ICB: A Question in Genesis

Badgerholt inkpotHow old was Jacob when he first met Rachel?

The story of Jacob and Rachel in Genesis is one of the great love stories in Scripture.  Jacob apparently fell in love with Rachel at first sight. But Scripture doesn’t state an age for Jacob when he first met Rachel. Although Esau was 40 years old when he married, Jacob was not. So, how old was Jacob when he first met Rachel?

Through finding the answer to this question, Rûãch @Élöhîm led me to compile the Internal Chronology of the Bible and everything else that followed in my pursuit of the truth of His Story and my appreciation of His artistry as an expression of who He is.

This link to A Question in Genesis will take you to the essay discussing this question.  Because of the extensive tables, it is not practical to post the essay directly in the blog.

Grace and peace to you,

Dori

 

An Internal Chronology of the Bible

To God be the glory!

As I stated in My Perspective, Rûách @Élöhîm (Sprit of God) directed me to take the perspective of the Storyteller. I look at history as an interactive, dramatic production playing out on the stage of the earth in the theatre of the universe, written, produced, and directed by YHWH @Élöhîm with input by the characters.

All stories have a chronology internal to themselves, which may involve seconds to centuries to millennia. The events in the story should fit consistently within that internal chronology.

I’ve always been interested in the internal chronologies of imaginative world stories and seeing whether the author managed to have a consistent internal story chronology, especially for those stories occurring over several novels. J.R.R. Tolkien managed it with his “Tale of Years” in The Lord of the Rings but most authors’ chronologies get off at some point. Maintaining a consistent chronology for a story occurring over hundreds or thousands of years is exceedingly difficult.

The Bible, which is the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, tells the true Story of the Line of the Promise down through the millennia. Rûãch @Élöhîm inspired those whom He selected to record the Story of the Line of the Promise to include numerous time markers in The Bible, mostly in the form of life years and reign years.

Over the centuries, many Bible scholars have sought to fit these time markers into a timeline consistent with man’s historical timeline based on records outside of The Bible. That was not the tack Rûãch @Élöhîm directed me to take in developing an internal chronology of The Bible (ICB).

Instead, Rûãch @Élöhîm nudged me to stick with the internal chronology in His Story and not try to fit His time markers into man’s historical timeline.  He included two summary year spans: 430 years from Abraham to the Exodus and 480 years from the Exodus to the founding of the Temple in the fourth year of Solomon.

What I found was the internal chronology in The Bible is consistent within its internal parameters, as long as one counts the way the Hebrew scribes counted. If I try to fit the time markers together as the western Greco-Roman world counts, they do not work.

Eventually, Rûãch @Élöhîm sent me to man’s records for synchronisms to define the 380 years from the founding of the Temple to its destruction. While I worked hard at fitting the reigns of the kings of Judah and Israel into the 380 years and thought I had found a solution, my chronology was not correct.

Rûãch @Élöhîm used a friend to direct me to Dr. Thiele’s The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, the accepted chronology for the kings of Judah and Israel, to correct my attempted Temple chronology. After the destruction of the Temple, I followed Rûãch @Élöhîm’s example in The Bible and used the reign years of the Gentile kings as time markers in the ICB.

With respect to synchronizing the ICB with the Western calendar,   I identified the relevant Bible events and assigned the Western calendar dates to them in a separate column.  Starting with the earliest synchronized event, the fifth year of Rechoboam, I assigned one Western calendar year to each ICB year in both time directions and let the years fall where they may within the life/reign year dates of Biblical events.

The ICB Menu link will take you to the menu of the charts and essays related to the ICB.

Badgerholt inkpotGrace and peace to you,

Dori

Jacob & Rachel: A Logic Puzzle

Badgerholt inkpotIn reading the story of Jacob and Rachel in Genesis, I saw a story of love at first sight, at least on Jacob’s part. And I wondered, “How old was Jacob when he fell in love with Rachel?”

Although Scripture records that Esau was 40 years old when he married, and the next incident Scripture records is Jacob’s stealing the blessing and fleeing to Padan Aram where he met Rachel, that doesn’t mean that Jacob was 40 years old when he ran away. Scripture records the events that the Holy Spirit considered important in telling the Story of the Line of the Promise but He usually did not direct the human authors to specify how long it was between events. However, the Spirit did have the human authors include life years for certain individuals.  Therefore, the place to start is with those life years.

And I did start with those life years, as I described in My Journey: The First Question, which led to developing an Internal Chronology of the Bible. However, in hindsight, I now understand that all I really needed to do to answer my question was to solve a logic puzzle with six clues found in Scripture.

THE CLUES
  1. Jacob served Laban for 20 years, 14 years for Leah and Rachel and 6 years for his flocks.

Gen 31:41  These twenty years I have been in your house. I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages ten times.

  1. Having served the agreed upon 14 years, Jacob renegotiated his wages in the year Joseph was born.

Gen 30.25-28  As soon as Rachel had borne Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, “Send me away, that I may go to my own home and country. | Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served you, that I may go, for you know the service that I have given you.” | But Laban said to him, “If I have found favor in your sight, I have learned by divination that the LORD has blessed me because of you. | Name your wages, and I will give it.”

  1. Joseph was 30 years old when he stood before Pharoah.

Gen 41:46  Joseph was thirty years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh king of Egypt. And Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh and went through all the land of Egypt.

  1. Joseph interprets Pharoah’s dreams as foretelling seven good years followed by seven famine years.

Gen 41:25-31  Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, “The dreams of Pharaoh are one; God has revealed to Pharaoh what he is about to do. | The seven good cows are seven years, and the seven good ears are seven years; the dreams are one. |The seven lean and ugly cows that came up after them are seven years, and the seven empty ears blighted by the east wind are also seven years of famine. | It is as I told Pharaoh; God has shown to Pharaoh what he is about to do. | There will come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt, | but after them there will arise seven years of famine, and all the plenty will be forgotten in the land of Egypt. The famine will consume the land, | and the plenty will be unknown in the land by reason of the famine that will follow, for it will be very severe.

  1. Joseph invites his brothers down to Egypt for the five remaining famine years.

Gen 45:4-6  So Joseph said to his brothers, “Come near to me, please.” And they came near. And he said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. | And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. | For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest.

Gen 45:11  There I will provide for you, for there are yet five years of famine to come, so that you and your household, and all that you have, do not come to poverty.’

  1. Jacob was 130 years old when he stood before Pharoah.

Gen 47:9  And Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The days of the years of my sojourning are 130 years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojourning.”

Using this information, one can deduce how old Jacob was when he fell in love with Rachel.

Solution

Have fun,

Dori