The Abraham Story Part 23: A Heroine From the Non-Chosen Family

Blessing for the Next Generation

A Heroine From the Non-Chosen Family

Genesis 22:20–24 NASB95

20 Now it came about after these things, that it was told Abraham, saying, “Behold, Milcah also has borne children to your brother Nahor: 21 Uz his firstborn and Buz his brother and Kemuel the father of Aram 22 and Chesed and Hazo and Pildash and Jidlaph and Bethuel.” 23 Bethuel became the father of Rebekah; these eight Milcah bore to Nahor, Abraham’s brother. 24 His concubine, whose name was Reumah, also bore Tebah and Gaham and Tahash and Maacah.

"Now it came about after these things," you kind of, getting used to that phrase now. Upload everything. And when he says everything, he means all 22 pages.

"After these things, it was reported to Avraham saying, 'Look, you remember Milcah?'" Her name means Queen. "Remember Queen?

You know, the woman that married your brother Nahor, who you left behind way a long time ago? Yeah. She has given birth to sons." Hooray. Birth is always, it's the Eden beat, the blessing of seed. There's Eden-ing happening back where you came from. Queen is giving birth to sons. "The first is Uz, his firstborn. The second is Buz.

And then Kemuel, he's the father of everybody you're gonna meet in the story later who are called the Aramaeans.

And Chesed and Hazo, and Pildash, and Jidlaph, and Bethuel.

Oh, here's something you should know about Bethuel. He caused the birth of Rivqah." All our English translations go with the Greek spelling, which is Rebekah, but Rivqah.

"These eight Milcah birthed for Nahor, the brother of Avraham." So eight sons, the daughter is saved for last, though she's not counted among the eight. Patriarchal set up, so the boys matter most in this way of accounting. 

Though it's as if the author puts Rivqah for at the climax, in this most special location at the last, because she is gonna play a huge role in the stories to follow.

"And as for Nahor's concubine, his second wife, her name was Reumah. Oh, and she also gave birth to Tebah and Gaham, and Tahash and Maacah." Oh, yeah, I guess that means 12. 

Twelve, hmm. So Avraham's family over in the east, Mesopotamia, they're doing their own little 12 tribes thing over there. God's got some blessing for them too. And just 'cause they're not the main focus of the story doesn't mean that he doesn't have plans and stuff going on with them.

This is the crew that Avraham left behind.

Leave your father's house, leave your family, your birth family, these are the people whom he left. So when's the last time that they were mentioned?

It was actually in the sentences right before God said, "Hey, get up and get going."

Genesis 11:27–29 CSB

27 These are the family records of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran, and Haran fathered Lot. 28 Haran died in his native land, in Ur of the Chaldeans, during his father Terah’s lifetime. 29 Abram and Nahor took wives: Abram’s wife was named Sarai, and Nahor’s wife was named Milcah. She was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milcah and Iscah.

And do you remember it was a whole list of, well, here, I'll just, I'll show it to you. It was in the final sentences of Genesis 11.

And then Haran, we remember Haran died, but then Avram and Nahor took wives. The name of Avram's wife was Princess. The name of Nahor's wife was Milcah.

And then we learn about, then the story follows in through Avraham after that, just tunes in.

And this is the family that he leaves in Mesopotamia.

The entire narrative is, so far, is bookended by these two mentions of the Mesopotamian family that he left behind. The first time they were brought up, the whole thing was about a call to leave.

Now, at the end of the seed drama, we are introduced to that family again, except with a new, 12, so they've got God's blessing going on over there. 

But there's one that stands outside the 12, and it's the woman who's at the center of this little composition. she's in the exact center. It's a whole bunch of sons, eight, and then four more sons. And then at the center is a woman whose name is, sounds like the letters of the word "blessing," but mixed around.

And you know, it's gonna be very interesting in a couple chapters. She's gonna be faced with a decision of whether she's going to leave the house of her father, her family, and go to a land that she's never been to before. And but what the servant of Avraham promises is that there will be blessing there for her.

So this woman whose name looks like the word "blessing" with the letters turned around, is in fact the key, the key to the blessing coming to fruition back in the land.

But she has a similar choice that Avraham did all the way back when. And so, this is a really remarkable, this is in a couple chapters, but we're, this idea is being seeded right here that for the blessing to take place, Rivqah is gonna face her own test of faith and trust. And she's gonna pass it just like her father, father-in-law, Avraham,

 She is the female counterpart to Avraham, a woman of great faith.

And so, so it's such a great little example of like, what's this thing doing here and why do I care? And this little paragraph, you really only get it if you're thinking big about these larger patterns at work in the story. 

Is this a conclusion to this bigger stretch of narrative? Or is this actually the introduction to the next stretch of narrative? And the answer is yes.

It's like a hinge. It's truly like the hinge of a door. You, it's how you go from one room into the next room. And you know, these aren't the most exciting parts of Genesis to read, these little genealogies, but it raises a larger issue.

So notice Avraham's journey has come, and the plot tension of his journey has come to its climax in 22. And so in a way, the bookend of Moreh and Moriah and get yourself going, that drama is complete. 

and the next chapters until chapter 25 when Abraham dies, is going to be about the passing of the blessing to the next generation to ensure that the blessing will carry on into the future through a future descendant that's a down payment of the next generation. 

And then through this piece of land that is the cave of the naked pair where Sarah and Abraham will be buried, is a down payment of the future possession of the land. 

This next has a totally different feel. The plot conflict is way lower, to be honest. And people are actually pretty awesome in these stories. And all of the icky gross make you feel bad inside stories are past us for the most part. And this is about the passing of the torch, so to speak.

So that's the section before us.

So here's this paragraph that we just read, the genealogy and the birth of Avraham's brother and Rivqah, 12 sons and Rivqah, the death of Sarah, and the burial in Machpelah. 

There's gonna be a long story about Avraham's servant going back to Mesopotamia to meet Rivqah and bring her back. 

And then right after that, the beginning of chapter 25 is about Avraham marries yet a third wife, third wife. No, Hagar's gone. Sarah just died. But he takes a third wife and through that, gives birth to a whole bunch of other sons who are going to become enemies of his descendants over time.

But Yitzhak and Rivqah are singled out as the chosen and blessed ones.

then Avraham will die. And then the Avraham story ends, not with his death, but with a genealogy of Yishmael's descendants. 

And then you get Yishmael's descendants, these are the generations of Yishmael. And then the next major part of Genesis begins, these are the generations of Yitskhaq, Isaac. And then we're on into the Isaac and Jacob story. 

So there's a bunch of genealogies in here, lots of lists of names. I mean, these are the parts you kinda like, read it before you go to sleep or something,

But here's what's fascinating. This section and the wording of these sections is mirrored at the next great hinge in Genesis which is the transition from Jacob to the story of Joseph and the brothers.

At that hinge point, you get a story of the death and burial of Rachel, who is Jacob's wife. Then you're gonna get another list of the chosen one's children. Then Isaac will die and he's buried, in that cave, same exact cave again. Then you're gonna get a list of the non-chosen's wife and children, and then a long genealogy, like a long genealogy of the non-chosen son, just like Yishmael. 

Do you see what's happening here? 

So here's essentially what, how the book of Genesis works. This is the whole book of Genesis seen from this lens.

The book of Genesis is all about the seed. Everything is about the seed of the woman. And so, right from the moment of that conflict between the chosen humans, it's the humans that are chosen to rule creation as God's image, not the animals. Even though the animals came first in Genesis 1, it's the human, it's the latecomers.

It's the younger of Genesis 1 that are chosen to rule over the older and who are the older but the animals. And the snake doesn't seem to like that. He's not pleased with that.

That's one way of thinking about it. 

So what's interesting is that you're gonna watch the author give airtime, there'll be dramas about the chosen and the non-chosen. And these are our rival brothers and wives and sons that we've been seeing through the Avraham story. And then the moment will reach some sort of crisis of conflict. 

And when we're ready to transition generations, here's what will usually happen. The narrative sequence will break from the strict chronology, and you know this film many sessions ago. And usually what'll happen is you'll get a separation like with Seth and Cain, and the story will focus on Seth, carry his genealogy way into the future, finish it off, and then will backtrack to the chosen lineage and then will pick up the story again. 

And so it literally, it happens with every generation of the story. You do this with Seth, he's introduced, follow Cain's line through. Okay, backtrack, let's start with Seth, it goes forward to Noah. 

And then you get three sons from Noah. So you do ham, this is Genesis 10, Ham, Japheth. And you backtrack. Okay, let's start with Shem. We lead to Avraham, and it just keeps on going that way. 

So when we get to the section that we're in right now, it's gonna be about the passing of the torch to the next generation. And then there's gonna be these lists in genealogies. We're gonna carry Yishmael through, period. We're gonna backtrack, come to Isaac, Yitskhaq, and then we're gonna keep on going, Yaaqov and Esau. 

And then at near the end of Genesis, it will be Judah, Yehudah, who's highlighted in Yaaqov's, the other 11 brothers too. 

So you just have to stop and you just have to say, "Okay, this is clearly, like, the way the book's designed." It's all about the seed. Singling out and making sure the reader has before their eye this promise of blessing, this promise of victory over the snake of a restoration of the Eden blessing. 

And somehow, this family, this one family line that keeps getting singled, singled, singled out is the special focus here. It's what's held before our eyes. So that might lead you to think, "Oh, okay, this is a story of the good guys and the bad guys." And so then you have to bring the next layer in, which is, yeah, that's not how the story works at all. 

In fact, it's the non-chosen who are consistently going to play this role of heroes of the faith. 

Example

Rivqah, who's Rivqah? She's not, she's from the non-chosen. She's from the brothers who were, Avraham's un-chosen brothers. And yet, she's gonna play the crucial link. It's her faith to leave her family like Avraham and go to a land not hers, or else the whole thing would fall apart. The whole blessing would fall apart if it weren't for Rivqah. And, oh, isn't it interesting that her name sounds like the word "blessing" with the letters swapped around?

And so what she's gonna begin is this really important motif right throughout the Hebrew Bible of non-chosen female heroines who saved the day, and sometimes even these female characters are themselves complex characters. 

Leah, the unloved wife, but she is the mom of Judah. She's gonna give, she's gonna be the mom of the messianic line. The Messiah comes from the non-chosen.

Tamar, a Canaanite woman, who's abused and, you know, jerked around by Judah, ancestor of the Messiah. And it's through deception and treachery that she saves the seed.

Pharaoh's daughter becomes the rescuer of Moses.

Zipporah, the Midianite daughter of the high priest of Midian who rescues Moses' life.

Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute. 

Deborah in jail, and on. Hannah, Abigail. I mean, it's just, it's a long list.

And Rivqah is the, she's the first one.

Bibliography

https://bibleproject.com/classroom/abraham

Middleton, J. Richard. Abraham’s Silence: The Binding of Isaac, the Suffering of Job, and How to Talk Back to God. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2021.

Cotter, David W. Genesis. Edited by Jerome T. Walsh, Chris Franke, and David W. Cotter. Berit Olam Studies in Hebrew Narrative and Poetry. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2003.

Josephus, Flavius, and William Whiston. The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1987.

Richard N. Longenecker, “The Melchizedek Argument of Hebrews: A Study in the Development and Circumstantial Expression of New Testament Thought,” in Unity and Diversity in New Testament Theology: Essays in Honor of George E. Ladd (ed. Robert Guelich, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 161.

https://bible.org/article/melchizedek-covenantal-figure-biblical-theology-eschatological-royal-priesthood#P8_421

Anders Aschim, “Melchizedek and Jesus: 11QMelchizedek and the Epistle to the Hebrews,” in The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism: Papers from the St. Andrews Conferences on the Historical Origins of the Worship of Jesus (eds. Carey Newman, James Davila, and Gladys Lewis, JSJSup. 63; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 130.

Paul J. Kobelski, Melchizedek and Melchiresa (CBQMS 10; Washington DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1981), 126-7.

https://bible.ca/manuscripts/Septuagint-LXX-Shem-was-Melchizedek-Masoretic-chronology-Messiah-Jesus-Christ-priesthood.htm

https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-ancient-traditions/history-circumcision-0010398

https://www.gotquestions.org/city-gate.html

https://www.gotquestions.org/hand-under-thigh.html