Oh, What a Tangled Web We Weave

In our review of Genesis thus far, the men (Noah, Abraham, Isaac) have received most of the attention. The women? Not so much. For example, the Bible doesn’t even tell us the name of Noah’s wife. We hear a little bit of Sarah and Hagar but Rebekah is the first woman in Genesis who takes charge of a situation and turns it to her advantage.

Before we get to her story in Gen 27, let’s rewind to Gen 25:19-34. The storyteller recounts that Rebekah was one more in a long line of OT women who had difficulty conceiving. Eventually she became pregnant with twins and received an oracle that the elder will serve the younger.

Jacob, the younger son (if only by a few minutes) became her favorite and she no doubt indoctrinated him in the prophecy so that, when the time was ripe, he took advantage of the situation to purchase the birthright from Esau for a bowl of lentil stew. The birthright entitled the firstborn to a double share of his father’s inheritance (Deut 21:17), so that may have been the most-lopsided financial deal prior to the Dutch purchase of Manhattan Island from Native Americans.

Mother’s Little Helper

Back to Gen 27. The story begins with Isaac, blind and at death’s door, wishing to impart his blessing to Esau, his favorite son. Rebekah overhears their conversation and fashions a plan for Jacob to steal the blessing. He offers a couple of objections which Rebekah easily swats away.

Why does she try to deceive Isaac in this fashion? While it might be the custom that the elder gets both birthright and blessing, perhaps she rebels at the injustice of the practice in the case of twins. Or maybe she argues that birthright and blessing go together. Having purchased the birthright for a mess of pottage, Jacob is also entitled to the blessing that goes with it.

Whatever her reasoning, Rebekah does most of the advance work of preparing a couple of goats and dressing Jacob in Esau’s best garments. All Jacob needs to do is play the part and is rewarded with a blessing of an abundance of grain and wine and dominance over his brother.

Then, in what is one of the most pathetic scenes in the OT, Esau arrives to find that Jacob has once again usurped him of his inheritance. He pleads with Isaac to scrounge up one last blessing and gets a promise that one day his descendants will throw off the yoke of Jacob’s descendants.

Esau vows that once Isaac is dead and the time of mourning is past, he will kill Jacob. Learning of this, Rebekah tells Jacob to flee to her brother Laban’s home in Haran and lay low until Esau cools down. She’ll then send for him to return. Little does she know that Jacob will be away for twenty years and she’ll never see him again. Moralists would say this is her punishment for deceiving Isaac.

Isaac Blessing Jacob (1638) by Dutch artist Govert Flinck, a pupil of Rembrandt who borrowed from his style.

Some Girls

Then, as a coda to this story (Gen 27:46-28:9) Rebekah complains to Isaac that Esau has married two of the local girls and she doesn’t want the same to happen to Jacob. Isaac calls for Jacob and sends him off to Laban’s home in Paddan-aram with a blessing. What? Another blessing? I thought he was all blessed out. Seeing this, Esau tries to please his parents by marrying within the family, taking one of Ishmael’s daughters as a wife.

Critical biblical scholars point out that the reference to Esau’s Hittite wives (Gen 26:34-35) and the coda belong together and both come from the P source. One of the giveaways is the P source always refers to Laban’s homeland as Paddan-aram while the J source calls it Haran. The P source provides a completely different motivation – finding a suitable wife – for Jacob’s travel outside the promised land. It is in the P source that the blessing of Abraham for offspring and possession of the land is passed on to Jacob.

Other than the final v. 46, the obvious signs of multiple sources such as contradictions, parenthetical comments, resumptive phrases (such as “and he said again”), and so on are lacking in Gen 27. The awkward etymology of the name Jacob in v. 36 may indicate an interpolation. And the content of the blessings to Jacob and Esau could very well have been composed by a later redactor. Other than those quibbles, the bulk appears to me to be a unified piece.

Not everyone agrees. Some biblical scholars see four, five, or ten different layers in Gen 27. For example, they claim Rebekah’s part in the story was added by a later redactor, perhaps in an effort to shift blame for the deception away from Jacob. Other layers would have heightened the rivalry of the brothers or played up the hairiness of Esau. The result is a convoluted explanation for the composition of the passage that does not appear to need it (unlike Gen 14, for example, that reads like a jumble).

Papa Was a Rolling Stone

An intriguing analysis of this chapter from Adrien Bledstein [1] turns the traditional explanation on its head. Instead of Isaac being duped into bestowing his blessing upon the wrong son, Bledstein proposes that Isaac engineered the entire episode to make sure the right son received the blessing. Her interpretation requires one to read the canonical text as a whole instead of treating the J and P strands separately.

In this telling, Isaac had his doubts whether Esau deserved a blessing after he foolishly sold his birthright and married Canaanite women. Yet he was bound by custom to give Esau the blessing. He purposely let Rebekah overhear his instructions to Esau; she took matters into her hands and Jacob played his part.

Isaac was not fooled for a moment, but before bestowing his blessing, he had to test Jacob. Eight times Isaac questions Jacob’s identity and each time Jacob either has a ready answer or had prepared his ruse (wore Esau’s clothes that smelled of the field and goat hide to make his neck and arms feel hairy). Satisfied that Jacob seemed to have thought of everything, Isaac blessed him with an abundance of grain and wine (items that wouldn’t have been very useful to the hunter Esau anyway) but held back the most-important blessing of possession of the land.

When Esau arrives, Isaac pretends to be shocked and tells Esau the content of Jacob’s blessing. It is at this point that Esau should have asked for the Abrahamic blessing of the land that was withheld from Jacob but he does not, thus failing his test and confirming Isaac’s suspicion that Esau is not worthy it. He leaves Esau with the consolation prize that one day he will break his brother’s yoke from his neck.

Now assured that Jacob is indeed the worthy successor, Isaac is able to send him off to Paddan-aram with the Abrahamic blessing of numerous descendants and possession of the land. Through plausible deniability, Isaac was able to ensure the appropriate son received the Abrahamic blessing, not merely the eldest son as custom would have dictated.

Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?

While highly entertaining, this interpretation only makes sense within the canonical text. It simply doesn’t work if you isolate the J and P versions of the story. But the most obvious interpretation of the canonical text is that Rebekah is controlling the events. Portraying Isaac as the master manipulator takes away the dominance Rebekah has been given in the story. Bledstein’s interpretation is just too clever by half.

I believe emphasizing Rebekah’s dominance is the point of the narrative. The entire episode is very reminiscent of the first chapter of 1 Kings where Adonijah, the eldest surviving son of David, has assumed the throne because the dying King has not named a successor. The prophet Nathan and Bathsheba cook up a plan to “remind” David that he had once promised to name Solomon as his successor. David pulls himself together long enough to make his announcement and Adonijah is out. Just as in Gen 27, we see a mother deceive her elderly husband to ensure the fortunes of her younger son over the rival claim of an elder son.

The theme of the younger son being favored over the elder (Abel over Cain, Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Judah over Reuben, Ephraim over Manasseh) is a continuing motif in Genesis and one we will need to explore in more detail in a future article.

[1] Adrien Bledstein "Binder, Trickster, Heel and Hairy-man: Rereading Genesis 27 as a Trickster Tale Told by a Woman" Genesis, A Feminist Companion to the Bible, ed. A. Brenner (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993) 2:282-295

The Evolution of Abraham

Every superhero has an origin story that explains how they got their superpowers or what motivates them. Nations also have origin stories. Israel has more than one origin story.

This seems like a curious claim. Isn’t the Bible the origin story of Israel? Yes, but as we have seen, the Bible has preserved competing traditions.

Competing Origins

The oldest origin story for Israel is the cycle of narratives surrounding Jacob in Gen 25-35. Judging by the historical context, the substance of the Jacob cycle appears to have been written down at the end of the 8th or the beginning of the 7th century BCE. After cheating his older brother of birthright and blessing, Jacob flees to the land of the Arameans, acquires wives and children and livestock, and obtains recognition as his own tribe (Gen 31). The final chapters have Jacob reconciling with his brother and connect him to sacred sites such as Peniel, Shechem and Bethel.

The Jacob cycle is a complete legend of Israel’s origin. On its own, it explains the existence of the twelve tribes and which are the most important, proves their rights to the hill country of central Palestine, recounts the founding of the main sanctuary at Bethel, and so on. But this Israel is not the one we know from other traditions in the Bible. This Israel is not a community of believers nor a warring nation, but a tribe struggling for recognition.

Compare the origin story of Jacob with the better-known origin story of Moses and the Exodus. Moses, too, had to flee to a foreign land where he married the daughter of a desert sheikh, only to finally return to his homeland with a mission. But Moses is not a patriarch, his sons play no role in the formation of Israel. According to the Exodus story, one is not a son of Israel through genealogy but by hearing the call from YHWH through his prophet Moses. Israel’s origins lie not in the tents of Laban, but in Egypt and the desert.

If this theory of competing origin stories sounds highly speculative to you, there is some hard evidence to support it. In chapter 12 of the Book of Hosea (end of 8^th century BCE), the prophet invites his audience to choose between the competing and conflicting legends of origins. Hosea’s challenge closes with this:

Jacob fled to the land of Aram,
there Israel served for a wife,
and for a wife he guarded sheep.

By a prophet YHWH brought Israel up from Egypt,
and by a prophet he was guarded.

Hosea seems to be asking his audience: Who do you want to be? Biological descendants of a scoundrel or a people called by God? He hoped to persuade his audience to choose Moses but, in the end, Israel refused to choose one origin story over the other and kept both.

Abraham: The Promise by Israeli artist Zvi Leonhard (https://zviandariane.com/). God uses the dust of the earth and stars of the heavens as metaphors for descendants beyond measure (Gen 13:16; 15:5)

Growth of the Abraham Legend

Is the Abraham cycle yet another origin story?

First of all, the Abraham cycle is not as old as the Jacob cycle. References to Abraham don’t appear outside Genesis until Ezek 33:23-29 and Is 51:1-3 (both 6^th century). The Ezekiel reference says Abraham came to possess the land. The reference from Isaiah says YHWH blessed Abraham and Sarah and made them parents of multitudes. In both citations we see expressed the dual theme of the Abraham cycle: the land and offspring.

Despite the fact that the references are 6^th century, biblical scholars believe that the origins of the Abraham legend were formed around the same time as the Jacob cycle (8^th-7^th centuries BCE). The core set of narratives (Gen 13; 16; 18-19; and 21:1-4) is centered on Hebron and the sacred oak of Mamre. Abraham (under his original name of “Abram”) has two sons, but only one belongs to Israel. Through Lot, Abraham is also related to the Moabite and Ammonite people. If the Abraham cycle is an origin story, it is not just an origin story of Israel.

Based on the core narratives, Abraham is an indigenous hero of the south. Isaac, too, is a legendary hero of the south, centered around Beersheba. Early on, Isaac was joined to the Abraham cycle as Abraham’s son. What remains of Isaac’s story (Gen 26) and was recast as narratives involving Abraham (Gen 20 and 21:22-34). Outside of Gen 26, Isaac only appears as either a son of Abraham or a father of Jacob.

After the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians in 721 BCE, the survivors brought their national origin story (the Jacob cycle) to the southern kingdom of Judah where it was merged with the combined Abraham-Isaac cycle. During the Babylonian exile, the conjoined Abraham/Jacob cycle of stories was modified to reflect a promise of land because the Israelites were no longer in possession of the land. A Babylonian backstory was provided for Abraham. The divine command that came to Abraham in Ur to go forth to Canaan was a call for the exiles to leave Babylon and return to the promised land.

With the addition of the primeval history and Joseph narrative, Genesis became a prequel to the Exodus story.

The Ecumenical Patriarch

While it may have started as legends of a southern hero, the Abraham cycle evolved into something else. What is his ultimate role in the OT?

One clue can be found in  a curious note (Gen 15:9) made upon the death of Abraham:

His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite, east of Mamre, the field that Abraham purchased from the Hittites.

We thought we had seen the last of Ishmael back in Gen 21:8-21 when he and his mother Hagar had been expelled to the desert. At a story level, the purpose of Ishmael's exile was leave Abraham only one remaining son when God called for a sacrifice (Gen 22). Yet the P source brings Ishmael back into the story as a reminder that Abraham is not only the father of Israel or Judah or the Jews, but is the ancestor of many nations.

According to an interesting article by Albert de Pury, Professor for OT studies at the University of Geneva, Abraham was ultimately seen as an “ecumenical patriarch.” In contrast to other traditions that found their way into the Bible insisting the promised land must be taken from the Canaanites in a war of conquest that ends in the extermination of all the land’s former inhabitants, Abraham is seen as peacefully co-existing with the various Canaanite clans. He is the father of or is closely related to neighboring nations such as the Arabs (Ishmael is the ancestor of the twelve tribes of the Arab federation), the twelve tribes of Israel (through his grandson Jacob), Edomites (through his grandson Esau), Midianites (through his second wife Keturah), and Ammonites and Moabites (through Lot).

De Pury uses the adjective “ecumenical” in the sense of “worldwide or general in extent, influence, or application.” As the father of many nations (Gen 17:5), perhaps a better adjective – although more technical – for Abraham’s role in Genesis would be “transethnic” or “transnational” patriarch.

The more commonly-used meaning of the word “ecumenical” is “of, relating to, or representing the whole of a body of churches.” It is in this sense that the term “ecumenical patriarch” is appropriate for how Abraham is viewed today.  Abraham is venerated by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. If the children of Abraham can focus on him as a symbol of what we have in common rather than what divides us, the world will be a better place.

Hail and Well Met

One of the books that became a major influence on how I approach the Bible is The Art of Biblical Narrative by Robert Alter. A professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, Alter sees the OT with the eyes of a literary critic, subjecting the biblical texts to the kind of critical analysis one might apply to the works of Shakespeare. The texts display literary artistry and are not simply cobbled together from various sources.

In chapter 3 of the book, Alter speaks of something I’ve written about in previous articles, how the same story gets told two or three times, sometimes with the same characters:

Three times a patriarch is driven by famine to a southern region where he pretends that his wife is his sister, narrowly avoids a violation of the conjugal bond by the local ruler, and is sent away with gifts. Twice Hagar flees into the wilderness from Sarah’s hostility and discovers a miraculous well and that story itself seems only a special variation of the recurrent story of bitter rivalry between a barren, favored wife and a fertile co-wife or concubine. That situation, in turn, suggests another oft-told tale in the Bible, of a woman long barren who is vouchsafed a divine promise of progeny, whether by God himself or through a divine messenger or oracle, and who then gives birth to a hero. (p. 49)

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear

Alter provides a modern-day example that particularly stuck with me over the years. Think of the gun-slinging hero in Westerns, able to draw and outshoot the bad guys before they can even pull their triggers. In a similar analogy I used way back when I began my blog five years ago, suppose that centuries from now, only a dozen Western movies have been preserved. In all but one, the hero has such a “hyperreflexive arm”. In the one exception, the hero has a withered arm and has taught himself to shoot from a rifle slung over his back.

Alter imagines that, having studied the surviving samples of 20^th-century Western cinema, future scholars might hypothesize these are all derivations of one original story of a hero with lightning reflexes. The oddball story of the rifleman with a withered arm would be a variant from a different source tradition.

Unlike these imaginary scholars of Western cinema studies, we who have seen untold number of Westerns from the Lone Ranger to Matt Dillon know that the image of the quick-on-the-draw gunfighter is a convention in that genre. When you have a major departure from the convention, the uniqueness tells you something about the character or story. In this case, it might be the hero’s determination to overcome a physical handicap or the rifle provides some advantage over the typical six-shooter.

Alter calls these conventions “type-scenes” and identifies several in the Bible: “the annunciation … of the birth of the hero to his barren mother; the encounter with the future betrothed at a well; the epiphany in the field; the initiatory trial; danger in the desert and the discovery of a well or other form of sustenance; the testament of the dying hero” (p. 51).

Betrothal type-scenes

Alter spends the rest of the chapter discussing a particular convention he calls the “betrothal type-scene” in which the hero of the story meets his future bride at a well in a foreign land. He draws water for the “girl” (how she is usually referenced) who then rushes home bringing news of the stranger. The stranger is invited to a meal, after which the betrothal between the stranger and the girl is finalized. 

I’ll skip over the first betrothal type-scene in Genesis for now and return to it later. In the second example (Gen 29:1-20), Jacob, escaping from his brother’s wrath, arrives at a well in a foreign land. Rachel arrives to water her flock but a large stone covers the well’s mouth. Jacob moves the massive stone and waters her flock. After Jacob informs Rachel that he is her kinsman, she runs to tell her father, Laban. The closed well is a metaphor for Rachel’s closed womb and Jacob’s labor in moving the stone foreshadows the various obstacles he will need to overcome in securing his bride and making his fortune. Stones also feature prominently in the Jacob cycle of stories.

The third example comes from Exodus (2:15b-21) where Moses, escaping from Pharaoh’s wrath in Egypt, arrives by a well in Midian. Zipporah and her six sisters come to water their flock but are driven off from the well by shepherds. Faced not just with an inanimate obstacle but with enemies, Moses drives off the hostile shepherds and waters the flock of Zipporah and her sisters. How Moses rises to the challenge is entirely appropriate for someone who has killed an Egyptian taskmaster, will later face off with Pharaoh to liberate his people, and become Israel’s military commander for the next forty years. That the tale is briefly told is typical of how the Torah doesn’t dwell on Moses’ personal life.

Elizarus and Rebekah at the Well (1670s) byJohann Carl Loth. The name of Abraham's oldest and most-trusted servant isn't given in Gen 24, but earlier in Gen 15:2 Abram laments that without a son, "Eliezer of Damascus" will be his heir.

Rebekah takes charge

Now that we have reviewed a couple of examples, let’s return to the first betrothal type-scene (Gen 24:10-61) and see how it differs from the simpler stories we just examined.

The main difference is that it is Abraham’s servant – instead of Isaac – who travels to the foreign land. The servant showers Rebekah with gifts that her brother is quick to notice. This is revealing of Laban’s grasping nature and why he will later become one of Jacob’s obstacles.

Alter says this is the only example in the Bible of a surrogate meeting the future bride. This is fitting because Isaac is a passive and shadowy figure in Genesis. We last saw him about to be sacrificed at God’s request. He’s not mentioned again until this betrothal episode, and then he only appears at the end to take Rebekah as his wife. Isaac appears in Gen 26 but these are recycled stories (wife-sister, treaty with Abimelech, dispute over wells, and origin of the name of Beersheba) from the Abraham cycle. Isaac plays a part in Gen 27 in which Jacob steals his blessing from Esau, but by then Isaac is old and blind.

The other major departure is that Rebekah draws water for the stranger (= the servant) instead of the other way around. The number of actions (11 verbs in the four verses of vv. 16-20) Rebekah takes (drawing water, filling her jar, pouring, giving drink, etc.) are emblematic of the dominant role she later plays (taking, cooking, dressing, giving) in the story of securing the blessing for her favored son, Jacob (Gen 27). As the most-controlling of all the matriarchs, it is appropriate that she dominates her betrothal scene.

Jesus the Bridegroom

Being a professor of Hebrew literature, Robert Alter limits his analysis to the OT. But if we include the NT, we see something that looks like a betrothal type-scene in the story of Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:1-42. Once again we have a stranger (Jesus) in a foreign land (Samaria) who is sitting beside Jacob’s well about noon when a Samaritan woman arrives to draw water. A conversation ensues, after which the woman leaves her water jar behind and returns to the city to inform its citizens of the stranger she just met. Moved by her testimony, they invite Jesus to stay with them for a couple of days.

A major difference in this version is that, instead of a maiden, we have a five-times married woman. There is no actual exchange of water, although the subject of water is the lynchpin of the dialogue that ensues in which Jesus contrasts the stagnant water of the well with his living water (the gift he has to offer). The episode ends not with a betrothal contract but with the townsfolk coming to believe in Jesus.

Understanding the literary conventions puts the modern reader of the Bible in the mind of the originally intended audience. When we watch a Western and see the hero face off with the bad guy on a dusty street in front of a saloon, we expect a shootout. Similarly, when the ancient audience saw the hero arrive at a well in a foreign land, they expected he would meet his future wife there. Knowing how the scene is supposed to play out, the audience – modern or ancient – revels in any twists from the standard convention. As the saying goes, “God is in the details.”

Abraham Unbound

In the Jewish tradition, Genesis 22:1-19 is referred to as the Akedah (ah-kay-DAH), or “binding” of Isaac. Christians will usually refer to it as the sacrifice of Isaac or even the testing of Abraham.

In this powerful story, God orders Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac as a burnt offering. Along with servants, they travel three days from Beersheba to the land of Moriah, the place of sacrifice. At the moment Abraham is ready to plunge a knife into Isaac, an angel calls out to him to stay his hand and a ram caught by its horns in a nearby thicket is substituted for Isaac. Jews remember this story on Rosh Hashanah when the ram’s horn (shofar) is blown. The shofar represents the ram substituted for Isaac and reminds God of his promise to bestow blessings upon Abraham and his descendants.

Christians view the story as a foreshadowing of the Passion narratives. Isaac is a precursor to Christ, the beloved Son offered as a sacrifice by the Father. The story was allegorized: Isaac carried the wood for the sacrifice just as Jesus carried his cross, the journey to Moriah took three days and Jesus spent three days in the tomb, etc. In this accounting, Jesus was the perfect sacrifice because he actually suffered and died, whereas Isaac was released and a ram substituted.

The Land or Hill of Moriah?

Where is the place of sacrifice, “the land of Moriah”? Moriah is only mentioned in one other place in the Bible. In 2 Chr 3:1, Solomon built the Temple on “Mount Moriah”. The same verse identifies Mount Moriah as the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite (called Araunah the Jebusite in 2 Sam 24). Connecting these two references to “Moriah”, Jewish tradition saw the sacrifice of Isaac as a precursor of all the sacrifices to come later once the Temple was built.

Scholars are dubious that the two references to “Moriah” identify the same place. Gen 22 refers to a general area – the “land of Moriah” – but Chronicles refers to a specific hill called “Mount Moriah” which became known as the Temple Mount. Furthermore, Jerusalem is in a wooded area and it would have been unnecessary to load firewood on Isaac’s back since it could be acquired on-site.

There are two theories to explain the mismatch. The first theory is that the reference to the land of Moriah in Gen 22 was original and the Chronicler appropriated the name to associate the Temple Mount with the site of Isaac’s aborted sacrifice. But if this were the case, one suspects that the Chronicler would have made the connection more obvious. The second theory is that the Temple Mount was originally called Mount Moriah and the actual location in Gen 22 was suppressed and replaced with the name Moriah to link Abraham with the future site of the temple. This theory appears more likely to me.

Sacrifice of Isaac (1635) by Rembrandt (1606-1669) captures the dramatic moment when an angel stays Abraham’s hand. Note how Abraham’s left hand covers Isaac’s face and the look of amazement on Abraham’s face bordering on madness.

Would God Order the Sacrifice of Isaac?

The traditional understanding of the Akedah is that God never intended for Abraham to slaughter Isaac but was testing his faith. By trusting in God and not withholding his son, Abraham demonstrated his fear of God. Abraham is praised for being prepared to do whatever God asks, even at great personal cost. Some interpreters take it further and claim the story is a polemic against child sacrifice: God is demonstrating to Abraham that he will never ask a parent to murder their own child as an offering.

I don’t agree that the narrative is intended as a condemnation of the idea of child sacrifice. Even if God never intended for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, when asked to do it Abraham didn’t argue with God over the justice of killing an innocent the way he did when told about the impending destruction of Sodom. Any interpretation of Abraham’s actions needs to begin with the understanding that a deity’s demand for a child sacrifice was not an absurd or unusual request in ancient times. It is not surprising that Abraham accepted God’s command without question.

Certainly, from our vantage point, it seems unusually cruel for God to put Abraham through the mental anguish of preparing to sacrifice his own son, only to stop him at the last moment. But the biblical authors didn’t think in those terms. If they weren’t bothered by physical torture (see the instruction to Hagar to return to beatings at the hand of Sarah), the idea of psychological torture certainly wouldn’t have crossed their minds.

Divine Intervention?

Some commentators have suggested that, in the original telling of the story, Abraham completed his sacrifice of Isaac. They point to v. 19 which reads that Abraham – and not Abraham and Isaac – returned to his servants and they then journeyed home to Beersheba. Could this be a clue to how the original story went? According to this theory, later editors subsequently covered this up by the introduction of the angelic messenger who stayed Abraham’s hand in vv. 11-12. Evidence these verses might be a later addition is how they refer to “the angel of YHWH” while the rest of the narrative (except for v. 14 which might be another addition) uses God (= Elohim) as the name of the deity. The ram caught in the thicket in v. 13 would also have been invented as a replacement for Isaac’s aborted sacrifice.

The main problem I have with this theory is that Isaac would then be dead. What happens to the promise then? As we have seen, up to this point the promise of land and descendants to inherit the land are major running themes in the Abraham cycle. Praising Abraham for sacrificing his son while promising to make his offspring as numerous as the stars would really be rubbing salt in the wound. Killing off Isaac would necessitate the introduction of a new heir to fulfill the promise.

A third interpretation keeps the ram as part of the original story but rejects the idea Abraham completed the sacrifice. Following the logic above, YHWH’s messenger in vv. 11-12 is still considered a later interpolation. The text would then have flowed from v. 10 to v. 13: “Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son, but then he looked up and saw a ram…and offered it up instead of his son.” If this preserves the original narrative, then Abraham would have considered the trapped ram a sign that God wanted him to sacrifice it instead of his son. Later redactors, possibly bothered by the idea that Abraham would disobey a divine order, introduced YHWH’s messenger to provide divine sanction for the substitution.

Troubling Questions for Today

What difference does it make how we understand the Akedah? I’ll answer that with a question: If Abraham had completed the sacrifice of Isaac, would he still be considered the exemplar of a righteous man, the father of faith? After all, he was just following orders. Orders from God, in this case. Aren’t we supposed to follow the divine will, not our own?

This train of thought is not assuaged by the intervention of YHWH’s messenger because that still implies Abraham was ready to kill Isaac following God’s mandate until he was stopped in the act. Yes, God stayed his hand once Abraham had proved that he was prepared to go through with the sacrifice. But is Abraham a righteous man simply because he was stopped a moment before slaughtering his own innocent son? 

It is only in the scenario where there was no divine messenger do we have some glimmer that maybe Abraham was looking for a way out of his predicament, that he wasn’t really fully prepared to slaughter his son. In this scenario, we could consider Abraham to be a human being with parental affections similar to our own and not a mindless robot carrying out divine instructions. A man who, in the final analysis, chose the life of his son over blindly following the dictates of what he perceived to be God’s will is someone we might find worthy of emulating today.

The Ages of Man

Among the many unbelievable aspects of Genesis (creation in six days, talking snakes, global flood, etc.) are the incredible lifespans. Prior to the flood, the lifespans are just shy of 1000 years. In Gen 6:3, YHWH sets a limit of 120 years but that seems more of a goal than a limit because descendants of Noah continued to live for hundreds of years, although the lifespans decreased with every pasing generation (see Gen 11:10-32). The genealogies document a devolution from the golden age of God’s original creation.

In Genesis, the genealogies and chronologies come from the P source. The non-P sources rarely provide any sort of genealogy and never mention ages. But when you combine the two sources together, the combination raises some narrative oddities.

Putting the Sexy in Sexagenarian

I’ve already discussed the stories (Gen 12 and Gen 20) of Abraham passing off his wife Sarah as his sister. When these stories are given context by the P chronology, it casts them in a different light.

Gen 12 takes place some time after Abraham arrives in Canaan. According to the P source, this happened when he was 75 years old and Sarah is 10 years younger than Abraham. This means that when Abraham feared that pharaoh would kill him to take Sarah as his wife because of her great beauty, he was talking about a woman in her late 60s.

Gen 20 takes place in the year before Isaac’s birth. Isaac was born when Abraham was 100 years old (Gen 21:5). Abimelech of Gerar, therefore, is supposed to have taken a pregnant 90-year-old woman into his harem. She must really have been a beauty for Abimelech to ignore the obvious drawbacks.

The Expelled Handmaid

Hagar’s story in Gen 21:8-20 is a parallel narrative to her story in Gen 16, previously discussed. In both stories, the deity finds Hagar wandering in the wilderness and announces her son will become a great nation. Because the deity is referred to as YHWH in Gen 16 and Elohim in Gen 21, the Gen 16 version is attributed to the J source and the Gen 21 parallel is attributed to the E source.

Gen 21:8-20 takes place after Sarah has given birth to Isaac. At the feast to celebrate Isaac’s weaning, Sarah sees Ishmael playing with Isaac and grows jealous thinking that Ishmael will inherit alongside Isaac. She demands that Abraham get rid of the boy and his mother.

In Gen 16:16 we are told that Abram was 86 years old when Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. Since Abraham was 100 years old at the birth to Isaac, by simple arithmetic Ishmael is 14 years at the time of Isaac’s birth. He’s well into his teenage years by the time of Isaac’s weaning feast.

Abraham is reluctant to expel Ishmael because he is his son after all, but God tells him it will be okay. With the divine reassurance, Abraham gives Hagar some bread and water and sends her off into the desert with Ishmael. In no time, the water is gone and she and the boy prepare to die. God hears their cry, gives Hagar the encouragement that Ishmael will become a great nation, and she sees a life-saving well of water.

Reading this narrative in isolation, Ishmael does not appear to be a teenager of 16 or more years. At that age, he should be able to fend for himself yet he is completely passive, totally dependent on Hagar. In the isolated story, Ishmael is treated as a small child and that is how artists through the centuries have portrayed him. Only when you marry the story to P’s chronology do you get the cognitive dissonance of a teenager in the role of a small child.

Hagar in the Wilderness by Camille Corot (1796-1875). This represents about 1/12 of the entire painting which is more of a landscape study.

Repeats and Reboots

In case you haven’t noticed, at this point Genesis is well into the rerun season. The wife/sister story of Gen 20 is another version of the one in Gen 12 and Hagar’s encounter with God in Gen 21 is an alternate version of Gen 16. The only portion of these two chapters that isn’t recycled is Gen 21:22-34 which provides an origin story for the site of Beersheba. The Hebrew word sheba’ sounds similar to shwebaa’ (= “seven”) and shebu’ah (= “swear”), so the story describes an oath between Abraham and Abimelech involving seven ewe lambs.

An alternative origin story for Beersheba will be told in Gen 26:17-33.  This narrative involves digging multiple wells and ends with an oath between Isaac and Abimelech of Gerar. If Gen 20 and 21 are reruns of the wife/sister and Hagar stories associated with Abraham, then Gen 26 (wife/sister and Beersheba origin) is more like a reboot featuring Isaac as the protagonist in the same situations that Abraham faced.

Isaac’s version of the wife/sister narrative in Gen 26:1-11 supposedly takes place after death of Abraham at age 175 (recounted in Gen 25:7-11) and the birth of Esau and Jacob when Isaac was 60 (Gen 25:19-26). Which would mean that when Isaac passes off Rebekah as his sister, he must have also passed off Esau and Jacob as his nephews.

Live Long and Prosper

Now, according to the P chronology, Isaac was born when Abraham was 100 and Isaac was 60 when his twins were born. This would mean that Abraham died when his grandsons Esau and Jacob were teenagers.

But in Gen 24, the aged Abraham sends off his servant to find a bride for Isaac. You are led to think that Abraham is at death’s door and wants to see Isaac married to someone from the “old country” before he dies. But according to the P chronology, Abraham is “only” 140 years old and has another 35 years ahead of him. Thirty-five years in which he will take another wife named Keturah and have six more sons (Gen 25:1-6). Seems like Abraham is still pretty spry for an old guy.

Something similar happens with Isaac. Old and blind, he wishes to impart his blessing to his Esau before he dies (Gen 27:1-4). When Jacob cheats Esau out of the birthright, Esau plans to kill Jacob once Isaac has died and the period of mourning is over (Gen 27:41). He’s going to have a long wait, because P’s chronology has Isaac living another 80 years (Gen 35:27-29). Using this chronology, Isaac would still have been alive at the time Jacob’s son Joseph was sold into Egypt. That’s wild!

The phenomenal ages given in the P source play havoc with the narrative arc. Much like a monarch, the patriarch is the tribal leader for life. Abraham has to die before Isaac can become the patriarch and Isaac must die before Jacob can take over. And this is exactly how the J narrative plays out. It’s only when you combine the J narratives with the P chronology that you end up with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as contemporaries.

Stop Me If You've Heard This Before

The Bible is repetitious at times, replaying themes, scenes, and sometimes entire sentences. For example, chapter 17 of Genesis repeats themes found elsewhere in Genesis, both in previous chapters and in chapters yet to come:

• Promises of land and numerous descendants are also made in chapters 13 and 15.
• A covenant between God and Abraham is also established in Gen 15.
• Isaac’s birth is also announced in Gen 18.
• References to laughter also appear in Gen 18 and 20.
• The renaming of Abram and Sarai is similar to renaming Jacob to Israel (Gen 32:29 and 35:10).
• El Shaddai is another name for God to go along with El Elyon (14:18-20) and El Roi (16:13).

The only originality is the establishment of circumcision as a sign of the covenant.

P Source and Exilic Themes

Gen 17 is clearly from the P source and combines the annunciation of Isaac’s birth with the establishment of circumcision as a sign of the covenant between God and Abraham’s descendants.

Scholars date the compilation of the P source to the time of the Babylonian exile, after the fall of Jerusalem. This is a time when the former inhabitants of Judah have lost their land and their temple. They face the possibility that they will also lose their identity as a people. A reminder that the land was given to Abraham and his descendants as part of an everlasting covenant would be assurance they would once again return to their home. That God had also promised Abraham his descendants would be made into a great nation would comfort those who feared that God had abandoned them.

In Gen 15, the covenant was established in a ceremony similar to one known in the last days of Judah, before the fall of Jerusalem. In Gen 17, circumcision was established as the sign of the covenant between God and Abraham’s descendants. Circumcision wasn’t unique to Israel; it was a common practice in the ANE (for example, Egyptians were circumcised). Only during the Babylonian captivity when the exiles came in contact with those who did not practice circumcision did it separate Israel from the other nations. The goal of the Priestly author in this chapter is to ground circumcision in the covenant made with Abraham, turning it into a sign that one belonged to YHWH.

Not an actual photograph of Abraham laughing when he hears that he will father a son at age 100. 

Who’s Laughing Now?

In both Gen 17 and 18, Abraham is told that Sarah will give birth to a son within a year’s time. Sarah is surprised to hear that she will give birth in Gen 18. Since Abraham was told the exact same thing in Gen 17, the only way she could be surprised is if Abraham never shared with her the revelation he was given. This is a good clue that these annunciations come from separate sources. Gen 18 is usually attributed to the J source.

The announcement that an elderly Sarah will bear a child in a year’s time causes a humorous reaction in both sources. In Gen 17:17, it is Abraham who fell on his face and laughed. In Gen 18:12, it is Sarah who laughed to herself. After the birth of Isaac in Gen 21, Sarah says that everyone will now laugh with her.

The Hebrew Bible loves puns and wordplay. Unfortunately, that is mostly lost in translation. In English translations, the name of Abraham’s son appears as Isaac, but the Hebrew is Yitzchak. The name derives from the verb tzachak meaning “to laugh”. The name Yitzchak, therefore, means “he laughs”.

English readers could get a better sense of the wordplay if we translate it as “chuckles”:

Then Abraham fell on his face and chuckled, and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” … God said, “No, but your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Chuckles. (Gen 17:17-19*) 

Abraham gave the name Chuckles to his son whom Sarah bore him … Now Sarah said, “God has brought chuckles for me; everyone who hears will chuckle with me.” (Gen 21:3-6*)

But we also see a pun on Isaac’s name. Yitzchak sounds very much like metzchak (= playing). It could be “playing” as in the activities of children or “playing” as in the sexual foreplay of adults. We see both examples of that.

In Gen 21:9 Sarah is angry when she sees the older Ishmael playing with her son Isaac. In Gen 26:8, King Abimelech of the Philistines knows that Isaac lied to him when he looks out his window and sees Isaac playing with Rebekah.

The Death of Innocents

There is also a parallelism between the visit of Abraham’s three guests in Gen 18:1-15 and Lot’s two guests in Gen 19:1-3, 12-13. After being served refreshments, Abraham’s three guests give him the good news that he and Sarah will have a child together while Lot’s two visitors bring him the bad news that his city of Sodom is about to be destroyed.

One of Abraham’s visitors – revealed to be YHWH – also informs Abraham of the fate of Sodom. The passage that follows (Gen 18:17-33) is usually summarized as “Abraham intervenes on behalf of Sodom” or “Abraham bargains for Sodom”. But that’s not quite right. Abraham doesn’t try to talk YHWH out of destroying Sodom, nor does he try to haggle down the number of people to be exterminated.

Instead, what Abraham does is clarify what YHWY’s justice means. YHWH confirms that if there are only ten just people in Sodom he will not destroy the city for the sake of those ten. YHWH’s justice demands that he not wipe out the good with the wicked.

YHWH’s justice here seems out of place with the rest of the OT. Certainly there were some innocent Egyptians who didn’t deserve to have their firstborn killed. And it is hard to believe that all Canaanites were wicked and thus deserving of extermination by Joshua’s armies. For much of the OT, YHWH seems unconcerned about collateral damage.

Many biblical commentators think this passage shows theological development more suited to the exilic period. Ezek 14:12-20 (dating to the Babylonian captivity) is very similar to this passage. If YHWH decides to destroy a land due to its wickedness and Noah, Daniel, and Job lived there, the destruction would still be carried out, but the three righteous men would be saved. Perhaps the experience of living through a catastrophe brought about some reflection on the question of whether it is truly just for the good to suffer alongside the bad.

In closing, I’m reminded of a Facebook conversation one of my friends had with his right-wing brother-in-law this past week. In the brother-in-law’s opinion, the United States would be entirely justified in leveling Tehran to end terrorism. My friend pointed out Tehran’s population is close to nine million and there must surely be innocents among them. The brother-in-law’s response was, “The first rule of war is innocents die.”

When my friend showed me this, my comment was that while it is an unfortunate fact that in war innocents do die, it should not be a goal. The same applies to God. “Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?” (Gen 18:25)

Take My Wife -- Please

Abraham is renowned in the Bible for being a man of faith. Maybe that’s how he ended up, but he certainly didn’t start off that way.

Abram Goes Down to Egypt

The first time we see Abraham – then named Abram – in action is Gen 12:10-20 and it’s not exactly edifying Prefiguring what will happen later in Genesis and Exodus, a famine hits the land of Canaan and Abram goes down to Egypt. Because his wife Sarai is so beautiful, Abram fears he will be killed for her. But if he announces she is his sister; instead of being killed, Abram will get the bride price for her. The plan works. Pharaoh brings Sarai into his harem and rewards Abram with much livestock (including camels) and slaves. YHWH afflicts Pharaoh and his household with plagues on behalf of Sarai. Learning of the ruse, Pharaoh expels Abram and Sarai.

The story is rather unsettling on many levels. Many modern interpreters view the passage as illustrating Abram’s lack of trust in YHWH. Despite having been promised earlier in 12:1-9 that YHWH would make him into a great nation, Abram thought he needed to take matters into his own hands to protect YHWH’s promise. But by endangering Sarai he put the promise in jeopardy and YHWH had to bail him out by punishing the Egyptians.  

An older view is that Abram did nothing wrong. He knew Egypt was a land of evil-doers and there’s nothing wrong with deceiving people who would try to do you harm. In fact, Abram turned the situation to his advantage. Instead of being killed, he walked away much wealthier. Abram is not condemned for what he did but the Egyptians are certainly punished for abducting Sarai.

Sarai is Taken to Pharoah’s Palace by James Tissot (1836-1902) [courtesy: Wikimedia Commons]

Because It Worked So Well the First Time…

You would have thought he had learned his lesson the first time, but amazingly Abram pulls the same stunt again in Gen 20.

In that passage, Abram – now called Abraham – finds himself in Gerar, in Canaan. Again, he passes off his wife – now called Sarah – as his wife and Abimelech, the king of Gerar, takes her. Unlike the previous version of the story, we are told that God prevents Abimelech from touching her. Later we learn there is a plague of infertility throughout the land (a plague of impotence, perhaps?). God (not YHWH) appears to Abimelech in a dream, sentences him to die, and Abimelech defends his innocence. God agrees. Abimelech demands an explanation from Abraham, returns Sarah to him, and gives him money to restore her honor. Abraham prays on behalf of Abimelech and God lifts the plague.

In this story, it is clear that Abimelech is a god-fearing man. He is horrified to learn that he had unwittingly taken another man’s wife (“I did this in the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands”). He’s also outraged at Abraham’s deception (“What were you thinking?”). Abraham’s pathetic defense is that Sarah is his half-sister, so he wasn’t telling a complete falsehood, just leaving out an important bit of information (in Catholic theology, this would be referred to as a “mental reservation”).

In the lengthy dialogues between God and Abimelech and Abimelech and Abraham, the biblical author of this passage is making it clear that Abraham is the guilty party, even if the outcome was to his benefit.

And, just to prove the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, in Gen 26:1-11 Abraham’s son Isaac pulls the exact same ruse when he tries to pass off his wife Rebekah as his sister with King Abimelech of the Philistines in Gerar. Seriously.

Multiple Versions, Multiple Sources

One possible explanation for multiple versions of essentially the same story is that we are dealing with multiple sources. Gen 26 explicitly references Gen 12 (this famine is different from that of Abraham, “do not go down to Egypt”), but is completely unaware of Gen 20 (does not try to explain why Abimelech fell for the trick again). Gen 12 and 26 mostly use the name YHWH in reference to the deity whereas Gen 20 uses Elohim (God). Gen 20 also has the motifs of God appearing in a dream, “fearing God”, and Abraham as a prophet. The character of Abimelech is tied to parallel narratives (in Gen 21 with Abraham and 26 with Isaac) describing how Beer-sheba got its name.

Based on these indicators, Gen 12 and 26 are usually attributed to the same source (J) while Gen 20 is attributed to a second source. This particular source is called the Elohist (E) because it refers to God as Elohim prior to Exodus. Other hallmarks of the Elohist source are God appearing in dreams, the need to “fear God”, and the establishment of prophetic authority.

If two sources are involved, it is not surprising that we have two versions (doublets) of essentially the same story. There are many examples of this in Genesis. What is surprising, however, is that we have doublets (Gen 12 and 26) within the same source.

Although Gen 12 and 26 apparently come from the same source, they do not appear to come from the same time. Of the two, Gen 12 is the more archaic. As we saw earlier, through his quick-thinking, Abram turns a bad situation into a money-making opportunity. The patriarchal narratives are rife with characters who use deception to advance in the world.

But the version that appears in Gen 26 seems from a later time. In this version, Abimelech is very much the innocent party; he does not take Rebekah into his house. Had he not spied Isaac and Rebekah making a very public display of affection, Abimelech would not even have been aware of their deception. Unlike the other versions of this narrative, God is not involved, neither to plague the kings nor to inform them of the deception.

What About Sarah?

Lost in all of the focus on Abraham is Sarah. A 2015 article from Christianity Today titled “David Was a Rapist, Abraham Was a Sex Trafficker” gets to the heart of the matter: Abraham profited by pimping out his wife. The utilitarian argument could be made that Sarah would have been abducted whether or not Abraham told the truth, so his lie saved his life and made him richer. But what exactly was the rest of the plan? Had God not intervened, what would have happened to Sarah? Would Abraham ever have been able to reclaim her?

Typically, when a king wants to make an alliance with another king, he will give one of his daughters in marriage to seal the deal. The author of Genesis wants to portray Abraham or Isaac as the equivalent of a king, even though they were more akin to tribal chief or sheik. But neither Abraham nor Isaac had daughters that could be married off, therefore the need to pass off their wife as their sister. The sources seem bound to the story-telling convention of a kingly alliance but had to contort it to take account of the daughterless patriarchs, no matter how nonsensical the resulting tale became. (For comparison, Jacob did have a daughter to bargain with the king of Shechem in Gen 34 but that didn’t turn out so well.)

One could say that I’m inappropriately applying 21^st century concepts of women’s personhood and agency to a culture that saw women as the property of men. But if my reading of the variations in the stories are correct, the idea that Abraham would sell Sarah to some foreign potentate bothered the authors three millennia ago. This uneasiness with the patriarchs’ deception may have been due to the development of law codes around adultery and perjury in a legal system that simply did not exist when the original narrative first circulated in an oral tradition.

Opening Up the Bible

The varying nuances and interpretations for odd stories like the wife-sister triplets are one of the reasons why I love a critical approach to studying the Bible. If you believe that the wife-sister stories happened exactly as reported, then you are limited to thinking Abraham was either devious or lacking in faith. He was also very reckless to try his ruse a second time and Abimelech was foolish not to suspect Isaac was pulling the same scam.

However, if you accept a critical approach to understanding the Bible, new avenues of interpretation open up to you. You can explore the possibility of multiple sources or a literary variation on the standard alliance-through-marriage narrative. Why is the author repeating essentially the same story multiple times? What is he trying to say by slightly varying the narrative each time? Can the story be better understood by looking at what happened immediately prior to it or does it shed light on what is to come?

Once you open up the world of the Bible, the Bible opens up for you.

Foolish Galatians

Here in the United States we’re in the middle of a presidential election year, with candidates doing their best to win over as many voters as possible. In a sense, a political campaign is not that different from how 1st century Christian missionaries tried to win over Jew and Gentile converts to their particular interpretations of Christianity.

In a contemporary political campaign, when one candidate critiques the positions of their opponent, the audience is familiar with what the opponent has said or done. But when it comes to Paul defending his ministry against his opponents, such as the Judaizers in Galatians, we only hear one side of the story. We have to reconstruct the opposing viewpoint from how Paul argues against it in his letters. And, just as a modern politician tends to twist their opponent’s position, you can be sure that Paul is giving his audience neither a complete nor a generous interpretation of the Judaizers’ position.

Arguments Against the Judaizers

The core of Paul’s refutation of the Judaizers in Galatians lies in chapters 3 and 4. A key argument is an experiential one: the Galatians received the Spirit without doing works of the Law, so how can doing works of the Law be necessary for justification (3:1-5):? Prior to receiving the gospel, the Galatians were enslaved to the “elemental spirits of the world.” Faith in God’s son redeemed them from their slavery and made them adopted children of God. How can the Galatians return to slavery (4:1-9)?

Paul also relied on Scripture to refute the Judaizers: God promised Abraham, a man whose faith was reckoned as righteousness (Gen 15:5-6), that through his offspring all the nations would be blessed (Gen 22:18). They will be blessed not because they are circumcised, but because they believed, like Abraham did. And this promise to Abraham was made 430 years prior to the Law being given to Moses, so how can it be contingent on observing the law (Gal 3:6-18)?

The Allegory of Sarah and Hagar

Paul cites the story from Genesis of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, but says the Judaizers have misinterpreted it. This requires a little explanation. In Genesis 16 Sarah, seeing that she was childless, gave her Egyptian slave-girl Hagar to Abraham as a concubine. Hagar conceived but became contemptuous of Sarah, who then mistreated her to the point that Hagar ran away. But YHWH found Hagar by a spring of water in the wilderness and told her to return, later giving birth to Ishmael. In Genesis 21:8-21, Hagar is again driven off into the wilderness where God intervenes once more to save the life of mother and child.

Hagar and Ishmael Banished by Abraham (1781) by Flemish painter Pieter-Jozef Verhaghen

As well as we can reconstruct it, the Judaizers’ argument was that Abraham had two children, one (Isaac) the son of the free woman Sarah, the other (Ishmael) the son of the slave-girl Hagar. Jews are the descendants of Isaac and Gentiles are the descendants of Ishmael, so both Jew and Gentile are children of Abraham. But the Jews are the true children of Abraham because, like him, they practice circumcision and observe the Sabbath and other feasts. As the Messiah, Jesus offers Gentiles the opportunity to share in God’s promise of blessings to Abraham’s descendants. All they have to do is accept circumcision and observe the Mosaic Law.

Paul interprets the story of Sarah and Hagar as an allegory (Gal 4:21-31). The child of the slave woman (Hagar) is born according to the flesh and the child of the free woman (Sarah) is born according to the promise. The descendants of Hagar are not the Gentiles but the Jews, for they are enslaved to the Law. The descendants of Sarah are those born according to the Spirit, in freedom. Sarah had Abraham drive out Hagar because she did not want the child of the slave to share Abraham's inheritance. Thus Paul makes a subtle suggestion that the Galatians are to drive out the Judaizers.

Such an allegorical interpretation of Scripture was once popular, but has been out of favor since the Middle Ages. It’s not hard to see why. There are simply no controls to the interpreter’s imagination. Are Jews the children of the free woman or the slave woman? As you can see, this approach allows for diametrically opposed interpretations of the same biblical passage. How can someone possibly judge which of these allegorical interpretations is correct?

It’s not entirely an academic question. Paul is trying to refute those who would impose the Mosaic Law on Gentiles. From his perspective, the Judaizers are trying to enslave his Christian converts. But to say Paul is denigrating Judaism as a religion that enslaves people is to completely misinterpret Paul. That’s exactly what the 2nd c. theologian Marcion did, concluding that the God of the OT was incompatible with the teachings of Jesus. Anti-semites down through the centuries have also used Paul to justify their prejudice.

Abraham vs. Jesus

The Judaizers’ elevated focus on Abraham and Law caused Paul to reflect on the role of Jesus and “the Law of Christ” which he defines as “faith working through love” (Gal 5:6). It is the love of Christ “who loved me and gave himself for me” that now lives in Paul (2:20). The magnitude of Christ’s love is his self-sacrifice on the cross (a death, by the way, that is condemned by the Law [3:13]).

The Christian is freed from obedience to the Law but that does not mean – contrary to what the Judaizers might say – that Christians are free to indulge the desires of the flesh (5:16-21). The works of the flesh lead to destruction of the individual and the community, but the fruit of the Spirit lead to building up the individual and the community (5:22-26). Use your freedom to become slaves to one another (5:13) because it is only by bearing one another’s burdens that one fulfills the Law of Christ (6:2). Christ himself said that the whole Law could be summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Did Paul’s letter bring the Galatians round to his side again? His letter was preserved, so at least some in Galatia thought his writing was worth keeping and sharing with other churches. Galatians served as a rough draft for Paul’s letter introducing himself to the churches in Rome, where he was able to expound on his theological ideas of justification by faith. Both Galatians and Romans would inspire Luther to develop his doctrine of sola fide (justification by faith alone).

Maybe Paul was misunderstood in his own time, but his writings have continued to inspire Christians throughout the centuries.