Esay

English Final

1: Throughout the Bible, many sibling relations draw the reader’s attention, primarily brotherships. In both the story of Jacob and Esau and Cain and Abel, the birthright of the eldest son induces conflict. The theme of jealousy-induced actions appear in both of these stories. In the case of Jacob and Esau, Esau, the first born, needs to follow the tradition of the eldest brother gets the birthright. However when “his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau's heel; so he was named Jacob” Genesis 25:26. Conflict arose, the fact that Jacob’s birth included the part of trying to pull Esau back in to the womb portrays Yahweh’s opinion on the firstborn child’s set in stone blessing. Jacob ends up with the blessing after Rebekah tricks her husband into blessing Jacob. In the story of Cain and Abel, Abel becomes upset that Yahweh accepts Cain’s offering and not his and kills his brother. Cain, like Esau being the first-born causes conflict between the siblings.

Both of these stories teach what happens when jealousy influences two people. Jacob becomes jealous of Esau’s birthright and so he tricks his blind father. Cain becomes jealous of Yahweh’s favoring of Abel and so Cain murders Abel. In the Bible Yahweh looks down on Humans acting with these bad emotions controlling them. It contrasts the rules for the people and Yahweh’s rules for himself. It shows that only Yahweh, when consumed in bad emotions like rage, jealousy or anger rightfully murders people, this causes much debate between readers.

2A: Within both the Bible and the Odyssey the Gods make clear that Gods needs to forever rest above Humans. In Exodus 9:16 Yahweh states “But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may ...

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... like yet another example of being given a task that in Yahweh’s eyes the person seems not complete well enough, this time loosing the reward of the promise land. The only way to end up successful in the bible becomes to please Yahweh. It seems hard to understand why Yahweh chose not to let Moses into the promise land after Moses completed every task Yahweh told him to. An example being 7: 1-5 God told Moses, “Look at me. I’ll make you as a god to Pharaoh and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. You are to speak everything I command you, and your brother Aaron will tell it to Pharaoh. Then he will release the Israelites from his land.” 7: 10 “Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did what God commanded.” Nevertheless in some way Moses failed to complete the task well enough and therefore readers need not to look to Moses as an example of success in the Bible.