People: from Adam to Joseph
The first people, and the family of Abraham over four generations, from whom the whole nation of Israel descends.
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Who were Adam and Eve?
The first man and woman in Genesis, made in God's image and placed in the garden of Eden, who disobeyed God and were sent out of it.
Adam's name is related to the Hebrew word for ground, and Eve's to the word for life. Their choice to eat from the one forbidden tree brings death, shame, and broken relationships into the world. Paul calls Jesus the "last Adam", the one who undoes what the first Adam did.
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Who were Cain and Abel?
The first two sons of Adam and Eve. Cain, a farmer, murdered his brother Abel, a shepherd, out of jealousy.
God accepted Abel's offering and not Cain's, and Cain killed him in a field. When God asked where Abel was, Cain answered, "Am I my brother's keeper?" It is the first death in the Bible, one chapter after the fall, showing how fast the damage spreads.
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Who was Noah?
The righteous man God told to build an ark to save his family and the animals from the flood, and with whom God then made a covenant never to destroy the earth by flood again.
By Noah's time, Genesis says, the earth was filled with violence. After the flood God sets the rainbow in the sky as the sign of his promise. Every nation in Genesis 10 is traced back to Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and Abraham descends from Shem.
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Who was Abraham, and why is he so important?
The man God called to leave his home in Mesopotamia for Canaan, promising to make him into a great nation through whom all the families of the earth would be blessed.
He was originally named Abram, and God renamed him Abraham, "father of many". The promise of land, descendants, and blessing drives the rest of the Bible. He is counted as the father of the Jewish people, and Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all look back to him. Paul holds him up as the model of faith, because he believed God before he had seen anything.
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Who was Sarah?
Abraham's wife, who was barren until God gave her a son, Isaac, when she was ninety.
She laughed when she overheard the promise that she would have a child in old age, and the name Isaac means "he laughs". The long wait for her son is the first great test of whether God will keep his promise to Abraham. She was originally called Sarai.
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Who were Hagar and Ishmael?
Hagar was Sarah's Egyptian servant, given to Abraham to bear a child when Sarah could not. Their son was Ishmael, Abraham's firstborn.
After Isaac was born, Sarah had Hagar and Ishmael sent away. God met Hagar in the desert twice and promised that Ishmael too would become a great nation. Arab and Islamic tradition traces Arab descent from Ishmael. Hagar is the first person in the Bible to give God a name: "the God who sees me".
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Who was Isaac?
The son promised to Abraham and Sarah, whom Abraham was told to offer as a sacrifice before God stopped him, and the father of Jacob and Esau.
The near-sacrifice of Isaac on Mount Moriah, called the binding of Isaac, is one of the most unsettling stories in the Bible. God provides a ram in his place. Christians have long read it as foreshadowing God giving his own son, and later tradition places Moriah where the temple would be built.
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Who were Jacob and Esau?
Isaac and Rebekah's twin sons. Jacob, the younger, took Esau's birthright and then tricked their father into giving him the blessing meant for Esau.
Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of stew. Jacob later disguised himself as Esau to fool his blind father. Jacob fled, lived for twenty years with his uncle Laban, and was tricked in return. Esau became the ancestor of the Edomites, and the rivalry between the brothers' nations runs through the Old Testament.
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Why was Jacob renamed Israel?
After he wrestled all night with a mysterious man who turned out to be God, and refused to let go until he was blessed.
The name Israel is explained as "he strives with God". It became the name of the whole nation descended from him, so every time the Bible says "Israel" it is echoing this night. Jacob came away from the fight limping.
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How did Jacob's twelve sons become the twelve tribes of Israel?
Each son's descendants became a tribe named after him, and together they made up the nation of Israel.
The sons were born to four women: Jacob's wives Leah and Rachel, and their servants Bilhah and Zilpah. Jacob loved Rachel and her sons, Joseph and Benjamin, most, which caused much of the trouble. Two tribes matter most later: Levi, which became the tribe of priests and received no land, and Judah, the tribe of David's royal line and of Jesus. Joseph's tribe was split into two, named after his sons Ephraim and Manasseh.
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Who were Leah and Rachel?
Sisters who both became Jacob's wives, after their father Laban tricked Jacob into marrying the older one, Leah, first.
Jacob worked seven years for Rachel, whom he loved, and woke up married to Leah. He worked seven more for Rachel. Leah, less loved, had many sons, including Levi and Judah; Rachel was barren for years before having Joseph and then dying in childbirth with Benjamin. The rivalry between the sisters shaped the family for generations.
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Who was Joseph, the son of Jacob?
Jacob's favourite son, sold into slavery in Egypt by his jealous brothers, who rose to become Pharaoh's second-in-command and saved his family from famine.
His father gave him an ornate robe, and he dreamed his brothers would bow to him, which made them hate him. In Egypt he was falsely accused and imprisoned before interpreting Pharaoh's dreams. When his brothers came begging for food years later, he forgave them, saying, "you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good." His story explains how Israel came to be in Egypt.
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Who was Melchizedek?
A mysterious king of Salem and priest of God Most High, who blessed Abraham and received a tenth of his plunder.
He appears in only three verses of Genesis, with no mention of his family or death. Psalm 110 speaks of a king who is "a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek", and Hebrews uses this to explain how Jesus can be a priest though he was from the tribe of Judah, not the priestly tribe of Levi.