June 14, 2009

Readings:
Genesis 28 and 29
Psalms 7 and 8

Genesis 28 and 29:
Jacob's ladder--the word in Hebrew for "ladder", rather than thinking of a 2 lane road going both up and down, should conjure something more like a fireman's pole. They could come down to him. He could not go up to them. Whatever this vision means, it seems that Jacob had an experience where the veil between humanity and the divine was thinner than normal. Jacob has his own encounter with God, to connect him to the experiences of his father and grandfather before him.

And much like his father before him, Isaac doesn't want Jacob to marry a local girl either. So Jacob heads to his Uncle Laban and we discover that his trickiness seems to be an inherited gene. In Uncle Laban, Jacob, the trickster, seems to have met his match. Jacob gives his labor to his uncle to earn the bride of his choosing.

Psalm 7 and 8:
Psalm 8 ends up being a reference for the Book of Hebrews (chapter 2). But where the psalm was talking about humans, the writer of Hebrews uses this psalm and psalm 110 to build an argument about Jesus. What do you hear in this psalm?