Torah portion Genesis 18:1-22:4

Torah portion Genesis 18:1-22:4


Collected from my thoughts, Midrash (usually Genesis Rabbah), TBI’s Torah study group and the books Midrashic Women by Judith Baskin and People of the Covenant by a group of non-Jewish scholars who are occasionally obviously anti-Israel but otherwise have good points. I blame no one but myself for all my negative thoughts about Abraham’s and Sarah’s behaviors.

The parsha begins with Abraham sitting at the entrance of his tent on a very hot day. Three "men" appeared before him; some say they were all angels and some say one was God, Himself. Abraham had many servants, but he hustled about to serve these men himself. He asked Sarah to prepare cakes of choice flour and a servant boy to prepare a tender calf. Abraham served these cakes with the calf and with curds and milk! This could well have been a Biblically kosher meal, but it most certainly was not a Rabbinically kosher meal. (Biblically kosher because the Torah does not say not to serve milk and meat products together. It says not to boil a kid in its mother's milk, which I interpret as an injunction against insensitivity to the mother since we are also not allowed to take eggs in front of a mother bird or kill a calf in front of its mother.)

Even Moses never got to see and talk to God man to man the way Abraham did. I wonder if God knew the founder of Judaism needed more attention. Or maybe this was Abraham’s reward for waiting on them himself, instead of having his servants do it. Abraham's relationship with God was familiar, almost. Because Abraham's God was friendly and is called El-Shaddai and El-Roy in this parsha, and El was the name of the Canaanite high God, some scholars have believed Abraham's God was not indeed the God of Moses, who resembled the Midianite high God, who was a God of volcanoes, fire and war.

The men/angels/Lord ate while Abraham hovered, ready to do whatever they asked. The one presumed to be God said he would return this time next year and Sarah would have a son. Sarah, listening in the tent behind them, laughed quietly to herself; she had stopped menstruating. "Now that I am withered, am I to have enjoyment, with my husband so old?" God asked Abraham why Sarah laughed. Sarah was frightened and lied about her laughing. But you must realize, for 24 years they had been hearing this; I think a moment's disbelief would be expected.

(Sarah is the first of three very beautiful women who were all related and all barren until God intervened. One, Rebekah, was only able to conceive after her husband, Isaac, prayed to God for a child. Two of them, Sarah and Rachel, did not conceive until they gave their husbands their maids as concubines. A fourth relative, Leah, understood precedence and gave Jacob her maid as a concubine when she wished to resume bearing children. If I were placed in such a position, I would interview maids until I found one who was not only capable, but also hirsute and odiferous!)

Abraham accompanied the "men" on their way towards Sodom. God mulled over whether or not to tell Abraham his plans to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Finally he decided to tell him the purpose of the trip: to see if they had mended their ways. Abraham, who must have been thinking partially of his nephew Lot, answered, "Will you sweep away the innocent along with the guilty? What if there should be fifty innocent...? Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?" Abraham deals until God agrees to spare the land if there be but ten innocent. Then He and Abraham parted.

Lot met the "men" at the gate to Sodom and entreated them to stay with him. He prepared a feast for them. The townspeople began shouting at the door for him to bring them out. Lot went outside and tried to bargain with them to leave the "men" alone. As a woman, I truly hope he knew who was in his house, because what he does next to spare the men is terrible: he offers the townspeople his virgin daughters to do with as they please if they leave the men alone. The townspeople tried to break the door down, but the "men" grabbed Lot, brought him inside and struck those outside with a blinding light. The “men” urged Lot to get his family out of the city before the Lord destroyed it, to flee and not stop or even to look back. Lot was able not able to persuade his sons in law, but he took his two unmarried daughters and his wife and they fled. Lot's wife, however, looked back and was turned to a pillar of salt.

Abraham hurried the next morning to see that Sodom, Gomorrah and the Plains were all destroyed, with smoke rising still. We can only wonder if Abraham knew that Lot had been saved. The poor guy has repeatedly been promised that he will father a great nation and Lot is the closest thing he has to a son. In the paragraph below, you will notice that since only Lot’s virgin daughters survived, he almost did not continue his own line.

Lot was so afraid he and his daughters went to live in a cave. The girls, believing they would never again see another man, got their father drunk and had sex with him so they might have children. It is interesting, because God so repeatedly commands against incest, that the Davidic line has this incestuous start. (Not to mention all the half-sisters and nieces that became wives of the patriarchs.)

Abraham took his household to live between Kadesh and Shur. While traveling in Gerar, unfriendly territory, Abraham again said Sarah was his sister. King Abimelech (who was almost tricked again later by Isaac) took Sarah, but God appeared to him in a dream and warned he would die because Sarah was a married woman. Abimelech had not defiled her and protested that he was innocent and had believed lies. Abimelech called Abraham to him and ran him off after giving him many presents, including sheep and oxen, male and female slaves. So again Abraham profits from her!

However, after this, the Lord gave Sarah a son, whom they named Isaac. Abraham circumcised him at eight days old.

In Genesis Rabbah, the rabbis say that the matriarchs were barren because the Lord longed for their prayers. Once they turned their hearts fully to Him, He heeded their prayers. Moreover, when Sarah birthed, He filled the wombs of numerous barren women, healed many of deafness and blindness and insanity, removed doubt from those who did not believe, and even increased the brightness of the sun and moon, just because His heart was so gladdened by Sarah's prayer. Sarah was even said to produce fountains of milk so that noble women of many nations could bring their children to be suckled by her! The text says, 'Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would suckle children!' even though she only had one child. (Various Rabbis in Genesis Rabbah offer a number of other reasons for barrenness that seem a bit odd, like so she will remain beautiful to her husband… for 89 years, long past when their relationship was strained by the lack of children, long past when he could have divorced her for being barren? I prefer to believe that since they were all related, they may have had a family tendency towards inability to conceive.)

When Isaac was weaned, Abraham celebrated with a great feast. Then Sarah, watching Ishmael “playing” (which the Rabbis interpreted as playing lewdly or meanly) asked Abraham to cast away Hagar and Ishmael because she did not want them to receive Abraham's inheritance. (I like Judith Baskin’s comment, “Here, as elsewhere in biblical narratives, questionable human actions, driven by the most elemental emotions, are presented as fulfillments of a larger, predetermined plan.” If Hagar and Ishmael had been allowed to stay, Ishmael may have thwarted the divine promise that Isaac would carry on Abraham’s name as founder of a great nation.) So after losing Lot, Abraham now also loses Ishmael.

Abraham was upset to force his first child out, but God reassured him Ishmael would also live to found a great nation. Abraham gave them water and bread and sent them on their way. They became lost and Hagar cried, afraid that her son would die of thirst. An angel of God told Hagar that God heard the boy's cries and opened her eyes so she might see a well of water. Ishmael drank, and from there on, God was with him.

During this time period, Abimelech and Abraham made a pact not to deal falsely with each other. Abraham gave sheep and oxen to Abimelech. They agreed that Abraham dug and owned a well that had been in dispute. (They named it Beer-sheba and it would come up again later, when Jacob stopped there for the night.)

The parsha ends when God tells Abraham told to sacrifice his favorite son, Isaac, the son he waited a lifetime to have! Human sacrifice was common among pagans because they believed in order to guarantee future fertility, they had to sacrifice their firstborn child to fertility gods. Abraham may have been horrified, but we do not know it. Then again, he may have recalled how many times God had promised him that through Isaac, he would father a great nation, so maybe he did not believe it would actually happen. In any case, Abraham saddled his ass and took two servants and Isaac on a journey to Mount Moriah, which would later become the Temple Mount.

On the third day, Abraham asked his servants to stay and wait for them to return after they worship. He had Isaac carry the wood for his own funeral! Isaac asked his father where the ram was for the burnt offering and Abraham answered that God would provide it. When they reached the proper place, Abraham built an altar, built a fire and bound Isaac, who could have fought for his life, but apparently did not. Abraham had the knife ready when an angel of the Lord calls Abraham to stop. Abraham had passed this test. A ram appears in the thicket. Abraham released his son and offered the ram instead. The angel promised again that Abraham shall have "descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven and the sands on the seashore."