:8) and Noah planted a vineyard (Gen 9:20).

Then we see the recapitulation of the fall narrative. Adam and Eve ate of the tree they had been commanded not to eat from (Gen 3:6) and Noah drank the wine and became drunk (Gen 9:21). Adam and Eve knew they were naked (Gen 3:7) and Noah "lay uncovered in his tent" (Gen 9:21). Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together for aprons (Gen 3:7) and Shem and Japheth took a garment and walked backwards to cover Noah's nakedness (Gen 9:23). And then YHWH cursed the serpent (Gen 3:14-15) and Noah cursed Canaan (Gen 9:25-27). Therefore, we learn that things before and after the fall are remarkably the same. The people still need a Savior from sin. Noah is one of many Christs (anointed ones) in Scripture who through their sin will point us to the need for Jesus. Noah's resurrection does not change hearts. The curse still holds sway over this new creation.

To return for a moment to the subject of the narrative analogy with Genesis 1: the text, like Genesis 1, uses ANE cosmology to describe the flood. The picture is one where the deep wells up like fountains and the waters above the firmament are allowed to pour through the windows in the firmament. The firmament had been created to hold back these waters. The firmament is a hard structure to which the sun, moon, and stars are attached. In this cosmology, when one looks up in the sky and sees blue they are seeing the waters on the other side of the firmament. The author of Genesis has shown us that he knows about clouds forming and watering the earth (Gen 2:5-6 as translated by Kline) but here describes the water coming down from above with the ANE cosmology by saying the windows of the heavens were opened (Gen 7:11) and closed (Gen 8:2). We should expect the author of Genesis to do this. And this in no way demonstrates that the author is in error because the book is not teaching us science but is teaching us about God's judgment, will, salvation, and people. It is important that the flood be considered a universal one regardless of whether it covered the whole earth or not because the text is teaching us about the final judgment that is coming for all.

So to summarize the positive teaching of the flood narrative: the great Noah falls short of the coming seed who will crush the serpent's head. Changed hearts do not result from Noah's resurrection. All deserve the final judgment of guilty for sin. The new creation after the flood has not escaped the effects of the curse. Thus we need the poetry.

In the overall structure of Book Three (like Books One and Two) the most important part is the poetry. Curses and blessings for future generations are immensely important in the Torah and often are the poetic text. This poem is a curse/blessing: "He said, 'Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.' He also said, "Blessed be YHWH, the God of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant'" (Gen 9:25-27). Thus the poem points us to the line of Shem as the line of the promise for one whose resurrection will crush the serpent's head, reverse the curse, and begin the new creation of the heavens and earth. Israel is of the line of Shem. Thus the poetry points us to Israel as the legitimate seed of the woman and heir to the promise and ultimately points us to Jesus Christ as that seed and heir.

And the brevity of the epilogue is appropriate. Noah died.

Labels: blessing, canaan, chiasm, curse, flood, Genesis, japheth, noah, recapitulation, shem