World Council of Churches
Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches
Reformed Churches Bern-Jura-Solothurn
Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum (PIEF)
INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL CONFERENCE
“Promised Land”
Church Center Bürenpark, Bern, Switzerland
10 - 14 September 2008
Hermeneutical implications of the covenant with Abraham according to Gen. 12-15
Dr Nicolas Abou-Mrad
University of Balamand, Lebanon
The story of Abraham plays a central role in biblical exegesis. In it we first see a thread that runs through the whole Bible. It contains in a nutshell the basic biblical thematic that will recur, in a more or less narratively elaborated way, throughout the biblical literature. As it stands in Genesis, it constitutes a conclusion of the previous primeval story and an introduction to the ensuing stories of Jacob and Exodus. It contains the very foundations of God’s covenant and presents the basics of the biblical story that revolves around the Exodus—already alluded to in it—as the central redemptive paradigm in the Bible.
I shall try to show this by discussing the three main axes around which the Abraham narrative revolves: 1) The “in and out” paradigm; 2) the enthronement of Abraham; 3) the Sarah-eretz paradigm. In conclusion I shall underscore the importance of these three axes for understanding the story and its hermeneutical implications.
The “in and out” paradigm
The Abraham narrative begins with two exoduses: Abraham’s departure from his country, Ur of the Chaldeans, in Gen. 12:1-4 (“Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you”), and his departure from Egypt in Gen. 13:1 (“So Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife, and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the Negeb”).
These two exoduses are separated by a paragraph stating that Abraham reached Canaan and built an altar to the Lord before the land was struck by a famine, obliging Abraham to head towards Egypt, a prelude to his second exodus expressed in terms reminiscent of the exodus from Egypt (Ex. 1-10).
It is no coincidence that the two places from which Abraham was led out by God are Ur of the Chaldeans—which can easily be linked with Babylon and Assyria—and Egypt. In Genesis 11, the first place is introduced through the story of the tower of Babel, epitomizing the yearning of human beings to depart from God and shape their lives on their own. Later, it will become the people’s place of punishment through exile. In the story of the Exodus, Egypt—the second place—was the place of bondage and slavery, which required God’s direct intervention to take the people out. In the prophetic literature also, these two countries are linked with the ultimate punishment of God for rebellion and disobedience (as in Hos. 11:6).
The relationship between the Exodus, “the going out”, and Abraham’s journeys is the clue to understanding the significance of the story of Abraham. It is the basis of what I call the “in and out” paradigm. It matters a lot for the understanding of the story whether Abraham is in the land (ba’aretz) and outside Ur and Egypt. I am convinced that the “in-the-land” of Abraham cannot be separated from his being “outside” Ur and Egypt. This observation can be clearly corroborated, not only through God’s insistence on driving Abraham out of Ur and especially Egypt—the same scenario will be repeated in the story of Abraham and Abimelech in Genesis 20; very illuminating too is the fact that when the same story was repeated with Isaac in Genesis 26, God commanded him not to go down to Egypt—but also by the fact that the Bible kept the tradition that the Exodus is the apogee of God’s work of salvation, to such an extent that God wants to be known always as the God “who brought you (Israel) out of Egypt”, that is, the God of Exodus. It is striking that the story of the entrance to the land is not related in the “traditional torah,” which contains, technically, the normative texts of Judaism. If this observation is valid, then the meaning of the land in the Bible is organically linked with non-presence in both Ur and Egypt.
The opposition between Ur/Egypt and the land is clearly expressed in the fact that in both Ur and Egypt Abraham was under the mercy of the Lord of each of these places, whereas in the land he was under the aegis of the God who invited him and to whose worship he erected the altar. Another opposition resides in the change of life-style between Ur/Egypt and the land. Genesis 11 is clear that Babel was built to be a city in which men wanted to settle after a long period of wandering (Gen. 11:1-3), and the mere presence of a king in Egypt is a clear sign of a sedentary way of life. Abraham’s style of life in the land was, on the contrary, nomadic (one needs just to remember the nomadic terminology in Genesis 12, as well as in the rest of the story: pitching the tent, journeying and departing, the heat of the day, keeping flocks etc).
This opposition suggests a pattern that will be repeated several times throughout the biblical literature: a clear preference for the life of wandering over sedentary life, with all its components including the city, its king and institutions (countless examples can be mentioned in this respect, from both testaments: most important of all is the biblical God’s preference to reveal himself and his will in the wilderness).
Taking this pattern into consideration gives our “in and out” paradigm a new dimension: being in the wilderness is usually expressed with reference to the city. When one is in the wilderness one is, ipso facto, outside the city. In ancient Near Eastern culture the wilderness is the absolute “out”, ontologically opposed to the “in” of the city. Applied on our story, when Abraham was in the land, leading a nomadic life until his death, he was outside Ur/Babylon and outside Egypt. The outbreak of famine (four times in the cycle of the patriarchs) is a clear sign that being in the land was the opposite of the ease of life in both Ur/Babylon and Egypt.
In Genesis 15, the chapter which talks about the covenant made by God to Abraham, the “in and out” paradigm plays a crucial rule. Beside the clear reference to God as the “LORD who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit it” (v. 7) and to the exodus of the people from Egypt in v. 13-14, it is interesting to observe the movements accompanying Abraham’s request of a son to be his heir:
After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” But the word of the Lord came to him, “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.”
He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness. Then he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.” (Ex. 15:1-7)
In these verses Abraham is preoccupied because he does not have an heir of his own blood to inherit “his house”. The expression “my house” is mentioned twice in two sentences in relation to the inheritance. But when Abraham was most preoccupied, the Lord “brought him outside”: the Hebrew verb is the same verb used to describe the Exodus (yatsa and its derivatives). Only outside his house—which in Semitic thinking suggests detachment—was Abraham promised a progeny and land. Here also the land is related to the notion of “outside”, with living as a stranger (ger) on it. Defining the land geographically as the land that extends from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates clearly means that the land is neither Egypt nor Mesopotamia but what lies outside them. That this land was also linked with nomadism is expressed by the ritual of the oath usually performed in tribal societies.
The enthronement of Abraham
This subtitle may sound rather odd. It constitutes, however, a further step in my hermeneutical approach. It is suggested by a commonly overlooked passage in the story of Abraham, which describes Abraham’s fight with the four kings who defeated Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 14. An odd battle, culminating in an odd victory of a small tribal chief over four powerful kings who had been able to defeat at least five other city kings and enslave their peoples for 12 years. The outcome of the battle leads in the narrative to two events important for our argument: 1) The blessing of Abraham by Melchizedek, the king of Salem (v. 18-20); 2) the refusal of Abraham to take anything from the king of Sodom as a reward (v. 22).
Interesting in the blessing of Melchizedek (v. 20) is the use of a formula that is usually linked with the enthronement of kings, or with celebrating a king’s victory over the enemies: “Blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!” In his function as a high priest, Melchizedek blesses a victorious Abraham using kingly terminology. In my view this is no less than the appointment of Abraham as a king, albeit an unusual one. I say “unusual”, because he is an old childless, nomad with no city, no army, no fortresses; yet the biblical narrative makes him humiliate Pharaoh and later Abimelech and deliver a fatal blow to four mighty kings. Not only this: five other kings with their cities must be forever grateful to him for their release from slavery and their salvation. It is not surprising that right after this story, the whole story of Abraham’s progeny begins. The newly appointed victorious unusual king needs a son, an heir, who in turn will also be unusual as the story suggests, starting with his unusual name: yithaq, “he laughs”.
In the biblical narrative, a small nomadic tribal chief defeats the kings of established cities and protects others. This goes in line with the preference of the biblical narrative for the wilderness as a possible place for flourishing with the blessing of God, an idea which leads us to our third and last axis.
The Sara-eretz paradigm
The first information the Bible gives about Abraham in Genesis 11 is that his wife Sarah was barren. Most of the rest of the story will revolve around Sarah’s barrenness and securing a progeny for Abraham exclusively through her. Genesis 18 suggests a close resemblance between the old, barren Sarah and the setting: the wilderness surrounding the tent at the hottest moment of the day. It is the moment of absolute lifelessness, when the land is as barren and dry as Sarah’s womb. Yet, precisely at this moment, Abraham and Sarah were given a sure progeny by the promise of God. The same word that carried the promise of the land carried also the promise of the son, and ultimately of life to a lifeless couple in a lifeless setting.
The oddity of the matter is reflected in Sarah’s comment, which also suggests, in its Hebrew original, an identification between Sarah and the land: ha ahare beloti tihye li edennah. This is ordinarily translated as “After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure?” but it can also be translated like this: “After I have become an abandoned place, shall I be restored to the state of paradise?”
It is Isaiah who takes this sentence and elaborates on it in Isaiah 54 and 55, in which he uses the phrase “Eden of Yahweh” to describe Sarah (54:3-4). In chapter 55 Sarah is compared to an abandoned ruin, now turned into an inhabited haven. We can now understand why the biblical story makes Pharaoh and Abimelech covet a woman at least 80 years old. This oddity is further strengthened by the same Abimelech coveting her daughter in law at least 30 years later. The oddity is understood if this matter is understood through the identification of Sarah and her daughter-in-law with the land of both their husbands. Pharaoh’s claim to Sarah is related to Abraham’s detachment from the land. Only when Sarah was restored to him, was he able to return to where he should belong. When Sarah flourishes with the promise of a son, the wilderness flourishes too as a haven of life, precisely at the same time when two flourishing cities meet their doom for their iniquities.
Conclusions
I have tried to show the narrative and hermeneutical value of the three themes in the story of Abraham, which I consider substantial for understanding not only this particular cycle but other parts of the scripture. The pattern of wilderness versus city, kingship and land will recur with more elaboration in other stories, the basis of which is that of Abraham as I suggest. The covenant with Abraham is one which should be looked at from the perspective of these three axes.
In relation to the whole issue of the claim to the land, I believe Abraham’s story is very illuminating. The question is not how to relate story to past history, but rather how we, who are living in history and making our history today, should understand the story and respect its biblical value.
It cannot be less than a challenge to us, who are shaping history in the manner of Babylon and Egypt, seeking exclusiveness, self-distinction, self-sufficiency and a feeling of absolute warranty for what we have—to us, who cannot see ourselves unless in an entity, be it political, religious, economic, ecclesial, or technical. It invites us to an exodus, to an “outside” where our deeds and achievements are barren, so that those of God may flourish forever.
