An extract from Guidelines - Abraham

by Walter Moberly

Included in the following extract from Guidelines are two week’s worth of readings. Click on the links below to go to a particular day’s reading

Introduction

Abraham is one of the momentous figures of world history. His significance can be summed up in two of the things that the Bible says about him. He is the ‘friend of God’ (Isaiah 41:8), and he is the ‘ancestor of a multitude of nations’ (Genesis 17:4). These come together in the fact that the world’s two largest faiths, Christianity and Islam, together with the faith out of which they grew, Judaism, are often called ‘the Abrahamic religions’, for Abraham is the foundational figure common to all three. Abraham is a man from the mists of antiquity whose depth of engagement with God has continued to be fruitful in an astonishing variety of ways.

What kind of stories are the stories featuring Abraham? It is important not to prejudge what we think the material ought to be, rather than trying to discern what it actually is. First, it is clear that the material was written many centuries later than the events it depicts. Even on the traditional assumption that Moses wrote the material, he would have been writing some 400 years later. Scholars have shown that, in all likelihood, the material was initially passed on orally and later written by several different hands, all subsequent to Moses.

Second, the stories seem to presuppose aspects of Israel’s own history with God, which are compressed into single episodes of great depth and resonance. There are perhaps similarities to the way in which the stories of Robin Hood compress the history and ideals of several centuries of English experience into a fixed cast of characters and a single historical context. Thus, the portrayal of Abraham is inseparable from the continuing impact that he continued to have within ancient Israel.

We need, therefore, to take the stories with total imaginative seriousness, just as we do any worthwhile story. At the same time, we must recognize that the reality underlying the text is complex, so taking the text seriously does not mean supposing that the storyline could be at all straightforwardly transposed into a historian’s account of the early second millennium bc.

Quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.


Week 1 Day 1: God’s call and promise read Genesis 12:1–3

These words are the keynote for the whole story that follows. For Abram (whose name is changed to Abraham later on: Genesis 17:5), engagement with God means not unusual mental states, glorified tribal loyalties or tenuous speculations. It is a matter of call and promise from God, envisaging trust and obedience from the human recipient.

God’s opening words (v. 1) are a summons to ‘go’, to leave what is familiar and safe, the places Abram knows and the people he knows and who know him. Where he is to go, he does not know in advance, but will only discover as he goes; understanding will come with obedience.

Abram may naturally be fearful about going. To leave one’s familiar context may be a journey into extinction and oblivion. So God reassures him with a promise that reveals the purpose of the divine summons. God will give the married but childless Abram (Genesis 11:29–30) so many descendants that he, through his descendants, will become a famous nation (v. 2). Moreover, God will so commit himself to Abram that those favourable or hostile towards Abram will encounter God’s favour or hostility accordingly (v. 3a). This will be so marked that Abram will in some sense become a worldwide blessing (though obviously ‘the earth’ has a wider meaning for today’s reader than for the ancient writer).

The sense in which Abram will become a blessing can be taken in more than one way. The NRSV footnote, ‘by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves’, envisages Abram becoming a model to be emulated, such that when people want to invoke a picture of a blessed existence they will invoke Abram (in the form of his descendants, Israel) and say, ‘May God make you like Abram/Israel’ (rather as the leader of a poor nation might say, ‘May we become rich like America’). This is the idiom of blessing found in Genesis 48:20. In this sense, Abram is reassured that his obedience to God will lead to his being recognized as a model of what life should be like.

The words ‘in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed’ suggest that Abram is to be a vehicle of God’s blessing to the world. What God promises is not only for Abram’s reassurance and benefit, but for the well-being of others also. This is the basic sense that Paul finds in the text (Galatians 3:6–9).


Week 1 Day 2: An early exodus read Genesis 12:4—13:2

In obedience to God, Abram sets out, taking his family with him. He travels through Canaan, in the middle of which, at Shechem, God tells him that this is the land of the promise. But Abram continues to journey southwards (we are not sure why), with the result that, in time of famine, he keeps on journeying out of the promised land altogether, into Egypt.

Abram’s time in Egypt looks odd. Should we find fault with him for lying and being faithless, or should we enjoy the sight of a wily Abram outsmarting dumb Egyptians? On any reckoning, Abram’s behaviour seems ambiguous and hard to evaluate, though it is difficult not to find fault with him to some extent against the wider backdrop of scripture.

Whatever we make of Abram, however, the significance of the story may lie on a different level, for what happens here encapsulates what happens later to Israel at the end of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus. In time of famine, the people of Israel go down to Egypt and initially prosper there. When they are oppressed, the Lord afflicts Pharaoh with plagues, and Pharaoh sends them away. The Israelites leave with considerable herds, silver and gold. Abram’s story encapsulates that of Israel.

This is particularly important for understanding how to read these Genesis narratives. The processes by which the stories were formed have drawn deep analogies between Abram and the nation of Israel, presumably to enable Israel to find itself, as it were, in these stories, which tell of a time before Israel as such existed. This is similar to the classic means by which Christians have tended to read the Old Testament down the ages—that is, as figuration or typology, seeing patterns in the text that resonate with patterns in the Christian life. The stories are our stories, which is not to say that they are not also the stories of Jews, but that we should be looking for ways of finding ourselves within the dynamics of the text.

Finally, we see that Abram has, in effect, left the two great centres of early civilization—Mesopotamia, where Ur and Haran were located (11:31), and Egypt. This is a tacit testimony to Israel’s vocation and, by extension, that of the Church, not to assimilate to contemporary culture but to be a distinctive people, set apart by obedience to God’s call.


Week 1 Day 3: A costly choice read Genesis 13:2–18

Abram returns to the land of Canaan and, as he had looked to God previously, so he looks to God now (vv. 2–4). However, typical problems of life soon arise. The very wealth that Abram enjoys, and which is shared by his nephew Lot, gives rise to conflict (vv. 5–7). There is not enough room for them both (which initially sounds surprising, but is explained by the note in verse 7b that the land had plenty of other inhabitants as well).

What is Abram to do? As the head of the family, he could resolve the problem by imposing a solution upon Lot and his herders: he could take Lot’s herders as his own, or he could send them away to find somewhere else to live. Abram opts for a form of the latter solution, but in a way that speaks volumes within the wider context of scripture: power is truly realized not in imposing upon but in enabling others. Abram offers Lot the choice of where to settle, thus taking the risk that he himself will be left with second-best (vv. 8–9).

Lot looks around and, indeed, chooses what looks to be the best territory. The Jordan valley is described in glowing terms. It has the kind of water supply and fertility that would mark the very garden of God (like Eden), or Egypt, where the Nile irrigates the land. It must be the best place to live, so Lot goes there (vv. 10–13).

Yet the story is strongly ironic, for the best and most fertile place is going to become the most blasted and arid (v. 10b). The reason for this is a factor that Lot apparently failed to consider significant in his deciding where to settle—the wickedness and corruption of the inhabitants (v. 13). The story is parabolic of the foolishness of making decisions based on superficial attractiveness.

Only after Lot has gone, when Abram has had to face the possible costliness of his generosity, does God speak again to Abram. As though matching Abram’s generosity, God’s initial, rather brief, promise (12:7) is expanded in glowing terms (vv. 14–16), and Abram is invited to savour his inheritance by walking through it in a way that will symbolically celebrate God’s gift (v. 17).

Abram then settles at Hebron, where he builds another altar, which seems to symbolize a dedication of the place to God. Abram is not complacent about what God is giving him.


Week 1 Day 4: Strange encounters read Genesis 14:1–24

The account of the military campaign that fills the first two-thirds of this chapter is unusual within the Abraham stories, not least for its numerous names of people and places, but the basic storyline is clear.

The kings in the Jordan valley rebel against their overlord, Chedorlaomer. Chedorlaomer comes and defeats the rebels and, for good measure, plunders them; Lot (who is presumably already discovering that living in the Jordan valley is not all that it looked to be) is taken off as part of the plunder. Abram has enough resources to pursue and defeat Chedorlaomer’s troops in a night attack and to rescue Lot and retrieve the rest of the plunder as well (vv. 1–16).

This sets the scene for two encounters that are the real interest of the narrative. Abram meets both the king of Sodom and the king of Salem (that is, Jerusalem: cf. Psalm 76:2. ‘The King’s Valley’ is probably close to Jerusalem: cf. 2 Samuel 18:18). One represents a place of evil and corruption, the other a place of God’s holy presence. How will Abram interact with each?

The king of Sodom comes to meet the victorious Abram to negotiate terms for the return of what was plundered from Sodom (v. 17). Surprisingly, however, before the king of Sodom can say a word, Melchizedek king of Salem appears with bread and wine, presumably as a gift to refresh Abram (v. 18a), though his gift has naturally acquired rich resonances in Christian imagination. Melchizedek is not only king but also a priest, and he blesses Abram, pronouncing that the deity who made heaven and earth is also the one who has enabled Abram to be victorious over his numerically superior enemies (vv. 18b–20a). Abram says nothing, but enacts a response of grateful recognition by giving a tithe of his spoil to this mysterious priest-king (v. 20b).

The king of Sodom now makes his negotiating proposal, one that sounds fairly generous (v. 21). But Abram declines. He has sworn to the deity by whom he has just been blessed—and ‘God most High’ is none other than the God Israel recognizes, the Lord (v. 22a)—that he will not be in any way beholden to the king of Sodom as he is to the other king (of Jerusalem). All he will keep is for those who have helped him (vv. 22–24). For himself, a sufficient reward for his campaign is that he has received God’s blessing.


Week 1 Day 5: The meaning of faith read Genesis 15:1–21

Did Abram have second thoughts after declining enrichment from his military campaign? At any rate, God speaks to reassure Abram and promises him rich reward (v. 1), in a way that resonates with Jesus’ promise to his disciples who followed him at great cost (Mark 10:28–30).

For the first time in the story, Abram’s words to God are recorded. Remarkably, Abram does not thank God for the promise just made, but rather queries it: how can God’s assurance be meaningful when God’s prime promise of descendants remains unfulfilled in any satisfying way (vv. 2–3)? God does not brush aside Abram’s words as in any way improper, but rather meets them with two specific assurances. First, it will indeed be Abram’s own offspring, not a slave (or even Lot) who will be his heir (v. 4). Second, Abram’s descendants will be like the stars on a clear night, wondrously beyond counting (v. 5).

Abram still ‘only’ has God’s word for this. On one level, nothing has changed, yet Abram is willing to take God at his word and trust him (v. 6a), a response of which God clearly approves (v. 6b). So basic is such trust to any real relationship with God that Paul looked to this passage as spelling out the heart of that which also characterizes Christian faith (Romans 4; Galatians 3).

God’s approval takes shape in a further promise, to give to Abram the land in which he is living as a resident alien (v. 7). Again, Abram (the model of trust) responds with a query (v. 8). Again God takes it seriously, thereby showing that a genuine and trusting relationship with God has space within it for question and answer.

God’s answer is a strange one. Abram is told to perform a ritual that has no parallel elsewhere in the Old Testament. He is not to sacrifice the animals, but to slaughter them, divide them (except the birds), and wait (vv. 9–11). As the darkness of night comes on, an even deeper, fearful darkness comes upon Abram in himself. Within this darkness God speaks strange words whose main tenor is ‘wait’: the fulfilment of God’s promises will not be for a long time, and Abram himself will die before he sees it (vv. 12–16).

Then, however, God guarantees the promise that the land will belong to Abram’s descendants. The fire represents God’s presence, as at the burning bush, and passing between the divided animals symbolizes God’s self-commitment to his promise to Abram (vv. 17–21).


Week 1 Day 6: An aborted exodus read Genesis 16:1–16

Waiting is hard. Despite the renewal of God’s promise to Abram that he will have offspring, nothing happens, so Sarai impatiently tries to exploit a possible loophole. God had said that the offspring would be Abraham’s own, and would be numerous, but he had not specified that she, Sarai, had to be the mother. Since her continuing inability to conceive seems to be by the hand of God, then perhaps a substitute would serve the purpose (vv. 1–3).

But the bright idea instantly runs aground on the rocks of raw human emotions—contempt, jealousy, resentment. Sarai turns on the crowing Hagar and maltreats her so badly, with Abram’s weak acquiescence, that Hagar runs away to the wilderness (vv. 4–6).

Here we have a remarkable kind of exodus in reverse. A Hebrew oppresses an Egyptian, who flees to the wilderness, where God is encountered (vv. 7–8). The angel of the Lord has three things to say to Hagar—bad news, then good news.

The bad news is that this time there is to be no escape from oppression. Hagar must return to the place and person she hates, and submit (v. 9). It is a hard word, but a reminder that the will of God may include enduring hardship as well as being delivered from it.

However, the angel renews to Hagar the promise of countless offspring in terms similar to those earlier used with Abram (v. 10). She, through her children, will flourish just like Abram. Maybe, she might suppose, she is to be the channel of God’s promise to Abram after all.

So, thirdly, the angel makes clear that Hagar’s son has a destiny distinct from Abram’s. His name is to be a permanent reminder of God’s concern for Hagar in her suffering (v. 11), but he is not to be the blessing to others. Rather, he and his descendants will be wild and not peaceable, and that will be the reason for their being set apart (v. 12). In this regard, Ishmael is like Cain (cf. Genesis 4:15). It is striking that these ‘awkward’ people are no less the object of God’s concern and promises than the chosen line of Abram. As Job also has to learn, God’s purposes are wider and less comfortable than what we might naturally imagine.

Hagar is awed by her encounter, and commemorates it in the name of the place (vv. 13–14). Without more ado, she returns to her unwelcome home to fulfil God’s purposes there for the time being (vv. 15–16).


Week 1: Guidelines

The great Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard once said of the Church Father John Chrysostom that ‘he gesticulated with his whole existence’ —that is to say, who he was pointed to God. That is surely also true of Abraham, whose whole being, whatever his ups and downs, speaks of the realities of life with God. May it be true also of us, that we ‘gesticulate with our existence’.


Week 2 Day 1: A promise and a symbol read Genesis 17:1–27

Years pass. The waiting continues, but its end is near. God appears again to Abram and renews his promise, specifying that this promise is a covenant, which will mean mutual obligation (vv. 1–2). God has three distinct things to say.

First, the covenant is God’s promise. As before, descendants and land are promised, with a fuller specification now than previously. On the one hand, the countless descendants will in fact be not one nation but many, and this is so significant that Abram’s name is to be changed to Abraham as a permanent reminder (in a Hebrew wordplay). On the other hand, the land is granted in perpetuity (vv. 3–8).

Second, Abraham’s role in the covenant is spelled out. Abraham’s present and future family is to have every male circumcised, a requirement that includes slaves who are not blood members of the household so that there is no distinction within the household (vv. 9–14).

Why circumcision? It was a widespread ancient practice and, indeed, there is an assumption within the text that it is familiar to Abraham already. Its symbolic meaning is not spelled out, and so must be inferred. Since the wider concern in the story is God’s promise of descendants, circumcision marks the human involvement in producing descendants. In the very act of sexual intercourse there is a reminder that the children who may be born as a result are to be understood not only in familiar human categories (love, family continuity) but also in terms of a fulfilment of God’s promise. Moreover, the fact that babies only eight days old are to be circumcised, when frequently in other cultures circumcision was a rite of puberty, means that circumcision also comes to symbolize the dedication of newborn life to God.

Third, God tells Abraham that it is his wife Sarai, and no one else, who is to be the mother of Abraham’s descendants; and her name is changed also, as a memorial to this (vv. 15–16).

After all the waiting, and the increasing age of Sarah and himself, Abraham’s initial response is incredulity. Surely God’s promise must be realized through his existing son, Ishmael (vv. 17–18). But God means what he says, though this does not exclude Ishmael from blessing also, and to underline it, for the first time a date is given for Sarah’s bearing a son (vv. 19–22).

Abraham then responds as a model of obedience to God’s commandment (vv. 23–27).


Week 2 Day 2: Negotiating with God read Genesis 18:1–33

The Lord appears to Abraham, remarkably taking the form of three men (a mysterious detail most memorably captured in Christian imagination by Rublev’s icon of the Trinity). Abraham and Sarah offer hospitality to those who initially appear simply to be travellers (vv. 1–8), thereby modelling practical care for others (cf. Hebrews 13:1–3).

God’s message parallels that at the end of chapter 17. This time the emphasis is on Sarah’s incredulity. Even though Sarah’s laughter is kept to herself, the Lord knows about it and overrides it. He reaffirms God’s power to transform what seems humanly impossible. Sarah is cowed by this, and God’s mild rebuke is perhaps intended also as a reminder of the divine power that reaches what is usually inaccessible (vv. 9–15).

Abraham’s hospitable escort of his visitors as they set off for Sodom might be the end of the story (v. 16), but in fact issues are intensified. In a remarkable divine soliloquy, some of the implications of Abraham’s being chosen to be the father of many and a blessing to all are spelled out. Abraham’s call involves access to God’s purposes, which are to be understood in terms of justice and righteousness; God wants patterns of human living that display something of his own integrity (vv. 17–19). In the light of this, God engages Abraham with regard to his moral concerns in this context—Sodom and Gomorrah (Lot’s home), where human life is reputed to be corrupt, the opposite of what God looks for (vv. 20–21).

Of the three men, apparently two go off while one remains to speak with Abraham, to give Abraham opportunity to display and develop qualities appropriate to his role as chosen by God. Abraham has to explore something of what justice really means (vv. 23–33). Although he appears to speak confidently (v. 25), this is a dialogue where Abraham also feels himself to be on a knife edge, probing uncertainly (vv. 27, 30, 32). This is not like haggling in the bazaar, for the Lord sets no opening price. Abraham himself sets all the terms, and the Lord always acquiesces. One issue is that the upright and the corrupt should not receive identical treatment, for right and wrong must matter (v. 25). The other is that a few upright may have a leavening effect so that the corrupt receive mercy (v. 24). Both issues are probed, but neither is resolved; learning God’s values is a continuing process.


Week 2 Day 3: Judgment and mercy read Genesis 19:1–29

The story of the two men/angels in Sodom begins straightforwardly, with Lot offering hospitality similar to that of Abraham (vv. 1–3). Yet it rapidly turns nasty, with an aggressive visit by the locals (vv. 4–5). Lot’s attempt to defend his guests does nothing for the modern reader and within the text is rudely rejected: what right have incomers to try to tell the locals what to do? (vv. 6–9). As brutality is about to take over, Lot’s visitors intervene and gain breathing space by turning their attackers’ vision in upon themselves (vv. 10–11).

The nature of the Sodomites’ sin has traditionally been construed as ‘homosexuality’ but more recently by some as abuse of hospitality. Such categories in such an antithesis are unhelpful, for the intended offence is clearly same-sex rape and the visit is an attack on strangers; the picture is one of aggression that takes the form of unbridled sexual appetite and violence.

The men make clear that the purpose of their presence is to enact God’s judgment upon the sin of Sodom; but, presumably because of Abraham’s interaction with God, Lot and his family are not to be swept away with the corrupt, and so Lot is given an opportunity to rescue his family. Those locals who are his prospective in-laws regard warnings of judgment as a joke, however (vv. 12–14).

Maybe Lot is not too sure himself about what his visitors say. At any rate, when morning comes he has done nothing. Further urging meets no response, and so he and his immediate family forcibly receive a merciful expulsion (vv. 15–16). Even then Lot dithers and haggles and, astonishingly, is allowed to go to Zoar rather than the hills (vv. 17–23), although just as Sodom is turning out not to be the paradise that Lot originally imagined, Zoar will be no lasting refuge either (v. 30).

Disaster then comes upon the whole region. Lot’s wife, whose looking back is perhaps to be imagined as lingering behind, becomes like one of the figures discovered in Pompeii (vv. 24–26). The region so desolate that it becomes known as the Dead Sea is to be envisaged as a picture of God’s judgment on human corruption.

Abraham sees the desolation. His response is not recounted, yet the narrator makes clear that the mercy received by Lot in the midst of judgment is somehow because of Abraham. Abraham’s probing engagement with God is a kind of intercessory prayer (vv. 27–29).


Week 2 Day 4: Puzzling integrity read Genesis 20:1–18

In some ways Abraham is a very slow learner. He repeats the lie about Sarah that he earlier perpetrated upon Pharaoh (vv. 1–2), only this time it is more serious, for this is the time in which Sarah is destined to become pregnant with Abraham’s child. Drastic measures are called for, and so God speaks to Abimelech (vv. 3–7).

The conversation is intriguing. Abimelech is in danger of death (vv. 3, 7), yet Abimelech speaks to God with the same kind of concern for justice that earlier marked Abraham (v. 4; cf. 18:25). Abimelech has been deceived by both Abraham and Sarah, and has acted unwittingly. God grants this, and indeed it was because of Abimelech’s integrity that God kept him from sinning. Abimelech has acted with more integrity than Abraham, yet his near-adultery is a moral offence that requires intercessory prayer on the part of the less-than-honest Abraham. (Abraham is called a prophet only in the sense that he is someone who intercedes with God, for intercession was one of the responsibilities of a prophet: cf. 1 Samuel 12:23; Jeremiah 27:18.) Although, generally speaking, authentic prayer requires openness and integrity before God, the people of God may yet be obligated to pray even when their living is no better, and possibly worse, than that of those for whom they pray.

Next day Abimelech issues a stinging rebuke to Abraham (vv. 8–9), and then asks what on earth moved him to act in such a way (v. 10). Abraham pleads first that he thought there was no ‘fear of God’ in the place (v. 11). The person who fears God is one who, among other things, does not take advantage of the weak and vulnerable (cf. Leviticus 19:14; Deuteronomy 25:17–18). Abraham had feared that, as a resident alien, he would be picked off by ruthless people. Yet the story shows how mistaken Abraham was, for Abimelech acted with more integrity than he did: not all foreigners are like the inhabitants of Sodom.

Abraham’s second excuse is that he was not really telling a lie anyway, for Sarah is his half-sister (vv. 12–13). One presumes that here Abraham is telling the truth, though the narrative does not specify.

Abimelech responds with generous reparations (vv. 14, 16) and a gracious offer (v. 15). God’s response to Abraham’s prayer leaves Abimelech and his family healthy and fertile (vv. 17–18). God’s commitment to Abraham makes Abraham a blessing in some rather strange ways.


Week 2 Day 5: Laughter and life read Genesis 21:1–21

At long last, almost beyond hope, God’s promise is fulfilled. A son is born to Abraham and Sarah. A sense of joy is apparent in the repeated reference to things happening as the Lord had said (vv. 1–2). Although previously both Abraham and Sarah had laughed in incredulity at God’s promise, now Sarah laughs with the laughter of sheer wonderment, which is only disbelieving in the sense that it all seems too good to be true. All these different laughters are commemorated in the name of their son, for the Hebrew form of Isaac, yitshaq, means simply ‘he/one laughs’. Joy seems complete.

The joy lasts for perhaps two or three years, which is the common length of time for the weaning of children in antiquity. Since the first years of a child’s life are also the most perilous for its survival, by the time a child is being weaned there is every reason to expect that it will survive into adulthood. So weaning would be an appropriate occasion for a celebratory feast (v. 8).

But there is a fly in the ointment (v. 9). Hagar’s earlier return to her mistress was presumably as displeasing in its own way to Sarah as it was to Hagar. The precise reason for Sarah’s displeasure with Ishmael is, however, unclear. The NRSV text, following the ancient Greek and Latin versions, has Ishmael playing/laughing with Isaac, which could be entirely innocent. The point then would be Sarah’s sense of her own previous blunder: having helped to bring about Ishmael’s birth, she now sees an innocent Ishmael as a threat to Isaac’s being the heir to his father. But the shorter Hebrew text, in NRSV footnote, suggests a different scenario: the Hebrew uses another form of the verb ‘laugh’ (metsahek), which on its own in this context would naturally bear a negative connotation—that is, ‘mocking’. To be sure, Sarah’s behaviour is on any reckoning mean, but she may have been prompted by the son’s taking after the mother in displaying scorn.

God overrules a distressed Abraham, because Ishmael also will become the ancestor of a people (vv. 11–13). Hagar goes off with Ishmael, clearly not knowing where to go or what to do, which is why she readily despairs (vv. 14–16). But God comes and promises life, a life symbolized by the water that is instantly discovered. Hereafter, the wilderness, which had initially been a place of apparent death, becomes a place of life (vv. 17–21).


Week 2 Day 6: The supreme trial read Genesis 22:1–24

God speaks the unspeakable. Abraham is to take Isaac, the apple of his eye as well as the tangible fulfilment of God’s promises, and reduce him to ashes and smoke as an offering to God (vv. 1–2).

How can this be? The narrator explains that this is a test (v. 1). Testing is a regular action of God to draw people out into a deeper obedience. In Deuteronomy 8, for example, God tests Israel in order to do them good (8:16), teaching them, through what they undergo, a basic truth about life (8:2–3). But a test may yet be demanding beyond imagination.

Although we may picture Abraham feeling bewilderment or resentment, the narrator tells us nothing of his feelings, only what Abraham does: he acts in obedience (vv. 3–6). Isaac’s question is simple and poignant; Abraham’s answer is equally simple and, whatever his possible feelings, expresses a fundamental trust in God (vv. 7–8).

Abraham presses on, and only at the last moment does the angel speak and stop him. He reveals the purpose of the test—to establish that Abraham truly ‘fears God’ (vv. 9–12). In the Old Testament, ‘fearing God’ is the prime term for appropriate human responsiveness to God (cf. Psalm 103:11, 13, 17; Luke 1:50). In Christian parlance, the story establishes that Abraham is a ‘true believer’. It shows that true faith means faithfulness to God, even when that faithfulness is a path of incomprehension and darkness.

One immediate consequence is that Abraham is able to offer a ram instead of Isaac, and to celebrate God’s provision in the name of the place (vv. 13–14). Where is the place? Verse 2 spoke of Moriah, and 2 Chronicles 3:1 speaks of Solomon building the temple on Mount Moriah—so Abraham’s sacrifice is in the location of the Jerusalem temple. This suggests that his story may be meant to show the true meaning of worship in the temple: the offering of an animal is a true sacrifice when it represents the kind of total self-giving that characterizes Abraham.

God’s promise of blessing is now renewed in glowing terms: Abraham’s obedience will bring blessing to many (vv. 15–18).

Abraham’s son has definitively been confirmed as the father of many. What remains is for the divine promise to be worked out in human terms. So amidst the genealogy that follows (vv. 20–24), we note the name of the woman who will one day become the mother of many—Rebekah.


Week 2: Guidelines

Paul focuses on Abraham as the one who trusted and took God at his word, even when he had to hope against hope (Galatians 3; Romans 4). James focuses on Abraham as the one whose response to God was total and unreserved in what he did (James 2:18–24). Can we hold together ‘faith’ and ‘works’ so that our response to God can have something of the richness of Abraham’s?


Further reading

R.W.L. Moberly, ‘Genesis 12—50’, in John W. Rogerson, R.W.L. Moberly and William Johnstone, Genesis and Exodus, Sheffield Academic Press, 2001.

R.W.L. Moberly, ‘Living Dangerously: Genesis 22 and the Quest for Good Biblical Interpretation’, in Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays (eds.), The Art of Reading Scripture, Eerdmans, 2003, pp.181–97.

Walter Brueggemann, Genesis, Interpretation Bible Commentary, John Knox Press, 1982.

Nahum Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary, Jewish Publication Society, 1989.

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