God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible by C.J. Werleman Page B

place whilst he was out obeying his dying father’s wishes. Esau rushed in to speak with Isaac, crying, “Father, what have you done?” Isaac, now confused, asked, “Who is that?” When Isaac realized he had been deceived into wrongly blessing his younger son, Jacob, he began to sob and tremble. But Isaac knew it was also too late to undo a blessing, i.e. you can’t take it back once given.
     
    Esau cried at his father’s bedside:
     
    “ Jacob has deceived me two times. He took my birthright and now he’s taken my blessing.” (Genesis 27: 37 NIV)
     
    Esau pleads with his dying father to bless him too, which seems only fair, but the blessing that comes forth is not the blessing that Esau either expects nor deserves. Isaac with an unjust callous voice says:
     
    “ Your dwelling will be away from the earth’s richness, away from the dew of heaven above. You will live by the sword and you will serve your brother.” (Genesis 27:39-40 NIV)
     
    Jacob, knowing his brother would be pissed and out for revenge, flees into the countryside. After travelling for a full day he camps under a tree, using a rock as a pillow. As he drifts off to sleep, God descends from heaven and appears directly before him and says:
     
    “ I am the Lord, your God, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendents the land on which you are lying. Your descendents will be like the dust of the earth and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” (Genesis 28:13-15 NIV)
     
    What? Were you expecting God to punish Jacob for his deceit, too? Not only does God choose not to punish this shyster, he rewards him with being the new ‘chosen one’. I guess God likes people that behave like himself, huh?
     
    This incredible injustice is a lesson that teaches villainy is good and the ends do justify any means. God has set a terrible precedent in this example of judicial oversight. And it gets worse! A few years later, Jacob becomes frightened that Esau has organized a few hundred men to attack him and his family. Jacob, ever cunning, formulates an elaborate plan for escape. The night before the attack, Jacob prays to God, which reads less as a prayer and more as a reminder to God that he honor his promise to help Jacob lead his descendents as a great nation. As Jacob prepares to set off, an invisible man wrestles Jacob to the ground. I always thought the ‘Invisible Man’ was a product of Marvel comics, but clearly not. Jacob is thrown to the ground and bashed against rocks by this transparent attacker. This fight lasts a full twenty-four hours, before the invisible man eventually tired and pleaded:
     
    “ Let me go, for it is daybreak.” (Genesis 32:24 NIV)
     
    But Jacob wasn’t prepared for the fight to end until he had been named victor:
     
    “ I will not let you go unless you bless me.” (Genesis 32:26 NIV)
     
    At this moment, the invisible man revealed himself as God. And God said that because of Jacob’s strength he was fit to found a nation:
     
    “ Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel.” (Genesis 32:28)
     
    The fraudulent man named Jacob had now been ordained a nation by God. The nation of Israel begins.
     
    A number of years later, however, a new Pharaoh took the throne and slowly instituted laws that made the Jewish nation slaves and over the course of the next 80 odd years, the Israelites were forced into labor and unjustly mistreated.
     
    Before I end this chapter on Genesis, I would like to say to those amongst us who believe the earth to be only 7,000 years old, DINOFUCKINGSAURS! If dinosaurs roamed the planet at the same time as early man, don’t you think that somewhere in this Bible there would be a