Overview: The Book of Genesis

History and Setting

Messages

Outline

Key Passages

Questions about Genesis

Questions for Your Bible Study

Ideas for Future Study

Messages:

God keeps his promises. How will the covenant with Abraham come to be? The stories are meant to keep you glued to the narrative, to see how God will keep the promises he made in the covenant. In each story in Genesis, we wonder how God will keep the covenant. Here’s some examples:

12:10-20. What if Pharaoh would have kept Sarai, his wife? How would God complete the covenant of giving children to Abraham and Sarai?

13:1-18. Abraham gives Lot a choice of where he would live. What if Lot had chosen the Promised Land? How could God give Abraham the land if Lot was living on it?

14:1-16. Abraham was in a fierce battle. What if Abraham would have been killed? How could God complete the covenant if Abraham was dead?

16:1-3. Abraham and Sarai still have no children. Is God keeping the covenant or not?

10:1-29. What if Abraham is killed in the violence in Sodom and Gomorrah? God has still not given them children.

22:1-19. God tells Abraham to offer his only son as a sacrifice (of course, it was later revealed as a test for Abraham). How can God fulfil the covenant if the only descendent of Abraham is dead?

God takes care of His people. We read the stories of Abraham’s sojourns, or Joseph’s rise from slavery to royalty, and many other characters in Genesis. The stories are arranged for a purpose: to reiterate over and over, that God takes care of His people. The authors wanted to convey that God, the creator of the universe, author of all life on earth, bends down to care about each of us.

Outline

Chapters 1-3: Garden of Eden

The stories of creation. The point is that God created everything good, but it was people who went astray. Check “Questions about Genesis” for more on the historicity of the creation story.

Chapter 4-5: Cain and Abel

Cain and Abel records the first murder in the Bible. Abel’s sacrifice to God is acceptable, but God didn’t accept Cain’s sacrifice. We’re not told why. We usually assume that Abel brought the first fruits, and Cain brought the leftovers, but the narrative never says that. Whatever the reason, Cain is filled with jealousy and kills his brother Abel. Later in the chapter (4:23) Lamech talks about killing a whole village of people. This may be a way to illustrate that the sinfulness and waywardness of the human race was increasing.

Chapter 6-9: The Flood

At the beginning of chapter 6 is a difficult passage about the Nephilim took human daughters. This may be from a Babylonian myth, which was absorbed into the narrative to show that the waywardness of people had filled the whole cosmos.

This introduces the familiar story of the Noah and the flood.

Chapter 10: Genealogy

There are snippets of genealogy throughout these chapters. There was an importance placed on genealogy so that the people would remember who they are. Nomadic peoples always run the risk of getting absorbed into other cultures. Genealogy was one of the ways that the people hung on to their roots as children of Abraham.

Chapter 11: The tower of Babel

Chapter 11 begins in Babylonia (11:2 says they were in the Plains of Shinar, which is in Babylonia). In many ancient cultures, they believed that the gods lived on the mountains. So… if you lived on the plains with no mountains, you built your own mountain! The story of the tower of Babel may be referring to the ziggurats, massive mountain-like buildings common in Babylonia.

At the end of chapter 11, we are introduced to the family of Abraham.

Chapter 12: The call of Abraham

God offers a covenant to Abraham in verses 1-3. God says he will create a great people from Abraham. God says he will make Abraham’s name great, and his descendants will bless all people.

One of the important things here is that God asks nothing in return from Abraham to get the covenant. God never says, “And if you disobey, I’ll withdraw my covenant.” God promises the covenant, and he will fulfill the covenant—not because Abraham is good, but because God is good. Abraham doesn’t even have to be faithful. In fact, in Joshua 24:2-3, Joshua says to the people, “Your fathers lived… beyond the river, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor. They served other gods.” So God called a family who were worshiping other gods, to become the ancestors of a people who would draw all humanity back to God. God called Abraham because God was good, not because Abraham was good. By the same token, God calls us to be his children—not because we’re good, but because He is good.