Joseph – Badgerholt 3.0

ICB: A Question in Genesis

How 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

Side Trip: YHWH ‘s Promise to David

How YHWH @Élöhîm (LORD God) Kept His Promise to David

The Promise (2 Sam 7:12-17)

¹²When your days are fulfilled, and you lie with your fathers, then I shall raise up your seed after you, who shall come out from your bowels, and I shall establish his kingdom.  ¹³He shall build a house for My Name, and I shall establish the throne of his kingdom forever. ¹⁴I shall be a father to him, and he shall be a son to Me. When he sins, then I will chasten him with a rod of men, and with strokes of the sons of men.  ¹⁵But My mercy shall not be taken from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you.  ¹⁶And your house shall be established, and your kingdom before you forever. Your throne shall be established forever.  ¹⁷According to all these words, and according to all this vision, so Näthän spoke to David.

The Obstacle (Jeremiah) 22:28-30)

²⁸Is this man Coniah a despised, broken jar, or a vessel in which is no pleasure? Why are they hurled, he and his seed, and are cast into the land which they do not know?  ²⁹O earth, earth, earth! Hear the Word of YHWH!  ³⁰So says YHWH, Write this man childless, a man who will not prosper in his days. For not one from his seed will succeed, a man sitting on the throne of David and ruling any more in Judah.

YHWH promised David that a son of his loins would sit on the throne of the kingdom forever. The legal claim to the throne ran through Solomon’s line, and that line ran through Jeconiah son of Jehoikim, the last living king of Judah. This is the same Coniah whose line YHWH debarred from the throne, as He decreed through Jeremiah. So, how could a son of David legally sit on the throne without being descended from Coniah?

YHWH Elohim follows His own rules, and His pronouncement against Coniah presented a genuine legal obstacle to keeping His promise to David. So, how did He fulfill His legal requirements while keeping His promise to David that one of His blood would sit on the throne forever?

The Claimant

I believe Jesus of Nazareth is who He claims to be – the uniquely generated Son of God, the Messiah, the Son of David who will sit on the throne forever, a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek. I believe the Gospels truly record His life and the genealogy of His mother Mary and His supposed father Joseph. It is in the genealogies of Jesus as recorded by Matthew and Luke that one finds the answer to this conundrum.

The Solution, Part 1: The Blood Claim

Now Jesus, making His appearance at about age thirty – being, as was supposed, a son of Joseph – was Himself descended of Heli, of Matthat . . . of Nathan, of David . . .  of Judah . . . (Luke 3:23,31,33) [JM Cheney, The Life of Christ in Stereo], pp.18[1]

In his Gospel, Luke records the genealogy of Jesus, showing his descent from Heli of the tribe of Judah. So, who was Heli? Heli was the father of Mary, Jesus’ mother. Thus Jesus was descended from him.

Heli was descended from the collateral line of Nathan, a son of David who was a full brother of Solomon’s (their mother was Bathsheba [1 Chronicles 3.5]). Not being descended from Solomon, Heli had no legal claim to the throne, but he did have a blood claim. He passed this blood claim on to his children, including his daughter Mary, who, in turn, passed it on to her sons, including her firstborn, Jesus.

So, Jesus had a blood claim to the throne of David through His mother Mary. Through her, He was descended from the seed of David, from the bloodline of David. However, He was hardly unique in that. After a thousand years, probably many families would have had a blood claim to the throne of David, but only one line had the legal claim—the line of Solomon.

The Solution, Part 2: The Legal Claim

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, Son of David, Son of Abraham. . . And Jacob fathered Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom (Greek pronoun ‘es’, clearly refers to Mary) was born Jesus, the One called Christ.  (Matt 1:1,16)

Matthew records the genealogy of Jesus as the Son of David, the Messiah, the One with a legal claim to the throne of David. However, the last line of the genealogy clearly lists Joseph, the husband of Mary who bore Jesus, but not Jesus directly as his son. It does not list Joseph as fathering Jesus because, of course, he didn’t. So, how then is this the genealogy of Jesus if Joseph was not His birth father?

It’s the genealogy of Jesus because He was the eldest acknowledged son of Joseph, even though He was not fathered by Joseph. Therefore, Jesus legally inherited the claims of the eldest son, which in this case included Joseph’s legal claim to the throne. But then again, after a thousand years, others probably also had a legal claim to the throne.

But here is where Jesus might differ from all the other legal claimants: did Joseph have a unique claim to the throne, in that he was the legal heir to the throne of David, descended from father to son down through the generations?

In Joseph’s dream (Matthew 1), the angel addresses him as ‘Joseph, son of David.’ There doesn’t seem to be discussion in mainstream scholarship of ‘son of David’ as a commonly used title for any man descended from David. By the first century, ‘son of David’ had become a Messianic title.[2] Did the angel refer to Joseph as ‘son of David’ just to remind him of his heritage? Or, might Joseph have had a unique claim to the title? Not a Messianic claim, but rather a claim as the legal heir to the throne of Solomon, descended father to son from Jeconiah.

However, even if Joseph was the legal heir to the throne of David, he could not sit on the throne because he was descended from Jeconiah and thus debarred from that position. If this is the case, then Joseph passed on to Jesus not merely a legal claim, but THE legal heirship to the throne of David through the line of Solomon.

None of the sons that Joseph and Mary had together could have sat on the throne because they were descended from Jeconiah through Joseph. Only Jesus, not being physically descended from Joseph, was not debarred from legally claiming the position held by His legal father—a position to which He also had a blood claim through His mother Mary. Thus He was declared King of the Jews from His birth.

It’s also possible that all Joseph had was a simple legal claim to the throne because he was descended from the line of Solomon through Jeconiah (the same as possibly several others). However, all of the descendants of Jeconiah were debarred from the throne and none of their blood descendants could ever claim the throne of David. So, either way, when Joseph passed on his legal claim to Jesus as his eldest acknowledged son but not his blood son, and Jesus had a blood claim through his mother Mary, Jesus became the King of the Jews from His birth.

A Question

Did YHWH @Élöhîm keep His promise to David by arranging for the legal heir to the throne of David, Joseph, to marry Mary, the daughter of a collateral bloodline of David (and one descended from a full brother of Solomon’s)? Given how YHWH works in His Story, that is a distinct probability.

How wonderful is the plan of YHWH in setting up the circumstances leading to Mary’s firstborn Son Jesus being declared ‘King of the Jews’ from the moment of His birth, the only son of David who fulfilled both the legal claim (but bypassing the debarment) and the blood claim to the throne of David.

Grace and peace to you,

Dori

Essay under Side Trips menu

[1] Cheney, Johnston M. The Life of Christ in Stereo. Portland, OR: Western Conservative Baptist Seminary. 1969, 275pp.

Note 16a: This rendering departs from the traditional but inconsistent “Joseph, the son of Heli.” Though never before proposed to our knowledge, this rendering is grammatically sound and clarifies the true intent of the passage. It only involves the addition of two commas in the Greek, (which had no punctuation in the original) and a proper recognition of the significance of the initial pronoun, which stands in the place of emphasis. Using English punctuation for modern clarity, the literal rendering would be: “Now Himself was Jesus, beginning at about age thirty–being a son, as was supposed, of Joseph–descended from Heli, son of Matthat, . . . “ His point is that Jesus descended, not from Joseph but from Heli through Mary. That Luke intended this meaning is suggested by the arrangement in the two oldest extant authorities, where Heli, not Joseph, heads the single-column listing of Jesus’ human forbears back to Adam. [This rendering was presented to and well received by the Evangelical Theological Society, as well as by other competent Greek scholars–Ed.]

[2] Bromiley, Geoffrey W., et.al. The International Standard Bible Encylopedia, vol. 1 (A-D), revised 1956. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. “Messiah.”

To God be the glory!

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 inkpot Grace and peace to you,

Dori

Jacob & Rachel: A Logic Puzzle

Badgerholt inkpot In 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

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.’

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