Episode 283: Pete Enns - Pete Ruins Genesis (Part 3)
In this episode of The Bible for Normal People, Pete dives into the story of Abraham in Genesis. Pete explores Abraham’s importance as a pivotal figure in the Bible, detailing his journey, covenants with God, and major themes found in the stories about him. Through a "flyover" of Abraham's life, Pete highlights connections to other parts of the Bible and explores theological tensions for Christians today. Join him as he explores the following questions:
Why is Abraham considered such a pivotal figure in the Old Testament?
What is the significance of God’s promise to Abraham regarding offspring and land?
What’s with the name change?
How does Abraham’s story parallel the Joseph and Exodus stories?
Why does Abraham’s call from God appear to come "out of the blue"?
What are unilateral and bilateral covenants, and how do they impact God’s relationship with Abraham?
What role does circumcision play in the covenant between God and Abraham?
Why is Hagar’s story important, and how does she represent a key part of God’s plan?
How does the tension between Hagar and Sarah unfold, and what does it signify about God’s promise?
Was Abraham’s decision to have a child with Hagar an act of faith or faithlessness?
What is the significance of Ishmael’s role in the larger story of Abraham’s descendants?
Why does God test Abraham by asking him to sacrifice Isaac, and what is the theological significance of this test?
How does the binding of Isaac (Akedah) reflect the covenant relationship between God and Abraham?
Why does God refer to Isaac as Abraham’s “only son” after Ishmael is sent away?
What role does Melchizedek play in the story, and why is he significant in the broader biblical narrative?
Quotables
Pithy, shareable, sometimes-less-than-280-character statements from the episode you can share.
“After Moses and David, Abraham is a pretty important figure. He gets more airtime than any other Old Testament character. And he is a pivotal figure in the Old Testament because it is with Abraham that the story of Israel truly begins. His great grandchildren will give their names to the twelve tribes of Israel, which is important to the biblical story about the Israelites and where they came from and their origins.”@peteenns @theb4np
“This twofold promise, seed and land—or maybe another way of putting it, uncountable offspring and a place to put them—that twofold promise will be a major theme throughout Genesis and also the Old Testament, either explicitly or lurking in the background.”@peteenns @theb4np
“Throughout the Bible, including the New Testament, we will see a wonderful tension between these two types of covenants, unilateral and bilateral, unconditional and conditional. They coexist, it's not one or the other. I find that fascinating, [as it creates] a wonderful theological tension for people to think through if we think one or the other of those two kinds of covenants is the most important. They're both important.”@peteenns @theb4np
“The biblical author is drawing for us, in the book of Genesis, Israel's political map. And this is the point I want to stress: it is a map that only means anything after the Israelites are in the land itself, and there are people like Moabites and Ammonites. It is fair to ask when Genesis was written on the basis of stories like this.”@peteenns @theb4np
“This political-map-drawing business strongly suggests a time period when such a map would make sense—later on, monarchy or later. Genesis is a book that was written in light of realities much later than the period covered by Genesis. There are other reasons for concluding this, but this reference to Israel's neighbors is one of them.”@peteenns @theb4np
“The editor of the various sources of Genesis is tying this earlier story, Abraham, to a later one, the Exodus. Why he does this is a good question, and it's hard to be dogmatic about it. But it may be enough to know that Genesis does this sort of thing here and there.”@peteenns @theb4np
“When reading about Abraham and Sarah's journey into Egypt and back again, I have a suspicion that the author wants me to think Exodus already at the outset of the Abraham story. This type of literary foreshadowing also suggests that simply recording events doesn't describe what the editor is doing. He is shaping them—he is crafting a narrative to push the readers into understanding Israel's story in a certain way. One of those ways that the editor is pushing might be to see the Exodus not as an accident, but as part of a larger divine plan, a pattern that is introduced way back at the beginning of Israel's story with their father, Abraham.”@peteenns @theb4np
“The Abraham story is a preview of Israel's journey into and out of Egypt. And let me say this clearly: In my opinion, to expect to find in these stories an objective handling of history, an objective historical account, is a misguided expectation. The editor of Genesis and Torah is not giving us history straight, but a highly interpreted, shaped take on the past.”
Mentioned in This Episode
Class: October class “Get a Grip on the Gospels: Reading the Gospels Well” taught by Dr. Jennifer Garcia Bashaw
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Pete: You're listening to the Bible for Normal People, the only God ordained podcast on the internet. I'm Pete Enns.
Jared: And I'm Jared Byas.
Pete: Have you ever wanted to learn from a Bible scholar how to read the Gospels well? Well, now's your chance. Our October class, which is the second class in our three part series on the New Testament, is here.
Jared: And the class is called Get a Grip on the Gospels, Reading the Gospels Well, and it's taught by our very own Incredible Nerd in Residence, Dr. Jennifer Garcia Bashaw. Jennifer explores that word we use all the time around here, the context, the context that shaped the Gospels, like the society, the politics of the time, as well as the pivotal elements in these four texts.
Pete: The class is pre-recorded, which means you can get instant access to watch it as soon as you buy it, and it even comes with a study guide so you can follow along. The class is pay what you can from October 1 through the 15th, and then it costs 25. There will also be a live Q&A for all three parts of the series on November 20th at 8pm ET, so Jennifer can answer all your burning questions about the New Testament.
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Jared: So for more information and to buy our October class, head to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/fall24. That's fall and the numbers 24. That's the Bible for normal people.com front slash fall 24.
Pete: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to my Pete Ruins series on Genesis. And today we're moving on to the story of Abraham, which takes us from the end of chapter 11 in Genesis to the middle of chapter 25. And after Moses and David, Abraham, you know, he's a pretty important figure.
He gets more airtime than any other Old Testament character. And he is a pivotal figure in the Old Testament because it is with Abraham that the story of Israel truly begins. His great grandchildren will give their names to the twelve tribes of Israel, which is important to the biblical story about the Israelites and where they came from, their origins, and all that sort of thing.
So, there is a lot to cover here, folks. Let's just do this. Let's begin with a fairly quick flyover of the action in the story of Abraham. And unlike other parts of the Bible and other podcasts I've done, the Abraham story is really hard to outline. It's really just a sequence of movements. It's one big story.
So I'm just going to go chapter by chapter here. Okay. And then after that we'll circle back and dig into some select details of parts of the story that I think are interesting or just important to understand. All right. So first the flyover chapter 12, that's where we begin. Abraham is called by God and promised offspring and land.
Side issue, at this point, he is still called Abram. He's not going to be called Abraham until chapter 17, though I will likely forget myself and flip back and forth between the two names at least early on. I'm gonna try really hard not to do that, not to confuse you, but I'm only human, okay? So, Abraham is called by God and promised offspring, and land.
And in fact, it's not just a promise. God takes Abraham on a tour of Canaan from north to south, and Abram builds two altars. Why do that? Well, that's just a way of laying claim to the land. And we also read here what seems to be a throwaway line in verse 6 of chapter 12. The narrator says, at that time, the Canaanites were in the land, at that time, the time of Abraham's tour of the promised land.
Now, since at least medieval Judaism, it's been observed that the phrase, at that time, the Canaanites were in the land, implies that it was written during a time when the Canaanites were no longer in the land. In other words, during the monarchy or later. That's just one little tidbit here that can escape our gaze, I think, pretty easily.
It seems like a throwaway line, but it's actually, I think, a pretty clear piece of evidence about the writing of the Book of Genesis, or at least the writing of this story. It has a different, Now, what is really curious about this call of Abram is that it comes out of the blue. No reason is given, you know, as opposed to Noah, right? More righteous than anybody else. That's Noah's story. And so God chooses him and his family to continue with humanity when everybody else drowns, right? So a reason is given there, but Abraham has no credentials.
And so this twofold promise, seed and land, or maybe another way of putting it, uncountable offspring, and a place to put them. That two fold promise will be a major theme throughout Genesis and also the Old Testament, either explicitly or lurking in the background. And then, later in chapter 12, he and his wife Sarai, she will be named Sarah later again in chapter 17, just like Abram gets a name change. And but they book it to Egypt to escape a famine, which foreshadows both the Joseph story and the Exodus story.
More on that later. Chapter 13, upon returning from Egypt, Abram and Sarai were pretty rich in livestock and such, and so Abram and his nephew Lot decide to live far apart from each other so as not to cramp things. Lot, interestingly enough, chose to settle near Sodom and Gomorrah, which will come up later too, with Abraham settling as we read in the land of Canaan.
So Lot settles near these two towns, which aren't going to end well. You know, we know that story probably. And then Abraham settles in the land of Canaan. And this brings us to chapter 14, which is connected to that. And what seems to be like, again, a side story of a war between an alliance of Mesopotamian Kings.
These are kings east of the land of Canaan, and five kings of the cities of the plain, and that is Canaan. And that includes Sodom and Gomorrah and three other cities in that battle Lot Abram's nephew is captured. And so Abram responds by taking his army of 318 men and rescuing lot on the way back.
Abram is blessed by the mysterious King Melchizedek of Salem, a story that is deserving of a whole podcast episode of its own, and I have a mind to do a deeper dive into parts of Genesis in subsequent episodes, but more on the overview. Moving to chapter 15. Some time has passed, and God comes to Abram in a vision and makes a covenant with him.
Think of that as a contract. Technically, this is the second covenant, the first being The call itself in chapter 12 where God promises, that's covenant language, God promises to make Abram great with a lot of offspring and land for them to live in. This covenant in chapter 15, you can think of it really as an expansion on that first covenant, maybe clarifying things more.
And it also involves an odd ceremony involving animals cut in half. Bottom line, as in chapter 12, this covenant is one sided. God is doing something for Abram. At this point, I want to stress that, at this point, nothing is required of him, though that will change in due time. This one sided covenant is sometimes referred to as a unilateral covenant.
Or, I prefer the term, an unconditional covenant, because there are no conditions placed on Abram. Chapter 16. This is about the birth of Isaac by means of Sarai's Egyptian slave girl, Hagar, or as Wil Gaffney appropriately says, womb slave. And this situation causes all sorts of feelings between Sarai and Hagar, leading Hagar to run away.
But in the wilderness, the angel of the Lord appears to Hagar and tells her to go back to Sarai and submit to her. Now, that's a problem on one level, you know, go back to your abuser, but I think this episode plays out differently if we look at the larger story, which we'll get to, you know, it's one of our deep dives we're going to take later.
Anyway, during this encounter, Hagar named the Lord who spoke to her El Roi. Which means something like, God of seeing, or God who sees, or perhaps, God who sees me. And that last one is at least how the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, understands it. But the bigger point here is that Hagar is giving God a name, El Roi, which is striking.
This is the only time in the Hebrew Bible that we see anyone giving God a name. And this hints at the honor given to Hagar and to her role in a bigger story. And so, the boy Ishmael is born when Abram is at the age of 86. And Ishmael, by the way, means God hears. In the next scene, chapter 17, Abram is 99 years old and God once again appears to him.
God reiterates once again the covenant he has with Abram, but with three twists. First. Abram's name is changed to Abraham to reflect that he will be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. How does it exactly work? I mean, people have tried to explain where that ab ra ham comes from instead of ab ram and what that means linguistically.
And the idea that Abraham actually means an ancestor of a multitude of nations is linguistically highly unlikely. In fact, these are probably just two versions of the same name without a tremendous amount of meaning. The biblical author is ascribing meaning to this name, Abraham, and that is theologically significant because Abraham is going to be an ancestor of a multitude of nations and now God is giving him a name change to reflect that, and that's in verse 4 of chapter 17. So that's the first twist.
The second, this covenant is no longer unilateral, but it's bilateral. It's no longer unconditional, but it's conditional. Now Abraham has a part to play in the covenant. What does he have to do? Well, he has to make sure that every male is circumcised when they reach the age of eight days.
And those already more than eight days will also have to get circumcised, including Abraham, and including Ishmael, who is 13 years old at the time. Ouch. Anyway, throughout the Bible, including the New Testament, we will see a wonderful tension between these two types of covenants, unilateral and bilateral, unconditional and conditional.
Those two types of covenants, they coexist. It's not one or the other. I find that fascinating and, again, creating a wonderful theological tension for people to think through if we think one or the other of those two kinds of covenants is the most important. They're both important. Now, the third twist, and the most surprising one, is that Sarai is now revealed to be the mother.
Up to this point, this is important folks, we're really going to come back to this later, but up to this point, the promise of offspring had only been made to Abram. There was never any mention of who the mother would be. And I say, well, that's not really that important. It's really important folks. We'll get to that.
This is a vital dynamic for understanding the story of Abraham, Hagar, Sarah, Ishmael, and Isaac. So we're going to unpack that more a little bit later. And this chapter then ends with a mass circumcision showing Abraham's obedience to God. Next is the famous story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which is covered in chapters 18 to 19.
Many are familiar with it. It involves three men who turn out to be supernatural visitors, one of whom seems to be the Lord himself. And they tell Abraham that Sarah will have a child by this time next year. Now, Sarah was off to the side listening, and she laughed when she heard it. And the name Isaac is a play on the Hebrew word for laugh.
Anyway, after all this, the visitors tell Abraham why they are there. Well, basically to carpet bomb Sodom and Gomorrah because the outcry of the people has reached God's ears. And Abraham famously takes issue with this idea, wondering why God would wipe out a whole city because of the bad people in it.
Surely, some people there don't deserve to die. See, Abraham seems to have an issue with such mass destruction and he tries to talk the Lord out of it. And it seems to me that Abraham's motivation for sparing Sodom and Gomorrah is because his nephew Lot lives there. So, the destruction will commence, but not without offering to save Lot and his family.
And for what it's worth, feel free to think of the flood story here. Everyone dies except for an elect few who are rescued. Next, we're still in the Sodom and Gomorrah story. The two angels, the Lord has left the building by this point, he's not part of this part of the story, but the two angels who remain head to the doomed cities upon which the Lord rains down sulfur and fire.
Not only upon Sodom and Gomorrah, but all the cities of the plain. That's five in all. The escape, however, left Lot wifeless. You may recall that she looked back while fleeing the city, which she was commanded not to do. Don't look back. And so, when Lot and his daughters were left alone, the daughters fretted that they would not be able to have children since their husbands didn't leave Sodom and Gomorrah with them.
So, they got their father drunk and lay with him. And thus each became pregnant. Two things are fascinating about this story. First, it parallels, here we go again, it parallels in some sense the Noah story. After escaping the flood, he gets hammered, and recall our discussion, this is in the previous episode if you haven't listened to it, but recall our discussion of that episode of the possible sexual overtones of Noah's son Ham, quote, seeing his father's nakedness. Here, Lot's offspring are in an overt sexualist situation with their drunken father. It's not overt in the Noah story, but boy, is it tempting to think that's what's going on, right? So we have another parallel, another sort of thematic connection between the Lot story and the Noah story.
Second, the two children born to Lot and his daughters are named Moab and Ben Ami. See, this is the origin story of the Moabites and the Ammonites, who will be Israel's hostile neighbors to the east. That's across the Jordan River. See, the Israelites here are telling the origin stories of neighbors that they are in conflict with.
They don't like them. And so far we've seen unflattering origin stories about outsiders. We've seen the Babylonians and the Canaanites in Genesis 1 to 11. The Babylonians are the ones who took them into exile. The Canaanites are the people of the land they're trying to oust so they can take it over. And now the Moabites and the Ammonites in chapter 19 of Genesis, the only founding ancestor, the only origin story that is portrayed positively is Israel's first father, Abraham.
The biblical author is drawing for us in the book of Genesis, Israel's political map. And this is the point I want to stress. It is a map that only means anything. After the Israelites are in the land itself, and there are people like Moabites and Ammonites. It is fair to ask when Genesis was written on the basis of stories like this.
Well, this political map drawing business strongly suggests a time period when such a map would make sense. later on, monarchy or later. Genesis is a book that was written in light of realities much later than the period covered by Genesis. There are other reasons for concluding this, but this reference to Israel's neighbors is one of them.
Also, I think it is right and fair to refer to this type of political rhetoric as propaganda, like against the Babylonians and the Canaanites. A lot of reasons to be propagandistic against these people. Our enemies, right, are an accursed lot. Let me tell you how they got their start. Moving along to chapter 20, we see there the second of two stories where Abraham passes his wife off as his sister.
The first one was back in chapter 12. Critical scholars routinely agree that this story in chapter 20 is from a different source than the rest of Genesis up to this point. I mentioned all this business in an earlier episode, but just to recap, the previous 19 chapters of Genesis are a combination of two ancient sources, the J source and the P source.
J stands for Yahwist, for his preference to call God by God's name, Yahweh. And it's J because the Germans came up with this idea and so, and they, they spell Yahweh with a J, not with a Y. And the P is for the priestly source because of this author's attention to priestly types of things. Chapter 20 is identified as the E source.
E for Eloist, Because of this author's penchant for using the generic divine name Elohim, begins with an a, at least at this point in the story, that will shift later on in the book of Exodus specifically. Anyway, chapter 20 is like its own thing. It's just stuck there. And I'm not going to say it interrupts the action, but it doesn't really need to be there to keep the story flowing.
Speaking of which, chapter 21, let's keep going. Isaac is born, which is the fulfillment of the promise Abraham got in chapter 17 and Sarah got in chapter 18. Abraham is now a hundred years old and we will return back to this story because the story of Ishmael and Isaac is central, I think, not just here, but to the whole Abraham story.
And I want to flesh that out a bit more. Remember, we're just doing a fly over here of chapters 12 to 25, but suffice it to say, that Isaac's birth caused some family tension, which resulted in Hagar and Ishmael being sent away by Abraham because Sarah told him to, and God told Abraham to do what Sarah tells him.
And if that weren't bad enough, Abraham only gave them some bread and a skin of water. Not a lot, which is basically a death sentence if you're sending people into the wilderness. But then God intervenes and keeps mother and son from dying in the wilderness, and in fact, prospers them. Abraham and Sarah may have abandoned Hagar and Ishmael, but God didn't.
And there's a reason for it, we'll get back to that. Next, after telling the story of the founding of Beersheba, a town which would become a prominent Israelite town later on, we're in chapter 21 now, we come to one of the best known and troubling stories in Genesis. This is the binding of Isaac, known in Judaism as the Akedah which is the Hebrew word for binding. Here, right, it's called the binding of Isaac, not the sacrifice of Isaac, because the whole point of this is that he's not sacrificed. It's wrong to call this a story of the sacrifice of Isaac. You can call it the near sacrifice of Isaac, but in history, it's called the binding of Isaac, the Akedah, because he's bound and put onto the altar to be sacrificed.
So, God seeks to test Abraham's loyalty to God by ordering him to take his son Isaac to Mount Moriah and sacrifice him, a command which Abraham obeyed without hesitation. Yeah. And in the nick of time, the angel of the Lord stepped in and halted all this sacrifice business. Because Abraham had proved his faithfulness to God, and we'll look at this story a bit more closely after we finish with the overview.
The next major scene in Genesis really begins halfway through chapter 25. It's the births of Jacob and Esau, and the final sections of the Abraham story that go before that, it seems like we're moving at a quick pace now to get to that Jacob and Esau story. So, in chapter 23, Sarah dies. She's buried at the age of 127.
She's buried in the town of Hebron, which appears to have been Abraham and Sarah's primary residence. Next is the story of Isaac's marriage to Rebekah in chapter 24. What Abraham does is he sends servants up north to Nahor. Which is north in Aram, Damascus, and you might ask, who the heck cares? Well, when Abraham's father Terah, this is way back in chapter 11, when Abraham's father Terah migrated with his sons from Babylon, they settled in Nahor, and it was from Nahor that Abraham was called by God to tour the land of Canaan. Again, that's chapter 12, but Nahor wasn't abandoned. The narrative does not provide any details, but Nahor is their ancestral home. And it's from there that the line of Abraham will get their wives, not just Isaac here, but Jacob will make the same trek later on up north to get his wife or wives and two concubines. Anyway, that's a whole other story. This is a very long story here in chapter 24. It's 67 verses long. And this is the last story where Isaac is really the focus. And it's always struck me how relatively little there is about Isaac, the child born to a barren woman and old father.
From a literary point of view, his star doesn't really rise. He's more of a bit player and a larger story. Alas. Then rounding out our summary of the Abraham story in chapter 25, he marries Keturah, who bore him six sons, who had other sons, and so on. The most prominent of these sons is Midian, who is the founding ancestor of the Midianites.
Again, more drawing of the political map. The biblical story will have a few things to say about the Midianites. Some good, um, Moses wife, Zipporah, is a descendant of the Midianites. And some not so good, like some bloody battles. But somewhat like Hagar and Ishmael, right, the sons and offspring of Keturah are sent away.
Why? Because Isaac and Isaac alone is the legitimate heir. And this brings us to Abraham's death at the age of 175. And he is buried with his wife, Sarah. Now, one last, this is still part of the fly over here, folks. One last scene. This is chapter 25, just a few verses, verses 12 to 18. There we see a list of Ishmael's 12 sons.
Yes, 12, just like Jacob will have later on in the book of Genesis. And this is no throwaway line. Verse 12, that tells of the offspring of Ishmael and his 12 sons. Verse 12 begins, these are the generations of. We've seen this before. I introduced this in the first episode of this series. And, these are the generations of is a phrase used by the writer of Genesis ten times to mark off discrete sections.
See, he is according Ishmael, in my opinion, some respect. He is, after all, a son of Abraham. Ishmael's sons are referred to here as princes and tribes. And then Ishmael is said to die at 137 years of age. And with that, he fades from the story. But he is given an honored send off. After this story, the writer gets down to business and begins talking about Isaac's sons, the fraternal twins Esau and Jacob.
And there is more political map drawing happening there. Esau, for example, is the ancestor of the Edomites. And Jacob, of course, is the ancestor of the Israelites and his name has even changed to Israel. But that's for the next episode. Now, with this summary behind us, let's circle back and look in a more detail at some scenes that I think are worth looking at more closely.
The first thing I want to look at is Abram and Sarai's journey from Canaan to Egypt to escape a famine. That's back in chapter 12. Now, if you're familiar with how Genesis ends, this may ring a bell. In the Joseph story, his father, Jacob, and his sons are forced to leave Canaan and go to Egypt because of, wait for it, a famine.
That's in chapter 42 of Genesis, and we'll get to Joseph in a later episode. But there is much more to it than this one overlap between these stories. Abram and Sarai fleeing to Egypt and then leaving it triumphantly is a summary of the plotline from Joseph to the Exodus. Here are the parallels between these two stories.
I find these to be so convincing and just so good to be aware of. First, Abram and Jacob are driven into Egypt with their families because of a famine. Second, both encounter danger. Abram fears for his life what the Egyptians will do to him. And the Israelites are enslaved. Third, God intervenes with plagues.
You can see that in chapter 12 verse 4. And that same word there is used, there are a couple words that are used to describe plagues in Exodus, but you see this word also used in Exodus 11 verse 1. Fourth, both Abraham and the Israelites acquire wealth. While in Egypt, right, he is given a lot of stuff by Pharaoh, just get out of here.
And in the story of the Exodus, the Israelites, they plundered the Egyptians, they leave with a lot of wealth. And in both stories, this is the last parallel, the fifth one, in both stories, the unnamed Pharaoh summons Abraham or Moses into his presence and then sends them on their way. That same sequence is seen here in chapter 12, as we see in the book of Exodus.
For what it's worth, the Hebrew word for send, like to send them on their way, in both instances is shalach, Genesis 12, 20 and Exodus 9, 27 to 28. And I hesitate to mention that because shalach is a fairly common verb and you don't want to make too much of a mistake. Verbs that are used in different contexts as a way of tying these two stories together because they're very common. What else do you want them to use for sending somebody off but still with all the other parallels?
I find this to be at least worth mentioning the Hebrew word shalach occurs in both instances of Pharaoh summoning and then sending off these parallels are not accidental They are deliberate and what is crucial for understanding the type of literature Genesis is is that? is to pay attention to these sorts of literary devices.
The author, or maybe better, the editor of the various sources of Genesis, is tying this earlier story, Abraham, to a later one, the Exodus. Why he does this is a good question, and it's hard to be dogmatic about it. But it may be enough to know that Genesis does this sort of thing here and there. When reading about Abraham and Sarah's journey into Egypt and back again, I have a suspicion that the author wants me to think Exodus already at the outset of the Abraham story.
This type of literary foreshadowing also suggests that simply, you know, recording events, that doesn't describe what the editor is doing. He is shaping them. He is crafting a narrative to push the readers into understanding Israel's story in a certain way. And one of those ways that the editor is pushing might be to see the Exodus not as an accident, but as part of a larger divine plan, a pattern that is introduced way back at the beginning of Israel's story with their father, Abraham.
This is similar to how the Adam and Eve story, you can see again, episode one of this series, but this is similar to how the Adam and Eve story is a preview of Israel's entire journey into and back out of exile. Here, the Abraham story is a preview of Israel's journey into and out of Egypt. And let me say this clearly, in my opinion, to expect to find in these stories an objective handling of history, an objective historical account, is a misguided expectation.
The editor of Genesis and Torah, Is not giving us history straight, but a highly interpreted shaped take on the past.
Now, let's look at the figure of Melchizedek in chapter 14. And there are a couple of moving parts here, folks, but I found this to be a fascinating episode and one that's worth looking at more deeply. So after returning from rescuing Lot, remember we talked about that, who was captured in this battle. Abram was met by Melchizedek. who showed Abram some hospitality and then proceeded to pronounce a blessing on Abram. A blessing? Yeah. For not only is Melchizedek a king of Salem, by the way, Salem, it's really close to Jerusalem.
And in fact, in Psalm 76, 2, Salem is an alternate reference to Jerusalem. So, I think Jerusalem is very much important here, we'll get to that in a second. But Melchizedek is not only King of Salem slash Jerusalem, but he's also Priest of God Most High, El Elyon. God most high. Let's talk about that reference to God.
It's important. The second part, Elion, means highest or most high. And the first part, El, basically means God. But which God exactly are we talking about? See, here's the thing. El is the chief of the Canaanite gods. And remember, we're in Canaan, and Melchizedek is already there. What God is he worshiping?
Okay, that's, that's, just hold that thought. But El is the chief of the Canaanite gods. In the Old Testament, it also is a reference to the God of Israel. Even in this context, if you look at chapter 14, verse 22, El Elyon and Yahweh are equated. The issue, though, is that we can't be sure, historically speaking, which of these the author had in mind.
Just hold your jets. We're getting to a point here. Is he saying that Melchizedek is a priest of Abraham's God? And again, what would that even mean at this point? when he's revealing himself to Abraham and starting a new thing. And he got this priesthood that's already Yahweh shaped. It's, it's, it's weird.
So is he saying that Melchizedek is a priest of Abraham's God or priest of a Canaanite God? On that latter point, the name Melchizedek might mean King of Righteousness, which is a typical way that it's understood, but it could also mean Now, which one this author is referring to, that might seem to have a straightforward answer.
It refers to Abraham's God, of course. But one thing that biblical scholars have dug into over the last couple of centuries is how Israelite religion arose. in a Canaanite context and was influenced by Canaanite religion. In other words, Canaanite religion is older. And the late comers, the Israelites who took up residence in the land of Canaan were influenced by Canaanite culture.
And this is not just a wild guess. In Deuteronomy 32, 8 to 9, and folks, by the way, that's, another one of these verses that's a podcast or two or three all by itself. Forgive me. In Deuteronomy 32, eight to nine, a God named Elion and Israel's God, Yahweh, are clearly two distinct entities. Your English Bibles may not show that, but that's because the translators are fudging it as to not upset people.
You look at footnotes, or look at any sort of translational notes, or look at commentaries, or just Google it, you're gonna find it's a lot more complicated than that. The fact is that in Deuteronomy 32, Yahweh answers to Elyon, the Most High. So scholars theorize that at an early point in Israel's history, El and Yahweh were in fact two distinct entities.
And only later was El folded into Yahweh, so to speak, were the two become interchangeable. And scholars say that because in the Hebrew Bible, sometimes they look like they're the same, but there are a few instances where they're clearly distinct. How do we account for that? How do we answer that? So, according to this theory, Abraham's reference to El Elyon in the Melchizedek story as Yahweh, That's in verse 22, is not an indication that Yahweh had always been equated with ale, but that this is evidence of the merger of the two.
Here is the point about Mel EK that I really want to get to, and here I am unabashedly and with great honor channeling Gary Rensburg, who has been a guest on the podcast. He suggests that the Melek episode. is another one of those forward flashes in Genesis to a later time, namely the time of David. Let me keep this simple by simply quoting from an article that you can find online called The Genesis of the Bible.
And I really encourage you to do that. Download the article and read it. It's very, very readable. It's a lecture he gave to a fairly popular audience. Anyway, in that article, Rendsburg says that Melchizedek, and here I'm quoting him, is referred to not only as the King of Salem, but as a priest of El Elyon, God Most High.
That reflects the reality of the heads of Canaanite city states who served as both king and priest. Furthermore, still quoting here, the story includes the important detail that Abram tithes to this individual. Now, for the next part, you should know that Rendsburg thinks that these stories were first composed in the 10th century, he's by no means the only one, some people will put it later, but his theory is that the 10th century makes the most sense for the composition of these stories that have like a David echo.
But let me continue with the quote. He says, the message for someone in 10th century BCE Israel is clear. Do not object to tithing to the new Canaanite king priest who supervises the cult in Jerusalem, namely Zadok, for it is something that father Abraham did. And that's what we're in the distant past already.
Note the names of the two Jerusalemite figures include the same root tzedek, righteousness, thereby solidifying the connection. There's a lot there, folks. I know. Let me summarize this. Rendsburg's point is this, that according to the biblical story, David captured Jerusalem and put the priest Zadok in charge.
Okay, great. Rendsburg thinks that what really happened is that David left the Canaanite king priest Melchizedek in charge of his city, Jerusalem. meaning Melchizedek city, Jerusalem, perhaps as some form of political alliance in this sense, just go with the flow here, folks. This is not an idiosyncratic point in biblical studies, I'm just trying to be patient here and work through this.
Cause again, there are a lot of moving parts, but in this sense that Rendsburg explains all this, the purpose of the Melchizedek story is to justify that move. What move? The move of David leaving the Canaanite king priest Melchizedek in charge of Jerusalem. To justify that move by having Melchizedek bless Abraham.
and Abraham tithes to Melchizedek. To put it another way, it is common among biblical scholars to see the story of Melchizedek as an attempt to link the father of Israel to this interesting political situation in Jerusalem in the time of David, and you can read about this in 2 Samuel 5. Now, if all that is too much to take in, I absolutely get it.
But I'd rather say too much sometimes than not enough. But this story in Genesis 14 raises a number of issues that historians are interested in. So, you know, I just wanted to give a hint of what some of those issues are. And at the very least, when someone says that the Bible is clear, just read it, just bring up Melchizedek and try to explain it.
Questions come out of the woodworks. Okay, one final thought about Melchizedek. Some of you understandably might already be thinking of how the author of Hebrews And this is in chapters 5 through 7 of Hebrews, how this author refers to Jesus as a priest, quote, according to the order of Melchizedek. Now, the author of Hebrews seems particularly interested in the fact that Melchizedek just comes out of nowhere.
No parentage is mentioned, yet he's a priest anyway. How can that be? Priests have to have a priestly lineage. And here's the thing. Jesus lineage was also mysterious and definitely not a priestly one, but he is still a priest. Just not according to any Levite heritage, but quote, according to the order of Melchizedek.
Now that line doesn't come from Genesis, that line, according to the order of Melchizedek, that comes from Psalm 110, verse 4. You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. Scholars suggest that this psalm concerns the installation of David as king over Jerusalem and the naming of Sadok, a Canaanite priest, king, as priest in the Jerusalem temple with an unending line of priests.
The author of Hebrews, of course, isn't interested in any of that sort of thing and instead sees Psalm 110 and the Melchizedek story as an opportunity to, well, actually do something analogous to what David was doing with this Canaanite priest king. It affords the author of Hebrews an opportunity to legitimate Jesus as high priest forever, even though he has no priestly lineage.
If it was good for Melchizedek, surely it's good for Jesus. Now, my point in raising Hebrews is simply this, how Hebrews interprets Melchizedek, how he understands that story in Genesis, fueled by Psalm 110. That is a creative take. on an old story. What Hebrews says about Melchizedek does not tell us what Genesis 14 is about, what the ancient author's purpose was for writing it.
Rather, it shows us, and I'm 100 percent supportive of this, but it shows us how an early Christian writer adapted that story for a new purpose, to center that story on his proclamation of Christ. to show how Christ is tied deeply to Israel's story. Creative moves like that are not only a staple of how the New Testament writers handle the Old, but actually that creative impulse is also part of Judaism at the time as well.
This is not odd to handle texts creatively. for purposes for which they were never written. Christians do this early on, Jews did it, and Christians did it because they were basically Jews early on when they were writing these texts. I have three more things I want to get to, and let's move on to the covenant ceremony in Genesis 15, which Along with God's call of Abraham is unconditional, unilateral.
There's nothing Abraham needs to do in response to God's promises to him in this chapter. Now in this scene, very important moment here in Genesis, folks, for a number of reasons. But in this scene, God appears to Abraham or Abram in a vision assuring Abram that there is no need to fear and that God is his shield and his reward will be great.
Well, whatever that means exactly, but Abram responds by questioning all of this, since God has not yet seen fit to fulfill his promise to Abram of a multitude of offspring. It doesn't even have one. You know, the biological clock is ticking here, folks, for him and for Sarai. All Abram has as an heir at this point is an otherwise unknown Eleazar of Damascus.
Never to be heard from again. But the Lord assures him that despite appearances, he will indeed bless Abram with an heir of his very own. And this leads to one of the better known exchanges in Genesis, especially since Paul makes quite a bit of it in Romans 4 and also in Galatians 3. Side issue James 2 also brings it up, but for almost the diametrically opposite point Paul wants to make, but that's another podcast, right?
is Genesis 15 verses 5 to 6. He, God, brought him, Abram, outside and said, look toward heaven and count the stars if you are able to count them. Then he said to them, so shall your descendants be. And he, God, Abram believed the Lord and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness. Now, that's the New Revised Standard Version, but it's really not much different from any other, uh, translations of the Bible.
But what does that last bit mean? And he believed the Lord, again, meaning Abraham, Now, there are a couple of well known ambiguities in the Hebrew which don't come across in English translations, but the sense is generally clear enough. As a reiteration of God's promise to Abraham of offspring, well, Abraham here responds.
He believed the Lord. By the way, that word believe, I am adamant, is best translated as trusted rather than believed. Believing has too many intellectual connotations, at least in English. The Hebrew actually is where we get the word Amen from, right, which serves as a concluding statement of prayers that the prayer trusts God with their hopes and fears and needs or whatever.
So, I want to say Abram trusted God's promise of children. God's response is to reckon to Abraham his act of trust as Righteousness, by the way, folks, that word can be so freighted with meaning and in the Hebrew Bible, it really means a very simple thing. It simply means that God counted Abraham's trust as a good move, as doing the right thing, righteous.
Contrary to popular opinion, righteousness is perfectly attainable in the Old Testament because it doesn't mean perfection. It's not referring to some inner state of perfection or purity. But simply the act of doing right, what rightness requires. In fact, the Hebrew root for righteousness and justice, right, doing right by someone, it's the same root.
I don't want to go off on a tangent here, but I'm only making a point of this because of how Paul's citation of this passage has influenced the Christian reading of Genesis. Paul, for perfectly understandable rhetorical purposes, is arguing how the gospel was embedded in the Hebrew Bible. And so he reads righteousness, not as a simple act of doing the right thing, but as something deeper, something that addresses the very essence of humanity, which is not what Genesis is saying.
Paul argues that Abram's act of trust, and not anything Abraham did, no work, but his act of trust is what made him righteous. in that deeper sense of inner, you know, purity or perfection or lack of any guilt or anything like that. Then this gets all tied up in Christian theology with the idea that our faith in Christ transfers to us Christ's righteousness.
Imputation is a technical legal term that theologians use, the imputation of Christ's righteousness, the transfer of it. Christ's righteousness, His perfect guilt free pureness becomes ours by faith. And James famously takes issue with Paul here when he argues that faith is not to be contrasted to works.
But works, righteous acts, are a demonstration of the faith you say you have. And James use of the Abraham story overlaps nicely with what the author of Genesis 15 is saying. Whereas Paul's use does not. Now, not to confuse anybody, but I think what Paul is doing with Genesis 15 is fine. He's a first century Jew engaging his tradition in light of his belief that Christ is the Son of God.
My only point here is that we won't understand Genesis 15 if we import all of this Christian theology Okay, moving along, the Lord then goes on to reiterate the second promise, the promise of land. And we read that in verse seven. Then he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.
Now, Ur is a city in Babylon and it's Abraham's birthplace. And Chaldeans. is another way of saying Babylonians. And there was Chaldean presence in Mesopotamia since the 9th century, but the term was not used for the region in general until the 6th century, which is how it is used here in Genesis 15 7.
Reference to Chaldeans supports the idea that Genesis Was either not written before the 6th century or, this is more my opinion, was edited in or after the 6th century. When this Chaldean thing was really a thing. It wasn't before that time. Anyway, this is the promise of land to Abraham. God brought him this far and will bring the land promise to pass just like the child promise.
But here, Abraham's response is not one of trust. Verse 8, this is what he says, O LORD God, how am I to know that I shall possess this? You know, whatever happened to trust? What happened between verses 7 and 8? My teacher, James Kugel, he puts it this way. Abraham is asking God to put it in writing. He wants a guarantee.
How will I know? Prove it. Show me this will happen, because I don't believe it. And it has always struck me that Paul doesn't cite this verse along with verse 6. There he trusts God. Here he does not. In fact, This is, I think, fascinating. You have sort of no Hebrew to get this completely, but there is an oddity in the Hebrew text that strongly suggests that God wasn't even done talking when Abraham piped up with his expression of doubt.
Abraham was Interrupting God to ask or demand of him that he gives some indication that it will come to pass. And God answers him, or better, shows him. He tells Abraham to take a bunch of sacrificial animals, cut them in half, and align them in opposite rows with room in between. And then after Abraham falls into a deep sleep, side issue, that's odd because this whole chapter started off by telling us that Abraham sees God in a vision, So, do you sleep in a vision?
Anyway, after Abraham falls into this deep sleep, God speaks words of reassurance to him that his descendants will indeed live in the land after a 400 year period of slavery. Again, another foreshadowing of the Exodus story as in chapter 12. He also adds that Abraham will live a long life. Then, when the sun has gone down, Abram sees something rather odd.
In this dream that he has, right? A smoking fire pot and flaming torch passing between the animal pieces. What the heck is going on here? Well, it's technically called a theophany, an appearance of God in some form. Think of the burning bush, right? It's the burning bush is God's presence on Mount Sinai.
It's not God, but it's God's presence that represents it. That's a theophany. It's an appearance of God. You don't get God straight. You get God in some sort of, let's say, metaphorical symbolism. The smoking pot and the flaming torch are a theophany. They represent God here passing between the pieces. And if you're familiar with the Exodus story, God appears there in a similar way in a pillar of smoke.
and a pillar of fire. See, this ceremony is also a nod to the Exodus story. It's weird, but what's the meaning of the ceremony? Well, it's an oath God is making by walking or passing between the pieces. Let's say Yahweh is saying, may I be like these pieces? May I be accursed if I don't come through on the promise?
The technical term for this is a self imprecatory oath. An imprecation is a curse. This is a self cursing oath. May I be accursed if I don't come through. See, the promise of land is a serious one, and God put his reputation on the line. He has skin in the game to make sure that both offspring and land will happen.
Again, this is a unilateral, unconditional promise. I will make it be so. No obligation is placed on Abraham. He's not going through the pieces. He's not walking through them. Now, by the way, if you're interested, this ceremony also appears in Jeremiah, chapter 34, and that's verses 17 to 22. And there are the focus, it's a different focus, but the focus is on Judah's violation of the covenant, which brings a curse.
Okay, moving on, let's talk about all this business of barren Sarai, fertile Hagar, and the promise of children, which takes up the lion's share of this entire Abraham story that's lurking there the whole time. So let me pose a question here so we can focus this discussion. There's so much to talk about, but I want to focus on one issue.
Um, Transcribed Was Abraham having a child by Hagar a smart move, or was it an act of faithlessness? My guess is most of you have heard in church perhaps that it's an act of faithlessness. Did Abram agree to this? This is Sarai's idea. But did he agree to this idea of hers because he believed in the promise?
Or because he didn't? And the same actually goes for Sarai. Did she even bring this up because she believed in the promise or because she didn't? And again, I think for many Christians, the answer is obvious that, well, they clearly didn't believe in the promise. But I want to suggest something here that may be new to some of you, but I think it really commands attention.
Using Hagar as a surrogate was an act of faithfulness, an act of believing in the promise. How is that? Well, let's look at what the story says. Way back in chapter 12, remember, God called who? Abram. And makes a promise to who? To Abram. That who? He will be the father of many nations. And right after this promise, we read of the famine, right, that drove Abram and Sarai to Egypt.
And on the way there, Abram begins to freak out. I mean, frankly, he should have thought of this before, but this is the story, right? He begins to freak out. He fears for his life because Sarai is beautiful, and they, the Egyptians, will kill him to get to her and bring her to Pharaoh's harem. So, he asks her to pose as his sister, and here I'm going to quote verse 13, pose as his sister so that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life
This is often read as Abram being basically a whining chicken who cares only what happens to him and not his wife. But I think something far more interesting is happening here than simply a comment on Abram needing to grow a pair. Remember that the promise to Abram early in the chapter was made to him.
No indication is given as to who the mother will be. Well, it's assumed. Maybe it's not. All Abram knows is that he needs to be alive in order for the promise to be fulfilled. Now we don't hear Sarai's response to this idea, you know, say you're my sister, unfortunately we don't hear anything from her, but the plan goes off without a hitch.
But the reader's left wondering whether Pharaoh took Sarai into his house as a concubine, was ever intimate with her. Now, I don't think we should assume one way or the other, the question is left open, and I think the writer is intentionally leaving this ambiguous, maybe because it's not even the point.
Regardless, this move did what? It brought down God's wrath upon Pharaoh, right? The Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. It's in verse 17. It's also worth noting that nowhere does Abram ever get a look of disapproval from God for pulling this off. He disapproves to Pharaoh, but not to Abram.
So, think of this episode maybe a little bit differently than you've heard before. Think of this episode as the lengths to which Abram will go to make sure he can be in the position to fulfill the promise God made to him. See, confronted with a problem, Uh, we're starving and we've got to get food. Let's go to Egypt, but the Egyptians will kill me.
He's confronted with a problem and Abram makes the best choice he can under the circumstances. Fast forward to chapter 15, which we just looked at, and here again, the promise of offspring is to Abraham, quoting here again, this man, he's referring here to Eliezer of Damascus, this man shall not be your heir, no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.
Issue means belly, which is a euphemism for Abram's semen coming out of him. That's the focus. Abram's issue, not who the mother is. There is still no mention of Sarai. And then we get to chapter 16 where things begin to get interesting. Abraham Still, Abram and Sarai, they've been living in the land now for 10 years and still no child.
So her idea is to use her Egyptian servant girl, Hagar, or womb slave Hagar, to have children by her. It's in verse 2 of chapter 16. The big question is whether this is a move of faith or a show of lack of faith. And in my opinion, If the promise had been to Abraham and Sarah, it would be an act of disobedience to God.
But since the promise was only made to Abram, right, from his issue, will he have a child? Well, Sarah's idea can, and I think should, be read as not an act of faithlessness, but her best effort. To do what she can to make sure her husband can have offspring in order to fulfill God's promise to him. Just like Abram gave his best effort in chapter 12.
So, Hagar had a child by Abram, which results in an unintended but hardly surprising consequence. Hagar looks on Sarai with contempt, and so Sarai blames Abraham for this tension between her and Hagar. By the way, just a side issue here. You remember back in Genesis chapter 3, the curse to the woman, and we looked at that as meaning not, it'll be painful to have children physically, but the whole idea of bearing children and conceiving children will be met with great sorrow.
This is, I think, the prime example in the book of Genesis where The issue of having offspring is not a blessing, it's a difficulty. Not be food for multiply, but you're going to have hard time having children. Sarai is barren, and now Hagar has the child, and there's conflict, right? This having of a child brings no blessing.
It simply brings conflict and sorrow. So anyway, Hagar looks on Sarai with contempt and how does Hagar show contempt? Well, the story is silent on this question. It may be that Hagar felt herself superior in some way to Sarai. I can imagine that. Or maybe Sarai imagined the contempt because she was jealous.
Who knows? But the point is that Sarai quote dealt harshly with Hagar. And so Hagar ran away. Okay. And while in the wilderness, what happens? Well, the angel of the Lord comes to Hagar and asks her why she is wandering around. So, Hagar tells him. But here's the thing, despite the harsh treatment of Hagar by Sarai, the angel of the Lord tells her to go back and submit to him.
to her. And this can understandably be read as God being on the side of the abuser, and I do get that. And nothing I say here should be understood as, you know, God doesn't care about abuse. God does care about abuse. But I think this misses the point of the narrative itself. That's what I'm after. The reason Hagar needs to go back is that her son Ishmael will play an important role in what is to come.
God's promise to Abram that his offspring will be innumerable is repeated here to Hagar with respect to Ishmael. This union between Abram and Hagar is also to be blessed because that's what God has been saying all along. Ishmael is from where? Abram's belly from his issue, and God honors the promise he made to Abram.
So if this is an act of faithlessness, God's not showing that at all here in this story. So here's the thing. Imagine the scene where Hagar, who had ran away, comes back. She came back, and Abram and Sarai are sitting there stunned, saying, Oh, she came back. And she has the child with them. And imagine that she told Abram and Sarai.
Why she came back? Why'd you come back? You were gone free, you know, maybe we don't blame you for how we treated you, right? She ran away and she came back and they asked her why and she says because God told me to. See, this solidifies in the minds of Abraham and Sarah that, well, it looks like Ishmael is indeed the means whereby God will fulfill the promise to Abraham.
Ishmael is the guy. Chapter 17. Fast forward 13 years. Abram is now 99, and by now, frankly, it is obvious that Ishmael is the one through whom God will fulfill his promise. Abram and Sarai are old, and this is their only shot. So God appears to Abram, this is now the third time, and reiterates and expands a bit on his earlier promise.
But there are a couple of turns here we need to look at. The first is in verse 9. God says to Abram, Well, actually, he already changed his name to Abraham, but he says, as for you, see, this is where Abraham will have an obligation in this covenantal relationship. This covenant with God, this thing that he's got to do is circumcision.
Right? Here's the tone of the first few verses of chapter 17. Here's what I'm doing for you, Abram. I've never wavered from this. I'm going to come through. But now as for you, and if this obligation is not kept, the covenant will be rendered null and void for that transgressor. Right? He'll be cut off from his people, verse 14, which I hope is an intentional pun on the part of the writer.
Anyway, Genesis 17 is now a conditional covenant. Abram has an obligation, whereas chapter 15 was unconditional. And they both exist, which results in some wonderful theological tensions, as I mentioned, in the Hebrew Bible. and which have spilled over to Christian theology as well. And you all know this, you know, which one is right?
One saved, always saved, or you can lose your salvation if you don't obey. One's unconditional, the other's conditional. The theological tension exists because the biblical writer was careful to create it. And I don't think we should try to explain them away. So even though this new thing is mentioned, this conditional element is introduced here, there's really nothing amiss.
Abram and Sarah are way old, and Ishmael is 13 years old. He is clearly the pony to bet on. But then we come, folks, to what is, I think, the most stunning verse in the entire book of Genesis. God said to Abraham, now, as for Saraisee, up to this point, Sarai has not been part of the plan at all. And now after 24 years in Canaan, right, Abram's 75 when they get there, and he's 99 years old now.
And the first half of all that action, the first half of those 24 years, there's no offspring, and the second half has Ishmael. Now after all this time, God brings Sarai into the discussion. And what he says about her should stun readers as it did Abraham. Sarai, now named Sarah, will be the mother. Abram laughed, and he said the obvious.
Oh, Lord, you missed the window. She's too old. And then he says to God, a very curious verse. He says, Oh, that Ishmael might live in your sight. Verse 18. I interpret this as Abram saying, can we just stick to plan A? Ishmael is already here and ready to go. He's also the eldest son, and it's going to be hard to explain this to him.
This other son, you know, do you expect him, one who's not even born yet, to just leap frog over Ishmael? Yeah. Yeah. Or do you expect to push Ishmael out of the way entirely, maybe to unalive him? Oh, that Ishmael might live in your sight. Also, Ishmael was the obvious plan, as I've been saying all along, because it is the only plan.
But God now finally puts his cards on the table. Sarah will have a son, and you will name him Isaac. Again, he laughs, both Abram and Sarah laugh. Abram in chapter 17, Sarah in chapter 18. It is through him that the covenant will be fulfilled. Well, what about Ishmael? Well, God hasn't forgotten him. He, too, will be blessed.
He will be the father of twelve princes. And he will become a great nation. God does not abandon Ishmael. So, a year later, continuing this story, Isaac is born again, chapter 21. And so, it's time now to send Hagar and her teenage son away with limited supplies. as if they want them to perish in the wilderness.
Maybe they do. It seems clear to me that Abraham wants them both out of the picture permanently. That's my opinion. So he arranges, you know, a little accident for them. Here's a little food, here's a little water, be on your way. I think he's hoping just to get rid of this little problem because Otherwise, you know, there's going to be conflict later on between which son is going to be the favored one, which is the Esau and Jacob story, which we'll get to, right?
These themes just keep recurring. Anyway, but God intervenes and he promises to make a great nation of Ishmael. And so he goes on to live out his life in the wilderness of Paran and Hagar got him an Egyptian wife. And with that, Hagar and Ishmael exit the biblical story because there is no longer Ishmael.
There is no Ishmael option. He is gone. There is only Isaac. Isaac is now the only son. So when God appears to Abram in chapter 22, again, the binding of Isaac's story, and refers to Isaac as Your son, your only son, whom you love, he means it. And then, as we all know, folks, in a stunning move that has captured the imaginations of Jews and Christians since antiquity, having just made Ishmael a non option.
There is no safety net here. God tells Abram to take Isaac to the land of Moriah and offer him as a burnt offering to God. See, keep an eye here on the big picture, folks. This is all connected. Genesis is not a loose conglomeration of stories. It's things woven into each other. There's overlap. There's revisiting earlier stories when you talk later stories, right?
God created Adam, and that turned out to be a disaster. So what does God do? Pick things up again with Noah. Chosen. Why? Well, because he deserved it. He's righteous in his generation. Well, that imploded not long after the ark settled on dry land. So now God takes matters into his own hands. He chooses Abraham out of the blue for no reason other than he does.
And he promises unconditionally, unilaterally, to make his name great and to be a father of a great nation. And how he brings this to pass is not by the normal course of things, but by removing Sarah's barrenness and giving the couple a baby in their 90s. See, the days of relying on the humans to get it right is over.
Now, God is steering the ship and he's making it very, very clear. There is so much to say about the binding of Isaac episode, but let me just make a couple of comments and bring this podcast to an end. First, this is clearly a test by God to see the level of Abraham's obedience to the God who called him 10 chapters earlier.
By doing what he is told, he will pass the test. And so, when his knife is about to plunge down on Isaac, the angel of the Lord stops him. Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me. That's verse 12.
This episode is another example of the covenant taking on a conditional element, which is crystal clear in verse 16. Let me read this to you. By myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this. And have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore.
And your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies. And by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves because you have obeyed my voice. It's that because, folks. Because you've done this, because you obeyed my voice, all these things are going to happen. This repeats the language of the unconditional promises of chapters 12 and 15, and it's almost as if God Yeah, it's unconditional, but maybe he wasn't so sure about Abraham anymore And he needed to be made sure and that should be a bit shocking by electing Abraham for no reason to be his guy Maybe even God still has to make sure one more point John Levinson and others have observed that the casual manner in which Abraham obeyed God's command to sacrifice his son suggests that child sacrifice was a thing, an assumed reality, at least in Israel's deep consciousness.
Now the substitution for Isaac is a ram caught in the thickets, and this is supposedly an indication of Israel's move away from child sacrifice to a substitutionary idea of sacrifice. And so we read in verse 14, quote. Abraham called this place, the Lord will provide. As it is said to this day, on the mount of the Lord, it shall be provided.
To cut to the chase, the mountain of the Lord is a reference to the temple mount where animals would later be sacrificed. And this is at least how 2 Chronicles chapter 3 verse 1 sees it, equating the temple with Mount Moriah. We have here, very likely, another leap forward to the time of the monarchy, as it is to this day.
The this day refers to when there was a temple and sacrifices were made there. That may be the main point of the story, in fact, to explain the origins of Israel's temple based, substitutional, sacrificial system. Okay, folks, this has been a long episode. Need I even say? Even after a long episode that we have only scratched the surface, I left a lot out, but I hope nevertheless that this has been helpful for seeing, let's say, the intricacy of the Abraham story and why reading it well means paying attention to its details.
So maybe this has put some fresh and exciting ideas in your head. Okay, next time we'll hit the Jacob and Esau story, which will take us from chapters 25 through 36.
[Outro music plays]
Pete: We'd like to take a minute to thank our devoted honor roll students for the fall 2024 semester. Thank you so much for your support as we continue to bring the best in biblical scholarship to everyday people: Lisa Glaser, Peter Sirotkin, Ed McNamara, Sharon Irvine, Lisa Harstad, Sarah Reando, Donald Long, Jo Ann Scalf, Jon Page, Lori Leckrone, Bob Hillhouse, Kristie Catuargueta, Barbara Baker, michael zenker, John Gudikunst, Kara Monroe, Leslie Traylor, Michele Casey, Kats Omine, Manfred Heck, Maria Soriano, Edward Daniels, Sean McDermott, Eric Trujillo, Bree Bruemmer, Julie Bell, Orlando Magallanes, Sarah Patton, Christina Nichols, Meghan Premo-Hopkins, Lara Marsh, Atsuko Short.
[Outro music plays]
Jared: Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you wanna support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just wanna give a little money, go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give.
Pete: And if you want to support us and want a community, classes, and other great resources, go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/join.
Jared: And lastly, it always goes a long way if you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review, and tell others about our show. In addition, you can let us know what you thought about the episode by emailing us at info@thebiblefornormalpeople.com.
Outro: You've just made it through another episode of the Bible for Normal People! Don't forget you can catch our other show, Faith for Normal People, in the same feed wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People team: Brittany Hodge, Stephen Henning, Wesley Duckworth, Savannah Locke, Tessa Stultz, Danny Wong, Natalie Weyand, Lauren O'Connell, Jessica Shao, and Naiomi Gonzalez.
[Beep signals blooper]
Pete: Okay, then rounding out our summoning—How'd you put up with me, folks? Okay. Why? Because Isaac—Again. God tells Abraham to take Isaac to the land of Moriah and offer him as a burnt offering to God. I really need to figure out how to say Moriah.
[Beep signals end of episode]
