From Noah to Israel
The author of this article is Carol M. Kaminski. Carol indicated that she wrote this book because of her interest with the book of Genesis. Being a doctorate student at St. Catherine’s College in Cambridge gave her the opportunity to be able to write this book. Working with many different professors, scholars and church members helped her with clarity and understanding of the book of Genesis. Most of all, she is grateful to Yahweh who guided her through this new understanding of his word.
First, to summarize the creation story is the mention of how life continued after the flood. As we already are aware the land was filled with humans, however, they were evil, except Noah’s family. Therefore, Noah and his family were directly chosen by Yahweh to continue a new generation of Yahweh’s people to replenish the land, however, this new generation was to be created solely in God’s image and not to turn evil, like they had before. Noah’s descendents continue to multiply over all the earth to this very day. However, Noah was supposed to just multiply and fill the earth with his descendents. According to this article, it was not planned for the descendents to scatter to different areas of the world. This was one thing that was not mentioned in Yahweh’s plan for the Israelites. Yahweh’s intention was to have divine promise, not for his creation to scatter. Divine promise means meaning of promise, as well primaeval blessing means to divide or separate. Therefore, the promise was meant by Yahweh to the people to keep the promise to divide and separate over the land of Israel and Judah. Another way that this promise was fulfilled was through Jacob. Jacob’s twelve sons assumed the role of the main son. The main son was the one who held the promise, not the other eleven sons. However, we learn that on Jacob’s death bed, Joseph’s older son, Reuben, forfeited his right as being the firstborn son when he went and layed with his father’s concubine, Bilhah. Then, Simeon and Levi are placed under judgment because the blessing had been bestowed upon them to multiply the land in Yahweh’s image, without corruption. However, we further learn that they multiplied, but did not multiply in the land that was promised to them; Israel. Through this promise of blessing we also learn that Jacob’s name was changed to Israel because his family would be the ones to continue with the expansion of the divine promise.
We must also summarize the curse of the land. In this article, Turner, gives in depth analyzes about the curse of the ground. Because humans were created in Yahweh’s image and not to kill, we see how the land was cursed with the battle of Cain and Abel and the killing that took