Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #20 in Genesis 38, and we will be reading Genesis 38:28-30:

And it came to pass, when she travailed, that the one put out his hand: and the midwife took and bound upon his hand a scarlet thread, saying, This came out first. And it came to pass, as he drew back his hand, that, behold, his brother came out: and she said, How hast thou broken forth? this breach be upon thee: therefore his name was called Pharez. And afterward came out his brother, that had the scarlet thread upon his hand: and his name was called Zarah.

I will stop reading there.  This brings us to the end of the chapter.

We want to try to understand what is going on here.  It is unusual that one boy put forth his hand, and the midwife had time to bind a scarlet thread upon his hand, and she even said, “This came out first.”  That would be very important to do, especially in a society where the “right of the firstborn” was according to the Law of God, and it was a major event in the family of the Israelites.  It had to be marked in some way, and this seemed to be a good way to do it because the hand had come forth, and the midwife bound a piece of scarlet thread to it.  And soon after she said this, it says in Genesis 38:29-30:

And it came to pass, as he drew back his hand, that, behold, his brother came out: and she said, How hast thou broken forth? this breach be upon thee: therefore his name was called Pharez. And afterward came out his brother, that had the scarlet thread upon his hand: and his name was called Zarah.

So in the historical situation, this is all understandable, so that is not what I meant when I said it was unusual.  The unusual nature of this comes into view when we are looking for a spiritual meaning.  Why was Zarah’s hand extended, and then marked with a scarlet thread, and then his hand pulled back, and his brother emerged first?

There was a similar problem with the twins Jacob and Esau, but it is not quite the same.  Esau was born first, but his brother Jacob had ahold of Esau’s heel, and that is why Jacob was called “the supplanter.”  But we do not read that Jacob thrust out his hand first and then it was pulled back.  Esau legitimately came out first, and Jacob was “right on his heels.”  And we still use that expression today when someone is so close behind another, and we would say, “He is right on his heels.”  Jacob had ahold of his heel, so it is similar in that there was a “jockeying for position,” with both desiring to be first.  Esau was also called “Edom,” which is closely related to “Adam,” or “man.”  So the birth of Jacob and Esau is something we understand very well spiritually.  Esau was Edom, or Adam, or man,  Adam was firstborn when God created him, and he represents the natural man.  The natural man is the first, and Adam is even called “the son of God.” 

And Jacob was second born, and Jacob typifies the elect, and it so happens in God’s salvation plan that the firstborn, or mankind, who ought to have received the birthright and the blessing of the firstborn, lost that right and that blessing due to sin.  And the second-born son ended up receiving the birthright and the blessing, and that points to God’s elect receiving the blessing in Christ, but (unsaved) mankind lost it.  Esau did not receive the blessing of the firstborn. 

So all that is very clear and understandable spiritually.  That is what makes it more difficult when one puts forth his hand and is marked as coming out first, but then he did not come out first.  His brother came out first, and it was said, “This breach be upon thee,” and the name Pharez means “breach.”  We will talk about what his name means later, and it is full of meaning.

But first, we see that the midwife bound upon his hand a scarlet thread.  And this word “bind” is used in Deuteronomy 11:18:

Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.

In the Bible, the hand represents the will, so God is saying, “Bind my word for a sign upon your will.”  And no man can do that, just as no man can lay up God’s words in his heart and soul if he has a dead soul.  God has to do that.  So a proper prayer for the Israelite of that day (or of a child of God in the New Testament era) would be to pray, “O, Lord, may you lay up your words in my heart and in my soul, and may you bind your Word for a sign upon my will, and make it as frontlets before my eyes.  May you do this in my life, O, God?”  That would be the proper response, rather than saying, “Yes, I am going to do it.”  Man cannot do it when it comes to performing a spiritual deed because mankind is unable to do it because he has a dead soul.

So we can see how “bind” is used there, and it also appears in Proverbs 3:3:

Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart:

The “neck” in the Bible can refer to one’s life.   To break the neck points to death.  Both “mercy and truth” identify with Christ, as well as with the Word of God.  It is saying, “Let not Christ, or the Word of God, forsake you.  Bind them in your life.”  How would you bind mercy and truth anywhere?  It is God’s Word that brings us the information about “mercy and truth,” and we bind God’s Word about our neck and write it upon the table of our heart.  And we know it is God’s Word that is written upon the table of our hearts when we become saved. 

And there is also the matter of God’s Law being written upon man’s heart in an earthly and natural sense, as God has given man a conscience, and the moral law, at least to some degree, is imparted to each person.  But here, it has to do with “mercy and truth,” and the Law of God written upon the hearts of men does not deliver that mercy and truth, although it can bring awareness of the Law.  It can tell someone they are doing right, to some degree, according to the Law, or it can reveal they are doing wrong in the matter they are involved with, based on the law written on the heart – there is a conscience, and it will accuse, or excuse, the behaviour of the individual.

But it is only the Word of God that brings mercy and truth, as Christ delivers mercy and truth to His people, and He is able to write them on the heart.  Again, “binding” has to do with Christ and the Gospel.

Now let us go to a passage that probably came into your mind as soon as you read in Genesis 38 that a “scarlet thread” was bound on the hand of Zarah.  And that is in the account of Rahab the harlot in the book of Joshua.  In Joshua 2, Rahab hid the spies, and she made a deal with them as she hid them to save their lives.  They agreed to the deal, which was that they would spare her and her house (from death).  The men agreed to this deal, and God acknowledged the deal.  Who called the walls of Jericho to fall down?  Rahab’s house was upon the wall, so why did her house not fall down along with everything else that was part of that wall?  It was because God had acknowledged this deal that was struck between Rahab and the spies.  The spies were representatives of Joshua, a type of Christ, so it is basically like God’s people as we deliver the Gospel as representatives, or ambassadors, of God.  And God honored the arrangement as the messengers of God brought Gospel into the lives of people, which promised deliverance and salvation to the elect.  God always honored those promises, even though they was carried by messengers, just as those spies we read of in Joshua 2:15-18:

Then she let them down by a cord through the window: for her house was upon the town wall, and she dwelt upon the wall. And she said unto them, Get you to the mountain, lest the pursuers meet you; and hide yourselves there three days, until the pursuers be returned: and afterward may ye go your way. And the men said unto her, We will be blameless of this thine oath which thou hast made us swear. Behold, when we come into the land, thou shalt bind this line of scarlet thread in the window which thou didst let us down by:

The word “bind” here is the same word as “bound” in our verse in Genesis 38, and in the other verses we just looked at.

Then it goes on to say in Joshua 2:18-19:

… and thou shalt bring thy father, and thy mother, and thy brethren, and all thy father's household, home unto thee. And it shall be, that whosoever shall go out of the doors of thy house into the street, his blood shall be upon his head, and we will be guiltless…

Do you see the picture?  What does the scarlet thread cover?  It covers Rahab’s house, and everyone within her house would be protected because of the scarlet thread.  But if someone were to come out of the house and go into the street, then his blood would be upon his own head – he had come out from under that protection.

This reminds us very much of the Passover when God sent the last great plague upon Egypt, the death of the firstborn.  To set the context, let us read that in Exodus 12:5-7:

Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats: And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening. And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it.

 They are taking the blood of the Lamb, which is full of spiritual meaning.  Christ is the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world of His elect, and His shed blood is applied by the “hyssop” of the Word of God.  That is how God saved people throughout the history of the world.

But here in this historical parable, the blood of the lamb was put upon the door post, marking the house and all that were in that house.  Then it says in Exodus 12:12-13:

For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am JEHOVAH. And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.

When God would see the blood, He would “pass over,” and that is where the feast of Passover received its name.  He would pass over that house: “This house I will not destroy by killing its inhabitants, but I will pass over them due to the blood.”  And this is a very obvious spiritual picture of those who are covered by the blood of Christ.

It is also in view with Tamar and the pledge.  The wrath of God is coming for Tamar, but she produces the pledge, and the wrath “passes over” her.  Another way of saying it is that God saw the blood of Christ that had washed away all her sins, making her without spot or blemish.  And that is what Christ did for each member of His eternal church, is it not?  He washed them with water by the Word, making them a beautiful eternal church, and so forth. 

So that is the beautiful picture that is painted with the Passover, and in another figure as the “scarlet thread,” as the color scarlet can be identified with the color of blood, and it certainly represents the blood of Christ covering her house.  It is similar to the high priest entering into the Holy of holies after having slain the sacrificial animal (representing Christ), and he sprinkled the blood on top of the mercy seat which is covering over the ark of the covenant.  It was called the ark of the covenant because the Ten Commandments were inside, representing the completeness of God’s Law, the same Law that judges and condemns mankind that are made under the Law.  But when the blood is sprinkled upon the covering, then God does not destroy that portion of mankind, the chosen few that He saved.  Again, that is the picture here.

I will finish by reading Joshua 2:20-21:

And if thou utter this our business, then we will be quit of thine oath which thou hast made us to swear. And she said, According unto your words, so be it. And she sent them away, and they departed: and she bound the scarlet line in the window.

She bound it according to their words.  Do you see the relationship?  In Deuteronomy, we read that we are to bind the Word upon our hands.  It is according to the Word of God.  The Word of God had delivered the “scarlet thread” to her, and that would protect and save her from an angry God.

Let us look at one other thing.  Those spies probably had no idea of God’s intention to collapse the wall, and Rahab’s house was upon the wall.  They just knew that God was going to destroy the city, and they would kill all the inhabitants therein.  The scarlet thread would mark her house, and her house would stand out from every other house, and the people of that house would stand out from all other people.

And that is what God has done in this Day of Judgment.  He has “marked” His people, and we are covered by the blood of Christ, or by the “scarlet thread,” that will protect us from destruction.