Wrestling with Jacob: When Trickster Tales Meet Divine Transformation

In this episode of the Scripture Study Podcast, hosts Susan Petersen and Cindy Madsen explore the biblical character Jacob, examining his moral complexities and human flaws as portrayed in Genesis. They discuss the Hebrew word "tom," recurring themes of deception, and the principle of divine measure-for-measure justice. The hosts also critique feminist biblical criticism for imposing modern frameworks onto ancient texts, using the story of Dinah and Shechem as an example. Throughout, Susan Petersen and Cindy Madsen encourage listeners to approach scripture with humility, embracing its complexity while trusting in God's transformative purposes through imperfect people.


00:00 Introduction
00:41 Jacob and the Word "Tom"
04:28 Binary Thinking vs. Biblical Nuance
09:41 Jacob’s Narrative Arc
14:51 Oral Culture and Literary Echoes
19:06 Historical and Legal Context of Birthright
25:04 Spiritual Karma and Redemption
32:02 Jacob’s Deceit and Its Consequences
42:28 Ancient Marriage and Women’s Rights Context
52:21 Power of Scripture and Personal Revelation
56:22 Selective Application and Double Standards
01:02:30 Dinah and Shechem
01:09:57 Outro and Listener Invitation

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The Scripture Study Podcast is your midweek Bible boost—designed to help you grow in understanding, confidence, and love for God’s word.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend!


Resources

Biblical Interpretation and Scholarship

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/samson-raphael-hirsch

Nahum Sarna
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/nahum-m-sarna

Walter Brueggemann
https://www.walterbrueggemann.com/

Claus Westermann
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claus_Westermann

Terence E. Fretheim (likely correct for “Frensham”)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_E._Fretheim

Ancient Literature and Parallels

Epic of Gilgamesh
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Epic-of-Gilgamesh

Isaiah 3:10–11
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/isa/3

Doctrine and Covenants 111:1
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/111

Feminist and Critical Approaches

Feminist Biblical Criticism
https://www.britannica.com/topic/feminist-biblical-criticism

Sam Walter Foss
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/sam-walter-foss

Join Us

The Scripture Study Podcast is your midweek Bible boost—designed to help you grow in understanding, confidence, and love for God’s word.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome to the Scripture Study Podcast. I am Susan Peterson. And I'm Cindy Madsen. We're so glad you're here with us. The Scripture Study Podcast is designed to be your midweek Bible boost. Let's dig in.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Welcome back to the Scripture Study Podcast. I am your host, Susan Peterson.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

And I'm Cindy Matson. Hi, Susan. Hi, Cindy. How are you? I am doing great. We have a beautiful day outside today.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Beautiful. Yeah. And we are so happy you're here to discuss scripture. And we're going to jump right into it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

So today we're going to talk about Jacob. Because we're familiar with the covenant promise extending through the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It's difficult for us when we encounter some of the really tricky and uncomfortable stories that the Bible tells us about them. Yes. It makes us really have to sit with some hard things and with a lot of human frailty and fallenness and just really acknowledge that. So in the story about Jacob, we are confronted with just such a story. It is messy, it is full of lots of human drama. And we are often tempted to see a moral polarity between the brothers. Jacob plus the covenant, which he has, equals the good guy. Esau minus the birthright which he sold equals the bad guy. But the text itself, recognizing that its human characters are complex and nuanced, presents matters rather differently, starting with this descriptive passage from Genesis 25-27, which says, And the boys grew. And Esau was a man, a skillful hunter, a man of the field. And now here is the tricky word. The Hebrew word is Tom. Okay. A Tom man dwelling in tents. So the episode begins contrasting Esau as the skillful hunter roaming in the fields and Jacob dwelling in a tent. But this apparently neat contrast has a problem, and it is in the word Tom. And that is what is describing Jacob. So we've got Issa, skillful hunter, Jacob, and here's this word Tom, Tom, as mild, or yours might say something like plain. Your translation might even say something like retiring. So he's a plain man or a mild man or a retiring man, something like that. However, in all other biblical occurrences of the word, and it is used frequently, both in its adjectival and its nominative forms, it is translated as perfect, undefiled, upright, blameless integrity, as in Job, who is described as a Tom man, a blameless man. So why in this one instance would translators choose to render the word Tom as plain or even tempered or whatever your translation says? Well, I think that it is because two verses later, Jacob barters with Esau over the birthright in an act that is shrewd, cunning, calculating. And so the author's choice of the word Tom, meaning integrity and uprightness, as a description of Jacob, seems incongruous to translators in light of his actions in getting the birthright, and two chapters later in deceiving his father Isaac to get the blessing. As moderns, we have a tendency to ascribe, like I said earlier, this moral polarity to a character where they're either all good or all bad. And I talked about this, I think, in one of our earlier podcasts, that part of it is that we're in this computer world. We're used to it's either a zero or a one. And the computer language is very binary. And so if I say zero, then somebody else thinks, oh, that means not one. But that's not it. In the ancient world, it could mean many things. They were much more multi-layered. I would say not just in the ancient world, probably right up through maybe the 18th, 19th century. We become much more binary. But anyway, I think that this introduction Well, we become binary in the way that we judge people, but no one is binary.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

No, that's just it. We're like an onion. Yeah. There are tons of layers to us. Yes, we're all on some sort of some spectrum. And some days I wake up and I'm on top of everything and I get it all done. And then some days I wake up and I think that is not today. So you're not just one way all the time. I mean, I'm consistent in my feelings and my fidelity and my loyalty. However, I'm not the same every single day.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

That's exactly it. And I think the biblical authors do a really good job at acknowledging this, right? Yeah. They give us these characters that are flawed characters, but are human and they treat them gently. In fact, I was talking to you earlier about a quote, Rabbi Hirsch. He writes this. He says, Our sages never hesitate to point out the errors and shortcomings, both great and small, of our forefathers. And precisely thus they make the Torah great and glorious, heightening its instructiveness for us. And then he goes on and he says this: he says, the Torah does not hide from us the faults, errors, and weaknesses of our great men. And this is precisely what gives its stories credibility. The knowledge given us of their faults and weaknesses does not detract from the stature of our great men. On the contrary, it adds to their stature and makes their life stories even more instructive. And I really like that because I think that for us, sometimes we think, oh, this is going to detract from them. But that's not what they thought. They thought, no, it added to it and it made the stories much more instructive. And so I think that this word, Tom, to be used to describe Jacob in the introduction is deliberate by the author. And I think he's using it to give us pause, to make us really puzzle over the nature of Jacob.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Well, and then also if you look at all of the stories where Jacob is, it points back to that, like him grabbing the forage or yeah, whatever it was. Yes. Pot the pottage, pottage, too, the foraging, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Um, him and his mother tricking his father. However, here's something I'd like to think about. Do you think God knows that Jacob is this way? Yes. And do you think God hates that about him?

SPEAKER_01 7:32

No.

unknown 7:32

No.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

God will work through the deceit.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Well, and we'll talk about that. Yeah. When I've struggled with different things, like I love to gossip. It's one of the things I like to do. I asked God one time, I said, Do you hate that I like to gossip? And the answer I got was no. However, I wonder if we could channel it into this other thing. And you will see that in his life, that it becomes this beautiful thing. And so anytime there's like someone's folly is pointed out, I don't think we're supposed to look at it as like a cautionary tell necessarily. More like, look what God can do with everything.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Yes. Yes. I love that. There's a poem, and this will speak right to this, that is one of my favorites. It's called The House by the Side of the Road, because that is what I want to be, is just this person who just lives in my house by the side of the road. Okay. It's by Sam Walter Foss. And the last stanza of the poem goes like this. He says, Let me live in my house by the side of the road, where the race of men go by. They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong, wise, foolish, and so am I. Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat or hurl the cynic span? Let me live in my house by the side of the road and be a friend to man. And I love this poem because I think that he holds all of these conflicting character traits that make us up as humans. Yeah. Just like you were saying, right? We have all of these things that are in us. And if we can just live in our house by the side of the road as we watch them go by and just love them and not, yeah, like don't be in this corner seat.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

So if we look at the story of Jacob then and we translate the word Tom as blameless, just like it is used to describe Job, we would read Jacob was a blameless man sitting in tents. Now we can look at Jacob's story as a narrative arc where Jacob starts out in a state of innocence or blamelessness. He sends and falls, he lives a bumpy life, he reconciles with his brother, he reunites with his beloved son, and he ends as an old man reenacting the blessing story. But in this case, Jacob is in the role of Isaac, blessing Joseph's two sons and conferring the birthright blessing on the younger son, but he is doing it openly and without any guile. There's no deception. It's a beautiful arc, it's a beautiful portrait of this very human person. So let's dive in more deeply, okay? Yes. In the first place, the move from innocence to a fall through deception should remind you of something. We start out innocent, and we have a fall because we've been deceived.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Yes, and like you say every time, it all goes back to Genesis 1, 2, 1.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Right, yes. It all goes back. Yes. So once again, we go back to the Garden of Eden. In the art, the garden, excuse me, Adam and Eve are the word is Arumim. So they are naked, right? They are in a state of innocence. And the serpent, so we've got Arumim, naked, and the serpent is described as Arum, crafty or shrewd. Can you hear the word play? Arumim, arum. And this creates a literary thread that many scholars see continuing into the Jacob cycle in the book of Genesis. The Jacob story does not use the exact same words as the Garden of Eden story, but it uses the same conceptual theme. So in the Jacob story in Genesis 25 through 34, the exact form, arum, which is spelled in Hebrew, there's ain, raish, and mem. And it's used to describe the serpent. And that word is not used directly to describe Jacob, but the idea and the related word play appear. So Genesis 27:35, Isaac says, Your brother came with Mirma, which means deceit, and took your blessing. So this uses a different Hebrew root. It uses a raish, a mem, and a he. The verb that this word comes from, which would be to deceive, the verb is rama, and it means to deceive, to delude, or to betray. But it overlaps conceptually with the word describing the serpent. He's a room. Now you can hear the sound patterns. Mirma, rama, arum, right? And you can also tell there's a lot of the same letters, especially the raish and the mem. And you can hear that, the RM sound. Yeah. So remember that in Genesis 25, 27, then Jacob is described as Tom, which means guiltless or upright or peaceful. Okay, this parallels the Adam and Eve story where they start out naked or innocent. But instead of repeating the same word, in this case, the text switches vocabulary, but it keeps the context. Starting in a state of moral innocence, moving to a state of fallenness due to deception. The difference is that in the Jacob story, Jacob becomes the serpent. He becomes the agent of deception. Now, a key development in the narrative will be the reversal. Jacob will get outcrafted. The crafty Jacob is going to get outcrafted by Laban in Genesis 29, when Laban swaps Leah for Rachel and he manipulates Jacob's wages. So the crafty character becomes the victim of craftiness. He also gets outcrafted by his sons, too. He will. That's exactly right. Yes. So this mirrors the Genesis 3 pattern in which deception spreads and it cycles. And what's really interesting is that in Genesis 28, when Isaac sends Jacob to find a wife from among Rebecca's relatives, in verse 5, it says, So Isaac sent Jacob on his way, and he went to Padan Aram. Now, Aroom, which means crafty and shrewd, describing the serpent in Genesis 3 and Aram from Padden Aram, which is the region that Jacob is sent to in Genesis 28. They look very similar in English, but they do not have the same Hebrew root. However, the Hebrew audience would have heard the similar sound pattern and they would have made connections. So remember that this culture is an oral meaning hearing, A-U-R-A-L, oral culture, because it is a storytelling oral O-R-A-L spoken culture. So I just use two different words, oral meaning hearing, A-U, oral meaning speaking, O-R, but they sound the same. Yeah. And they have different roots and they mean different things. But we make connections when we hear those two words, right? The same is true with an ancient Near Eastern audience. Jacob, the crafty figure in behavior, Aruum, is sent to Aram, where the deception intensifies in the Laban episode. The words are echoing each other, and there is an echo of the Garden of Eden story. So the audience is now primed for a cycle of deception. And the audience will probably be asking themselves, how is this going to play out? Yeah. Like they're ready for this, they're enjoying this, they're listening to these tales, they're thinking through things. They don't have paper scriptures. This is done orally. This the Torah is being read to them. So as you're reading, I want everybody to notice how the theme of deceit shapes not only Jacob's character art from trickster to transformed figure, but also how deceit structures the entire Jacob story. Biblical scholar Klaus Westermann talks about the narrative realism in this story. Jacob is neither idealized nor condemned outright by the author of Genesis. Instead, we watch the narrative arc as his original sin, deceit, leads him on a life journey that includes suffering, divine encounter, and gradual transformation. Scholar Nahum Sarna, he sees that although the deception is morally problematic, and the text never hides that, Rebecca and Jacob do act deceitfully. The outcome aligns with what God had already declared, that the younger would prevail over the older. So the scene reflects divine will working through human imperfection. Nahum Sarna points out that Jacob's trickery is not celebrated. Instead, it sets up his later hardships, showing a kind of moral consequence and eventual growth. And this is important because in the ancient Near East, you can find examples of what we might call trickster tales. And this type of tale is ubiquitous to folklore, like you find it in every culture. Well, often in these types of stories, the younger, weaker sibling, a clever underdog, outsmarts the elder, often winning inheritance, marriage, or status through cunning. There is a reversal of expectations or some sort of social inversion. For example, in the epic of Gilgamesh tradition, when the gods decide to destroy humanity with a flood, Inky is bound by oath not to warn humans directly. His work around deception by proxy is to speak to a reed wall, not to a human. But of course, the human overhears. So he technically doesn't break his oath, but he still saves humanity. And this is classic Inky. He obeys the letter of the law, but violates the spirit through his cleverness. And this would have been celebrated by his ancient Near Eastern audience. Well, Nahum's Sarna acknowledges the parallel of the Jacob story to a broader ancient Near Eastern trickster type of story, but he points out that while the Jacob cycle echoes this type of story, ultimately it undermines it. And this is often what the Bible does. It will take known literary forms from their surrounding culture and then subvert them. Where the ancient Near Eastern audience is meant to enjoy the role reversal of the clever underdog, the Bible often presents the story in such a way that it makes a moral judgment. Nahum Sarna also points out that beyond fiction, the Jacob story is also grounded in historical reality. He points out that there are legal cases that demonstrate that the birthright did not have to go to the firstborn son. A newsy tablet records this quote, as regards my son, Zirteshoop, I at first annulled his relationship, but now I have restored him into sonship. He is the elder son and a double share he shall receive. So he had the power to take away the birthright and give it to whoever he wanted and then restore it. A marriage contract from the town of Allah, in the extreme northwest of Syria, stipulates that the groom shall appoint a firstborn from the future sons of the present bride, even though another wife might give birth to a son first. And this document is of considerable interest to the student of the Bible in that the firstborn status is conferred prenatally and in complete disregard of any possible natural claim to the contrary. It at once calls to mind God's divine elevation of Jacob to his firstborn status, displacing the elder Esau even before birth. The actual sale of the birthright by one brother to another has a remarkable parallel in one newsy document, which provides for a man named Kurpaza to part with his future inheritance share for three sheep received immediately from his brother Tupkatila. So in the case of Jacob and Esau, in place of a written document, there is an oath, an oral oath given, which was an equally binding form of agreement in antiquity. In Isaac's final blessing, he gives an oral benediction which had the same legal validity as a last will and testament document. A Newsie court record deals with the case of Tarmia, who was involved in a lawsuit with his two older brothers who contested his right to the possession of Sululi Ishtar, a slave girl. Tarmia testified My father Huya was sick and lay on a couch. Then my father seized my hand and spoke thus to me My other sons, being older, have acquired a wife. So I give herewith Sululi Ishtar as your wife. After examining the witnesses and the contestants, the court upheld the validity of the father's disposition of his property, even though it was delivered orally. The biblical narrative has preserved this peculiarly Mesopotamian institution, even to the extent of incorporating into the text a phrase now recognized to be the Hebrew equivalent of a newsy legal formula. Isaac introduced the subject of his final blessing by saying, I am, you see, so old that I do not know how soon I may die. That's in chapters 27, verse 2. This is not just a stock phrase, because another newsy text detailing final disposition of a property similarly opens with the statement, Now that I am grown old. Isaac's words therefore had a clear socio-juridical implication. Nahum Sarna concludes by saying, this is what's so interesting to me, that these texts should arouse renewed respect for the Bible as a source of history and help to illuminate the text to an extent not hitherto possible. But they also help us to understand something of the way the narratives have been transformed to serve a higher moral purpose. There is no doubt that the way Jacob acquired his brother's birthright would not have been considered either unusual or objectionable in the context of his times. As a matter of fact, there is every reason to believe that Jacob's dealings with Esau and his father represent a stage of morality in which the successful application of shrewd opportunism was highly respected. It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that scripture should have cast the story in a mold of implicit reprobation. So again, in the biblical story, we see that even though an action may have been considered ethical, normative, or reasonable according to the prevailing culture, God says, No, these are not the ethics of my kingdom. That Jacob's behavior was not considered okay by God is reflected in an unbroken chain of his misfortunes as the direct result of his actions. And this reflects what's called Mida Kenegid Mida, or measure for measure justice. So this is a fun one. In Isaiah 3, 10 through 11, it says, Hail the just man, for he shall fare well. He shall eat the fruit of his words. Woe to the wicked man, for he shall fare ill. As his hands have dealt, so shall it be done to him. And this is a fundamental principle in Jewish thought and Talmudic tradition, referring to the concept of divine justice or poetic justice, we might say, where a person's punishment or reward is designed to correspond precisely to their actions. It's what goes around comes around.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

Spiritual karma.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

It is spiritual karma.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

Yes. Not to just seal it down to not to be disrespectful or anything like that. That's what it is. And I'm not saying it has the exact same things. I'm just saying it might be a way to start thinking about it if you're familiar with the word karma.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

In our culture, it's a really good way of thinking about it. Yeah. So this term, Mida Keneged Mida, is often used to explain that the actions a person takes create a corresponding force in the world, a spiritual law of equal and opposite reaction. For example, Pharaoh and the Egyptians, because Pharaoh ordered the drowning of Jewish babies, the Egyptian army was punished by being drowned in the Red Sea. Or Haman. Haman was hanged on the same gallows he built for Mordecai. The Talmud teaches that if a person treats others with kindness, God will treat them with kindness. And while often viewed as a punishment, Mida Kenneged Mida is also understood as a kindness from God. It allows individuals to realize their misdeeds and through this reflection repent. While it might sound similar to this concept of karma, mida keneged mida is specifically tied to the active, personal, divine providence of God rather than just some cosmic force. Rabbi David Wolp writes, quote, How does the Torah itself regard his action? The subtle critique can be found later on in Jacob's story. He works for seven years to marry Laban's daughter Rachel. At the end of that time, however, he wakes up in bed next to Leah. The rabbis imagine that when he upbraids Leah for conniving with her sister, she answers, Are there teachers without disciples? In other words, you had it coming, buddy. Jacob pretended to be his brother, Esau. He was deceived by Leah, pretending to be her sister. He fooled his blind father by touch and could not himself distinguish the feel of Leah from the feel of Rachel while blinded in the dark of night. The result, in one case, was that he benefited from the blessing. In the other case, he had to work an additional seven years. Rabbi Wolp goes on. There is a moral order to the universe. And sooner or later, what we do will affect what is done to us. Learning this helped Jacob grow into Israel. Close quote. Wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

Right now, because I repeat it to myself all the time. It gives me so much hope, but it's similar to this. So, and I think I might have even said it on this podcast before because it's in DNC 111. Verse one I, the Lord your God, am not displeased with you coming on this journey, notwithstanding your follies. And I think like there's a to your point, every action has an equal reaction. So there is something at play there within the forces of the universe, and whether it is energy or whatever, but it all comes from God, obviously. But I love that, and in the here, Joseph Smith was treasure hunting, and the Lord says, I'm not displeased, notwithstanding your follies. And then the very end, and this one is similar to the scripture about God will order everything for your good as fast as you're able to receive it. Well, actually, so it's not that what is it in Jacob where he says he will consecrate all our trials for our good. All our trials for our God. So this says, Therefore, be you as wise as serpents and yet without sin, and I will order all things for your good as fast as you're able to receive them. And in this, Jacob is the serpent, but do you see the yet without sin? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

And that I will order things.

SPEAKER_00 30:10

Yes, as fast as you're able to receive it.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

He will ultimately redeem it if we'll let him teach us. I think that's the big thing is being open to his teaching. Okay, you've messed up. That's okay. We're gonna move forward here, be open to my teaching and change.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

Well, and if we look at the fruits of the deceit, we've been very micro on a bunch of things. Let's take like a step back and you look at the fruits of Leah, or you look at the fruits of the birthright and the way that God ordered those things, not only for Jacob's good, but for all of humanity's good. And so, Elder Kieran, God is in relentless pursuit of you. And then something that D. Todd said once was, or D. Todd Christopherson, sorry, that's why I call him in my head was you cannot plumb the depths of God's love. And so there's just like no way to get outside the reach of him if you are turning to him.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

Yeah. I find it really comforting to know that I can mess up, I can sin, and ultimately God will be able to fix it. It's not going to permanently damage the universe. Yes. He can make the things work out. Yeah. And that's really comforting to me. And it doesn't mean it gives me license to sin, no, you know, with impunity. No. But what it's saying is inevitably I'm going to make mistakes. Yeah. I'm going to mess up. But that in the long run, somehow God will fix it so that the whole universe isn't disrupted, you know, like it did here.

SPEAKER_00 31:38

He can order it. And order it. He can put it back into order.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

Yeah, he can make a turn, make a course correction, and kind of get us on our way.

SPEAKER_00 31:45

Yes. And how beautiful, how beautiful. I mean, the story of Jacob is just, it reminds me of like my ninth grade English class learning how to write a thesis and then a full essay. And then like how you have to bring in your conclusion at the end. And it's just like, wow, he really he's good at everything. God is.

SPEAKER_01 32:02

He is. Yes. He is. So Walter Brugemann, who's another scholar, he also sees Jacob's deception of his father and brother as setting in motion a pattern in which Jacob himself is deceived in analogous ways and describes this as a kind of measure-for-measure dynamic or narrative reciprocity where actions generate corresponding consequences. He calls attention to this pattern of deception or cycle of trickery that ultimately leads to divine transformation. Jacob's deceit is not excused, but it becomes a part of how God works through flawed people, which is exactly what you were saying. And I find his idea, Walter Brugeman, his idea of a pattern of deception or a cycle of trickery interesting. Because in Exodus 34, when Moses first went up to Mount Sinai with the two tablets of stone, which he had made, and this is before the golden calf incident, the Lord said, quote, see, I am going to make a covenant before all your people. In this case, who is all your people? Well, it's the children of Israel, it's Jacob's offspring. God is recovenanting with them. And in this chapter, the Lord Yahweh describes himself, quote, the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loyal love, Chesed, and faithfulness, keeping Chesed for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but he by no means leaves the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquities of the fathers on the sons and the children of the sons to the third and fourth generation. And in Exodus 20, it adds this caveat, the third and fourth generation of those who reject, or it's often translated, hate me. But I think reject is a better word, because when we reject the Lord, his spirit withdraws. And as section 121 tells us, we are left unto ourselves to kick against the pricks, to persecute the saints, and to fight against God. So what we are seeing in the Jacob story is the initiation of the iniquity of the fathers. Jacob's decision to use deceit will be replayed over and over to the third and fourth generation. And unfortunately, often the deceit is escalated. And we're going to talk about that. But I want to point out that we see this often in people that we know.

SPEAKER_02 34:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

So, for example, somebody that I know, the father was terribly mistreated and abused.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 35:00

Okay. Initial iniquity, first generation, right? And it was a difficult situation, obviously, where his mother had passed. So this was another person that was married, you know, another stepmother situation. But even still, there is the initial abuse, right, that happens. And so that's the patterning that you have and that you receive. And so then when he marries, this is what he knows, right? He knows this abusive patterning. And you can see that with the older children, it was a more harsh situation. But he recognized this and worked hard throughout his life to try to move beyond this terrible patterning that he had received. Yeah. And as he worked with his younger children and really worked with himself, going so often to the temple, turning to God, really recognizing this. And then you can see the next generation then is able to break the cycle even further.

SPEAKER_00 36:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:06

But you have to have somebody who's willing to break the cycle. If you don't, then unfortunately the abuse can escalate and it can get worse over time. And in this situation, we will see deceit escalating. We'll especially we'll point it out to some degree in this podcast, but in the next one, in the Joseph podcast, we'll see the cycle broken.

SPEAKER_00 36:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:30

As there is a conscious turning away from deceit.

SPEAKER_00 36:35

Even in, not to get too far ahead, but in Joseph, the deceit when his brothers come to Egypt. Exactly. It's like kind of more like he tests them.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

Are you going to do to Benjamin what you did to me? Yeah. Yeah. And then you have this beautiful speech by Judah. Yeah. And he realizes okay, they have turned, they're breaking the pattern of deceit. And Joseph really magnanimously also forgives and breaks that pattern. And then, like you will see Jacob without any deceit or guile blessing Joseph's sons. Like I said, and it is the younger son that is favored over the older one. But there is, it's the same thing that happened with Isaac, except there is no deceit. Right. Yeah, so it's like beautiful. It is healing. Yeah. It's a beautiful thing. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. So what we've got now is Jacob deceives his father. Okay. And then later he is deceived by Laban, who substitutes Leah for Rachel on the wedding night. So again, like I said, this mirror.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

Could you imagine?

SPEAKER_01 37:46

No.

SPEAKER_00 37:47

I mean, it is part of the Jewish tradition, how they would lift the veil and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

But even so back then, it's like there's a lot of complicity here. What does Leah think he's going to feel the next morning? But anyway, again, we don't know the culture. But what it does is it mirrors Jacob's own deception of his blind father, right? Jacob now is also deceived in the dark. So the iniquity rebounds in this situation almost immediately. It is this reciprocated iniquity, but there's an increased fallout, right? Now he's got two wives, plus the two wives' slaves, who also become his wives, plus the 12 sons. And you've got this constant family rivalry, tension, and scheming. Okay, then Jacob also exploits Esau. Well, in turn, Jacob is exploited by his father-in-law Laban. Jacob says to Rachel and Leah in Genesis 31, 6, quote, You know that I've worked for your father as hard as I could, but your father has humiliated me and changed my wages ten times. But God has not permitted him to do to me any harm. Well, the word translated here, I was just reading from the Net Bible translation, but the word translated here, chathal, it means to cheat someone or to deceive someone so that their public reputation suffers. So it's deliberate cheating with humiliation. Other deceit, Jacob disguises himself with skins. His own sons deceive him with Joseph's code. So you've got the cycle of deceit, deception, broken trust, family rupture is now repeated and intensified by the next generation. A family culture shaped by favoritism, rivalry, and manipulation continues. The consequences of deceit are not just individual, they have now become embedded in the family as these behavior patterns. Yeah. And then in Genesis 34, we have the Dinah and Shechem story. Okay. So there is a strand of biblical criticism. And remember, biblical criticism is an umbrella term for various methods of analyzing and studying the Bible. And I've gone through some of these methods in earlier podcasts. So there is a method called feminist biblical criticism, which at its most basic is analysis of biblical texts about women or that deal with matters of concern to women. And I'm going to lay my cards on the table right now. I often have a problem with feminist biblical criticism. Just like I said before, I have a problem with source criticism. Yes. So I usually do not find it academically rigorous or intellectually honest. And here are some of the reasons why. And I'm going to explain this, and I'm prefacing all this to the dinosaur so that you will then understand why I interpret the dinosaur the way that I do. Okay. Okay. I find feminist biblical criticism to be almost always fundamentally anachronistic and culturally imperialist.

SPEAKER_00 41:03

Okay, wait. Tell us what that means.

SPEAKER_01 41:06

Right. So I feel that what it's doing is it retrofits 20th and 21st century Western concepts, such as patriarchy. They'll say that systemic oppression, or what's called intersectional power analysis, which is systems of privilege and oppression, talking about modern notions of consent and autonomy. These are put onto texts that were written between 2500 and 3,500 years ago. They're written in completely alien, honor-shame tribal hierarchical societies. Like their societies are not at all like ours. It would be like retrofitting Western ideas onto a native tribe in the Amazon jungle right now that exists as a hunter-gatherer tribe.

SPEAKER_00 42:02

It doesn't matter. Or even to that point, it's like your family does this, our family does this, you're wrong, we're right. And that's cultural imperialism. Exactly. Okay. That's exactly it.

SPEAKER_01 42:14

Okay. Ancient Israel and the Greco-Roman world had no category for feminism. There was no individual rights framework. They viewed gender roles as divinely ordained or natural.

SPEAKER_00 42:28

Also, I just want to bring up the ketubah real quick. So the ketubah is an ancient, I want to say, prenuptial agreement, honestly. And what it did was there was always an endowment that was included in it. And the endowment was hey, here's money that we are investing together. But if I'm going to die or if we get divorced, you will then have this money to take care of yourself. So it was not just, hey, if I die, it was also if we get divorced, you will be fine. And the whole thing is centered around women's rights. And again, I'm coming at this with my 20th century appreciation or whatever, but it was actually really revolutionary in its time. If you just take the text out of context and then you apply some sort of agenda or even just some sort of understanding to it, you're not understanding the whole thing. However, if you put the ketubah or you put everything else into context, you got to think maybe what I'm seeing is not accurate or not real. Not that it's not real, but like you will find what you're looking for in the Bible. And if you're looking for words of God, comfort, peace, being able to sit with your own discomfort and learn from it, you will find that. Yes. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 43:50

And that's also true. Like more recently, I've talked about them like, for example, the newsy tablets and some of these really old law codes. And this is what Whom Sarna was pointing out, you will find contextual legal either maybe disputes. And you so you see the resolution or laws that talk about specific situations. And so when I was talking in an earlier podcast, I talked about Abraham and we talked about Sarah and Hagar. A lot of times people will say, well, Sarah is under Abraham's thumb, but that is not true. Hagar, we have documents that show that the giving of a slave girl to a woman when she gets married is common, which is what you see here with Leah and Rachel. They each come with their slave girl. That is verifiable in legal and marriage documents from this time. And those women did not belong to Jacob or to Abraham. They have no control of them. So whatever Rachel wants to do or Leah wants to do with her slave or Sarah wants to do with her, that is theirs, right? And so again, it's the same type of thing. I'm not saying slavery is right. I'm just saying in the context of this, that was their possession. That's one thing that we found in being able to study some of these early things. And I'm not as familiar with them as I'd like to be, but there are legal codes in place. We assumed there weren't, but there are. So yeah, just like you were saying, there are things there that address different things.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:31

Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 45:32

Yes. And the idea that that you belong to no one and you are your own person. And I'm not saying we should be property of one another. That's not what I'm saying at all. However, the singular idea that whatever happens with you doesn't affect people around you, that's just not reality.

SPEAKER_01 45:49

And it's a very, very modern Western idea.

SPEAKER_00 45:51

It's a very modern Western idea. So the Katuba, back to the ketubah. The ketuba was a document that was signed between an engaged couple that they were agreeing that they were going to get married. That was it. It's prina. So back to that, the groom's family was paying the dowry. The dowry came from the groom's family because they were paying the bride's family because they were losing a working member of the household. So to your point, the slave slavery was common back then. However, the working member, just because you had a slave didn't mean that you were not a contributing member. And so that's what I mean by the fact that we belong to ourselves is like they had to compensate for the loss of that working person. And so that's why the dowry was paid, because traditionally the woman would go and live with the man. That's how it worked. So we look at anything now, we want to say, well, I'm my own person. Everything I do only affects me or whatever. And that's not the case today. And it certainly was not the case back then. You depended on these people for not only your livelihood, but for your safety and to stay alive. Every person was vital in the household. Every single person, children, adults, old people, everyone played a role. And you knew the role you were going to play.

SPEAKER_01 47:11

Exactly. Yes. Yes. Yes. And that's why the text, you cannot judge it fairly by standards that didn't exist when they were written. No. Right? I find this incredibly bigoted, ironically paternalistic, and very myopic on LR. Okay. I often also find that feminist biblical criticism begins with a non-falsifiable ideological presupposition, which is called the hermeneutic of suspicion. In other words, this is what the hermeneutic of suspicion essentially is: what misogynistic message is hidden behind the surface? Every reading starts from the assumption that the biblical authors, editors, and canonizers were patriarchal oppressors, hiding or suppressing women's voices. This circular starting point guarantees the desired conclusion. The text is always problematic, always has to be unmasked, resisted, or reinterpreted. That for me is not neutral scholarship. It is activism with footnotes. Traditional historical grammatical criticism at least tries to discover what the text meant in its own world. Even source criticism, which you know I find problematic and often speculative, is working within the text. But feminist criticism assumes it already knows that the text is oppressive and works backward from there. And I have a problem with that. Yeah. It also subordinates scripture to the critic's modern ideology. When the Bible's clear statements conflict with contemporary feminist values, the method routinely declares the text deficient, culturally conditioned, or in need of liberative correction. It needs to be liberated somehow. The critic's experience or ethics becomes the real authority. This is the opposite of classical hermeneutics. Let scripture judge us. For anyone who takes the Bible's own claim to be divine inspiration seriously, this is fatal because the method dismantles the very authority it claims to interpret.

SPEAKER_00 49:19

There's going to be tension in you your whole life. There will be this tension. And you think you kind of get this tiger by the tail and he whips around. So there's this tension between judging and compassion. And every time I think I got this down, I understand something new pops up. And so compassion actually, it sounds like an arrived place. It sounds like a restful place. It is not. It is taking what you believe to be true and holding another person's interpretation of that within the same hand and allowing their interpretation to also maybe be true as well. And then it is also taking what you do and what you believe, even though they might not be congruent, and allowing both of those to exist in the same place. It is so much easier to judge someone and say, well, if I was in that situation, I would X, Y, or Z. But to have compassion for that person, it's actually more uncomfortable. So if there are stories in the Bible that make you feel uncomfortable, then that means that you're actually on a closer path to compassion than you are to judgment. It is so easy to judge. It really is. And what it does is it separates us, it makes us see each other as binary. It makes us see something's right, something's wrong, whatever's happening here. If it makes me feel uncomfortable, it must be wrong. But to say everyone is on a spectrum and everything is on a spectrum, there are a million shades of gray, then this is making me feel uncomfortable. Why? Be curious about it.

SPEAKER_01 51:01

Yes. I think it's important to be curious about it. And I guess for me, I feel like we have to start with the text first. What does the text say? What we look at the context too. What culture is it coming from? So how can we interpret this fairly and correctly, right? And give honor to the text. And that's where I have a problem sometimes with the feminist criticism. It starts with this culture is bad, then works backwards. And so I think, and I'm not saying, and you've heard me say this so many times, you shouldn't apply things you've learned from the text to your life and have a good discussion. But I think my thing always is let's first start with the text and the context. Yes. Then we move to where's God? Where's God in the text?

SPEAKER_00 51:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 51:54

And then finally you move to application. How can we discuss this?

SPEAKER_00 51:59

What does this have to do with me? Right. But if you don't understand the context and you don't find God, which you guys, we said this at the very beginning of our podcast. Everyone does this. It is so much easier to say, what does this have to do with me, as opposed to where is God in this? But until you find those two, then you honestly you're gonna have a harder time applying it to yourself. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:22

And I also want to be really careful to say, I am not saying you have to be a biblical scholar. I know I've said this before, but I'm gonna say it again. You do not have to be a biblical scholar to have affirmed to you that the scriptures are true. No, or to find God in the scriptures or to learn things. The Holy Spirit is the best tutor that you can have. So I just want to be really careful and say that is reading the scriptures with the expectation that these are divine. Yes, they're written by humans, but that God has worked through these humans through the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, to write things and that there are things in there that are important for us to understand. The Spirit will tutor you in a way that I can't, that Susan can't. That's the most important thing. And listening to us, maybe getting some background, I hope that's helpful. But again, I don't want anybody to ever go away from here feeling like they cannot have a profound love and spiritual experience with the scriptures.

SPEAKER_00 53:30

I would say try to have that first. I am gonna be 48 this year. I read the scripture strictly for vibes until now, because it made me feel good. It helped me in my life in ways that I couldn't even say. And so now I'm like wanting to pull it apart and take looks at it and see what it all means. But up until now, I didn't do that. So if you're not doing this, which I'm assuming you guys all are because you're here, however, just sometimes it's for vibe, sometimes it's to deeper understanding. But either way, it's going to bless your life. We'll bless your life.

SPEAKER_01 54:04

I just wanted to be really there is power in the scripture. Absolutely. Absolutely. And yeah, like you said, just reading them, reading God's word. I think the fact that you've got them open and you're reading them allows the spirit to speak to you. God will speak to you through the words that are written on the page, and also it will open your spirit up to his voice. It puts you in a place to receive revelation. Yeah. Feminist biblical criticism often reduces the Bible to sociology and flattens its actual message. The grand biblical narrative of creation, fall, covenant, redemption through Jesus Christ, holiness, judgment. It is all collapsed into a single lens, gender power dynamics. Everything becomes about who has power over whom. This is reductionist in the extreme. The texts themselves repeatedly declare their central concern is humanity's relationship to God, not 21st century gender equity. Turning the Bible into a mirror for contemporary grievances distorts what it claims to be: a theological document about sin, grace, divine kingship, and our submission to God's authority. Finally, and this is where I will directly pull in the dinosaur, although everything that I have said applies, feminist biblical criticism is selectively applied and internally inconsistent, especially on sexual violence. The method relentlessly condemns patriarchal violence and male failures while often excusing, psychologizing, or reframing female moral agency in the opposite direction. So let's look at a story we discussed in an earlier podcast about Genesis 19, Lot's willingness to offer his daughters to the mob. Now, this is rightly labeled horrific. Yeah. But the immediate sequel, his daughters deliberately intoxicating their unconscious father and raping him to produce children in feminist biblical criticism is frequently spun as survival strategy. Survival strategy for who? It's not like there aren't other people around. We know that Abraham and his tribe are about 40 miles away. The daughters could have gone to him and intermarried with someone in his clan. It's also often labeled as ironic justice or female agency or trauma response. That is intellectually dishonest. The text presents both acts, the acts of Lot and the Acts of his daughters, as disordered desires in a broken world. The deliberately juxtaposed text portray the Lord's reason for Sodom's judgment. Feminist readings, however, amplify Lot's transgression while softening or celebrating his daughters. That double standard reveals the ideology at work, not objective analysis. It also ignores the theological message of the text. Feminist biblical criticism may provide interesting observations about overlooked women or cultural backgrounds, but as a controlling hermeneutic, I find that it repeatedly fails the test of intellectual honesty, historical fidelity, and fidelity to the text's own claims. It tells us more about late modern ideology than it does about the ancient documents it claims to illuminate. And the reason that this is so much in the front of my brain right now is that I watched a video of a biblical scholar who I respect teach an Old Testament class on the Dinah Shechem story using the currently very popular feminist interpretation of the text, which is firstly the fact that Dinah never speaks in the text. Only men do. And this silence somehow illustrates patriarchal oppression or misogyny. Was this a good biblical interpretation? Well, we can ask ourselves: are there other situations when people are silent? And yes, there are. Abel, the first murder victim in the Bible, never speaks. Only Cain does. I don't know, is that patriarchal oppression by Cain on Abel? Or how about the fact that we never hear the voice of Lot's wife? She is forced to leave Sodom with her husband, and then when she looks back longingly, God turns her into a pillar of salt. That might be the ultimate example of patriarchal systemic oppression. I mean, the woman just wanted to stay in her home and town with mobs of men roaming around, wanting to rape male strangers who come into their city, and a husband who thinks that it is okay to offer his daughters to the mob, but she is forced to leave by these angels. And not only that, no one lets her talk about it and tell her side of the story. Also, Ishmael never speaks. Ishmael is silent. It is only his mother or Sarah who speak for him. Maybe this is matriarchal oppression. You see the problem with starting there.

SPEAKER_00 59:19

Right. So I think then a good tool to use would be to take any criticism. And remember, by criticism, we're not saying people who are critical of the Bible, we're saying commentary, and run it through all the stories. Because if it holds up, there's a term in journalism where a story has to stand up on its own, meaning the sources have to be able to tell the truth of it. So what Cindy's doing here is saying, okay, if someone's mute, does that imply patriarchy? No, it doesn't stand up. That does not stand up across the whole thing. You can accept it or you can reject it if that's what you're thinking. And then if you reject it, then what then I guess I would say part one B of that is so then what is a text? Why does she not? What's going on? Is there a reason?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:04

Yeah. Is there a reason? Are there texts where women are raped and they speak, or are they all silent? Well, there are other texts where women speak. Yeah. So we know that it has nothing to do with she's being oppressed from speaking. Right. That it's not important to the text. It's not important to what the author wants us to see from the text, which what I think. And completely acknowledge I can be wrong.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:27

Read the text and make your own interpretation. So if you guys don't know, Cindy's married to an attorney. So we have facts and examples for days here. Continue.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:36

We do.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:36

Yes, we do. Yes, I love it. Cite your sources.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:41

Cite my sources. Cite your sources. Yes. So here's the other problem I had with this class using the Dinah Shechem story to talk about sexual violence. Now, I am not saying that sexual violence shouldn't be talked about. Violence of any kind should be talked about and repudiated. But the Dinah Shechem story is not the first instance of rape in the Bible. Lot's daughters raping Lot is the first rape in the Bible. So my husband was a criminal lawyer for 14 years. He does civil litigation now. But I will tell you that female on male violence, and that includes sexual violence, is a taboo subject in our culture. It is often dismissed by people who will say something like, well, he provoked her, and that is why she hit him with a cast iron frying pan. And I will say that came from a case. So that one's not pulled out. Yes. So woman, yeah, hit her partner with a cast iron frying pan and it caused a lot of damage. But that same excuse flipped. She provoked him, and that is why he hit her, is not okay in our culture to say, right? That is not fair and it's not honest. It does not matter how much someone provokes you, you do not have the right to initiate violence against that person. I'm not saying here that you do not have the right to defend yourself. I am saying that if somebody is provoking you, you do not have the right to initiate, verbally provoking you. You do not have the right to initiate violence against that person. If you want to talk about sexual violence in your gospel doctrine class as an outgrowth of either of these stories, that's fine. But be honest about it. Violence is not a male problem. Violence is a human problem. It's the first thing that happened right out of the garden. The first story is violence. Yeah, it is murder. Yeah. It's the problem that we've got. So here's another problem with this interpretation of the Dinah Shechem text. The text is very muddled. There are a lot of problems with interpreting the text if you're reading the Hebrew. And I don't have a lot of time to go into the problems. I will say that source criticism has a heyday with this one just because you can tell that there's a whole bunch of different parts of stories that are patched together. I'm just going to give you a little taste of some of the problems. In an essay by Zlat, I hope I'm pronouncing this, Zlatko Musija, he asks the question: what exactly happened to Dinah? According to Genesis 34, 1 through 3, Leah's daughter Dinah, probably a young teenage girl, went out to visit the daughters of the land. Her motives are not given. Now, I will say, in an ancient Near Eastern context, that was probably not the wisest thing to do. However, I don't have time to go into all that.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:25

We're not saying she's provoking anyone or brought it on herself, yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:29

But so it's not a wise thing to do. So Shechem, the prince of the land, saw the word is ra'a. He saw her, he took, so the word there is laqah, her, he lay, so the word is shakhav with her, and then he did something with her that is described by the verb anna in the PL form. Furthermore, his whole being clung to her, Dabak, and he loved Ahab. He loved her and spoke to her heart. The narrator's comment of what happened is that Shechem defiled Tameh Dinah and that he had done folly, and the word there is nebalah in Israel. So he did something that ought not to be done. The proponents of the rape reading of Genesis 34 conclude that the expressions took her, Lakak, lay with her, Shakav, and Anna, which can mean violate, designate physical force or violence, and that the expression defiled Tamey and Folly, Nabala, implied the severity of Shechem's rape. But it is important also to notice that none of these words has an inherent connotation of rape. First, the word lakak is used several times in Genesis 34, and Lakak is took her, is used several times in Genesis 34, the same chapter, in the context of giving and taking wives, in verses 9, 16, and 21, without any reference to physical force. It's intermarriage. It is only in verses 25 and 26, taking the sword and killing all the males, where violence is described in association with Lakak. Anna, the word anna, which is often translated as violate, can range in meaning, though, from defile, violate, to humble. God will humble someone. Also, the combination of to see and to take is already mentioned in Genesis 3, verse 6 and 6, verse 2, in the context of something sinful, but not with a connotation of violence. Second, the construction of verse 2 is problematic. Points out that grammatically you cannot conclude that the verb shakav lay with her connotes either a mutually agreed-upon sexual act, as some biblical scholars have thought, nor that it definitely indicates rape. What we can conclude is that it is quite clear that Shechem has done something to Dinah that is very evil in the eyes of the narrator. So you'd start to see some of the problems with the text. I think that most of the interpretive problem in the class that I originally spoke of stems from looking for the meaning of the story in what somebody, specifically men, have done or not done, and what are the readers' feelings about it. Feminist biblical interpretation fails to consider the function and the meaning of the story in the broader context of the narrative. I believe that what we have here is another vignette exposing an escalating pattern of generational deceit. Earlier deceptions used natural objects like goats or garments, or situational manipulation like blindness or darkness. But in Genesis 34, something new happens. And this is really important to consider. It is that the sign or the token of the covenant itself, circumcision, becomes the instrument of deceit. This is a major escalation. The family is no longer just acting deceitfully. They are now using their identity as God's covenant people as a tool for violence. Earlier descriptions used external props. In this story, deception uses the holiest internal marker of identity. The irony is sharp. What marks loyalty to God becomes a trap for betrayal. The covenant requires moral behavior, but here it is completely emptied of its ethical meaning. The problem is no longer just behavior. It is now the corruption of identity itself and ultimately corrupting others' view of God, Jehovah. What the dinosaur is about, what it implicitly asks is what does it mean to be God's covenant people if the covenant sign can be used for murder? I think we should ask this of ourselves. With the covenants that we take, what does it mean to be God's covenant people if we misuse, or even if we don't honor our covenants in a way that brings glory to God, but instead dishonors God?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:59

It's a really important question. That I believe is what this biblical chapter, this story, is asking of us. It's a much deeper question here. Terence Fretham, another scholar, understands Jacob's deception as part of a long process of growth, culminating in the wrestling episode in Genesis 32, where Jacob is renamed Israel, marking a shift from manipulator to one who struggles with God. Because this text of Dinah and Shechem doesn't give us a simple moral judgment. We also have to wrestle with it and ultimately with God. And this is true about much of the Bible. We are forced into acknowledging that God's promises unfold despite and sometimes through deceit. And that can often make us uncomfortable and something we need to sit with.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:57

Yeah. Well, thank you all for joining us. I hope we have given you stuff to think about. We'd love to hear from you on this episode if you have any thoughts. And we will see you next time. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Scripture Study Podcast, your midweek Bible boost. Everything we mentioned on this podcast, if we said there would be a link to it, it is in the show notes wherever you find your podcast. Cindy Madsen currently does not believe in or participate in social media. However, if you would like to follow along with Susan Peterson, she could be found on Instagram at susan.m.peterson. Have a good week.