[Gen. 21]
Abraham is 100 when Sarah gives birth to their son Isaac. We don't know how old Sarah is, since she's a woman and doesn't count. Although we hear that through this birth "God has made laughter" for Sarah. (Maybe this is an echo of the time she laughed scornfully at the angels who predicted she would even have a kid at her age?)
Now that she has her own child around the house, Sarah starts clamoring again to have her handmaiden Hagar expelled, as well as Hagar's son by Abraham (Ishmael, age 14). God comes down to Abraham and tells him to do whatever the wife says; and so mother and son are sent packing, with nothing between them to pack but a skin of water.
"When the water in the skin was gone, she [Hagar] cast the child under one of the bushes." (Gen. 21:15). Interesting maneuver. Since (1) Hagar is abandoning her son to die, and (2) she's physically capable of picking up a 14-year-old boy and throwing him under a bush? Has our author maybe forgotten the age of Hagar's son?
Hagar wanders a couple hundred yards away, saying, "Let me not look upon the death of the child." Whereas honestly, you might think a hale adolescent could last longer in the desert than his middle-aged mom. But lo! God reveals a well to Hagar, and all's okay. The boy goes on to become an ace bowhunter, and marries an Egyptian woman picked out for him by his mum. Per extra-Biblical tradition, Ishmael will go on to
Meanwhile, this king Abimelech whom Abraham screwed over in the last chapter?, he has a pointless dispute with Abraham over who dug a certain well. Abraham gives Abimelech seven sheep to secure ownership of the well, and they decide to call the place Beer-sheba in honor of the pact. --Really, it's passages like this that make people bored-stiff-scared to read the Bible.
[Gen. 22]
But here comes one of the interesting bits.
As you know, God taunted Abraham for 25 years with the prospect that he would father a mighty nation. Abraham being elderly and childless, with a menopausal wife, this seemed silly. But finally and miraculously Abraham and his wife got their kid. Wonderful! "God has made laughter" for them.
God's next move?
"Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you." (Gen. 22:2)
Well. Let me go out on a limb here and state that I am an opponent of child murder. Disagree if you like, but that's how it is for me.
And so I could go off on this scene, ranting that God is a deranged sadist, and a bestial monster for ever wanting "sacrifices" in the first place. He made the world; why does he need bits of it back all the time? Did he not make enough world for himself to have some of his own? Of course I say this in jest: it doesn't work like that. Sacrifice means either that God is punishing us, or that he simply wants to prove he's boss (ie, "testing our loyalty"). A petty piece of rigmarole coming from an omniscient being, to be sure. Life on Earth under this fellow's rule puts me in mind of nothing quite so much as Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring". Barbaric, capricious, terror-splashed.
But in come the Biblical interpreters over the centuries, trying to hide a perverse story beneath a mountain of pseudo-profound theological murmur. Some of this commentary tries to remind us that child sacrifice was not uncommon in Canaan at the time - disquieting in its own right, but downright abominable when what your apologetics are propping up is a grave moral corruption at the foundation of a book presumably encoding the world's eternal and immutable ethics.
Soren Kirkegaard alone delivered a whole book on the subject of Abraham's sacrifice (unlike most, Mr. K. at least takes these things seriously, as his title Fear and Trembling suggests. He's not trying to hide the fact that this is an awful story. And Kierkegaard may be a grade-A nut, but I aver that he is - a singular thing among theologians - an admirable fellow.).
But in the main, millennia of commentary on this kill-your-son-for-God passage focus on Abraham's great fidelity and commitment. I'm sorry to say that I see it exactly in reverse. Doesn't Abraham shame himself here - indeed, whore himself here? Let's be true about this. If God tells you to do something immoral, does that make it moral?
If the president breaks the law, is it still against the law? You bet your sweet buppy it is.
--Now, this scene is only the more distressing because just a few chapters back, Abraham didn't mind pricking at God's conscience, even reproaching him. God shouldn't destroy Sodom if it contained both the righteous and the wicked, Abraham had said. "Shall not the judge of the earth do right?" Where is Abe's moral compass today? Today, when what's at stake isn't innocent strangers in Sodom but his very own hard-won son?
And so I think this is a tragic story. Because if God set up this little practical joke as a test of Abraham's rectitude, then Abraham failed catastrophically. He acted on his fear, not his sense of right. And seriously, if the measure of human virtue is the fear of god, rather than the love of what is true and what is good, then let us all hope to be virtuous enough to overcome that kind of virtue.
We know the rest of the story. Abraham saddles his ass and takes the kid to the mountain, trusses him down, holds up the knife, and is called off at the last second by God. A ram trapped in a nearby thicket (which St. Augustine, in schizophrenic-overinterpretation mode, said represented Jesus) becomes Abraham's new offering; and father and son leave.
It must have been one depressing trip home for them.
--And then, to top off the chapter, some more genealogy!
[Gen. 23]
Abraham's wife Sarah dies (at age 127, natch). What we get next, rather than a memorial or eulogy, is a couple hundred desperately inane words about real-estate negotiations.
Suppose you're Abraham and your wife dies. What next - mourning? Concern for the future of your young son whom you almost just murdered? No, the important thing is whether Ephron the Hittite will allow you a choice spot in the cave of Mach-pe-lah, at the end of one of his fields, for use as a burial site; and will he accept 400 silver shekels for it? This will require at least three rounds of negotiation, all of which must painstakingly be documented for posterity in the Holy Bible, with a chapter-ending topper of about five repetitive announcements that this transaction was concluded.
Thank god we didn't have to hear about Abraham's deliberations over the headstone.
[Gen. 24]
Abraham, old and sensing he doesn't have much time left, sends a servant (unnamed) to fetch a wife for his son Isaac. It's important to Abraham that the woman come from his homeland in Mesopotamia - no local Canaanite girls allowed. Also, the servant is bonded to this task through the interesting, if inexplicable, custom of "placing his hand under his master's thigh." Risque, but there you are.
If you didn't notice, Isaac has nothing to do with the selection of his wife. Turns out she is selected like this: the servant rides by camel to the city of Nahor. This city is named after Abraham's brother, whose granddaughter Rebekah emerges from town at dusk to collect water, meets the servant, and gives him some water when he asks. What the servant had secretly decided was that whomever was nicest about the water-sharing, was going to be Isaac's wife. And so he gives Rebekah two bracelets and a nose ring, accompanies her home, and quickly convinces her family that she should leave with him to marry a stranger in a foreign country. Never mind that this stranger is her cousin.
Not that it was easy convincing them: the servant has to heap the family in jewelry, garments, and ornaments. He has to threaten them ("If you will deal loyally and truly with my master, tell me; and if not, tell me, that I may turn to the right hand or to the left." [Gen 24:49]) And he has to overcome the family's suggestion that Rebekah wait ten days before following him to Canaan - which seems like a clear-cut effort to dupe the guy altogether.
But no, Rebekah and her maidens leave with the servant; and when she meets Isaac it is - after this propitious meeting, how could it be otherwise? - love at first sight.
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