Who you callin’ Elroy?

Although the name of God is eventually revealed to Moses in the book of Exodus as Yahweh (“I am who I am”, which doesn’t really clear things up all that much, but oh well), variations on the name “El” (with a long “e”, like “eel”) frequently appear in the book of Genesis, including:

1. El-roi, the God of Seeing;
2. El-Elyon, the God most high;
3. El Olam, the everlasting God;
4. El Shaddai, God Almighty;
5. El-Bethel, God of the House of God;
6. El-Elohe-Israel, God of the God of Israel.

It’s not clear why God was going by so many different names, or why it was important that He use an alias when dealing with the humans that He was dealing with, but that’s what it says happened.

It is pretty clear, however, that those who actually saw God felt lucky to have survived the experience.  Genesis recounts two who saw God and identifies the places where they met God face to face and lived to tell about it, including:

1. Hagar, Egyptian slave of Sarai (later Sarah) concubine of Abram (later Abraham) mother of that wild-ass Ishmael, who saw God at a place called Beer-lahai-roi which means “the well of the living one who sees me”, and
   
   
2. Jacob (later Israel), who wrestled with God and ended up busting a hip at a place called Peniel which means “The face of God”.

Jacob Wrasslin' with God

Perhaps one of the reasons why God is using so many different names is because the people He is dealing with appear on the whole to be pretty dysfunctional.

Leah and Rachel

The short list includes murderers (Cain), sneaky women (Eve and the serpant, Leah passing herself off as Rachel to con Jacob to procreate, Tamar masquerading as a temple prostitute (temple prostitute?!?!? What's up with that? Going to church must have had a whole different meaning back then) conning Judah to procreate), and sneaky men (Jacob conning Esau's birthright and Isaac's blessing, Joseph's eleven brothers selling him down the river into slavery).


I mean, seriously.


When the most righteous guy in town (actually, the only righteous guy in town, who is Lot) is willing to toss out his virgin daughters to the Sodomites, you know you're dealing with a pretty rough crowd.


Lot's daughters later wind up getting dad drunk and decide that hopping on top of pop is a good idea.


From Jacob and Esau to Joseph and his 11 brothers, sons walk around with a mindset that "When Dad kicks the bucket, my brother will kill me/us (literally, not figuratively)".


This makes perfect sense when you consider that the household, the fathers of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, is comprised of Jacob's twelve sons coming from four women consisting of two wives (the sisters Leah and Rachel, who are also Jacob's cousins) and their handmaidens (Bilhah and Zilpah).


The rest of this book will be about this family, and these kinds of people?


I wouldn't want them to know who I was or where I lived either. 


And if I did cross paths with any of them, they'd be lucky to come away from the experience in one piece.


At least on some counts, the mind of God might not be all that difficult to fathom.