WISDOM

Wisdom has more to do with asking the right questions, than with knowing a lot of things. Wisdom comes from processing information right; from investigating how new information affects all the information obtained earlier on. When we ask the right questions, we find answers that lead to new questions. Thanks to this dynamic, we continuously achieve a better understanding of ourselves and the world we live in.

Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, is a book of wisdom. It is a book that encourages the reader to ask questions. The answers later lead to new questions, and thanks to this dynamic we either discover certain secrets or obtain a better comprehension of certain matters.

Let us take the chapter regarding Abraham’s servant who goes to look for a wife for Isaac (Gn24). The careful reader notices that it makes little sense that after the servant gives silver and gold ornaments and clothes to Rebekah, he also gives rich presents to her brother and her mother. Why did Rebekah’s brother and not Rebekah’s father receive those presents?

When we ask this question, and investigate all the information regarding the family ties between the different protagonists of this story, we discover that Rebekah was the fruit of an incestuous relation between Milcah and her son Bethuel. Therefore, Bethuel was not only her father, but also her brother. The words ‘brother’ and ‘sister indeed only imply having one parent in common.

Since Rebekah is the mother of Jacob, a direct ancestor of Jesus, this will surprise a lot of people, but not those who, by studying the genealogies from Adam to Noah, have discovered several cases of incest, endogamy and extramarital relations. Furthermore, Milcah was Lot’s sister, and Genesis tell us that he committed incest with his two daughters.

Genesis says Milcah and Lot were children of Haran, but does not mention that Haran married. Since it tells us that his brothers Abraham and Nahor married, it encourages us to investigate Haran’s family ties and thus discover that he had his children from one of the wives of his father. That is why on a certain occasion Abraham referred to Lot as his brother and why Genesis refers to Haran’s children, but not to Haran’s wife. Haran could not marry the mother of his children, because she was already married to his father.       

The woman that Haran had children with was not necessarily his mother. His father had at least two wives, since Abraham and Sarah were brother and sister from the same father, but from a different mother (Gn20:12). The difference between a sexual relation with one’s own mother and one with another wife of one’s father is that in the latter case there is no inbreeding. But this relation is also considered incest, since this concept refers to any relationship between relatives who are not allowed to marry.

This definition may very well have its logic, because Genesis suggests that an incestuous relationship between a son and one of his father’s wives who is not his mother leads to an incestuous relationship between a mother and her son, or between a father and his daughter, one generation later. If this is true, it explains why Amos, an Old Testament prophet, while speaking of Israel, spoke out against fathers and sons having relationships with the same woman (Am2:7). Amos may have discovered what this would entail for the next generation.