Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham

CHAPTER SEVEN: Abram from the Calling to the Covenant

127 chapter seven Abram from the Calling to the Covenant The calling of Abram recapitulates in a sense the calling of Noah.∞ As with every such biblical recapitulation, the divergences are at least as instructive as the redundancies. Noah and his family were called to be the surviving remnant of the whole human race; Abram and his family are called to separate themselves, to distinguish themselves, from all the rest of the race.≤ Accordingly, Abram/Abraham and Sarai/Sarah are the first real personalities in the Bible. We gained but little sense of Noah or of his family as distinctive persons. His wife, and his sons’ wives, remained anonymous. In contrast, Abraham and Sarah, their descendants and their descendants’ wives, are indelibly etched in our minds as perplexing exemplars . From this point forward Genesis bristles with characters defined and to some extent ranked by unique qualities, both admirable and questionable —qualities that disclose themselves for the most part through the drama, and only to readers who do some serious thinking for themselves. ‘‘It is a characteristic of these narratives,’’ Cassuto remarks, ‘‘not to describe the thoughts and feelings of the dramatis personae, but only to record their deeds, and to inform the reader through the narration of events of the ideas and sentiments that prompted their actions.’’ Or as Alter says, ‘‘We are compelled to get at character and motive, as in Impressionist writers like Conrad and Ford Madox Ford, through a process of inference from fragmentary data, often with crucial pieces of narrative exposition strategically withheld, and this leads to multiple or sometimes even wavering perspectives on the characters. There is, in other words, an abiding mystery in character as the biblical writers conceive it, which they embody in their typical methods of presentation.’’ Our contemporary novelist E. L. Doctorow, praising ‘‘the wisdom of the later scribes in leaving intact on the page those chronicles they felt obligated to improve upon,’’ argues that ‘‘as a result we get more than one point of view, which has the e√ect, in the depiction of human character, of a given roundness or ambiguity that we recognize as realistic.’’≥ Preeminent of course is Abraham, the only person in Genesis who is denominated, by God Himself (though not when speaking to Abraham), Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham 128 as a ‘‘prophet.’’∂ What kind of man is this first richly developed ‘‘hero’’ that the Bible sets before us? How does he come to sight as Abram, and how do his qualities unfold in dialectical interaction with the other characters about him, divine and human, in the course of the amazing drama through which we watch him live? What do we learn from this drama about God, about God’s intention, and about the chosen people who embody that intention, in part by honoring and following the example of Abraham? For he is rightly designated, according to the Bible, as ‘‘the pillar of the world’’: ‘‘The term ‘rock’ was used figuratively to designate the root and principle of every thing. It is on this account that after saying: ‘Look unto the rock whence you were hewn,’ Scripture continues (Isa. 51:1–2): ‘Look unto Abraham your father,’ and so on, giving, as it were, an interpretation according to which the rock whence ye were hewn is Abraham your father. Tread therefore in his footsteps, adhere to his religion, and acquire his character’’ (Maimonides Guide 1.16, 3.29; see also Abravanel ’s Commentary on the Pentateuch ad Gen. 22 beg.). Abram at the Time of the Call Our massive initial impression of Abram is of a man characterized by singular devotion to, and trust in, the Lord. God’s first words to him are a summons to personal sacrifice and risk: at the age of seventy-five, with a wife aged sixty-six, Abram is commanded (without any threat of punishment for disobedience) to leave his native land—and, what is more (cf. Gen. 20:13), his aged father and paternal home—in order to ‘‘go his own way’’ to a land unspecified.∑ To be sure, it is undeniable that God in the same breath holds out the loving promise of very substantial goods that will accrue to Abram as a consequence of his obedience. So grand are these rewards, and so prominent and primary is the promise of them, that they have occasioned deep discomfort among rabbinic commentators—an unease that seems to have contributed to the amassing of...