The genesis of sibling rivalry
The Rev. Dr. Justin Reed of Louisville Seminary shares his insights on the ‘Leading Theologically’ podcast
LOUISVILLE — The Book of Genesis has plenty to say about reconciliation and repair. Fortunately for listeners of the “Leading Theologically” podcast, the Rev. Dr. Justin Reed joined podcast host the Rev. Bill Davis recently to share his insights on some of those frayed and fraught relationships, as well as the reconciliation that sometimes followed the conflict. Listen to their 40-minute conversation here.
Reed is Associate Professor of the Old Testament at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. His teaching focuses on African American hermeneutics. His first book, “The Injustice of Noah’s Curse,” is forthcoming. Davis is Senior Director of Theological Education Funds Development at the Presbyterian Foundation.
“To me, the mixture of what’s in Genesis is fascinating and relatable as a human and across cultures,” Reed said. “I read a story in Genesis and I can compare it to the beautiful and inspiring stories I know through different cultures. … It’s really the stories that capture me.”
Davis asked Reed to start with what’s often described as the first murder in history, the Cain and Abel story.
What a person brings to the table makes “a big difference” in how we read such stories, Reed said. Cain brings God an offering of fruit, Abel brings an offering from his flock, “and people look at that difference with a high level of scrutiny and say, ‘Cain did it wrong from the beginning,’” Reed said, adding he’s “not bringing a desire to justify God’s response to Cain’s offering” when reading and teaching this text. “Instead, I’m looking at how is this true of the human experience I see in the world. It’s so relatable to see a story of two brothers and the divine favor that they receive is different.” Siblings can grow up in the same household, and one is a gifted athlete while another is more cerebral. That’s seen as divine favor.
“To me, what’s beautiful about this story is saying there is a difference in favor. That’s a fact of life in the world we live in, and it’s a fact of life in this story,” Reed said. “Cain chose the wrong response. It’s homicide, and that’s wrong.”
What’s beautiful in the story is that when Cain tells God the punishment is too much for him to bear and that he fears for his own safety, God gives Cain “a form of grace by saying, ‘Cain, I know you’re afraid somebody’s going to harm you the same way you did to your brother,’ and then God puts a sign of protection on Cain. … There is grace with the punishment. There’s a care from God about that person’s fears.”
It's “difficult but important work as Christians to think about redemption for everybody, to think about the full humanity of people in spite of the worst that they’ve done,” and “how we can work toward a society that has space for their redemption, a society where everyone is safe and at the same time you haven’t abandoned, you haven’t given up on someone who has done an extreme harm,” Reed said.
Then Davis moved to the Genesis account of other brothers in conflict, Jacob and Esau. Even before the twins are born, God gives Rebekah an account of what is to be: “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples born of you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other; the elder shall serve the younger.”
The Hebrew here is a bit ambiguous, Reed said. “Is this a story about who’s great, or who’s older?” he asked. Here we’re “talking about a world that’s set up where humans justify differences based on our understanding, our interpretation, our claims of where God’s favor is.” Rebekah’s favorite is Jacob, and Isaac’s is Esau. “Now we have this transition,” Reed noted, “from God’s differential favor to humans’ differential favor.”
One thing Reed loves about Genesis is “it doesn’t say, ‘the lesson is this,’” he said. “Genesis doesn’t say, ‘these are the virtues that are important for you to follow because of your ancestor Jacob.’ … You listen to the story, you meditate on it, and it becomes part of the perspectives you have on the world around you.”
When he tells these stories to his young children, Reed calls Esau “Hairy Red” and Jacob “Little Trick.”
“My four-year-old caught on quickly to the emotional draw, a hope for a fuller reconciliation,” Reed said. What really got to the child was “that Jacob, in the aftermath of deceiving his brother, had to go into exile. The big hope that gripped my son is, ‘Little Trick, Jacob — is he going to be back with his family again?’” Eventually there is reconciliation. But for the child, “it can’t be just Jacob and Esau. It has to be the whole family.” Sure enough, Reed turned to Genesis 35 and found a brief mention of Jacob returning to Hebron to help Esau bury their father Isaac.
“That’s been there the whole time, but I never paid attention to it as the capstone of reconciliation — to be there for the while family,” Reed said. Thanks in part to his son’s vision, “it was a different layer to the reconciliation.”
Davis responded: “The way our children open scripture up for us with their curious insight is a gift that has helped me reconcile difficult texts.” Davis and Reed then turned to a final Genesis story about siblings: Joseph and his brothers.
“Reading these stories in order, they build anticipation and hope. You get an immediate setup [Joseph] is the dad’s favorite, and we’ve seen this before,” Reed said. “We know it leads to inter-family conflict, and it could be deadly conflict. How’s it going to pan out this time?” It doesn’t help when Joseph shares his dream “about everybody bowing down to him,” Reed said. “We saw that jealousy well up in Cain.”
But “this one ends well,” Reed said. Joseph tells his brothers they intended what they did for evil, but God intended it for good. It’s fascinating that in the midst of draught or other calamity, “people have tried to make sense of trauma by pointing to God’s will. There is something reassuring in the midst of horrible circumstances to believe it’s part of the bigger plan, that God let this happen so that something great could happen.”
“At the same time, it can be unhealthy, dangerous, harmful and hurtful to have that theology. We have had people across history who embrace this as a way of having some degree of sanity in spite of what they’re going through — and the opposite, people who condemn this type of thinking and say, no, that type of thinking lets people off the hook for injustices that we should be fighting against.”
“I think the responsibility wrestling with a text like this and plenty of other texts in the Bible should include that back and forth,” Reed said.
In thanking Reed for appearing on “Leading Theologically,” Davis said he hopes “our listeners, who spend so many of their Sundays in pulpits — the next time these pericopes show up in the lectionary, that these conversations will be helpful and provide insight into how to approach these texts through this lens.”
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