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CHAPTER EIGHT: Abraham at the Peak
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154 chapter eight Abraham at the Peak The behavior of the Sodomites would seem fully to justify God’s decision to extirpate the city and everyone in it, with the exception of Lot and his family; the Scripture stresses that the rapacious mob included ‘‘all of the people, in its entirety, from the young to the old’’ (Gen. 19:4).∞ But prior to the visit, God makes the portentous decision to allow Abraham the opportunity to share in, or indeed to contribute to, the verdict . More precisely, the Lord determines to inform Abraham of an investigation ≤ that He, through His two angels, intends to carry out into the reports that have reached Him concerning the outrageous sinfulness of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. And the narrator takes the remarkable step of letting us listen to the conversation God had with Himself in determining so to inform Abraham, and thus to open up the possibility that Abraham will respond by seeking to influence the divine deliberation. This inner divine conversation lets us see directly the reason God takes Abraham into His confidence; and that reason sheds clearer light on Abraham ’s mission, and on the meaning and purpose of the chosen people.≥ For the reason is that Abraham is to ‘‘become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth are to bless themselves by him, because,’’ God now explains, enlightening all of us as to His providential design, ‘‘I have singled him out [literally, ‘‘I have known him’’; wyOedy] so that he may command his children and his household after him to heed the way of the Lord by doing what is just and in accordance with right judgment [tPqMw hkdx; perhaps hendiadys], so that,’’ God does not fail to add, ‘‘the Lord may bring to Abraham what He promised to him’’ (Gen. 18:18–19). Abraham is, in the words of Philo (On Abraham 4–6), ‘‘a living rational law, the model for the later, particular written laws.’’ The teaching of justice, by precept and example, is the truest blessing Abraham represents for mankind.∂ The teaching of justice is the heart of Abraham’s, and the chosen people’s, mission. Now, if Abraham is to teach his people—and through his people, the world—what justice means in word and deed, he must show that he knows what justice is; and for this it is not enough merely to act justly and to obey God. God’s soliciting Abraham’s reaction Abraham at the Peak 155 to the impending investigation is a necessary step in Abraham’s testing and his education, but it is above all a showing forth, to us and for our meditation, of Abraham as an embodiment and thus as a teacher of the knowledge of justice. In reacting to God’s disclosure of His intended judicial investigation, Abraham discloses—first for himself, and then, by his example, for all others—a new depth to his concern for justice. Abraham’s Insistence on Divine Justice Abraham responds by venturing to remind God, fearfully and in all humility , but with relentless moral insistence, of the requirement that even God—that God above all—must adhere to intelligible justice.∑ Abraham here proves that his pious obedience is not a slavish submission, his terror not an abject terror. His compliance is not simply with God as the Almighty Ruler of all the earth; it is, most fundamentally, an obedience to God as ‘‘the Judge [tpqh] of all the earth,’’ and God as Judge sanctions a justice (tPqm) that is not simply whatever He declares to be justice (Gen. 18:25). The Bible here teaches that God vindicates a concept of justice known to man, apart from—though of course indurated and clarified by—the fiat of God.∏ This justice that man knows independently of revelation , this justice that is presupposed by revelation, man can humbly call upon God to uphold.π Abraham brings to full explicitness here a crucial ingredient of his experience of God that was hitherto always implicit. He experiences the presence of God, and the call of God, conjoined with the experience and demand of an intelligible justice. Without this latter copresent experience and demand, it is impossible to imagine what the experience and call of God would be for Abraham. This is not to say for one moment, however, that the experience of God is ever, for Abraham, merely some kind of Kantian postulate evidently presupposed by or necessary...