God is a redhead.

I was just re-reading the story about Shechem and Dinah, trying to decide if God deserved at least some of the credit for the resulting massacre (I decided he didn't), when I noticed that chapter 33 of Genesis didn't have a single side note. It is (or was) the first "clean" chapter in the SAB.

But then I noticed something amazing. Something that I'd never noticed before. There, in verse 10 of chapter 33, the Bible tells us what God looks like. And it's nothing like Charlton Heston.

In this verse, Jacob is talking to his brother Esau when he says this:

I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God. KJV: Genesis 33:10

To see your face is like seeing the face of God. NIV: Genesis 33:10

Now this is coming from a guy who (just a few verses ago) saw God face to face. So he should know. And he says that God looks just like Esau.

Luckily, the Bible describes Esau's appearance. He was all red and hairy.

And the first came out red, all over like an hairy garment; and they called his name Esau. Genesis 25:25

Esau was so hairy, in fact, that Jacob (with his mother Rebekah's coaching) stole his father Isaac's blessing by putting goat skin on his hands and neck so he would feel like Esau to his dear old, nearly blind and dying, dad.

And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man... And Rebekah ... put the skins of the kids of the goats upon his hands, and upon the smooth of his neck... And he came unto his father, and said ... I am Esau thy first born. Genesis 27:11-19

So Esau was red and hairy all over his body. And God (according to a guy who had seen them both many times up close and personal) looks just like him.

(Which is kind of strange, since God hates Esau.)

So now we know what God looks like.

Unless, of course, Jacob was a liar.
(Which he was. That's why God like him so much.)