Genesis 25
1 Abraham married another wife whose name was Keturah;
2 and she bore him Zimram, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak and Shuah.
3 Jokshan was the father of Sheba and Dedan, and the descendants of Dedan were the Asshurites, the Letushim and the Leummim.
4 The descendants of Midian were Ephah, Epher, Hanoch, Abida and Eldaah. All these were sons of Keturah.
5 Abraham left all his possessions to Isaac.
6 To the sons of his concubines Abraham made grants during his lifetime, sending them away from his son Isaac eastward, to the Land of the East.
7 The number of years Abraham lived was a hundred and seventy-five.
8 When Abraham had breathed his last, dying at a happy ripe age, old and full of years, he was gathered to his people.
9 His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah facing Mamre, in the field of Ephron the Hittite son of Zohar.
10 This was the field that Abraham had bought from the Hittites, and Abraham and his wife Sarah were buried there.
11 After Abraham’s death, God blessed his son Isaac. Isaac settled near the well of Lahai Roi.
12 These are the descendants of Ishmael son of Abraham by Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian slave-girl.
13 These are the names of the sons of Ishmael by name and line: Ishmael’s first-born was Nebaioth; then Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam,
15 Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish and Kedemah.
16 These are the sons of Ishmael, and these are their names, according to their settlements and encampments, twelve chiefs of as many tribes.
17 The number of years Ishmael lived was one hundred and thirty-seven. When he breathed his last and died, he was gathered to his people.
18 He lived in the territory stretching from Havilah-by-Shur just outside Egypt on the way to Assyria, and he held his own against all his kinsmen.
19 This is the story of Isaac son of Abraham. Abraham fathered Isaac.
20 Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah the daughter of Bethuel the Aramaean of Paddan-Aram, and sister of Laban the Aramaean.
21 Isaac prayed to Yahweh on behalf of his wife, for she was barren. Yahweh heard his prayer, and his wife Rebekah conceived.
22 But the children inside her struggled so much that she said, ‘If this is the way of it, why go on living?’ So she went to consult Yahweh,
23 and Yahweh said to her: There are two nations in your womb, your issue will be two rival peoples. One nation will have the mastery of the other, and the elder will serve the younger.
24 When the time came for her confinement, there were indeed twins in her womb.
25 The first to be born was red, altogether like a hairy cloak; so they named him Esau.
26 Then his brother was born, with his hand grasping Esau’s heel; so they named him Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old at the time of their birth.
27 When the boys grew up Esau became a skilled hunter, a man of the open country. Jacob on the other hand was a quiet man, staying at home among the tents.
28 Isaac preferred Esau, for he had a taste for wild game; but Rebekah preferred Jacob.
29 Once, when Jacob was cooking a stew, Esau returned from the countryside exhausted.
30 Esau said to Jacob, ‘Give me a mouthful of that red stuff there; I am exhausted’ — hence the name given to him, Edom.
31 Jacob said, ‘First, give me your birthright in exchange.’
32 Esau said, ‘Here I am, at death’s door; what use is a birthright to me?’
33 Then Jacob said, ‘First give me your oath’; he gave him his oath and sold his birthright to Jacob.
34 Then Jacob gave him some bread and lentil stew; he ate, drank, got up and went away. That was all Esau cared about his birthright.
Genesis 26
1 There was a famine in the country — different from the previous famine which took place in the time of Abraham — and Isaac went to Abimelech, the Philistine king at Gerar.
2 Yahweh had appeared to him and said, ‘Do not go down to Egypt; stay in the country which I shall point out to you.
3 Remain for the present in that country; I shall be with you and bless you, for I shall give all these countries to you and your descendants in fulfilment of the oath I swore to your father Abraham.
4 I shall make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven, and I shall give them all these countries, and all nations on earth will bless themselves by your descendants
5 in return for Abraham’s obedience; for he kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes and my laws.’
6 So Isaac stayed at Gerar.
7 When the people of the place asked him about his wife he replied, ‘She is my sister,’ for he was afraid to say, ‘She is my wife,’ thinking, ‘The people of the place will kill me because of Rebekah, since she is beautiful.’
8 When he had been there some time, Abimelech the Philistine king happened to look out of the window and saw Isaac fondling his wife Rebekah.
9 Abimelech summoned Isaac and said to him, ‘Surely she must be your wife! How could you have said, “She is my sister”?’ Isaacreplied, ‘Because I thought I might be killed on her account.’
10 Abimelech said, ‘What a thing to do to us! One of the people might easily have slept with your wife. We should have incurred guilt, thanks to you.’
11 Then Abimelech issued this order to all the people: ‘Whoever touches this man or his wife will be put to death.’
12 Isaac sowed his crops in that country, and that year he reaped a hundredfold. Yahweh blessed him
13 and the man became rich; he prospered more and more until he was very rich indeed.
14 He acquired flocks and herds and a large retinue. The Philistines began to envy him.
15 The Philistines had blocked up all the wells dug by his father’s servants — in the days of his father Abraham — filling them in with earth.
16 Then Abimelech said to Isaac, ‘You must leave us, for you have become much more powerful than we are.’
17 So Isaac left; he pitched camp in the Valley of Gerar and there he stayed.
18 Isaac reopened the wells dug by the servants of his father Abraham and blocked up by the Philistines after Abraham’s death, and he gave them the same names as his father had given them.
19 But when Isaac’s servants, digging in the valley, found a well of spring-water there,
20 the herdsmen of Gerar disputed it with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, ‘That water is ours!’ So Isaac named the well Esek, because they had disputed with him.
21 They dug another well, and there was a dispute over that one too; so he named it Sitnah.
22 Then he left there, and dug another well, and since there was no dispute over this one, he named it Rehoboth, saying, ‘Now Yahwehhas made room for us to thrive in the country.’
23 From there he went up to Beersheba.
24 Yahweh appeared to him the same night and said: I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid, for I am with you. I shall bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham’s sake.
25 There he built an altar and invoked the name of Yahweh. There he pitched his tent, and there Isaac’s servants sank a well.
26 Abimelech came from Gerar to see him, with Ahuzzath his adviser and Phicol the commander of his army.
27 Isaac said to them, ‘Why do you come to me since you hate me, and have made me leave you?’
28 ‘It became clear to us that Yahweh was with you,’ they replied, ‘and so we thought, “It is time to have a treaty sworn between us, between us and you.” So let us make a covenant with you:
29 that you will not do us any harm, since we never molested you but were unfailingly kind to you and let you go away in peace. Henceforth, Yahweh’s blessing on you!’
30 He then made them a feast and they ate and drank.
31 Early next morning, they exchanged oaths. Then Isaac bade them farewell and they left him as friends.
32 It happened, the same day, that Isaac’s servants brought him news about the well they had been digging. ‘We have found water!’ they said to him.
33 So he called the well Sheba, and hence the town is named Beersheba to this day.
34 When Esau was forty years old he married Judith daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath daughter of Elon the Hittite.
35 These were a bitter disappointment to Isaac and Rebekah.
Job 15
1 Eliphaz of Teman spoke next. He said:
2 Does anyone wise respond with windy arguments, or feed on an east wind?
3 Or make a defence with ineffectual words and speeches good for nothing?
4 You do worse: you suppress reverence, you discredit discussion before God.
5 Your very fault incites you to speak like this, hence you adopt this language of cunning.
6 Your own mouth condemns you, and not I; your own lips bear witness against you.
7 Are you the first-born of the human race, brought into the world before the hills?
8 Have you been a listener at God’s council, or established a monopoly of wisdom?
9 What knowledge do you have that we have not, what understanding that is not ours too?
10 One of us is an old, grey-headed man loaded with more years than your father!
11 Can you ignore these divine consolations and the moderate tone of our words?
12 How passion carries you away! And how you roll your eyes,
13 when you vent your anger on God and speeches come tripping off your tongue!
14 How can anyone be pure, anyone born of woman be upright?
15 God cannot rely even on his holy ones, to him, even the heavens seem impure.
16 How much more, this hateful, corrupt thing, humanity, which soaks up wickedness like water!
17 Listen to me, I have a lesson for you: I am going to impart my own experience
18 and the tradition of the sages who have remained faithful to their ancestors,
19 to whom alone the land was given — no foreigner included among them.
20 The life of the wicked is unceasing torment, the years allotted to the tyrant are numbered.
21 A cry of panic echoes in his ear; when all is peace, his destroyer swoops down on him.
22 No more can he count on escaping from the dark, but knows that he is destined for the sword,
23 marked down as meat for the vulture. He knows that his ruin is at hand.
24 The hour of darkness terrifies him, distress and anguish assail him as when a king is poised for the assault.
25 He raised his hand against God, boldly he defied Shaddai!
26 Head lowered, he charged him, with his massively bossed shield.
27 His face had grown full and fat, and his thighs too heavy with flesh.
28 He had occupied the towns he had destroyed, with their uninhabited houses about to fall into ruins;
29 but no great profit to him, his luck will not hold, he will cast his shadow over the country no longer,
30 (he will not escape the dark). A flame will scorch his young shoots, the wind will carry off his blossom.
31 Let him not trust in his great height or delusion will be his.
32 His palm trees will wither before their time and his branches never again be green.
33 Like the vine, he will shake off his unripe fruit, like the olive tree, shed his blossom.
34 Yes, sterile is the spawn of the sinner, and fire consumes the tents of the venal.
35 Whoever conceives malice, breeds disaster, bears as offspring only a false hope.
Job 16
1 Job spoke next. He said:
2 How often have I heard all this before! What sorry comforters you are!
3 ‘When will these windy arguments be over?’ or again, ‘What sickness drives you to defend yourself?’
4 Oh yes! I too could talk as you do, if you were in my place; I could overwhelm you with speeches, shaking my head over you,
5 and speak words of encouragement, and then have no more to say.
6 When I speak, my suffering does not stop; if I say nothing, is it in any way reduced?
7 And now it is driving me to distraction; you have struck my whole acquaintanceship with horror,
8 now it rounds on me, my slanderer has now turned witness, he appears against me, accusing me face to face;
9 his anger tears and hounds me with gnashing teeth. My enemies look daggers at me,
10 and open gaping jaws. Their sneers strike like slaps in the face; and they all set on me at once.
11 Yes, God has handed me over to the godless, and cast me into the hands of the wicked.
12 I was living at peace, until he made me totter, taking me by the neck to shatter me. He has set me up as his target:
13 he shoots his arrows at me from all sides, pitilessly pierces my loins, and pours my gall out on the ground.
14 Breach after breach he drives through me, charging on me like a warrior.
15 I have sewn sackcloth over my skin, thrown my forehead in the dust.
16 My face is red with tears, and shadow dark as death covers my eyelids.
17 Nonetheless, my hands are free of violence, and my prayer is pure.
18 Cover not my blood, O earth, and let my cry mount without cease!
19 Henceforth I have a witness in heaven, my defender is there on high.
20 Interpreter of my thoughts there with God, before whom flow my tears,
21 let my anguish plead the cause of a man at grips with God, just as a man might defend his fellow.
22 For the years of my life are numbered, and I am leaving by the road of no return.
Proverbs 2 [20-22]
20 Thus you will tread the way of good people, persisting in the paths of the upright.
21 For the land will be for the honest to live in, the innocent will have it for their home;
22 while the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the faithless rooted out of it.
Thoughts and Reflection
Here we have the son following the father in the same mistakes. Just a few days back Abraham didn’t tell the truth of who Sarah, his wife, was. Now Isaac is doing the same with Rebekah and passing her off as his sister. People continually repeat the same mistakes.
Esau is the firstborn son and thus was entitled to a inheritance from his father. However, temptation falls before him and he trades his inheritance for food since he was hungry. This type of temptation is before us all the time and many times we do not think of anything except of what we need at that moment. It is at these moments we need God’s grace and strength to over come these and continue to set forth on the path we are on.
About This Project
For the year 2022, I decided that my New Year’s Resolution was to read the whole Bible following the Bible in the Year plan presented by Fr. Mike Schmitz. It is a big and bold undertaking. You can follow along by subscribing. Feel free to look at previous day’s post and comment. It’s something we can all learn from together!
