No, really.

Since yesterday’s reading, a lot of time has gone by for Joseph and his brothers. The whole family moved to Egypt; seventeen years later, Jacob blessed the children and then died. Seventeen years is a lot of time. And yet, despite everything that happened when Joseph met his brothers again, now after Jacob is dead, [...]

Let it go!

Joseph has established that he is smart about many things. He understands dreams. He understands economics. He knows how to turn a situation to his advantage. And now we find that he is also wise about how people are likely to behave. After all this time, after all this energy and work, Joseph and his [...]

People are goofy

When I read this story, especially right after reading the Jacob stories that we’ve been reading, here is what strikes me most: These people are goofy. All of them. So Jacob has made it to Canaan, and has been sobered a little by his experience of life. He’s a little less of a traveler, a [...]

Threes

There’s an old saying that death always comes in threes. It’s just a superstition, but it does reflect the fact that sometimes in our lives there are times when it seems like everything is coming at us at once. This seems to be one of those moments for Jacob. Just as he’s finally finished his [...]

Purify yourselves – YELLOW

Another trend is starting. Up until now, we haven’t heard much about where other gods fit in all this.  We’ve heard little snippets about how other gods are out there – it’s clear that Laban has some sort of “household gods” – but nobody has bothered much about them. Now, Jacob is telling his family, [...]

What would we gain? – ORANGE

“What would we gain from the Bible by having yet another story of humiliation and pain?” asks Rabbi Lia Bass.  We are not yet done with the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, and how many stories of humiliation and pain have we found? What would we gain by having yet another? [...]

Jacob’s sports injury

If you’ve ever had a significant injury or even just overused a body part, you know that it is never quite exactly the same afterward.  Maybe there is a scar than you can see, on the skin. Maybe there is scar tissue inside that doesn’t work the same way. Maybe that joint or muscle just [...]

Two sides to every story

And sometimes, the Bible tells them both.  We saw this with the creation stories, and it happens again in Genesis. Today’s reading tells  us how when Laban mistreated Jacob and kept changing his wages, God made it all ok because God made the flock only produce the kind of sheep that would be Jacob’s.  It [...]

Can’t buy me love

Every so often, as I flip through channels, I stop and watch a few minutes of The Bachelor. I do not recommend it. The show brings in a dozen or so women who are all trying to do whatever they can to earn the bachelor’s love, so that at the end he will marry them. [...]

The Trickster Tricked

That’s the title my old children’s Bible gives to this section.  After playing all those tricks on others, Jacob gets tricked himself. It’s a story that (in some form) gets told in every culture I can think of.  In Native American myth, there is usually a character specifically known as the Trickster (often a coyote, [...]