Wrastlin' With God

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Dan McClellan (0:29)

So there's some tradition evidently, anciently, where Israelites were like, nope, can't eat that part.

Dan Beecher (0:35)

Wait, was this by the hip? Get out of, get this out of here.

Dan McClellan (0:37)

You didn't bring me no hip meat, did you?

Dan Beecher (0:39)

I don't do hip meat.

Dan McClellan (0:45)

Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher (0:46)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan (0:47)

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things, Dan?

Dan Beecher (0:59)

Things are good. It's springtime, it's beautiful.

The leaves are on the trees, the flowers are all over the place. I don't have particularly bad hay fever right now. So I'm having a great time. How are you doing?

Dan McClellan (1:13)

I'm doing all right. The, we have a bunch of the, what are they called? Is it peach, white? No, we got some kind of trees lining our street that smell awful when they're blooming, but that's all over with. So I don't have to deal with that smell anymore.

Yeah, doing all right. What do we got on deck for us today?

Dan Beecher (1:35)

I'm excited. Today, it's all famous people. It's Bible heroes, but we're going to call the section, the segment Bible heroes? Heroes?

Question mark? Because, you know, beauty and heroics? Heroism?

Dan McClellan (1:56)

Heroism.

Dan Beecher (1:57)

Heroism, that's the one. It's in the eye of the beholder, really. And I think a lot of both of these two characters that we're going to be exploring, there are many questions. So hopefully we'll get some answers about those. So let's just dive in to our first Bible hero.

Up first, we have Jacob. Now, that is, or at least that's how he starts out the story. But by the end, I don't think he's going to be Jacob anymore. So that's going to be confusing.

And I think we can go through and sort of like, I don't think we need to tell the whole story of Jacob, but we should just give a little bit of background to the Jacob story to sort of get us to the point, because there's one point that I wanted to get to. I've been asking you to do this one for a while, because I find it odd and confusing. And I have also seen argument on the internet about what is happening. So Jacob is born into a family and his father is, you have to remind me, I'm not on the right part of the Bible.

Dan McClellan (3:19)

Oh, Isaac.

Dan Beecher (3:20)

Isaac, right. Yes, of course. Yes, Isaac.

And so, and he's got a brother named Esau, and there's a whole bunch of back and forth about who's the important brother, which goes on for basically all of their childhood, it feels like.

This is the one, he was the one that like, like one of them came out and started to, they were like twins, and one of them started to come out and got the thing. Is that, is that what, am I? Yeah, yeah. They did the string around the wrist or whatever?

Dan McClellan (3:47)

The one like grabs the heel. And that's a folk etymology for Jacob's name.

Dan Beecher (3:53)

Oh.

Dan McClellan (3:54)

So yeah.

Dan Beecher (3:55)

What's, so what do we say? What is that claim? What is the claim that the name means?

Dan McClellan (4:03)

Means to grab or follow hot on the heels of something like that. I think that's how it's, I think in later Hebrew, that's how they use the verb.

But the idea is like a supplanter or something like that.

Dan Beecher (4:15)

Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan (4:16)

But another argument is that it means may he protect or God protected or protects or something like that.

So like a lot of these patriarchal figures, there are different stories associated with different interpretations of the name. But here, I think the idea is that because the older serve the younger, the idea is supplanting. That's why the story is being told that way. But yeah, and then Jacob is, you know, that rascally supplanter goes and tricks Esau out of his birthright for, what does the KJV say? A mess of pottage or something?