Define...

So, this morning I was doing a little project for my devotional time. I'm going through 1Chronicles and those super LONG BORING genealogies (blah, the son of blahblah, the son of blahblahblah!) Well, I know that every part of the Bible is important so there I was trying NOT to sleep through my way through the first chapters of 1Chronicles when Dad gave me an idea: for each name write down the definitions and make a list...

Adam -- man
Seth -- appointed
Enosh -- human

and so on. I thought that'd be pretty cool (if you want to try, here's the site I used for definitions) and off I went!

I go down a couple verses and something jumped out at me (odd, considering it was a genealogy.) This may get a little technical, so I'll try to break it down...

(1Chronicles 1:8-10)
"The sons of Ham were Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan. The sons of Cush were Seba, Havilah, Sabta, Raama and Sabteca; and the sons of Raamah were Sheba and Dedan. Cush became the father of Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one in the earth."

Something funny struck me about Cush. (Remember, Ham was one of Noah's three sons? And you might remember that Nimrod build the tower of Babel.) It starts out saying that Cush is Ham's son. Nothing funny there. Then it says who Cush's sons are and moves on to Raama(h)'s sons. Nothing odd their either. BUT, then we go back -- it's like God wanted to add a footnote -- to Cush. I know that doesn't sound like much right now, but just wait.

I thought that that was a little bit weird considering that hadn't happened in the previous names, so I decided to pay a little extra attention to it. Instead of just writing down names and definitions, I decided to keep everything in the sentence.

(Before translating 1Chronicles 1:10)
"Cush became the father of Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one in the earth."

(After)
Darkness became the father of Rebellion; he began to be a mighty one in the earth."

Whoa! Like... WOW! When I saw that, I nearly jumped out of my clothes! Nimrod rebelled against God and built the Tower of Babel, but not only that, MANY people followed him. Rebellion became a "mighty one in the earth" And rebellion is surely the child of darkness.

As it turns out, this turns up EVERYWHERE in the genealogies. The definitions turn the names into sentences (I'll probably post more later.) I strongly encourage you to toy with this -- if only to make reading the son-of's more interesting ;)