so much I don't understand...

I was just scanning through the book of Genesis again (in all honesty, looking for names I might have missed that we could use for baby boy). But as I scan through it and remember the stories I have heard and read and thought on many times, I am reminded of how much I don't understand about the way God's people acted and the way He interacted with them.

One of the hardest things for me as a woman is the business of taking not just multiple wives, but concubines also. I know in the New Testament, Christ and the Apostles reaffirmed that one wife was the original ideal of creation that we should strive for and that we should require it of our leaders in the Church. But these were the people God chose back then, the people from which He brought forth the Messiah. Not only were they polygamous, but often what we would consider incestuous. I cannot imagine as a woman sharing my husband. I just can't fathom it. Even worse, I can't imagine being a servant who is told by her mistress that she must sleep with the master and bear a child for them. I guess with a lot of these customs, it was just the way human society and culture worked then. Really big families were desirable, and women needed to be protected in many ways we don't even think of today. So, better to be the second or third wife than a single woman with no protector or provider.

There are other things I don't understand. Abraham lying and saying Sarah was his sister instead of his wife and allowing her to be taken in to the King's household. Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac, even after God's covenant with Noah in which he declared that anyone who kills a man made in God's image is subject to being killed himself. Jacob lying to his father, under his mother's direction, in order to get the blessing - and the fact that God and Isaac both honored the blessing given under false pretenses.

I hope I understand some of these events better eventually. Any of your insights are welcome.