Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Blessings and Curses


    A while back I wrote about blessings and mentioned that we would get into curses another day.  Well, today is that day.  It seems like blessings and curses go hand in hand, but they are the two sides of a coin.  We down play it so much today.  Look at technology.  We say it is a blessing and a curse.  It makes our lives what it is.  It allowed most of us to work from home during the pan epidemic.  Yet we complain about how it has stopped people from being able to look each other in the eye and have a conversation.  Some of us may laugh about seeing a couple or a group of teens at a dinner table.  None of them are talking, but they are all texting, presumably to each other.  Technology is not a blessing or a curse.  It is just a factor in life that can be used for the positive or the negative.
    When Israel was dying he began his blessings with Joseph and especially Joseph's sons.  Then he gathered all his other sons.  They did not have privacy.  It left them all as witnesses to attest through the generations to the validity of the inherited blessings and curses.  He also began the outline of where their property lines would be.  These blessings and curses that he gave that day carried on until they stopped being Israelite tribes and became the Jewish nation.  I personally think they continued until Jesus.
    Reuben was blessed with strength and power, but he since he defiled himself by sleeping with Israel's concubine he was also cursed to not excel.  Simeon and Levi were warriors with a vicious nature, so they were cursed by anger.  The curse was to be scattered.  Judah was blessed to become the family leader, to be praised and to be obeyed. Zebulan was blessed to become a seaman next to Sidon.  Issachar was blessed with strength, but cursed to become a laborer.  Dan was blessed to be judge, but cursed to lead the tribes away from God.  Gad was blessed to be adaptable to survival, but cursed to be plagued by raiders (always under attack).  Asher was blessed with a green thumb: farmer and the gift of cooking.  Naphtali was blessed with children and beauty.  He would become a hunter.  
    Joseph had his own private blessing, but he was there with his brothers.  He had overcome his injustice and was blessed in front of them to be prince over them all.  Lastly, came Benjamin.  Benjamin's descendants were cursed to become savage fighters, but blessed to bring prosperity to the rest of the family.  These brothers became the fathers of the great Israelite tribes.  Israel was thorough.  He probably spent years deciding who got what curses and what blessings.  I think it was to try to keep them all together where they would need to be together to be complete.  Once he accomplished this, he died.
  A curse is a horrible power inflicted on a person, so you don't see it as often as blessings in the Bible, but they are real.  A curse influences every aspect of your life, like a blessing, but for the negative instead of positive.  Words in the Bible that can be found for curse is arar (poetic) and qalal (severe).  They were used to make light of a person, make them insignificant, or to be trifled.  A curse treats a person with contempt.  The power behind blessings and curses is supernatural.  That just means it is from God, but once spoken angels, demons, or Satan are allowed to influence what happens.  We need to be careful whom we bless or curse.  

Genesis 49

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