Abraham’s Call and Covenant
Abram ben Terah was in Haran when he first heard the call of the Lord: “Go from your country and kindred and father’s house to the land that I will show you. And 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.” (Gn 12: 1-3)
The call comes almost immediately after the “scattering” recounted as the story of Babel (Gn 11). The Catechism tells us “in order to gather together scattered humanity God calls Abram from his country. . .and makes him Abraham, that is, ‘the father of a multitude of nations.’” (par 59) From the beginning, the vocation of Abram/Abraham was intended by God to be a summoning of the entirety of humanity to make a new community, to restore the oneness of humanity that was God’s original intent (Gn 2). “The people descended from Abraham would be the trustees of the promise made to the patriarchs, the chosen people, called to prepare for that day when God would gather all his children into the unity of the Church. They would be the root onto which the Gentiles would be grafted, once they came to believe.” (CCC 60)
The promise of land was complemented by a promise of fecundity. “I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your descendants also can be counted.” (Gn 13: 16) This fertility is contrasted with the steady-state population of Egypt by juxtaposing a story (Gn 12) of Abram and Sarai going to Egypt, where the Pharaoh attempted to take her as wife. The story is one not of a desire for progeny but of lust after another man’s wife (Pharaoh was told she was Abram’s sister, but was Pharaoh that much of a sequestered idiot?) Indeed, Sarai/Sarah was to be the woman by whom the uncountable descendants would come (Gn 17:16). An identical story comes down in Gn 20 of Abraham trying to deceive King Abimelech of Gerar in the same way.
The story of Abram/Sarai in Egypt paints a picture of weak and sinful human beings acting in what appeared to be their own best interests, breaking divine commandments yet being spared. Fleeing drought and famine, the couple take their retinue to the only reliable bread-basket of the Middle East, Egypt. In the course of their stay, we must admit, Abram pimps out his wife to the corrupt local ruler. As a result, Abram prospers (!) and Pharaoh is cursed by plague (Gn 12: 16-20). Ultimately, like his descendants four hundred years later, Abram is banished from Egypt.
It is wise to keep this story in mind, and the later one of Abram the bloody warlord (Gn 14), because we might be tempted otherwise to fool ourselves into the notion that God rewarded Abram for his goodness and virtue. As St. Paul later wrote (Rm 4), God blessed Abraham because of his acted-out faith (which itself was a divine gift), and his faithfulness to the covenant, not because of any good he did or evil he avoided.
The same can be said for the other two major patriarchs. Isaac, living in Gerar because of another famine, passed off his wife Rebekah as his sister, just as his father had done (Gn 26:6-7). The ruse worked on the ruler, Abimelech, until he looked out the window of his palace and espied the two “fooling around.” Not much more was recorded about Isaac–his place in salvation history was assured by an earlier incident we shall soon examine. But Jacob, his younger twin son, was the grand master of deception and betrayal.
The “struggle” between Esau and Jacob is documented in multiple places. It began in Rebekah’s womb (Gn 25: 22), continued at birth (verse 26), and included the famous incident of Esau selling off his birthright for a “mess of pottage” (verses 29-34). A whole chapter (27) of Genesis is devoted to relating the story of Jacob’s defrauding dim-visioned Isaac of that birthright and blessing due the firstborn, and of Esau’s hatred of Jacob and plot to kill him (Gn 27:41). Despite this, during Jacob’s exile, he saw and heard the Lord confirming at Bethel the bestowal of the covenant of Abraham and Isaac on his treacherous self, and Jacob’s “iffy deal” with God, which included tithing of his goods (Gn 28:18-21). Jacob continued his contentious relations with his relatives in Mesopotamia (Gn 29-31), and perpetrated a major fraud on his father-in-law. He then plotted a scheme to bribe his angry brother so that he could return home. In the midst of all this convoluted drama, however, he renewed his oath to be faithful to the one God of his fathers (Gn 32:9-12), by a prayer that set up one of the most remarkable scenes in the Bible.
After sending ahead his retinue, Jacob was alone, and wrestled with “a man” all through the night (Gn 32:22-32). When the “man” saw he could not defeat Jacob, he cheated. (We can’t help seeing how the master of deceit and fraud was defeated by his own devices.) Even in his pain, Jacob insisted on winning something, in this case, a blessing. At that point, the “man” revealed himself as an apparition of the Lord, and changed Jacob’s name to “God-fighter” (Israel), a name that has stuck to his descendants ever since. We shall have cause to be reminded of this reality and its beginning over and over again through history, especially in the early years of the Church, by the martyr Stephen.
The faith of Abraham was most clearly seen in the story of the generation of Isaac and Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice him in order to fulfill a divine call. The tale of getting Isaac is long (Gn 15-17) and convoluted. It begins (15:1) with the Lord’s appearance to Abram and His promise to the man of a great reward. Abram bargains. “Who cares what You give if I have no heir to pass it on to?” The Lord promises Abram a son, and a countless posterity. Then comes one of the key texts of the Scripture, “Abram believed the Lord and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.” The Lord then “cuts a covenant” with Abram, to seal the promise of a land and descendants to occupy the land.
This covenant is bilateral. It imposes obligations on both the Lord and Abram. The term “to cut a covenant” is literal. A heifer, she-goat, ram, turtledove and pigeon are split in two parts, and each participant (God appearing as a smoking “fire pot”) passes between them. The symbolism is clear. Each participant is invoking upon himself the fate of the sacrificed animals if he does not fulfill his part of the covenant. Abram is to follow the Lord’s guidance; the Lord is to do everything else. That is the faith of Abram. But how would he get the land and people?
Abram/Sarai conspired to produce Abram’s descendants by her maidservant, an Egyptian, Hagar. Abram impregnated Hagar, and everything about this human plan then went to pieces, literally. Everybody involved got sideways with everyone else. (Gn 16) It is quite clear that this was not the result of a command of the Lord. This came in a later vision, when Abram was a hundred years old (Gn 17:1). God promises Abram that he will be the father of “a multitude of nations” and to symbolize that promise, he changes his name to Abraham, in the manner of a king changing the name of a servant. Moreover, he makes the covenant with Abraham an everlasting one. The covenant is bilateral, and involves the male children descended from Abraham being circumcised (17:9-14). Sarai’s name is changed to Sarah, and she is promised a son, even though she is ninety years old (verse 16-17). Abraham immediately obeys the Lord. Every male in the household is circumcised.
In time, Sarah conceives and gives birth to Isaac in Abraham’s hundred and first year. A couple of years later, after Isaac had been weaned, Sarah sees Ishmael abusing the boy and demands that Hagar and Ishmael be sent away. When we recall the anti-Egyptian bias of Torah, this is not surprising. Hagar is Egyptian, and she ultimately finds Ishmael’s wife in Egypt.
About twelve years later, the crisis event of Abraham’s life, and indeed of all salvation history, is set up by another appearance of God to Abraham. God orders Abraham to take Isaac, now his only son, “to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” (Gn 22:2) Uncharacteristically, no bargaining follows. Abraham says nothing, but acts immediately to do as he is told. Isaac goes willingly to the sacrifice, even when it becomes obvious that he is the lamb of sacrifice. The angel of God stays Abraham’s hand, so that his only beloved son does not die, but this event echoed throughout the following millennia. In John 3: 14-17, we read the early Church’s thoughts about Jesus, the Messiah and the only Son of God, being lifted up in sacrifice. Both James and the author of Hebrews comment on the offering of Isaac as an example of both faith and good works.
The Fathers of the Church commented often on the parallel sacrifices of Isaac and Jesus. As early as Clement’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, we read, “For what reason was our father Abraham blessed? was it not because he wrought righteousness and truth through faith? Isaac, with perfect confidence, as if knowing what was to happen, cheerfully yielded himself as a sacrifice.” (Chapter 31) Tertullian, in “An Answer to the Jews,” (chapter 13) tells the reader that these were “mysteries” which were being kept for “perfect fulfillment” in the times of Christ.
In his commentary on the Chronicler’s works (Letter and Spirit, Liturgy and Empire, at 19), Scott Hahn reminds us of the liturgical context of the twin sacrifices: “in contrast to the other historical works in the canon, where the Mosaic covenant is dominant, the Chronicler seems to insist on the priority of the Abrahamic covenant. This again reflects a sound interpretation of the canonical record, where the Abrahamic covenant is foundational and Israel’s liberation from Egypt and exodus to Sinai is brought about because ‘God remembered his covenant with Abraham.’ The Chronicler may also feel that following the ordeal of the [Babylonian] exile, the people need a return to their roots–to understand that long before the Exodus and Sinai there was Moriah, the site of Abraham’s binding of Isaac and, in God’s plan, the site of the Temple at Zion.”
The faith of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is precisely situated in their willingness to do absurd things apparently against their own self-interest in order to follow the call of the Lord. In each case we can see that these are flawed human beings who often act out of cowardice, greed, lust, impatience and sheer arrogance, but who, in the end, adhere to the plan of their God. It is this that makes them and their wives the spiritual patriarchs and matriarchs of the “Israel of God.”
