Sons in the Bible

I'm sure we all have things we ponder from the Word. I've often wondered why so many of the godly men in the Bible have produced so few godly sons. As you read throught the Bible, most of them spawned offspring that were even downright wicked! This is such a shame! So many of the kings that were good were succeeded by their sons that were noted as 'evil' in the Word. We know that Abraham had Isaac, who was godly, but he also fathered Ishmael! We also know he SHOULD NOT have fathered Ishmael, so that was a big part of the problem! But, I also wonder how much of that may have been true of the others.

Look how many children David fathered. LOTS!!! And many were by concubines. God was exceedingly gracious to David, but His highest and best would have been for David to have had ONE wife and NO concubines, thereby producing far less children...and perhaps he'd have taken more time to instill his love of God in all of them.

Even in the beginning, Adam fathered Abel and Cain...well we know how THAT turned out! Cain slew Abel! This was only the second generation of man. We didn't get off to a very good start, did we?

Then there was Jacob, later renamed Israel by God as a recognition of changed character. He fathered the 12 sons who became the 12 tribes of Israel and out of 12, only one was of outstanding character, with a deep love of God. That's a poor statistic, wouldn't you agree? One out of 12...sigh...

I could go on...there's Aaaron, Moses's brother, Solomon and many more. It might make a good study some time. It makes me pray: Lord, teach our men how to be fathers who will teach their sons to love and obey You that they might become the men you designed them to be.