Professor Christine
Hayes: So last time we
started discussing the
historical merits of the
biblical stories of the
patriarchs and the matriarchs.
These are contained in Genesis
12 through 50.
Scholarly opinion on this
matter is seriously divided;
something you need to know.
 
Some scholars will point to
internal biblical evidence for
the authenticity and the
antiquity of the patriarchal
stories.
So for example,
Nahum Sarna argues that
representing Abraham and Isaac
and Jacob as foreigners and
strangers in Canaan is hardly a
convenient tradition for a
people who are seeking to
establish their claim to its
homeland.
And if this myth of origins
were the fabrication of a later
writer, then surely they would
have written the story in such a
way as to give their ancestors a
less tenuous hold or claim,
connection, to the land.
 
He also notes that some of the
material in the patriarchal
stories would be offensive to
later religious sensibilities.
Jacob is married to two sisters
simultaneously.
That is something that is
explicitly forbidden in the book
of Deuteronomy.
Wouldn't a later writer have
cleaned up this ancestral record
if this were in fact something
composed at a later period?
 
Also, he notes that the
representation of inter-ethnic
relationships in the patriarchal
stories does not accord with the
reality of a later period.
 
So for example,
the Arameans are considered
close kin to the Israelites.
 
"A wandering Aramean was my
father," it says.
And spouses are always
chosen--daughters for sons are
always chosen by going back to
the Aramean people and choosing
someone from close kin.
 
But in the period of the
monarchy--that's going to be
after 1000--in the period of the
monarchy, there were very poor
relations with the Arameans.
 
They were bitter enemies.
 
So why, according to scholars
like Sarna, would a biblical
author from that period portray
the Arameans as close kin,
unless they had some older
tradition, established tradition
that reflected that fact?
 
So Sarna and other scholars
hold that the patriarchal
traditions are not entirely
fabricated retrojections from a
later period.
They contain authentic memories
of an earlier historic
situation.
The patriarchs,
it's maintained,
were semi-nomads.
 
They lived in tents.
 
From time to time,
they wandered to Egypt or
Mesopotamia often in search of
pasture for their animals.
And various details of their
language, their customs,
their laws, their religion,
it's argued,
seem to fit well into the
period of the Late Bronze Age.
I've given you the periods at
the top of the chart:
early Bronze Age;
middle Bronze Age from about
2100 to 1550;
we date the late Bronze age
from about 1550 until 1200--the
introduction of iron and the
beginning of the Iron Age in
1200.
Prior to that,
the Bronze Age,
which is divided into these
three periods.
So that's on the one hand:
scholars who see these stories
as reflecting historical
memories and having a certain
authenticity to them.
 
Then on the other hand,
at the other extreme,
you have scholars who see the
patriarchal stories as entirely
fabricated retrojections of a
much later age.
And they vary significantly as
to when they think these stories
were written:
anywhere from the period of the
monarchy all the way down to the
fourth century,
some of them.
Works published in the 1970s by
authors like Thomas Thompson,
Jon Van Seters,
take the position that these
stories are filled with
anachronisms,
their chronologies are
confused.
These anachronisms and confused
chronologies in the patriarchal
stories are the rule rather than
the exception in their view,
and they are evidence of a very
late date of composition.
 
So you have these two extremes
based on the internal evidence
of the Bible itself.
 
But you also have the same two
extreme positions reflected in
the discipline of archaeology.
 
In the early days,
archaeology of the region
tended toward credulity.
 
And it was explicitly referred
to as biblical archaeology--an
interesting name,
because it suggests that the
archaeologists were out there
searching for evidence that
would verify the details of the
biblical text.
We're doing biblical
archaeology;
archeology in support of the
biblical text.
I mentioned last time William
F.
Albright, an American
archaeologist.
He believed strongly that
archaeological findings were
important external evidence for
the basic historicity and
authenticity of,
for example,
the patriarchal stories.
 
And certainly some
archaeological findings were
quite remarkable.
 
Scholars of the Albright school
pointed to texts and clay
tablets that were discovered in
second millennium sites.
So you see down on the bottom
the second millennium BCE,
obviously going down to 1000;
first millennium: 1000 to 0.
The second millennium really
wasn't longer than the first
millennium, it's just that I ran
out of board!
But specifically sites like
Nuzi and Mari--I've placed them
in their approximate places on
the timeline--Nuzi and Mari are
sites that are near the area
that's identified in the Bible
as being the ancestral home of
the patriarchs in Mesopotamia or
on the highway from there to
Canaan.
These texts and clay tablets
were believed to illuminate many
biblical customs and
institutions.
So in the Nuzi texts from about
the middle of the second
millennium, we learn of the
custom of adoption for purposes
of inheritance,
particularly the adoption of a
slave in the absence of
offspring.
Biblical scholars got very
excited about this.
They point to the biblical
passage in which Abraham
expresses to God his fear that
his servant,
Eliezer, will have to be the
one to inherit God's promise
because Abraham has no son.
 
Also according to the Nuzi
texts, if a wife is barren,
she is to provide a maidservant
as a substitute to bear her
husband's children.
 
And this is something that
happens with three out of the
four matriarchs,
who are afflicted with
infertility: Sarah,
Rachel and Leah.
There are other parallels in
family and marriage law that
correlate with certain biblical
details.
In the eighteenth century,
the texts from Mari.
They contain names that
correspond to Israelite names:
Benjamin, Laban,
Ishmael.
So biblical scholars,
buoyed up by these correlations
between the archaeological
finds,
the texts found by
archaeologists,
and biblical stories,
asserted that the patriarchs
were real persons and their
customs and their legal
practices and their social
institutions could be verified
against the backdrop of the
second millennium as revealed by
archaeological findings.
 
However, it's been argued that
some of these ancient sources
have been misread or
misinterpreted in an effort to
find parallels with biblical
institutions.
A lot of gap-filling is going
on to make these texts look as
though they correspond to
biblical institutions.
And skeptics like Thomas
Thompson and John Van Seters
point out that many of the
biblical customs which are
paralleled in Ancient Near
Eastern sources were still alive
and well down in the first
millennium.
So reference to these customs
in the patriarchal stories
really doesn't tell us anything
about dating.
They could derive from anywhere
in the second or first
millennium.
And for other reasons,
they think it is much more
reasonable to date the
composition of these stories to
the first millennium,
in some cases,
quite late first millennium.
Furthermore,
over time, many discrepancies
between the archeological record
and the biblical text became
apparent.
Increasingly,
practitioners of what was now
being termed Palestinian
archaeology,
or Ancient Near Eastern
archaeology, or archaeology of
the Levant, rather than biblical
archaeology--some of these
archaeologists grew
disinterested in pointing out
the correlations between the
archaeological data and the
biblical stories or in trying to
explain away any discrepancies
in order to keep the biblical
text intact.
They began to focus on the best
possible reconstruction of the
history of the region on the
basis of the archaeological
evidence regardless of whether
or not those results would
confirm the biblical text,
the biblical account.
 
In fact, this reconstruction
often does contradict biblical
claims.
We're going to see this quite
clearly in a few weeks when we
consider the book of Joshua and
its story of Israel's lighting
invasion of the land of Canaan.
The archaeological record just
doesn't support such a story.
Still, many people have clung
to the idea of the Bible as a
historically accurate document,
many times out of ideological
necessity.
Many fear that if the
historical information in the
Bible isn't true,
then the Bible is unreliable as
a source of religious
instruction or inspiration.
 
And that's something they don't
want to give up.
This is all really a very
unfortunate and heavy burden to
place on this fascinating little
library of writings from late
antiquity.
People who equate truth with
historical fact will certainly
end up viewing the Bible
dismissively,
as a naive and unsophisticated
web of lies, since it is replete
with elements that cannot be
literally true.
But to view it this way is to
make a genre mistake.
 
Shakespeare's Hamlet,
while set in Denmark,
an actual place,
is not historical fact.
But that doesn't make it a
naive and unsophisticated web of
lies, because we accept when we
read or watch Hamlet that
it is not a work of
historiography,
a work of writing about history.
 
It is a work of literature.
 
And in deference to that genre
and its conventions,
we know and accept that the
truths it conveys are not those
of historical fact,
but are social,
political, ethical,
existential truths.
And the Bible deserves at least
the same courteous attention to
its genre.
The Bible doesn't pretend to be
and it shouldn't be read as what
we would call "objective
history"--and see the scare
quotes,
you should be looking up here
so you'll see the scare quotes:
"objective history"--in other
words perhaps,
a bare narration of events.
 
To be sure, we do find that
some events that are mentioned
in the biblical texts correlate
to events that we know of from
sources outside the Bible.
 
So for example,
Pharaoh Shishak's invasion of
Palestine in 924.
 
This is mentioned in the
biblical text,
it's mentioned in the Egyptian
sources--there's a nice
correlation.
The destruction of the northern
kingdom of Israel in 722,
the capture of Jerusalem in
597,
the destruction of the temple
in Jerusalem in 586--these are
all recorded in the biblical
text and they are in Assyrian
and Babylonian records as well;
as well as other events from
the period of the monarchy.
So as a result,
because of these correlations,
many scholars are willing to
accept the general biblical
chronology of the period from
the monarchy on:
starting about 1000 on,
they accept that general
chronology;
the sequence of kings and
battles and so on.
 
But ultimately,
it is a mistake,
I think, to read the Bible as a
historical record.
The Bible is literature.
 
Its composition is influenced
and determined by literary
conventions and goals.
 
Now, of course we all know that
there is no such thing as purely
objective history anyway.
 
We have no direct access to
past events.
We only ever have mediated
access in material:
archaeological remains that
yield information to us only
after a process of
interpretation,
or in texts that are themselves
already an interpretation of
events and must still be
interpreted by us.
The biblical narrative is an
interpretation of events that
were held by centuries' long
tradition to be meaningful in
the life of the people.
 
And to the biblical narrators,
these events known perhaps from
ancient oral traditions pointed
to a divine purpose.
The narrative is told to
illustrate that basic
proposition.
The biblical narrators are not
trying to write history as a
modern historian might try to
write history.
They're concerned to show us
what they believed to be the
finger of God in the events and
experiences of the Israelite
people.
One scholar,
Marc Brettler,
whose name I've also put up
here, Marc Brettler notes that
in the Bible,
the past is refracted through a
theological lens if not a
partisan political,
ideological lens .
 
But then all ancient historical
narrative is written that way,
and one could argue all
contemporary historical
narrative is written that way.
 
With due caution,
we can still learn things from
texts ancient and modern.
 
We can still learn things about
Israel's history from the
biblical sources,
just as classical historians
have learned a great deal about
classical history,
Greece and Rome,
despite or through the
tendentious, partisan and
ideologically motivated writings
of classical writers.
 
So our discussion of the
patriarchal stories is going to
bear all of these considerations
in mind.
We're not going to be asking
whether these stories are
historically accurate.
 
I'm going to assume they are
not.
And once we rid ourselves of
the burden of historicity,
we're free to appreciate the
stories for what they are:
powerful,
powerful narratives that must
be read against the literary
conventions of their time,
and whose truths are social,
political, moral and
existential.
So what are these truths?
We'll begin to answer this
question--begin to answer
this question,
you'll spend the rest of your
life finishing the process of
answering this question.
But we'll begin by identifying
some, by no means all,
of the major themes of Genesis
12 through 50.
And we're going to begin with
the story of Terah and his
family.
This is a story that's marked
by the themes of divine command
and divine promise.
Now, the biblical writer
represents the emigration of
Terah's son Abram,
whose name will be changed to
Abraham,
so sometimes I'll say one and
sometimes the other.
 
But they represent this
emigration as divinely
commanded.
It's the first step in a
journey that will lead
ultimately to the formation of a
nation in covenant with God.
 
First we meet our cast of
characters.
This is in Genesis 11:27 on
through chapter 12:3.
Now these are the
generations of Terah:
Terah begot Abram,
Nahor, and Haran;
and Haran begot Lot.
 
Haran died in the lifetime of
his father Terah,
in his native land,
Ur of the Chaldeans.
And Abram and Nahor took them
wives, the name of Abram's wife
being Sarai [who will become
Sarah];
and the name of Nahor's wife,
Milcah....
And Sarai was barren;
she had no child.
Terah took Abram his son,
and Lot the son of Haran,
his grandson,
and Sarai, his daughter in law,
his son Abram's wife;
[getting confused yet?]
and they went forth together
from Ur of the Chaldeans to go
into the land of Canaan;
but when they came to Haran,
they settled there.
 
And the days of Terah were 205
years: then Terah died in Haran.
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."
I will make of you a great
nation,
And I will bless you;
And make your name great
So that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless
you, and him who curses you,
I will curse;
and by you all the families of
the earth shall bless themselves
[source unknown].
So Abram is commanded to go
forth from his home and family
to a location to be named later,
a location that remains for now
unspecified.
And this is a fact that has
caused commentators for
centuries to praise Abram for
his faith.
That is a virtue--faith is a
virtue--that is connected or
associated with Abram/Abraham in
other biblical contexts and also
in later religious tradition.
He is seen as the paradigm,
the paradigmatic exemplar of a
man of faith.
The command is coupled with a
promise: "I will make of you,"
God says, "a great nation,
and I will bless you."
 
But, we have just learned in
chapter 11 that Sarai is barren.
It was a seemingly irrelevant
detail, whose import is suddenly
clear.
How clever of the narrator to
plant the information we need to
realize that Abram has to take
God's word on faith,
and how perfectly the narrator
sets up the dramatic tension and
the great confusion that is
going to run through the next
several chapters,
because Abram doesn't seem to
understand that the progeny will
come from Sarai.
You have to read these stories
as if you're reading them for
the first time.
You have the great disadvantage
of knowing the ending.
It's a terrible disadvantage.
 
You have to discipline yourself
to read these stories as if you
don't know what's coming next
and put yourself in the position
of the character.
 
Abram's just been told he's
going to be the father of great
nations and he has a barren
wife.
 
 
He doesn't seem to understand
that the progeny is going to
come from Sarai,
and why should he think that it
would?
God wasn't specific.
He simply says,
"I shall make of you a great
nation."
He says nothing of Sarai,
and after all she's barren.
 
So Abram may be forgiven for
thinking that perhaps some other
mate awaits him.
And so he surrenders her easily
to other men,
to Pharaoh of Egypt immediately
following this scene in chapter
11;
immediately after that,
in Egypt, he surrenders her.
He willingly accepts Sarai's
offer of a handmaid,
Hagar, to bear a child Ishmael,
in Sarai's place.
How cleverly the narrator leads
us with Abram to pin our hopes
on Ishmael as the child of the
promise.
And how cleverly is the carpet
pulled out from under our feet
in Genesis 17,
when God finally,
perhaps impatiently,
talks specifics:
No, I meant that you would
father a great nation through
Sarah.
And Abraham,
as he's now called,
is incredulous:
"She's past the age of bearing,
Lord."
And he laughs.
And God is silent.
And in that silence I always
imagine that this light goes on:
this click, this awful,
sickening light.
And Abraham says,
O, that Ishmael might live in
your sight!
Or something like that.
I think I probably misquoted.
 
"O, that Ishmael might live by
your favor"-- sorry,
that's the actual words.
 
But God is determined.
 
Sarah will bear Isaac and with
him God will make an everlasting
covenant.
All of this drama through the
first five chapters made
possible by a seemingly
irrelevant line in 11:30,
a sort of throw-away datum in a
family list that one might gloss
over: "and Sarai was barren;
she had no child."
 
And that's the power and beauty
of biblical narrative.
You have to get yourself into
the mindset to read it that way.
A few verses later,
when Abram and his wife Sarai
and his nephew Lot and those
traveling with them all reach
Canaan, God makes an additional
promise.
He says in verse 7,
"I will assign this land to
your offspring."
So in just a few short
verses--we've just gone from 12,
we've just gone seven verses
now into chapter 12--in just a
few short verses,
the writer has established the
three-fold promise that
underpins the biblical drama
that's about to unfold:
the promise of progeny,
of blessing, and of land.
And that establishes a
narrative tension for the
stories of the patriarchs,
but also for the story of the
nation of Israel in subsequent
books.
Because in the patriarchal
stories, there is this
suspenseful vacillation between
episodes that threaten to
extinguish God's promises and
episodes that reaffirm them.
Israelite matriarchs seem to be
a singularly infertile group.
The lines of inheritance defy
our expectations:
it doesn't seem to go to the
person that we think that it's
going to go to.
The process by which the
promise is fulfilled is halting
and torturous at times.
We're going to look at one
example of an episode in which
the promise is affirmed--or
confirmed,
reaffirmed--and an example of
an episode in which the promise
is supremely threatened.
 
In Genesis 15,
God's promise to Abraham is
formalized in a ritual ceremony.
 
God and Abraham are said to
"cut" a covenant--that's the
verb that's used in making a
covenant--and "covenant" is a
central biblical concept.
 
The Hebrew word for covenant,
which I've written over here is
berit.
It means vow,
promise, perhaps contract,
agreement or pact.
Parallels to the biblical
covenant have been pointed out
by many Ancient Near Eastern
historians and scholars.
We have in our Ancient Near
Eastern texts--and we'll come
back to these in more detail
when we get into Exodus--we have
in our Ancient Near Eastern
texts,
two types, two main types of
covenant: the suzerainty
covenant and the parity
covenant.
As you can imagine from the
name, a suzerainty covenant is a
covenant in which a superior
party,
a suzerain, dictates the terms
of a political treaty usually,
and an inferior party obeys
them.
The arrangement primarily
serves the interest of the
suzerain, and not the vassal or
the subject.
In a parity covenant,
you have really two equal
parties who both agree to
observe the provisions of some
kind of treaty.
Now, there are four major
covenants in the Hebrew Bible.
 
They're initiated by Yahweh as
expressions of divine favor and
graciousness.
And two of these appear in
Genesis.
We've already seen one,
the Noahide covenant;
and the Abrahamic covenant,
which we're looking at now.
 
Now, the Noahide covenant in
Genesis 9:1-17 is universal in
scope.
It encompasses all life on
earth.
It stresses the sanctity of
life and in this covenant,
God promises never to destroy
all life again.
By contrast,
the Abrahamic covenant is a
covenant with a single
individual.
So we've gone from a covenant
with all of humanity to a
covenant with a single
individual.
And it looks very much like an
Ancient Near Eastern suzerainty
covenant.
God appears as a suzerain.
 
He's making a land grant to a
favored subject,
which is very often how these
work.
And there's an ancient ritual
that ratifies the oath.
In general, in this kind of
covenant, the parties to the
oath would pass between the
split carcass of a sacrificial
animal as if to say that they
agree they will suffer the same
fate as this animal if they
violate the covenant.
In Genesis 15,
Abraham cuts sacrificial
animals in two and God,
but only God,
passes between the two halves.
 
The striking thing about the
Abrahamic covenant is its
unilateral character.
 
Only God seems to be obligated
by the covenant,
obligated to fulfill the
promise that he's made.
Abraham doesn't appear to have
any obligation in return.
And so in this case,
it is the subject,
Abraham, and not the suzerain,
God, who is benefited by this
covenant,
and that's a complete reversal
of our expectation.
 
Note also that the biblical
writer goes out of his way to
provide a moral justification
for this grant of land to
Israel.
In the biblical writer's view,
God is the owner of the land,
and so he is empowered to set
conditions or residency
requirements for those who would
reside in it,
like a landlord.
The current inhabitants of the
land are polluting it,
filling it with bloodshed and
idolatry.
And when the land becomes so
polluted, completely polluted,
it will spew out its
inhabitants.
That process,
God says, isn't complete;
so Israel is going to have to
wait.
The lease isn't up yet,
and the Israelites will have to
wait.
He says in Genesis 15:16,
the iniquity of the Amorites
will not be fulfilled until
then.
So here, and in other places in
the Bible, it's clear that God's
covenant with Israel is not due
to any special merit of the
Israelites or favoritism:
this is actually said
explicitly in Deuteronomy.
Rather, God is seeking
replacement tenants who are
going to follow the moral rules
of residence that he has
established for his land.
 
Genesis 17 seems to be a second
version of the same covenant.
This time, scholars attribute
it to P--the Priestly writer,
the P source.
There are some notable
differences, emphasizing themes
that were important to the
Priestly writer.
God adds to the promises in
Genesis 17 that a line of kings
will come forth from Abraham,
and then, that Abraham and his
male descendents be circumcised
as a perpetual sign of the
covenant.
So here there is some
obligation for Abraham.
"Thus shall my covenant be
marked in your flesh as an
everlasting pact" .
 
Failure to circumcise is
tantamount to breaking the
covenant, according to the text.
 
Now, circumcision is known in
many of the cultures of the
Ancient Near East.
 
It's generally a rite of
passage that was performed at
the time of puberty rather than
a ritual that was performed at
birth, eight days after birth.
 
So that's unusual in the
Israelite context to have it
occur with infants.
 
But as is the case with so many
biblical rituals or institutions
or laws, whatever their original
meaning or significance in the
ancient world,
whether this was originally a
puberty rite or a fertility rite
of some kind,
the ritual has been suffused
with a new meaning in our texts.
So circumcision is here infused
with a new meaning:
it becomes a sign of God's
eternal covenant with Abraham
and his seed.
These texts are typical of
affirmations of God's promise.
 
But despite them,
the patriarchal episodes or
stories are peppered with
episodes in which the
realization of the promise and
the blessing is threatened.
In chapter 12,
Abram surrenders his wife Sarai
to Pharaoh in order to advance
his position among the
Egyptians,
plausibly not knowing that it
is Sarai who is supposed to bear
the child of God's promise.
As I said, that's left unclear
until chapter 17,
when God says:
No, no, no, you misunderstood.
I meant Sarai.
God intervenes,
however, and returns Sarai to
Abraham.
Sarai's barren state really
casts a shadow over the promise
from the very beginning of the
story of Abraham and Sarah.
Desperate, Sarah takes
advantage of the custom that is
attested in the ancient world of
giving her Egyptian handmaid,
Hagar, to Abraham to bear a
child in her stead.
But Hagar apparently lords this
over her mistress,
and an embittered Sarah forces
her from the house.
Hagar and her child Ishmael cry
out to God in the wilderness and
God assures Hagar that Ishmael,
who's regarded by Muslims as
the ancestor of the Arabs and
the inheritor of the blessing
and the promise,
that Ishmael shall become a
great nation too.
 
But really the greatest threat
to the promise comes from God
himself, and that is in Genesis
22 when God tests Abraham with
the most horrible of demands.
 
The child of the promise,
Isaac, who was born
miraculously to Sarah when she
was no longer of child-bearing
age,
is to be sacrificed to God by
Abraham's own hand.
 
And the story of the binding of
Isaac is one of the most
powerful, most riveting stories
not only in the Bible but,
some have claimed,
in all of world literature.
The story is a marvelous
exemplar of the biblical
narrator's literary skill and
artistry.
This week's assigned reading
includes selections from Robert
Alter's book,
The Art of Biblical
Narrative,
which I heartily recommend to
read in its entirety.
 
Alter describes the extreme
economy of biblical narrative,
economy in the description of
physical settings and character
as well as speech.
 
Rarely does the narrator
comment on or explain a
character's actions or thoughts
or motives.
There's only the barest minimum
of dialogue.
And on the few occasions that
the Bible will violate this
principle of verbal economy--for
example if two characters
converse at length--you can be
sure it's significant.
You'll want to pay extra
attention.
The biblical narrator's
concealing of details and the
motives of the characters,
God and Abraham and Isaac,
leads to ambiguity,
and the possibility of very
many interpretations.
 
And that is a striking
characteristic of biblical
prose: its suppression of
detail, its terse,
laconic style.
That makes the little that
is given so powerful,
so "fraught with background" to
use the phrase of Eric Auerbach,
whose article you are also to
read this week.
Auerbach contrasts the literary
style of Homer with the biblical
writer's style specifically in
connection with the story of
Genesis 22.
The ambiguities and the
indeterminacy of this story make
it one of the most interpreted
texts of all time.
Why is God testing Abraham?
 
Does God really desire such a
sacrifice?
What is Abraham thinking and
feeling as he walks--for three
days, already--walks with his
son, bearing the wood and the
fire for the sacrifice?
 
Does he fully intend to obey
this command,
to annul the covenantal promise
with his own hand?
Or does he trust in God to
intervene?
Or is this a paradox of faith?
 
Does Abraham intend faithfully
to obey, all the while trusting
faithfully that God's promise
will nevertheless be fulfilled?
What's Isaac thinking?
 
Does he understand what is
happening?
How old is he?
Is this a little boy or a grown
man?
Is he prepared to obey?
He sees the wood and the
firestone in his father's hand.
Clearly a sacrifice is planned.
 
He's got three days to figure
that out.
He asks his father:
Where is the sheep for the
burnt offering?
Does he know the answer even as
he asks?
Does he hear the double
entendre in his father's very
simple and solemn reply,
which in the unpunctuated
Hebrew might be read,
"The lord will provide the
sheep for the offering:
my son."
Does he struggle when he's
bound?
Does he acquiesce?
The beauty of the narrative is
its sheer economy.
It offers so little that we as
readers are forced to imagine
the innumerable possibilities.
 
We play out the drama in
countless ways,
with an Abraham who's reluctant
and an Isaac who's ignorant.
Or an Abraham who's eager to
serve his God to the point of
sacrificing his own son,
and an Isaac who willingly
bares his neck to the knife.
 
Read the story one verse,
one phrase, one word at a time.
There are so few words that you
can be sure that they were
chosen with care.
 
You'll be looking at Genesis 22
closely in your section
discussions.
And as you read the story,
remember its larger context:
God's promise to make Abraham
the father of a great people
through his son,
Isaac.
It's this context,
this promise,
that gives the story its
special power and pathos.
 
But of course the story can be
contextualized in a number of
different ways.
For example,
one can read the story in its
historical context of child
sacrifice in the Ancient Near
East.
Although child sacrifice was
adamantly condemned in various
later layers of the Bible,
there's plenty of evidence that
it was probably practiced in
different quarters throughout
the period of the monarchy.
 
Does Genesis 22 assume or
reject the practice of child
sacrifice?
Some scholars argue that a core
story promoting child sacrifice
has been edited so as to serve
as a polemic against child
sacrifice now in its final form.
Do you think so?
Can you see the seams and feel
the narrative tensions that
would support such a claim?
Does the story pull in more
than one direction?
Or we can read the story in its
immediate literary context.
Abraham has just permitted the
expulsion of Ishmael,
the only beloved son of Hagar.
 
And now God demands that he
sacrifice his beloved son.
What might he be trying to
teach Abraham?
Is this a trial in the sense of
a test or a trial in the sense
of a punishment?
The Hebrew term can tolerate
both meanings.
Or Genesis 22 can be
contextualized another way.
 
And at this point,
we need to backtrack a little
bit to the story of Sodom and
Gomorrah,
which is in Genesis 18 and 19,
to contextualize the story a
little bit, in terms of
Abraham's character development.
In the story of Sodom and
Gomorrah, in Genesis 18 and 19,
Yahweh tells Abraham of his
plan to investigate reports of
the wickedness of the city,
the Canaanite city of
Sodom--its violence,
its cruelty to strangers--and
to destroy it.
And Abraham's reaction comes as
something of a surprise.
 
He objects to the plan,
and he starts to argue with
God.
"Will you sweep away the
innocent along with the guilty?
 
Shall not the judge of all the
earth deal justly?"
That's in Genesis 18:23-25.
 
The question is of course
rhetorical.
Abraham is evidently quite
confident that God would not act
unjustly, would not destroy the
innocent along with the wicked.
Indeed, Abraham is banking on
the fact that God is merciful
and will overlook evil for the
sake of righteous individuals.
And so Abraham haggles with God
for the lives of the innocent:
"...Shall not the Judge
of all the earth deal justly?"
And the Lord answered,
"If I find within the city of
Sodom fifty innocent ones,
I will forgive the whole place
for their sake."
Abraham spoke up,
saying, "Here I venture to
speak to my Lord,
I who am but dust and ashes:
What if the fifty innocent
should lack five?
 
Will You destroy the whole city
for want of the five?"
And He answered,
"I will not destroy if I find
forty-five there."
 
But he spoke to Him again,
and said, "What if forty should
be found there?"
And He answered,
"I will not do it,
for the sake of the forty."
And he said,
"Let not my Lord be angry if I
go on: What if thirty should be
found there?"
And in this way,
Abraham manages to whittle the
number down to ten:
"And God answers,
'I will not destroy for the
sake of the ten.'"
But ten innocent men are not
found.
The narrator makes that very
clear.
He takes pains to point out
that the mob that comes to abuse
the two divine visitors includes
all the people to the last man:
very clear statement.
 
So Sodom and its four sister
cities of the plain,
around the Dead Sea,
are destroyed.
But out of consideration for
Abraham, Abraham's nephew Lot is
saved.
Genesis 19:29:
"God was mindful of Abraham and
removed Lot from the midst of
the upheaval."
Now, this text is often
identified as the source for the
doctrine of the merit of the
righteous,
 
 
 
which is the idea that someone
who is not righteous is spared
for the sake of,
or on account of,
the accrued merit of one who is
righteous.
So Lot himself is no prize,
but he is spared on Abraham's
account.
This is an idea that will have
repercussions in later biblical
thought.
In this story,
we see Abraham rising to the
defense of a thoroughly wicked
and reprehensible group of
people,
arguing quite pointedly that
the innocent should never be
wantonly destroyed.
Can this be the same Abraham
who a few chapters later,
when told to slaughter his only
son,
his perfectly innocent and
presumably deeply loved son,
not only makes no objection,
but rises early in the morning
to get started on the long
journey to the sacrificial site?
What are we to make of the
juxtaposition of these two
stories?
Which represents behavior more
desirable to God?
 
Before leaving this story,
I just want to make two quick
comments.
First, I've included in your
reading packet,
and it's uploaded on the
website,
a very interesting article by a
writer who relates her efforts
since childhood to understand
why Lot's wife should have been
turned into a pillar of salt as
punishment for looking back as
she fled from her burning home.
It's not a biblical scholar,
but someone who's simply
reacting to the text.
 
Was this, in fact,
a punishment,
or was it a mercy?
 
Second, the story of Sodom and
Gomorrah has often been cited as
a biblical condemnation of
homosexuality,
as if the Sodomites were
condemned to destruction because
of homosexual behavior.
 
In fact the very terms "sodomy"
and "sodomize" represent this
interpretation.
But the idea that the
fundamental sin of Sodom was
homosexual behavior is not
present in the Hebrew Bible.
 
It appears only in later
documents.
It's found in the Christian New
Testament, in the book of Jude
7:2;
the book of Peter 2:6-10;
and subsequent interpretations.
 
The Sodomites,
like the generation of the
Flood, stand condemned by the
"outcry against them,"
a particular Hebrew word that's
used to refer to outcry.
It's a term that's generally
associated with the appeal of
victims of violent oppression,
bloodshed, injustice.
God hears this outcry of
victims, against the Sodomites:
the Sodomites' violation of the
unwritten desert law of
hospitality to strangers,
their violent desire to abuse
and gang rape the strangers that
they should have been
sheltering.
This is merely one instance of
a pattern of violent brutality.
 
 
 
Now, Isaac, who is the child of
God's promise to Abraham,
is often described as the most
invisible of the patriarchs or
the most passive of the
patriarchs.
Perhaps his passive acceptance
of his father's effort to
sacrifice him serves as the key
to the biblical narrator's
perception of his character.
 
By contrast,
his wife Rebekah is often
described as the most determined
and energetic of the matriarchs.
She runs to extend hospitality
to a stranger.
She quickly draws water for him.
 
She quickly draws water for his
camels and waters them all.
She seems to run everywhere,
and she does all this not
knowing that the man she greets
is the servant of Abraham who
has come to seek a wife for his
master's son,
Isaac.
Rebekah herself personally,
accepts the offer of an unknown
bridegroom in a far away land
and overrides the urgings of her
mother and her brother to delay
her departure.
No, she says, I'm ready to go.
I'll go now.
There's a very moving
conclusion to the betrothal
story.
We read in Genesis 24:67 that
Isaac brought Rebekah "into the
tent of his mother Sarah,
and he took Rebekah as his
wife.
Isaac loved her and thus found
comfort after his mother's
death."
But like the other matriarchs,
Rebekah is barren.
So Isaac pleads with the lord
for a child on her behalf.
And Rebekah becomes pregnant
with twins.
The older child is Esau--Esau
will be the father of the
Edomites--and the younger is
Jacob, who will be the father of
the Israelites.
Now, Jacob is the most fully
developed, the most colorful and
the most complex of the
patriarchs.
Jacob has long been identified
by commentators as the classic
trickster, a type that we know
from folklore.
Marc Brettler has described the
Jacob stories as a kind of
morality tale,
the main message of which is
"trick and you shall be
tricked".
Jacob tricks his brother out of
his birthright,
and in turn is tricked by his
brother-in-law,
his wife and later his own
sons.
How much of Jacob's trickery is
really necessary?
 
After all, Rebekah,
who suffers tremendous pain
during her pregnancy,
is told by God that the twins
who are fighting and struggling
for priority in her womb will
become two nations,
the older of which will serve
the younger.
That happens in Genesis 25:23.
"Two nations are in your womb;
two separate peoples shall
issue from your body;
one people shall be mightier
than the other;
and the older shall serve the
younger."
And indeed, the real life
nations of Israel and Edom were
long-time enemies--Esau is the
father of the Edomites according
to the biblical texts--and for a
time,
Edom was subjugated by Israel,
according to the biblical
texts, under King David.
Some scholars,
like Nahum Sarna have argued
that this announcement,
that the older shall serve the
younger is the narrator's way of
establishing for the reader that
the younger child,
Jacob, is the son who will
inherit the divine blessing,
and that that then raises
serious questions about Rebekah
and Jacob's morally dubious
efforts to wrest the blessing
and birthright from Esau.
Are we supposed to be comforted
by the fact that they are
fulfilling a divine plan?
 
Are we supposed to conclude
that it's alright to fulfill a
divine plan by any means,
fair or foul?
Or are we to conclude,
as Sarna and others suggest,
that Jacob's possession of the
birthright was predetermined,
it was disengaged from all of
his acts of trickery?
And if so, then Jacob's efforts
are indicative of a deceitful
and narcissistic personality?
 
He takes advantage of Esau's
hunger, offering him a pot of
lentil stew in exchange for the
birthright.
He and Rebekah plot to deceive
Isaac in his dotage into
bestowing the blessing of the
firstborn on Jacob instead of
Esau.
So perhaps by informing us that
Jacob had been chosen from the
womb, the narrator is able to
paint a portrait of Jacob at
this stage in his life as
grasping and faithless:
a great contrast to his
grandfather, Abraham.
 
Now, Jacob's poor treatment of
his brother, Esau,
earns him Esau's enmity and
Jacob finds it expedient to
leave Canaan and remain at the
home of his mother's brother,
Laban.
On his way east,
back to Mesopotamia from
Canaan, where Laban resides,
in Mesopotamia,
Jacob has an encounter with
God.
At a place called Luz,
Jacob lies down to sleep,
resting his head on a stone.
And he has a dream in which he
sees a ladder.
The ladder's feet are on the
earth, it reaches to heaven and
there are angels ascending and
descending on the ladder.
In the dream,
God appears to Jacob and
reaffirms the Abrahamic or
patriarchal covenant.
He promises land,
posterity and in addition,
Jacob's own safety,
his own personal safety until
he returns to the land of
Israel.
Jacob is stunned:
we read in Genesis 28:16-17:
"Jacob awoke from his sleep and
said, 'Surely the Lord is in
this place;
and I did not know it.'
/ Shaken, he said,
'How awesome is this place!
This is none other than the
abode of God,
and that is the gateway to
heaven.'"
The stone that served as his
pillow, he then sets up as a
cultic pillar,
some sort of memorial stone.
He sanctifies the stone with
oil and he renames the site
Bethel, Beyt El,
which means the house of God.
But it's significant that
despite this direct vision,
Jacob, so unlike Abraham,
is still reluctant to rely on
God and his promise.
 
And he makes a conditional vow:
If God remains with me,
if He protects me on this
journey that I am making,
and gives me bread to eat and
clothing to wear,
and if I return safe to my
father's house--the Lord shall
be my God.
And this stone,
which I have set up as a
pillar, shall be God's abode;
and of all that You give me,
I will set aside a tithe for
You.
So where once God had tested
Abraham, it seems now that Jacob
is almost testing God.
If you can do all this,
fine: you can be my God.
Well, Jacob spends some 14
years in the household of his
uncle, his mother's brother,
Laban.
And Jacob meets Laban's two
daughters: Leah is the elder
daughter and Rachel is the
younger.
And he soon loves Rachel.
 
He agrees to serve Laban for
seven years for the hand of the
younger daughter Rachel.
 
When the seven years pass,
Laban deceives Jacob and gives
him the elder daughter,
Leah.
Jacob, the trickster,
is furious at having been
tricked himself,
and in much the same way--an
older and a younger sibling,
one disguised as the other or
wearing the covering of the
other, just as he tricked his
own father.
But he is willing to give seven
years more service for Rachel.
 
Rachel, Leah,
and their two handmaidens will
conceive one daughter and 12
sons, from whom will come the 12
tribes of Israel.
 
But it's the two sons of
Rachel, the beloved wife,
the two sons of Rachel,
Joseph and Benjamin,
who are the most beloved to
Jacob.
Jacob determines finally to
leave Laban and return to
Canaan.
There's one final remarkable
incident in Jacob's life that
occurs on his return journey.
It's an incident that most
readers associate with a
significant transformation in
his character,
and that is Jacob's nighttime
struggle with a mysterious
figure, who in some way is
representative of God.
This struggle occurs as he is
about to cross the river Jabbok
and reconcile himself with his
former rival and enemy,
Esau.
Jacob has sent everyone on
ahead: his wives,
his children,
his household,
his possessions.
He's standing alone at the
river.
And we read, Genesis 32:25-33.:
… a man wrestled with
him until the break of dawn.
 
When he saw that he had not
prevailed against him,
he wrenched Jacob's hip at its
socket,
so that the socket of his hip
was strained as he wrestled with
him.
Then he said,
"Let me go, for dawn is
breaking."
But he answered,
"I will not let you go,
unless you bless me."
 
Said the other,
"What is your name?"
He replied, "Jacob."
 
Said he, "Your name shall no
longer be Jacob,
but Israel, for you have
striven with God and men,
and have prevailed."
 
Jacob asked,
"Pray tell me your name."
But he said,
"You must not ask my name!"
And he took leave of him there.
 
So Jacob named the place
Peniel, meaning,
"I have seen a divine being
face to face,
yet my life has been
preserved."
The sun rose upon him as he
passed Peniel,
limping on his hip.
Many scholars,
Michael Coogan and others,
see this story as an Israelite
adaptation of popular stories of
river gods who threaten those
who wish to cross a river,
or trolls or ogres who guard
rivers and have to be defeated
by a hero, making the river safe
to cross.
In its Israelite version,
however, this story is
historicized.
It serves an etiological
function.
It's associated with one
particular character at a
historical time and it serves to
explain why the Israelites
abstained from eating the
sciatic nerve of an animal even
to this day.
We also learn how Peniel gets
its name.
We learn how Israel gets his
name.
Names are an important theme of
this story.
In the biblical context,
names encapsulate the essence
of their bearer.
Naming something or knowing the
name of something gives one
control over,
or power over,
that thing.
And that's why the stranger
will not reveal his name to
Jacob.
It would give Jacob power over
him.
Jacob's own name is the
occasion for some punning in
this story.
His name is built on this root
Y.'.Q.B: Ya-'a-qov It
means to supplant or uproot.
He emerges from the womb
grasping his brother's heel.
'aqev here,
the word for "heel," is based
on that root.
It's part of his effort to
supplant Esau right at birth,
and he continues that effort at
supplanting through his early
life.
The writer makes that explicit
in Genesis 27:36 when Esau cries
out, "Was he then named
Ya'aqov that he might
supplant me these two times?"
 
Yes.
And in this chapter,
Jacob wrestles.
 
The word for wrestle is built
on this root,
just switching two letters.
 
He wrestles with the
mysterious, divine being at the
Jabbok river.
So you see all of this punning
with the name.
Jacob's very name hints at and
foreshadows the struggling,
the wrestling,
the trickery that are the major
themes of his life.
But his striving has reached a
climax here.
And so the angel names him
Yisra'el, Israel,
which means he who has striven
with God.
Because as the stranger says,
he has striven and wrestled all
his life with men,
particularly his brother,
and now with God.
 
El means god.
 
It's the name of the chief god
of the pantheon of Canaan.
Yisra'el,
he who has struggled with God.
We'll talk about the way in
which the change of name means a
change of character,
change of essence for the
patriarch when we return.
 
