Reading Genesis
By Marilynne Robinson.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024.
Hardcover, 352 pages, $29.00.
Reviewed by Richard Gunderman.
In thin places, the distance between heaven and earth is narrowed, making it possible for human beings to feel the presence of the sacred. Among such sites, at least for some, are waterfalls, starry nights, and cathedrals. The patriarchs of the Book of Genesis, most notably Jacob, sometimes stumble across such places and build an altar to mark their location. Yet God is revealed not so much in particular places as at specific moments, often in the face of another person, or even more commonly, in the unfolding of a narrative. The Bible, and especially the Book of Genesis, is a collection of just such stories.
Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis is not a commentary or a work of scholarship but a series of essays on the human encounter with the divine as portrayed in this first and perhaps most influential of all books. At its core lies the reminder that man is not God, and that human beings who pretend otherwise have forgotten our place and fallen out of harmony with reality to such an extent that it distorts everything we do. To the contrary, the one God is the only god, and for human beings to claim to know the mind of God or take over the reins of creation from Him is the absolute height of folly.
We are so small, occupying an infinitesimally tiny plot of space at the edge of a galaxy of no particular distinction. We are so brief, each life enduring for something approaching an instant on the galactic time scale, the whole history of humanity having played itself out in less than a blink of the cosmic eye. Far from being able to assume responsibility for creation, we cannot even manage the billion or so chemical reactions taking place every second in one of our 50-or-so trillion cells. It is precisely when we think we have everything figured out that we stray furthest from our true place in the created order.
And yet, Robinson argues, humility should not blind us to our profound dignity, for we are the creatures who have been made in God’s image. Human beings do not, like the birds and the bees and the trees, simply run with creation, but inquire into it, seeking to understand what it is and how it works. We have been gifted a special capacity to appreciate its beauty. And we know, or at least are capable of knowing, something of our own stories and the larger story of which we are a part, which is precisely what Genesis shares. Although it ultimately exceeds human experience, we can glimpse its majesty.
The patriarchs’ stories nicely embody these contrasts. On the one hand, Abraham is no one special, who for no apparent reason will produce descendants as numerous as the stars, serve as the father of nations, and represent a blessing unto humankind. Yet he is also weak. Fearing for his own life, he tells both Pharaoh and Abimelech that his wife Sarah is his sister, a marital betrayal repeated by his son Isaac. Despite God’s assurances, Abraham doubts that he will ever become a father. And yet he is God’s chosen one, and the arc of divine providence eventually shows itself through the lives of his progeny.
Isaac, nearly done in by his father’s own hand, proves far from heroic. He is not trusted to find his own bride, and he is blind to the true natures of his own two sons, Esau and Jacob. To ensure that the Abrahamic blessing descends to its rightful bearer, his wife Rebecca must resort to treachery, prompting Esau to a murderous rage. Nevertheless, Isaac does what must be done, blessing the disguised Jacob, and once he realizes what has happened, he trembles, recognizing that he has been an unwitting instrument of the divine will. Instead of reversing course, he reaffirms the blessing.
The young Jacob, the trickster, the bearer of the birthright and the blessing, flees his home with nothing, eventually receiving his comeuppance at the hands of his uncle Laban, who switches brides on him. He is far from a paragon of faith, yet decades later he and all he possesses, including his two wives, come face to face with his brother Esau, who has every reason to seek revenge for the wrong Jacob has done him. Yet, to Jacob’s surprise, in his brother’s face he sees not vengeance but “the face of God, for you have accepted me.” He discovers that God is above all the bearer not of vengeance but mercy.
Joseph, too, is all too human. His father’s favorite, his vanity is more than his brothers can bear, so they throw him into a pit, telling their father that he has been killed by an animal. Yet Joseph’s sale into slavery and subsequent rise to viceroy of the Pharaoh soon merge with another story of universal famine, which threatens even his own family. When his brothers come to buy food, he makes them pay in more than just money, but when his ruse is finally revealed, he embraces them. What they intended for ill, the arc of divine providence meant for good, and Jacob and his family are saved.
Yet this very act of salvation carries its own great price. Joseph has made the Egyptians Pharaoh’s slaves, establishing despotism and ensconcing the people of Israel in a nation that will enslave them for a period no less than 400 years. Perhaps, Robinson speculates, no shorter period would have been sufficient to teach the Israelites what it means to exist at the mercy of others. Only after so many years would they finally refrain from repressing strangers, seeing that they themselves had been strangers in the land of Egypt. To respond compassionately to the suffering of others, it helps to have known suffering.
God speaks to Abraham, but He also speaks to his childless wife’s slave, Hagar, whom Sarah gives to her husband so that he might have an heir. Sarah comes to resent Hagar, persuading her husband to send Hagar and her son, Abraham’s firstborn, away into the wilderness. Yet they are saved by God’s hand, and Hagar is told that she, too, will produce descendants too numerous to count. Her son, Ishmael, whose name means “God hears,” will live free, beholden to no man. Again and again, most notably in the release of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage, the divine arc is one of liberation.
Robinson writes,
God’s covenant and God’s active grace are profoundly implicated in—braided into—plain human physicality. If God is a given, then Being should be expected to bear the mark of a complexity that exceeds our understanding. As it does in any case. So contradiction and anomaly should not act as pretexts for excluding evidence that any given conception of reality is too simple. How can the constancy of God’s historical intention be reconciled to the freedom of His grace?
Here is the core of Robinson’s hermeneutics. Human beings exist on an earthly plane, preoccupied with earthly concerns—how to sustain ourselves, whom to marry, how to raise our children, whether our lives will have any enduring significance. Yet we are also parts—vital parts—of a larger story that lies finally beyond our knowing, yet of which we are given occasional glimpses. How do we reconcile barrenness with descendants as numerous as grains of sand in the ocean, hateful sibling relationships with the fulfillment of a divine covenant, or perpetual wandering with a land of promise?
The point, of course, is that we cannot. Genesis never relents in its mission to show us how profoundly limited in understanding we truly are. And yet, writes Robinson, “If we knew as we are known, we would realize that there is a role that requires our assuming it, uniquely, out of all the brilliant constellations of human families.” Each of us is a son of Adam or a daughter of Eve, a child of God, made in God’s image, and blessed with the opportunity to see God’s face in His creation, especially in the faces of our brothers and sisters, and to recognize in them the opportunity to “comfort, sustain, and forgive.”
Unlike some of his predecessors, Joseph never encounters God directly. The voice of God never speaks directly to him. He never answers the divine call with “Here I am.” Yet, Robinson points out, he is richly blessed in the opportunity to see divine providence working itself out in the course of human events. There is much in the human story that should prompt God to vengeance, the countless times we betray divine purposes. And yet God remains steadfast, opting not to destroy but to instruct, not to pass sentence but to provide a law that inclines us to see, to the extent we are able, the true thinness of our lives.
Richard Gunderman is Chancellor’s Professor of Radiology, Pediatrics, Medical Education, Philosophy, Liberal Arts, Philanthropy, and Medical Humanities and Health Studies at Indiana University, where he also serves as John A Campbell Professor of Radiology.
Support the University Bookman
The Bookman is provided free of charge and without ads to all readers. Would you please consider supporting the work of the Bookman? Contributions of any amount are needed and appreciated!
