Y'all the Hebrew Bible is Complicated.

Understatement of the year, am I right?

I grew up reading the Bible. I went to a Christian Elementary school so we read through the Bible every single day as a part of our curriculum. We read through the Bible sequentially, meaning we started at Genesis and worked towards the right.

I think about how hard that must have been for my teachers… teaching 8 year olds about some of the dicier passages found at the beginning of God’s word.

The Hebrew Bible course I am in now is moving thematically and our theme this week is “ethnicity.” Full disclosure, I read that this was the theme and I thought: easy. Goodies (Hebrews) and baddies (everyone else) all the way through the Hebrew Bible.

And as usual, the truth was much more strange than I thought.

Moses is introduced in the beginning of Exodus as a Hebrew born of Levites, saved and raised by Egyptians. Than the author of Exodus ping pongs the ethnicity of Moses between a Hebrew and an Egyptian several times over throughout the Exodus story. Moses takes a Midian woman as a wife. Then a Cushite.

As a part of our discussion, I found this lithograph from Chagall. In it, we see Moses and the elders of Israel all bound together as a squad around the Law and the revelation from God. All different tones and colors bring about a cohesive people in the light of God.

It appears, as usual, where people (myself, at least) see division, God sees family. God is constantly in the work of making the table that we gather at for a grace-filled meal longer and longer. Pulling up chairs for more and more folks to sit and be sustained.

There is a story here in the Hebrew Bible that is vitally important for the Church that we can miss if we do not look closely. At first blush, the Hebrew Bible is about identifying who is in and who is out. It seems that woven in and throughout that whole narrative is the story that God wants all of us “in.” and that this is only the beginning.