What Is This That You Have Done?

What Is This That You Have Done?  The Scriptures exclusively have the answers to questions that humans all over the world, all throughout history have been asking: (1) Who is God? (2) Who am I? (3) What went wrong? (4) How can it be fixed? (5) What comes next? Each of those universal questions drives the ones who “ask, seek, and knock” (Matt. 7:7) to Jesus Christ.

But the Scriptures also have an all-star list of stand-alone questions, too. A running list of the Bible’s questions yanks a gut-wrenching thread through the book of Genesis. The first question in Genesis is layered in nuance and thick in deception, but clearly draws a perimeter for every subsequent answer between what God says and what God does not say. “Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?’” (Gen. 3:1). The second, third, fourth, and fifth questions in Genesis, asked by God, betray the first humans’ dreadful answer given to the first question asked by the serpent: “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9), “Who told you that you were naked?” (Gen. 3:10), “Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” (Gen. 3:11), and “What is this that you have done?” (Gen. 3:13).

Questions, sometimes more than our meager and masquerading answers, are the real windows into our souls, especially when our answers have departed from or added to the words of God. To Cain at the jealousy which he showed against his brother Abel, God asked, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted?” (Gen. 4:6-7). Instead of answering God’s probing questions, which were very similar to God’s pursuant questions of Cain’s parents, “Cain spoke to Abel his brother” (Gen. 4:8), which was a ruse for premeditated murder. Again, God’s question cuts to the quick: “Where is Abel your brother?” (Gen. 4:9). However, Cain’s sly retort to God cannot cover his deceptive heart or treacherous deed: “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen. 4:9). “And the Lord said, ‘What have you done?’” (Gen. 4:10), which was the exact question he asked in Genesis 3:13.

The next recorded question in Genesis, again echoing the Fall, waits until the life of Abram when he sojourned in Egypt. He coached his wife, Sarai, to deceive Pharaoh by saying that she was his sister. “So, Pharaoh called Abram and said, ‘What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife?’” (Gen. 12:18). While the excuses might be obvious—fear, self-preservation, disbelief—there is no suitable answer that solves Adam’s sinful pattern and practices from spreading even to the righteous life of Abraham.

Isaac, Abraham’s son, faces the same question in Genesis 26:10 when he also conceals the identity of his wife, Rebekah, from the king of Philistia. “Ahimelech said, ‘What is this you have done to us?’” Jacob, Isaac’s son, asks the same question of his uncle, Laban, when Laban deceitfully switches Leah for Rachel on Jacob’s wedding night. “What is this thing that you have done to me” (Gen. 29:25). Joseph, Jacob’s son, asks the same question of his brothers when he pretends not to know them from his unexpected position as the prime minister of Egypt. “What deed is this that you have done?” (Gen. 44:15). The excuses we give cannot satisfy the question since “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). God doesn’t accept our excuses but offers us his answer—his sinless Son offered for our sins