{"id":2673,"date":"2014-07-07T23:37:36","date_gmt":"2014-07-07T23:37:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/?p=2673"},"modified":"2014-07-07T23:37:36","modified_gmt":"2014-07-07T23:37:36","slug":"gods-concern-for-the-marginalized-in-the-old-testament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2014\/07\/07\/gods-concern-for-the-marginalized-in-the-old-testament\/","title":{"rendered":"God's Concern for the Marginalized in the Old Testament"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once again I’m going to make an effort to start writing \/ blogging regularly. \u00a0This post is from a paper I wrote for an Old Testament class at Wycliffe College<\/a>. \u00a0The prompt was as follows: \u00a0Discuss God\u2019s concern for the outsider (the poor, the widow, the orphan, the marginalized, etc.) in Genesis\u20132 Kings.<\/p>\n

Here is\u00a0\u00a0Part 1:<\/p>\n

The Marginalized or Outsider in Genesis<\/strong><\/p>\n

Section A:\u00a0 The Protohistory (Gen. 1-11)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The theme of the \u201cmarginalized\u201d or \u201coutsider\u201d does not at first blush seem evident in the \u201cprotohistory\u201d of Gen. 1-11.\u00a0 After the depiction Gen. 1-2 of God\u2019s creation of the universe, the Earth, and humanity, these chapters tell the story of humanity\u2019s persistent, violent rebellion against God.\u00a0\u00a0 This theme is summarized in Gen. 6:5:\u00a0 \u201c[t]he Lord saw how great man\u2019s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.\u201d\u00a0 (NIV). But these chapters also tell the story of God\u2019s persistent grace and faithfulness towards the creation and particularly towards sinful humanity.\u00a0 In Gen. 3:21, after Adam and Eve are removed from the Garden, God provides them a covering of skin.\u00a0 In Gen. 4:15, God marks the murderer Cain to protect Cain from vengeance in the land \u201ceast of Eden.\u201d\u00a0 In Gen. 6-9, God remembers Noah and, even after the terror of the Flood, renews His covenant with humanity.\u00a0 In Genesis 11:8, God scatters the nations, perhaps in part to protect humanity from its own attempt to overreach human limitations.<\/p>\n

In a sense, then, Gen. 1-11 demonstrated the furthest depths of God\u2019s concern for the \u201cmarginalized\u201d or \u201coutsider.\u201d\u00a0 These chapters show that we as human beings are \u201coutsiders\u201d from the fellowship of God because of our own<\/em> willful sin and violence.\u00a0 We have \u201cmarginalized\u201d ourselves by trading our status as the crown of God\u2019s creation for the allure of knowledge and power that properly belong only to the God who made us.\u00a0 We deserve exposure, but God provides covering skins; we deserve destruction, but God provides an ark; we deserve to be shattered and toppled but God scatters us into nations in which we can build functioning human societies.<\/p>\n

Part B.\u00a0 The Patriarchal Narratives<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the Patriarchal narratives (Gen. 11:27 –\u00a0 50:26), some of the more poignant examples of God\u2019s concern for the marginalized and outsider are in His provision for \u201csecondary\u201d characters within the narratives.\u00a0 By convention we call these the \u201cpatriarchal\u201d narratives, but they are also significantly \u201cmatriarchal\u201d stories.<\/p>\n

We feel sympathy for Abram that he is old and childless, particularly if we understand the extent to which his culture practiced primogeniture and connected an abundance of children with male success and status.\u00a0 (Gen. 15:2.)\u00a0 But Abram\u2019s culture tended to \u201cblame\u201d the wife for infertility, and provided alternatives such as multiple marriages and concubinage with household servants.\u00a0 Indeed, although Abram believed God would keep his promise to provide Abram with heirs (Gen. 15:6) \u2013 a moment celebrated in the New Testament as a paradigmatic act of justifying faith (Romans 4:3) \u2013 it seems that Abram did not trust God to provide an heir through his wife, Sarai, and so accepted the invitation to sleep with Sarai\u2019s maid, Hagar.\u00a0 (Gen. 16:1-4.)\u00a0 This marginalized Sarai, who would become the barren, disfavored and shamed wife, except that God also remembered and honored her.\u00a0 (Gen. 17:15.)\u00a0 When God changed Abram and Sarai\u2019s names to \u201cAbraham\u201d and \u201cSarah,\u201d He showed His concern both for Sarah as a marginalized woman and for all of humanity, male and female.\u00a0 As Eve was called the \u201cmother of all the living\u201d (Gen. 3:20), Sarah was named \u201cthe mother of nations.\u201d\u00a0 (Gen. 17:16.)\u00a0 The woman who was barren was made the new Eve, and the womb that was empty became the ark that would carry the seed of \u201ckings of peoples\u201d who would be scattered throughout the earth to build a new peaceable kingdom.\u00a0 (Gen. 17:16.)<\/p>\n

There are other instances in the \u201cpatriarchal\u201d narratives in which God particularly remembered marginalized women:\u00a0 the provision for Hagar and her son Ishmael (Gen. 21:17); the opening of Leah\u2019s womb when Leah \u201cwas not loved\u201d (Gen. 29:31, 30:17); the provision of children to Rachel, despite her scheming (Gen. 30:22); the rescue (though violent!) of Dinah (Gen. 34:1-37); and the provision of offspring (though through nasty deceit!) for Tamar when Onan would not fulfill his duty to his brother\u2019s widow (Gen. 38:1-30).\u00a0 Although some of these examples are \u201cmessy,\u201d they illustrate that, even in a cultural setting dominated by powerful men, in narratives that emphasize the faith and failings of the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, God remembers and honors women as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once again I’m going to make an effort to start writing \/ blogging regularly. \u00a0This post is from a paper I wrote for an Old Testament class at Wycliffe College. \u00a0The prompt was as follows: \u00a0Discuss God\u2019s concern for the outsider (the poor, the widow, the orphan, the marginalized, etc.) in Genesis\u20132 Kings. Here is\u00a0\u00a0Part […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2674,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31,72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biblical-studies","category-scripture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-H7","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}