Concepts of Family in the Book of Genesis

"Draft only: not to be copied or cited. Jeffrey Wattles February 2000"

Next to the drama of the Creator's relations with his creatures, the dramas of family interactions are the most important in the Book of Genesis; and the two orders of drama are interrelated. The Book of Genesis suggests three concepts of family.

The first humans were a couple, created "in the image of God." They founded the first family, and all humankind derive from their offspring.

There are hints of more complex transactions, interactions between "the sons of God" and "the daughters of men" (6.2-4). There are, moreover, traditions according to which Adam and Eve were not the first humans; since Cain took a wife from a neighboring tribe, his parents must have lived among pre-existent humans. Melchizedek is said in the New Testament Book of Hebrews to be "without beginning or ending of days." It is at least thinkable that different orders of creatures have been involved in human history.

Derivation from the same parents--or at least from a common father--establishes weighty relations between siblings. Violations of brotherhood have severe consequences. Cain, having slain his brother, lost his garden home and his family. At the same time, reconciliation between brothers shines like gold: Esau treats Jacob (who had disastrously cheated him) with mercy; Joseph treats his brothers (who had jealously staged his "death") with mercy.

The importance of the family is seen in several ways. It is important to have children, and marriage is important, giving the prime reason for urgency to ethics pertaining to sexual behavior. The covenant with Noah assumes monogamy. The rape of Dinah, even by a man who loves her dearly and wants to marry her, brings her into such dishonor that her brothers plot and carry out a brutal revenge. The family is the matrix within which political leadership arises. To be scattered from one's family is such a severe punishment that it is used as retribution for murder. Burial near the graves of one's ancestors returns the departed "to his people."

The importance of the father as the head of the family is socially expressed in several ways. In a society that recognized a plurality of Gods, to worship the God of one's father was a primary form of loyalty, and to set aside "household gods" of foreign origin was an act which sharply focused devotion and trust in God. Even God is represented as announcing himself to Jacob in a dream as "the God of your father."

Moreover, the father may have several wives and may have children through concubines or by still other women. All the resulting sons and daughters are members of the family. The father could give his daughters in marriage. The father, on his deathbed, pronounced a blessing that establishes the inheritance and may also prophecy the future for his offspring. It is through offspring that the parent's name is perpetuated.

The theme of humankind as a family gets a second beginning in the story of Noah, which reinforces the importance of righteousness and cites the image of God as a reason for the prohibition of murder. Differing groups of humans are traced to the descendants of the sons of Noah.

Nations diversified according to family, language, and land; indeed, the story of the destruction of the prideful Tower of Babel explains diversification of language and the dispersion of people into various territories as a punishment for pride. These divisions would be the occasion for enmity; to eat with Egyptians would be an abomination to Hebrews, even as Hebrew shepherds were an abomination to Egyptians.

It is in the Abraham story that the reader meets a particular family being singled out for special blessing, marking the primary division within the human family. Melchizedek, priest of the Most High God, Creator of the heavens and the earth, has Abraham look into the starry sky and makes a covenant with him, predicated on Abraham's faith, promising that Abraham's descendants will be as numerous as the stars. The subsequent stories especially follow Abraham's descendants, Isaac and Jacob (Israel) and the clans and tribes of their descendants; they are even to be "a company of peoples" (48.4). At the direction of his wife, Sarah, Abraham sends away his servant Hagar and his son by her, Ishmael, from whom tradition indicates that the Arabs descended.

Given that humankind are the family descending from the first human couple, it is most interesting to note the uses of family language in relating to those beyond the speaker's immediate kin. When Jacob journeyed to "the people of the east" where he would find his cousin Rachel to marry, he first met shepherds whom he addressed with a question: "My brothers, where do you come from?" His confident address (29.4) goes beyond affirming the mere possibility that they might be related through Abraham. He calls these strangers brothers, thus preserving the concept of the brotherhood of man (siblinghood of humankind) from the traditions of Adam and Noah.

A great change transpires from Jacob's confident address to eastern strangers to his sons' deceitful bargain with the people of the man who raped their sister. They promise that that Shechem may marry Dinah on one condition: "On this condition will we consent to you: that you will become as we are and every male among you be circumcised. Then we will give our daughters to you, and we will take your daughters for ourselves, and we will live among you and become one people" (34.15-16). The prospect of becoming one people is contingent upon behavior that assimilates the strangers to the ways of the sons of Israel (Jacob). The rest of the story is that the men of Shechem's city perform the required circumcisions and are then slaughtered anyway.

The Book of Genesis thus suggests three concepts of family: (1) the family of parents and children and their descendants; (2) the family of humankind--affirmed based on the fact of descent from the original human couple or affirmed as a experience of faith and hope; (3) and the family of those who have become similar through deliberate action to assimilate.