When the Young Perish and the Old Linger

Were you to ask “average” Christians to describe the storyline of Genesis, what would they come up with? Perhaps it would emphasize the “beginnings” aspect of the book. I took a very scientific survey of the standard evangelical understanding of Genesis by asking an unnamed one of my sisters who took all the Bible classes at The Master’s University to tell me about Genesis. She depicted it as something like this:

• God created the world and made it perfect.
• Adam and Eve sinned and messed it up.
• Cain launched the first whodunnit in literary history.
• Man got really evil so God washed them away in a flood.
• God then made a rainbow to promise not to flood the world again.
• Man then tried to build a tower to heaven, so God made languages to confuse people.
• Then boom Abraham and the Abrahamic covenant reached way back to the seed promise in Genesis 3:15 to make a new promise.
• There were like patriarchs and stuff.
• Joseph reminded his brothers that God uses things for good after the famine.

So this isn’t bad; our Bible colleges are doing their jobs. Students retain the elements of the content of the books of the Bible that they read. However, in this list we learn two major shortcomings of the typical evangelical recollection of the book of Genesis that demonstrate why you need to pay more attention to the details of the Bible. We will illustrate these by demonstrating the seminal importance of Genesis 11:27–32 in what is generally referred to as the story of Abraham.

The Importance of Reading the Boring Details

Perhaps no two torpedoes have more successfully sunk the ships of yearly Bible reading goals more than Leviticus and genealogies. Readers usually prefer to gloss over tables of names, finding themselves confused by the deluge of foreign sounds and repetitive usages of “begat” or “begot.” But God inscripturated these sections because they are important. Genesis 11:27–32 comes at the end of one of these important genealogies.

Genesis 11:10 and Genesis 11:27 start with the same words: “These are the generations of…” This formula is repeated ten times in Genesis and provides its literary structure. Genesis 11:10–26 thus describes the generations of Shem, and Genesis 11:27–25:11 the generations of Terah. This is the entire “Abraham story.” That’s right; the section of Genesis describing the story of Abraham and the inception of the Abrahamic covenant and God’s miraculous gift of Isaac is headlined as the generations of Terah. Most Christians can’t tell you Abraham’s father’s name. Yet Terah is given the importance of headlining approximately thirteen chapters of Genesis.

How can this be the case? How can the “Abraham narrative” be headlined by his father Terah? Consider something: Abraham isn’t always the central character of the story. Genesis 19 describes God’s destruction of Sodom and sparing of Lot. Genesis 13 and 21 record God’s multiple deliverances of Hagar and Ishmael. Perhaps a better way to think about the “Abraham story” is less about Abraham alone than the tale of Terah’s family and descendants, the central protagonist of which is Abraham.

A boring section–the genealogy–provides a key link between the tower of Babel and Abraham. Shem’s line is traced down to Terah, and his children are introduced. Then “These are the generations of Terah” begins a new section: the tale of Terah’s family. Terah had three children: Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Haran’s son was Lot. But Haran died while Terah was still living, before his father’s face, in their homeland, in Ur of the Chaldeans. This is the introductory scene to the Abraham story, and yet, I don’t know how many years it was before I started reading Genesis this way, and I suspect there are many Christians who don’t. What does this all mean? Why is this here in the Bible?

The scene continues: Abram marries Sarai. Nahor marries Milcah. Terah takes the family and leaves Ur to go to Canaan, but they end up in Haran on the way instead. All this detail is introduced before the Abrahamic covenant. Is it just fluff? What does it matter for the “Abraham story?”

The Importance of Tracing the Bigger Picture

Like with most of the essays you wrote in college, you would probably struggle a little to find the thesis statement of Genesis. With your essays, this was probably, as your professor noted, because you didn’t have one. But with Genesis, this is due to its neither being an essay nor having a thesis statement. Regardless, there is a main point to Genesis, as there is a main point even to most fictitious stories not called The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Surely God’s inerrant Word recounting foundational human history will not fail to have a purpose.

Perhaps no verse captures that purpose more clearly than Genesis 3:15. In the wake of Adam’s sin and the invoking of the curse on creation, God promises that the seed of the woman will defeat the seed of the serpent. A descendant of Eve will overthrow sin and the curse. The search for the seed inspired by this hope is central to the book of Genesis. This is captured by its outline, these are the generations of a narrowing scope of people. First we see the generations of the heavens and the earth. Then we see the generations of Adam, what he begat, his seed. We don’t find the seed of the woman, but then we see the generations of Noah, then of his sons, then of Shem, and now of Terah. Slowly Genesis narrows down its focus to the nation of Israel, from whom will come Jesus the Messiah, the seed of the woman. So the thrust of Genesis is the history of the redemption of creation from sin.

Understanding this explains the opening of the Abraham story. As we’ve moved through the generations, things have gotten worse. After the re-creation through the flood, mankind was restored to a certain level of greatness. Genesis 10 is called the “Table of Nations” because of its description of the origins of the nations that dominated the ancient middle east. Nimrod is described as a “mighty hunter before Yahweh.” Human greatness is present. But at Babel, God confuses languages and humanity declines. Man’s lifespan grows shorter and shorter throughout the genealogies of Genesis 11:10–26. Shem lives 600 years, his son 438 years, and his son 433 years. The next in line lived 464 years, but his son only 239 years, as also his grandson.

The inevitable result of shortening human lifespans is that parents would eventually see their children die of old age. Let that sink in. Surely one of the hardest parts of living in a fallen world is for parents to watch their children suffer and die–whether killed in war or run over by drunk drivers or taken by cancer or plague or congenital birth defects. Even still born children whom parents have never gotten to see face to face bring us much grief. Innately we know that God did not create the world to fill it with the suffering and death of young children. This grief is one of the sharpest reminders of sin and the curse. The removal of this grief is one of our greatest hopes as believers; the children cannot come to us, but we can go to them.

But parents today rarely if ever watch their children die of old age. That’s the implication of the death of Haran before Terah: humanity had fallen so far under the curse of sin that children will die before parents. As Theoden pined, “The young perish and the old linger.” Against this backdrop of despair, God restates his promise for a reversal of the curse. Against this darkness of parental grief, and against the sadness of Sarai’s continued barrenness, God promises Abraham that Terah’s family will not perish. Abraham’s family will not die before him. Abraham will have seed, and in this seed all the peoples of the earth will be blessed (Gen 12:1–3)! Jesus will make all things right! God gave Abraham and his family hope when all was dark.

So by reading the boring details and tracing the bigger picture, we can come to a better understanding of Genesis. The Abrahamic covenant does not come in a vacuum! Not only is it connected to the seed promise God made after the curse, but to the genealogies next to it, and to the lives of Abraham and the other members of Terah’s family. In this way, the Abrahamic covenant is itself a reminder of God’s promise to wipe away every tear and right every wrong. When God’s people will reign forever with their Lord in the new creation, these pains and toils of the curse will be no more!