Printable Version

 CHAPTER FORTY FIVE
Jacob and Esau Meet, Genesis 33:1 - 33:20.

THE FACTS!

Jacob looks up and sees Esau coming with 400 men.

Jacob lines up his children and wives, from least loved to most loved.

Jacob bows seven times as he approaches his brother.

Esau runs at Jacob!

Esau grabs Jacob by the neck!

Esau kisses Jacob?

Esau and Jacob hug and weep. Darn!

Esau sees four wives and twelve children and says, "Yee haw, who am all these peoples?"

Jacob says, "Theeth are my wiveth and my children which God hath motht graciouthly granted me, thy humble thervant."

Jacob's family bows to Esau.

Esau says, "What was up with all them cattle?"

Jacob says, "Thothe were for you tho you wouldn't kill me."

Esau says, "Naw, you keep 'em. I gots plenty."

Jacob says, "No, no! If you are happy with me and my gift, then I am ath happy ath a thkool girl meeting God. You keep it thince I have plenty altho."

Esau accepts the gifts.

Esau urges Jacob to continue back with him.

Jacob says, "With all my children and kidth (the kidth being baby goatth!), I need to travel thlowly. I'll meet back up with you when I arrive at Their. I mean Their. SEIR!"

Esau says, "Well, take some of my men to help you."

Jacob says, "Whatforithwhyeth do you doeth that? Trutht me! I'm a man! I can take care of my own!"

Esau heads back to Seir.

Jacob travels slowly.

Jacob arrives in Succoth.

Jacob builds booths for his cattle which causes the place to be called Succoth. Or maybe the name of the place just gave Jacob the idea to build booths. Or maybe The Bible doesn't understand cause and effect or linearity.

Jacob pitches his tent before the city of Shalem.

For 100 Lambs of Money, Jacob buys a parcel of land from Hamor who is the father of Shechem who owns the city of Shalem.

Jacob erects an altar and calls it God the God of Me (the Me part being his new name, Israel), El-elohe-Israel.

STUDY QUESTIONS!
Question God and Religion!

Why weren't there any goats in this Chapter? I'm really missing the Scripture that talked about the goats!

Why was Esau so happy to see Jacob? I can't believe no blood was spilled! The Bible was working up to a big blood bath and then, nothing! It was like Deadwood, Season Three! Oh, don't read that if you haven't seen Deadwood! If you haven't seen Deadwood, perhaps you misread what I just wrote or maybe I meant to say it should have been more like Deadwood, Season Three! Or maybe I'm just remembering the show wrong.

After reading that Chapter, don't you feel cheated? Everybody who wants to discredit God is always saying how violent The Bible is and how God destroys everyone and is a giant Hater and it's only Jesus who acts nice and takes the edge off of his Father. But here, just thirty pages into The Bible, God doesn't draw blood when blood was exactly what the recipe required!

What recipe am I talking about? Does that even make sense to anyone who isn't a cannibal or a witch or a German? Oh! Blood is required in the recipe, Rare Steak!

How do you think Leah felt when Jacob lined up his wives from least favorite to favorite, just in case Esau came in swinging his hatchet? Wouldn't it have been funny if Leah was at the front of the line and the handmaidens (whose names The Bible never remembers) were behind her? Jacob must have really been afraid of Esau if he was willing to make his wives angry at him by comparing them to each other!

Why doesn't The Bible say which Handmaiden was first in line and which was second? I'm really curious as to which one Jacob preferred! I'm sure many people just assume that Leah's Handmaiden was first. But you know what happens when you assume! You just make stuff up in your head that lacks evidence and then you believe it so strongly (because why would you, the genius, be wrong?) that it takes two to three times more evidence to convince you that you were wrong than if you had just let the evidence come in before making your stupid assumption. You hear me, women with your awesome intuition! I'm talking to you! Yeah, intuition isn't truth no matter how awesome you think you are at it! Keep ruining people's relationships with your lousy intuition! Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, a woman could love a fish?!

I wonder what the life expectancy of a Tuna is? Do you think my daddy is still alive out there, somewhere? I wonder why I chose the name Grunion Guy if my dad was a tuna? Maybe my mom dated a Grunion in my formative years! I bet he had a big, fluffy mustache and a big 70's van with an airbrushed mural on the side and an orange and yellow sunset sun blocker thing on the back windows. You know, the kind with lots of little holes so they block the sun but you can still pretty much see out of it?

Should I be calling Jacob by his new name? Why didn't The Bible start calling him Israel? Is that because Esau wouldn't have recognized him if he came back to town with a different name? Or maybe Esau would have been offended and thought that Jacob was trying to hide from him?

By the middle of this Chapter, somebody gives someone something else because God was really good to someone. Who was that? And who was the other one? I'm pretty sure Jacob was insisting that Esau keep the gift basket and Esau was saying how he really didn't need it and Jacob says that he doesn't either so Esau should keep it and so Esau says, "Okay!" But, really, it could be the other way too. Come on, The Holy Bible! For an infallible work, you're awfully ambiguous and unclear!

Wouldn't you think that if God wanted us to know how to act and how to behave, he would have written The Bible like a technical document and spelled everything out in straightforward terms? I guess saying we just can't comprehend the will of God is good for a lot of dumb people who are trying to comprehend him every day until some lousy atheist asks the tough questions. But if God gave us a Holy Manual, and he's omnipotent, and he's actually good and just, you'd think he would have written it in a non-cryptic way so that it wouldn't have caused so many miscommunications and deaths and wars and problems. Unless it was a big joke. Because I can understand that! Ha ha, good one, God!

Does Jacob actually take offense with Esau when Esau offers to leave behind some men to help the small goats and children with the long journey? It seems that way to me. Maybe it's just a kind of man denial. Jacob has too much testosterone to let another man think he needs help from that other man with his goats and children and that the one man can't take care of everything himself. Stupid confusing Bible is rubbing off on me!

Did the phrase "stupid confusing Bible is rubbing off on me" sound dirty to you too?

So was the name of the place Jacob journeyed to named Succoth before Jacob got there or was it only named afterward because Jacob built a Goat Condo there? Maybe because God is Omniscient, he has trouble with cause and effect! So God sees the place as always having been called Succoth and never having been called Succoth all at the same time! And so he can state why the place was called Succoth but, in God's mind, it has always been called Succoth. Um, and never been called it too!

Being Omniscient is probably really confusing! It's also one of God's traits that would probably have been better left off since it makes God seem far less believable, since if he knows everything forever (and being Omnipotent, can change it. And being Omniscient, he knows that he'll change it!), he really lacks Free Will of his own. He knows how things will be and how they always will be and have always been, including His own actions and reactions. If He changes history, He's always known that He was going to change history and therefore history hasn't changed since He knew He was going to do that and did it and never didn't do it so history can't change at all! So, can a Creator be both Omnipotent and Omniscient?

Did the phrase "pitched his tent before the city" sound dirty and arrestable to you too?

How boring is the Jewish God's name, God? That's what you get when you aren't allowed to speak your God's real name! I wonder which brave person was the first one to say Yahweh out loud? How did this religion take over the world (in three different parts. Maybe that's the Trinity!)? I would have put my money on a God with personality! Like Thor or Osiris or Bacchus or Krishna! Well, I guess Krishna is doing decently!

RECIPE: Rare Steak
     Ingredients:  1 Steak, Rare
                              Steak Seasoning

     Preparation:  1. Put steak on grill.
                              2. Immediately take steak off of grill.
                              3. Put seasoning on steak. Unless you were supposed to do that first! Then make this Step 1 and make Step 1 into Step 2 and make Step 2 into Step 3!
                              4. Eat! Make some comment about eating a living cow. Look down your nose at people whose steaks were on the grill longer than yours was.

I went to the movies on Thursday, June 30th. It was really, really hot and you could feel the air conditioning through the ticket taker's little window. So I told the Ticket Taker, "You're box feels really good." That's the end of the story except that there might be a lot of people out there feeling a lack of resolution to the story, so let me clear up your anxious wondering: The movie I went to see was called Sunshine Cleaning.

Every subject in the world has a Monopoly game for it. The Beatles Monopoly Game has recently come out and you can play as a serial killer's weapon of choice or a guy who shoots up a hoedown because he was spurned by his lover! Although, I have to admit, the Rocky Raccoon game piece is awesome. Oh, it's not a gut shot hillbilly! It's an actual raccoon! I think maybe somebody at Milton Hasbro might have missed the point of the song somewhere. I hope an Alice Cooper Monopoly Game comes out so you can have a Dead Baby playing piece!

Sometimes it only takes two or three hours to do a Bible Study. And sometimes it takes weeks because the Chapter is really boring or I'd rather play Call of Duty: World at War instead of writing or I'm having tons and tons of sex with the ladies. So I apologize to the three or four of you who are really eager to learn more about The Bible! I should pick up the pace!

The Bible isn't really as awe inspiring and amazing as many Christians would have you believe. Maybe it'll get more interesting when Jesus comes to town!

A. Can a Divine Creator be both Omniscient and Omnipotent? Explain yourself!
B. Write a better ending to the Jacob / Esau conflict. Make sure there are more weapons in your ending than in the real ending!
C. Write a screenplay about a guy who wakes up to find that he has never existed. Be sure to include a perky, cute, Goth girl who is the only one who remembers him and can communicate with him through dark, depressed journal entries in her secret diary. Also include some authority figures that the audience will hate and some preppy and popular social types who make living look really easy while the Goth and the non-existent guy struggle at every turn. Release the rights to the movie version of the screenplay to me!

DRAWING TIME!

Draw five Monopoly Game Pieces for any band or performer. Except for a country band or performer because then you'd all draw the same thing: a beer bottle, a truck, a cowboy hat, a cowboy and a break-up.

WHAT DID CHRISTIAN LITERALISTS LEARN?

God makes forgiving easy. Ha ha! I wish! I don't even think they learn that in the Jesus parts!