By Prof Joel S. Kaminsky
God's prefer in the direction of a few serves God's plan for the bigger global.
The proven fact that the Jewish individuals are specially selected via God is an concept affirmed via either early Christians and rabbis. even though, the concept that God would like one individual or workforce over one other is extremely problematical in state-of-the-art democratic and pluralistic society. Being the selected is usually visible as greater neglected or maybe repudiated by way of either Christians and Jews.
According to Joel Kaminsky, God's better plan for the realm is labored out throughout the three-way dating among God, Israel, and the international locations of the realm. He asserts that we have to reexamine the Bible in mild of this topic. what's wanted is a greater realizing of what the Bible relatively says approximately God's picking. starting with the commonplace tales in Genesis (Cain and Abel; Isaac and Ishmael; Jacob and Esau; Joseph and his brothers; but in addition Hagar and Sarah; Leah and Rachel; Isaac and Rebekah), Kaminsky exhibits how God chooses, how people take part, what we all know from the Bible approximately God's intentions, and no matter if God's plan for the selected humans succeeds. The e-book maintains in the course of the previous testomony, asking in regards to the fates of these whom God chooses to prefer, these whom God rejects, and those that are neither favorite nor rejected. eventually, Kaminsky exhibits how either the recent testomony authors and the rabbis affirmed the outdated testomony view of God's election. every one bankruptcy engages smooth issues of a theology of election and each bankruptcy affirms the biblical paradox the God's selection in prefer of a few serves God's plan to learn all.
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Additional resources for Yet I Loved Jacob: Reclaiming the Biblical Concept of Election
Sample text
In turn, the oppression of Hagar the Egyptian in Gen 16 ominously adumbrates the future oppression that the Israelites receive in Egypt. Particularly striking is the way in which just as Abram and Sarai attempt to raise an Egyptian’s child as an Israelite, later Pharaoh’s daughter attempts to raise the Israelite baby Moses as an Egyptian. These narrative connections are brilliantly brought into focus by Rosenberg. This ravaging of Hagar’s own kinship is pointedly analogous to the narrowly averted exploitation of Abraham’s family by Pharaoh in chapter 12.
Another interesting facet of this story occurs several verses later in Gen 4:25, a narrative fragment that may have been more closely linked with Gen 4:16 at an earlier redactional point. This verse tells us that not only does Cain’s murder of Abel, God’s elect, fail to gain him the elect’s position, which he jealously wished to assume, but the status of the elect instead passes to the latest born son Seth, who, as the text reports, is Abel’s replacement. Thus, God’s mysterious tendency to favor certain people remains unabated, offering evidence that the point of these stories is not to critique God for having elevated one brother over the other, but to critique the all too human propensity to become hateful and hurtful toward those whom God favors.
The first question about whether Cain and Abel are twins is relevant to the discussion of election in that if Cain and Abel are twins, the issue of who is the firstborn and who is the younger child turns on a few short minutes. This would heighten the rivalry between the siblings by stressing their near equality. Furthermore, it might lead one to see this narrative and the Jacob and Esau account as a pair of narratives that should be read over against each other. Unfortunately, whether Cain and Abel are twins or just brothers is not a question that can receive a definitive answer from the language of the verses themselves.