The Fratricidal Impulse in Genesis
A meandering journey from Genesis to Galatians and the Sermon on the Mount
What if there really was a historical Moses who wrote the five books attributed to him around the 15th century B.C.?
For most conservative evangelicals, this is not a controversial suggestion. In fact, it is what we believe happened (although some might dispute the exact date), but since the Enlightenment, it has been a laughable assertion among scholars. According to the gospel truth of critical scholarship, there was no Moses. They believe Genesis and the other books of the Torah were scotch taped together from various sources into a fragmented unit during the time of Ezra or perhaps even later.
If someone copy-and-pasted Genesis together from various sources, then it follows that little unity should be found in the narrative of Genesis, and what unity does exist has been forced on the book like cramming puzzle pieces from different puzzles together and saying, “Voila!”
While evangelical scholars maintained faith in Mosaic authorship, many were nevertheless infected with the methodology of the critical scholars. Generally speaking, the result among evangelicals was an atomistic method of exegesis that focused so intently on the trees that many often missed the forest.
But if we accept the idea that Moses actually planned and wrote Genesis as a unified whole, how might that change the way we read Genesis? The primary result would be to find intentional and intricate unity across the book, which expresses the central themes and purposes of the author.
No Laughing Matter
One example of scholarship’s inability to read Genesis can be found in commentaries on Galatians. In Galatians 4:29, Paul writes, “But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh [Ishmael] persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit [Isaac], so also it is now.” The problem with Paul’s explanation is that Genesis 21:9 never says that Ishmael persecuted Isaac. It merely says that Sarah saw Ishmael laughing.
Since no one practicing grammatical-historical exegesis would ever interpret Ishmael’s laughter as persecution, the most influential commentators have speculated that Paul refers to extra-biblical rabbinical interpretations of the story. According to these scholars, Paul isn’t reading Genesis like those of us trained in proper grammatical and historical methods. Instead, Paul is copying the non-contextual, arbitrary interpretations of the Jewish rabbis under whom he trained as a youth.
The theory, however, doesn’t hold water. In the rabbinical literature, only a tiny minority of Jewish teachers hypothesized anything like persecution against Isaac. The view that Ishmael persecuted Isaac could hardly be the traditional Jewish interpretation, as some Galatians scholars would suggest. Secondly, rabbinical sources come centuries after Paul. While they claim to record oral traditions going back to the Second Temple period, there is no way to verify the influence of our recorded rabbinical sources on Paul’s interpretation.
Chasing down Miss Right at the airport
What do we make then of Paul’s assertion about Ishmael and Isaac? Was he an arbitrary interpreter of Scripture? Or did he perhaps read Genesis better than modern grammatical-historical exegetes?
How many times have you watched a movie or television character chase down their beloved in an airport to confess their undying love before it was too late? While the scene admittedly worked better before the establishment of TSA security, we’ve all viewed the same basic storyline worked and reworked over and over again. The reason the “chasing down Miss Right at the airport” scene works is because we know what to expect, and it both excites us to see the familiar scene again and intrigues us to see how this retelling will differ from previous versions that we’ve enjoyed.
This is what is called a “type scene.” Think of all the times in the Bible that someone meets their spouse at a well. When the scene is presented, we know what is going to happen, and we also look forward to seeing how this instance will be slightly different from the other times we’ve heard the story.
When these sort of predictable stories occur in a single book, the story teller is identifying and developing one of his main points, and one of the best places to see this is in the story of fratricidal impulse in the book of Genesis.
Cain and Abel, Again but Different
Cain and Abel. Isaac and Ishmael. Jacob and Esau. Joseph and his brothers.
The fraternal relationship is essential to the message of Genesis. Of the four fraternal relationships listed above, three of them clearly focus on the urge of brothers to kill. Obviously, Cain kills Abel. Esau would kill Jacob, except that Isaac and Rebekah send him away. Joseph’s brothers plan to kill him but instead sell him into slavery and tell Jacob that he died.
When we read Genesis as a unified whole, we see it as a story of fratricidal impulses. In every story, there is a variation on the theme, but the variation only serves to emphasize the point.
What we are missing, however, is any surface-level fratricidal impulse in the relationship of Isaac and Ishmael. But because it is a type scene—because this story is repeated over and over again in the book—we don’t need the fratricidal impulse to be on the surface. We can already read the situation.
In fact, that’s exactly what Sarah does in the story. She saw Ishmael laughing, but she knows where things are headed. It is headed in the direction that it is always headed—murder. So she says to Abraham, “Cast out the slave woman with her son” (Gen 21:10).
We live in a fratricidal world
This theme of fratricidal impulse does not come out of nowhere. It is a central theme of Genesis because it explains one of the most significant promises of God in the book—Genesis 3:15.
In a sinful world, God says there will be enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, but ultimately the seed of the woman will deliver a mortal blow to the serpent.
Cain and Abel serve as the initial interpretation of this promise. God isn’t talking about a human fear of snakes. Humanity will be divided into two spiritual families. These spiritual families do not reflect biological descent. Cain and Abel are biological brothers but not part of the same spiritual family. Therefore, Cain’s murder of Abel was completely predictable since God predicted this enmity in Genesis 3:15.
This unified reading of Genesis supports Paul’s argument in Galatians. In Genesis, we expect Ishmael to eventually make an attempt on Isaac’s life, but Sarah prevents it. Thus, Paul can say that this is the way of this present evil age. Children of the flesh—the seed of the serpent—always persecute children of the Spirit—the seed of the woman.
In Galatia, such persecution is coming via the false teaching of Paul’s opponents, which would sever the Galatians from Christ (Gal 5:4). Therefore, Paul appropriates Sarah’s own words, which saved Isaac’s life and can now save the Galatians. “Cast out the slave woman and her son” (Gal 4:30). If the Galatians will cast out the false teachers, their lives can be saved from the threat.
Anger with your brother and God’s judgment
But Galatians 4:29 isn’t the only instance of biblical authors reflecting a worldview formed by Genesis, which sees the world as a place where brothers murder. Think of Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount: “But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment” (Matt 5:22).
Why does Jesus choose specifically to call out anger against one’s brother? Certainly this could just be a general way of identifying people close to you, but if that is the case, why doesn’t Jesus choose the word “neighbor?”
Rather Jesus’ teaching echos his reading of Genesis. If you are angry with your brother, then you are liable to judgment because such action identifies you with Cain and his imitators. Anger against one’s brother is the fratricidal impulse that belongs to the seed of the serpent. Those who belong to the kingdom won’t be like Cain—offering a gift to God while harboring hostility—but as the seed of the woman, the children of God, they will instead leave their gift on the altar to make peace with their brother (Matt 5:22).
For a more in-depth examination of this theme, check out my book Persecution and Cosmic Conflict.
The Biblical Theological lens should be our default when reading and interpreting Scripture. How many themes and types are missed entirely by those who rely solely on other methods of exegesis. Hutchens proves this point again in this article.