Patriarchs, Pericopes, and Providence
In preparation for preaching through the Torah, I am reading through Genesis and also using this as an opportunity to practice my Hebrew reading skills. I begin by maladroitly working my way through part of a chapter in Hebrew and then I switch over to English when I see that I am running out of time. The reason I mention this reading routine is that some of the most fascinating things I find in the text come from being so poor at reading the original languages. When you are forced to read a text at the same pace a drunken sloth climbs up to bed you tend to see knots on the tree you had previously passed by with little or no interest. The passage for this morning was Genesis 20. This story comes after the debacle with Lot leaving Sodom and Gomorrah and the unspeakable foolishness of Lot's daughters in Genesis 19 (no doubt that horrific tale holds numerous applications for the necessity of catechizing our children in hopes that they will trust the Lord rather than their own str