The Lord, before whom I have walked

Still chipping away here through Genesis. Generally, the more closely I read, the more confused I get! These are not the characters of Sunday School (including God).

• First and foremost, everyone sins -- a lot. Noah gets drunk and exposes himself to whoever's walking by -- who happens to be his son. Ham tells his brothers about it, and gets himself and all his descendents cursed. Noah apparently does not get punished.
• Abraham and Isaac turn into cowards when they go out travelling, and don't want to get killed for having beautiful wives. So they claim their wives are their sisters, and are causing others to sin (not to mention sinning against their own wives). And Abraham and Isaac get blessed by the nations they have sinned against, because they are chosen by God.
• Hagar gets completely taken advantage of (quite literally) and then her descendants get more or less cursed. Sarai, whose whole idea the hooking up was in the first place, gets the blessing.
• God chooses to place all his blessing on one offspring: Isaac. Abram and Sarai and Isaac did nothing particular to deserve this, other than having faith off and on.
• Sarah always gets the bad wrap for laughing about having a baby at 90 or 100 -- but Abraham laughed first (17:17).
• God seems to have a short fuse. He demolishes entire cities/worlds often. But, he puts up with a lot, too. But, he could be accused of inconsistency. But, consistency may be a lesser virtue when you have all the power and everything belongs to you anyway.
• This angel of the Lord shows up often to give messages. And he has a tendency to speak for God in the first person. Why have I heard so little about him?
• When Abraham's servant goes wife-hunting, his plan for finding the girl is (blank), and then he asks God to bless that plan. Right?
• I loved this line, though, from the servant quoting Abraham: "The Lord, before whom I have walked, will..." I can't find much in research talking about why we are walking before God, but one interpretation could be that God is protecting us, or telling us which steps to take, or that he sees all we do.
• Usually, I get a little upset with the Jacob and Esau story. I feel bad for Esau, since he made one bad choice and got himself and his descendants screwed. (They really all looked to the extreme future often.) But today, on 25:34, I read, "So Esau despised his birthright." It put me in my place a bit, with the remembrance that God has his reasons -- I don't necessarily have the whole story.