Adam—Seth—Noah—Shem—Abraham—Isaac...
The Bible is a marvelous unity, which is one of the clearest evidences of its divine inspiration. Get 40 “priests” together, and they won’t agree on anything. But the 40 authors of the Bible (very few of whom were priests, incidentally) present a perfect harmony. That is because there is one Mind behind the whole production.
God told Abraham and Isaac that the promised Messiah—promised thousands of years before to Adam and Eve—would come through Isaac. But Isaac had two sons, Esau and Jacob. Esau became the father of a people called the “Edomites.” Jacob, of course, fathered 12 sons who because the 12 tribes of Israel. And, obviously, the son of Isaac through whom the Redeemer would come. That’s what is truly important to humanity, not the history of one group of people among countless thousands who have lived on the earth.
We are left in no doubt about the Messianic lineage because in Genesis 28:14, God told Jacob, “Your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread abroad to the west and the east, to the north and the south; and in you and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So, there it is again. “ALL the families of the earth” would be “blessed” through Jacob. The Messiah, the Savior of ALL mankind, not just the Jews (of whom in Jacob’s day there were literally only a handful), would come through Jacob.
But Jacob had 12 sons. From which one will the Messiah descend? “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor a lawgiver from between his feet, Until Shiloh [the Prince of Peace] comes” (Genesis 49:10). The kingly line of Israel, from David to Jesus, came through Judah. Both Matthew and Luke affirm this.
So, the book of Genesis, the book of beginnings, points us to the right people and family—Adam, Seth, Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah...and read Genesis 38 to see how God’s marvelous plan worked out, if even in a bit of a sordid way.