Friday, February 22, 2013

Bible Challenge Day 5 - God Backs Away

Genesis 13-15, wherein Abram comes full circle, he and Lot are separated, then reunited through Abram's heroism, the first tithe is paid, and God promises Abram's descendants vast tracts of land.

Psalm 5, wherein the Psalmist is slandered, and asks for God's protection

Matthew 5, wherein Jesus says some beautiful and challenging things

Genesis is filled with competing visions who God is physically. We have God who walks in the Garden of Eden, from whom Adam and Eve literally hide in the bushes. Other people are described as "walking with God", notably Enoch (about whom we know basically nothing else), and Noah.

Abram's relationship with God is more distant. We know in Genesis 12:1 that God speaks to Abram, but what form God takes at that time is unclear; the same is true in 13:14, which seems to prefigure (or be another version of?) the covenant coming in chapter 15. But by chapter 15, it's seems that God is speaking to Abram in sometimes terrifying visions, that the days of God just walking around on the earth are at or near a close.

The image toward the end of today's reading, "When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces" (the divided sacrifice that Abram had made earlier in the day), is a poignant sign of God tiptoeing away, no longer appearing to human eyes, but veiled by darkness, soon to stop leaving footprints on the earth.

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