1. The earth was not created prior to God's creation. The very first things God created were the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty.
2&3. Adam and Eve had multiple sons. The first set were Cain and Abel. Cain was a farmer, Abel was a shepherd. Cain killed Abel. To comfort Eve, God gave her Seth. We don't know what he did. Adam had 'other sons and daughters' in his 930 years.
4. Enoch walked with God and then 'he was no more, because God took him away.' No death for God's walking buddy.
5. Noah was chosen because he was righteous man, blameless among the people of his time. All the rest were corrupt.
6. Shem is the ancestor of Jesus. Ham saw his dad naked after drinking and Shem walked a cloak backwards to cover him up. Noah blessed Shem 'Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem. May Canaan (Ham) be the slave of Shem'. There is also conjecture that Melchizedek is actually Shem (the one Abraham gave a 10th of the booty).
7. Names were changed to protect the innocent. Oh wait, that is from Dragnet and The FBI. Sorry. Names were changed when something dramatic happened in their lives. For Abram and Sarai, when they got the word they were going to have a baby at 100 and 90 respectively. For Jacob, well that is murky. Because he really doesn't change his name. The Bible is constantly flipping between Jacob and Israel. I think that God wanted him to be Israel but he just kept being Jacob, the trickster. Makes you think what we would do if God changed our names. Would we live up to the new nature that God is calling us to be or would we slip back into old patterns and behaviors. I think this is why we need Jesus. He truly makes us into a new creation.
8. I have no answer to the barren women issue. I just know that it runs through the whole Bible. We will see this over and over again. The Godly women don't have babies while the not so good ones get pregnant in a flash. Seems to me that God would want babies to be born into houses of faith and loyalty and not so much into the other -- sort of a cosmic weeding out -- but clearly, my way is not God's.
9. Noah got the covenant of not destroying humankind again. Abraham got 2 covenants -- the multitude of descendents and the land. Isaac got reaffirmed this and so did Jacob/Israel.
10. Jacob is the trickster because he just couldn't get things done without wheeling and dealing. He inherited it from his mother, Rebecca, who was barren until God intervened. It has ugly ramifications all the way to present day.
11&12. Jacob was partial to Joseph because he was the son of Rachel, the wife he loved. None of his other children except for Benjamin who was way too little to understand appreciated this and as a consequence, Joseph ended up a slave in Egypt. But while the brothers meant it for evil (to get rid of Joseph), God meant it for good (to save the family during the famine).
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