Genesis 49:23-25 (New International Version)

With bitterness archers attacked him; they shot at him with hostility. But his bow remained steady, his strong arms stayed limber, because of the hand of the Mighty One of Jacob, because of the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel, because of your father’s God, who helps you, because of the Almighty, who blesses you with blessings of the heavens above, blessings of the deep that lies below, blessings of the breast and womb.

I think I have watched Joseph King of Dreams a hundred times already. It is actually a musical cartoon version of the story of Joseph, his life, his happiness and struggles. The movie was so simple yet the message was so profound. It mainly concentrated on pain and on how this has glorified God.

Suffering is a refining process. Character is refined. Suffering is the “trying” or “testing” of our faith. Suffering refines faith. Faith is like gold; in fact it’s more precious than gold that perishes. For gold to be pure it has to be refined in fire to get rid of any impurities and other metals. When gold is refined it is soft, pliable and tender. Before it is refined, it is hard, less pliable and more corrosive. God wants a heart that is soft, tender and pliable. Our faith is tested by fire. It’s not pleasant, but the end result is to the glory of God. What’s the end result? Praise, honor and glory will be given to God.

In the story where the verse was taken, Jacob was at his deathbed bed and he was blessing his children one by one, this verse is part of the blessing given to Joseph. Jacob was saying that even though the world turned it back upon him and all struggles imagined was inflicted on him, he had stood his ground. But it was not Joseph’s own strength that helped him through, it was God’s mighty hand. In times of testing, we see our weaknesses. When we are weak, we realize that we can’t in our own strength overcome situations and be what God wants us to be. So when we are weak we stop trying and God takes over. We start to wait upon Him and He exchanges His strength for ours. When times of testing come we get a glimpse of the ways of God and what He’s doing in our lives. We see God’s faithfulness; we see we can trust Him, which brings us to our last word.

A number of features of excavations are worth further comment. The excavation of the house on a mound has provided a wealth of information. Provisional interpretation suggests that this structure was originally constructed as a wheelhouse which was transformed after a conflagration into a sub rectangular structure which retained the original round east side. Timbers within the destruction layer suggest the presence of a timber roof over the central area of the house. Within the destruction layer there were also large quantities of artifacts including worked and unworked bone, pottery concentrations, clusters of hammerstones and a whalebone axe. One of the most interesting objects was a parallelopiped bone dice, this was found in the destruction layer, but unlike all the other finds from this layer it was not burnt. It also stood vertical within the layer and it seems likely that it has been deliberately pushed in from above.

The excavation was successful in answering almost all the objectives set. Work on the mound has reached a point where further work is no longer necessary to understand what has been excavated, though new work in both areas would produce important results. The excavation of the mound successfully exposed and excavated the structure predicted by the geophysical survey. It was shown to be constructed on an important deposit of iron working debris and these deposits and the surrounding mounds are still under threat.

It helps in the detailed understanding of the distribution of settlement across the mounds and together with the data from the geophysical survey, it can begin to discuss about the spatial organization of the settlement. Detailed spatial analysis of several house floors has now been undertaken and provisional work on these floors already suggests our understanding of the activities undertaken within the house will be enhanced. A large quantity of artefactual and ecofactual material has now been recovered from all the trenches and we can now begin to talk with confidence about the economy of the site in the three main periods outlined in the aims and objectives.

With all the information given, the importance of knowing the relevance of said destruction layer of the mound is that it will provide us evidences to be able to reconstruct history. We will be able to use archeology in putting the pieces of the puzzle in trying to know or discover what really happened during their time. It is like in a crime scene investigation, they get the evidences and use it to reconstruct what had happened on that specific crime and so is like with the destruction layer of the mound, it assist us in understanding history even just for a little bit.

REFERENCE:

Cardiff Studies In Archaeology, Specialist Report Number 16

Genesis 12:2-3 (New International Version)

“I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

The Bible contains the record of mankind’s rebellion against God, and God’s plan for restoring that broken relationship. In Genesis 12 we find God calling one man, Abraham. God didn’t even tell him where He was leading him. No wonder Abraham is held up as an example of faith! God’s covenant with Abraham was “unconditional.” This means that God’s promises will be without qualification; that is, that the covenant promises will be completely fulfilled in spite of man’s success or failure to keep whatever conditions or commandments may be contained in the covenant. Fulfillment is dependent upon God and not man. God intends to fulfill the terms of the covenant regardless of whether man fulfills his obligations. Abraham may have had some obligations to fulfill, but even if Abraham failed to fulfill those obligations, God’s promises to him would still have been kept.

What does it mean to me? By leaving Ur, Abraham had to totally abandon all that was significant to him. Of course God rarely demands personal sacrifice without the compensation of even greater blessings. Abraham’s move from Mesopotamia and his father’s house probably meant losing his inheritance, but how much greater were the things which God promised! Abraham would, indeed, be leaving a land of large cities rich in material goods, but the LORD promised a new inheritance that would include another land. Even though Israel’s possession of the land was threatened time and again, Israel never completely lost it. God’s promise was sure and it was unconditional. Retaining the land did not depend on the might of Abraham or his descendants, but on the faithfulness of God who promised.

In the same way that we know God has not abandoned Abraham’s physical descendants, so we can be assured that He will not abandon those who are Abraham’s children “by faith.” The promises He has made He will fulfill, because it is His character to do so.

In the time of Nimrod, most of the children of Adam had no respect for the Lord. They thought they didn’t need God and His word; they did not need anyone to tell them anything. They were characterized by a spirit of independence and rebellion. Those who began to build the tower to reach to the heavens didn’t care about God’s glory. They only sought their own glory. They had no use for the Name of their Creator. Certainly, many people of that time were religious, but they ignored the word of God. They thought they could reach heaven in their own way. Think of it! Just five hundred years after the flood, people were, once again, going their own way and ignoring the Lord who gave them life and breath. They were like a horse that, after it has been washed, goes and rolls in the mud! How foolish and wicked of man to want to live his life apart from God and His Word!

So what did God do? Did He ignore the people’s plan to live independently of their Creator? Did He accept those who rebelled against Him? No, He did not! Listen to what God did. We see how God upset the plans of Nimrod and the others who had begun to build a great city for their own glory. Until this time, everyone in the world spoke the same language. But on this day, God mixed up their language so that they could no longer understand each other. You will remember that God had commanded Noah’s descendants “to fill the earth”; to spread out all over the world. But Nimrod and his followers wanted to do things their own way and gather all the people of the world into one place. God defeated their intentions by giving them new languages. That is how God scattered them over the face of the whole earth. This is the reason we have hundreds of nations and thousands of languages in the world today.

God certainly did a thorough job of mixing up the languages of the world. Oh how great is our God! No one can go against God Almighty and prosper. “An egg should not wrestle with a rock!” Man tried to “wrestle” with God and lost. Do you know the name of this city which man tried to build in rebellion against God? Yes, the name of the city is Babel. Babel means confusion. Life apart from God and His Word is only confusion!

REFERENCE:

Lesson 16 – The Tower of Babel (Genesis 10, 11)

Genesis 9:16 (New International Version)

“Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.

It is really overwhelming for a person like me, limited in the knowledge about the Bible to try and make my own devotional materials. But I don’t have much of any choice, don’t I? Kidding! This is actually a very good way for me to push myself in doing my obligation – building a deeper relationship with God. When I was reading the first few chapters of the Book of Genesis, I was actually trying to contemplate on how a person can get devotional material out of such a story and then this specific verse struck something in me, it showed me how God keeps His promises faithfully and how one man can make a difference by being holy in the presence of God.

Yes, there was a promise. It was a promise made to humanity as a whole. God has almost destroyed the whole world. If it were not for one righteous man Noah, God would have destroyed everything. The flood provided mankind with another chance at life. The world is not as God intended it to be. Humans cannot be trusted to be good to each other without threat of consequences. Eden was a paradise where man and beast lived together and there was no fear between them. Adam and Eve were vegetarians and animals had no need to be afraid of us. The human race is taking advantage of God’s patience. God is good and there is no written law, so technically, it’s a free for all. Mankind takes advantage of this and does what he pleases. The flood is God’s opportunity to start over with new rules.

Covenants between God and man usually require some give and take but it’s hard to see how man is asked to contribute anything to this arrangement. God makes a promise, period. God promised to never send a flood again. Of course, God has kept his promise. Thinking about it, when we want something so badly, we try and make a pact with God and when He concedes and give us what we want – what do we usually do? We turn our back and go on our merry way!

When I see the rainbow, I see beauty and a God who keeps his promise. His covenant is a covenant of love. God recognizes our shortcomings as a race. Because of a few who are righteous, God promises to keep the earth going in continuity from season to season and year to year. The rainbow reminds us of God’s promise and His care. No matter how bad things get, God will never destroy us through a flood. Our God keeps His promises even if we don’t.

The 3rd millennium BC spans the Early to Middle Bronze Age. It represents a period of time in which imperialism, or the desire to conquer, grew to prominence, in the city states of the Middle East, but also throughout Eurasia, with Indo-European expansion to Anatolia, Europe and Central Asia. The civilization of Ancient Egypt rises to a peak with the Old Kingdom. World population is estimated to have doubled in the course of the millennium, to some 30 million people.

The previous millennium had seen the emergence of advanced, urbanized civilizations, new bronze metallurgy extending the productivity of agricultural work, and highly developed ways of communication in the form of writing. In the 3rd millennium BC, the growth of these riches, both intellectually and physically, became a source of contention on a political stage, and rulers sought the accumulation of more wealth and more power. Along with this came the first appearances of mega architecture, imperialism, organized absolutism and internal revolution.

The civilizations of Sumer and Akkad in Mesopotamia became a collection of volatile city-states in which warfare was common. Uninterrupted conflicts drained all available resources, energies and populations. In this millennium, larger empires succeeded the last, and conquerors grew in stature until the great Sargon of Akkad pushed his empire to the whole of Mesopotamia and beyond. It would not be surpassed in size until Assyrian times 1500 years later.

In the Old Kingdom of Egypt, the idea of absolute ambition was further defined by conquerors. Military expeditions were sent throughout the kingdom to bring back thousands of slaves at a time. The Egyptian pyramids were constructed during this millennium and would remain the tallest and largest human constructions for thousands of years. Also in Egypt, pharaohs began to posture themselves as living Gods made of an essence different from that of other human beings. Even in Europe, which was still largely Neolithic during the same period of time, the builders of megaliths were constructing giant monuments of their own. In the Near East and the Occident during the 3rd millennium BC, limits were being pushed by architects and rulers.

Towards the close of the millennium, Egypt became the stage of the first popular revolution recorded in history. After lengthy wars, the Sumerians recognized the benefits of unification into a stable form of national government and became a relatively peaceful, well-organized, complex technocratic state called the 3rd dynasty of Ur. This dynasty was later to become involved with a wave of nomadic invaders known as the Amorites, who were to play a major role in the region during the following centuries.

REFERENCE:

1. Lamberg-Karlovsky, C. C. and Jeremy A. Sabloff (1979). Ancient Civilizations: The Near East and Mesoamerica. Benjamin/Cummings Publishing, p. 4.