Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel and today we are going to continue our theme study of the idea and the concept of refuge. You don't necessarily have to listen to episode 187 before listening to this one because it's fairly contained, but I will talk a little bit about what we were talking about before, and we will be continuing on with our discussion that we ended last week. So basically what I want to be tackling here in this series is the theme of refuge, the theme of hiding, the theme of protection. And the idea of God as our refuge is a really common one, especially when we read the Psalms and some really poetic literature. So I think our tendency is to think that this theme is very picturesque, and it's very poetic, and it's very metaphorical.
And certainly all of those things are true to whatever extent. But I think that Scripture also portrays refuge in very physical ways, in ways that involve things that are really put into practice. And refuge is often in light of something that is truly dangerous, that is truly threatening. And I'm not trying to put down our ideas of things that we experience in life that require God to be our refuge in ways that are perhaps about things that are very emotional. I don't want to put any of that kind of idea down where God is our rock, and He is our fortress, and He is our shelter. But I think it would be really helpful to understand this picture in the concrete forms that Scripture really portrays it as.
Being able to trace it and recognize it when it shows up in Scripture, is really going to be helpful to other conversations we might have, conversations about salvation, about atonement. So very theological ideas and very theological concepts. But, you know, sometimes we think of theology and theological concepts as these ethereal spiritual realities. And while again, those might be part of how we look at this as emotional or mental or things that we're dealing with on a conscious level. I really do see the world of Scripture portraying these as concrete realities. And that will also play into things like our eschatology and the way that we see the church and the way that we see discipleship. And so that's why I think that this theme is very important, and it can be very neglected. So last week we gave a survey of the theme of refuge in a few different ways, beginning in the Book of Genesis, where we talked about Eden, we talked about Adam and Eve hiding from God.
[00:03:24] We talked about Cain receiving protection, but that didn't really mean he was restored to full relationship with God. We talked about Hagar. We talked a little bit about Noah, but we've already talked quite a bit about the ark as the refuge. And the other two stories we talked about centered on Lot and eventually led up to Abram and God saying that He is Abram's shield. And so we went through all of these ideas up to the point where we understand God as a refuge. So we don't have to wait until the Psalms to get that kind of picture, but we get it with the story of Abram. And we get that in a very interesting point in his story where we have that really strange incident in Genesis 15 with the covenant ceremony and the animals that are cut in half, and the torch and the fire pot pass through those cut pieces of the animals.
I'm not gonna go ahead and open the entire conversation about covenant because I've had a few episodes about that. So if you're interested in those conversations, you can go to my website at genesismarksthespot.com, and you can search for covenant, or you can go to the tab at the top of the page where it says episodes, and I have category listings.
[00:04:51] You can go to all categories, and you can find the category of covenant, and you can find all those episodes I did about covenant. But because it's such a strange incident here in Genesis 15, I wanna give a little bit of the cultural background. And it's really important to understand covenant in its ancient understanding when we're trying to understand God as refuge, because this is very crucial. So in Genesis 15, God says that he is Abram's shield. And Abram has a question because he is wondering how his future can really be protected when he has no direct offspring.
So then this is the moment where God brings him outside. He shows him the stars in the sky, and he promises offspring beyond counting. And we've recently talked about how this is not just about numbers, but also about the quality of Abram's offspring. It's not just human offspring, but offspring that will be made like the stars.
[00:05:55] This connects to Abram's ultimate offspring of Jesus, but also us being made like Jesus. But the conversation with God doesn't end there. God identifies himself as the one who brought Abram from Ur to give him the land. And Abram asks another question, "How do I know that I shall possess the land?" So it's not just about the offspring, but about the promise of the land. And so the covenant ceremony that then occurs is God's answer to Abram's request for assurance in the fact that he is Abram's shield. So the first exchange concerns offspring, and the second exchange concerns the land. So the covenant that occurs is going to be related to both of those questions. God promises descendants, and not only descendants, but descendants of a particular type, and God also promises that his offspring will receive the land that he has been promised.
So the Abrahamic promise is wrapped up in both of these ideas. Now, a covenant in Scripture is more than just a casual promise. And it's even more than a modern contract, even though that might be our closest way of understanding what a covenant is. A covenant is something that would establish or formally define a binding relationship between two parties. Often those two parties are not equal. And a covenant would usually have promises or obligations. And there would be particular declarations, there would be signs or sacrifices or oaths, and there would be consequences attached to faithfulness or violation. Now, not every covenant that we see in the Bible works exactly the same way. Some will place explicit obligations upon both parties. Some will prominently emphasize divine promise.
Some of them establish a political or a community order. And some actually renew an existing relationship. So here in Genesis 15, we have God's promise and a covenant ceremony. That doesn't mean that there is an entirely new plan, but it formally confirms the promise that God has already given and answers Abram's question of, " How will I know?" So the term cutting a covenant is a regular Hebrew idiom for covenant making. And this is kind of going to be very picturesque with the cut animals, right? The animals have literally been cut. They've been arranged in pieces. And we actually have a biblical explanation of this rite. We can read in Jeremiah chapter 34 where people cut a calf in two and pass between its parts.
[00:09:00] When they violate the covenant, then God declares that they will become like the animal through which they passed. So the action that they're committing here within a covenant ceremony functions as a solemn oath that carries an enacted projected curse warning. It basically says, " May the covenant breaker suffer the fate represented by the pieces of the animal." So this is a bit gruesome, right? It's not a picture we maybe like to think about. Like, you're cutting an animal, and this is a warning that you're gonna be like the animal that has been cut up if you violate the covenant. Imagine if our contracts today really were like this. Like you're signing the paperwork to buy a car or something, and you have to do this kind of gruesome ritual. I know that really wouldn't fly well in today's culture, right?
It seems very gruesome and very bloody. Now this is the place where we see animals in the relationship of there is a meaning about death involved with what's going on with the animals. But a covenant ritual is simply not the same thing as what we have going on in sacrificial rituals like within the book of Leviticus, for instance. The situation with an animal in a sacrifice is one of a communal fellowship meal.
[00:10:32] Here in a covenant ritual, we don't have a meal. The animals aren't being eaten. And we also don't have the idea of substitution. We have representation, but we don't have substitution because substitution would mean that the animal got what the person deserved instead of the person who violated the covenant. Well, that's not what we have in a covenant ritual. In a covenant ritual, it is warning the person. It is an enactment of something that may happen. So what's going on with the animals is not going on instead of the person. It is warning the person that that might be their fate. So in Genesis 15, just like many other covenants, what is happening here is not only the question of will Abram personally receive some property or offspring. But it establishes certainty around a future that Abram himself cannot secure. He can't produce the promised offspring by his own power.
[00:11:42] He can't guarantee that the family will survive. He can't take lasting possession of the land himself because he's just a mortal. He cannot control the nations that will rise and fall. He can't prevent his descendants from being oppressed or turning away from God, and he cannot bring them out of oppression generations after his own death. And so the promise that God is giving is extending far beyond Abram's lifespan and his capacity. And so that's why this covenant scene here in Genesis 15 belongs really well within the refuge theme, because God is not merely offering Abram reassurance for his present emotions. God is pledging himself to preserve a promised future through dangers that Abram will never personally be able to manage, and that even his offspring will not be able to fix or secure the promise themselves.
And so the covenant is God placing the promised future under the protection of his own faithfulness, because the torch and the fire pot are representative of God. Usually you would have two parties pass through the animals. But here we don't have God in two forms. We just have representations of God. And the torch or fire and the fire pot are representative of God and I'm not gonna get too technical about exactly what it represents here. It's going to involve things like the Holy Spirit. But what we know is that Abram himself does not pass through the animals. That means there is no warning in this covenant associated with human failure. And we know that God does not fail in his promises. So this is also not an instance of projecting what will happen to Jesus eventually.
Because if that was the case, then it would indicate that God violated the covenant. We know that God did not, and that he in fact was faithful in his promises. So this is not connected to the death of Jesus, not in the way that a lot of people have tried to connect those two things. But within this instance of the covenant ritual with God and Abram and the animals, it is basically God's solemn promise to Abram that these promises will be kept. For us it's a very strange scene. It's so strange that we might wonder how it connects to the idea of God reassuring Abram, right? Because it seems really bloody. And we have exposed carcasses, and we have scavenging birds, and we have darkness, and it feels like a little bit of a situation that might promote some terror or fear if you're reading Genesis, by the time you've gotten here, you have probably forgotten that God has promised that He will be Abram's shield.
But I think that two things are intimately connected. this is a promise of protection. And that is what's going on in this covenant ceremony. And so it's very much connected to our theme of refuge. I also think that it is not an accident that this happens in the dark. And that this is maybe part of the story that God is telling Abram in his actions here. God does not promise to keep Abram's descendants from ever descending into darkness or experiencing darkness. But God promises beforehand that he will preserve the covenant future through the darkness and to bring the descendants out again. And so I think that is what makes Genesis 15 so important for our study of the theme of refuge, because the covenant here contains the exodus in promise form before Jacob's family ever even goes down into Egypt.
I want to stress that the Abrahamic promise is not what Galatians 3 and the curse is all about. It's not unrelated, but the very specific curse that is mentioned there in Galatians 3 that was blocking things and that was causing a problem was the curse that is associated with the people moving into the land at the end of Deuteronomy. So it is not this curse that is being enacted here in Genesis 15, because again, if that's what it was, then the problem would be God violating the covenant. So the common Christological reading that tries to read Jesus into Genesis 15 is really trying to slide between two different covenants and two different curses. In Genesis 15, Yahweh is not assuming the penalty for Abram's future violation. He is solemnly guaranteeing his own promise.
The implied Genesis 15 curse would be activated only if Yahweh himself failed to keep his oath. It's not a curse that hangs over Abraham or over any other human that can be later transferred to God or to Jesus on the cross. Now, a few other things I want to mention here. The Genesis 15 oath concerns non-fulfillment or breaking the covenant, but it doesn't include every later act of disobedience, particularly for Abraham's descendants. Another point I want to bring out that's very important. This kind of oath that goes on in a covenant ceremony doesn't mean the curse is going to happen or that even that a curse necessarily has to be ended in the way that is gruesome and that is like the animals, right?
[00:17:58] Because this is a warning. This is a performance that is going to suggest that there is a possible consequence, but that does not mean that the one who didn't break the covenant must enact the curse. Now I will say also that Christ fulfills the Abrahamic promise. But he does that in a positive way because Christ is part of the whole situation here. He is Abram's seed. In him, the nations receive blessing. Through him, the promised family and the inheritance reach their intended scope, and his death and his resurrection are indispensable to that fulfillment. But that is not the same thing as saying that Jesus dies because of the Genesis 15 self-curse. Fulfillment through death is not the same as punishment for a failed fulfillment, especially when we have a much fuller picture of what's going on with what Jesus did. Because again, Deuteronomy's curse that Galatians 3 touches upon particularly and explicitly has a recognizably different form.
[00:19:16] It involves the exile, and if Paul wanted readers to understand Jesus as undergoing the Genesis 15 curse that's going on here, then Paul really gives zero explicit indication of that. His stated scriptural frame is the curse from Deuteronomy. And even the idea that Israel broke the Abrahamic covenant requires a good bit of qualification itself. Because like I say, Genesis 15 is a divine oath. Now, you could move into Genesis 17 and add some information from there where it does add covenantal human response, especially walking before God, circumcision, and the possibility of an individual being cut off from the people.
[00:20:08] And I don't think Genesis 17 is unrelated to Genesis 15. But even in Genesis 17, the threatened consequence is not presented as annulment of the promise or as activation of Genesis 15's animal curse. And Galatians 3 itself argues that the later law does not annul the prior promise. So Genesis 15 is far more foundational than Genesis 17. All right, so let's go bring this back into our theme of refuge. Genesis 15 gives kind of our whole picture here. We have a promise where Abraham will have offspring. The offspring will inherit the land. We also have the concept of hiddenness because Abram cannot yet see either the heir or the possession of the land. We continue in the story historically, and we have displacement. The descendants will live in a land that is not their own.
And that could look like God's promise is not being fulfilled because the foreign land will become a place of servitude and affliction. We'll talk about that a little bit more next week. There is divine judgment involved where God is going to confront the nation that oppresses his people. And we have that being wrapped back up into the promise and the refuge theme, where we have preservation and deliverance where the descendants will survive and they will come out of that problematic situation. And they return to the land and God will bring them toward his promise again. And all of that is laid with a covenant foundation. And it's really interesting because I think that Abraham doesn't quite understand how God intends to fulfill the promise. So it's fascinating to me that he brings up the concept of his childlessness simply because it is quite possible for God to have enacted and fulfilled his promise to Abraham by allowing one of Abraham's heirs to inherit the promise.
Because adoption is a big theme in Scripture, it's a big deal in the ancient world. It wasn't necessarily the case that God had to do something supernatural in order to bring about an offspring. That wasn't necessarily part of the explicit promise that God even gave Abraham. A lot of times we read Genesis with the knowledge of what happens in the story, and so we import that knowledge into something that we think that Abraham should have known.
[00:23:04] And in fact, Abraham did not know what God's full plan was. And I think that, you know, the story with Abraham and Sarai and Hagar and that whole debacle, we think that Abraham is being obtuse and he's like not listening or waiting on God. But it's entirely possible that Abraham had no idea that God would fulfill his promise in the supernatural way that he did. And yet we see that Abraham recognizes his childlessness as the promise being under threat. Because God promises that Abraham will have offspring. And Abraham's like, "Well, I don't have any children." But Abram's offspring are also adopted children that were in his family. Again, that's perfectly normal for the ancient world.
[00:24:00] Another really interesting piece of this is something I mentioned last time about Abraham's household as not necessarily a refuge itself. At least it wasn't for Hagar. She was cast out. And so just because Abraham's household is the promised household, that doesn't make it always the safe place. Abraham is the promise bearer, but that doesn't mean he's automatically the refuge, especially when he's not acting well in accordance to what God would have him do, right? So I do think we're supposed to see something very problematic with what's going on with Hagar in the story. But nonetheless, God protects the promise, and He protects the vulnerable woman even when Abraham fails. And in fact, actually we have several times of failure with Abraham and women that he is supposed to be protecting.
In Genesis 12 and in Genesis 20, God has to intervene when Sarah or Sarai is taken into foreign royal houses. That happens to her twice. And it also happens to Hagar twice, where God has to do something about her. And so when we're looking at the theme of refuge in general, this is a major pattern.
[00:25:25] God's refuge is not identical with the promised household And the promise also doesn't mean that the family is going to be acting always according to God's will. So Abraham and his family carries the promise, but that family does not automatically guarantee a safe refuge for everyone. Although like with the story with Lot, I think it does show that there is something that goes on within relationships of people to the promised one
[00:26:00] All right. Another thing I want to mention in regards to Abraham is the concept of the altar. Because the way that we see ancient people worship and who they worship is going to expose something about who they are. Now, even though Abram does not own anything in the land, at least not for a good long while, he is still building altars in the land where he goes. And this also matters because altars are going to mark places where the sojourner's life is oriented to God. Abram does not yet possess the land, but he is still worshiping the God who promises it. This is really important to our theme of refuge when we get to the Psalms and other places. Because worship is going to mark the land before possession. Abram's altars are acts of trust in that promise Abram's security is tied to invoking Yahweh.
It's not necessarily tied to grasping possession of the promises. And in fact, that's kind of the anti-story that we have with Hagar. when Abraham does try to grasp and possess, it doesn't go too well. But at the same time, an altar is not a magical refuge. Altars do form a kind of refuge in Scripture, especially later. We have asylum that is attached to the idea of altars. But Abram's altars show that exposed life under promise is lived in a worship context.
[00:27:47] Last time I brought out the theme of the hiddenness of God and how we're not really talking about that exactly because we're talking about refuge and hiddenness from the context of people more than from God. But in Abraham's story, we still see these echoes of God and his relationship to being hidden or not. God is sometimes hidden. That doesn't mean he's absent. But in the story with Hagar, God sees Hagar, and Abraham does not see God in that same kind of a way. We also have the fulfillment of the promise that is hidden because Abram does not possess the land. We have the promise that comes before Abraham has a child. And we have blessing before we have the land stabilized. and so I think there are a few things we can talk about here in regards to this really difficult question of God not always being seen in the way that we want to see Him, in the way that we want to experience Him.
This isn't a full apologetics answer for our question, okay? But I do wanna point out that what we see in Scripture is that God is present by word even if fulfillment is delayed. that's a very theological, a very biblical category to see this as. Because Abram's life is sustained by the word of the God whose promise is not yet visible. And the promise itself becomes a refuge It promises the future. It promises protection. The fact that that is not fulfilled immediately doesn't mean that God is not there, or that he has abandoned Abraham. We also see several incidences of Abraham questioning God inside that faith-trust situation. And that is not itself a threat against God fulfilling His promises or interacting with his chosen one.
[00:30:00] All right, so here in Genesis with Abraham, we see the theme of refuge begin to really take on this deeper theological shape. God is the one who gives a place. But not only that, God is also the one who promises a future. And that future doesn't have to look settled. It doesn't have to look very visible. It doesn't have to look all that possible. The chosen people continues to live in states of displacement, sometimes in fear, within conflict. And we see that being played out through the rest of the book of Genesis. And I think it becomes especially clear in the story of Jacob, because Jacob is not really a heroic refugee. He is himself a fugitive. He leaves home because of family conflict and because he's afraid of his brother Esau. But on the road, exposed and away from home, seemingly away from the promise again, he discovers that the God of Abraham is not confined to one place.
And so his road of exile becomes a sanctuary itself because God promises, "I am with you and will keep you." So this gives another dimension to refuge, another dimension also to God's promises that even though it's tied to the land, it is not only in the land where God is found to be a refuge. All right, so I have a whole list of texts we could get to when we're talking about Jacob. I'm not gonna go into a lot of these in depth, so I'm gonna rely upon you knowing the story, or if you don't know the story, you go find it yourself within these chapters that include the story of Jacob. Particularly, we're looking at chapter 27, 28, chapter 31, and 32, and 33. Although, of course, that whole section really involves the story that we're looking at, as well as Genesis 35 with the return to Bethel and God reaffirming the identity of h- the people and the promise that he has given them Now, I called the story of Jacob one of exile.
And that might be an angle that you have not thought about before But remember, we're talking about the theme of refuge, and I think Jacob's story really displays that divine refuge can even accompany a morally complicated fugitive. I've brought out the idea that Jacob wasn't necessarily always a great guy.
[00:32:53] He was quite the trickster. And I think that if you haven't really glimpsed the patriarchs from a very nuanced and not always nice way, we presume that Jacob, the founder of the nation of Israel, he has to be, a good guy, right? Because he is God's chosen one, we think that that must mean he is morally an okay kind of a person.
[00:33:24] And so I've seen sermons and I've experienced Bible studies where they kind of explain away Jacob's complications. But he's really very morally complicated. So in Genesis 27, we have Jacob fleeing. He's fleeing his home. This is the exile story of Jacob because Esau intends to kill him after Jacob has taken the blessing through deception. His mother Rebecca tells Jacob to flee to her brother Laban in the land of Haran until Esau's fury turns away So this is not like the story with Hagar. He is not a vulnerable figure because someone more powerful has afflicted him. Jacob is vulnerable because well, he has helped create the crisis that he's now in. He has deceived his father and his brother, and his brother's murderous intent might not be the best response to what Jacob did But Jacob is not innocent here.
And yet we have God keeping and protecting him even though he's running away because of his own sin, because of his own fear, because his family is an absolute mess. But here we have the land, the family home. It's no longer a safe place, even though, Jacob has a reason for causing it to be that way. But his home is not a refuge. Things have now gone straight up into the air where we have the threat of murder. And Jacob has received a promise. He has received a blessing from his father, and he has every reason to believe that that blessing will be fulfilled, or at least as readers of the Bible, we're supposed to presume that the blessing is going to be fulfilled, right? And that Jacob should have trust in that. But he is not experiencing that blessing as shalom. He's not experiencing it as peace.
He has to actually leave. And his mother says that he can just run away for a few days, but he is gone for years. So we have refuge away from home for an extended period of time. Presumably he's gonna come back, but it is far longer than he expects. So then we get into Genesis 28, and we have Jacob leaving Beersheba, and he goes toward Haran, and he comes to a certain place, and he spends the night there because the sun has set. Again, we have the context of darkness. He takes a stone, puts it under his head, and lies down there. We have some detail here, but it's very strange detail. But he's traveling, and being traveling in the middle of nowhere, there's kind of a presumed context of vulnerability, perhaps. We don't know precisely what this certain place is, It seems ordinary, but it's not.
Kind of echoing the story from Genesis 15, we have darkness and Jacob falls asleep. And being asleep is a state of vulnerability.
[00:36:47] Jacob can't guard himself, and he is exposed And Jacob, of course, dreams of a stairway or a ladder, and its top reaching to the heavens. The angels of God are ascending and descending on it. And Yahweh stands above it or beside him, depending on the translation, and God is speaking. He identifies himself as the God of Abraham and Isaac. He promises the land and the offspring. He says that all the families of the earth will be blessed through Jacob and his offspring, and he gives the promise: "I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land."
[00:37:30] So then Jacob wakes up. And he knows that Yahweh is in this place even though he did not previously know it. He calls it the house of God and the gate of heaven. This is a moment in the middle of nowhere, supposedly. A place of exposure, a place of travel, and yet it is a place of refuge. We have clear connection of heaven and earth here that is going to bring to mind sacred space. And bring to mind the idea of safety, which doesn't depend on being back in the land. And it is a place of refuge and safety and the promise is not the land, but God Himself once again. God will remain with him. And that is what is going to protect and keep him Calling back to the theme of God's hiddenness, Jacob did not know that Yahweh was in this place until Yahweh revealed himself to him.
So again, not a full apologetics answer to the question, and I'm not trying to even give a full apologetics answer. But sometimes what we see is God's presence that is unrecognized until God chooses to reveal it. I know that isn't necessarily comforting, and I'm not suggesting it should be. But in the encounters that we have with God in Scripture, God is teaching people who He is, how He interacts with us, and what we should probably expect. The road that Jacob was on that night that he laid down, it didn't look like any kind of a sanctuary space, and yet it turns out to be one. This certain place becomes Bethel, the house of God. so this same physical location shifts frame simply because God revealed himself there. Jacob rises, he takes the stone he had used as a pillow, and he sets it up as a pillar, a standing stone.
He pours oil on it. He names the place the house of God, and he makes a vow there. The stone begins again as a pillow for the exposed fugitive, but it becomes that pillar to mark a divine encounter. We have naming going on. And Jacob's vow sounds very conditional. Jacob says that if God will be with him, will keep him, will give him bread and clothing, and bring him back, then Yahweh will be his God. That might sound a little bit less than ideal because God gave an unconditional promise, and shouldn't he just be trusting in that? But I think this does fit Jacob's developing faith. He's not really mature in his faith and his trust in God. And so I think he's responding in a very, well, Jacob-like way. His concerns are very concrete. He wants food, he wants clothing, he wants protection, and he wants a return to his father's house where he believes he has a promise waiting.
Refuge is not just an abstract spiritual concept here. It includes bodily provision and safe return back home. So then of course, Jacob arrives at Laban's house, and there he experiences his own form of deception kind of back at him. He has to work. There is rivalry. There is exploitation going on. But eventually God does tell him to return We might feel a little bit of satisfaction when Jacob the deceiver is himself deceived Jacob is being kept. He is being protected. But that doesn't keep him from going through hard circumstances. Probably some of those circumstances were again brought about by his own action and his own behavior. Bringing in the theme of refuge, Laban's household does receive Jacob. It is a place of protection and provision, but it's also a place of exploitation.
So we have the theme continue where households can shelter, but also be places of threat. But Jacob does gain family. He does gain flocks. The promise actively is continuing But it's not comfortable. It is not without difficulty. Eventually, in Genesis 31, God tells Jacob to return to the land of his father and repeats the promise that He will be with him. That is fulfilling the Bethel promise And as we're building our picture of refuge, we have refuge that includes return to promises. Exile is not to be forever, but return is also not without its danger because going home means facing Esau And that's going to introduce a new fear. Jacob has no idea how Esau is going to receive him, if he's still going to be in a murderous rage. But Jacob still returns. Jacob goes on his way, and there in Genesis 32, the angels of God meet him.
And when Jacob sees them, he says, "This is God's camp." So he recognizes them, and this echoes Bethel, but kind of in a flipped way. Jacob had no idea that he was going to have the experience there at Bethel, but when he gets to God's camp, he recognizes it. So on the way out for his exile, Jacob saw angels ascending and descending on the ladder. On his way back, angels meet him again, but this time they are settled in a camp. And so really interesting that we have angelic presence that brackets Jacob's exile.
So then Jacob sends messengers to Esau. He hears Esau is coming with 400 men, and Jacob is quite understandably afraid and distressed. So he divides the people and his animals into two camps. And then he prays, recalling the God of Abraham and Isaac. God commands him to return. God promises to do him good. And he reminds him of that in his prayer, and he asks for deliverance from Esau So at this point, Jacob has had the experience at Bethel. He has had the experience in Laban's family where Jacob really did quite well in a lot of ways. And Jacob has seen God's camp, but he's still afraid. And once again, we see that that fear is very concrete. Esau is coming at him with four hundred men, which sounds like a threat. So Jacob's fear is not irrational. He divides the camp.
He sends forward some gifts. And so he's got a bit of a strategy here. But he also prays, and he reminds God of the promise that he was given. At this time, Jacob confesses his unworthiness. He acknowledges he is not worthy of God's steadfast love and faithfulness. And so I think within the story, we are to see a change in Jacob. He has been humbled. He has now repented because Jacob could have asked God for rescue from Esau before. He didn't. But now he is. He's still afraid, and so refuge and protection doesn't mean that fear doesn't exist But at this point, Jacob prays like a man who knows he cannot outrun his past unless God keeps him. And now we have the night before meeting Esau, and Jacob is left alone, and he wrestles with a man until daybreak. He receives some physical harm,
[00:46:00] but also a blessing. And this is where we see the name Israel. And he names the place Peniel because he has seen God face to face and his life has been delivered. This moment doesn't really seem like a refuge text, but it is deeply relevant to the theme because before Jacob faces his brother, he must face God. Before the human threat is resolved, then we need to have this divine encounter. And yes, I do think that Jacob is wrestling with God and not with some other elohim. I think it would be very problematic if some other Elohim other than Yahweh named him Israel. And he literally names the place because he saw God. If this was some other lower created being, I would find that very problematic to the text. So we have a nighttime encounter. The danger is not just his brother, but there is a deeper issue at play of Jacob before God himself.
But he comes out well in the situation. He receives a new name. He receives harm of some kind, so he doesn't come out of the encounter unscathed, but he is blessed, and he sees the face of God, which is a huge connection back to Genesis 3, as well as the story of Cain.
[00:47:33] Because Adam hides from God, Cain also says he will be hidden from God's face. But Jacob sees God's face and lives. Jacob proclaims that his life has been delivered or spared. That is refuge language right there. All right, so keeping in mind that Jacob just saw God's face, let's go into Genesis 33. Here we have Jacob meeting Esau. Esau runs to meet him, and this is a happy encounter. It's not dangerous at all, it turns out. Esau embraces his brother. He falls on his neck. He kisses him, and they weep. Then Jacob tells Esau that seeing his face is like seeing the face of God because Esau has received him favorably. This is a story that tells us we should not just read chapter by chapter because if you read Genesis 32 and then a day or several days later you read Genesis 33, you might not make these connections.
But if you're reading it as one story together, then you will see even in English that these incidences are connected in the story. Here we have the social and brotherly resolution of the fear that drove Jacob's exile, but also that drove his return. The brother whom Jacob feared becomes the brother whose face reflects mercy. Jacob expected vengeance, but Esau's embrace interrupts that and changes it and puts it on its head. Esau could have still acted as an avenger, but he receives Jacob, so it seems like both of the brothers have changed during this time. This also resonates with the story of Cain, where the murder of a brother and vengeance shaped the world that came from Eden. But here with Jacob and Esau, we have reconciliation between brothers. Although it's not perfect and we have a messy reality still.
The fact that we have the language of the face brought up again. Now, of course, these are idioms that could be used in different contexts, but I think we're to see that the divine encounter that Jacob had shapes how this human encounter is seen. We also have a connection with refuge and reconciliation because Jacob's safety is not achieved by hiding away from his brother forever. He's got to face the brother that he wronged. And so I think what this is telling us in the theme of refuge is that it's not always about avoidance even in fear. Sometimes a refuge can keep us through a situation until we achieve the state of reconciliation. Now, that's not always simplistic. Jacob and Esau don't really fully merge households together afterwards. Jacob doesn't travel with Esau.
There is reconciliation, but they don't fully come back together. However, the immediate vengeance threat is removed. So then we get back to Genesis 35. God tells Jacob to go up to Bethel and to make an altar. And then Jacob purifies his household, he buries his foreign gods, he goes back to Bethel, he builds an altar, and God reaffirms his name and his promise. And that basically closes the Jacob refuge arc, and he returns to the place where God met him when he fled from Esau in a kind of a closure, right?
[00:51:27] So Bethel was the place of departure, but also the place of return, and both of those are wrapped up in the concept of worship as well. So refuge, promise, worship, as well as household purification, because Jacob actively tells his household to put away foreign gods. And this is something he has had to learn in his context.
[00:51:52] Like, we tend to think that the patriarchs, the children of Abraham, they all understood God because of course they're children of Abraham. But that's really not how it plays out, is it? They have to learn their own lessons. They have to experience and find refuge in God themselves. And unlike just a standing stone, we now have a full-on altar at Bethel.
[00:52:20] All right, now let's expand this back out into our frame of refuge. There's a few things that the story of Jacob adds to our theme. Number one, we've seen this before, but it's really brought out with the story of Jacob, Where refuge can still be part of the morally complicated figure, right?
[00:52:43] Jacob is not innocent, but God keeps him, and protects him, and leads him on this path where eventually he becomes transformed. And this happens during his exile, which is a really big piece of the puzzle that I think a lot of people don't really notice. This is basically foreshadowing what is to happen in the wider nation of Israel during their exile. They are learning hard lessons. They eventually are going to see the face of God. And that is going to be in the figure of Jesus. The question is, are the people who encounter the face of God, do they react like Jacob does here? So refuge does not need to happen within a particular place. But it can happen on the road. It can happen during exile, which is a really important key piece of what I want you to see here. Refuge does not mean that we don't have harm, that we don't have problems and difficulties.
But we can be carried through those things when God is our refuge. And the ultimate refuge is going to be one that ends in worship.
[00:54:02] All right. So to kind of frame the theme of Jacob. The story of Jacob teaches us that the road of exile can become actually sanctuary—protected space because God's promises will stay. They will stay through exile, through judgment, through really morally complicated situations. But then we come to the next major refuge pattern before we get to the Exodus.
[00:54:34] That is the story of Joseph. Now, we've talked quite a bit about this, and so I think that if you've listened to my previous episodes recently on the story of Joseph, I probably don't need to go through and repeat everything that I've said there. But it's very clear in the story of Joseph that God preserves life even where refuge might be hidden or might not seem like a refuge at all. Because for most of the story of Joseph, refuge is really not clear. But it is of course very clear at the end. So God preserving life through a path that doesn't look like refuge even when it's happening is a very important and common part of the theme of refuge. Just a few things I will mention here so that we have all of this in mind when we're thinking about the theme of refuge. Here we really have the concept of providence heavily at play.
And Joseph's story unfolds under that hidden divine providence that he doesn't necessarily see along the way, but is very clear to him at the end. Even though his path looks like loss after loss and problem after problem, the fact that Yahweh is with Joseph is what sustains the whole story. The promised family is threatened by the famine, but the preservation begins well before that. And Joseph's story explains how Egypt itself, which we often see as a negative thing in Scripture, actually becomes refuge. That's gonna be flipped on its head in the next book. But Genesis is really a story of entering Egypt through evil. We have betrayal and a lot of really negative things going on. All of this keeps the refuge theme very complex, right?
[00:56:38] Not always straightforward. Joseph's descent into the pit is kind of like a death-like hiddenness himself. And yet he is brought out, and he is eventually exalted to a place where nobody in the story early on could have possibly imagined where it would end up. There are so many parallels with the Joseph story and with Jesus, and I'm sure a lot of them are things that you've seen before. But going down into the pit, being stripped of his robes, being mistreated and yet bringing life. And connecting back into positive resolution with his brothers later. Like I said, there is so much in the story of Joseph, and we could just talk again and again about this. But I think I've kind of set the whole refuge frame up for you well enough that we don't need to get into all of the nitty-gritty details.
So here at the end of this episode, perhaps you've noticed by now that even though I like to use frame semantics, in the last two episodes, I haven't really done that on the front end so much. And I kind of wanted to do that because I wanted to draw out the theme of refuge in a more narrative way. But we still have plenty of different frames that are going on here. So at this point, I want to bring some of those out because now that we've seen some of the stories, we can really look at this idea of refuge and hiddenness and protection. And I'm going to use the Joseph story as a way to draw out a lot of the things that we will see commonly in the frames of refuge. For those of you not familiar with my methodology here, frame semantics is just looking at a concept with an entire conceptual framework in mind.
Because when we have the idea of something like refuge, it is not simply the dictionary definition of the word that we are bringing to mind when we hear that word. But really, there's a whole bunch of other things that come along with that idea. So let's look at that within the frame of the Joseph story. First of all, within the refuge theme, we have a threat, or we have a problem. In a basic refuge frame, something is threatening life. So with Joseph, the threat actually changes over time. First the threat is his brothers, then the threat is slavery and loss of freedom, then it is false accusation, then it is imprisonment. And then we have the problem of being forgotten, kind of left to rot in that imprisonment. And then finally, we have the famine that threatens not just Joseph, but his family and many, many other people and nations.
And it's that last shift that really brings the picture into full scope, because Joseph's personal danger is not the whole refuge story. The narrative eventually reveals that the deeper threat is kind of worldwide.
[01:00:01] It is a famine that hasn't even arrived when Joseph is experiencing his first problem. And so one of the things I think we can see in this part of the frame is that sometimes the visible threat is not always the full threat. So we talk about the hiddenness of God and how we want to see God and we want to experience God. And sometimes the hidden thing is the threat. We don't always know the full extent of the danger we're in. The thing that we actually need refuge in and for.
[01:00:40] All right, so within the theme of refuge, we have the threat. We also have the vulnerable party, the one who is under the threat. And that's not always the same person in every story. It's not always the same person throughout a whole story, because at first, Joseph is the threatened one. But by the end, we have Jacob's whole household that is vulnerable, the covenant family, we have Egypt, and even surrounding nations who are vulnerable. So Joseph moves from being the one who needs preservation to becoming the agent through whom others are preserved. And so this is very biblical within the theme of refuge. The person who is preserved may later become part of the refuge that is provided for others—or really the way that refuge and provision is provided So biblical refuge, often preserves someone else so that life at large can be preserved through them, or that many can be preserved through them.
It's a major pattern that can apply to Moses, to David, to Esther, and certainly in Christ. Okay, so within the theme of refuge, we have the threat, we have the vulnerable party, we have the protecting agent. In some refuge stories, this is very obvious. The protector is God who shuts Noah into the ark, the ark itself. We have God seeing and hearing Hagar. We have God promising Jacob that he will keep him. But the protecting agent in the story of Joseph is actually a little bit more indirect. The narrator tells us that Yahweh is with Joseph, but the protection works through Joseph's administrative skill or his skill at interpreting dreams.
[01:02:43] We have delayed timing that is part of the protection. We have the policies that Joseph puts forward. We have the Egyptian storehouses, and even the memory of the cupbearer. And so the protecting agent could be God, but the means of protection can be very ordinary, very political, very economic, very relational, and sometimes even institutional. And I think that's really worth seeing because refuge, again, is very concrete in Scripture. While we can have these fuzzy emotional ideas, God being our refuge doesn't just have to be some spiritual reality or something that we're feeling. It's not always even a miracle that suspends ordinary processes because in the Joseph story, divine providence is operating through the wisdom of people, planning, storage of food, bureaucracy, timing, foreign power, and food distribution.
We have multiple layers here.
[01:03:55] We have the ultimate protector, who is obviously God. But we have a proximate means of refuge, which is not directly God, but it is people, it is places, it is practices, resources, and even things that are very surprising. And I think that could be very helpful to us in how we are reading these themes of refuge and trying to understand how they are to work and apply to our own lives. That means that, yes, you can pray for miracles. You can pray for God to work supernaturally in your life, but you should not ignore the boots on the ground reality around you that God might be using in order to provide a refuge for you.
Okay, so within the theme of refuge, again, we have the threat, the vulnerable party, the protector. We also have a refuge location, and it's not always a single safe place. It's not always necessarily the physical place that is safe because Joseph goes through mostly dangerous physical locations. A pit, a caravan, Potiphar's house, prison, Pharaoh's court, and Egypt, which in this story is not a negative thing, but surely the people who are reading the story of Genesis in its original context would not see Egypt as a positive thing, right? So it is a provisional refuge, but it's not the promised land, and it does later become bondage. So a place may function as a refuge, but it's not necessarily ultimate, it's not necessarily sacred, it's not necessarily morally uncomplicated.
And yet it's still very important. A fifth point I will bring out is that refuge scenes often involve flight, so there is a movement into refuge. Hagar has to flee. Lot has to flee. Jacob has to flee. Jacob's family flees into Egypt and eventually out of Egypt. Joseph, on the other hand, doesn't flee into refuge. He is taken there against his will. And his movement is coerced descent. He's forced into it. He's thrown down. He's sold. He's carried away. He's confined. And only retrospectively does that movement become legitimately seen as being sent ahead to save. So the movement into refuge could be voluntary, commanded, forced, hidden, or only understood later on. And sometimes you don't know that a place or a situation could be a refuge A sixth point that we generally have in the theme of refuge is a form of protection.
Joseph is not protected from every harm. He is betrayed, he is enslaved, he is falsely accused, imprisoned, forgotten. And so he's not being protected for comfort or freedom from suffering, but his life is protected, his vocation, his wisdom, his covenant family's future, and the lives of many others through him. So refuge doesn't always mean that we don't lose anything or that there isn't anything negative going on, but we are carried through that, and there are various and sometimes surprising ways that that happens.
A seventh point is that there is an interval usually. Most refuge frames contain some sort of interval between entry and emergence. In Joseph, that is quite long, and it's very complicated and a little bit opaque to see during his situation, right? He has no idea that he's gonna end up where he ends up. And then of course, finally, in a refuge theme, we have emergence or possibly an outcome if we don't have direct emergence. But usually we do have emergence within the refuge frame of the vulnerable party coming out of that place of sanctuary. Noah leaves the ark. Jacob returns. Israel leaves Egypt. And even in places where we don't have some form of emergence, like, you know, the picture of the eschaton where we no longer have to fear, we no longer have the problems we have now.
Well, there is still an outcome. There is no longer the refuge that is needed, right? Because we're no longer surrounded by enemies. we're no longer in the situation where we have to be worried about the things we're worried about now.
[01:09:11] So I don't have time to really lay out all of these in particular, but I'm gonna give you a set of refuge frames, because not every refuge is the same, and different kinds of these stories are going to tell us different things. So I'm just gonna give you a list of them, and you can think about them for yourself. And when you're reading Scripture and one of these seems to show up, then you know, you can explore it a little bit more in depth. The first one is the concealment refuge, where we have a threat, we have hiding or some form of enclosure, we have a guarded interval and emergence from that. A really clear example is Noah in the ark, Moses in his basket. We have the households of Passover. The story of Joseph fits this in some ways, but only in some of the instances.
Frame number two is the flight refuge, where we have a threat, we have departure from a dangerous place, we have encounter or provision somewhere else, and eventual return or at least survival. So we have Hagar, we have Lot, we have Jacob. And the story of Joseph is one that is forced rather than chosen. So it's not really the flight refuge, but there are many other stories that fit that pattern.
[01:10:41] Frame number three, the presence refuge. This is where we have displacement or danger. We have divine promise or presence. We have keeping through the road of exile or the journey. Then we have the return or continued life. We have Abraham, we have Jacob, we have Joseph, and this is a very strong theme with Joseph. The fourth frame is providential refuge. This is where we have a future threat. We have hidden preparation. And then when the crisis arrives, there is a prepared means to preserve life. And then that meaning is only recognized after the fact when they are experiencing it or after they have. This is the sent ahead idea or the prophetic refuge.
A fifth frame is covenant refuge, and we cannot underscore this one's importance enough. We have a promised future that is threatened by anything from barrenness to exile to oppression to simple delay. But God binds himself to the promise, and history passes through that danger, and the promise remains alive. The last theme I'll talk about here is provisional refuge. This is where we have a real danger, a temporary sustaining place, life is preserved, the place remains incomplete or later on becomes dangerous. There's a lot of overlap to these. But each one of them is going to bring out a point that is very theologically rich that I think the biblical authors are trying to hit upon. They're not doing this in some systematic, dogmatic way, but they are showing how the course of history and the interaction of God with people works through these ways and these different stories.
[01:12:52] All right, So at this point, I hope it has been helpful to make the frames a little bit more visible. I've used the idea of refuge throughout the whole concept with all of these different stories, but each story is not the same as another. And so I think that with each one of them, we are to advance our understanding of something a little bit deeper, or with a little bit more nuance. So I think that the scope of Genesis has brought us a whole lot of different pictures here that are going to be very helpful as we follow along the theme throughout Scripture. We will be going into a few more places where we see this in the Old Testament before we finally culminate in the perfect refuge in Christ, and what that means for the church today. I hope you have found something of interest in today's episode.
And as always, I really appreciate you guys listening, and you guys sharing the episodes and engaging with the content in whatever way you're doing. Really appreciate all of you guys, and especially big shout out to all of you who are my Patreon and PayPal and my biblical theology community supporters. You guys are absolutely awesome, and you really do help me a whole lot. But that is it for this week, and I wish you all a blessed week. And we will see you later
