father abraham meaning

As we noted in the first part of the essay, Abraham had an unusual father: Terah had children very late, perhaps because he was into other things. The prophet Haggai famously foretold the coming of the Messiah, and said that the desire of all nations (and not simply all people) would come (Haggai 2:7). Now that Abram has a son, the crucial task of perpetuation begins in earnest, and Abram must be shown what is required. Isaac asks presumably in childlike wonder; Abraham’s answer gives authoritative, fatherly, and pious reassurance. Moreover, Isaac and Abraham will not appear together again (in the text) until Isaac and Ishmael come to bury Abraham. But in the immediate sequel, Abram no doubt feels a sense of loss, and needs consolation: Compensating Abram for the recent loss of the more favorable land, God stresses in beginning and ending how the lost land and more will eventually be Abram’s. One might go so far as to suggest that this “trauma” at the hands of his father explains Isaac’s subsequent shortcomings as a father of his own sons, Esau and Jacob, including his preference for the strong, ruddy, earthy, present-centered hunter, Esau (whom Isaac loved, we are told, because he loved to eat of his venison), and his apparent indifference to the paternal work of transmission. There could have been as many as nine who perished with the guilty—not to speak of innocent newborn babies—as the city went down together. And this lesson could not be more timely. Because he hearkened, in awe-fear-and-reverence, to the voice of the Lord. Abraham, who risked his very life—and with it the divine promise—to rescue Lot in the war of the kings, will certainly not have become indifferent to the fate of his kinsman just because he now has an heir in Ishmael. As Abraham prepares to execute the covenant, circumcising himself (at age ninety-nine) as well as Ishmael and all the males attached to his house, God announces that Sarah will bear him a son, Isaac, within the year, Isaac, son of Sarah, not Ishmael, son of Hagar, is to be Abraham’s true heir within the new covenant. The new covenant is announced in explicit relation to the theme of procreation and perpetuation. “In a strange way the present passage speaks more about God’s faith in Abraham than Abraham’s faith in God.”1. Why does Abraham break off at ten? More important, God also intends that Abraham share responsibility for the punishment as a result of his participation in the judgment. The point is driven home the next morning as Abraham awakens to see smoke rising from the cities and all the land of the Plain, “like the smoke from a furnace” (19:28). Abram, who initially had prudently sat out the war, now, upon learning that his nephew was taken captive, leads forth his band of 318 men into battle and wins a mighty victory: He smites the enemy, pursuing them past Damascus, and brings back all the goods, all the people, and his kinsman Lot (who promptly returns to Sodom). Abraham's "son of the promise" is Isaac, whose name means Laughter or Play, which seems to indicate that international trade is to result in leisure and sport. Or, perhaps better, he is compelled to consider that being a righteous father, like being a righteous founder, means to care more for what is right and good than for your own. Shem, we know not how, appears to have divined the sacred meaning of the authoritative relation of father and son. Finally, the true founder knows and accepts the fact that his innocent sons will suffer for the sake of the righteous community and that their “sacrifice” is no proof that they are not properly loved as sons. This sobering instruction greatly alters Abraham’s view of the world, including his understanding of fatherhood. On the surface, there is no apparent rupture on the mountain. This letter ה (he) is one of a few Hebrew letters that may represent both a consonant and a vowel, and the Hebrew invention of vowel notation lifted the art of writing out of the realm of the esoteric and made it available to the common man (Exodus 19:6). In this way, Abraham is the “father” of all who have faith in God (Romans 4:11-12, 16-17). Download Video ( High Standard Phone (3GP) ) Indeed, my own approach seems even to me to be too shallow, precisely because I am attempting to be reasonable about this awesome and shocking story. (without father, mother, without descent, no beginning or end, a continual priest). In Christianity, the Apostle Paul taught that Abraham's faith in God – preceding the Mosaic law – made him the spiritual progenitor of all Christian believers. The mother of Solomon's son and successor Rehoboam was an Ammonite called Naamah (1 Kings 14:21). From now on, accepting God’s correction, Abraham will do the bargaining solely in terms of the size of the saving remnant. Jabal and Jubal's physical lineage was cut short by Noah's flood and their patriarchies, like Abraham's, sum up activity and not physical descent. Hence Adam marks the level that all living things have in common (Eve was the 'mother of all life', or in modern terms: the biosphere; Genesis 3:20, and the 'original sin' affected the whole of creation; Romans 8:22), and Noah marks the level of complexity at which the human mind is distinguished from animal behavior (hence 'they knew not until the flood came'; Matthew 24:39, also see 2 Peter 2:12 and Jude 1:10). . And what of Lot? And while on their trek, Israel additionally absorbed 32,000 Midianite virgins (Numbers 31:18 and 31:35, also see Deuteronomy 20:14). Freed by nature from the consequences of their sexuality, probably both less fitted and less interested by nature than women for the work of nurture and rearing, men need to be acculturated to the work of transmission. As for Abraham (and his seed), the obligation is simple: Keeping the covenant simply means remembering it, that is, marking its token or sign in the flesh of every male throughout the generations, by the act of circumcision. In Genesis 17:5, the Lord promises Abram that he would be the father of many nations — in Hebrew: אב המון גוים, 'ab hamon goyim — but that does not mean that Abram's new name, namely Abraham, means Father Of Many Nations. His brush with death in battle, his fear of reprisals, and perhaps, too, the irrevocability of Lot’s separation weigh on his mind. Whether we like what Abraham did or not, we have it on the highest authority that Abraham passed the test. plained as “the (not ‘my’) father is exalted . Continuing (and these are the last words and the last deed of Isaac in the Bible), Isaac bestows on Jacob—fully and freely—the Abrahamic blessing, the proper blessing of the sons of the covenant: Isaac, stepping forward into the paternal role, at long last fulfills his mission as patriarch. Because it would be both ignoble and unjust to engage in special pleading, Abraham cannot make his argument in personal terms; he must make it in terms applicable both to his own and to the strangers alike. God arranges the encounter, “seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations shall be blessed in him,” and reveals for the first time His true interest in Abraham: “For I have known him, to the end that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the ways of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice: to the end that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which He hath spoken of him” (18:17–19; emphasis added). Even leaving aside the question of Lot, Abraham’s point of departure is clearly a concern for personal justice: Is each person getting what he deserves? True, they do so less visibly and less concentratedly, but they do so willy-nilly, through the things they teach and respect in their own homes; they intend that the entire life of the sons be spent in service to their own ideals or idols, and in this sense they do indeed spend the life of the children. If so, will it be possible to follow Him wholeheartedly as God commanded? First, Abraham is much less likely to plead for himself or for his own; special pleading for oneself is base, whereas Abraham aspires to be noble. Genesis 18:1 records another meeting between The Lord and Abraham. We can think of many possible reasons, all of them apt. And why a rite applicable only to the male children? Though he stems from Noah’s pious son Shem, and though he himself was more attached to his father than was his brother Nahor, Abram’s immediate paternal ancestry is not a model for the work of cultural perpetuation. God tries to put Abram in mind of his prospective paternity. Mr. Sacks’s remarkable commentary has been published as a single volume A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, by the Edwin Mellen Press (1991). More precisely, Abraham focuses entirely on the danger of injustice for the righteous: He is not at all arguing that the wicked should be spared out of mercy or compassion, only that the righteous not suffer with the guilty. Yet a closer look shows that his relation to his father is indeed broken as a result. Examples of first-stage states are very early Egypt and Mesopotamia. Abraham, his pride suitably humbled, “circumcise[s] his son Isaac when he [is] eight days old, as God had [earlier] commanded him” (21:4). For Abraham is dimly aware that there may be a tension between what is just for a city and what is just for individuals. With fear and trembling, I am suggesting (and hope to show) that, far from being irrational, this test makes pretty good sense, as a test both of the father and of the founder. In other words: the Hebrew word 'camel' does not bring to mind a particular animal but rather expresses a unit of trade, comparable to our word 'barrel'. The reason the angel offers for sparing Isaac is the praise of Abraham’s fear-of-the-Lord which we have already discussed. The kings of Babylon invade Canaan to suppress a rebellion against their rule. His name in Hebrew means "father of a multitude. At Sarah’s insistence, Abraham, with heavy heart and great reluctance but with God’s approving endorsement of Sarah’s plan, banishes Ishmael and Hagar, bringing the family for the first time into its proper order and harmony. But—and this is crucial—He does not tell Abraham that He has done so. Generally and safely speaking, we may say, a test of Abraham's disposition toward God. But what about the righteous for whom he had bargained? When Sarah died, Abraham married Keturah and sired another six sons (25:1-2), among whom Midian, an Arabic nation, to where Moses fled and where he met his first wife Zipporah (Exodus 2:15-22; his second wife was a Cushite; Numbers 12:1). The fourth stage of natural state formation is like the third with as main distinction that it has no central government. Justice, not compassion or mercy, is on Abraham’s mind, as it is on God’s. Would Abraham have been deemed worthy had he said, “Why my son?” Second, because it was a request not a command, Abraham was free to refuse, and his refusal did not require any argument about the justice or injustice of the matter. Moreover, he understands that the affair is really only about himself, Isaac, and God, and about their interrelationships. So Abraham, the father of the faithful, kept on believing God, and any person, if he or she believes like him, will also be reckoned righteous (see Rom. As Ishmael approaches young manhood (age thirteen), God, looking to the future, proposes a new covenant, giving Abram a new charge: “[W]alk before me and be thou whole-hearted [or “perfect” or “blameless”; tamim]. Abraham had looked only at the fifty righteous and implied that God might destroy the whole city for a mere lack of five such. While it may seem simpler to refer to Him as the God of Abraham, referring to Him as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob emphasizes the covenant that He made first with Abraham and repeated with the following generations. Virility and potency are, from the Bible’s point of view, much less important than decency, righteousness, and holiness. 2 Many a reader has been perplexed by the fact that Abraham does not plead with God for the life of Isaac, as he had done for the inhabitants of Sodom. But, as Robert Sacks has astutely observed, the test is also risky, and not only on Abraham’s side. The Assyriologist, Hommel suggests that in the Minnean dialect, … But God partly misses the mark, for Abram now for the first time is weighed down with a concern for his childlessness, a concern which his encounter with death has now made acute. Abram. God concludes with remarks about Abram’s own fate: Forced by God directly to contemplate his own death, Abram now more than ever longs for a son. True, shedding of innocent human blood had been pronounced a capital offense (9:6), and Abraham might have thought to refuse to do the deed on those ethical grounds. Abraham’s reflection on the deed of the destruction completes and fixes the political lessons of the conversation of the day before. Circumstances change. It is Abraham, not God, who introduces the punishment of destruction; God was still investigating, but Abraham, far from shrinking from punishing the wicked, is the one who suggests it. Accordingly, he eschews the political perspective (which is concerned with the city) and focuses entirely on the fate of the righteous individuals—and probably for all the reasons mentioned. The phrase contains no "r", for instance, while our name does. Noah, awakening to discover what Ham had done, curses Canaan the son of Ham, measure for measure driving a wedge between Ham and his own son. Abram is not yet thinking in a fatherly way—and for obvious reasons. The name Abraham is applied to only one man in the Bible: the famous son of Terah, who started out his life as Abram in Ur of the Chaldeans (Genesis 11:27) and ended it in Canaan, as the grandfather of Jacob, who became Israel. “Our father is Abraham,” they replied. More importantly, they are called from the start to assume the obligations of transmission. In Judaism, he is the founding father of the covenant, the special relationship between the Jewish people and God – leading to the belief that the Jews are the chosen people of God. And they are made aware of the consequences for their children— now and hereafter—of their failure to hearken to the call: “And the uncircumcised male. For it would be a tragic and self-defeating result if Abraham proved himself a worthy father only at the price of his son’s alienation. When Sarai failed to conceive the Child of the Promise, she gave Abram her Egyptian servant Hagar, who conceived of Ishmael (16:3). Abraham's patriarchy denotes a shared behavior (John 8:39) — what we moderns would call an -ism , in essence comparable to the patriarchies of Jabal and Jubal, the "fathers" of all who keep life stock, live in tents and play music (Genesis 4:20-21). The three words spoken poignantly verify the paternal-filial tie; and Abraham’s response means “I am fully present to you, my son”—that is, as the father you summoned. Merchants will initially travel all the way from one social nexus to the next, but quickly seek to meet somewhere conveniently in the middle. In the animal world this stage would be represented by any herd or pack that follows a clearly identified alpha around a set territory. By stopping the bargaining at ten, Abraham (at least tacitly) accepts the possible destruction of Lot, the man he once called “brother,” the man he once looked to as adopted son and possible heir. As if to tell the reader of Abraham’s heavy heart about his “sacrifice” of Lot, the text speaks of smoke ascending like smoke in a furnace, using the words for smoke and ascent connected with the making of burnt offerings. My theme is the education of the patriarch Abraham, Father of Judaism, father of Christianity, father of Islam. (Rom 4:16-17 ESV) 16 That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring — not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, 17 as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations” — in the presence of the God in whom he believed, … John 8:56, ESV: "Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day.He saw it and was glad.”" John 8:56, KJV: "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad." Additionally, God promised Abram that He would be “the father of many nations” (Genesis 17:4) and accordingly changed his name to Abraham (Avraham in Hebrew).God also changed Abraham’s wife’s name to Sarah meaning “princess:” Its regal connotations reflected that kings, including Jesus Christ, would be born from her lineage.. Additionally, Sarah, as Abraham… Though it is the child who bears the mark, the obligation falls rather on the parents; it is a perfect symbol of the relation among the generations, for the deeds of parents are always inscribed, often heritably, into the lives of their children. The hardest and most difficult lesson is yet to come. . Bryant's newspaper originally published the poem and, because it was originally published anonymously, many assumed it was his, and it was widely republished, so Bryant issued a statement denying his authorship. Abraham is generally said to mean father of many nations from the two words Ab and Hamon, but these contain no letter ‘r’.J. Circumcision emphasizes, even as it also restricts and transcends, the natural and the generative, sanctifying them in the process: Under God’s command, men willingly produce in their living and generational flesh the mark of their longing for God, of their desire for His benevolence and care. Leon R. Kass is Addie Clark Harding Professor in the College and the Committee on Social Thought, The University of Chicago, and author of Toward a More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs and The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature. The word translated fear, yare, means more than simple fright. Noah as father is reduced to mere male-source-of-seed; eliminated is the father as authority, as guide, as teacher of law, custom, and a way of life. But, I must confess, I have utterly neglected one vexing question: Isaac. Hence Paul wrote that Jesus (making the ultimate sacrifice) was the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant (Romans 4:11, Galatians 3:7). No story in Genesis is as terrible, as powerful, as mysterious, as elusive as this one. It is crucial also for God and for the main lesson that He wants to teach Abraham and about which Abraham already has his suspicions. Abraham’s course of instruction would appear to have been completed. Where Abraham had asked Him “to forgive the place for the fifty righteous therein” (18:24), God stresses the totality: “I will forgive all the place for their sake” (18:26; emphasis added). The proverbial tower of Babel manifests the quintessential need of people to gather around an identifying center, whereas Abraham's story is characterized by a divergence away from local centralization. There Abram received word from YHWH to go forth from the land of his father (that would be Haran; 12:4) and finish the journey to Canaan that Terah had begun (12:1). In contrast with Abraham, God is much more interested not in individuals, the righteous ones, but in the city, and its wickedness. His household reordered, Abraham next secures good relations with his neighbors, Abimelech and the Philistines. for we are brethren” (13:8)—Abram magnanimously offers Lot the first and finest choice of land. He will not finally love his son solely because he is his own, but will love only that in his son which is good and which is open to the good, including his son’s own capacity for awe before the divine. Abraham also fathered an untold number of sons with an untold number of concubines, whom Abraham gave gifts and sent to the east, away from Isaac (Genesis 25:6). The second distinct stage of natural state formation follows from a reversal of the line of sight, from inward to outward; when the primordial state becomes aware of others, develops a sort of cultural theory-of-mind and initiates interaction and synchronicity between states. Imitating God’s practice with him, Abraham enters into a covenant of mutual respect and recognition with Abimelech at Beer-sheba. He has witnessed not only God’s dreadful power but also His insight into men’s souls, as well as His solicitude, honesty, justice, restraint, and providence. Babylon marks the first level, Abraham the second and the resurrected Christ the fourth: From Abraham onward the Old Testament deals with the intensification of international exchange (more and more sharing and less and less hoarding; hence the era of the great empires) and obviously culminates at the level of personal transcendence (no more self) and full dedication to exchange (only sharing). In the immediate sequel, Isaac on his own initiative calls, blesses, and, for the first time, commands Jacob—not to take a Canaanite wife but to find one at the ancestral home of his mother, Rebekah. The ancient Jews considered the bosom of Abraham as a place of security, both in life and after death. There ensues the momentous conversation between Isaac and Abraham, the only one recorded in the Bible, a conversation that may therefore reveal the core of the relationship between father and son. And I will make My covenant between thee and Me, and will multiply thee exceedingly” (17:1–2). If you want this website to work, you must enable javascript. In Rebekah, he found more than any father of sons could ask for, a woman of worth who, even more than her husband, will be responsible for safeguarding the new way into the third generation. I. Fathers and Sons: The Uninstructed Way. Birth.He was born in Ur of the Chaldees, and was a direct descendant of Shem ( Genesis 11:10-32). . Not hesitating, and without saying a word (not to God,2 and probably not to Sarah), Abraham “arose early in the morning,” as if he were wholeheartedly in sympathy with the request. For Abraham, the lesson could not be more pointed: His excessive preoccupation with God’s personal promise, with his own merit and its reward— that is, with personal justice—is in fact at odds with the fulfillment of the purpose of God’s promise that he become a great nation, steeped in righteousness, to become a blessing to all the others. Yet Abraham does not exactly lie: For in Abraham’s eyes Isaac, the sacrificial lamb, had indeed been provided by God, presumably for this purpose. Finally, Abraham is told that all the nations (cf. A comparable discussion could, of course, be presented about Sarah’s education in motherhood. Jacob married Rachel (who came with Bilhah) and Leah (who came with Zilpah; all four Chaldeans, as far as we know), had twelve sons and one daughter (Dinah) and became Israel. Resting in the arms of Abraham meant resting in a place where the evil one could not reach and where the just rested securely. For it is administered to Abraham, via this conversation, just after he has learned that Sarah will bear him the long-awaited son-of-the-covenant within the year. At age eighty-six, fatherhood at last. Hence Abraham had at least ten sons, eight of whom we know the names of. The new way entails rightful conduct toward and rightful relations with members of one's household, members of the tribe, strangers and members of other nations, and the divine. But, as the question was .not about reward or punishment but about a a gift or an offering, the guilt or innocence of the “victim” is beside the point (indeed, the offered one is almost invariably pure, innocent, unblemished). In literature this stage would be represented by a naturally growing tree or forest (Psalm 1:3, Ezekiel 31:3). Speaking better than he knows, Abraham uses Isaac’s trust in his father to encourage his son’s trust in God’s providence. Brother Nahor married niece Milcah and also had a concubine named Reumah. The burdens of the father, the founder, and the judge are heavy indeed. In gratitude for his new blessed circumstances, “Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beer-sheba, and called there on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God. I agree, not many of the rest of us have any tribal link to him, but there's another meaning: "Abraham was not a Jew nor yet a Christian; but he was true in faith, and bowed his will to God's and he joined not gods with God. Before I could finish, she burst into her rendition of “Father Abraham.” I could not resist this flashback to my childhood days and proceeded to sing along. Our concern here is Abraham, who, like most men, needs much more instruction in these matters than does his wife. 3 And the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery, and having set her in the midst, 4 they said to Him, … Abram, Terah’s first-born, given a proud name that perhaps means “lofty or exalted father” or “the father is exalted,” seems not to be bothered by the advanced age of his father. Looking away from all the city, he wants God to look only at the group of the vulnerable fifty righteous: “Perhaps there shall lack five of the fifty righteous; wilt thou destroy all the city for the lack of five?” (18:28; emphasis added). There is also something significant in the name Terah gave his first-born son; Abram, which means “lofty or exalted father,” or perhaps “the father is exalted,” is in either case an expression of paternal pride at his birth. 1 Robert Sacks, “The Lion and the Ass: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Chapters 21–24),” Interpretation 10 (1):77, 1982. Abraham’s Paternal Beginnings:His Father and His Nephew. More important, God does not finally require that men choose between the love of your own and godliness. 2 And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people were coming to him; and he sat down and began to teach them. When Abram next impatiently demands proof that he will indeed inherit the promised land, God enacts the awe-inspiring covenant-between-the-sacrificial-pieces and, in the eerie darkness, gives Abram some bad news: not he but only his seed will inherit the land, and then only after they have suffered four hundred years of slavery as strangers in a strange land.

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