Genesis 35:16-29 - Joy and Sorrow Combined

Many of the circumstances in our lives involve either joy or sorrow. Sometimes those circumstances can be excessively joyful or excessively sorrowful. On some occasions, the joy and sorrow occur simultaneously within a situation.

How we react, for example, to ill treatment, says as much about us as it does about the person who has mistreated us. That is certainly not a popular message in our culture at present, where scorched-earth policy is the favored approach for even the tiniest slight.

The book of Genesis continues to describe life, even modern experiences, incredibly accurately. In this passage today, we see a few situations of joy and sorrow, some of them simultaneous, and we see the lasting impacts of when responses to grievous sins were not handled well.