Abraham

What is so interesting about the story of Abraham and the near-sacrifice of his son is that on many other occasions Abraham argued with his God and reasoned with Him. For instance, when God was en route to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham argues at length with Him and persuades God to spare the towns if He can find ten good men within them. This sort of occurrence is entirely absent from the Qu'ran, where at one point Abraham concedes "I have no power to get aught on thy behalf from God"; but in Genesis, Abraham's God does not command him, but is rather his companion.

The exception, of course, is when God tells him to sacrifice "your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love". Abraham's doubts, if he has any, are not recorded; he simply sets about the task at hand. But what we know of Abraham's willingness to argue with God ought to make us doubt the usual interpretation of this, that it was simply a test of Abraham's faith and capacity to sacrifice everything for God.

One interpretation hence suggests that this story has another meaning: Abraham is confidently demonstrating that God will keep His side of their covenant. It is of course entirely unreasonable for God to ask for the sacrifice of Isaac, a man made in His own image and told he would inherit the Promised Land; and so Abraham went along, being entirely truthful when he said to his son, whilst preparing the sacrifice, that God would provide a lamb for it. Seen this way, the story more aptly illustrates a faith in God's reasonableness, not his demand for obedience. And don't forget that Isaac means "he laughs", perhaps for more reason than one.

BrevityQuest07

The contemporaries of Abraham

For simplicity's sake, I have referred to Abram/Abraham as Abraham and Sarai/Sarah as Sarah.

Abraham's relatives

• Abraham's ancestry

  Abraham's father was Terah. If you read the Bible's genealogical records literally, then until Abraham was 46 years old, every one of his ancestors, back to Noah, was alive. Going backwards from Terah, they were Nahor, Serug, Reu, Peleg, Eber, Shelah, Arphaxad, Shem and Noah.

  Terah had at least two wives. He died in Haran.

• Abraham's siblings

  Abraham had a half-sister, Sarah, whose father was Terah. She died in Hebron in Canaan. Abraham also had two brothers, Nahor and Haran.

  • Haran

    Haran had a son, Lot, and two daughters, Milcah and Iscah.

    • Lot was close to Abraham, and they travelled together in the beginning of Abraham's sojourn in the promised land. Lot had two daughters, and later two sons, Moab and Ben-Ammi, by his two daughters.

    • Milcah married her uncle Nahor.

    Haran died in Ur before Abraham had even left permanently. Haran may have been visiting from the city of Haran, which may have been named after him.

  • Nahor

    Nahor married his niece, Milcah. Together, they had eight sons: Uz, Buz, Kemuel, Kesed, Hazo, Pildash, Jidlaph and Bethuel.

    • Kemuel was the father of Aram.

    • Bethuel was the father of Rebekah, who later married her relative, Isaac. Rebekah's brother was named Laban.

    Nahor also took a concubine, Reumah, who bore him four sons: Tebah, Gaham, Tahash and Maacah.

• Abraham's family

  Abraham's wife was his half-sister, Sarah. While he was still married to Sarah, Abraham took Sarah's maidservant, Hagar, as a concubine. After Hagar was sent away with Ishmael, and Sarah died, Abraham took Keturah as a concubine.

  Abraham's first son was Ishmael; his mother was Hagar. Ishmael had twelve sons: Nebaioth, Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish and Kedemah. Ishmael also had a daughter, Mahalath, who married her cousin Esau.

  Abraham's second son was Isaac; his mother was Sarah. Isaac married his cousin's daughter, Rebekah. Rebekah bore Isaac two sons: Esau and Jacob.

  Abraham had six sons by Keturah: Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak and Shuah. Jokshan had two sons: Sheba and Dedan. Midian had five sons: Ephah, Epher, Hanoch, Abida and Eldaah.

Members of Abraham's household

Apparently Abraham passed through Damascus on his way to Canaan, and it is probable he acquired any number of servants there, including Eliezer, whom it seems Abraham was fond of (he was set to inherit Abraham's estate).

Perhaps while the Hebrews were briefly in Egypt, Sarah acquired a maidservant, Hagar, who later became one of Abraham's wives.

At the time that Abraham rescued Lot, he had 318 trained men who were born in his household (meaning many more women, children and untrained men), all before he even fathered any offspring.

When Rebekah came to be Isaac's wife, she brought with her her nurse and her maids.

Nations in the promised land

When Abraham first entered Canaan, it was inhabited by Canaanites. When Abraham returned from Egypt, the Perizzites were living in the promised land alongside the Canaanites. On the other side of the Jordan river was the city of Sodom.

After Abraham parted company with Lot, he moved to Hebron and allied himself with Mamre and his brothers, Eschol and Aner. Across the Jordan a confederacy of city-states arose, consisting of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admar, Zeboiim and Zoar (which was also called Bela). The confederacy had been subject to Elam, a city-state that was allied with Shinar, Ellasar and Goiim. When the confederacy rebelled against Elam, the alliance reasserted itself, as well as conquering the Rephaites, the Zuzites, the Emites, the Horites, the Amalekites and the Amorites. After Abraham had conquered the alliance war party, he was blessed by the king of the city-state of Salem (which was later called Jerusalem).

Also in the land at this time were the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.

After the cities of the Jordan plain were destroyed, Abraham moved into the Negev, and whilst there had some dealings with the inhabitants of Gerar.

After Isaac was born, Abraham is seen living in harmony with the Philistines, and after Sarah died, Abraham is at peace with the Hittites.

{E2 Dictionary of Biblical People}

ABRAHAM
(a' bruh ham) HEBREW: ABRAHAM
"father of a multitude"
_______________

The first great patriarch of the nation of Israel, Abraham is also revered as the epitome of human faith in the will of God by Christians and Muslims. Indeed, Abraham's very name, though of disputed linguistic origin, has been taken to mean "father of a multitude" (Genesis 17:5). His story in Genesis, which seems to be a compilation from three separate and independent original sources, explains how and why the clan of Abraham made its way to Palestine from the Tigris-Euphrates basin, or Mesopotamia.

Yet this towering figure is frankly portrayed in the Old Testament as a flawed, contradictory human being whose personal struggle is a profound and often surprising spiritual drama. Sometimes impatient and deceitful, Abraham comes only slowly to full realization of the true nature of the Lord's revelations and promises to him and to his descendants.

Abraham, originally known as Abram ("exalted father"), was probably born some 4,000 years ago in the famous Babylonian city known as Ur of the Chaldeans, which was situated in what is now Iraq. A direct descendant of Noah's son Shem, he was a wealthy man, the head of a seminomadic clan that lived by herding small flocks and by seasonal farming. Perhaps because of an invasion of Ur by the Amorites, Abram's father Terah decided to move his family to Canaan (Genesis 11:31). They went as far as Haran, a prosperous town 500 miles away from Ur is what is now southeastern Turkey, and settled there. The two cities may have enjoyed a close relationship, for the inhabitants of both worshiped Sin, a moon god. As the years passed, one great void remained in Abram's prosperous, pastoral life. His remarkably beautiful wife and paternal half sister Sarai (Sarah) "was barren; she had no child" (Genesis 11:30).

A PROMISE OF GREATNESS
Abram was given his first test of faith at the age of 75, when God appeared to him and promised that he would become the father of a great nation, but only if he left his homeland and most of his relations behind to strike out for the alien region of Canaan, some 400 miles to the south. "I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse," said the Lord; "and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves" (Genesis 12:3).

Evidently, Abram's faith at this point was extraordinarily strong, for he immediately gathered up his household and left the settlement of his father and other kinsmen. Sarai joined her husband on this challenging journey, as did his brother's son Lot, but the travels and travails of their household had only begun. Wandering through the foreign land of Canaan, Abram may have wondered how it could possibly become the property of his unborn progeny. The area was already well-settled - the Bible mentions ten separate peoples who lived there. But once again, God appeared and explicitly stated, "To your descendants I will give this land" (Genesis 12:7). Abram paused to camp in the region at least twice and set up altars to God: near the oak of Moreh at Shechem and also on a mountain to the east of Bethel. These acts were certainly significant in a country dedicated to the worship of the pagan god Baal.

As time passed, however, and Abram remained childless and found himself still surrounded in the Promised Land by the pagan Canaanites, it seemed that his faith in God's pledge began to waver. For when a severe famine swept through Canaan, he did not wait for the Lord to take care of him and his family. Instead, he immediately pulled up stakes and led his household down into fertile, flourishing Egypt in search of food.

Then Abram revealed still another puzzling aspect of his character. Afraid that he would be killed by some Egyptian eager to seize his beautiful wife, he claimed that Sarai was his unmarried sister and did not object when she was taken into the Egyptian Pharaoh's household. The grateful monarch repaid Abram for this gift with "sheep, oxen, he-asses, manservants, maidservants, she-asses, and camels" (Genesis 12:16). Not until God ravished the land with severe plagues, which were considered in ancient times to be divine punishment for disobedience or sin, did the unsuspecting ruler discover the truth about Sarai. Appalled, he summoned Abram and cried, "What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? . . . take her, and be gone" (Genesis 12:18-19). Pharaoh swiftly restored Sarai to her husband and encouraged the entire family to return to Canaan.

The story of Abram's reprehensible deception is doubly significant. For one thing, it is another indication that the patriarch was not yet ready to trust completely in the divine promise, which certainly implied that God would ensure his safety, even from foreigners who might be struck by Sarai's beauty. For another, the Lord's response proved that he would forever stand by his chosen servant, even when Abram showed himself to be a fallible human being who had to be rescued from a foolish predicament he had created for himself.

Meanwhile, despite these distractions, Abram and Lot had acquired so much cattle that the pasturage back in the hills of Bethel was no longer sufficient for them to share by the time they returned to Canaan. When fighting broke out between their herdsmen, Abram generously offered to cede to his nephew whichever area of Canaan he chose. "Is not the whole land before you?" he asked. "Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left" (Genesis 13:9). The younger man quickly opted for the best possible site, the extremely fertile Jordan valley, described in Genesis as "well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt" (Genesis 13:10). Lot removed his household to a city known as Sodom, which was infamous for the degeneracy of its inhabitants.

In this incident, God's chosen one not only demonstrated the benevolence of a clan patriarch toward a younger kinsman, he also parceled out territory with the authority of someone who confidently believed that his descendants would someday inherit all of the land that was still heavily populated by Canaanites. By contrast, Lot is shown in a disagreeably selfish light, probably to compare this ancestor of the Ammonites and Moabites unfavorably with his uncle, the ancestor of the Israelites.

THE PROMISE REPEATED
Perhaps in response to this demonstration of faith, God appeared and specifically repeated the promised, even urging Abram to "Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you" (Genesis 13:17). For the first time it is made clear that Canaan will be given directly to Abram during his lifetime, not just to his descendants some time in the future. Moreover, God expanded his earlier promise to say that the still childless Abram would father descendants as innumerable "as the dust of the earth; so that is one can count the dust of the earth, your descendants also can be counted" (Genesis 13:16).

Obeying the divine commandment to familiarize himself with the territory, Abram left his household throughout the area and then decided to set up his tent in Hebron, beside the oak trees at a place called Mamre, later described as belonging to an Amorite named Mamre. The site of these oaks assumed great historical significance for Judaism, for the altar that the patriarch built there became an important sanctuary for the Jews' traditional rememberance of the man who later became known as Abraham.

Sometime after the move to Mamre, circumstances forced Abram to go into battle, the only time this man of peace is shown taking the role of military hero. Four powerful kings from the East joined forces to attack and plunder Sodom, its sister city Gomorrah, and three other Dead Sea settlements, carrying Lot and his household into captivity. Assembling a force of 318 of his own retainers, Abram chased after the interlopers and put them to rout north of Damascus. He not only rescued his nephew and the other captives but was also able to retrieve the valuable booty seized by the four royal invaders.

Upon his return to Canaan, Abram was ritually blessed by Melchizedek, the king of Salem, an early name for Jerusalem, and "priest of God Most High" (Genesis 14:18) - in this case, the Canaanite deity El. In addition, the grateful king of Sodom offered to let Abram keep the spoils taken from the city, but he replied, "I have sworn to the Lord God Most High, maker of heaven and earth, that I will not take a thread or a sandal-thong or anything that is yours, lest you should say, 'I have made Abram rich'" (Genesis 14:22-23). In using the phrase "Lord God Most High," Abram was referring not to El but to the Lord.

In other words, it seems that Abram continued to trust fully in God's protection at that point. Soon afterward, however, he was questioning the Lord as to why he and Sarai were still childless, even though ten years had passed since the divine commandment to move to Canaan. "Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them," the Lord replied. "So shall your descendants be" (Genesis 15:5). Abram fell into a deep sleep, and God revealed even more of the future, explaining that his chosen people would be held captive in Egypt for 400 years, then be freed at last to return to the land promised to them. But he also confided that Abram himself would not suffer: "As you yourself, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age" (Genesis 15:15). When Abram awoke, the Lord for the first time revealed the actual extent of the land of promise, which would stretch "from the river of Egypt (the brook of Egypt in the Sinai Peninsula) to the great river, the river Euphrates" (Genesis 15:18).

Astonishingly, Abram must now have become too impatient to believe this latest affirmation of the promise and decided to take matters into his own hands. At Sarai's suggestion, he took her Egyptian maid Hagar as a concubine in order to produce an heir. The son of this liaison was named Ishmael.

A CHANGE OF NAMES
At this point, the biblical narrative flashes forward 13 years. When Abram was 99, God appeared and once more repeated his promise of land and descendants. As token of this binding covenant, he changed Abram's name to Abraham, evidently expanding the meaning of the original name from "exalted father" to "father of a multitude." Sarai became Sarah, both words meaning "princess." When the Lord also explicitly pledged that a son would be born to Sarah, Abraham literally fell down laughing at the very idea. "Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old?" he asked. "Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?" (Genesis 17:17) Unmoved, God explained that the boy would be born within the year and should be named Isaac, meaning "he laughs."

God also revealed a new ritual requirement for Abraham and all of his promised male descendants: "You shall be circumcised . . . (as) a sign of the convenant between me and you" (Genesis 17:11). Abraham thereupon circumcised himself and then performed the same operation on 13-year-old Ishmael and all of the males in his household. In the future, the ceremony producing this irreversible sign of membership in the Israelite community of the covenant was to take place as soon as a male infant was eight days old. Down to the present, the Jewish circumcision rite or birth continues to include the phrase, "entry into the covenant of Abraham our father."

Sometime thereafter, Abraham was resting from the noontime heat in the cool shade of his tent when three strangers suddenly appeared in front of him. As eastern hospitality required, he rushed to welcome them, hastily ordering a small feast to be prepared, including a freshly killed calf. After these heavenly visitors sat down and ate beneath the oaks of Mamre, the Lord revealed his identity by repeating his vow that Sarah would give birth by spring. Listening from inside the tent, she laughed out loud, as her husband had done, saying, "Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?" "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" her visitor countered. Terrified, Sarah denied that she had laughed, but God replied, "No, but you did laugh" (Genesis 18:13-14,15). For all of its homely and comic touches, this announcement of Isaac's birth was taken by Christian artists of the Middle Ages to prefigure the angelic Annunciation of the birth of Jesus in the New Testament.

On this day, it turns out, God had paused on his way to more troubling business, having come to judge Sodom and Gomorrah because of the outcry against their wickedness. When he does Abraham the great honor of sharing this information, his chosen servant, in a moving scene, shows himself worthy to be the father of nations by daring to intercede for these foreigners. "Wilt thou indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked?" he asks (Genesis 18:23). Abraham wins the Lord's agreement to spare the cities if 50 "righteous" can be found, then continues to bargain the number down to a mere ten such people, daring to call down God's wrath on himself in order to save others.

For religious scholars, this determined intercession is profoundly significant, and not simply because Abraham might have come close to winning an argument with the Lord. Rather, he introduced an important new concept: the possibility that sinners could be saved from destruction by the mere existence of even a small number of God-fearing people. Moreover, by trying to rescue the two non-