Lent Day Five

Remember David, Bishop of Menervia (d c 601) and the Saints of Wales.

Now, continuing in Genesis Chapter 37

"Jacob wants to compose a whole world of his own" (Zornberg 247)

There are the contrasting stories of Esau and Jacob and their children.
Zornberg says of Esau's children, that their lives are predictable and simple. There are "no secret areas,... no crevices out of which God can speak."

She says further: "Jacob's children are individual, unique, unclassifiable. The story of their "settling" is a long and tortuous process..." (248)

As we read Genesis chapter 37 we read the story of Joseph and his dreams and his brothers, and the shocking attack. Joseph is cast down into the well, and fortuitously sold to the Ishmaelite caravan and into slavery.
But the story told to Jacob is a lie. Goats blood on the coat...

"In a word, Jacob wants to compose a whole world of his own: 'He sought to settle in peace' indicates a cognitive and aesthetic ambition to see history resolved, sojournings over, in this world. What 'leaps upon him' is the wild animal that tears Joseph apart... Instead of... clarity, composure, coherence, there is... confusion, bewilderment, loss of consciousness." Zornberg 247