A Quick Summary of Genesis
Adam Kissel

50 Chapters.

Showing God, following God. 1-4: God creates everything, and rests. Adam names the animals. God brings Eve out of Adam to be his helper. The serpent convinces Eve to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam also eats. God curses the serpent and foretells strife for the couple. Adam and Eve bear Cain and Abel. God pays heed to Abel's offering but not Cain's; Cain kills Abel and is banished. 5: The generations through to Noah. 6-9: God prepares Noah for the Flood and then destroys everything living but what is on the Ark. Afterward he covenants not to destroy the world like that again. 10: The generations through to the clans and nations. 11: The peoples are divided after attempting to build the Tower of Babel. The line of Shem, Noah's son, through to Abram, who marries Sarai.

12-13: God tells Abram that his descendants will become a great nation. Abram and Sarai go to Egypt, but are expelled. They go to the Negeb with Abram's nephew, Lot. Lot inhabits the Jordan plain while Abram remains in Canaan. God repeats his promise to Abram. 14: The various kings go to war; Lot is captured; Abram pursues and retrieves Lot and God is thanked. 15-19: God promises to bring children to Abram, who initially is incredulous but then trusts the Lord. God covenants to give Abram's descendants the lands around Egypt and the Euphrates. Abram tries to get descendants via Sarai's maid, Hagar, who bears Ishmael. God inaugurates circumcision and renames Abraham and Sarah, and again promises Sarah a son to be named Isaac. God appears to both. God is about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for their iniquity but Abraham intervenes somewhat. Lot's family escapes the destruction, until his wife looks back and becomes a pillar of salt. Lot's daughters, through incest with their unknowing father, found the Moabites and Ammonites. 20: King Abimelech of Gerar almost gets Sarah from Abraham, again because Abraham pretends she is merely his sister, but God visits plague on Gerar and Sarah is returned. 21: Sarah bears Isaac. Sarah banishes Hagar and Ishmael, but God blesses him. Abraham and Abimelech swear friendship. 22-24: God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, which he almost does--but it is to test his faith--so God continues the blessing on him and his descendants. Sarah dies and Abraham buys land in which to bury her. Abraham procures Rebekah to marry Isaac, with God's help and Rebekah's kindness.

25: Abraham remarries Keturah; her descendants and Ishmael's are catalogued. Isaac fathers Esau and Jacob. Esau sells his birthright to Jacob for bread and lentil stew. 26: Isaac resides in Gerar near Abimelech, who renews his treaty with Isaac's line. 27-31: Jacob preempts Esau for Isaac's blessing, with Rebekah's help, and then flees Esau's wrath with his father's blessing. He sees God in a dream. He comes to his relative Laban's land and falls for Rachel. He works seven years for her, but gets the other daughter, Leah, instead. He works seven years more and receives Rachel. The two wives have a childbearing contest. Finally Jacob leaves Laban with much of Laban's flock. Laban is warned by God not to make trouble for Jacob; they make a truce. 32-33: Jacob returns to Esau and they make peace. 34-35: Shechem, a Hivite, rapes Dinah, Leah's daughter. Jacob's sons trick the Hivites to all circumcise themselves, after which the sons decimate the Hivites. Isaac is blessed again by God, and then dies.

36-41: The line of Esau and the line of Jacob. Jacob's son Joseph can interpret dreams, and foretells that his older brothers will bow before him. They sell him into slavery, to Egypt, where he becomes ruler under Pharaoh and foretells a time of plenty and then one of want. (Meantime, Judah marries Shua and later sleeps with his daughter-in-law, Timnah.) 42-45: During the famine Jacob's sons, Joseph's brothers, come to Egypt and bow before him in order to get food. Joseph gets them to return with the youngest brother, Benjamin, and finally discloses that he is the long-lost brother. Pharaoh is kind to the family. 46-49: Jacob (having been renamed Israel) and his sons and other descendants: the twelve tribes of Israel. Egypt prospers during the famine. Jacob/Israel blesses Joseph's sons and waxes poetic about his own sons, and dies. 50: Israel is buried in Canaan. Joseph fully forgives his brothers. Joseph dies and is embalmed and buried in Egypt.