The book of Genesis

• The first book of the Bible.
• The second longest book of the Bible.
• There are a lot of interesting and well-loved stories in the book of Genesis.

How Genesis is structured?

Genesis and the stories there in told about how the people of Israel even came to be and so they began to be associated with Moses laws over centuries scribes worked on the books of Moses and and the rest of the scriptures maintaining them and pulling them together into these beautifully constructed.

Genesis is its structure the book of Genesis is 50 chapters.long but it neatly falls into two larger sections the first section just looks at the relationship between God and all of humanity and that's the first 11 chapters then the last 39 chapters and so chapters 12 through 50 really zoom in on God's relationship with the nation of Israel or rather the nation of Israel's ancestors.

The middle we see God making a set of promises to a gentleman named Abram who goes on to be called Abraham so if you understand the structure part one has God and humanity and part two is God in Israel. What's with a covenant set of promises in the middle.

Why it's so important to the rest of the Bible?

Genesis was written there are a few reasons and it makes Genesis very important book of the Bible in terms of understanding how the Bible works perhaps most important is the the book of Genesis sets the stage for divine in human affairs throughout the rest of the Bible.

How we got the book of Genesis?

Genesis are very old thousands of years old and they've been around for a long time before they were ever written down the stories.

In Genesis began as oral traditions that were passed down from Hebrew generation to Hebrew generation until they joined the law of Moses in the Torah.

Why it was written now the stories in Genesis?

The law of Moses began as a list of conditions that an ancient prophet gave to the Israelites about how they should interact with their God.

Old Testament which they called the Tanakh now.

Bible is very much about God's relationship to humans whether it's God relating to humans through the nation of Israel or God relating to humans through His Son Jesus in the New Testament but Genesis that stage and tells us a little bit about the default relationship between humans and God tells us a little bit more about humans.

Genesis we start seeing different elements of humanity that are not so good it tells Israel's origin story the nation of Israel had to come from somewhere every nation begins somewhere and this is the collection of stories that the Israelites told each other about where they came from and then finally it does give a message of hope for non-israelites.

It's mostly for the Israelites in terms of who was reading it for a very long time before Christians came along but it is relevant to the rest of the world in a couple of ways.

Genesis structure is that both of these sections fall into roughly four subsections 

first section with God in humanity we have section on creation a section on a curse or when things start getting out of hand a section on judgment and salvation and then a section that talks about where the nations of the world came from likewise in the latter part of Genesis we have sections that are more focused on specific people.

Abraham a brief section on Isaac a section on Jacob whose name changes to Israel and then a section on Jacob's sons focusing on two in particular Joseph who is very famous and Judah who is not so famous but vital to the rest of the Bible.

Starting with section

God and humanity - In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and what this story tells us is that while there was chaos when the earth was formless and void God brings an order out of that chaos and created humans are said

God's image which means they represent God and they're supposed to reflect the qualities of God and they're supposed to be running the world almost as governors for God and the humans get to live in this world with God.

In fact there's a lot of imagery of to the ancient Israelites would have sounded like a temple and so we end the creation segment with humans and God living together in this garden temple.

In the ancient Near a East temple was a place where the gods and the humans could coexist for a while and so Genesis opens by saying there was a time when God and humans could be in the same place at the same time they started in garden temple which is important to Hebrews through the rest of the Bible because the Hebrew temple in Jerusalem takes center stage for most of the rest of the Old Testament.

Next we have things getting out of hand with a curse and there are two really big pieces of this section that are interwoven together there's this sense of a supernatural or divine evil a serpent comes into the garden and tricks the humans into rebelling against God and then afterwards we know just out of this world sort of stories about the the sons of God having relationships with humans there are these folks called Nephilim which may be the ancient Jews believed were part demon part human maybe they believed that they were just irregular humans that became so powerful that they were worshipped as gods there's a lot of debate on that but the important thing to know is that we get this sense of a supernatural evil that is corrupting the world but also humans are corrupting the world too.

We've heard about Cain and Abel well Cain kills his brother but then later on we have humans becoming even more violent so from chapters 3 to 6 we see just things getting really bad in both the supernatural sense and in the the human sense this is how the ancient Jews talked about that time but there is a glimmer of hope in that God says that one day there will be a human who can defeat that serpent which represents that divine evil that has come into the picture so good news right there at the beginning of the first book of the Bible.

Next we have this story of judgement and salvation so humanity gets so bad that God sends a flood and it wipes out most of life in the world however one family remained loyal to God is saved and so we have these waters these chaotic waters coming back over the world but God rescues a handful of people from that fate and this says that he really values human life he wants human life to continue to grow and flourish.

Next section where we have all the people multiplying and we get many people on the earth who decide to build their own structure they want to build a tower that reaches into heaven and you've probably heard this story the Tower of Babel and so at the end of the first section..

We have this strange progression where once humans lived with with God in in a temple a garden temple and everything was fine and by the end we have humans trying to build a name for themselves God doesn't like that so God says okay I'm going to distribute all of humanity into various nations and so each people group gets a language each people groups gets a land and then later on in the Torah.

We find that the ancient Israelites believed that God also distributed the nation's to different gods and that's where these nations may have got their Pantheon's that's the outlook that that Moses has in Deuteronomy at least.

God distributes them all so we have this spot where humans are rebelling against God we have God divvying up the humans and the humans going all to their own gods but then God chooses one family to have a relationship with and that family starts with a man named Abraham.

God comes to Abraham in Genesis 12 and makes a promise to him he says he's going to make Abraham a very great person in history he says that he's going to be with Abraham, he's going to give Abraham many descendants many nations and kings will come from Abraham which is very important because when we meet Abraham he's old Abraham is going to have the land of Canaan the Promised Land if you will that's why it's called the Promised Land.

God is going to bless all the nations of the world through Abraham's descendants of promises.This blessing is passed from Abraham to his son Isaac to Isaac's son Jacob and on to the nation of Israel.

The second part of Genesis we have Abraham this is chapters 12 through 24 Abraham is called by God. He wanders around for his whole life he never really settles down he sojourned across the land that he was promised and through other lands as well. He is tested by God but he passes the test because he believes in God and later on in the Bible Abraham is called Abraham.

The believer Abraham's life is pretty interesting when you compare it to the rest of the Old Testament because the life of Abraham kind of has some parallels to the nation of Israel. Before they got to the land remember Israel was called by God out of Egypt Israel wandered around in the wilderness for 40 years.

He's has a great deal of wealth and he has two sons this is kind of like Israel's history later on in the Old Testament as well Israel inhabits their territory they get to the promised land later on in the book of Joshua and they stay there for a good long while and not one but two kingdoms come out of the the people of Israel so again kind of an interesting parallel that foreshadows what's going to happen in the Old Testament.

Jacob is a deceptive little guy he tricks his brother out of his brothers inheritance and because of that he needs to run away he's exiled back east and that's where he starts his own family but he eventually returns back to the land that God promised.His ancestors and lives there again this is a lot like what we're going to see in the rest of the Old Testament.

Israel as a nation is going to be exiled they'll be taken into captivity off to Babylon but they will be able to return back from Babylon after 70 years so again we have some foreshadowing of the rest of the Old Testament happening here in the book of Genesis and then lastly we have chapters 37 to 50 focusing on the sons of Jacob.

Jacob had 12 sons those twelve sons roughly mapped to 12 tribes of Israel and two sons in particular are very important one is Joseph he's the one with the famous jacket that his father gave him. Joseph was the youngest of his brothers for a while and he had these dreams of greatness he was his father's favorite son and his brothers were jealous of him so they sell Joseph into slavery and after that Joseph is tested his integrity to test his loyalty to God ,his wisdom is tested but he passes those tests and then emerges as this ruler and Savior who saves many people from a famine.

Through his trust in God his wisdom and his perception.This story of someone who was of low esteem in his family who was betrayed tested passes the tests and becomes this ruler Savior foreshadows another part of the Bible write the New Testament Judah has some very interesting story lines here as well so Judah is another one of the sons of Jacob.

Judah is the one who has the idea to sell Joseph into slavery not a great guy then he goes on to make some other really weird and bad decisions but eventually he humbles himself and he offers up his own life on behalf of a later younger brother and offers two offers to die and his younger brothers stead and so we have a bit of a story of redemption for Judah and at the end of the book we have this blessing given to Judah saying that from Judah will come a king who will rule over the nations in peace and justice.

Messianic King which Christians believe is Jesus so both Joseph and Judah give us a taste of what's to come beyond the Old Testament.