The Sermon Series: Genesis

The book of Genesis has a groove to it. It runs from poem to song to narrative to poem to song.

The Book of Genesis has a unity to it that fits with the entire Torah (the Pentateuch or the first 5 books of scripture). There is a definitive strategy laid out and sometimes this leads to a narrative that isn’t always smooth and uniform. This has led many people to assume that Genesis was written by different authors and is a disjointed mess.

For example, the short narrative about building the city of Babylon (Genesis 11:1-9) is almost entirely a self-contained and shows little external relationship with other narratives within its immediate context…But the narrative plays a strategic role in the development of one of the major themes in the book: covenant and restoration. By placing a self-contained story between two genealogies the story actually shows the difference between what man desires “Let us make a name for ourselves” (11:4) and the central point of the patriarchal narratives--”and God said, “I will make your name great’” (12:2a). Thus the genealogies of “Shem” provide a narrative link between the story of the city of Babylon and the account of the call of Abraham.

Far from being disjointed, Genesis is a literary masterpiece that weaves all the scriptures themes together in wonderful unity.