Shemot: Snake Staff, Part 1

Moses hears God speak out of the burning bush on Mount Sinai, and learns that he must act as God’s prophet and lead the Israelites out of Egypt. He tries four times to get out of the job in this week’s Torah portion, Shemot (Exodus 1:1-6:1), and one of his efforts leads to God making his staff magical.

First Moses hints that he is not qualified, saying:

“Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring the Israelites out from Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11)

Instead of saying why Moses meets the job qualifications, God replies:

“I will be with you, and this will be your sign I myself sent you.” (Exodus 3:12)

In other words, Moses will be frequently reminded that God sent him on this mission, because God will be present for him. As the story continues, God’s presence with Moses is indeed obvious, since God continues to speak to him.

Next Moses asks what name he should call God when he speaks to the Israelites, and God answers at length, giving him more information about his mission as well as about who God is. Then Moses makes his second protest:

“And if they do not believe me, and do not listen to my voice, but say: Y-H-V-H did not appear to you?” (Exodus 4:1)

This time God responds by showing Moses three “signs” he can perform in front of the Israelites to demonstrate that Y-H-V-H¹ is with him. The first sign turns out to be the most important.

God said to him: “What is this in your hand?” And he said: “A mateh.” (Exodus 4:2)

mateh (מַטֶּה) = a shepherd’s staff; a staff serving as an official symbol of authority over a tribe or country; a tribe. (Plural: mattot, מַטּוֹת.)

Moses is holding a shepherd’s staff because he has just led his father-in-law’s flock through the wilderness all the way to Mount Sinai. But this is his last undertaking as a shepherd. After he returns to Egypt, Moses will use his staff to signal divine miracles. He will also become the leader of the thousands of Israelites who follow him out Egypt.

From Charles Foster Bible, illustration by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1860

Now God demonstrates that Moses is no longer holding a mere shepherd’s staff.

Then (God) said: “Throw it to the ground.” So he threw it to the ground, and it became a nachash, and Moses fled from it. Then God said to Moses: “Reach out your hand and grasp it by its tail.” And he reached out his hand and took hold of it, and it became a mateh in his palm. (Exodus 4:3)

nachash (נָחָשׁ)= snake, serpent. (Words from the same root include the verb nichash, נִחַשׁ = practice divination, the noun nachash, נַחַשׁ = bewitchment, magic curse, and nechoshet, נְחֺשֶׁת = copper, copper alloy.)

Then God gives Moses two more signs for the Israelites. For the second sign, is he puts his hand into the fold at the bosom of his robe, and when he pulls it out his hand looks white and scaly. When he repeats the action, his hand returns to normal.² For the third sign, God says, Moses will pour some water from the Nile on dry ground, and it will turn into blood.³

Once Moses has demonstrated the signs to the Israelites, God says, they will believe that God appeared to him.

Moses does perform all three signs in front of the elders of Israel when he arrives back in Egypt, and they believe he is God’s prophet.⁴ But the only one of these signs he uses in front of Pharaoh is the staff trick. (See next week’s post, Va-eira: Snake Staff, Part 2.)

But the three signs are not enough for Moses, who does not want to be a prophet in the first place. So he makes two more attempts to talk God out of giving him the job. He says he is a slow and clumsy speaker, but God promises to tell him what to say. Finally, Moses simply begs God to send someone else.⁵ God gets angry, then promises to appoint his brother Aaron to help him. And Moses resigns himself to returning to Egypt.

Moses’ staff could turn into anything surprising, and the transformation would prove that he is a channel for the miraculous power of God. So why does God choose a snake for this sign?

Snake as deceiver

Adam, Eve, and Snake, Escorial Beatus, ca. 950

One explanation is that a snake is the opposite of a staff. A snake is a flexible animal that moves with whiplash speed. It can shed its dead skin and emerge alive. And in the story of the Garden of Eden, the snake is clever and deals in deception and half-truths.⁶

Some early commentators claimed that the first time God changed Moses’ staff into a snake, it was a personal message to Moses that he had slandered the Israelites when he said they would not believe him—just as the snake in the Garden of Eden had slandered God by implying that God had lied about the effects of eating fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.⁷

A staff, on the other hand, is a long stick of dead wood, hard and inflexible. It is reliable, strong enough to lean against without breaking—and therefore a good symbol for a chieftain or a king. 19^th-century Rabbi S.R. Hirsch wrote:

“… מטה [mateh] denotes (a) an extension of the hand, upon which man can lean for support as he stands on the ground; (b) an extension of man’s sphere of power; it is a symbol of his authority. This sign in Moshe’s hand will show the people that, if God so desires, the thing on which a person leans for support and with which he wields his authority can turn into the very opposite: a serpent. … Conversely, if He so desires, God can take a hostile force that is feared and shunned by man and place it into his hand as an accommodating support and tractable tool.”⁸

Snake as phallic symbol

Both a staff and a snake are obvious phallic symbols. I suspect that when this story was told orally, the verbal image of a snake stiffening into a staff in Moses’ hand drew snickers from the audience.

The staff and the snake represent two aspects of power. The staff stands for legitimate authority. The snake stands for creative subversion—the power of the trickster. Perhaps one way God uses the staff and snake is to demonstrate, first to Moses and then to the Israelites, that ultimate power over everything belongs to God.

Furthermore, God only makes the snake harmless enough for Moses to pick up with his bare hand when a demonstration of Moses’ status as God’s prophet is required. This demonstration happens first to Moses himself on Mount Sinai, then to the Israelites, then to Pharaoh and his court.

When Moses sets off for Egypt with his wife Tziporah and their two small sons,

Moses took the mateh of God in his hand. (Exodus 4:20)

Moses’ staff is now called the staff of God because God has imbued it with the power to miraculously turn into a snake (and to signal or initiate other miracles in the future).

An incident on Moses’ journey to Egypt shows that the snake can also be dangerous as a phallic symbol.

On the road, at a lodging-place, God confronted him and sought to kill him. Then Tziporah took a flint, and she cut the foreskin of her son, and she touched it to his raglayim, and she said: “Because a bridegroom of blood you are to me!” (Exodus 4:24-25)

raglayim (רַגְלַיִם) = a pair of feet, a pair of legs—or a euphemism for genitals.

The Torah does not say how God “sought to kill him”. But since the next sentence refers to a foreskin and genitals, the Talmud and Exodus Rabbah imagined the angel of death swallowing Moses from his head down to his genitals, where Moses’ circumcision stops the process.⁹ Rashi wrote:

“The angel became a kind of serpent and swallowed him [Moses] from his head to his thigh, spewed him forth, and then again swallowed him from his legs to that place. Tziporah thus understood that this had happened on account of the delay in the circumcision of her son.”¹⁰ (For a fuller discussion of the “Bridegroom of Blood” episode, see my post Shemot: Uncircumcised, Part 1.)

The staff that turns into a snake and back is God’s phallic symbol, not Moses’. Moses is merely another of God’s tools. In next week’s Torah portion, Vayeira, God makes Moses use the staff to impress the simple-minded people in Egypt, from Israelite slave to Egyptian monarch. It would be easy for me, as a feminist, to mock these displays of male power. Yet perhaps they are necessary to get some people’s attention.

And once they are paying attention, they might consider the difference between a man with a staff of office on whom you can depend, and a man in authority who is more like a poisonous snake. Which kind of authority is Pharaoh?

What about our leaders and authority figures today?

For an explanation of God’s personal name, indicated by Y-H-V-H, see my post Lekh-Lekha: New Names for God.
Exodus 4:6-7.
Exodus 4:9.
Exodus 4:28-31.
Exodus 4:13.
Genesis 3:1-6.
C.f. Ramban on Exodus 4:3. (Ramban is the acronym of 13^th-century Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, also called Nachmanides.) For the snake’s implication that God was lying when God said eating from the Tree of Knowledge would result in death, see Genesis 3:2-5.
Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash, Sefer Shemos, translated by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2005, p. 50. (Hirsch was a 19^th-century German rabbi and commentator.)
Talmud tractate Nedarim 32a, Exodus Rabbah 5:8, both written circa 300-600 C.E.
Translation from www.sefaria.org. Rashi is the acronym for 11^th-century Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki.

Vayechi, Chayei Sarah, & Vayishlach: A Touching Oath

This week’s Torah portion, Vayechi (Genesis 47:28-50:26), begins:

And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years; and the years of Jacob, the years of his life, were 147 years. The time for Israel to die approached, and he called for his son, for Joseph … (Genesis/Bereishit 47:28-29)

Jacob acquired a second name, Israel, in an earlier portion of the book of Genesis, Vayishlach, when he wrestled with a mysterious “man” all night before his reunion with Esau, the brother whom Jacob had cheated twenty years before.

Becoming Israel

In Vayishlach, Esau was approaching with 400 men, and Jacob was terrified that his brother would attack his camp for revenge. He prayed, he sent generous gifts ahead on the road, and he moved his whole household and all his possessions across the Yabok River. Then Jacob spent the night on the other side.

And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until dawn rose. And he saw that he had not prevailed against [Jacob], so he touched the socket of his yareikh, and the socket of Jacob’s yareikh was dislocated when he wrestled with him. (Genesis 32:25-26)

yareikh (יָרֵךְ) = loin, i.e. hip, buttocks, upper thigh, or genitals (depending on the context).

One cannot actually touch the socket inside a human hip—unless, perhaps, one is a supernatural creature. Even with the pain of a dislocated hip, Jacob hangs onto his opponent. The mysterious wrestler is the first to speak.

Jacob Wrestles, by Ephraim Moses LIlien, 1923

Then he said: “Let me go, because dawn is rising.”

But [Jacob] said: “I will not let you go unless you bless me!”

And he said to [Jacob]: “What is your name?”

And he said: “Jacob.”

Then he said: “It will no longer be said that Jacob is your name, but Yisrael. Because sarita with God and with men, and you have prevailed.”

And Jacob inquired and said: “Please tell your name.”

And he said: “What is this, that you ask for my name!” (Genesis 32:27-29)

Yisrael (יִשְׂרָאֵל) = “Israel” in English. Possibly he strives with God, he contends with God. (Yisar,יִשַׂר = he strives with, he contends with + Eil, אֵל = God, a god.) On the other hand, the subject usually follows the verb in Biblical Hebrew, so Yisrael could mean “God contends”.)

sarita (שָׂרִיתָ) = you have striven with, you have contended. (From the same root as yisar.)

Gradually the “man” who wrestles with Jacob is revealed as a divine messenger. “Jacob was left alone”—away from any other human beings. “A man wrestled with him”—messengers from God often look like men at first, and can do physical things in our world.¹ “You have striven with God and with men”—striving with God’s messenger is the equivalent of striving with God. And protesting that “you ask for my name!”—God’s messengers do not reveal their names in the Torah.²

The two wrestlers in this passage also serve as a metaphor for a narrow human frame of reference wrestling with a broad divine frame of reference—both within Jacob’s psyche. The divine perspective touches an intimate spot, and Jacob emerges from the experience with a new name, and a limp to remind him of what happened.

And the sun rose for him as he passed Penueil, and he, he was limping on his yareikh. (Genesis 32:32)

After this story, the Torah continues to use the name Jacob, but sometimes switches to Jacob’s new name, Israel. Why does it switch from “Jacob” to “Israel” at the beginning of this week’s portion, Vayechi?

Requesting an oath

The time for Israel to die approached, and he called for his son, for Joseph, and he said to him: “If, please, I have found favor in your eyes, please place your hand under my thigh. And do with me loyal-kindness and faithfulness: do not, please, bury me in Egypt! [When] I lie down with my fathers, then carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their burial site!” (Genesis 47:29-30)

This is Jacob/Israel’s first deathbed speech. As the self-centered Jacob, he might want to be buried in Bethlehem beside Rachel, the wife who died in childbirth, the wife he loved and mourned for the rest of his life. Or he might even want his sons to bury him in Egypt, where his entire surviving family has emigrated. His beloved son Joseph is a viceroy, so he could buy a deluxe burial site there.

But Jacob does not mention either possibility. As Israel, he knows it will be best for his future descendants if he is buried in the cave of Machpelah, which his grandfather Abraham purchased for a family burial site. This is where Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and (we learn later in this Torah portion) Jacob’s first wife, Leah, are buried. Reinforcing the importance of that site, the only land in Canaan that his family inherits through the generations, will help Israel’s descendants in Egypt remember that someday they must return to Canaan to fulfill God’s prophecies.

Israel begins his speech to Joseph with extreme formality and politeness, addressing him in his role as the viceroy. The consensus among commentators is that the pharaoh does not want his invaluable viceroy to leave Egypt for even a short visit to Canaan, his homeland. What if Joseph did not return? So Israel decides to give Pharaoh an extra reason to let Joseph go to Machpelah. If Joseph has sworn the most solemn oath possible, how could Pharoah make his viceroy dishonor himself by violating it?

Precedent for the oath

So Israel requests the kind of oath that Abraham made his steward swear regarding a bride for his son Isaac. Jacob/Israel knows he will be powerless over his own burial; Abraham, at age 137, was afraid he would not live long enough to make sure his son married one of his relatives from Aram instead of a Canaanite. In both cases, the aged father relies on the most serious oath possible. Abraham told his steward:

“Please place your hand under my yareikh, and I will make you swear by God, god of the heavens and god of the earth, that you do not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites amidst whom I am dwelling. Because you must go to my [former] land and to my relatives, and [there] you must take a wife for my son, for Isaac.” (Genesis 24:2-4)

Abraham’s Solemn Charge, by Pedro Orrente, 17th century, detail

Abraham’s steward asked a clarifying question to make sure he understood his mission. Then he complied at once with his master’s request:

And the servant placed his hand under the yareikh of Abraham, his master, and he swore to him on this matter. (Genesis 24:9)

Since the word yareikh could mean any of several locations on the lower body, we can only guess where Abraham’s steward placed his hand. But commentators have noted that the Latin root “testis” appears in words whose English versions are testify, testimony, and testicles, and claim that this may reflect a Roman practice of taking an oath on the genitals. And for at least two millennia, oaths administered by a court have required the person swearing the oath to hold a sacred item in the hand. Before the holy objects were made for the sanctuary, before the Torah was written down, a circumcised penis was the only sacred object available.³

The actual oath

In the portion Vayechi, Joseph listens to his father’s request, then tells him:

“I will do as you have spoken.” (Genesis 47:30)

Instead of immediately placing his hand under his father’s yareikh, Joseph makes a simple verbal promise. Is placing his hand under his father’s whatever-it-is beneath the dignity of a viceroy of Egypt?

Or does Joseph remember Jacob’s famous limp, and feel reluctant to touch the spot that the unnamed being touched?

Jacob does not accept Joseph’s unsupported promise as a bona fide oath.

He said: “Swear to me!” And he swore to him. Vayishtachu, Israel, at the head of the bed. (Genesis 47:31)

vayishtachu (וַיִּשְׁתַּחוּ) = and he prostrated himself, and he bowed as deeply as possible. (This verb is used for bowing to a king or to God.)

It sounds as though Joseph brings himself to place his hand under the spot and swear. His father, Israel, accepts Joseph’s response as a duly sworn oath, one that even the Pharaoh could not quibble about. And he bows as deeply as possible for an invalid in bed.

When Jacob limped toward Esau the morning after the wrestling match, he prostrated himself seven times—honoring his brother’s power over his life. Now Jacob prostrates himself as best he can, at age 147, to his Joseph—honoring his son the viceroy’s power.

Pharaoh’s permission

After that Israel rearranges his inheritance by adopting Joseph’s two sons as his own⁴ and makes two deathbed prophecies, one short⁵ and one lengthy.⁶ Then he repeats the instructions for his burial in the cave of Machpelah, and dies.⁷

Joseph has his father embalmed like an Egyptian nobleman, and then informs Pharaoh:

“My father made me swear, saying: ‘Here, I am dying. In my burial side that I dug for myself in the land of Canaan there you must bury me.’ And now please let me go up, and I will bury my father, and I will return.” And Pharaoh said: “Go up and bury your father as he made you swear.” (Genesis 50:5-6)

So Israel’s plan works.

A speculation

Yet Pharaoh gives Joseph permission to go even though Joseph does not mention the hand position he used for his oath to his father. Why is the placement of Joseph’s hand so important to his father?

I wonder if Israel wants Joseph to touch the same place the divine being touched. He might recognize himself in his favorite son. The first two times Joseph’s brothers came to Egypt, Joseph disguised himself and lied to them in order to get the information he wanted. When Jacob was a young man, he disguised himself and lied to his father in order to steal his brother’s blessing.

How can Israel get Joseph to recognize the manipulative side of his personality, and wrestle with it? Maybe if Joseph touches the spot that the divine being touched, it will shock him into the awareness that he is not as grand and impartial as he thinks. Joseph is the supreme judge of Egypt’s agricultural system, but he is not divine.

Would Jacob/Israel think in those terms? He is not a psychologist, but he is a clever thinker. And humans have always used symbolic acts to make connections between the known and the unknown. There is always more going on inside us than we know. Some people tend to act intuitively, and need to practice thinking and planning. Others are like Jacob, Joseph, and myself: thinking and planning are default behavior for us. We need to step back, take a breath, and take the long view. We need a touch of the divine.

For example, divine messengers wash their feet and eat in front of Abraham in Genesis 18:1-8.
See my posts Toledot & Vayishlach: Wrestlers, and Haftarat Naso—Judges: Spot the Angel.
Talmud Bavli, Shevuot 38b; Rashi (11th-century Rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki); Rabbi Elie Munk, The Call of the Torah: Bereishis, Mesorah Publications, 1994, p. 626. See my post Chayei Sarah: A Peculiar Oath.
Genesis 48:3-11, 48:22.
The prophecy about Efrayim and Menasheh is in Genesis 48:12-20.
The prophecy about the twelve tribes of Israel is in Genesis 49:1-28.
Genesis 49:29-33.

Vayigash: Compassion

Vayigash to him, Judah did, and he said: “By your leave, my lord, please let your servant speak words to the ears of my lord, and do not get angry with your servant, for you are the equal of Pharaoh.” (Genesis 44:18)

vayigash (וַיִּגַּשׁ) = and he approached, and he came closer.

Judah steps closer to the viceroy of Egypt in order to make a plea and an offer at the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, Vayigash (Genesis 44:18-47:27).

Judah’s view

Even at close range, Judah does not recognize the Egyptian viceroy as his missing brother Joseph.¹ It has been twenty years since he sold Joseph as a slave to a caravan headed for Egypt.

Joseph Dwelleth in Egypt, by James Tissot, circa 1900

Judah sees an Egyptian nobleman wearing fine linen and gold, seated in a chair on a dais above him, speaking through an interpreter. This is a man with absolute power in Egypt. This is the man who sold Judah and his brothers grain the year before on the condition that they come back with their youngest brother—probably not imagining how hard it would be to meet that condition.

Now the viceroy seems to be playing a sadistic game with the brothers from Canaan. The day before, he welcomed them into his own palace and treated them to a feast. Today, he had them arrested for a crime they did not commit. At least he had one of them arrested: the youngest, Benjamin. Judah had vowed to their father, Jacob, that he would not return to Canaan without Benjamin.

But Judah is desperate. He has to persuade the viceroy to free Benjamin, and to do that he must get closer, and touch the man’s emotions.

Joseph’s view

Joseph Sold for Twenty Pieces of Silver, Bible Stories for Little Children, Benziger Bros., 1894

Joseph sees his brother Judah stepping closer. He does not trust any of his ten older brothers. Twenty years before, they stripped off his clothes and threw him into a pit, then discussed killing him until Judah saw the caravan and persuaded the others to sell him instead.

Back then, his brothers overpowered him physically in order to eliminate him from their lives. But now Joseph has all the power. In fact, when his ten older brothers came to Egypt to buy grain the year before, he imprisoned them all for three days while he figured out what to do.²

With a word, he could have had his brothers killed, or sold as slaves. But he overheard them telling each other that God was (finally) punishing them for their merciless behavior toward Joseph. So he embarked on a series of secret tests to see if his brothers had reformed. (See my posts Mikeitz: A Fair Test, Part 1 and Mikeitz & Vayigash: A Fair Test, Part 2.)

Joseph’s last test

Joseph knew the famine would continue in Canaan, and his brothers would have to return—with Benjamin—to buy more grain. The night before they head up to Canaan again, Joseph prepares his final test by ordering his assistant:

“Fill the sacks of the men with food, as much as they are able to hold, swelling. And put each man’s silver in the mouth of his sack. And my goblet, the silver goblet, put it in the mouth of the sack of the youngest one, along with the silver for his grain purchase.” (Genesis 44:1-22)

At dawn, as soon as his brothers leave, Joseph tells his assistant:

The Cup Found, by James Tissot, circa 1900

“Get up, chase after the men! Overtake them, and say to them: Why did you repay [the viceroy] with wickedness instead of good? Isn’t this what my lord drinks from, and he divines divinations in? What a wickedness you did!” (Genesis 44:4-5)

Then they tore their clothes. And each one reloaded his donkey, and they returned to the city. (Genesis 44:11-13)

The man catches up with them just outside the city and delivers the accusation. He searches their sacks of grain, from the oldest brother’s to the youngest, and pulls the goblet out of Benjamin’s.

Tearing one’s clothes is an act of mourning. Benjamin will never return to Canaan now. And without him, their father will die of grief.

When they are brought before the viceroy, he says:

“The man in whose possession the goblet was found, he will be my slave. And you, [the rest of] you, go back in peace to your father.” (Genesis 44:17)

Judah’s plea

At this point Judah steps closer to the viceroy, and the Torah portion Vayigash begins. After obsequiously begging the powerful man to listen, Judah gives his own version of what happened the year before.

“My lord questioned his servants, saying: ‘Do you have a father or another brother?’ And we said to my lord: ‘We have an old father, and a child of his old age, the youngest. And his [full] brother is dead, so he alone is left from his mother, and his father loves him.’” (Genesis 44:19-20)

This is not quite what happened. Actually, the viceroy accused the ten Canaanite men of being spies. Flabbergasted, they protested that they were all brothers, ten of their father’s twelve sons, and added:

“And hey! The youngest is now with our father, and the other is no more.” (Genesis 42:13)

The viceroy agreed to sell them grain, but ordered them to prove they were not spies by bringing back their youngest brother.

Now Judah decides not to bring up the viceroy’s accusation. He continues his story:

“And you said to your servants: ‘Bring him down to me, so I can set my eyes on him!’ But we said to my lord: ‘The young man is not able to leave his father; if he did leave, his father would die.’ But you said to your servants: ‘If your youngest brother does not come down with you, you will not see my face again.’” (Genesis 44:21-23)

Judah reports that this year, when their father told them to go back to Egypt and buy more grain, they reminded him that they could not go without their youngest brother.

Then your servant, my father, said to us: “You know that my wife bore two sons to me.” (Genesis 44:27)

Rachel is only one of Jacob’s four wives, but he thinks of Rachel and her two sons as if they were his only family. He loved rather Rachel far more than his other wives. After she died, Jacob treated her son Joseph with blatant favoritism—which contributed to the ten older brothers’ desire to get rid of him.³ After they did, and deceived their father so he believed his beloved son was dead, he transferred his attachment Rachel’s second son, Benjamin.

In last week’s portion, Mikeitz, Jacob finally agreed to let Benjamin go to Egypt, but warned his older sons that if anything happened to him, they would be sending his gray head down to Sheol in torment. (Sheol is a vague underworld where souls sleep forever after death.)

Judah phrases his father’s protest this way in his report to the viceroy:

“But the one is gone from me, and I said: Alas, he was certainly torn by a wild animal! And I have not seen him since. And you would take this one from in front of me, too? If a mortal accident happens, then you would send down my gray head to Sheol in misery.” (Genesis 44:28-29)

Then Judah comes to the point.

“And now, if I come back to your servant, my father, and the young man is not with us—and his [own] soul is bound up with his soul—then it will happen when he sees that the young man is not [with us]: he will die. And your servants will send down the gray head of your servant, our father, in torment to Sheol.” (Genesis 44:30-31)

After this attempt to rouse the viceroy’s compassion for the old father, Judah asserts his own responsibility.

“For your servant pledged himself for the young man to my father, saying: ‘If I do not bring him back to you, then I am guilty before my father all the days [to come].’ So now, please let your servant stay instead of the young man as a slave to my lord, and let the young man go up with his brothers! Because how can I go up to my father if the young man is not with me? Lest I see the evil that will find my father!” (Genesis 44:32-34)

Judah’s speech works—in a different way than he hoped. Joseph is impressed and moved by Judah’s choice to become a slave in Egypt himself, rather than see Jacob’s other favorite son in that position.

Without knowing it, Judah has passed the ultimate test, and proved to Joseph that he has reformed.

And Joseph was not able to control himself in front of all his attendants, and he called out: “Have everyone leave me!” So no one stood with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he gave his voice to weeping. And the Egyptians [nearby] heard, and then Pharaoh’s household heard. And Joseph said to his brothers: “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” (Genesis 45:1-2)

Compassion

Judah demonstrates compassion both for Jacob, the father who never loved him, and Benjamin, who swims in paternal affection.

When Joseph recognizes Judah’s compassion, he feels compassion himself. Although only Judah has passed the final test, Joseph is moved to welcome all of his brothers as his own family. And the first thing asks them about is the welfare of his father, with whom he has not communicated for twenty years, not since Jacob sent him off alone to confront the brothers who hated him.⁴

Both Judah and Joseph feel compassion for people whom they had resented for years. And both men act on it, changing their lives forever.

Feeling compassion does not necessarily mean acting on it. I am not the only person I know who can feel compassion for someone—such as a starving child in a distant land, whose photograph appears when I open my mail—and yet do nothing about it.

I am also not the only person who can doggedly go on doing the right thing, treating people as if I felt compassion for them even when my heart is not moved.

The story of Joseph reminds me that we humans tend to keep on doing whatever we’ve been doing. Like Joseph, we keep on ignoring a resented parent, or manipulating others, or setting a slew of conditions. We do not like to change.

But if compassion suddenly touches your heart, there is a moment when your egotism loses its grip. You might even weep, like Joseph. Then you could harden your heart and return to your old habits. But you could also change into a more generous person.

I am grateful that humans are capable of feeling compassion. Although the feeling does not last, it may trigger a change that does. And the whole world needs more generosity.

And Joseph recognized his brothers, but they did not recognized him. (Genesis 42:8). Judah’s behavior when he makes his plea in Vayigash does not indicate that this has changed.
Genesis 42:17.
Other contributing factors were Joseph’s reports of dreams in which his brothers were bowing down to him, and the fact the Joseph, encouraged by their father, brought back bad reports on his brothers (Genesis 37:2-14).
See my post Mikeitz: Forgetting a Father.

Mikeitz: An Unlikely Ascent

From prison to palace, from slave to ruler, in one day.

At Pharaoh’s command, Joseph leaves the dungeon and becomes the vice-regent of all Egypt in this week’s Torah portion, Mikeitz (Genesis 41:1-44:17). Joseph has intelligence and God’s favor; Pharaoh has power. Yet Joseph’s elevation would not have occurred without the honesty of Pharaoh’s chief butler, the Egyptian “magicians”, and Joseph himself.

Joseph Sold into Slavery, by Own Jones, 1865

Joseph is a Hebrew youth who grew up as the favorite son of a rich man, Jacob. His descent was precipitous in last week’s portion, Vayeishev. His older brothers stripped off his fancy clothing, told a caravan bound for Egypt that he was a slave, and sold him. The Egyptian who bought him recognized Joseph’s intelligence and ability, and made him the head slave of his household. But his Egyptian master’s wife falsely accused him of attempted rape, and Joseph was thrown into the dungeon.

Thanks to the dishonesty and cruelty of his own brothers and his master’s wife, Joseph became the lowest of the low. At least he is not sentenced to death. Joseph lives in the dungeon, and once again his attitude and abilities lead to a small increase in status: the chief jailer makes Joseph his assistant, and lets him run everything inside the dungeon. But he is not allowed to leave.

The chief butler forgets

The portion Vayeishev ends with Joseph interpreting the dreams of two of his fellow prisoners. Joseph predicts that the former chief baker will be executed, but the former chief butler will be pardoned and restored to his post.

Joseph in Prison, by James Tissot, c. 1900

This man is the only person Joseph knows who will soon be in Pharaoh’s presence. He tells the chief butler he is innocent, and begs him to mention his case to Pharaoh.

The chief butler does not actually promise Joseph he will tell Pharaoh, but he does not demur. Yet the portion Vayeishev ends with the sentence:

But the chief butler did not zakhar Joseph, and he forgot him. (Genesis 40:23)

zakhar (זַכַר) = remember.

This week’s portion, Mikeitz, begins:

It was at the end of two years, and Pharaoh had a dream … (Genesis 41:1)

For two years nothing happened. The chief butler did not mention Joseph to Pharaoh. Joseph continued to live in the dungeon.

Why does the chief butler “forget” to bring up Joseph’s case?

An 18^th-century commentary explained that the Torah says he “did not remember Joseph and he forgot him” to refer to two stages of forgetting:

“At the beginning he simply did not recall Joseph’s name, something that Joseph had asked him to remember. … This verse also informs us that the chief butler subsequently forgot Joseph completely, he erased the incident from his heart. … a deliberate act of forgetting.” (Or HaChayim)¹

When I put myself in the chief butler’s place, I imagine that when he is first pardoned and restored to his position, he would want to keep his head down and not ask Pharaoh for any favors. I’ll bring it up later, he would think, after I’m sure Pharaoh trusts me again.

A few months later, when everything is going well, the man remembers Joseph. But now he does not want to remind Pharaoh about whatever he did that caused Pharoah to throw him into the dungeon in the first place. I imagine the chief butler rationalizing that he did not actually make a promise to Joseph. And it is not as if the young Hebrew man is under a death sentence. So gradually the butler forgets all about Joseph’s request—until Pharaoh asks for a dream interpretation.

A 12^th-century commentator, Rashbam, wrote that God “performed a miracle for the sake of Joseph” by sending Pharoah two dreams that his own interpreters could not understand. That way, the chief butler “was forced to remember him.”²

The chartumim do not cheat

Pharaoh has two dreams in a single night. In the first dream, seven healthy cows are eaten by seven gaunt cows. In the second, seven healthy ears of grain are swallowed up by seven thin, scorched ears.

Then it was morning, and his spirit was disturbed. And he sent out and summoned all the chartumim of Egypt, and all of its wise. But there was no dream-interpreter among them for Pharaoh. (Genesis 41:8)

Chartumim (חַרְטֻמִּים) = literate priests with occult knowledge. (Probably from the Hebrew word charut, חָרוּת = engraved, written. These high-level priests wrote down and read incantations out loud.)

Khamwese, Egyptian Priest and Heka manipulator, 13th century BCE

The word chartumim is often translated in English as “magicians”. But they were not magicians in the modern sense: people who create illusions and trick their audience. The ancient Egyptians believed that the gods created and maintained the universe with “heka”, a cosmic power that some individuals could also tap into and use to manipulate reality. Priests who were chartumim accomplished this through incantations and ritual actions.³

The Torah assumes that are that significant dreams are predictions about the future. In last week’s portion, when seventeen-year-old Joseph related his two dreams, his brothers and his father assumed they were predictions that someday they would bow down to Joseph (although they did not want to believe it).⁴

The other assumption in the portion Mikeitz is that chartumim were usually able to interpret significant dreams. Perhaps they failed with Pharaoh’s two dreams because their occult knowledge was about Egyptian gods. This time, although Pharaoh does not know it, his dreams came from the God of Abraham, the God of Joseph. So the rituals of the chartumim do not yield any results.

And they are honest enough to say so.

The chief butler remembers

Then the chief butler spoke to Pharaoh, saying: “My offenses I am mazkir today. Pharaoh became angry with his servant, and he placed me in custody of the house of the chief of the guards, me and the chief baker.” (Genesis 41:9-10)

mazkir (מַזְכִּיר) = mentioning, recounting. (A form of the verb zakhar = remember.)

When the chief butler mentions his “offenses”, he probably is not including his failure to mention Joseph to Pharaoh. His “offenses” are whatever he did two years ago that offended Pharaoh. He chooses not to remind Pharaoh of exactly what he had done, but he does take the risk of Pharaoh remembering it—in order to help his boss now, and perhaps even in order to help the young Hebrew in the dungeon.

The chief butler continues:

“And one night we [both] dreamed a dream, I and he, each dream according to its own meaning. And there was with us a young Hebrew man, a slave of the chief of the guards, and we told him, and he interpreted our dreams for us … And it happened as he had interpreted for us: I was restored to my position, and he was hanged.”
(Genesis 41:11-13)

This true account is all it takes to move the story along; the chief butler does not even need to add Joseph’s claim that he is innocent. Pharaoh is so eager to have his two disturbing dreams interpreted that he sends for Joseph immediately.

Joseph does not take credit

Then Pharaoh sent and summoned Joseph, and he was rushed out of the dungeon, and he shaved and he changed his clothes and he came to Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said to Joseph: “A dream I dreamed, and there is no interpreter for it. But I have heard it said about you: you [need only] hear a dream to interpret it.” (Genesis 41:14-15)

Pharaoh’s chief butler did indeed describe Joseph interpreting his dream and the chief baker’s dream right after he heard them, without engaging in any of the occult rituals the chartumim would use.

Joseph knows his dream interpretations in the dungeon were inspired by God; he would never have made such accurate guesses on his own. He had even told the chief butler and chief baker:

“Isn’t interpretation of them for God?” (Genesis 40:8)

Now that he stands in front of Pharaoh, Joseph once more refuses to pretend he has magic power of his own.

And Joseph answered Pharaoh, saying: “Not I! Elohim will answer for the welfare of Pharaoh.” (Genesis 41:16)

Elohim (אֱלֺהִים) = plural of eloha, אֱלוֹהַּ = god. Elohim = gods, god, God.

Joseph Interprets Pharaoh’s Dreams, by Reginal Arthur, 1894

Instead of using God’s personal name, Y-H-V-H, Joseph uses an ambiguous word that could as easily refer to the gods of Egypt as to Joseph’s God, the God of his great-grandfather Abraham. He is both honest about his own abilities, and intelligent about using a neutral word for God that will not trigger any negative reaction from Pharaoh.

With no further ado, Pharaoh tells Joseph his two dreams, concluding:

“And the scanty ears of grain swallowed up the seven good ears of grain. And I told the chartumim, but none [of them] was an explainer for me.” (Genesis 41:24)

Joseph might have decided to make the number seven mean seven years if he wanted to invent an explanation for the dreams of seven scrawny cows consuming seven fat cows and seven scanty ears of grain swallowing up seven good ears. But how could anyone invent explanations for the other elements in Pharaoh’s dreams that would turn out to be true predictions? There is too much at stake for anyone to prophesize without the help of a guidebook or a god.

The chartumim had no guidebook for the dreams sent by Joseph’s God. But Joseph has God, who instantly puts the meaning of the dreams into his mind. He explains the dreams to Pharaoh, ending with this summary:

“What the Elohim is doing, he made Pharaoh see. Behold, seven years of great plenty are coming throughout the land of Egypt. And seven years of famine will arise after them, and all the plenty in the land of Egypt will be forgotten, and the famine will completely use up the land. … And the dream came to Pharaoh two times because the matter was determined by the Elohim, and the Elohim is hastening to do it.” (Genesis 41:28-32)

Next Joseph gives Pharaoh some good advice. The text does not indicate whether God is transmitting these words to Joseph as well, or whether Joseph now had an idea of his own.

“And now, let Pharaoh select a man of discernment and wisdom, and set him over the land of Egypt. … And let them collect all the food of the seven good years … in cities under guard. And let the food be a reserve for the land for the seven years of the famine that will be in the land of Egypt. Then the land will not be cut down by the famine.” (Genesis 41:33-36)

And the thing was good in the eyes of Pharaoh and all his courtiers. And Pharaoh said to his courtiers: “Could we find another man like this, who has the spirit of Elohim in him?” (Genesis 41:37-38)

Pharaoh makes Joseph his viceroy on the spot—because the spirit of Elohim is in him.

Pharaoh needs a dream interpreter. He does not know that he also needs a viceroy in charge of agriculture and food rationing. Joseph wants to be released from both prison and slavery. He does not know what he wants to do once he is free.

Pharoah and Joseph need each other. But they would never meet, if it were not for the honesty of the Egyptian chartumim, and a belated good deed by Pharaoh’s chief butler. And their meeting would not have led to Joseph’s elevation if Joseph had not been honest about the true source of his dream interpretations. Pharaoh gives him the job title and the signet ring because he respects Elohim—whether that means Joseph’s God or many gods—and sees that Joseph has Elohim’s favor.

Does everything come together by chance? Are Joseph and Pharaoh just lucky?

Or does God arrange everything as part of a master plan? (Later in the Joseph story, Joseph tells the brothers who sold him into slavery “you did not send me here, but God!” and “you planned evil for me, but God planned it for good, in order to bring about this time of keeping many people alive.”)⁵

Or is it a combination of luck and the honest, ethical behavior of everyone involved at the time?

The same questions apply to our life stories today. When the right people do the right things and everything “clicks” for a good outcome, what do you attribute it to? Luck? A master plan of God’s? Or a combination of luck and a few individuals acting honestly for the good of everyone?

Or HaChayim is a collection of 18^th-century Moroccan Jewish commentary. Translation from www.sefaria.org.
Rashbam is the acronym of 12^th-century Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir. Translation from www.sefaria.org.
Scott B. Noegel, “The Egyptian Magicians”, www.thetorah.com/article/the-egyptian-magicians; Flora Brooke Anthony, “Heka: Understanding Egyptian Magic on Its Own Terms”, https://www.thetorah.com/article/heka-understanding-egyptian-magic-on-its-own-terms.
Genesis 37:5-11.
Genesis 45:8 and 50:18-20. See my post: Vayigash & Vayechi: Forgiving?

Vayeishev: Question at Shekhem

His brothers went to pasture their father’s flocks at Shekhem. And Israel said to Joseph: “Aren’t your brothers pasturing at Shekhem? Go, and I will send you to them.” And [Joseph] said to him: “Here I am.” And he said to him: “Go, please, see the welfare of your brothers and the welfare of the flock, and bring back word to me.” (Genesis 37:12-14)

This passage in the Torah portion Vayeishev (Genesis 37:1-40:23) sounds pleasant—as if there were nothing ominous about Shekhem, or dangerous about sending Joseph to report on his brothers. But someone who reads the book of Genesis up to this point knows that something dire is about to happen.

At Shekhem: Rape and murder

The Seduction of Dinah, by James Tissot, ca. 1900

When Joseph and his half-sister Dinah were about twelve or thirteen years old, their father Jacob (a.k.a. Israel) brought his whole family to Shekhem¹ and pitched camp next to the town. Jacob even purchased the land they were camping on, as if he intended to stay. Then one day Dinah walked into town alone “to see the daughters of the land”.² Instead of making some female friends, she is abducted and raped by the son of the town’s ruler.

Jacob delayed taking action until his older sons came home from pasturing the flocks. By that time the ruler’s son, also named Shekhem, had fallen in love with Dinah and talked her into changing her mind about him.³ Shekhem and his father came to Jacob’s camp to arrange a marriage. The son offered to pay Jacob any bride-price he asked for. The father upped the ante, proposing that his people and Jacob’s people would intermarry and become one people.⁴

Jacob said nothing. His sons pretended to agree to intermarriage if all the men of the town circumcised themselves first. After the men of Shekhem had done so, and were disabled by pain, two of Jacob’s sons, Simon and Levi, came into town and killed every male. They took their sister and left. Then “the sons of Jacob” (which sons are not specified) plundered the town, seizing its women and girls as slaves, and its goods and livestock as booty.⁵

Then Jacob said to Simon and Levi: “You have stirred up trouble, making me stink among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and Perizites! And I am few in number, and they will gather together against me, and they will strike me and I will be destroyed, I and my household!” (Genesis 34:30)

To escape vengeance from neighboring towns, Jacob makes his whole household pack up and move south to Hebron.

Joseph was probably too young to participate in the massacre or the looting of Shekhem. His mother, Rachel, was protective of her only son; and when Jacob introduced his family to Esau and his soldiers, he placed Rachel and Joseph in back, the safest position.⁶

But Joseph saw his half-brothers Simon and Levi arm themselves with swords, go into Shekhem, and return covered with other men’s blood. Later that day Joseph saw his older brothers herding their new female slaves. And when the whole household packed up and took down the tents, Joseph knew that they were moving again to escape a possible counter-attack.

Now, only four or five years later, Joseph’s ten older brothers have taken the family flocks to
Shekhem, of all places. And his father wants him to go there and check up on them.

At Hebron: Joseph’s negative reports

Joseph is seventeen when Jacob sends him from their home in Hebron back to Shekhem. By this time Joseph’s ten older brothers hate him—partly because their father demonstrated blatant favoritism by giving only Joseph a garment fit for royalty; partly because Joseph told them two of his dreams, in which his brothers were bowing down to him; and partly because he maligns them when he reports to their father.⁷

Joseph, at age seventeen, was tending the flock with his brothers, and he was an assistant to the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s women.⁸ And Joseph brought bad slander about them to their father.⁹ (Genesis 37:2)

Jacob may believe everything his favorite son says, and trust him to bring an honest report back from Shekhem. He may also be concerned that his ten older sons decided to take the flocks to Shekhem. (I assume that Jacob’s older sons are still making independent decisions without consulting their father, as they did several years before at Shekhem.) What if someone from a neighboring town recognized them from the time before the massacre?

On the other hand, what if someone in the vicinity of Shekhem recognizes Joseph? This possibility does not seem to occur to Jacob.

Perhaps he does not think logically where his favorite son is concerned, especially now that Joseph’s mother, Rachel, has died. It also does not occur to Jacob that his older sons might hate Joseph so much that they are a greater danger to him than any neighbors of the former Shekhemites.

At Shekhem: The question

Joseph answers his father, “Here I am!” With the blitheness of a spoiled adolescent, he heads off alone for Shekhem.

And [Jacob] sent [Joseph] away from the valley of Hebron. And he came to Shekhem. And a man found him, and hey! He was wandering in the fields. And the man asked him: “What tevakeish?” (Genesis 37:14-15)

tevakeish (תְּבַקֵּשׁ) = do you seek, will you seek, are you looking for. (A conjugation of the piel verb bikeish, בִּקֵּשׁ = seek, look for, try to get.)

Joseph probably wandered off the road and through the fields looking for his brothers and the flocks. The Torah never identifies the “man” who questions Joseph. It might be an ordinary man, or it might be a “man” like the “man” who wrestled with Jacob in Genesis 32:25 and turned out to be a divine being. Most classic commentators said it was an angel, i.e. a divine messenger who looked like a man,¹⁰ though Ibn Ezra wrote that the man was simply someone passing by.¹¹

At Shekhem: Joseph’s answer

And he said: “My brothers I am mevakeish. Tell me, please, where they are pasturing.” (Genesis 37:16)

mevakeish (מְבַקֵּשׁ) = seeking. (Another piel form of bikeish.)

Why does Joseph assume that a man who happens to be crossing a field near the former town of Shekhem would know who his brothers are, or where they went?

Perhaps Joseph’s polite request implies “if you happen to know”.¹² Perhaps Joseph intuitively senses that the “man” is actually a divine messenger from God.¹³ Or perhaps he simply figures he might as well ask, just in case the man has seen them.

Growing up with his family’s religion and stories, Joseph would know that God’s divine messengers sometimes look like men—until they disappear. So the question “What do you seek?” might be an inquiry from God. In that case, Joseph could take the opportunity to give a different answer, and receive a different response.

1) He could say: “I am seeking to find out what my brothers are doing wrong this time, so I can report back our father.”

He knows his father loves him more than any of his brothers, but he is old enough to wonder if it will last. Perhaps Joseph thinks that slandering his brothers helps to keep him in first place.

2) He could say: “I am seeking to find out what really happened when my family lived here in Shekhem.”

If Joseph had asked his mother and other adults in the household about Shekhem, their reactions combined with his own vivid but incomplete memories would give him a morbid fascination with the subject.

3) He could say: “I am seeking an interpretation of those two dreams I had in which my brothers were bowing down to me.”

His father and his brothers thought that Joseph was fantasizing that he would become a king and rule over them all.¹⁴ But what if the dreams were true prophecies from God? Was there something else he should know?

4) But he would not say: “I am seeking to know why my father sent me all the way to an abandoned city to check up on my brothers who hate me enough to kill me.”

If he had been more aware of his family’s psychology, Joseph would have been afraid of finding his brothers. Readers today might suspect Jacob of the psychological blindness of narcissism. (See my post: Mikeitz: Forgetting a Father.) We might also wonder about the Joseph’s older brothers, who were brought up in a family where two of their mothers were openly jealous of one another,¹⁵ where their father and grandfather were cheating one another,¹⁶ and where they literally got away with murder at Shekhem. Would these young men feel any ethical qualms about harming the little brother they hated?

Joseph has an excuse for giving up and going home, since he could not find his brothers near Shekhem. But he is determined to complete the mission his father sent him on. So instead of giving a more response, he merely tells the stranger that he is looking for his brothers.

Does Joseph feel some inner calling in the presence of God’s angel? Or does he simply believe, with the naivety of a spoiled seventeen-year-old, that he will return safely to his father in Hebron?

And the man said: “They pulled out from here, for I heard them saying: Let’s go to Dotan.” So Joseph went after his brothers and he found them at Dotan. (Genesis 37:17)

When the brothers at Dotan see Joseph approaching, some of them want to kill him right away and throw him into a nearby dry cistern. Reuben, the oldest, says they should throw him into the pit alive. So the brothers seize Joseph, strip off his royal clothing, and throw him in. Then a caravan headed for Egypt passes by, and the brothers sell him to the traders as a slave.¹⁷

They think they will never see him again. But the rest of the book of Genesis is a story about the complicated reconciliation between Joseph and his brothers, and how all the children of Israel ended up living in Egypt.

History haunts the story of Joseph and his brothers. They leave Shekhem with their father to make a fresh start; but then they return, and Shekhem becomes the place where Joseph makes the fateful decision to follow his brothers instead of going home. Jacob gives Joseph a royal tunic and Joseph blabs about his dreams and his brothers’ faults; and these relatively small errors in judgment lead to attempted murder, slavery, redemption, and four hundred years of exile in Egypt.

Everything is connected in the Joseph story. Everything he does matters.

I suspect this is true in our own lives as well. Before we act, before we speak, we might ask ourselves: What are we looking for?

Shekhem was about 30 miles (50 km) north of Jerusalem, between two round hills, Mt. Gezerim and Mt. Eyval. (The common noun shekhem, שְׁכֶם, means “shoulders”.) The site is now part of the city of Nablus.
Genesis 34:1.
Genesis 34:2-4. See my post Vayishlach: Change of Heart, Part 1.
Genesis 34:4-12
Genesis 34:13-29.
Genesis 33:1-2.
Genesis 37:3-4. See my post Vayeishev: Favoritism.
Jacob’s two wives, Rachel and Leah, gave him their slaves Bilhah and Zilpah as concubines in Genesis 30:3-9.
The Hebrew word is dibatam (דִּבָּתָם), which could mean slander or negative gossip about them, reports of their own slander, or their bad reputation. See my post Vayeishev: What Drove Them Crazy.
C.f. Aggadat Bereshit 73:3, Bereshit Rabbah 84:14, Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Rashi, Kli Yakar, Siftei Chakhamim.
12^th-century rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra.
C.f. Ibn Ezra, Radak.
C.f. Haamek Davar by 19^th-century Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin.
Genesis 37:5-11.
Leah and Rachel in Genesis 29:31-30:24. Leah’s son Reuben, at least, knows about their competition for Jacob’s love when he gives his mother mandrake roots in Genesis 30:14.
Lavan cheats his son-in-law Jacob in Genesis 29:18-27. Lavan and Jacob both try to cheat one another regarding Jacob’s wages in Genesis 30:31-30:2.
Genesis 37:18-28.

Vayeitzei: Awe versus Terror

Jacob introduces a new name for God in this week’s Torah portion, Vayeitzei (Genesis 28:10-32:3):

“If it were not that the elohim of my father—the Elohim of Abraham and the Pachad of Isaac—is with me, you would have sent me off empty-handed!” (Genesis 31:42)

elohim (אֱלֹהִים) = gods, god, God.

pachad (פַּחַד) = trembling; terror, dread. (From the verb pachad, פָּחַד = tremble uncontrollably, shudder, be terrified; dread.)

Everyone in the book of Genesis uses the common noun elohim to refer to gods in general. Descendants of Terach, both Abraham’s line in Canaan and Nachor’s line in Aram, also use the proper name Y-H-V-H for the god who becomes known later as the God of Israel.¹ Y-H-V-H has other names and titles, but only Jacob calls God the Pachad of his father.

Jacob’s awe

In last week’s Torah portion, Toledot, Jacob cheats his older brother Esau twice, and Esau vows to kill him. He flees to his uncle Lavan’s house in Aram, a northern Mesopotamian territory far from Canaan. On the way, Jacob has his first direct experience of God: a dream featuring a stairway between the earth and the heavens, and God standing over him.

Then Jacob woke up from his sleep, and he said: “Surely there is Y-H-V-H in this place, and I, I did not know!” Vayiyra, and he said: “How awesome is this place!” (Genesis 28:16)

vayiyra (וַיִּירָא) = and he was afraid, and he was awed. (A form of the verb yarei, יָרֵא = fear, be afraid, be awed, revere.

Jacob feels awed and frightened by his numinous experience. Maybe he has goosebumps. But he is not overcome by the uncontrollable trembling associated with pachad, terror. When he gets up, he erects a stone, pours oil on it, and vows that if God protects him until he returns to his father’s house, he will worship God and give God a tenth of his possessions.

Isaac’s terror

Jacob’s practical bargaining is a far cry from his father Isaac’s relationship to God. As a young adult, Isaac voluntarily let his father tie him up on an altar as a burnt offering to God. Abraham almost cut his throat before God intervened.² According to some classic Jewish commentators, Isaac experienced pachad then, and carried the trauma for the rest of his life.³ When Isaac is old and blind, Jacob impersonates his brother Esau in order to steal Isaac’s blessing in the name of God. When Esau arrives and confirms what Jacob did, Isaac is seized by another kind of fearful trembling, charad.⁴

Perhaps Jacob thinks of Isaac’s overwhelming relationship to God in terms of trembling.

Jacob’s wages

Jacob arrives safely at his uncle’s house in this week’s Torah portion, and promptly falls in love with Lavan’s younger daughter, Rachel. Having arrived without any gifts to use as a bride-price,⁵ Jacob works as a shepherd for Lavan for seven years. But on the wedding day, Lavan substitutes his older daughter, Leah. Jacob still wants Rachel, and Lavan tells Jacob he has to work another seven years for her.⁶

After Jacob completes fourteen years of service for his two wives, he continues to work for his uncle and father-in-law, this time in exchange for the black sheep and the spotted and brindled goats in Lavan’s flocks. Lavan promptly sends them all to a distant pasture before they can be counted.⁷ But over the next six years Jacob uses breeding techniques to build up his own flocks of black sheep and brindled goats.

… so the feeble ones were Lavan’s and the [sturdy] striped ones were Jacob’s. And the man spread out very much, and he owned large flocks, female slaves and male slaves, and camels and donkeys. (Genesis 30:42-43)

After Jacob has accumulated this wealth, he notices that Lavan and Lavan’s sons act as if they have a grudge against him.

Then Y-H-V-H said to Jacob: “Return to the land of your fathers and your clan, and I will be with you.” (Genesis 31:3)

Jacob talks it over with his wives, who agree it is time to leave their father in order to ensure their own children’s inheritance. While Lavan and his sons are away at a sheep-shearing, Jacob leaves town with his whole household (his two wives, two concubines, twelve children, and many slaves) and all his flocks and other possessions. He does not know that his wife Rachel secretly brings along the small idols from her father’s house.⁸ They cross the Euphrates River and continue west, heading for Canaan.

Final confrontation

Lavan and his sons are not amused. They pursue Jacob’s party for seven days, and catch up with them in the hill country.

And Lavan said to Jacob: “What have you done when you deceived me and you carried off my daughters like captives of the sword? … There is power in my hand to do harm to you all! But last night the elohim of your father spoke to me, saying: Guard yourself, lest you speak with Jacob for good or bad. And now, you are surely going because you surely longed for your father’s house. [But] why did you steal my elohim?” (Genesis 31:29-30)

Elohim is an elastic word in the Hebrew Bible. When Lavan remembers his dream, he refers to the elohim of Jacob’s father (and also of Lavan’s father), whose name is Y-H-V-H. But also when he remembers that his household idols are missing, he accuses Jacob of stealing his elohim. Lavan does not limit himself to a single god.

Jacob chooses not to respond to Lavan’s allegation that he carried off Leah and Rachel like captives. Instead he makes his own accusation.

And Jacob answered, and said to Lavan: “Because yareiti, because I thought: Lest you take your daughters from me by force!” (Genesis 31:31)

yareiti (יָרֵאתִי) = I was afraid. (Another form of the verb yarei.)

Jacob’s use of the verb yarei does not imply that he was pusillanimous, only that he recognized a danger. He was afraid, not terrified.

Then Jacob challenges Lavan to look through the camp and see if he can find his household idols. Lavan searches the tents belonging to Jacob, his two wives, and his two concubines without finding them. (Rachel has hidden them in a camel cushion and is sitting on them. She tells her father she cannot get up because it is her menstrual period.)⁸

After that, Jacob feels entitled to castigate Lavan. He points out that he did hard, honest work for for twenty years, while Lavan tricked him more than once regarding his wages. He claims that he had to leave while Lavan was away, because:

“If it were not that the elohim of my father—the Elohim of Abraham and the Pachad of Isaac—was with me, you would have sent me off empty-handed! But Elohim saw my plight and the labor of my hands, and gave judgement last night.” (Genesis 31:42)

The judgement, according to Jacob, is God’s warning to Lavan the previous night that he must not say (or do) anything bad to his nephew and son-in-law. If God had not intervened in Lavan’s dream, Lavan would have taken everything Jacob had earned.

The two men agree that the Elohim in Lavan’s dream is the god they both acknowledge, Y-H-V-H. But Jacob includes another name for God: the Pachad of Isaac.

Jacob is not the kind of person who says the first thing that pops into his mind. I suggest that Jacob thought of “the pachad of Isaac”, then decided to say the words out loud in order to warn Lavan that his father’s God is a god of terror. The aspect of Y-H-V-H that causes terror and dread is on Jacob’s side.

Lavan cannot resist one last protest:

“The daughters are my daughters, and the children are my children, and the flocks are my flocks, and everything that you see, it is mine!” (Genesis 31:43)

But then he gives up and proposes that he and Jacob make a formal peace treaty. Jacob raises a memorial stone and builds a cairn (a heap of stones) to mark the boundary between them. Lavan says:

“A witness is this cairn, and a witness is the standing-stone, that I will not cross over past this cairn to you, and that you will not cross over past this cairn or this standing-stone to me, [to do anything] bad. The elohim of Abraham and the elohim of Nachor, may he judge between us—the elohim of their father.” (Genesis 31:52-53)

When Lavan swears by the elohim of Abraham (Jacob’s grandfather) and Nachor (his own grandfather) and their mutual great-grandfather, Terach, he knows he is swearing by Y-H-V-H, the god that Jacob also recognizes. Lavan phrases his oath to emphasize his kinship with Jacob. It is a reassurance: We have the same god.

And Jacob swore by the pachad of his father, Isaac. (Genesis 31:53)

Perhaps, as Robert Alter wrote, “he himself does not presume to go back as far as Abraham, but in the God of his father Isaac he senses something numinous, awesome, frightening.”⁹

Or perhaps Jacob is fed up with his uncle and father-in-law, and wants a clean break—as long as he gets to keep all of his own family and property. He does not care about his kinship with Lavan. Swearing by the pachad of Isaac emphasizes the dreadful power of the god who helped him and judged in his favor. It is a warning: My god is more dangerous!

Divine terror

The next time the word pachad appears is in the book of Exodus, in an ancient poem about how Egyptians were defeated at sea by the power of Y-H-V-H. The poem declares that all the nations in the region are aghast and tremble with fear of the God of Israel.

Horror and pachad fall upon them! (Exodus 15:16)

Pachad next appears in the book of Deuteronomy, when God promises the Israelites:

“This day I begin putting pachad of you and yirah of you over the faces of all the peoples under the heavens, so that they will pay attention to a rumor of you, and they will shake and they will weaken before you.” (Deuteronomy 2:25)

Later in Deuteronomy, Moses warns the Israelites that if they fail to obey God’s rules, God will inflict horrors upon them.

“And your life will hang in the balance, and you will be pachad night and day, and you will not [be able to] rely upon living. In the morning you will say ‘Who will make it evening?’ and in the evening you will say ‘Who will make it morning?’ because of the pachad of your heart that you will be pachad, and the vision of your eyes that you will see.” (Deuteronomy 28:66-67)

So God is the pachad of Isaac, who obeyed and nearly died; the pachad that Jacob uses to threaten Lavan; the pachad of the enemies and rivals of the Israelites; and the pachad of anyone who dares to disobey God.

I have felt a touch of yirah of the divine, though not quite at the goosebump level. I have never experienced pachad, the shuddering terror. I hope I never do. When I pray, I try to cultivate awe, but not dread.

Yet I know what is going to happen to Jacob in next week’s Torah portion. He will wrestle with a mysterious being, and walk away limping on his hip. He ran away from Esau and he ran away from Lavan, but he cannot run away from God.

I pray that everyone who is overwhelmed by terror is able to walk away—perhaps traumatized, like Isaac, or limping, like Jacob—but able to go on living.

In Genesius 24:50-51, Nachor’s son Betuel and grandson Lavan spontaneously use the name Y-H-V-H.
Genesis 22:1-14.
Cf. Ibn Ezra, Ramban, Rabbeinu Bachya.
Genesis 27:33. Charad (חָרַד) = tremble with fear.
Even though Isaac is rich, Jacob runs off without any silver, animals, or trade goods to use as a bride-price. See my post Vayeitzei: Guilty Conscience.
Genesis 29:9-20.
Genesis 30:33-36.
See my posts Vayeitzei: Idol Thief and Vayeitzei: Stealing Away.
Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses, W.W. Norton & Co., NY, 2004, p. 175.

Chayei Sarah & 1 Kings: Old Age for Scoundrels, Part 2

Both Abraham and King David have motley careers in the bible: brave and magnanimous in one scene, heartless and unscrupulous in the next. But in old age (about age 140-175 for Abraham, 60-70 for David) the two characters take different paths.

And Abraham expired and died at a good old age, old and satisfied, and he was gathered to his people. (Genesis 25:8)

Abraham, who is healthy and virile in extreme old age, takes a new concubine and raises a new family in last week’s Torah portion, Chayei Sarah (Genesis 23:1-25:18). But this time, instead of endangering his women and his sons, he acts responsibly. Abraham makes explicit arrangements for his eight sons so that each will carry on an independent life without internecine struggles. (See last week’s post: Chayei Sarah & 1 Kings: Old Age for Scoundrels, Part 1)

King David, however, is feeble and bitter during his last years. The haftarah reading for Chayei Sarah (1 Kings 1:1-1:31) sets the tone with its opening:

And the king, David, was old, coming on in years. And they covered him with bedclothes, but he never felt warm. (1 Kings 1:1)

This is the man who personally killed 200 Philistines in a single battle,¹ who took at least eight wives and ten concubines,² and who danced and leaped in front of the ark all the way into Jerusalem.³

David’s prime

As a young man, David is such a charismatic and popular military commander that King Saul is afraid David will steal his kingdom. Saul makes four attempts to kill him.⁴David flees and becomes the leader of an outlaw band. At one point he seems to be running a protection racket.⁵

Later David defects to the Philistines, Israel’s longtime enemies, with his 600 men. The Philistine king of Gat welcomes the mercenaries and gives David the town of Ziklag. For over a year David and his men raid villages, kill the residents, and bring back booty (presumably sharing it with the king of Gat). This kind of raiding was common in the Ancient Near East, and the Hebrew Bible does not censure David; the text merely indicates that David lied to the king of Gat in order to avoid raiding Israelite villages.⁶

After King Saul and his son and heir Jonathan die in a battle with Philistines, David and his men relocate to Hebron, where David is proclaimed king of Judah, his own tribe. Meanwhile, Saul’s general Abner makes one of Saul’s sons⁷ the king of the northern Israelite territory.⁸ Right after David and Abner have made a truce, Joab, David’s army commander and nephew, assassinates Abner.⁹ Two other supporters of David assassinate Saul’s son in the north, and David becomes the king of all Israel—when he is only 30.

He captures the part of Jerusalem and turns it into his capitol, the City of David. One spring King David stays home while Joab leads a fight against the kingdom of Ammon. Walking on his rooftop in the evening, David sees a beautiful woman bathing on her rooftop. He finds out that she is Bathsheba (Batsheva), the wife of one of his own soldiers, Uriyah.

King David Sees Bathsheba, by Jean-Leon Gerome, 1889

Adultery is a sin in the Torah, a crime punishable by death.¹⁰ Nevertheless, David has Bathsheba brought to him. When she tells David she has become pregnant, he calls Uriyah home from the front so it will look as if she is pregnant by her husband. Uriyah, however, refuses to spend even one night in his own house at a time of war.

So David compounds his crime.

And it was in the morning when David wrote a letter to Joab, and he sent it by the hand of Uriyah. And the letter he wrote said: “Put Uriyah in the front of the hardest battle, then draw back from him, so he will be struck down and die.” (2 Samuel 11:15)

Joab obeys. The innocent Uriyah dies. As soon as Bathsheba finishes the mourning rituals for her husband, David marries her.

And the thing that David had done was evil in the eyes of God. (2 Samuel 11:27)

The prophet Natan transmits the words of God’s curse to the king:

“And now the sword will never swerve away from your house again, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriyah the Hittite to be your wife. Thus says God: Here I am, raising up against you evil from within your own house…” (2 Samuel 12:10-11)

The death of Bathsheba’s infant conceived in adultery is only the beginning. Amnon, who is David’s firstborn son by his wife Achinoam, rapes Tamar, David’s daughter by his wife Ma-akhah. David is responsible for justice, in both his household and his kingdom, but he does nothing about the rape. So Tamar’s full brother, Absalom (Avshalom), kills Amnon and goes into exile.

King David grieves over Amnon’s death for three years, then lets Absalom return to Jerusalem. Absalom usurps David’s throne after a long misinformation campaign, and King David leaves Jerusalem with his supporters. They camp at Machanayim on the other side of the Jordan River. On the way, a fellow named Shimi throws stones, dirt, and insults at David, but David is feeling either defeated or philosophical, and he tells his men to leave Shimi alone, since this, too, is God’s doing.¹¹

David’s Grief over Absalom, Bible card, Providence Lithograph Co., 19th century

When Absalom’s army clashes with David’s army, David orders Joab and his other two commanders to go easy on Absalom. David’s troops win the battle, and Absalom is left dangling from a tree branch by his own long hair. Joab disregards David’s order and kills Absalom. David is heartbroken. His grief demoralizes his troops, until Joab persuades David to come down from his bedroom and act like a king.¹² Shortly after that, David replaces Joab with Amasa, who was Absalom’s general.¹³

When David and his followers cross the Jordan back into Jerusalem, Shimi prostrates himself and apologizes for insulting the king and throwing rocks at him. Joab’s brother Avishai says:

“Shouldn’t Shimi be put to death instead, since he cursed God’s anointed?” (2 Samuel 19:22)

But David scolds Avishai and says no man of Israel should be killed on a day of national reconciliation.

And the king said to Shimi: “You will not be put to death.” And the king swore to him. (2 Samuel 19:24)

With David back on the throne, life continues as usual for ancient Israel, full of battles against neighboring countries. During one of them, Joab kills General Amasa, hides his bloody corpse with a cloak, and takes charge of the king’s troops. He defeats the enemy and returns to Jerusalem as the king’s general once more. King David takes no action.

Unlike Abraham, David is punished during his lifetime for his worst sin (committing adultery and then having the woman’s husband killed). But his woes only make him more passive, not more ethical.

David’s old age

The first book of Kings begins:

And the king, David, was old, coming on in years. And they covered him with bedclothes, but he never felt warm. Then his courtiers said to him: “Let them seek for my lord the king a virgin young woman, and she will wait on the king, and she will be an administrator for him, and she will lie in your bosom and my lord the king will be warm.” (1 Kings 1:1)

David and Abishag, Bible Illustration Cycle, 1432-35

They bring King David a beautiful young woman named Avishag.

And she became an attendant to the king and waited on him, but the king lo yeda-ah. (1 Kings 1:4)

lo yeda-ah (לֺא יְדָעָהּ) =he was not intimately acquainted with her. (lo, לֺא = not + yeda-ah, יְדָעָהּ = he was intimately acquainted with her. From the verb yada, יָדָע = he found out by experience,was acquainted with, had sexual relations with, understood, knew.)

Poor David! Even though Avishag is young and beautiful and lies down right next to him, he is too feeble to take advantage of the situation. And he used to be a man who loved spreading his seed around.

Unlike Abraham, David has not named his heir or distributed his property. His three oldest sons were Amnon (murdered by Absalom), Khiliav (Avigail’s son, who has disappeared from the story), and Absalom (killed in battle). Next in birth order is Adoniyah.

And Adoniyah, son of Chagit, was exalting himself, thinking: I myself will be king! … And his father had not found fault with him, or said “Why did you do that?” And also he was very good-looking … (1 Kings 1:5-6)

Adoniyah, the son whom David spoiled, gets support from General Joab and one of the top priests. He holds a coronation feast at on the southeast side of the City of David, and he invites everyone except his half-brother Solomon (a later son of David and Bathsheba) and Solomon’s supporters (the prophet Natan, the priest Tzadok, and King David’s personal guard, headed by Beneyahu).

Then Natan said to Solomon’s mother, Bathsheba: “Haven’t you heard that Adoniyah son of Chagit rules, and our lord David lo yada? And now, please take my advice, and save your life and the life of your son Solomon!” (1 Kings 1:11-12)

lo yada (לֺא יָדָע) = he does not know, does not understand.

King David, once an active and decisive leader, seems to have slipped into a state of passive ignorance. Perhaps he has become senile.

Following Natan’s script, Bathsheba comes to David’s bedchamber and bows.

And she said to him: “My lord, you yourself swore by God, your God, to your servant about Solomon, your son, ‘He will rule after me and he will sit on my throne.’ Yet now, hey! Adoniyah is king, and now, my lord the king, lo yadata! And he has slaughtered oxen and fatlings and many sheep, and he has invited all the king’s sons and Avyatar the priest and Joab commander of the army, but he has not sent for your servant Solomon. And you, my lord the king, the eyes of all Israel are upon you, to tell them who will sit on the throne of my lord the king after him. And it will happen when my lord the king lies down with his fathers, that I and my son Solomon will be considered guilty!” (1 Kings 1:18-21)

lo yadata (לֺא יָדָעתָּ) = you do not know; you do not understand. (Also from the verb yada.)

Natan comes in and corroborates. Then King David pulls himself together and issues orders for Solomon’s anointment as king.

The Solomon faction immediately holds a ceremony just east of Jerusalem, with shofar-blowing and music so loud that Adoniyah’s people hear it on the other side of the city. Solomon sits on the king’s throne before Adoniyah can get there.

Thus David, who had forgotten to take care of his most important business, makes Solomon his heir at the last minute. Adoniyah submits to his younger brother, and Solomon spares his life.

David’s last words to Solomon come right after last week’s haftarah reading, in the second chapter of 1 Kings. David opens with a formulaic directive to be strong and walk in God’s ways, but then he orders Solomon to take care of some unfinished business. Apparently David was too weak—politically, physically, or psychologically—to mete out rewards and punishments before he took to his bed. After his introduction, David tells Solomon:

“And also yadata yourself what Joab son of Tzeruyah did to me, what he did to the two commanders of the army of Israel, to Abner son of Neir and to Amasa son of Yeter. He killed them, and he put the bloodshed of war into a time of peace … So you must act in your wisdom, and his gray head will not go down in peace to Sheol. (1 Kings 2:5)

David reminds Solomon of what Joab did to Abner and Amasa, but does not say what Joab did to David. The obvious answer is that Joab killed David’s son Absalom, but David chooses not to go into that on his deathbed. He just wants Solomon to execute Joab, something David himself could not manage to do.

“But to the sons of Barzilai the Gileadite you must do loyal-kindness, and let them eat at your table, since [Barzilai] came close to me with blessings when I fled from the face of Absalom, your brother.” (1 Kings 2:7)

Here David is merely asking Solomon to continue the reward he set up for one of Barzilai’s sons after Barzilai had provided provisions for David and all his men during their exile from Jerusalem after Absalom usurped the kingship. But then David remembers someone who did not treat him well when he left Jerusalem.

“And hey! With you is Shimi son of Geira … and he, he insulted me with scathing insults on the day I went to Machanayim. Then he went down to meet me at the Jordan, and I swore to him by God, saying ‘I will not put you to death by the sword”. But now, do not hold him guiltless, because you are a wise man, veyadata what you should do to him. And you must bring his gray head down in blood to Sheol!” (1 Kings 2:8-9)

veyadata (וְיָדַעְתָּ) = and you will know. (Also from the verb yada.)

After David has laid these orders on Solomon, reminding him that he knows what to do, David dies—cold, ineffective, unforgiving, and bitter.

Abraham has a good and satisfied old age; David has the opposite. Abraham starts taking care of his family, instead of using them for his own selfish desires. David becomes so passive it takes both Natan and Bathsheba to get him to give orders to prevent a civil war, and on his deathbed he orders his son and heir to take revenge for him.

Why are the two characters so different?

Now, when I remember my mother’s suffering, senile incomprehension, and verbal sniping during her long journey toward death, I think that what matters most in the last part of life is autonomy and agency. During Abraham’s last years he is sound of mind; he gives thoughtful orders, and he continues to be obeyed. David retreats from thinking during the last half of his life. Instead of seeking more knowledge and understanding, he continues to make impulsive decisions that disregard both other people’s point of view and the good of his own kingdom. First Joab, and then Natan, manipulate him for the good of the kingdom. At the end, David takes no responsibility for anything, and asks his son Solomon to avenge him after he dies.

May each of us take responsibility while we still have autonomy and agency, and may we act in order to improve the situation for those who survive us. Even if we have a past record of misdeeds, may we be more like Abraham in old age, and less like King David.

David killed 200 Philistines and harvested their foreskins (1 Samuel 18:25-27).
The foreskins were the bride-price for marrying King Saul’s daughter Mikhal. David was leading an outlaw band when he married Avigail (1 Samuel 25:39-42) and Achinoam (1 Samuel 25:43). As king of Judah, he married Ma-akhah, Chagit, Avital, and Eglah (2 Samuel 3: 3-6); and as king of all Israel he took “more concubines and wives” (2 Samuel 5:13). He married Batsheva in 2 Samuel 11:27. We learn he had ten concubines in 2 Samuel 15:16.
David danced in front of the ark, whirling and leaping, in 2 Samuel 6:13-16.
King Saul tries to thrust a spear through David himself in 1 Samuel 18:8-2 and 19:10. He sends David into a difficult battle in the hope that Philistines will kill him in 1 Samuel 18:25-26. And Saul sends assassins to David’s house in 1 Samuel 19:11.
1 Samuel 25:2-44.
1 Samuel 27:10-13.
The Hebrew Bible calls this son of Saul Ish-Boshet, meaning “Man of Shame”; we never learn his actual name.
2 Samuel 2:1-10.
2 Samuel 2:12-3:39.
Leviticus 20:20.
2 Samuel 16:5-14.
2 Samuel 18:1-19:15.
2 Samuel 19:12-15. Amasa is another nephew of David’s, and a cousin of Absalom’s.

Chayei Sarah & 1 Kings: Old Age for Scoundrels, Part 1

And Abraham expired and died at a good old age, old and saveia, and he was gathered to his people. (Genesis 25:8)

Old Man on his Deathbed, by Gustav Klimt

saveia (שָׂבֵעַ) = (adjective) satisfied, full, sated. (From the root verb sava, שָׂבַע = be sated, have enough, be filled up—usually with food.)

The full and satisfying end of Abraham’s life in this week’s Torah portion, Chayei Sarah (“The Life of Sarah”, Genesis 23:1-25:18) contrasts with the thin and bitter end of King David’s life in the accompanying haftarah reading (1 Kings 1:1-1:31). The haftarah sets the tone for King David’s final years when it opens:

And the king, David, was old, coming on in years, and they covered him with bedclothes, but he never felt warm. (1 Kings 1:1)

In their prime, both men have motley careers: brave and magnanimous in one scene, heartless and unscrupulous in the next. But in old age (about age 140-175 for Abraham, 60-70 for David) their paths diverge.

Abraham’s prime

Abraham commits several major unethical deeds after he moves his family to Canaan when he is 75. Although his behavior toward his nephew Lot is faultless, his behavior toward his wife Sarah and his first two sons, Ishmael and Isaac, is sometimes cruel, selfish, and immoral.

Abram’s Counsel to Sarai, by James Tissot, ca. 1900, detail

Twice when he travels to a new kingdom, Abraham asks Sarah to pretend to be his sister. He claims that she was unusually beautiful¹ and that the king has peculiar morals, considering adultery taboo, but murder perfectly all right. The king will take Sarah regardless, but only if everyone lies and says Abraham is her brother will the king let him live. In fact, both kings pay Abraham a bride-price for his “sister”. Both kings are horrified when they discovered the truth. Both times, Abraham gets to take back his wife and leave richer than when he arrived.²

Sarah also uses Abraham, by giving him her slave Hagar as a concubine for the purpose of producing an heir. (She is 75 and childless at the time.) After Sarah give birth to her own son at age 90, she sees that Hagar’s son Ishmael is not treating her son Isaac with respect. So she orders Abraham to cast out Hagar and Ishmael, in order to make Isaac the only heir. Abraham is rich, and could easily give his own son and his former concubine a couple of donkeys laden with water, food, and silver to ensure their safe relocation. Instead, Abraham sends them off into the desert with only bread and a skin of water. When they get lost and use up the water, Ishmael nearly dies.³ God arranges a rescue, but Abraham never sees his oldest son again.

Isaac has grown up, but has not yet married or had children, when Abraham hears God tell him:

“Please take your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac. And get yourself going to the land I will show you, and offer him up there as a burnt offering on one of the hills, which I will say to you.” (Genesis 22:2)

Abraham knows he could argue with God. When he was 99, he argued with God about destroying Sodom, and God listened and agreed it would be unjust to annihilate the city if it contained even ten innocent people.⁴ Yet now, in his 130’s, Abraham does not argue with God. he does not even ask God a question. He gets up early and leaves with Isaac, two servants, and a donkey carrying firewood, without telling Sarah where they are going. When Isaac lies bound on the altar and Abraham lifts the knife, God has to call his name twice to get him to stop. After Abraham sacrifices a ram instead, he walks back down the hill alone.⁵ The breach between father and son is irreparable. Abraham never sees Isaac again.

Abraham’s old age

Is Abraham consumed by guilt and loss during the final stage of his life, from his late 130’s to his death at 175? No. But he has changed. This week’s Torah portion, Chayei Sarah, portrays a man at peace with himself who meets all his responsibilities and also enjoys life.

The Torah portion begins with Sarah’s death in Hebron. Yet the last we knew, Abraham was living in Beersheba.⁶ Perhaps the two locations reflect a glitch in a redactor’s effort to combine two stories. Or perhaps Sarah left her husband after he returned without Isaac and tried to explain what happened. In an already difficult marriage, that would be the last straw. Yet the estrangement does not stop Abraham from traveling to Hebron and doing his duty as Sarah’s husband.

Abraham Buys the Field of Ephron the Hittite, by William Hogarth, ca. 1725

And Abraham came to beat the breast for Sarah and to observe mourning rites. Then Abraham got up from the presence of his dead, and he spoke to the Hittites, saying: “I am a resident alien among you. Give me a burial site among you, and I will bury my dead away from my presence.” (Genesis 23:2)

After some negotiations, Abraham buys a plot of land with a suitable burial cave, and buries Sarah there. In this way he also prepares for his own burial, and future burials in his family.

Isaac is not mentioned during the first scene in Chayei Sarah. But in the next scene, Abraham makes arrangements for Isaac’s marriage.

And Abraham said to his elder servant of his household, the one who governed all that was his: “Please place your hand under my yareikh, and I will make you swear by God, god of the heavens and god of the earth, that you do not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites amidst whom I am dwelling. For you must go to the land I came from and to my relatives, and you must take a wife for my son, for Isaac.” (Genesis 24:2-4)

yareikh (יָרֵךְ) = upper thigh, buttocks, genitals.

This is a serious oath. Isaac is in his late thirties at this point, and his father has obviously been keeping track of him from a distance. Now Abraham wants to make sure, before he dies, that Isaac marries and starts producing the descendants God promised. But he does not try to confront his estranged and traumatized son in person. He instructs his steward, and trusts him to deliver the right bride to his son.

Arranged marriage was the norm in the Ancient Near East, so Isaac is not shocked when his father’s steward arrives with a young woman for him. In fact, he falls in love with her.⁷

Once Isaac is married, Abraham takes a concubine again, and has six sons with Keturah.

And Abraham gave all that was his to Isaac. But to the sons of the concubines that were Abraham’s, Abraham gave gifts, and he sent them away from his son Isaac while he was still alive, eastward, to the land of the east. And these are the days of the years of Abraham, that he lived: 175 years. And Abraham expired and died in good seivah … (Genesis 25:6-8)

Abraham is virile and enjoys life his old age. He is also in charge of his own life, and takes care to meet all his responsibilities well before he dies. He divides his wealth among his sons and makes sure Isaac will not be harassed by his stepbrothers. After his death, Ishmael and Isaac bury their father in the cave he bought for Sarah’s burial. Whatever mistakes he made before the age of 140, Abraham leads an enviable life for his last 35 years. He is fortunate to be in good health, with both virility and a sound mind. He knows what he is doing, and he does it more thoughtfully than he used to. Abraham was always good at generating plans. But during the last part of his life, his plans are more reasonable, and take the other people in his life into consideration.

No human being is perfect. We may not commit such extravagant misdeeds as Abraham, but we have all hurt other humans. Occasionally we get the blessing of a frank conversation with someone we hurt, and an opportunity to apologize and make amends. But often the chance for a frank conversation never comes. Then the best we can do is to acknowledge our misdeeds to ourselves, and plan how we will behave more ethically in the future. Sometimes we can notice our own improvement, and find peace in our old age.

Perhaps this is what Abraham does in the book of Genesis. He never apologizes to Sarah, or Ishmael, or Isaac. But after age 140, he is careful to meet his responsibilities to everyone, even the people estranged from him. Abraham still pursues his own interests and arranges a pleasant life for himself, but he does it without any deceit and without endangering anyone’s safety. He dies old and satisfied.

Next week, in Part 2, we will look at the unfortunate counterexample of King David’s old age.

Sarah is 65 when Abraham pulls this scam on the king of Egypt in Genesis 12:10-20. She is 89 when he repeats it with the king of Gerar in Genesis 20:1-18, but during that year God is presumably making Sarah’s body younger so she can bear a son to Abraham.
See my posts The Wife-Sister Trick: Part 1 and Part 2.
Genesis 21:8-19. See my post Vayeira: Failure of Empathy.
Genesis 18:16-32.
Genesis 22:1-19. See my post Vayeira: Stopped by an Angel.
In Genesis 22:19 Abraham comes back to Beersheba without Isaac.
Genesis 25:67.

Vayeira: On Speaking Terms

Direct speech, or visions, or dreams, or divine messengers—the Hebrew Bible portrays God as communicating with human beings through all these methods. In this week’s Torah portion, Vayeira (“And he appeared”, Genesis 18:1-22:24), God speaks to Abraham both directly and through divine messengers, called malakhim; to Sarah directly; to King Avimelekh in a dream; and to Lot and Hagar through malakhim.

malakh (מַלְאָךְ) = messenger, emissary. (Plural: malakhim, מַלְאָכִים. While human characters in the Torah send fellow humans as malakhim, the God character sends divine malakhim. “A malakh of God” is often translated into English as “an angel”.)

One way or another, God speaks to more people in Vayeira than in any other Torah portion or haftarah reading. And Vayeira is the only place in the Hebrew Bible where God sends three malakhim at once. What does the God-character achieve?

Three “men”

Abraham is 99 when this week’s Torah portion begins. God spoke directly with him five times in last week’s portion, Lekh Lekha, both with and without accompanying visions.¹ The portion Vayeira begins:

Three Visitors, by James Tissot, ca. 1900

And God appeared to him by the great trees of Mamrei, while he was sitting at the entrance of the tent as the day grew hot. And he raised his eyes, and he saw—hey! Three men were standing near him. And he saw, and he ran from the entrance of the tent to greet them, and he bowed down to the ground. (Genesis/Bereishit 18:1-3)

When God appears in Mamrei, what Abraham sees is three men.² At first Abraham assumes the three men are ordinary human beings, travelers passing through. He rushes to offer them hospitality: water for washing their feet, shade to rest in, and food to eat. He waits on them under the trees. Then one of the strangers speaks like a prophet, saying:

“I will definitely return to you when this season revives, and hey! A son for Sarah, your wife!” (18:10)

Sarah, who is 89 years old, overhears from inside the tent, and immediately thinks of the sexual act necessary to produce a son.

And Sarah laughed inside herself, saying: After I am all used up, will there be pleasure for me? And my lord is old. (Genesis 18:12)

Then God said to Abraham: “Why is it that Sarah laughed, saying: ‘Can I truly even give birth, when I am old?’ Is it too extraordinary a thing, from God?” (Genesis 18:13-14)

Abraham expresses no surprise that now God is talking to him, though the three “men” are still present. Perhaps he knows that God sometimes speaks through malakhim who look human, at least at first.

And Sarah lied, saying: “I did not laugh,” because she was afraid. But [God] said: “No, because you did laugh.” (Genesis 18:15)

Sarah’s fear shows that she, too, knows that God is speaking.

Does God make three malakhim manifest in the grove of Mamrei only in order to test Abraham’s hospitality and/or to announce Sarah’s future child? I doubt it. A single malakh could have achieved both these objectives.³

Then the men got up from there, and they looked down at Sodom. And Abraham was walking with them to send them off. And God said: Will I hide from Abraham what I am doing? … For I pay attention to him, so that he can instruct his sons and his descendants after him, so they will observe God’s path to do righteousness and justice … (Genesis 18:16-19)

After this thought, God addresses Abraham, saying:

“The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, because their abundant guilt is very heavy. Indeed I will go down, and I will see: Are they doing like the outcry coming to me? [If so,] Annihilation! And if not, I will know.” The men turned their faces away from there and they went to Sodom, while Abraham was still standing before God. (Genesis 18:20-22)

In other words, God sends two of the malakhim down to check out Sodom. The God in the Torah is not omniscient; in the story about the Tower of Babble, God comes down from the heavens to look at the city and tower before taking action.⁴ The God of Torah is not omnipresent either, but always has a specific location in our world or in the heavens.

After God’s opening statement about the outcry about Sodom and Gomorrah (presumably coming from victims),

Abraham approached and said: “Would you sweep away the tzadik with the wicked? What if there are fifty tzadikim inside the city? Would you sweep away and not pardon the place for the sake of the fifty tzadikim who are in it? Far be it from you to do this thing, to bring death to the tzadik with the wicked! Then the tzadik would be like the wicked. Far be it from you! The judge of all the earth should do justice!” (Genesis 18:23-25)

tzadik (צַדִּיק) = righteous, innocent. tzadikim (צַדִּיקִם) = people who are righteous or innocent.

And God agrees to pardon the whole city if fifty of its residents are innocent. Abraham continues until God agrees to spare Sodom even if it has only ten innocent people.

As we will see, this encounter between God and Abraham could have changed Abraham’s life about 30 years later—if only he had remembered that he could argue with God. As it is, Abraham does succeed in establishing that God is supposed to be a god of justice.

Two malakhim

And the two malakhim came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. And Lot saw them, and he rose to greet them, and he bowed down with his nose to the ground. (Genesis 19:1)

Abraham’s nephew Lot emigrated with him from Aram to Canaan 24 years before. They parted when the pastureland around Bethel was no longer sufficient to feed the increasing flocks and herds of both men. Abraham stayed in the hill country, and Lot went down to the fertile valley and settled in the city of Sodom.⁵

Now, when he sees two strangers enter the city, Lot is as hospitable as his uncle Abraham. He, too, bows to the ground. He begs the men to come home with him for the night, and he prepares a feast for them. That night, all the men of Sodom surround Lot’s house.

And they called to Lot and they said to him: “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, and we will ‘know’ them!” (Genesis 19:5)

Lot Prevents the Sodomites from Raping the Angels, by Heinrich Aldegrever, 1555

The men of Sodom believe that the two strangers in Lot’s house are ordinary men who can be degraded through rape. They do not care about other people; they only want to prove how powerful they are. Lot steps out, closing the door behind himself, and begs the men of Sodom not to do an evil deed. He volunteers to send out his own two virgin daughters for them to rape instead. (This offer indicates that he is not a tzadik, but his hospitality to strangers indicates that he is not wicked like the native Sodomites.)

The men of Sodom reject Lot’s offer.

And they moved forward to break the door. But the “men” [inside] stretched out their hands and brought Lot inside the house with them, and they shut the door. And the men who were at the entrance of the house, from small to big, they struck with a blinding light; and they were powerless to find the door.

The two malakhim urge Lot to collect his married daughters and their families, so they can all flee together before Sodom is annihilated. Although Lot believes the malakhim, he cannot persuade his sons-in-law to take the warning seriously. When he returns to his own house at dawn, the two malakhim urge Lot to leave at once with his wife and his two unmarried daughters. Lot hesitates, and the malakhim grasp the hands of all four humans and drag them out of the city.

Then God rained down on Sodom, and on Gomorrah, sulfur and fire from God, from the heavens. (Genesis 19:24)

We can deduce that God sends two malakhim to Sodom in order to confirm that all the men there (except Lot) really are evil, and to rescue Lot and his wife and virgin daughters. The rescue requires a magical power (blinding the Sodomites) and four hands with a firm grip.

The encounter with the two malakhim from God does save four human lives, but it does not redeem them. Lot’s wife ignores the warning of the malakhim not to look back, and turns into a pillar of salt. Lot gets drunk and has incestuous intercourse with his two remaining daughters, providing an excuse for the author to insult the kingdoms of their descendants, Moab and Ammon. (See my post Vayeira & Noach: Drunk and Disorderly.)

A dream

Abraham travels on to Gerar, where the Torah gives us a second version of the wife-sister story.⁶

And Abraham said about Sarah, his wife: “She is my sister.” And Avimelekh, the king of Gerar, sent for and took Sarah. Then God came to Avimelekh in the dream at night, and said to him: “Hey, you will die on account of the woman that you took, for she is the wife of a husband.” (Genesis 20:2-3)

In his dream, the king defends himself, protesting that Abraham and Sarah lied to him, and anyway he has not yet touched Sarah, so he is innocent. Avimelekh’s argument is successful.

And God said to him in the dream: “I also know that you did this with an innocent heart, and I also held you back from doing wrong to her. That is why I did not let you touch her.” Genesis 20:6)

After claiming credit for the disease that caused King Avimelekh’s delay, God orders him to restore Sarah to her husband. He does so, throwing in some portable wealth to be on the safe side, and God heals him.

In this case, God participates in Abraham’s scam, but then sends Avimelekh a dream that gives him a chance to defend himself. When he does, God remits his punishment. As in the first wife-sister story, Abraham goes unpunished.

About Ishmael

After Abraham and Sarah return from Gerar, Sarah does indeed have a son at age 90. Several years later, at her son Isaac’s weaning feast, she is disturbed by the behavior of Abraham’s first son, Ishmael. Sarah orders her husband to cast out Ishmael and his mother, the slave-woman Hagar, in order to prevent Ishmael from sharing Isaac’s inheritance. (See my post Vayeira: Failure of Empathy.) Abraham is not happy about this order from his wife.

But God said to Abraham: “Don’t let it be bad in your eyes about the boy and about the slave-woman. Everything that Sarah says to you, listen to her voice! … And also I will set the son of the slave-woman as [the founder of] a nation, because he is your seed.” (Genesis 21:12)

Perhaps this promise makes Abraham feel absolved of responsibility for the adolescent boy. He sends off Ishmael and Hagar with only some bread and one skin of water, and nothing to give them a start on a new life. The mother and son run out of water in the desert.

Hagar in the Desert, by Gheorghe Tattarescu, 1870, detail

And God listened to the sound of the boy [crying], and a malakh of God called to Hagar from the heavens and said to her: “What is it, Hagar? Don’t be afraid. Because God has listened to the sound of the boy where he is. Get up, lift up the boy, and hold your hand firmly in his. Because I will make him a great nation.” Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. (Genesis 21:17-19)

The words of the malakh might make Hagar feel more optimistic, but the important change is that Hagar now sees the water.

Abraham obeys again

Abraham hears from God for the last time in his life near the end of the portion Vayeira.

And it was after these things, and God tested Abraham. And [God] said to him: “Abraham!” And he answered: “Here I am.” And [God] said: “Take, please, your son, your only one,⁷ whom you love, Isaac. And go for yourself to the land of the Moriyah, and offer him there as a burned offering on one of the hills that I say to you.” And Abraham got up early in the morning and he saddled his donkey and he took two [slave] boys with him, and his son Isaac. And he split wood for the burnt offering and he got up and went to the place that God had said to him. (Genesis 22:1-3)

Abraham simply obeys. He does not argue with God. Apparently he does not remember the time when he debated with God about justice and the city of Sodom; he does not even mention that Isaac is innocent.

The Sacrifice of Isaac, by Tintoretto, 1550-55, detail

On the summit of the hill in Moriyah,

Abraham stretched out his hand and he took the knife to slaughter his son. Then a malakh of God called to him from the heavens, and said: “Abraham! Abraham!” And he said: “Here I am.” (Genesis 22:10-11)

In the Torah, when the speaker repeats the name of the person addressed, it means there was no answer the first time. Abraham is not even listening for God’s voice.

Once he has Abraham’s attention, the malakh from God says:

“You must not stretch out your hand against the boy, and you must not do anything to him. Because now I know that you fear God, and you have not withheld your son, your only one, from me.” (Genesis 22:12)

Abraham looks up, sees a ram caught in the bushes, and sacrifices it instead of Isaac.⁸ But as a result of his unquestioning obedience, he is estranged from his only remaining son for the rest of his life. And although Abraham appears in several more scenes in the book of Genesis, God does not speak to him again.

What does God achieve in the portion Vayeira through all these conversations, speaking with Sarah, Lot, Avimelekh, and Hagar as well as Abraham?

Abraham argues in favor of sparing Sodom if it contains ten innocent people, but then he fails to argue for the life of his own innocent son. Sarah is unaffected by the annunciation of Isaac, though she defends him after he is born. God spares Lot’s life, but Lot does not appreciate it, and falls into immoral behavior. Avimelekh protests to God in his dream, and God heals him—of the affliction God caused in the first place. And God does not tell Abraham anything that motivates him to behave decently to Hagar and Ishmael.

We can see God’s involvement in the lives of all five people: Abraham Sarah, Lot, Avimelekh, and Hagar. But if God had remained silent and distant in the portion Vayeira, the five humans might have been better off. And although the generations after Abraham have benefited from his argument that God is supposed to do justice, this benefit has been undermined by the story of his unquestioning obedience to an unjust command.

But without God’s conversations, the stories would have been less entertaining.

God manifests to Abraham as a voice only in Genesis 12:1-3, and 13:14-17; and as voice with an accompanying visuals in Genesis 12:7, 15:1-21, and 17:1-22.
God might be invisible, or manifest in a fire, or use a malakh; but nobody can see what God actually looks like. As God tells Moses in the book of Exodus, “No man can see me and live” (Exodus 33:20). Moses, Aaron, two of Aaron’s sons, and 70 elders do see God’s feet on a sapphire pavement in Exodus 24:10, but this does not count.
Cf. the single malakh who announces the coming birth of Samson in Judges 13:2-24.
Genesis 11:5 in the portion Noach.
Abraham and Lot separate in Genesis 13:1-13.
The first wife-sister story is in Lekh-Lekha, in Genesis 12:11-20. See my posts Lekh Lekha, Vayeira, and Toledot: The Wife-Sister Trick, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
We know Abraham has two living sons, so why does God call Isaac “the only one” (yechidekha, יְחִידֶךָ)? I believe here the word means “the only one remaining to you”, since Ishmael has been banished.
See my post Vayeira: Stopped by an Angel.

Lekh Lekha: Abraham’s Heir

When you die, what do you leave behind in the world of the living?

Someone inherits your wealth: land, money, or—for nomads in the Ancient Near East—the livestock and slaves you own. Someone may take your place at work or in your community. And some people will remember you and tell stories about you, for good or bad.

What do you want to leave behind, and who do you want to your heirs to be?

The question of inheritance is a major concern in this week’s Torah portion, Lekh Lekha (Genesis 12:1-17:27), and for the next six portions. For three generations, from Abraham to his grandson Jacob, the men and women in his family tree try to manipulate events in order to control who will inherit.

Abraham appears (under his original name, Avram) at the end of a long genealogy in last week’s portion, Noach. Nine generations after Noah, Terach was living in the city-state of Ur in southern Mesopotamia when he begot three sons: Avram, Nachor, and Haran. All three sons grew up and got married in Ur. Haran died there. Terach set out for Canaan with Avram and his wife Sarai, and Haran’s son Lot. Before they reached Canaan, they stopped and settled in the Aramaean town of Charan in northern Mesopotamia.¹ Later we learn that Nachor and his wife also settled in Aram.²

Possible heir #1: Lot

When Avram is 75, God tells him:

“Get yourself going away from your land and your clan and your father’s house, to the land that I will show you! And I will make you a great people, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and it will become a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who belittle you.” (Genesis 12:1-2)

In the Torah, someone becomes “a people” by having numerous descendants who become an ongoing society or even country. A great name means fame or a great reputation. Already God has promised Avram two roles that his heirs might inherit: the leadership of a whole people, and a name that can trigger divine blessing or curse.

And Avram went, as his god, Y-H-V-H, had spoken. And Lot went with him. And Avram was 75 years old when he went out from Charan. And Avram took his wife Sarai, and his brother’s son Lot, and all their acquisitions that they had acquired, and the persons that they had made [their own] in Charan; and they left to go to the land of Canaan. (Genesis 12:4-5)

Without an explicit direction from God, Avram heads toward Canaan, his father’s intended destination. Besides his wife and his nephew, Avram takes all his possessions with him—mostly livestock and slaves. He stops at the site of Shekhem in Canaan, where God appears to him and says: “I will give this land to your offspring.” (Genesis 12:7)

This confirms that Canaan was the right place to go. Avram does not question God’s promise to give Canaan to his offspring, even though he has no children and Sarai is already 65. The household migrates south through Canaan, from Bethel to the Negev. When a famine comes, they go to Egypt, where Avram uses Sarai to pull a scam on the pharaoh. (See my posts Lekh-Lekha, Vayeira, & Toledot: The Wife-Sister Trick, Part 1 and Part 2.)

It went well on account of her, and he acquired flocks and cattle and male donkeys and male slaves and female slaves and female donkeys and camels. (Genesis 12:16)

When Avram, Sarai, and Lot return to Canaan with and all their possessions,

Avram was very heavy in livestock and in silver and in gold. (Genesis 13:2)

At this point, Avram has great wealth to pass on to his heir. The right heir might also inherit his connection with divine blessing, and his ability to hear God. Avram’s presumed heir at the beginning of Lekh Lekha is his nephew Lot. But when they return to Bethel, Avram and Lot decide to go their separate ways.

Lot, who went with Avram, also had flocks and cattle and tents. And the land could not support them [if they were] staying together … And there was quarreling between the herdsmen of Avram’s cattle and the herdsmen of Lot’s cattle. (Genesis 13:5-7)

Avram gives his nephew first choice of pastureland, and Lot claims “the whole plain of the Jordan”—the river valley and the land near the Dead Sea—because it has lots of water.

And they separated, each man from his kinsman. Avram stayed in the land of Canaan, and Lot settled in the cities of the plain, and he pitched his tent near Sodom. (Genesis 13:11-12)

The Torah never specifies the borders of Canaan, only the borders of the future kingdom of Israel.³ It does locate some towns as being in Canaan, but Sodom is not one of them. The passage above indicates that Lot rejects Canaan in favor of Sodom. This may be the point when Avram realizes Lot will not be his heir.⁴

As soon as Lot has left, Avram hears God repeat the promise that Avram’s offspring will someday own the land of Canaan.

And God said to Avram, after Lot had separated from him: “Raise your eyes, please, and look around from the place where you are, to the north and to the south and to the east and to the west. For all the land that you see, I give it to you and to your offspring forever. And I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone is able to count the dust of the earth, he can count your offspring.” (Genesis 13:14-16)

Possible heir #2: Eliezer

The next time God appears to Avram in a vision, God says:

“Don’t be afraid, Avram. I am a shield to you. Your wages will be very great.” (Genesis 15:1)

Avram does not ask what God is paying him for. But he does ask who will inherit God’s reward:

“What could you give me, when I am going childless, and the one maintaining my household is Eliezer of Damascus?” (Genesis 15:2)

When God does not answer, Avram explains:

“Since you have not given me offspring, then hey! The one over my household yoreish from me.” (Genesis 15:3)

yoreish (יוֹרֵשׁ) = will inherit

Perhaps Avram nudging God to provide him with his own son, so he can have the descendants God promised. There is nothing wrong with his steward Eliezer, especially if he is the same unnamed senior servant who, years later, goes out of his way to procure the right wife for Avram’s son Yitzchak (Isaac in English).⁵ But like most men in the Hebrew Bible, Avram wants an heir who is his own flesh and blood.

Then, hey! The word of God came to him, saying: “This one lo yiyrashekha, because one who goes out from your own loins, he yiyrashekha.” (Genesis 15:3-4)

lo yiyrashekha (לֹא יִירָשְׁךָ) = will not inherit land or property from you, will not get your possessions. (Lo, לֹא = not + yiyrashekha,יִירָשְׁךָ = will inherit land or property from you, will get your possessions.)

Then God again promises Avram an uncountable number of descendants.

Possible heir #3: Yishmael (Ishmael)

When Avram is 85 and his wife Sarai is 75, long past menopause, Sarai decides to give her husband an heir without waiting for a miracle.

And Sarai, Avram’s wife, had not borne children to him. And she had an Egyptian slave-woman, and her name was Hagar. And Sarai said to Avram: “Hey, please, God has kept me from bearing children. Please come into my slave-woman. Perhaps I will have a son through her.” And Avram paid attention on Sarai’s voice. (Genesis 16:1-2)

This was not an unusual strategy in the Ancient Near East. Childless women assign surrogates to their husbands and then adopt the resulting progeny both in the Mesopotamian laws of Hammurabi and in another story in Genesis, when Rachel and Leah ask their husband Jacob to produce more children for them by using their slave-women as surrogate mothers.⁵

And Hagar bore a son to Avram, and Avram called the name of his son that Hagar had borne Yishmael. And Avram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Avram. (Genesis 16:15-16)

The arrangement does not go well for Sarai or Hagar, but Avram acknowledges and grows fond of his son Yishmael (Ishmael in English).⁶

Possible heir #4: Yitzchak (Isaac)

When Avram is 99, and Sarai is 89, and Ishmael is 13, God appears to Avram again and says:

“Walk constantly in my presence, and be blameless. Then I will establish my covenant between me and you, and I will make you very, very numerous.”

At first the deal appears to be that Avram will behave perfectly, and in return God will give him those long-promised descendants. But then God continues:

“Behold my covenant with you: You will be a father for a hamon of nations. And you will no longer be called the name Avram, but your name will be Avraham; because I will give you a hamon of nations. And I will make you very, very fruitful, and give you nations, and kings will go out from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for generations as a covenant forever: to be a god for you and your descendants after you. And I give you and your descendants after you the land of your sojourning, all the land of Canaan, as a possession forever, and I will be their god.” (Genesis 17:4-8)

hamon (הָמוֹן) = crowd, noisy procession, uproar. (From the root verb hamah,הָמה = roar, make an uproar. Avram’s new name, Avraham, incorporates the root hamah.)

Now God’s side of the covenant is to give Avraham crowds of descendants who will possess the land of Canaan; and to act as their god, presumably by paying special attention to their welfare.

Then God tells Avraham what he must do for his side of the covenant:

“This is my covenant that you must keep, between me and you and your descendants after you: Be circumcised, every male among you. And they must be circumcised, the flesh of your foreskins, and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and you.” (Genesis 17:10-11)

In future generations, God adds, the circumcision should happen when a male infant is eight days old; and every man should also circumcise his male slaves.

And God said to Avraham: “Sarai, your wife—her name will not be called Sarai, because Sarah will be her name. And I will bless her, and even give you a son from her. I will bless her and she will become nations; kings of nations will come from her!” And Avraham threw himself on his face and he laughed, and he thought in his heart: Can a son be born to a hundred-year-old? Or can Sarah bring forth a child at ninety? And Avraham said to God: “May Ishmael live before your presence!” (Genesis 17:15-18)

Avraham seems content with Ishmael as his son and heir. Why does he need another? God reassures him that Ishmael will have twelve children and found a nation of his own. But the heir to Abraham’s property and relationship with God will not be Hagar’s son, but Sarah’s son, whom he must name Yitzchak.

“And my covenant I will establish with Yitzchak, whom Sarah will bear to you at this time next year.” (Genesis 17:21)

So Avraham’s own wife will miraculously give birth to Yitzchak, who will inherit God’s covenant with Avraham: God’s attention, the obligation of circumcision, and the equivalent of a deed to the land of Canaan. And that is not all Yitzchak inherits. God also blesses him⁷ and makes him a blessing to others.⁸ When Avraham himself dies at age 175, in the Torah portion Chayei Sarah, he leaves his wealth and livestock business to Yitzchak.

And Avraham gave everything that was his to Yitzchak. But to the sons of Avraham’s concubines, Avraham gave gifts, and he sent them away from his son Yitzchak while he was still alive, eastward to the land of the east. (Genesis 25:6)

Thus Yitzchak, the fourth person under consideration as Avraham’s heir, inherits his father’s wealth, livestock business, position as a blessing to others, deed to the land of Canaan, covenant with God, and ability to speak with God. Avraham left a lot to inherit, and he was happy with his heir.

And Avraham died at a good ripe age, old and satisfied. (Genesis 25:8)

When you die, what will you leave behind in the world of the living?

Someone will inherit your wealth. Someone may take your place at work or in your community. Some people will remember you and tell stories about you, for good or bad. And some may inherit your personality, or your attitude toward God.

Will you be satisfied with what you leave behind? Will you be satisfied with your heirs?

Genesis 11:27-31.
Genesis 22:20-22 and 24:10.
Numbers 34:1-12.
In chapter 14 of Genesis, invaders from the north raid Sodom and its neighbors, capture Lot and other residents of Sodom, and carry them off along with the loot. Abraham and his 318 men rescue all the captives, either because Sodom is one of Abraham’s allies at the time, or because he feels affection and/or responsibility for his nephew. But Lot returns to his home in Sodom, not to Avram’s camp in Canaan.
Genesis 24.
See my post Lekh Lekha: Belittlement.
Genesis 30:1-13.
Genesis 25:11.
Genesis 26:2-4.