Ex Libris Kirkland

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First Written 2024
Genre Nonfiction
Origin US
Publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux
My Copy library ed
First Read September 24, 2024

Reading Genesis



I was 100 pages into this before I had the realization: oh, this is a commentary. I automatically rule out any books that are called Commentaries on scripture because every time I tried they were exceedingly dry and overconcerned with details; the domain of scholars and pastors who must gin up a new sermon or two every week.

But of of course that IS what this is; it's just 'Robinson on Genesis', and I enjoyed it.

Noted on October 8, 2024

I'm a Marilynne Robinson fan anyways, and definitely love her nonfiction / essays. This is one BIG essay about Genesis, and it's right on target for me, as I've been working my way through this 'cultural backgrounds' bible. That one is more footnotes than text, and especially in the first books covers a lot of ground comparing Genesis to neighboring cultures' myths.

Noted on September 24, 2024

This is the epitome of the stories that seem far too ugly to be in the Bible. This is not trickery but treachery at its most abysmal. It should be said, first of all, that the Hebrew Bible does not romanticize the history of the people who create it, to whom it is addressed, and who have preserved it faithfully over millennia. It is as if America had told itself the truth about the Cherokee removal or England had confessed to the horrors of slavery in the West Indies. History is so much a matter of distortion and omission that dealing in truth feels like a breach of etiquette. However, if a people truly believed that it interacted with God the Creator, it might find every aspect of its history too significant to conceal.

Quoted on October 17, 2024

The God of Scripture tolerates sacrifice rather than requiring it. The festivals established in the laws involve sacrifices that are also feasts, in which the widow, orphan, and stranger are to take part. They define community. We moderns like our turkey dead and plucked before we have anything to do with it, but we know what it is to gather around a turkey and to bond in some way with the community who also participate in the secular consecration of the creature.

Quoted on October 8, 2024

The much greater issue, the attempt to justify the ways of God to man, the question of whether divine justice in the world can be reconciled with individual human de-serving, is among the preoccupations central to the whole of Scripture.

Quoted on October 8, 2024

The Lord knows the king as a righteous man. So the text establishes that it is not as a pagan city that Sodom is condemned, since pagan Abimelech is known to God and kept in His care. The text teaches and Abraham learns something of great importance-that the Lord is not a local or a tribal god. It cannot be assumed that the fear of God is unknown in foreign places, or that His power to protect has boundaries. The wonderful exasperation and offense captured in the voice of Abimelech make it clear that his views on right and wrong are not lightly held.

Quoted on October 8, 2024

Someone walking by Abram's tent that night would presumably have seen him standing there alone, gazing at the night sky, rehearsing to himself, or prayerfully, the one sorrow that made his wealth and good fortune meaningless to him. But we are told God stood beside him, showing him the plenitudinous universe, stars lost in the light of stars, dimmed by nothing else. Then imagine, in God's sight, every star a human soul. If ever God exulted in His power to create, if ever the sons of God shouted for joy, surely it would be in His foreseeing this second universe of minds and spirits, whom, in fact, only He knows how to value.

Quoted on October 8, 2024

Descent from both Abraham and Sarah makes a very narrow window for the covenant to pass through, so that it can exist to be carried on by later generations. Isaac's two sons, Esau and Jacob, engage in guile and conflict that threatens to become another fratricide. Jacob's sons come near killing their brother Joseph, who will save them all from famine. The covenant would be in continuous peril if it depended for its survival on human loyalty rather than on God's steadfastness. From a scriptural point of view, this could be said of everything that matters.

Quoted on October 8, 2024

Would a man who believes he has a great destiny awaiting him fear for his life? Would a righteous man deceive Pharaoh and put his wife in a deeply compromising situation? This story must be important. The same situation occurs three times, twice involving Abram, once involving his son Isaac. If it tells us anything about Abram, it must be that after God has spoken to him, he is still an ordinary man, liable to fear and deception. About Egyptians it tells us that they honor marriage and that they expect divine punishment if it is violated. In all three recurrences of the story, the patriarchs act badly and the pagans act well.

Quoted on October 8, 2024

This world is suited to human enjoyment-"out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight" — in anticipation of human pleasure, which the Lord presumably shares. This is an extremely elegant detail. The beauty of the trees is noted before the fact that they yield food. It is a rich goodness that the Lord intended and created for our experience. Two things are signified, that God as the creator of beauty intends it for us to see and enjoy, and that He gives us the gifts of apprehension this pleasure requires, which is nothing less than a sharing of His mind with us in this important particular. That God Himself in some celestial sense has and enjoys this kind of perception gives us an insight into the meaning of our being made in His image. The world is imbued with these reminders that there is a beautiful intention and assurance expressed in every perception we have of loveliness in the natural world.

Quoted on October 8, 2024

But the Bible itself names human authors for most of its books, meaning no more perhaps than that a collection of writings shared an affinity for the thought of a particular teacher or school. In other words, whether or not these attributions reflect authorship as we understand it, the Bible itself indicates no anxiety about association with human minds, words, lives, and passions. This is a notable instance of our having a lower opinion of ourselves than the Bible justifies.

Quoted on September 24, 2024

No one wants to be found among the credulous. Belief itself exists in disturbing proximity to credulity, a fact that has afflicted the church with a species of tepid anguish for generations.

Quoted on September 24, 2024

We are disastrously erring, and irreducibly sacred. And God is mindful of us.

Quoted on October 4, 2024


Ex Libris Kirkland is a super-self-absorbed reading journal made by Matt Kirkland. Copyright © 2001 - .
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