Abraham's Family (part 2 of 3)

After Abraham’s response of faith, which proved his genuine loyalty, God continues to speak to Abraham, saying “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess” (15:7b).  Having responded in faith, Abraham has accepted that this can be made to happen, even if his situation and circumstances seemed to militate against the possibility; but he does ask “O Sovereign Lord, by what can I know that I am to possess it?” (15:8)  The Lord responded with directions concerning some animals, which would lead to a covenant ritual.  As it relates to what Paul is attempting to prove in Romans four, given the opportunity to here enshrine circumcision as the proof of God’s covenant promise to Abraham, the proof comes in the form of yet one more thing for which Abraham will have to trust is going to come about under the ultimate control of this sovereign God. 

Strangely, Abraham is told “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign country.  They will be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years.  But I will execute judgment on the nation that they will serve.  Afterward they will come out with many possessions.  But as for you, you will go to your ancestors in peace a be buried at a good old age.  In the fourth generation your descendants will return here” (15:13b-16b).  The eighteenth verse stresses what it is that God is doing, as we read “That day the Lord made a covenant with Abram: ‘To your descendants I give this land” (15:18a).  So here we have explicit language of covenant, and a specific promise related to Abraham’s descendants, with this following Abraham’s belief, which has induced the continued communication between God and Abraham, and there is still no circumcision (or any other visible or physical covenant marker besides loyalty).  Though he does not offer any outward signs, can it be doubted that Abraham is operating under the auspices of God’s covenant with him?  Of course not.

At least thirteen years later, as we press forward to chapter seventeen to hear God again speaking to Abraham, we hear Him say “I am the sovereign God.  Walk before Me and be blameless.  Then I will confirm My covenant between Me and you, and I will give you a multitude of descendants” (17:1b-2).  We bear usefully in mind that it has been quite some time since Abraham has heard “a son who comes from your own body will be your heir” (15:4b).  In the meantime, and according to his belief in God and his response of faith, Abraham has produced an heir, from his own body, with that heir being his son, Ishmael.  In fact, those hearing the story would also have heard God speaking to Ishmael’s mother and saying to her (using language that is heavy with Abrahamic covenant implications ) “I will greatly multiply your descendants… so that they will be too numerous to count” (16:10). 

This sounds quite similar to the words that have been spoken to Abraham in regards to his descendants.  Assuredly, these words of promise, though offered to Hagar, would not go unheard by Abraham, and would be evidence, to him, of the faithfulness of his God.  We simply cannot imagine Hagar keeping this experience from him.  As one of Abraham’s wives, and as one who, as a servant in his household prior to gaining status as a wife, would have learned about the God that is said to have revealed Himself to Abraham, we can only imagine her excitedly sharing the good news with her husband, as it would have been received as yet another confirmation of the words of promise that had been previously directed only to Abraham himself.  Hagar would not have heard them as an independent promise to her.  She would have heard them in the context of the promise to Abraham, especially since she had been taken as his wife specifically in relation to Abraham’s belief in God that he would have countless descendants.  For Abraham, Hagar and the son to be born through Hagar were integral components of the fulfillment of promise.    

When Abraham hears God speaking again in the words that open the seventeenth chapter, and when those that hear the story of Abraham again here the voice of God, what is heard is renewed talk of a multitude of descendants that follows hard upon nearly identical words spoken to Hagar.  Surely this of interest to someone like Paul, who has as his mission to throw wide the gate of entry into the fold of the covenant people of God, firmly believing that, in Christ, this covenant encompasses all peoples (and hence all creation as the land of promise), not being limited to the physical descendants of Abraham through Isaac or to those that take up covenant markers that the Abraham story clearly reveals to be of a secondary concern.  To this point in the Abraham story, it has been well demonstrated that belief in God is the primary concern and the basis for a covenantal relationship.

Isaac's Life Of Exodus (part 1)

Some of the Biblical details of the life of Isaac, as is well known, present themselves as a repetition of events that are also to be found as part of the life of Abraham.  As we consider this in the overwhelming light of the repetitive hermeneutical framework of the Scriptures, not only should we find this fact to be unsurprising, but it should re-confirm that the Bible, though this may sound redundant, can and should be understood as a revelation of God inside of and according to a repetitive hermeneutical framework.  Remembering this will aid us in that which is most important, which is the task of coming to an understanding of what is meant by the words of Jesus, along with His life, death, resurrection, and ascension, inside the understanding of Israel and its role in the world as presented by the Hebrew Scriptures that are shaped by the story of the exodus. 

We should be able to understand Jesus, and therefore able to understand those who told us about Jesus (Gospel writers), as well as those that presented the early church’s understanding of Jesus (authors of New Testament letters), because of what we know about God based on this obvious repetitive theme.  If Israel’s God is the God of exodus, and if the notion of exile is always bound up with exodus, and if this God presents Himself as a God of movement in accordance with His over-arching plans for exodus, then operating within this hermeneutic will shed a fair amount of illumination upon the God-revealing Scriptures, allowing us to avoid pointlessly spiritualized, unnecessarily existential, unfortunately de-contextualized, and often catastrophic mis-readings. 

Returning to Isaac, the first stories of him that are independent from Abraham have him experiencing a famine and considering a trek to Egypt.  This is familiar.  However, the Lord intervenes and says to Isaac: “Do not go down to Egypt” (Genesis 26:2b).  Thus, it is almost as if Abraham’s venture to Egypt is repeated in Isaac’s life.  That’s an odd things to say.  However, what we can see is that rather than Isaac actually going to Egypt, and then being sent out of Egypt as was Abraham, the inclination to Egypt, and God’s call to retrieve Isaac from such thinking, serve in place of an actual journey.  Even in this we find an exile and exodus construction.  The command that is then given to Isaac is to “settle down in the land that I will point out to you” (26:2c).  This is immediately followed by “Stay in this land” (26:3a).  Now, this is not to say that Isaac was to stay where he was, but that Isaac was to “stay in this land” that was going to be pointed out to him by the Lord.  It appears to be the case that the words of the first verse are explained by the subsequent verses, in that we have a record that “Isaac when to Abimelech king of the Philistines at Gerar” (26:1b) because of the famine in the land.  It was before going to Gerar that Isaac considered going to Egypt to escape the famine, as his father had done.  It is during this consideration that God speaks to Isaac, promising direction, which the result that “Isaac settled in Gerar” (26:6b). 

Before Isaac made his move to settle in Gerar, he receives the promise that had first been delivered to Abraham.  After directing Isaac to trust Him, the Lord speaks and says, “Then I will be with you and will bless you, for I will give all these lands to you and to your descendants, and I will fulfill the solemn promise I made to your father Abraham.  I will multiply your descendants so they will be as numerous as the stars in the sky, and I will give them all these lands.  All the nations of the earth will pronounce blessings on one another using the name of your descendants” (26:3b-4).  What we see in this is a collapsing of all of the various promises made to Abraham into one single iteration from the Lord.  We should not be surprised to find that the first instance of God’s speaking directly to Isaac so as to extend the Abrahamic covenant to him and through him, occurs in conjunction with a command to move and a demand for trust.  God first spoke and made promises to Abraham (Abram) by directing him to “go out from” the place that he was dwelling at the time (Haran, having already left Ur with his father), and evoking a need for Abram to trust Him with “to a land that I will show you” (12:1).  So also the record of Isaac’s initial personal dealing with the same God, with the Lord effectively instructing him to go out (“do not go down to Egypt; settle down in…”, while positing a need for trust with the statement in regards to “the land that I will point out to you.” 

Movement (part 2 of 3)

Continuing our observation of the “movement” of Scripture, Abram is not long in the land before there is a famine.  In response, he moves south to Egypt (Genesis 12:10).  Later, he is expelled from Egypt due to deceptive acts perpetrated by he and his wife (12:20) but not before receiving “sheep and cattle, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys and camels” (12:16b).  Owing to that, and with these possessions, Abram left Egypt and “returned to the place where he had pitched his tent at the beginning… This was the place where he had first built the altar, and there Abram worshiped the Lord” (13:3b,4).  Once again, we see a foreshadowing of the great movement of the people of God, in an exit from Egypt, an altar, the worship of the Lord, and mention of a tent. 

Shortly thereafter, we hear God saying to Abram, “Look from the place where you stand to the north, south, east, and west. I will give all the land that you see to you and your descendants forever.  And I will make your descendants like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone is able to count the dust of the earth, then your descendants can also be counted” (13:14b-16).  Not only is Abram directed to look, but God adds to this by saying “Get up and walk throughout the land, for I will give it to you” (13:17).  Yet again, just as we have seen when Noah and his family make their departure from the ark, God demands movement.  There is a more than a superficial correlation between God’s command to Noah to fill the earth, and God’s command to Abram to get up and walk throughout the land.  In both cases, there is a promise from God connected to movement.  As a result, “Abram moved his tents and went… and he built an altar to the Lord…” (13:18)  Additionally, let us not discount the importance that can be attached to “looking.”  Moses, though he is not denied the opportunity to move with the people of God into the land, is given the opportunity to look upon the land, thus enabling us to make an appropriate connection between the two men that can be thought of as bearing God’s covenant. 

When the Lord comes to Abram in a vision and gives him a promise of an heir and descendants, and the reiteration of a promise of a land to possess.  These promises are accompanied by a reminder of his being taken out of Ur of the Chaldeans (15:7), a promise that those descendants will go into subjection to a foreign nation in a foreign country (15:13), and a promise that when they come out of that foreign land that they will do so with many possessions (15:14).  This, of course, is what was supposed to have sustained Israel during their time in Egypt, as well as the evidence (many possessions---plundering the Egyptians, and thus providing an even further revelation of the tremendous symmetry of Scripture---both Abram and Israel would go down into Egypt and leave Egypt with more than they possessed when going in) that would have been purposed to increase their trust in the covenant faithfulness of their God, that He would bring them into the land that had been promised to Abram.  We note with interest that when God speaks to Abram, he reminds Abram of his own exodus, just as when God speaks to His prophets or speaks to His people through His prophets, He is almost always very quick to remind them of their exodus.  For Abram, the exodus is linked to Ur, and for Israel it is linked to Egypt.  When God speaks, He is quite often reminding His chosen ones that He is the God of exodus---the God of rescue. 

We will find Abraham (now with name changed) journeying again, settling “between Kadesh and Shur” (20:1b).  It is said that “he lived as a temporary resident in Gerar” (20:1c), which can be taken to imply that Abraham pitched his tent in that place.  It is here that Abraham will have his dealings with Abimelech, in which he again engages in deceptive acts regarding the nature of the relationship between he and his wife.  This time however, Abraham is not expelled from the land, but is told “Look, my land is before you; live wherever you please” (20:15).  It appears to be the case that it is in this place that Abraham’s wife, Sarah, gives birth to Isaac, for we later learn that “Abraham stayed in the land of the Philistines for quite some time” (21:34). 

The next time we find Abraham moving, it is in connection with this son that was born to him according to God’s promise, when God says to Abraham to “Take your son---your only son, whom you love, Isaac---and go to the land of Moriah!  Offer him up there as a burnt sacrifice on one of the mountains which I will indicate to you” (22:2).  The faithful movement of Abraham in response to this commandment results in an offering on an altar (but not of Isaac), and yet another reiteration of the original covenant promise to Abraham (22:17-18).  Not surprisingly then, we immediately read that Abraham “set out” (22:19).  Though this setting out was simply a return to his home, the fact that there is a  “setting out” set before us following a revelation of God should not go unnoticed.