BibleProject - Sibling Rivalry and Biblical Election – Family of God E5

Episode Date: December 21, 2020

Why do God’s chosen people have just as many moral failings as anyone else in the Bible? In this week’s episode, Tim and Jon take a look at ancient sibling rivalries, divine election, and God’s determination to form a covenant people that will one day embrace and include all nations. View full show notes from this episode →Timestamps Part one (0:00–9:20)Part two (9:20–19:40)Part three (19:40–40:00)Part four (40:00–end)Show Music “Defender Instrumental” by TentsShow produced by Dan Gummel. Show notes by Lindsey Ponder.Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds, and please transcribe your question when you email it in. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

This is John from Bible Project, and we are in the middle of a series called The Family of God. How God created all humanity as one family. And while we've become different tribes and nations spread out all over the land with different languages and cultures, the biblical hope is that all of humanity will come together to represent God with all of our diversity. Now, the entire plot of the Hebrew Bible

is that God is gonna accomplish all of this through one family, the family of Abraham and his son Isaac, who become the nation of Israel. But here's the thing, Abraham has lots of other kids other than Isaac, like Ishmael, his first born. And he also has a lot of children from his wife, Ketura, a woman he marries when Sarah dies.

In fact, in Genesis, chapter 25, we get a list of all the names of these other kids and their descendants and the nations that they become. And it's easy to get bored when we read genealogies in the Bible. But this one's really important. What's happening, these genealogies are populating the biblical world, and you're going to meet all of these families again later in the story. And they're all hostile.

These are the nations that Israel fights against throughout the story of the Bible. In the end, this is all sibling rivalry. This is a very realistic depiction of the human story. The strange siblings. It's a thing. And somehow, through it all, God is going to bring blessing to all of these nations, through Israel. But what we learned pretty early on is that God didn't choose Israel because they are a gold standard of what it means to be human.

He's choosing to bring his blessing to the many nations through one family. And even though this family is not morally or ethically superior to the other families, in any way, in, they're often worse. That's not the basis for God's choosing them. Nor is it the purpose God's choosing them for the simple fact that He chose them.

He chose them because He chose them, and they're who He's going to work with. But that doesn't mean that all these other families are outside of the scope of God's mercy, just the opposite. They often produce the heroes and heroines of Israel's story. So today, on the episode, we're gonna talk about

the election of Israel, sibling rivalry, and the hope of unity. Thanks for joining us, here we go. Okay, Tim, let's continue this. Let us. The theme of the family of God, the family of humanity. Kind of fundamental to this theme is another theme we've talked about, which is the God wants to rule the world through humans. Humans representing God's reign and rule.

It not just through one or two humans, or this group of humans, but all of humanity. And so all of humanity needs to be united in that reign and rule. So we're tracing this theme of how a disunited, an ununited, a fractured, divided humanity can be the image of God, which means that they need to learn how to represent God. And fundamental to being able to do that is doing that in unity with other humans.

And so God's strategy for bringing about this rescue of humanity to be reclaimed as the image bears is to select one man, make a great family with him, and through that family, then find this blessing and unity of all the families of the earth. Abraham and Sarah. And that's Abraham. And his wife Sarah. Yeah. Power couple.

And right away we see the problem with the strategy, which is the humans. Yeah. Abraham is a human. Abraham is a human. And right off the bat, Abraham goes and starts just doing dumb things, not trusting God and deceiving the nations. And being deceptive to leaders of other nations. To leaders of other nations.

And then taking into his own hands him and Sarah, in this total just repetition of the garden narrative, use their own kind of schemes to try to get the thing that God promised them on their own terms instead of just trusting God. And that is getting a son by oppressing, having sex with one of their Egyptian slaves that they got through that other deception. And that turns into this infighting in which now,

Sarah and the immigrant slave, whose name is immigrant, hey, Gar, are at odds with each other. So we're left kind of with this mess, but despite the mess, we saw some beautiful things happen, which is that God comes back to Abraham, and he says, stop doing the dumb stuff, but he doubles down on his covenant with Abraham.

It says, I'm going to make your family great. And not only are you going to bless the nations, we learned that now he's going to be the father of many nations. Yes. It's like a development in the covenant. And then we see how he gives him the sign of circumcision, which we talked a lot about. If you're interested in that, that's last episode.

Very fascinating. But that entryway into the covenant family isn't about whether or not your Abraham's son or daughter. which we talked a lot about. If you're interested in that, that's last episode. Very fascinating. But that entryway into the covenant family isn't about whether or not your Abraham's son or daughter. Right, yeah. It's about whether you take on the sign. Yeah. So it's available to not just the chosen family,

but to anyone who wants to participate in that. So that kind of bubbles out of this story. And then what also bubbles out is that isch mael, the son who Abraham has with the immigrant, who Sarah doesn't want, who now has created this division in the family. God says, I'm going to take care of that family. Ishmael's family. And they're going to be blessed. And so despite all the evil, the Abraham was doing and his wife.

God is finding goodness in this and doubles down on his promise to use it. Well, I wouldn't say he finds good in it. What he does is he creates good out of the bad situation that, which doesn't redeem it or erase the evil. Make it okay. But it is God's response to. I see, yeah. He creates good. He doesn't find the good. He creates the good.

He creates new good out of an evil situation that Abraham and his wife are responsible for. Yeah, it sounds very much like the message of Genesis. That's what Joseph says was brothers at the end. Yeah, right. You planned this for evil, but God planned good to save many lives. And so God's still, I guess, stuck with this strategy. Well, it's more that God has made a covenant promise to this family of Abraham and to use one particular lineage, and he doesn't want to use a lineage that came about through human

scheming. That's what Ishmael represents. What he's going to do is continue to work in surprising ways, the upset, the schemes, and the power and wisdom of humans. And so he's gonna give Sarah, who's 90, and Abraham, who's 100, a miraculous son named laughter. Isaac. So Abraham's family is now bigger than just the family of Israel.

The family that will become Israel. Yeah, because there's Ishmael and his descendants. Exactly. And we're going to see a whole lot more are going to start appearing. Abraham is the father of many nations, not just Israel, but Israel in the biblical story is the chosen lineage for the seed. I see. For the promised seed to come through whom God

will restore blessing to all of the rest. So even though Old Testament is going to keep focusing in on a smaller and smaller subgroup. The family of Abraham is always still in the background. So here's what I want to do in this step is just explore that more. What's going to happen is after Ishmael, Abraham's family is actually going to continue to multiply into some other nations, and what we're going to see is a family divided. As Abraham dies, his family is fractured and divided between many nations, and there's just one through whom God is working.

And that sets a pattern in motion that's just gonna work on recycle through the rest of the Torah and into the prophets. Joshua Judges Samuel Kings, there's just gonna be all of these repetitions of Abraham's descendants doing exactly what Abraham and Sarah did, which is exactly what Adam and Eve did because they're humans. Which seems to be just something about being humans.

Humans do stupid stuff, selfish things to each other, and then we don't want to be around each other anymore. I mean, that's basically it. I'm not. I'm not. That's pretty intuitive. That's how I would describe how I'd be treated. I get that bumper sticker that says,

the more people I meet, the more I like my dog. I've seen that bumper sticker. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of it. Yeah. Oh, I'm glad God doesn't feel that way.

So we're going to follow that through. And then what we're going to see is how Isaiah the prophet sums all this up and rekindles the hope of a unified human family. So those are the steps that we're about to take. So let's begin at the end of Abraham's story. Genesis 25 is where Abraham dies. It's actually probably a chapter. So we're skipping over him having Isaac Promise seed. He has to promise seed. So he has a promise seed. Yeah God tests him. Yes the moment he gives it

He demands the life of the promise on back. Mm-hmm as a test as a test and Abraham passes passes the test. Yeah God gives an alternate sacrifice for Abraham to make. Yep Yeah, and then God repeats the promise and said, because you've passed the test, I'm gonna do what I said I would do. Okay. So Genesis 25, it's full of a bunch of genealogies. Yeah.

Ha ha ha ha. But it has a symmetry. It begins with some genealogies, has an important thing in the middle, and then it ends with some more genealogies. It begins. Abram took another wife after this, Sarah died.

Oh, okay. A few chapters ago. So Abram took another wife after Sarah died. Her name was Ketura. It rhymes with the Hebrew word for a crown. Spell differently, but it rhymes with crown. So Queen died and now he married Kron. Yeah, so Sarah meant Queen,

and then he married another woman whose name sounds like the word crown. She bore for him and then a list of bunch of sons. Zimran, Yoxhan, Medan, Midyan, Ishbuk, Shuwa. Let's tune back to that second born Yoxhan. He became the father of Sheba and Daedan. All the sons of Dedan were Ashrim and Letusim and Leumim. Oh yeah, and do you remember those midian nights? Well, their sons were Fah and Efer and Hanok and Avida and Elda. These are the sons of Ketura. 16.

16. 16. Named here. You know, this is where Bible trivia. I don't know, you don't like it when I do this. Sometimes you do. Sometimes I get a laugh out of you. When's the first time?

Oh, right. If you're reading the Tanakh the Way it's Design to Red, which is over and over and over again, the moment you see Me Don and Midian and Sheba and De Don, you're like, aww. The only one that's ringing in a bell is Midian where Moses' wife comes from.

Mm. Oh, correct. That's right. Totally. So that's going to come back to us. But especially in the book of Judges, the Midianites are a hostile desert tribe that's constantly performing raids on Israelite caravans. Okay. So this is the birth of some estranged hostile brothers. But what's important here is that they are brothers of Isaac.

We have 16 descendants of from Keturra, and these are all brothers, or nephews and cousins of Isaac. So all of these are going to come to have some kind of hostile relationship to the family of Isaac through the story. So, verse 5, now Abraham gave everything he had to Yitzhak, to Isaac, laughter. But to the sons of his concubines, you know, like Keterah and Hegar, he gave them gifts while he was still living, but he sent them away from his son Isaac into the east, to the land of the east.

Further into exile. Yes, Adam and Eve go east of Eden, Cain, and the scattering of Babylon, all this. So he sends them off to the east, even though it just seems like a neutral description here. Yeah, it's loaded. It's loaded. And the east is always a place where you've been made distant from the presence and promise of God. We're told Abraham lived 175 years, he breathed his last and died. Came about after the death of Abraham that God blessed his son Isaac, and Isaac went to go live by

a well called the well of the living one who sees me. Be'er lachai roe. Now that's ironic because back in chapter 16 when Sarah I oppressed Hegar, the Egyptian slave, after Ibrim's had sex with her, she got pregnant, Sarah oppressed her, and Hegar fled into the wilderness. And she found a well that saves her life, and she calls that well, Be'er Lachai Rui. So in other words, Isaac is blessed,

and he goes and lives by the well that was the place where God met and rescued. Hegar, who gave birth to Ishmael, who's the rival brother of Heisen. So he lives in the place of his rival brother and finds God's blessing. And so it becomes a narrative image of the division of Abraham's family. Okay. Because this is where...

So by Isaac being placed there, you're like, always there with his rival brother. Or just he's in the place where his rival brother was given his name and so on. Speaking of his rival brother, here's the records of the generations of Ishmael, Abram Sun, who Hegar, the Egyptian, Sarah Slav, Borde Abraham, that's so unnecessary at this point in the story. Of course I know who Hegar. But it repeats it all just to rekindle the memory of what they did there. Here are the names of the sons of Ishmael by their birth names, the order of their birth.

You get the whole list of names. These are the sons of Ishmael, twelve princes according to their tribes. The twelve. God's doing what he said he would do. It's blessing. So these are the years of the life of Ishmael. He died. So these are the years of the life of Ishmael, he died, and his descendants went and settled from Havila and Shur, which is east of Egypt, as you go to Ashur, and he settled against the face of all his brothers. Some more hostile brothers here. So you have Abraham's family,

in just 25, is marked off in three streams. You can see's family. And just 25 is marked off in three streams. You can see them here. Right. Isaac. And then all these sons of Abraham's wife, Ketura. Ketura. And then all the sons of Ishmael, Abraham's son via Haggar. Yeah, and they're all out there living in the East. Mm-hmm.

The sense of Ketra, Abraham sends them out to the East, and here the Ishmael were told they went, they settled in the East of Egypt. So the same, they all go to the same place. What's happening? These genealogies are populating the biblical world, and you're going to meet all of these families again later in the story. Right. They're all bad guys families again later in the story.

Right. They're all bad guys. And they're all hostile. Yeah. Yeah. They're all hostile. So just like how God chose Abel, he chose one son, favored him and that generated hostility from the other brother. Oh, yeah. It's that motif here. Huh. The one that's not being chosen becoming hostile. Becoming, yeah. But here's the thing. The one that's not being chosen, becoming hostile. Yes. But here's the thing, is the one that God has chosen doesn't actually prove to be any morally or more ethical. Yeah.

Then the ones who are chosen. Yeah. The only reason why I call them the bad guys is because they're not the protagonists. Exactly. Yeah, totally. Yeah, that's right. Not that they've done more bad than the family of Abraham. Yeah. So just think back to the the height of our hopes when God called Abram. I'm going to make you a great nation. Yeah. Make your name great. I'm going to bless you. You'll be a blessing.

This is a real gut punch then here at this chapter. And here's Abram finally dying and he has become a father of many nations. Yeah. And they all hate each other. Mm. It's a downer. Yeah. So you're, you're really like, man, that did not go well. There were some things, and positive moments that happened, but Abraham and Sarah sin really.

Yeah. And now you have a bunch of tribes who are all out for each other. Yeah. What's going to happen? Totally. Yeah. This is a very realistic depiction of the human story. This is just strange siblings.

It's a thing. Both of us have two sons, and they're young. I find myself thinking about this all the time. Wondering. I do wonder if your kids are gonna like each other long and wanna be in each other's lives. Well, man, I mean, every day, it depends on the hour, whether or not they like each other. I know.

They go from just best friends. Yes. I mean, there's six and nine right now. Best friends to mortal enemies, back and forth. You know, I've had a great relationship with my brother and that we've never become estranged, but we haven't done a great job of also being really connected in brotherhood.

We've had our moments, but yeah, there's this hope for sons or siblings of this like, this real sense of unity and allegiance or just this sense of we have this bond and it's really thick. Yeah. Yeah, there's just something when you see a family whose children are really dedicated to each other, even into adulthood and in their own family years, it's really beautiful. It's actually stunning and beautiful when there's those networks, not just of support, but of enrich relational enrichment and doing things together. And it's actually less common. It's not super common. At least in my experience, usually it's a mixed bag and that's true for all families, but it seems as much the rule

It's not more that there's as much tension between siblings as there is Yeah unity and so that's the portrait of the chosen family of God in the Hebrew Bible Yeah, one of two generations down and it is yeah, it's a hot mess. So here we're going to fly real high here. If you think through this design pattern, at every transition of the generations, God's going to keep selecting one sub-group of the lineage of this chosen line, and it will always be set in contrast to some other siblings.

And then just watch. Those other siblings are usually going to go live in the same place, or if they don't live in the same place, they're going to act similar with hostility. And this becomes a whole network of design patterns of sibling rivalry, and it begins with cane and abl. Here's what happens. So you have the chosen, we're going to call it the chosen line.

Let's just think through that line real quick. That goes from Abel, who's a sacrifice hises favored he gets murdered by this hostile brother, but then you get Seth Yeah, who Eve says God gave me Seth in the place of Abel you follow Seth's line down through and you get to Noah and then you get from Noah has three sons Shem and Yafat Mm-hmm, J.Feth and Shem is the chosen one. Yeah, then you go from Shem, Ham, and Yafat, J-Fest, and Shem is the chosen one. Yeah.

Then you go from Shem to Abram. Abram, follow those. This is if you read closely all those genealogies. Yeah. And then Abram, we've just went through history. It's Isaac, it's the chosen one. Isaac has two sons, Jacob and Esa. Jacob's the chosen one.

Yeah. Jacob has twelve sons, and Judah ends up being the chosen seed mine. And then Judah's line goes for a long time and then you meet one key figure from the line of Judah, David. So just follow that. So every single one of those figures we just named

has an alternate unchosen brother who ends up being hostile and who becomes the patriarch of a whole family who comes from them. So this is a pattern that's kind of all crystallized. I remember back in I think the winter of 2019 and it was like all of a sudden so many things became much clearer in the Hebrew Bible. So let's go back to Cain. Let's follow back and go through all the non-chosen sense. Cain wasn't chosen.

Cain's the first non-chosen. So his name is Cain. And what that masks, it's spelled in our English translation, C-A-I-N. What that masks from you is the fact that you're going to meet a people group later in the biblical story who come from his line. But it's spelled differently so you don't notice the connection. But it's spelled exactly the same in Hebrew. So it's a group of people called the Kenites. Spelled K-E-N, like Ken, Kenites. The Kenites are the... They came from Kenites.

The Kenites. In Hebrew, there's Ken and then there's the Kenites. They came from Kenites. The Kenites. In Hebrew, there's Ken, and then there's the Kenites. It's exactly the same. So Ken becomes the father of this whole group of people called the Kenites. In contrast to the, and then the future generation, you have Noah's son, Shem, Chosen One, but the nonchosen are J.F.S. and Ham. I wonder.

They skip Noah. He doesn't really have an answer. Oh, no, there's not a similar rival. No, he's just, uh, he's just plucked out. Plucked out, yeah, literally, of the waters. Let's speak.

So, uh, J.F. and Ham are going to become the patriarchs of the island nations. This is from the Table of Nations, just 11. But then the Canaanites, the Egyptians, and the Babylonians all come from ham. Yeah So that's power brokers some hostile brothers, but their brothers Their brothers to the Shem. Yeah, so this is so important all of the bad guys in the Bible are brothers of Israel Yeah, oh, yeah, our brothers to the four fathers of the four fathers of Israel. Yeah, are brothers to the forefathers of Israel.

To the forefathers of Israel. Let's just keep going. So, when Abram goes into the land, he's supposed to leave his family behind, but he takes one family member with him. Yeah, a lot. A nephew, a lot. And how's that going to go?

Well, a lot becomes the father of Moab and Ammon. The Ammonites and the Moabites are the sons of Abrams Nephew. I wonder if they're going to cause any problems. All of these people are going to cause problems. Next generation, Isaac is chosen Ishmael, Sinan Chosen, and we already saw the Ishmaelites, the 12. This is going to come from them. Jacob and Issa.

Issa is the nonchosen. He becomes the father of the people of Adam. You get the 12 sons of Jacob. You're gonna get Judah. And then the 11 other brothers. I wonder how Judah is, the tribe of Judah is going to get along with the rest of the tribes. Oh yeah, you know, right after Solomon, the son of David, when Solomon dies, the 11 tribes all break off from Solomon's son, Rehobom, and there's almost a civil war between the brothers that only a prophet, Achaia, can... but that's a whole other story.

Ooh, okay, let's go down the tribe of Judah. David is from the seat of Judah, and who is David's great rival? Saul. Saul. Not an actual brother. Well, Saul go down the tribe of Judah. David is from the seat of Judah. And who is David's great rival? Saul. Saul. Not an actual brother. Well, Saul is from the tribe of Benjamin. So they are brothers. Yeah. In that collective sense. So look, think the Kenites, the Canaanites, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Moabites, Ammonites, Ishmaelites, Ita Mites, the Benjaminites, these are all families. These are all the family of Abraham. Excuse me, not the Canaanites Egyptians. From the sense of Noah.

But they're all connected to that. There's a pattern here. So on the surface, there's a few dynamics here as you think about all these generations. First of all, it almost every bad guy you meet in the Bible then is a repetition of the sibling rivalry of Cain, unable. It's always brothers and sisters against brothers and sisters. That's how the Bible wants you to view all of these clashes, sibling rivalries. Humans who are in the same family who can't live in unity together.

It's the Babylonian tragedy. So to speak. So that's one thing. It's interesting. The whole Bible, the Hebrew Bible, is just a whole series of sibling rivalries. And for some reason that was very powerful when it happened. So another dynamic here is God keeps choosing, right? This one out of the many. And as you especially go ahead and to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, David, what is it with why does God keep choosing these particular people? Exactly. Right. Why? Why? It's not working. It's not working. And none of them are very upstanding moral examples. Yeah. In fact, the narratives of every one of these chosen figures is going to highlight for the reader huge moral failings. So to be the elect does not mean that you are righteous and good.

No moral superiority to being elect. Yeah. So flip it over. If that's true of the elect, what about the non-elect? If the elect are not the righteous and good, those sometimes you get some good guys in there And gals, but what that means is that the people who aren't chosen They are not the wicked and the evil in the story In other words, this is not a story about the good guys and the bad guys

The chosen and the non-chosen because the chosen can be good or bad And the non-chosen can sometimes be bad, cause they're often hostile, but to check this out, this is a little list I made, I need to keep growing it. What you're going to meet is you read throughout the Torah and the prophets, is all of these heroes of different biblical stories who are from these non-chosen families. In fact, their identity in these non-chosen families

is highlighted for the reader. For example, right after, this is related to escape from Egypt, and they go through the desert, and Moses is trying to lead all these people, and he's exhausted, and he doesn't know how to organize the people. His father-in-law, a guy named Jethro, comes up, and he's the priest in the land of Midian, what we're told, so Midian. Yeah, that's why I thought Moses married a Midianite, but he's not a Midianite. Ah, he's the priest of Midian.

He's the priest of Midian. Yep, totally. What we're told in Exodus 18, and then again, later in the book of Numbers, is that he is a canite. He's a canite. He's a canite. He's associated canite. He's a canite. He's associated with can. The first murder.

Yeah, and he's a hero in the story. Yes, because he saves Moses by giving wisdom to Moses. And he's also, when he hears the story of the Exodus, he praises the God of Israel. So the hero who saves Moses is from the line of Cain. That's interesting. Let's see. Ah, the famous story of Debra and Barak who saved...

It isn't the book of Judges. And there's the Cain and I, King Yavine and his general Cicera, and they're oppressing its real. This is the famous story. It's a piece of chubby. Yeah. So what Cicra does is the general, as he flees when he is defeated in a battle, and he flees, and he sees some, like some migrant wandering tent farmers. And he runs into a tent, and he meets a woman there named Yal or Jal.

And what we're told is that she's from the line of Cain. She's a Cainite. And she crushes the head of Cicera, the savior of Israel, crushes the head of a descendant of ham, is from the line of Cain. Is that interesting? Why does the author highlight that her family, except there's a strategy at work here. Ruth is from the line of Moab, and she becomes the great grandmother of David by marrying Boaz. Oh, this is a good one, Caleb. You know, in the story of the spies,

where the 12 spies are sent into the land by Moses and 10 come back with a bad report, but there's two who trust God. One of them's Joshua and the other one is Caleb. And then Caleb's on his real life? Caleb, and when you meet Caleb, what you're told is Caleb the Kenazite. Kenaz is a descendant of Issa, Edamite.

And he's like the model of faith. And actually, he's a Kenazite, but he's become and married into the family of Judah. So he's actually a part of the Messianic lineage, but he's from Esau. And Ruth as well as part of the Messianic. Exactly, yes, exactly right. David himself is a descendant of Caleb, a descendant of both Ruth because Caleb is in the same line. So here's my whole point, is that all of a sudden,

you realize the biblical story is populated with all of these isch-male types and cane, and issa, and lot, and ham. And all of these figures actually are models of faith and trust and righteousness, and they are not from the chosen mind. The Bible doesn't have a clear black and white view of election. To be the elect does not mean to be the righteous, and to be the non-elect does not mean that you are the wicked. That's interesting.

Yeah, so there's a different way God discerns between the Regis and the wicked. Correct. There you go. Not by lineage. That's not by lineage. Your lineage doesn't define your identity and association with God's family. But the lineage is this vehicle of God's promise. Yeah, that's right. Of the seed. Of the seed.

Of the snake crushing seed. And the blessing. And the blessing, that's right, of the seed. Of the seed. The snake crushing seed. And the blessing. And the blessing, that's right. Okay. The reason this is so surprising is because most people associate the Hebrew Bible as Israelite literature. Which it is. It's about God's covenant with Israel, which it is, it's all those things. At least this is true for me.

I just assume for so long that therefore it's pro-Israelite. God is for Israel and against everybody else because they're the non-Josen. And that's exactly the opposite of what these stories are trying to do. Well, he's for Israel. He is. It's not the opposite of that. You're right. That was not a very accurate way of what I'm trying to communicate. But he's not for Israel in the sense of... He's for his promises. Yeah.

I want to find better language to talk about this. Just kind of new ideas I'm working out. So God chooses one family from among the many, so that they become the vehicle of blessing for the many. However, that means that every generation will have some nonchosen family members. And the people that God chooses often bring as much curse and violence as death and division

into the human story as the nonchosen. So what God is for in continuing his election of one isn't for these people as such. It's that through these people he will bring a seat who will crush the head of the snake. And I don't know, I think maybe it's because I, you know, when I was a brand new Christian, I was introduced to the word election. All right. To have a meaning that has nothing to do with you.

It's whether or not God is going to rescue you, save you. Choose you to go to the good place after you die. Right. But even if you take that part out and say, okay, well, Bible's most fiscate and just dying going heaven Yeah, choosing you to be part of his family. Yeah, that's right choosing you to be part of his plan To rescue the world or choosing you to be no, sorry choosing you should be

Trying to put this in language that I think yeah me too. I would have Understood choosing to be saved save save you. Now, you could just mean go to heaven when you die, but you could be more sophisticated and say to be a part of uniting heaven and earth together, to be a follower of Jesus. There's a sense of, that's how I understood being, I've been elected, I've been chosen to be a follower of Jesus and God in his foreign knowledge, was able to decide that. That's kind of the preloaded category for me for the lecture. Yeah, sure, yeah, that's right.

So what God's choice here, he's choosing to bring his blessing to the many nations through one family. And even though this family is not morally or ethically superior to the other families, anyway, in fact, they're often worse. That's not the basis for God's choosing them. Nor is it the purpose that God's choosing them for the simple fact that He chose them. He chose them because He chose them. And they're who He's going to work with.

But that doesn't mean that all these other families are outside of the scope of God's mercy, just the opposite. They often produce the heroes and heroines of Israel's story. Yeah, or even first, they are the point of God electing. You're right. That's right. To be blessed through it. To find unity back in the image of God. But even in that plan, it isn't so black and white where it's like, okay, well, you've

got people over there out in the nations who are corrupt and evil and wicked and are trying to thwart the plan of God, and then you've got the elect who are trusting God and are on a mission to try to be God's partners and to make that out into the whole world. That's not the story represented. It's that God's elect are just as bad in these stories, oftentimes. And also the people that you would think are the bad guys out there. They keep popping up in these narratives as actual heroes. Here is a faith in Israel story.

And in the genealogy of the seed. Yeah, that's right. So that David himself, who's the icon of the Messianic hope, at least until the Bashiba failure, is himself the product of a moa bite, the line of Judah, and the line of Edom through Caleb. So the messianic icon in the Hebrew Bible is himself made up of the whole family of Abraham, not just the line through Jacob.

Yeah, there wasn't any sense in the assembling of this book, of these stories of, let's try to protect this, this sense of dignity around this line. Like, yeah, yeah, let's just reflect on that for a moment that this bad propaganda was. Yeah, this literature was in biblical scholarship. There's a common sociological way of thinking about ancient literature, that it's all identity serving and forming. And so the goal of this is to bolster our group identity as better than or distinct from all the others. And this family's literature definitely sets this family apart among the nations, but not at all in a way that elevates them a superior. On the surface, it does seem to do that.

On the surface. You start scratching in, you're like, this is, they're airing a lot of dirty laundry here. Yeah, yes. And it's a big indictment. It's a massive indictment of the family of Abraham. And it's showing that even though they have a unique role among the nations,

they believe that they are certainly not superior to those other nations. This is the literature that reflects a group of people that believes that somehow, despite their deep failures, God is going, I'm just thinking Hebrew Bible here, like a Daniel or something, or a Nehemiah. They believe that they are the people that the Creator God has chosen to bring blessing and rescue to the nations, but we have botched the job. And the whole human family has botched the job. And whether you're Israelite or Moe by it, doesn't matter in God's eyes. What matters is how you relate to him. Will you be like Ruth? Will you be like David? Will you be like Caleb? Will you be like J.O. And your ethnicity doesn't determine your value in God's eyes.

What else is this story saying? To me, that's so surprising that that's what these stories are communicating. At least it surprised me for a while. Now I get it, but it surprised me. It sounds like the message of the New Testament. Hmm. Maybe that's why it's surprised. Because you're like, this is the Old Testament. Maybe that's why it's surprised.

Because you're like, this is the Old Testament. It's supposed to be, say something else. So this should be surprising. That should be what you expected. And now it's what I expected. And yeah. So the family of Abraham is huge. It's made up of many nations.

And they all can't stand each other. And they all constantly fight and try and take each other's stuff and territory. Through the stories in the wilderness, this begins once they get in the land, and more. I mean, really, once you get into Joshua, the stories of all the Canaanites, they're all brothers.

Once you get into judges, all the oppressive nations, they're all brothers, all of them. like all that list we just read through earlier, names almost every one of the bad guys that you'll meet in the story of Joshua Judges, Samuel and Kings. And if you've been meditating on these chapters in Genesis and you get to that, you're like, these are all brothers

who are meant to all be the image of God together. Correct. So now we're set up to maybe just kind of close this step of our conversation with a couple poems in the book of Isaiah. 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 So Isaiah's in a period where he's watching the sons of Ham come and begin to attack Israel in Judah, the Assyrians, And he sees Babylon on the horizon. He's all sons of him. And this is after the tribes of Israel that are all brothers have divided

and they can't their hostile with each other. And so this is a famous poem in Isaiah chapter two. We've read it before. All that you read it. But just think in light of the whole story that's foregrounding the sibling rivalry and hostile brothers and sisters who can't get along. Think about how this poem lands in that context.

Isaiah 2.1-4. The word which Isaiah the son of Amos, Amos, how do you pronounce it? Amos. Amos. Amos. Amos. Amos. The word which Isaiah the son of Amos saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. Now it will come about that in the last days the mountain of the house of Yahweh will be established as the head of the mountains, and he will be raised above the hills, and all the nations will stream to it, and many peoples will come and say, come, let us go up to the mountain of Yahweh, to the house of God of Jacob, that he may teach us concerning his ways, and that we may walk in his path. For the Torah will go forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and he will judge between the nations, and he will render decisions for many peoples,

and they will hammer their swords into plow blades and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, and never again will they learn war. Sounds nice. Yeah. So notice, let's think about the visual picture. He's painting a visual metaphor here about a, ooh, a hill, and a city whose head is exalted high up. Do you see that? That mountain of the house of Yahweh will be the head of the mountains and Zion. It's the antithesis of Babylon, right?

Who they tried to make it themselves and put the head in the skies. And now here's a city and a hill whose head is in a pie. And contrasting Jerusalem with other mountains is kind of saying there's other gods in their ways and schemes, but Yahweh's will be above them all. Yep. So this is called the house of Yahweh, the mountain, the house of the god of Jacob. So this is very much. It's the one, the one family. To Zion's the city of David, who's from the tribe of Judah, who's the son of Jacob. So this is the one, the hill, and the city,

and the temple of one family, will become the source of divine peace and justice for the many nations. This whole poem takes the Genesis 12 concept as a given here. The one for the men. All the peoples come there, learn of God's ways, and then this piece. Yeah, so the visual image is of a huge mountain where heaven and earth meet, because there's the temple on top, and then all of the nations do pilgrimage up, like the tribes of Israel would do,

multiple times a year, but now it's all the nations doing pilgrimage. Yeah. Up. And this is a picture we get in Revelation 20. Totally. Oh, is it? Yeah.

21 and 22 with the new Jerusalem and all the nations coming up to the gates. Yeah. That's right. Totally. And notice highlights, what usually happens when all the nations coming up to the gates. Yeah, that's right, totally. So, and notice highlights, what usually happens when all the nations come together? Yeah, and meet in a place.

They usually have swords. Yeah, so this is beautiful just from the human experience in general, but within the Hebrew Bible, when you get to Isaiah, you've just read Genesis through kings, and it's just one long history of sibling hostility and war and This becomes such a beacon of hope the city on Hill City on a hill where there's wisdom divine Torah and wisdom that teaches people how to resolve

Resolve their conflicts. Mm-hmm. Sounds like sermon on them out to me Okay, so that's pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing hope to begin the book of Isaiah with. As the book of Isaiah develops, you're going to learn that ruling that house and city on the hill is a seed from the line of David, a chute from the line of David, this in chapter 11. We've read that poem many times. He's in doubt with the sevenfold spirit.

Sevenfold spirit, sevenfold spirit of Yahweh. And then as you go on throughout the book, you realize that seed is actually going to call the one family of Jacob to follow him and they won't. In fact, there will be hostile to their brother and they'll want to kill this one who tries to lead the people back to Yahweh. And here we get into the suffering servant poems. But the suffering servant is going to give up his life for the sins of the many, and then God's going to vindicate his life

by showing him light after the grave. That's the end of Isaiah 53. And then that servant begins to speak up in the poetry of later Isaiah. And all of a sudden, the future of this future seed and the future of that city on the hill become two ways to think about two ways, two sides of the same coin. So you get a poem like Isaiah 60.

And we know Jesus loved Isaiah 61, the next poem, because he quoted from it in Nazareth. But I'm sure he loved this poem too, even though he never said anything about it. So I'm gonna read it and we'll just pause and you'll just see how this is bringing so many pieces together here. It's talking about the vindication of Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile. So the poet says, get up, shine for your light has come. The glory of Yahweh has risen up over you. For look, darkness covers the land.

I think Genesis 1 here. Deep darkness is over the peoples. But Yahweh will rise upon you. Let there be light. And his glory will appear over you. So God's, it's a new creation moment. So there's darkness over the nations, but God's going to become the light. And that light will become a beacon, verse 3. Nations will come to your light. Kings will come to the brightness of your rising. Lift up your eyes. Look around.

See, they, that is, the nations and kings, are gathering together all coming to you, and your sons will come from afar, your daughters carried in their arms, speaking to the diaspora of the family of Abraham, not scattered among the nations. Then you will see and you will glow, be radiant. Your heart will thrill and rejoice, because the abundance of the seas will be turned to you. The wealth of the nations will come to you. You find out that you here as a city. It's the New Jerusalem. Sitting on a hill at sunrise, and then down below all the nations who are coming, bringing all of these exiled Israelites, and bringing their wealth to come honor Yahweh. So a multitude of camels and they were like pack horses. This is a way

of saying like Samitriks. Like freight trucks. Yeah. Are going to come young camels of Midian and Fah. Those from Shaba will come. Oh yeah. You know what? Those were the sons of Ketara. Remember I when Abraham died all the sons that got sent away to the east now they're coming They're coming in too. Yeah, yeah bringing gold and frankincense. That sounds familiar. You mean from the wise men? Yes Exactly what the wise men bring and It's exactly what the wise men bring. And bearing the gospel of the praise of Yahweh, all the flocks of Kedar will be gathered to you,

the rams of Nebios. Who's that? Quick Concordant search. Why am I being told about a guy named Nebios? Oh yeah, he's the son of Ishmael. And they will offer up rams that will be accepted on my altar and glorify my house. This whole poem is about the unification of the family of Abraham.

That family that got divided in Genesis 25 is here being united, the family of Abraham. This poem is assuming all of the stuff that we've looked at and bringing all those threads together. We could go on, but I'm just curious what's connecting in your mind. Well, you brought out the uniting of the family of Abraham, that was just one thing. Oh, totally, yeah.

We've got the division. It's kind of the many, that was the inception fracture. Yeah, that was like, the fracture within the fracture. The fracture within the fracture. And it seems like this other Isaiah 2 is kind of about, you know, all the things. The thing that started with Cain and Abel streaming up, yeah. Rivering up to Jerusalem. Yes. And so yeah, I see how it all comes together. Are we going to continue to talk about this theme into the New Testament? Yeah, totally. Yep. Yeah. So yeah,

let's just make some concluding observations. The next step we're going to take is going to be to how the story of Jesus and Apostles pick all this up. Yeah. If you just read, if you just synthesize what we've done with the Hebrew Bible, you get some pretty profound claims about the family of God. Right. And about, well, and actually what we didn't talk about, which we have talked about outside of this conversation is Babylon. We talked about the Tower of Babylon. I feel like what we did was we talked about the family of God, but then we started talking about election. And how, just because God chose a family doesn't mean that they're more special or more righteous or superior. Or superior.

That God has all the nations in mind. And you see this in Isaiah 2 and in Isaiah 60, but you see it in other places and you see it in this promise to Abraham. And so it's great just to kind of keep that in the forefront. But this idea of this finding unity among the nations that doesn't seem to be on David's mind or... No, that's true. It doesn't seem to be on any of these kind of main protagonists along the story. It doesn't seem to be like that's the thing. They don't have this charge in their heart about like oh the image of God Needs to be protected by all of these nations. We're all brothers. Yeah, can't we all like instead?

It's kind of almost this justification of like I got to protect Israel. Yeah, cuz we're the chosen ones Yep And it's that because they lost the plot or is that because we're in a different part of the story that has focusing on different themes? Well, part of it's working out the, I will bless those who bless you and those who curse you, I will curse. We're in the territory that I'm very much processing real-time right now. Because the Hebrew Bible is subverting, critiquing the family of Abraham at the same time that it's claiming to be the chosen family of God, the God protects. And you're saying those two things can live together. There is a logic to that or harmony to that in the biblical narrative.

But David didn't go on a peacemaking mission over to Moab and Ammon. What he went to go do was subjugate them when he became king and made them his servants. Yeah. And when Israel would encounter these tribes, they are cast as the wicked. I feel like, and maybe, and sometimes. Sometimes it's of these unchosen brothers, the mobiots, or the

Midianites, who come and oppress and try to enslave the Israelites. And so they're on the Israel's own defensive, and it's these other brothers who are the ones who are taking advantage. But often the tables are turned, and this is the Israelites who are the evil ones, taking advantage of these others. So it goes all directions. It's much more similar to when I enter the room of my boys and they're in a vicious fight with each other.

I love them both. I expect more out of the older one because he's a little more developed in theory. You know, he can make why their choices, although I don't know. But also I'm entering into a situation where their choices have already created the landscape that I as a parent can operate with them. So I might have an ideal plan. But all of a sudden, they realize like there's three hits in to like a fight. And like, I need to do damage control and triage.

And that's much more the picture of how Yahweh is working out as purpose is adaptively reacting to what's already happening on the ground, which is why, for example, in the story of Abraham, we looked at a few conversations ago. He defends Abraham as a liar. He prenishes the family of Egypt for Abraham's lie. That seems so screwed up. But God's made a promise, and so now he's got to work within the framework of that promise, and it's a non-ideal situation. I think there's something like that going on with all of the stories of God defending Israel even when they're really screwed up. So big picture. God's chosen this very non-ideal family to be his vehicle, a blessing to the nations.

They've landed themselves in a heap exile and hostility with all their brothers. Isaiah has hope. The ASEED will come from the line of Abraham to bring unity to the fractured family of Abraham and the family of Adam and Eve. And welcome to the story of Jesus. The story of Jesus takes all of this for granted and just starts the story of Jesus assuming that you've kind of have uploaded all this.

So let's look at those stories. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Bible Project Podcast. Next week we're going to continue in this series on the Family of God. Someone says, Jesus, you know, your mother, your brothers, they're outside. They want to talk to you. And so in a normal exchange, a normal person would say, Oh, cool. Can you guys wait a minute?

But yeah, Jesus takes this as a moment to become the riddler. And so he responds to the guy talking to him. Jesus said to the guy, who is my mother? Who are my brothers? And then stretching out his hands to the disciples in the room, he said, look, my brothers and my mother. Yeah, he's untethering the idea of the family of God from the physical lineage of Israel. We're collecting questions for our upcoming question response episode on this series.

So we'd love to hear from you. You can record yourself asking your question, try to keep it to around 20 or 30 seconds, and then send that audio to info at BibleProject.com. Please tell us your name or your from, and then also in your email, transcribe your question for us, that would be amazing. Today's show was produced by Dan Gummel. Our theme music is from the band Tents, and Lindsay Ponder has done her show notes. Bible Project is not just a podcast.

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