Engaging Genesis, engaging the Bible as a whole, is important. We’re familiar with many of the stories and characters, sure. But what about when we don’t understand?
There’s an awful lot in Genesis (and the Bible as a whole) that can seem confusing. We bog down, uncertain of what God means or how a particular story relates to anything else. Like the next section of Genesis, for example.
The Quick Version
After the story of Cain and Abel, we get a chapter and a half of genealogy and overview. We get glimpses of stories as Moses skips us ahead a few generations, but mixed into the overview are certain details that God just seems to drop in there for us. And we’re confused.
The second half of chapter 4 covers Cain’s family and its continued move away from God. We find out Cain had a wife and kids. We hop, skip and jump to his (several-greats) grandson, Lamech. Then we find out about Lamech’s sons and their areas of expertise, as well as Lamach’s strange decree to his wives (vs. 23-24). At the very end of the chapter we jump back to Adam and Eve and the arrival of a third named son, Seth, from whom a family line with different values descends.
The genealogy of chapter 5 is interesting, if you like a lot of names and years. So, not really interesting at all. We do meet Enoch, who “walked with God, and he was not, for God took him” (v. 24). A very long description in the middle of nothing but names, so we pay more attention to him, but his eulogy is still kind of confusing.
Then we come to the beginning of chapter 6, which is (in my opinion) one of the strangest sections of the Bible anywhere. As a strange introduction to Noah’s story, God gives us this information:
When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. 3 Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” 4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. 5 The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.
Let’s be honest
Here’s the hard and honest truth. Engaging doesn’t always mean understanding. When I engage with my husband or kids or a stranger on the other side of some cultural divide, I don’t necessarily come to understand or agree with them. Not always. Engaging is about honest conversation. About coming to an idea or person and being real with them, letting them be real with you, without demanding the outcome be just your way.
And when we come to the Bible, the same is true.
I don’t know who the “sons of God” are in verse 2 and 4. No ideas at all about Nephilim or giants or mighty men of old. I don’t know why God interrupts the descriptions of what happens between the sons of God and the daughters of man with a comment about how mankind will stop living so long. Why is that relevant right there?
I do get the point of verses 5-8. That’s a lot more obvious really. Mankind was set entirely away from God. Everything about what humans thought and did was another “my way” choice, just like the Garden, just like Cain. And it made God sad. So he decided to do something about it, but (we are told) Noah found favor with God. In the midst of all the evil and wickedness, there was this one guy. And he wasn’t Nephilim or a son of God … he was just plain old Noah.
When we don’t understand
Here’s my point. I don’t know what the point is here. I know Moses needed to get to Noah’s story. But why he’s introduced this way … I got nothing. The genealogy stuff is long-winded and uninteresting to me. Boring even. The lists of hard-t0-pronounce names are not particularly relevant to my life.
So what do we do when we engage with sections like this one? A couple of things, I think.
- Find out more. Engaging should bring up lots of questions. Asking questions is the number 1 way to engage with anyone and anything. So if you have questions, go look up the answers. Don’t just google or ask Siri, though. Look up books about Genesis by people who’ve studied it, the culture, the language. People who know what they’re talking about. Maybe the answer is more obvious than I realize. Go find someone who knows and get more information.
- Remember. These names don’t mean much to mean, but they were important enough for God to remember. By this time in Genesis, there are thousands and thousands of people on the earth. He named these ones. So they’re important, whether I can make sense of them or not. Keep them in mind as you continue to engage so that when these names or ideas appear again, you are ready to learn more about them. And if we never learn anything else about them…
- Trust God. God is a trustworthy God. He is sovereign and his words were breathed out to us so we would know what we needed to know. But he doesn’t tell us everything we want to know. So when we come up against a passage or story that doesn’t make sense, that leaves us confused, we have to come back to the fact that he knows, even if I don’t. That’s faith.
Engaging when we don’t understand can be difficult. But it’s still important. With God, with the Bible, with people, with ideas we don’t agree with. Engage anyway. Because when we don’t understand, we are often closer to the profound and important than we will ever realize. And if we walk away, we’ll miss it.
Don’t miss it. Engage. Even when we don’t understand.
