Page 302 - Through New Eyes

304 NOTES TO PAGES 182-192

during the Old Testament was that after the Abrahamic covenant, they were
obligated to recognize the special priestly status of Israel.
3. The author’s study of “The Life of Abraham” provides an in-depth examination
of the history of Abraham and its meaning in the context of Genesis. This is a
set of twelve tapes with a forty-six-page syllabus, and is available from Biblical
Horizons, P.O. Box 132011, Tyler, TX 75713.
4. David Daube, The Exodus Pattern in the Bible (London: Faber and Faber, 1963).
This is the standard work on the subject, but is marred by critical (liberal) as-
sumptions. My own comments entail significant expansions of Daube’s initial
study.
5. The Mountain the angels offered Lot was the mountain where Abraham was.
Lot refused it. He wound up in another mountain, living in a cave, a symbol of
being returned to dust in death. Lot’s exodus was a warning to Israel. Note the
unleavened bread (Genesis 19: 3), the angels guarding the doorway, and the
midnight pass over exodus. When Israel refused to conquer Canaan, they re-
peated Lot’s mistake, and received the same judgment. They did not learn from
typology.
6. Christian ethicists have generally not regarded the deception of tyrants as evil.
A familiar example is the way Dutch Christians hid Jews from the Nazis, and
boldly lied about it. In his sermons on Genesis, Luther exonerated Abraham
and Isaac for deceiving Pharaoh and Abimelech. See my comments on this in
Jordan, Primeval Saints: Studies in the Patriarchs of Genesis. Available from Biblical
Horizons, P.O. Box 132011, Tyler, TX 75713.
7. The details of the Jacob- Laban episode correlate to the laws of slavery in Ex-
odus 21. See my remarks on this in Jordan, The Law of the Covenant: A n Exposition
of Exodus 21-23 (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1984), pp. 33-34.
8. Deposit “under the oak near Shechem” implies that these gods were humbled
under the trampling feet of God, whose ladder to heaven was the tree.
9. An extensive discussion of this pattern and its wider ramifications can be found
in Meredith G. Kline, The Structure of Biblical A uthori~, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1975), pp. 76-93.
10. Lot’s exodus (Genesis 19) and Abraham’s (Genesis 20-21) are a study in paral-
lels and contrasts.
11. See my extended remarks in James B. Jordan, Judges: GOSS War Against Human-
ism (Tyler, TX: Geneva Ministries, 1985), pp. 279-290.
12. Eber had two sons, Peleg and Joktan (Genesis 10:25). Abraham was a de-
scendant of Peleg (Genesis 11:16-27). In the “Table of Nations” of Genesis 10,
Eber and Peleg each count as distinct “nations” in the list of seventy. The
Pelegites had apostatized and worshiped strange gods in Ur (Joshua 24:14).
The converted Abraham and his clan considered themselves not as Pelegites
but as the true Eberites (Hebrews).
13. Joseph’s sheaves are to be associated with the earth, in light of Genesis 1:9-13.
Thus, the picture of Israel as both dust (sheaves) and stars is found in Joseph’s
dreams (Genesis 37:6-10).
14. This verse does not refer to purchased slaves but to converts. See the remarks of
Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, Part II: From Noah to Abra-
ham, trans. Israel Abrahams (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, [1949] 1964), p. 320.
15. Tree and altar, Genesis 12:7; 13:18; 35:7-8; tree, well, and worship (altar im-
plied), 21:30-34; altar and well, 26:23-25, 32-33.
16. On the cloud and the Spirit, see Meredith G. Kline, Images of the Spirit (Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1980), passim. On oil, pp. 45-46.
17. See Jordan, Primeval Saints, chap. 10.