Virginia Theological Seminary OT Prof. To read the Bible is to enter into a world shared by God and by humankind. Whereas we can say at one level that we are simply entering into the biblical world, as we open to a page of the Old or New Testament, we must also acknowledge the incredible diversity of traditions, genres, authors, historical and sociological settings, and theological agendas and motivations.
Every person seeks to find meaning in life.
If we may add another metaphor to guide and structure our journey into the biblical world of meaning-making, let us say that each verse, each passage, is one manifestation of one circle in the midst of an infinite number of concentric circles of meaning. An attempt was made to start with the smallest circles and proceed outward, with the notion in mind that in another sense, the fifth circle really ties back into the first, bringing us back to our original starting point. Several current types of criticism were used in the deveiling of circles, including form criticism, tradition-history, and historical and literary analyses. Verses 27 and 28 are crucial to our interpretation of the interaction between the two brothers, Jacob and Esau. And so Esau returns from the field to find his brother preparing food.