This year my Bible reading is off to a rocky start, when I got started with my new Bible, The Reformation Study Bible: English Standard Version, and enjoying it quite a bit as it is one of those Bibles with almost as many notes as text, Heather started to feel sick and we went to the hospital. The long and short of it is she was admitted at 2:00am and we crashed hard there. She is fine now and is home resting but I haven’t gotten much past Genesis 3.

Luckily I have pressed on and am now caught up with my plan. I am greatly enjoying things this time around, slowing the pace has allowed me more time to meditate on the things I read and has also enabled me to study things a bit more.

But I digress, moving though Genesis a few things stuck out to me; I have heard some women complain over the years about the term helper as used in Genesis 2:18. Although the woman was created to be a helper to Adam, this same term is also used of God in Deut 33:3 and other places in scripture so if a woman is to be insulted by the use of this term she would be insulted by a comparison to the All Mighty. If that same term is used to apply to God it obviously doesn’t automatically make one inferior, as God is inferior to none.

Although I never considered it before, it appears to me now that even the clothes God creates for Adam and Eve are a shadow of the redemption that was to come. They already knew they were naked, and although they made loincloths with leaves there were still essentially naked, because they hid from God when he came to the garden. God provides the cover for their nakedness himself, their attempts to cover their sins were not enough and only God could create their covering. It was through his grace and love that he “covered up the sins” of his children. It wasn’t because they even knew to ask him, it appears they didn’t know or were not able to solve their nakedness problem. Only through the grace of God is this “original” sin problem solved.

Reading God’s story chronologically have given me some additional insight into at least one book, as we begin the book of Job in its proper place in the time line, I now realize that Job was without the benefits of the knowledge of the covenants or Law. Reading Job in the order it appears I have just assumed that he lived after the historical books of the Bible which puts a different light on the matter entirely. Historically speaking he was a contemporary of Abraham and probably would not have been aware of the Abrahamic covenant. Job goes through his trials without the beneficial knowledge these covenants bring.

I will post my more complete thoughts on Job when I am finished with the book but I believe it gives us great insight into a much ignored nature of God.