Two Themes, Two Days, Two Goats; with Caleb Lewis - Episode 083

Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel and I am here again with Caleb Lewis, who is the co host of the podcast The Bible in Context, and who has just released a book called Through the Waters, A Biblical Theology of the Book of Genesis.

[00:00:32] Now, we recently already had a conversation about the themes of Exodus in his book, and I almost want to keep having that conversation because there's so much there. But I really want to get into the other thing that he talks about in this book, and that is what he calls the two goats motif. So, yeah, welcome back to the show, Caleb.

[00:00:56] Caleb Lewis: Thanks for having me back. Glad to be here.

[00:00:59] Carey Griffel: Awesome. again, just as an introduction, in case other people haven't listened to that episode, can you just briefly give a little bit of background to who you are and what you're doing with your podcast and your book?

[00:01:13] Caleb Lewis: Yeah, absolutely. So, the podcast actually grew out of the book and us wanting to just be able to give some high level points about the book and some more perhaps pastoral application and just further thoughts that Pastor Nate Young and myself might have and this book, it goes into the exodus pattern throughout the book of Genesis and also, as I mentioned, the two goats motif and how these two motifs are undergirding literary structures that really are at the center of the author's literary strategy. s at the core of his method of communication. And so I want to show how these themes work together, not just in an academic exercise about how all the word plays work and all that fun stuff, but also what does it matter for us as Christians?

[00:01:57] And so that's really the impetus behind this book. And I want it to help us get into the world of the Bible and to even better understand who Jesus is and who we are as his people.

[00:02:08] Carey Griffel: Yeah. And if you guys listened to the previous episode with Caleb, I think you'll see just how deeply he gets into the context of scripture in order to show the purpose and intent of Jesus and why he came and what that means for the church.

[00:02:27] This level of application is just, it's so needed in biblical theology today. So I really, really appreciate that. So let's just dive in and talk about the two goats motif. What is it, first of all, and what is its purpose?

[00:02:46] Caleb Lewis: All right. Well, once we talk about this motif, we'll be able to tie in our previous conversation of the Exodus and tie these two motifs together to really, it's going to be very significant, I think.

[00:02:56] And, and hopefully a lot of you will be able to not read Genesis in the same way. So let's talk about the two goats motif. Now, first of all, why did I call it the two goats motif? That's... for better, for worse, that's what I called it. But I want that name, whenever you see that and wherever you see the pattern occur in Genesis, I want you to think of the day of atonement where there's a lot of things going on there, but the high priest takes two goats on the day of atonement and one goat is selected by casting lots. It is actually selected, elected as a goat for Azazel, which is the one that has the sins of Israel confessed over it, placed on it, and then it bears the sins of Israel outside of the camp into the wilderness. And then you have the other goat, which is the goat for Yahweh. That goat is then slaughtered, and its blood is brought into Yahweh's the Holy of Holies, where he is dwelling and used to atone for the community.

[00:03:48] These two goats together function as the atonement for the community so that Yahweh can dwell with Israel. And so I know you've had some discussions on this podcast before about proper understandings of sacrifice and atonement. And so I won't go too deep in the weeds on that. I don't know if you have particular places you have had those discussions.

[00:04:09] Carey Griffel: there's been several times that we've talked about sacrifice and what that meant in the ancient context and really the importance of how deeply embedded that is in How people were relating to either each other or to their gods, right? And, you know, this wasn't something that God just revealed to, Abraham or anybody like it's so deeply embedded into the culture that it wasn't just the Israelites who had this idea.

[00:04:40] And so you'll find it a lot in parallel literature, but you'll find very, very big differences between what the parallel literature says and what the Bible says. And that's really fascinating. Like for instance, I was just talking about the Atrahasis epic and how there it has the theme of purification that is connected with the flood and with childbirth.

[00:05:06] , it's really fascinating because the way it talks about it is very similar to our biblical understanding of what purification and sacrifice and all of those things would mean. But There's definitely a different tweak to it, right? Or rather, maybe the Bible is bringing a different tweak to what sacrifice and purification means.

[00:05:29] But in any case, However, you look at what purification is and what the sacrifices are and what they do, that's kind of secondary to what you're talking about here in this book, I think, because you can look at it in different ways, and it's not dismantling your idea of what the Two Goats motif is and how you see it in Scripture.

[00:05:51] Caleb Lewis: And the thing I want to put my finger on with that is just that, In this bearing of sin with the goat, that's not necessarily a punishment, and I want to put my finger on that just because we're going to see this replayed with other human characters in a second, and they're not being punished as they go out, always at least the goat itself, it is actually affecting purification in some way.

[00:06:16] Now, the brothers themselves throughout the book of Genesis, sometimes it is a punishment, sometimes it's not, sometimes it's just circumstance. But, I thought it would be beneficial to bring up that that goat is not bearing punishment as it goes out. Because , the brothers themselves are not depicted as characteristically evil and banished or essentially just cursed and bound for hell once they are, out to the wilderness.

[00:06:39] , the overall pattern of these goats though, of being elected and one is sent out to the wilderness and the other is brought closer to Yahweh's space becomes a pattern that is projected back onto some of the brothers in the book of Genesis and in particular, the elect one and his non chosen brother.

[00:06:58] So throughout the book of Genesis, we see, A younger brother is elected as the firstborn, the leader of the family, the bearer of the seed of the woman promised, the one through whom Yahweh is going to work out his plans of redemption. And you should immediately hear some links to the Exodus motif, if you've listened to the last conversation. They really walk hand in hand a lot.

[00:07:18] So the older brother acts with jealousy against the elect or does something to wrong this elect brother. Usually, yeah, he's jealous over the role he's been given. Then the older brother is given some form of protection. Even though he has done this wrong thing, Yahweh gives him a form of protection, and then he is exiled out to the wilderness, similar to the goat.

[00:07:39] Now the older brother, this is where we depart from what happens just to the goats, but the older brother then is multiplied into a nation out in this wilderness, and that's part of why I wanted to bring up they're not necessarily cursed, but Yahweh still still loves them. He still shows them some loyalty and It wants to bring them back into the family with the seed of the woman. But they are multiplied into a nation. The nation then becomes hostile to God's people at some point throughout the story. Some nations will see that immediately in Genesis, others it's going to take multiple books and we'll see it later in the canon, but it's consistently a nation that becomes hostile to God's people.

[00:08:14] And then the elect brother, back to him now, he is brought into Yahweh's dwelling. He's brought closer to Yahweh. He is exalted. And then sometimes what's really interesting, this elect brother becomes associated with an offering, often with a sin offering, a sacrifice. We also have some other smaller links from these brothers to the goats. And for thousands of years scholars have been realizing that-- modern and ancient-- seeing these patterns throughout the book of Genesis.

[00:08:42] And maybe we should talk about the first instance with Cain and Abel. Hopefully some of these you've already guessed through that listing. Abel, he becomes a chosen brother. We see that because Seth is the one who replaces him and he is the elect brother who carries forward that seed of the woman promise in the text.

[00:08:59] And Cain I would say he acts with some jealousy there. He murders his brother because he has been given the firstborn status and Cain, he's the older brother. He should be the one to have it. So, you know, let's just kill him and get him out of the way. Well, despite that, God puts a mark on Cain and then he bears his punishment out into the wilderness.

[00:09:20] It's not the same word bears his sin, but he does bear this punishment out just to give a little bit of similarity. And then, yeah, he goes out to the land of wandering. Now out there, Cain, he becomes a nation. He becomes a city and that city becomes violent. It's characterized with violence and polygamy, and so it's not a great place.

[00:09:40] And then that's where we see the nation become hostile to God's people. They become the problem in the world whenever we get to Noah, along with some other fun sons of God things that go on in chapter six, but they are, at large, the last people group we've talked about when we get to Noah. And so they're a large part of the violence and the problem that he lives among.

[00:10:01] So meanwhile, we have Abel. Now, some of this is going to require a retranslation of Genesis four, verse seven. And I go into that and that is nothing that is new to me. I've actually taken the work of other scholars who are smarter than myself and, brought that in and shown how This text actually has a lot more ritual symbolism, a lot more cultic significance than a surface reading may allude to. It alludes to the Levitical system a lot more than what a surface reading would allude to.

[00:10:30] And so, we have Cain and Abel, the sacrifices they offer, they are sin offerings. And Abel, his is accepted, while Cain's is rejected, because the assumption behind the text is here that he should have given a blood offering, and he did not do that.

[00:10:47] And so, God actually graciously says to him the results of the retranslation, God is not saying to him in Genesis 4 verse 7 sin lies crouching at the door as a prowling animal to devour him. Rather, it is saying that there is a sin offering lying at the door, essentially, of the temple of, of Eden for Cain to use to atone for himself.

[00:11:09] And instead he decides to, murder his brother. Now that sin offering, Abel is associated with the sin offering through a Hebrew wordplay where the letters are swapped in a word, but all the same letters are in that word. This is called metathesis. So Abel, he takes the fat of his flock to offer and Abel's name in Hebrew is H B L, and the fat is H L B, essentially, the consonants in the word.

[00:11:40] And so, there's a little wordplay that, again, has been noticed by many others and for a long time. Because this pattern, this literary wordplay here is used so often, it is something the biblical author definitely uses and he is applying it in order to compare Abel to the fat of his offering.

[00:11:58] Now that's the first time that we see an elect brother associated with a sin offering. And so, you may continue on reading and just say, okay, well that was weird, don't know what that was about, maybe nothing's going on there. And you get down to someone like Shem. And this is another one. You may write it off after the fact. What he does is he covers his father with a garment similar to the way that Yahweh covers Adam and Eve with a garment after their fall.

[00:12:24] And so there's a bit of a redemptive aspect to this elect brother's actions. And again, you may say, okay, well, that's still a little different and there's not really a pattern developing. that's just kind of weird. Well, we skip down to Isaac. I think we all know that Isaac was associated with an offering at least.

[00:12:41] And there's a lot more in that story than meets the eye. If you pay attention to a lot of the repeated words that's shared between the Passover and Leviticus 16 and Leviticus 8 and 9 where Isaac's potential sacrifices is very significant. And it even kind of drops the hint in there of... maybe resurrection was supposed to be part of this story, at least puts it in our minds.

[00:13:03] And again there's been many others to recognize that even back to the book of Hebrews, recognize that fact, and said that Abraham must have supposed that he could have raised Isaac from the dead because for Abraham to kill Isaac would do one of two things. It either would have meant that God's a liar because he killed the promised son, or God's going to stop him or resurrect him.

[00:13:25] So one of three things is you're going to resurrect Isaac or stop Abraham before he kills him. Otherwise Yahweh's going to have to prove himself a liar because the elect son is dead and gone. So the story does mean to put the idea of resurrection in our And again, you may say, okay, well, it's just the idea. It's not explicit. Big deal. It's not there.

[00:13:43] Well, we get down to Joseph and again, he is replaced by a slaughtered goat. So it associates him with an offering and in particular, along with a pattern that associates with him, with the goat for Yahweh in the day of atonement. Meanwhile, Joseph is also the goat for Azazel and this is the first time we have both goats overlapped on the same character.

[00:14:07] It's going to be significant and you'll see why in just a minute, because he is the one that is exiled out. And so at this point we have four brothers that have some atoning connotations applied to them and three that have been associated with offerings that are going to atone for the elect community.

[00:14:27] So, Joseph's exile, that is the beginning of his exodus as well. So, for the first time we have a brother who is both goats for the Day of Atonement, who is also about to go through an exodus. And in the midst of that exodus, we see this death and life theme show up again as Joseph goes to the pit, which has been noted as a sort of a metaphor that ties to Sheol or death throughout scripture. So he goes into the pit, he's brought back out. He goes further into his exile and again, he finds himself in the pit again in prison after he's falsely accused and then he is brought back out again.

[00:15:04] So we have again, another goat f or Yahweh brother who is associated with an offering, with a sin offering, and has death and life, the motifs, applied to him.

[00:15:17] So at this point in the narrative, we should be expecting that this se this elect one that is the, the goat for Yahweh is going to become a sin offering perhaps, and perhaps die and rise again, just maybe.

[00:15:33] So let's continue on through. discussing Joseph and really just bring this home, and then we can continue discussing how we see Jesus in this, because I think it does become very explicit. And so Joseph, in his first bit of the exile, he goes and becomes a slave in Potiphar's house, and there is one thing in that house that he is not supposed to touch, even though he has authority over everything else, and he says that much to Potiphar's wife, that that's the one thing he can't touch.

[00:16:01] So this, for Joseph, is a test that he passes. If only Adam and Eve had said the same thing, this is the only thing I'm not supposed to touch, I'm not gonna do it. And so, again, that lands him further in the pit, and he is It's brought out of that by Pharaoh, ultimately, and Pharaoh, he, in this story, surprisingly plays the role of, of God.

[00:16:22] That's going to sound weird, but he does some things that only God does throughout this story. And so I think, literarily, the author is trying to show Pharaoh is playing a role that is supposed to portray God for Pharaoh and set Joseph up as a new Adam all the more.

[00:16:39] Whenever Joseph is brought out of his test and out of his exile and he's given Exodus, it's not so much back to the land of Canaan, but it's more so into a literary Yahweh's presence, being Pharaoh.

[00:16:53] So, Pharaoh, he brings him out, he gives him, authority, he gives him some garments that only show up again in the priestly adornment. , he makes him a priest as well as a king, second in command of all the land. He renames him, just like God names the things he has created, gives him a new purpose.

[00:17:11] He gives him a wife, which Yahweh does for Adam. And then there is one thing in all his authority, in all the land, that is not to be touched, and that's the throne. And so again, we have Pharaoh set up here, as God essentially, literarily, in this story. There's also the fact that Joseph shaves himself, and the last time that we've seen shaving in the Genesis narrative is the fact that, whenever Jacob and his family, they shave themselves to prepare to meet God.

[00:17:40] It was an act of cleansing. It doesn't appear again until we get to the Nazirite vow, where a person shaves themselves to dedicate themself to God. really this should just make us like, Oh, wait a minute. Joseph is doing something that he only does for God, for Pharaoh. Not to say that Pharaoh is God in the Egyptian mythological sense, but literally he is back in the service of Yahweh.

[00:18:05] And so now, with all this put together, with the Exodus motif climaxing in Joseph, with the Two Goats motif climaxing in Joseph, we get a picture of a dying and rising Chosen One who has gone through an exodus, he's been tested and passed, and then he goes on to test his brothers and refine them to lead them through their own exodus, as you'll see, if you read the book they go through their own exodus out of the famine in Canaan to his presence.

[00:18:32] He then goes on to save his family and saves the nations. And then he continues on as a priest and a king for God he has all in his command. He's given a bride, just like Adam. He is both a sin offering for his people and he is the one who bears the sins of his people by the two goats motif being applied to him.

[00:18:55] So kind of a long list, but I'm hoping that that list sounded familiar.

[00:19:01] Carey Griffel: Ah, yeah, thanks for going through all of that, because I think you really have to track through that deeply in order to really see it in Genesis, because we're so very divorced from that context of the ancient world with sacrifice and what these goats would mean and stuff like that.

[00:19:21] Now, I mean, there's points that I would kind of push back on, but a lot of those points, I don't, they're not necessarily impinging upon the entire idea. Right? So, whether or not you see purification in this way, whether or not you see the sin offering acting in certain ways, it's clear still through the narrative of the entire scriptures that Jesus is equated to certain things. And, you know, the early church has also talked about whether Jesus is supposed to be seen as that other goat. So this isn't like something brand new and different.

[00:20:01] I think this helps a lot with understanding the typology of Jesus, Which I think is the deepest kind of prophecy for the Messiah, right? Like, when we as Christians look at scripture, and we look at the New Testament, we look at the Old Testament, we go, Where's the prophecies of Jesus? And we just want to mine out, specific prophecies. And we forget that typology is also prophecy.

[00:20:28] And when you see the typology, you see the patterns, then it's very clear that it is leading up to what Jesus is doing, and that it's very complex. It's more than one thing. Jesus didn't just die to save us from our personal sins, there's much more to it than that. the imagery and the ideas have to be more because you don't see that often enough in the Old Testament.

[00:20:55] And so it's like, well, if the Old Testament is just leading up to that, it's really harder to see Jesus. If you see all of these things working together in the context and in how they would be thinking about it in their worldview, it makes a whole lot more sense.

[00:21:12] Caleb Lewis: Yeah, absolutely. I'll mention here just before I continue on that I did skip a few of those brotherly pairs.

[00:21:19] And so this occurs with all the elect ones and their brothers, but I just highlighted some high points there. But yeah, back to what you were saying with just this being a typological expectation. I think that is absolutely the biggest way that the Old Testament portrays how Yahweh is going to carry out his plan and how the New Testament looks back and sees how the Old Testament expectations are being created.

[00:21:42] And just, to give a good example here ,I think that the author of Isaiah 53, that's one of the biggest prophecies, or at least the most notable, of Jesus in the Old Testament that people will pull on. And Jim Hamilton in his book, Typology, actually makes some notes showing how that prophecy, or that section of Isaiah, is actually typologically looking back on Isaac, who is, again, part of this theme.

[00:22:08] And so, I think the author of Isaiah, he's using Isaac, but he's pulling on this, this entire theme as there is, again, an elect one who is going to rescue his people. He's not going to become a sin offering, but he's going to become a guilt offering. So we still have that a similar idea there. As to why Isaiah may have used that language instead of the language we find here, I don't know, but we do have someone who is giving himself as a sacrifice for his people. And then he is also going to, after that, still see his, people. And so there are some allusions to death and resurrection in that. And so I think that what we're seeing here, the patterns and expectations we're seeing created in the book of Genesis carry on forward through the rest of the prophetic corpus and the expectations they're trying to create in their readers.

[00:22:55] Carey Griffel: Well, and the other thing that really excites me in looking at this is the connection between the Day of Atonement and the Exodus and the Passover event, right? Because, The way that Jesus is portrayed over and over in the New Testament is as a new exodus. And yet so many people go back to the day of atonement, connecting with Jesus.

[00:23:19] And that's also there, but they're two events, right? Like, you know, they're, they're not the same event. And yet people so often connect the day of atonement with Jesus, but he died on Passover. So you know, what do you do with that? And how do you see that? And if we can kind of find ways in which these actually overlap in the Torah, that becomes much more easier to see how the New Testament authors could come to multiple conclusions like that, right?

[00:23:51] And how it's not just One thing that Jesus is doing, and it's not just one type of sacrifice that we should be looking at in order to kind of figure that out and see that typology and pattern, but it's actually multiple layers of this. So, yeah, it's good stuff, and when you're talking about Pharaoh acting as God to Joseph, it's like, well, yeah, people are going to go, wait a second, what are you talking about there?

[00:24:19] You know, that's not a cool thing to be saying, but you're talking about typology and pattern and the thematic things that are going on here. And it strikes me that That's like, it's a reversal of what happens with Moses, because Moses is supposed to act like God to Pharaoh, right? So you have like this change between what Pharaoh is and how he is interacting with the Israelites at the end of Genesis versus how Pharaoh is at the beginning of the book of Exodus.

[00:24:57] There's a massive change there, and we can see that with this kind of flip here, and that's really interesting and I think very insightful.

[00:25:06] Caleb Lewis: Yeah, and I think you see the character of Pharaoh change. So, those who have pointed out that Pharaoh, Looks like Yahweh in this section, the parallels stop as the scene changes to the narrative of Joseph being king and testing his brothers and so on.

[00:25:23] As we see Pharaoh show up again, he is being blessed by Jacob and so on. He, he kind of loses his God connotations after this point. It's just, it's just there long enough to show us not to make any statement about who Pharaoh is, but it's there more so to try and portray Joseph and say, look, this is the climax of Genesis.

[00:25:43] We started with Adam, and now we have a new Adam, someone who looks just like him. And so really Pharaoh becomes just a literary tool here to put a nice neat bow on the story of Genesis.

[00:25:55] Carey Griffel: Right. And that's why it's really important to make distinctions between what the text is in its literary structure and how it speaks to us in a literary way and what it can talk to us about as far as like salvation history, because it does both things and sometimes it kind of, you know, mixes things up like this where we're like, well, In our modern Western propositional thinking, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to us, except that it does when we tell stories.

[00:26:28] When we tell stories, we do this kind of thing all the time. We just forget that we do that once we come and read scripture.

[00:26:37] Caleb Lewis: Right. We have a certain definition of what infallible means. And so maybe we need to nuance that a little bit. And like you said, understand it in its literary light.

[00:26:45] Otherwise we discussed the exodus last time, and at the end of a lot of these exoduses, we see the elect one planting trees. We know that sacrifices have been fulfilled in Christ, and that, There are sacrifices alongside these trees in Genesis. Well, we have reason to stop sacrifices, but if we're not just reading this literarily, we don't have any reason to stop planting trees as an act of worship.

[00:27:04] So that's, that's a distinction that we can make and say this is part of the literary structure pointing us back to Eden, not commands for us to plant trees as acts of connecting with Yahweh.

[00:27:15] Carey Griffel: Right. Well, and when we think of sacrifice, we're thinking of that sacrificial system. But if you look at sacrifice as the theme that it is, and that deeper theological messaging of sacrifice as fellowship and communion with God, then we are still sacrificing, right?

[00:27:36] We give our bodies as a sacrifice to God. We commune with God through the Lord's Supper. You know, and those are.... They're not exactly the same-- they're, you know, they're not one to one correspondences, but they're continuing the theme and pattern of what we see in worship and what it looks like to to be in communion with God, what it looks like for God to dwell with us here on earth.

[00:28:04] Caleb Lewis: Right. And I don't know if you would nuance this different, but you know, the sacrifices, the end goal of those is, again, communion. And so now the cleansing, the purgation and purification has been made in Christ. And so now all that's left is communion.

[00:28:18] And even further than that, we're no longer just, you know, Joe Schmoe Israelite. We're the priests as well. So all that's left is communion, but there's also an extra step in that we are now the priests who are God's hands and feet.

[00:28:30] Carey Griffel: Right, and that connects back to the functional creation and being made new in Christ.

[00:28:37] And what does that mean? What does that look like? And how does that relate to what we read in Scripture? Because the surface level of application is... you read a scripture and you go, this applies directly to my life. And sometimes we can do that. Like God speaks to us in these ways. Absolutely. So I'm not trying to discount that kind of thing, but the deeper messaging can also apply to who we are and what we're doing and you know, how we actually structure our lives . Like, our daily walk with, everyone else, because sacrifice wasn't just about a meal with God. It was about a meal with God and with each other. And so, you know, it was about both that, you know, they like to say the vertical dimension and the horizontal dimension. It's about both things at the same time.

[00:29:27] So as far as The two goats motif and seeing that playing out throughout Genesis... I have this book that I was just reading that I've been reading over and over like this gives the documentary hypothesis for Genesis and tells you here's where the J source is, here's where the P source is and all of this and and one of the things he says in it is... Really, what he's doing is he's criticizing these motifs and saying God is a big old meanie because he chooses one and he doesn't choose the other.

[00:30:03] And so, it's really interesting because, well, he's first of all a linguist and not a bible scholar, and so he doesn't understand, I think, the culture of the time, the actual, you know, viewpoint and vantage of what people were doing and thinking about in ancient times. So it's really frustrating when you have these linguists who don't have any of that context. Don't understand that worldview at all, and they're trying to separate the text out into these different sources. It doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. You can't do one or the other. You got to do both because they're so integrated, you know, and so it's like God isn't trying to be a big meanie in choosing one over the other, because like we've talked about in our last episode, there is still blessing that is going on.

[00:30:54] There is still reaching out by Yahweh to the people who are exiled and who are not in God's favor. You know, it's like, when you first notice that Cain doesn't get The death penalty, even though he murders, you're like, well, he should have been killed, right? Like, isn't that the law? Well, we don't see that until after the flood and He's instead given protection like you said and that's a really important point to notice I think.

[00:31:26] Caleb Lewis: Yeah, and we see that throughout the the story as well because we have Lot who, rather than doing something wrong necessarily and then being exiled, he is self exiled. He decides that that stuff over there that's outside of the promised land That's not part of Yahweh's blessing or apart from his elected community, I want that stuff over there. And Even despite that, he is protected by Yahweh. And then all of these goat for Azazel brothers, they all do something wrong, Even including Joseph I would say, But yet, God shows grace to them.

[00:31:57] The whole goal is not to say, okay, you're the goat for Azazel brother who's being cast out and I hate you. It's rather for now, you need to go out that way. I'm going to multiply you into a nation, make you fruitful and multiply, give you that Edenic blessing in some ways, with the hopes that the goat for Yahweh , his family is going to continue until we get to that climactic one who both goats land on one character and he is going to Bring the goat for the other goat for Azazel families, quote, unquote, back and be one big family under Yahweh.

[00:32:30] And so that's a big distinction to make and I think that you miss the point whenever you really when you just don't understand all the all the themes and motifs that this is all for the purpose of redemption, not for Just picking and choosing and hating people for no reason and favoriting people. It's it's all part of redemption

[00:32:49] Carey Griffel: Yes, yes, yes, like I've been talking about in my recent flood episodes. If you're looking at God as a big old meanie who's trying to judge people and he's just angry all the time at everything that you're doing wrong. You're gonna see everything so very differently than if you see him as the loving father who is bringing people together instead of separating them out permanently, right?

[00:33:15] And the entire point of separating out is to bless people and to try and bring them back, right? So, you know, Cain had options. Like, he could have turned to Yahweh and asked for forgiveness and repented, right? Like, in that sense of turning back to Yahweh. We don't see him doing that. Instead he moves into the wilderness.. He just broods into What he sees as punishment instead of seeing God trying to bring him back and yeah So, you know you have your choices. You can go one direction or the other and we see that happening.

[00:33:55] Caleb Lewis: We have interesting examples as well with, I think, Jacob and Esau I think is one of the most interesting stories because Everything that you that you expect because of what's happened beforehand in Genesis, it's flipped on its head. Because, you know, you have Jacob who looks more like a serpent than not. And then by the end of the story, we see Jacob, he's, he's come a long way. But he's still deceiving. He still looks a lot like the serpent in some ways. And we have Esau, who actually is a pretty stand up character and is actually loving to his brother.

[00:34:23] And he does play the role of the goat for Azazel as Jacob is brought closer to Yahweh and he goes out. But Esau, unlike the others, he doesn't go out because of a, a failure. Him and his brother part ways in peace and it's, it's a kind of a good thing, but he still plays that role. So that there can be a lot to, to meditate on there with you know, this isn't again a punishment or always a negative thing, but this is a literary motif that's being built to point us to our future redemption.

[00:34:51] But there's also a lot of reversals in that story. So there, there can be a lot to unpack in that story as we see God working with such upside down characters.

[00:35:01] Carey Griffel: Right, and very often, I see people kind of latch on to the theme of Esau, and they only want to see the negative aspect, right? And so they're like, well, look at all of these nations and all these other people who are correlated to Esau, and God hates them, and they're God's enemies.

[00:35:20] Well, yes. But what Genesis is bringing out is how we're supposed to read the rest of Scripture. Like that, like this is our lens to see who Esau is supposed to be. And it's not that, you know, until the end of time, Esau is going to be the enemy. He's not supposed to be the enemy till the end of time.

[00:35:46] That's not the goal. That's not the direction it's supposed to head. So if Israel does its job, quote unquote, then they're going to be coming back together and that is what we should be seeing. So if you look at the theme of Esau and you go, well, this is the seed of the serpent and we're just going to keep digging into the seed of the serpent pattern instead of seeing the reversal of the seed of the serpent pattern and focusing on that, then we come away with scripture with two very different types of reading in my estimation.

[00:36:22] Caleb Lewis: Oh, absolutely. And if I can, you know, digress onto a little tangent about that too, that I think is really becomes beautiful that that that phrase, Jacob I've loved and Esau I've hated that's not from Genesis.

[00:36:35] Jacob is chosen in Genesis, but that phrase is from, I believe it was Micah it's in the, in the book of the 12, where the prophet is trying to make the point that, I have shown loving loyalty to you because you've been such a horrible nation, and I have, you're still a nation, I've made you persist through time. However, Edom, they attacked you, and so I used other nations to decimate them. And so, he says Esau there as a locution referring to Edom as a whole. But then, even in Obadiah, it says, I'm going to leave a remnant of them to fold into the elect family. And then what do you have in the New Testament? You have Iudemeans, which is Greek for Edomites, believing in Jesus.

[00:37:15] And so they are being folded into the family. They're not someone who is just eternally hated. It's just a rhetorical point being made in a verse that gets co opted for some bad things. But he loves both goats. He loves both communities. He wants the seed of the serpent to become a part of the seed of the woman's family.

[00:37:31] That's why we have Pharisees believing in Jesus. And I mean, , there's no clear genealogical boundary lines built into your DNA. It's all about where are your loyalties.

[00:37:42] Carey Griffel: Exactly, absolutely, and that's why it matters that we can see the scripture in its whole picture and this lens of the Christological reading of seeing the love of God and the bringing together of everything. And it's fascinating that you don't have to get to the New Testament to see that. You see it directly in Genesis and in what's going on with, everything in Genesis.

[00:38:09] Now one thing we haven't talked about is Sarah and Hagar and That one has, I really enjoyed that part of your book, because it's not talked about very often in a sense of it being its own narrative and not just folded under the narrative of Abraham and Isaac.

[00:38:30] Caleb Lewis: Yeah, Hagar's story is really cool because Her story is actually a very inverted Exodus. So, on the one hand, you have Sarah and Hagar. They kind of fold in with their sons as the goat for Yahweh and the goat for Azazel. And as Hagar and Ishmael are being exiled out, He is playing the role of the goat for Azazel, and meanwhile, Hagar she's kind of continuing her previous exodus from chapter 16.

[00:39:00] So, in that we have Sarah and Abraham, they become the elect family who are now oppressors. And Yahweh hears the cries of Hagar and of her son later, and she gets blessings of being fruitful and multiplying. And so she gets brought out of this oppressive situation and given Edenic blessings and promises, or at least similar to the Edenic Blessings and Promises, they're not exactly the same, for good reason. That she's going to become a multiplied nation.

[00:39:27] In chapter 21, as she is finally sent out of the camp for good, she continues her previous exodus and is delivered to her own place to dwell along with , her son who plays the role for the goat for Azazel.

[00:39:40] And so she does have her own complete story there. She's not just kind of a side character, but we see really in that, I think a lot of God's grace and care for one, the sojourner but also the average person who's in the camp and even being cut off from the camp. And so there's, there's a lot of different scenarios and types of people and situations we find in the Exodus and intermingled with these different goat motifs. But in them we consistently see God's love for the most important to the most random person.

[00:40:11] Carey Griffel: I love how you point out in your book that Ishmael may have actually been the promised seed, like they were kind of going along the track of, okay, well, I guess we have our offspring now, because a lot of people read our later understanding of what happens next, back into what's going on in these earlier chapters before Isaac comes along. And we go, well, of course they were still expecting Isaac! But they weren't. They weren't expecting Isaac. Sarai wasn't mentioned originally, and in the ancient context, if Abram was going to have a child with a concubine, that child could still be a legitimate offspring. It's not like we're thinking today, whereas, oh, his legitimate offspring could only have come from Sarai.

[00:41:00] That's actually not the case in the ancient context. Ishmael really could have been his offspring that perpetuated the seed. But that's not what we see, but we don't see it until after some things happen with Sarah and Hagar.

[00:41:16] Caleb Lewis: Yeah, I mean, from, from Genesis 12 on, we, we should be slightly suspecting that Sarah's going to be the the wife that bears the elect's son because she's been through an exodus, but we're not told that explicitly.

[00:41:27] And whenever she wrongs Hagar, we could be even thinking like, oh, there's a reversal going on here. She's fallen out of favor and maybe Hagar is going to be the new one because she's got a kid and then she gets out into the wilderness and she gets some Eden like blessings. And so maybe she's becoming the, the top, the top wife. It's a very weird and terrible phrase, but stick with it for now. And so Abram, he goes on and he, I think he believes like this is, this is the son.

[00:41:54] And that's why we get to in Genesis 17, whenever we're told, no, Sarah is going to have the son, Isaac is going to be your chosen son, who's going to carry forward the promises. He says, no, but what about Ishmael? Why can't he do it? Because up to this point, that's, that's what he's expecting. There's been nothing really in the narrative that has conclusively led us to believe that Ishmael is not going to be that son.

[00:42:17] And so there's a lot of just literary tension that's going on in the story. If, you know, if we could go back and just read it for the first time again, there are a lot of twists and turns. And up to this point, we do know that God has created the world. And so we have that pointing to the fact that, yeah, he could have a child come out of barren Sarah, but we don't know that explicitly and Abraham and Sarah definitely don't know it. But then we get to Genesis 21 and the author puts this story in another sister fib story where she has given Exodus out.

[00:42:49] But in the midst of that story, we see that, at the end of it, Yahweh has closed and opened the wombs of all of Abimelech's women in his house. And so. In that we learned that okay, not only hypothetically, but definitively, God has power over the womb. And so now we're really queued up to expect that there's going to be a new son from Sarah that is going to bear the promises of redemption.

[00:43:14] Carey Griffel: Right. And this kind of helps clarify why we have two things going on, one after the other. We have two covenants being mentioned with Abraham, along with the fact that Hagar has kind of a reversal of an exodus, we also have that reversal of expectation with Sarai versus Hagar, because quite often it is the second one who is the chosen one.

[00:43:40] And here, in this case, it's not. So that probably really, it's not like a side point. It's not a mistake. It's not just, well, this is the way it was, like there's a real definitive literary purpose to the fact that this is reversed, and it's very different from the other patterns.

[00:44:01] Caleb Lewis: Yeah, I think it continues a pattern Previously in being patient in the land where you know, , we've discussed that I think Abraham going to Egypt was a fall moment where I think he should have stayed in the land. As he tells his servant later when he goes to get Isaac's wife, he should have stayed in the land and trusted that Yahweh's gonna provide. Here again, he should have remained with his true wife and not taken a concubine and waited for God to bring life out of death. Again, really.

[00:44:30] Carey Griffel: Right. , we have Yahweh stepping in and going, okay, you guys are trying to screw this all up, but we're still on the path. I'm going to still make this happen. And let me assure you again, that I'm going to make this happen. And let me be more specific about it. This is how it's going to happen.

[00:44:49] And if you look at the differences between the two covenants that Yahweh has with Abram and Abraham. It's really interesting the differences you see with, like, the names of God, and It's a process of Abraham understanding better who God is. , along with the testing, we have the growth of knowledge and experience and understanding and relationship with God.

[00:45:16] so the point of testing is to literally test the person and to test their loyalty, but it's also like, exile... to be a blessing to the person, to grow in their faith, to grow in their understanding of God. You know, and if you read something like the book, Abraham's Silence, and talking about how, What was Abraham's expectation of the sacrifice of Isaac? And how did that fit with his current understanding of how the gods relate? And how that whole situation completely flipped everything that Abraham knew about the way deities involved themselves with mankind on its head. And suddenly, Abraham knows so much more about who God is and what his promises literally mean in his life and in salvation history as a whole.

[00:46:11] Caleb Lewis: Yeah, that's one I've, I've not read yet. I need to... be a very, a very good one to see, especially the connections to Job that he makes, but yeah, there's so much in the stories that these expectations, these motifs, these patterns are so many expectations that are being created and changed, subverted to teach us to think with the wisdom of the author, to be able to take, you know, 20 different situations that he has given us with different outcomes and nuances, characters, and consistency in the reactions of, of Yahweh in the way that he deals with these things and nuance where there's needed, and then we can look at our world, here and now, and see both the similarities and differences and think, If I were in the biblical story, what would happen? What should I do? What is God going to be like? And that's not a perfect black and white answer for every situation, but it's wisdom, it's helping us think with the wisdom of God's inspired author. And I think inform our hope as well, make, make us more focused on the future hope.

[00:47:14] And I think that's the biggest thing. I think that scripture is definitely there to teach us how to live righteously. That is one of its main functions, but it's other main function is to inform our hope. And that's what these patterns do as well.

[00:47:26] Carey Griffel: Right. And teaching not in the sense of, Here's all of the laws and here's the moral patterns you have, because I mean, obviously, we don't have the moral pattern of marrying multiple wives today and things like that.

[00:47:42] So you know, you have to understand it in context in relation to the process of history and how, just because it's here in the text doesn't mean that everything about it is Yahweh approved, so to speak. Like, he doesn't have a stamp of approval on this particular special culture that was created to be a culture just for him.

[00:48:08] No, it's a real culture in real time, and God is dealing with that and moving things forward so that we can better understand him with everything that happens and everything that transpires.

[00:48:23] Caleb Lewis: Yeah, absolutely. Just like, I mean, Sarah and Hagar, we've already talked about, that was culturally acceptable, but obviously Yahweh had other plans and wished that they would have done different, and he still brought good out of the ruin and chaos that they created through that wronging of Hagar.

[00:48:40] Carey Griffel: Right. And a better, a better Understanding of who he was. Now, with who Hagar is and who she represents as the nation of Egypt.... you know, if somebody is reading this back in biblical times, they'd be really thinking about the nation of Egypt and their relationship to the nation of Israel. So let's talk a little bit about how nations relate to these themes and how that kind of plays out.

[00:49:08] Caleb Lewis: Yeah, definitely. I mean, we can start with that one because that's a great example where Israel, they remember their history of, well, we used to be slaves in Egypt. And so here in this story, there are now the elect family, , our fathers are, you know, Abraham and Sarah, they are wronging an enslaved Egyptian.

[00:49:27] Well, that's rich, you know, that's, that's ridiculous. And so in that we're able to see like, oh, So, God gave her exodus out of the oppressive hands of our forefathers and really just turn it on its head and show, I mean, really what Jesus has been saying all along of like, just because Abraham is your father, it means nothing.

[00:49:47] It's about where are your loyalties? And he cares for all of them, those who are his elect and the nations. And the elect are instruments to redeem the nations. It's not like you're the special chosen people that just get all the goodies and all the love and everybody else is hated. I think the story really would wrap its arms around an Israelite and, you know, point to this story and say, look, we, we don't like this Egyptian.... Oh wait, God does care for her.

[00:50:11] That's significant. That would change their views on some things. But we have other nations throughout the story that Abraham continually finds himself in connection with, and they're very significant. First, you have the Amorites in Genesis 13, and some translations will say that they were his friends, Abraham's friends, or have something like that, but literally they were owners of a covenant with Abraham.

[00:50:33] Again, we see Abraham making a covenant with Abimelech right before he goes up the mountain with Isaac in Genesis 22. So there at the end of Genesis 21, we see him again making peace with the nations. And both of these scenarios, too, in Genesis 13 and 21, we've just been through an exodus previously, we've been through a brotherly testing narrative, and then we get to this episode where the Elect One is making a covenant with the nations, and it takes place at these very Edenic looking spots with trees and sacrifices, and there's just a lot of connotations that bring us back to Eden.

[00:51:10] So whenever we see the nations coming to be at peace with one another, and also with the Elect One, and benefiting from Yahweh's blessings on them, and even with Abimelech explicitly saying like, I see Yahweh is with you. And you gotta remember that's, that was the goal of the exodus in the book of Exodus.

[00:51:27] The nations have seen God's blessing on the elect one, and now the nations are being brought to the elect one to share in Yahweh's blessings. So again, we, we just see the pattern of like, the goal has never changed. The method has never changed. Yahweh is continually using these patterns to bless the elect one, to bring 'em through exoduses, to give them promises so that the nations will be drawn to them and they will be saved through this elect one. It happens over and over and over again in different ways.

[00:51:55] Carey Griffel: I like how you bring out the different ways that Abraham deals with different kings, right? So, you have the situation with rescuing Lot, and how Abram's like, I'm not going to profit from this from you, because that would indicate some sort of relationship and you guys aren't the kind of people I want to be in relationship with.

[00:52:18] Whereas you have the situation with Abimelech and that's very different than the situation we have with those kings and also with Sodom as well. So there's those themes of understanding where the nations are in relation to their standing with yahweh, and how they can try to be in relationship with the people of God, but the people of God are going to only do that in the right ways, or at least, They're only supposed to do that in the right ways, right?

[00:52:51] Caleb Lewis: Yeah, with Abimelech, you have him coming to Abraham and saying, hey, I've seen God's blessing on you. I want to be your friend and we're gonna live in, it says, Chesed, in loving loyalty with one another. They're, they're looking out for each other's good. Whereas with Sodom, and then you get this on repeat with the Hittites, whenever Abraham is trying to find a tomb for Sarah, each of them, they want to Give a quote unquote blessing to Abraham so that in that culture he will be beholden to them. I've given you a gift now you in some way you owe me. You owe some kind of allegiance or favor or whatever it may be.

[00:53:25] And so there it's not, hey We're going to dwell in loyal love with one another, it's I'm going to Basically turn you into my vassal. Gonna make you owe me tribute and owe me your allegiances. And Abraham in both of those situations is Going to make clear, if it's going to be to my expense, I'm going to make it so that I owe no one anything. I only owe my allegiances to Yahweh. I will not be beholden to anyone else who is trying to extort my allegiances because my entire calling is for him

[00:53:57] Carey Griffel: And the whole situation about Abraham buying the plot of land for Sarah's burial, that's really a fascinating little insight into all of that, plus the fact that, There's the admission that there was going to have to be conquest of the land, but Abraham was not the one to do that.

[00:54:18] Caleb Lewis: Right, yeah, at this point he's just to dwell in the land, and we've already had the promise from Genesis 15 that the people are going to be blessed and multiplied in slavery, in the exodus of Israel. we already have that expectation. There are some foreshadowings of the conquest in Genesis, and even some promises that they will come back and subdue, but that's not to be right now.

[00:54:40] In Genesis 15, 16. We learned that because of Abraham's friendship under a proper translation his friendship with the Amorites, god is forestalling that calamity that will come on them until well after his life is over, so that those he has made covenant with he can maintain loyalty with them.

[00:55:00] Carey Griffel: Again, it's like the first and second pattern. You have the first thing going on. It's not going to see its fruition until the second comes along. Like you see Adam and Jesus, you see, David and Solomon with the building of the temple, you know, you have one thing going on and you'd think that they could just continue on and do the thing, but they don't.

[00:55:23] It's in God's providence that some of it has to wait to be fulfilled. it's really a fascinating and kind of frustrating theme for us, I think. It's like, well, couldn't God just have, fixed it all, and then not waited and not had all of this calamity. And, but I think a lot of that has to do with the blessing of exile and what that does to people and , the formation of who people can be because of that.

[00:55:51] Caleb Lewis: Yeah. You really get to the end of Genesis and you wish that that was the end of the book because, at the Bible as a whole, because you wish that it could have just been Joseph that, okay, he is finally going to be this one that bears all these. But the story has to continue. God's not done working with humanity, growing them, blessing them and sending his divine son, himself, in Jesus sending, this is a different conversation, but I think the angel of the Lord in the person of Jesus... but at least the patterns of the book, they're designed to at least give us an expectation of like, okay, there is going to be someone who brings his family together.

[00:56:25] Someone who is going to both bear our sins and be a purification for us. He's, he's going to refine us. He's going to defeat the gods. He's going to bring us out of The wilds and waste, out of the formless and void, out of the chaos and the oppression. And he's going to bring us into his space to reinstate us as priest kings, as he has full authority over everything under God's hand.

[00:56:47] Carey Griffel: And so often we're like, can't you just perfect me right now, God, isn't that the point? or I'm just going to wait till I get to heaven and then I'll be perfect. Whereas, just in our lives, just like in these themes in Scripture and what we see, it's the trials and being in exile with the ultimate hope of the real final exodus.

[00:57:11] And that is part of us becoming who we are and being perfected in God. I can't make this stuff up because like, I would just, you know, put it really neatly with bows on top and everything. And yet God is wading into the messiness of humanity and seeing how we are so rebellious and we're so contrary and yet God's so patient with us and he carries us along in all of these difficult times, even though we can't see where it all ends, except through the lens of Jesus. And you know, thank God, like, praise God that we do have that today for our hope and our promise, because it can get really hard. And it's hard to live out our lives in this time where we have so much strife and struggling.

[00:58:04] But that's also built into what Jesus did, right? Like, if it was just about his death, he could have been killed as a baby, and there you go, right? But no, he lived an entire life of suffering and servitude and you know, part of what we're supposed to be looking at with Jesus is that parallel of his humanity and our humanity, his understanding of who we are, what we're going through.

[00:58:30] And we're not alone in that. And God himself came to dwell and partake in that. Like if, if it's just about a substitutionary death and we just leave it at that, We're missing out on this beauty of what it means to be a Christian and to be the image of Christ. Living in suffering and our own exiles to lead to the exodus that we're gonna have.

[00:58:58]

[00:58:59] Caleb Lewis: Even the initial creation, you know, it was still we had the garden and outside of that was Eden that was not garden. Then we had the wilderness and then the the sea, the chaotic ruin of the sea. And so all of this has not been quote unquote, we imagine is perfect from the beginning, but it's always been the process of God turning the ruin into good.

[00:59:17] And so now Jesus has come and reinstated us as new Adams, new priest Kings who can fulfill the calling. And now it's, it's no longer, you know, at least , literally, the waters that need to be subdued, but rather it's the nations need to be subdued and not with, you know, armies, but with the gospel, with recognizing his kingship and all of us joining together to continue to expand his good into the ruin.

[00:59:41] Carey Griffel: Absolutely. It's such a beautiful picture when you can see it like that.

[00:59:46] Caleb Lewis: Yeah, definitely. That's, it's been a big help to me to reframe it in those terms and to understand that that's the, the worldview that Genesis is starting with.

[00:59:54] Carey Griffel: All right. Well, is there anything else you wanted to make sure to bring out in the two goats motif to make sure we get that kind of cemented in our minds?

[01:00:04] Caleb Lewis: Yeah really, so the two goes motif is a lot simpler than the Exodus motif. And so we've really covered it. I think the biggest thing is just to come away with the way that the Exodus motif and the two goes motif work together. And one show a lot of grace in a lot of different ways. But it, it also climaxes in Joseph to have a category for someone that bears all the redemptive actions and silhouettes that are born out in these motifs and these patterns. And so really it just from very early on in the Bible, from the first book, we are left with a, Not a explicit, exact prophecy of all the details of who Jesus is, but we have a silhouette of this seed of the woman that Jesus very neatly fits into.

[01:00:53] Carey Griffel: Yes, yes. And that's what I love, is, it's so much harder for us as Christians to see that, I think, because we're so used to just seeing Things one dimensionally, right? But when we understand Genesis ends with the idea of the Messiah, and the pattern of the Messiah, and what that looks like, and how that's gonna play out into the further reading of what the Torah is and the center of the Torah, which is the Day of Atonement, and all of these things would have been so integral to the identity of the ancient Israelite, and th that's kind of what we need to be grasping for and trying to get our heads around.

[01:01:34] Caleb Lewis: Absolutely. Yeah. It's, not just a book about just an old story, but it's filled with a lot of hope for us today. Even as we think about how these things are found in Jesus, how these patterns climax in Jesus, there are some things that the New Testament writers, they capitalize on certain parts of this motif, but they didn't capitalize on all of it. And so there's some things that we can even learn about the pattern Jesus fits into through seeing the patterns of the Old Testament that expect him and anticipate him.

[01:02:01] Carey Griffel: Yeah. And I don't think that's a matter of eisegesis. It's a matter of God's wisdom, right? Sitting with the text and letting it speak to us because, I mean, like Luke in his gospel said, there's many more things about Jesus that weren't written.

[01:02:17] And so there's more things we can think about. There's more patterns we can see. It's essential, of course, that we make sure that what we're seeing is absolutely centered in Jesus, in God working in the world, and in what we see in the meaning of the text. But that is the beauty of the literary design, because we know it's so embedded in here, and we know that it's so beautifully designed.

[01:02:43] And, however you see source criticism and the compiling of scripture and the dating --, none of that really matters when you're looking at it from a canonical perspective and saying, look, this was actually designed literature and this was designed for a certain purpose in order to see God. And that's the beauty of it.

[01:03:06] Caleb Lewis: Yeah. The story on repeat is not the same boring redemption a hundred times over, but rather it's a hundred different ways to see redemption and teach us to see it in our own world.

[01:03:17] Carey Griffel: Yes. Beautifully said. All right. Do you want to go ahead and make sure everybody knows where to find you and especially where to find your book?

[01:03:26] Caleb Lewis: Yeah, absolutely. , through the waters of biblical theology of the book of genesis, you can find it at Wipf and Stock's website, They're the publisher. It's also on amazon, barnes and nobles... it's on quite a few platforms now So hopefully it should be pretty easy to find wherever you like to get your books at.

[01:03:42] And You can also find me on our Facebook page for the Bible in Context podcast discussion group, and you can also check out that podcast. The description has some other contact information if you ever wanted to reach out, share some thoughts or anything.

[01:03:56] Anyone who leaves a review, thank you very much for the book. That always helps get it out there, and if you think it's, it's helpful for the way you read Genesis and the rest of your Bible yeah, appreciate that information being shared so that others know that this is a book worth picking up and informing their biblical study.

[01:04:12] Carey Griffel: Absolutely, I definitely encourage everyone to grab a copy and sit with it and meditate with it. It's a lot of information. It's a very data heavy book, and that's good, but it might be a little bit deceptive because it looks kind of thin, but then you start reading it and you go, well, it's going to take me a while to get through to really get the meat and goodness from it.

[01:04:37] Yeah, so, so much goodness from this. Thank you, Caleb, for joining me for this conversation. I really hope this is not going to be our only discussion, because I think this is really exciting stuff to talk about, and I think you've got some good insight, and some really just deep, deep things that It's so much fun to talk about this stuff. Like this is the kind of Bible study I enjoy, just talking with people and seeing the themes and patterns and especially centering that on Jesus. So thank you, Caleb, so much.

[01:05:10] Caleb Lewis: I've really enjoyed getting to think alongside you and just have a discussion. I'm looking forward to doing it again.

[01:05:16] Carey Griffel: Awesome.

[01:05:17] Thanks, everyone, again, as always, for listening to the podcast, and I really appreciate those of you who share the content, and if you're interested in hearing more from Caleb, make sure to check out his podcast, and also check out his interview that he was on recently as well at Answers to Giant Questions.

[01:05:38] Thank you for all of you who support me in the various ways that you do, especially if you're supporting me financially to help me get all of the resources and things that I can do in order to share the content that I share here at Genesis Marks the Spot. And if you want to contact me, you can find me on Facebook, you can find me in my discussion group. You can find me on my website at GenesisMarksTheSpot. com where you can contact me or find guest profiles and blog posts and all kinds of other stuff. So, all right, well, we'll go ahead and wrap things up for this week and I wish you all a blessed week and we will see you later.