Apostle Sha’ul the Asked For becomes Paul the Rest-maker in his first missionary voyage, stopping in Cyprus. There he meets a truth-seeking official and a “truth”-peddling Jewish sorcerer. How could a Jew be involved in the occult, and where do we see such corruption of the truth today?
After Sarah’s death Abraham had other children as well and we learn how his estate was divided up between his heirs. We also learn how Yiskhak (Isaac) deals with his status as a wealthy patriarch in a hostile land and how his two sons start fighting over Yiskhak’s estate before they are born and continue fighting over it when they are adults. The fight appears to end with Esau “despising” his birthright. But does this really end the dispute?
We start to see how closely connected the lives of Samuel, Saul, Jonathan and David truly are. All these men’s lives were shaped and irrevocably changed by the events surrounding the High Priest Eli and the confiscation of the Ark of the Covenant. We also see the beginnings of David’s quick rise in stature from a modest shepherd boy to a royal court entertainer and finally a leading warrior in Saul’s army.
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Yitskhak meets his wife (Genesis 24)
We learn about the Near Eastern customs of how to find a wife for a prominent family. From Abraham’s request to Rivka’s acceptance, Isaac is not a part of this story until the very end when Isaac greets Rivka as acknowledges her as the wife God has chosen for him.
It’s no coincidence God frees Petros (Peter) from jail during Passover/Unleavened Bread, which even at that time was understood to be a removing of “sourness” from one’s life. In Acts 12, the “leaven” of Herod and of the leaders was shown to be “spoiling” Israel.
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Lessons from The Name
In Ex. 3:14, God tells Moshe to identify Him to the elders of Israel as, in Hebrew, “‘Ehyeh ‘Asher ‘Ehyeh.” It’s translated various ways, such as “I Am Who I Am” and “I Will Be Who I Will Be.” Richard Agee explores the teaching of The Name.
The events around Sarah’s death are not mentioned simply as a marker of time. She was a prominent person in her own right. Her Biblical biography is the only one of a woman that mentions her age at the time of her death as well as the elaborate negotiations surrounding the location of her final repose. The negotiations for her burial place have implications into the present day.