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Lech Lecha

Cheshvan 5767 (Nov. 2006)

Abraham, the First Patriarch

by

Miriam Ben-Yaacov

A new creation

And to Abram YKVK  said:  “Go for yourself, and of your country, from your birthplace and from the house of your father, to the land which shall show you.  I will make of you a great nation and I will bless, and I wish to make you name great; you, become a blessing!  I wish to bless those who bless you, and whoever brings a curse upon you I will curse, and all the families of the earth shall be blessed through you.”—Genesis 12:1-3

In the beginning Gd created the earth and Adam with a specific plan.  When He preserved Noah through the Flood, He again created the world with that same idea for Mankind.  The balance between good and evil after each of those creation events shifted away from His will, and the generations before the Flood and then right after became increasingly corrupt.  In the case of Noah, the decision of Gd was destruction and a new beginning.  After Noah, He took a new direction.  It is interesting to note the span in generations.  There were ten generations between Adam and Noah, and there were ten generations between Noah and Abram—this pattern of promise then follows into the future.

This new direction was the creation of a nation that was meant to be blessing to all the other nations as a vessel of the Law of Gd.  In order for this to come about, Abram was called out of the society in which he lived.  During the building of the Tower of Babel, Abram, along with Noah and Shem, was one of the dissenters.  The whole family moved to Haran, where Abram converted many souls to the rightness of the Noahide Laws.  As important as that was, Gd’s plan for him was more far-reaching.  Abram had to go into an isolation from the influences of the societies in the known world, as much for the insulation of those souls as for the development of the new thing Gd was creating through him.  He was told to go to a place he would be shown, so he chose to go to the land of Canaan. 

Abram and Lot
While still in Chaldea, Nimrod demanded that Abram acknowledge him as a god.  When Abram refused, he was thrown into a fiery furnace.  His brother, Haran, had thought to side with Abram if he survived, but if not, with Nimrod.  When Abram came out of the furnace alive, he declared that Abram’s belief in the One Gd was true.  Haran, however, did not survive the furnace. 

When Abram left Chaldea, and then Haran, he took his brother’s son, Lot, with him.  In spite of the time spent with Abram, however, Lot did not come to his depth of faith.  When Abram gave him the choice of the land, he chose to go to the lush valley, where Sodom and Gomorrah were.  Abram was 75 years old when he first went to the Land and received the promise of the Land for his seed.  After the years of sojourning, Lot, may probably felt he was the heir apparent, seems to have lost hope and decided to make his own fortune.  It is interesting to note that right after Lot’s departure that Gd reiterates the promise to Abram, showing him the Land  (13:14-17)—as He had told him to go to a land He would show him (12:1).  He had to let go of one more link to his past for the promise of Gd to come into fruition.

Melchizedek
One reason Abram chose to journey to the land of Canaan was that Melchizedek lived there.  This was Noah’s son, Shem, who carried forth the righteous teachings of Noah and Adam.  At the time, each city’s ruler was called a king, but Melchizedek seems to have been the only righteous one in the area.  After the battle with the kings that had carried off the people of Sodom, including Lot, Abram gave a tenth of the spoils of victory to Melchizedek, king of Salem.  This is the first time tithing is mentioned in the Torah; it was acknowledgement that his victory was given to him by the Most High Gd.  The idea of honoring father and mother, while not mentioned in the Seven Noahide Laws, was demonstrated through the actions of Shem and Japheth.  So too, tithing is a principle whose virtue is seen as established through the actions of Abram at Salem. 

Covenant between the pieces
After the war with the kings, Abram knew he was capable to conquering the Land militarily.  He did not want to do so, though, unless that was in the will of Hashem.  It was as much in that vein of thought as in his awareness of his advanced age that he asked:  “Whereby will I know that I am to take possession of it?” (15:8).  He was told:  “Bring Me three time a female calf and three times a goat and three times a ram and a turtle-dove and a young pigeon” (15:9).  This is one of the most famous of all sacrifices.  Like that of Noah, it was on behalf of future generations, symbolizing the various sectors of the people through the components of the sacrifice.  The “three times” was the three generations that would suffer in slavery before the fourth one would be redeemed.  The heifer represented yet developing energy in a species working in the service of his master. The goat, among the species of sheep—true pasture animals—widely used metaphorically to represent the relationship of men to Gd, represented the strong, resistant character that is only tractable to its master.  The ram represented the man of property, one of privilege and status. The dove represented that sector of Israel that is weak and defenseless, yet free and happy. 

And He said to Abram:  “You shall surely know that your seed shall be a stranger in a land not theirs; they will serve them, and they will torment them for four hundred years….” –Genesis 15:13  

The dismembered ram symbolized their alien status, without rights and privileges.  The dismembered heifer symbolized their energy broken through slavery.  The dismembered goat symbolized their torment, as their resistance was broken.  Each of the halves was carefully laid opposite the other, symbolizing the potential of coming back together again.  The bird, not split, symbolized the unbroken hope of taking flight—of Redemption.  For He promised:  “The fourth generation will return to this place, because the iniquity of the Emorites is not yet complete.” (15:16) 

Sarah

At the time of the covenant of the brit milah, when Abram’s name was changed, his wife’s name, too, was changed to Sarah.  Until that time she was called Sarai.  She was the ideal partner for Abraham.  In all his endeavors, she actively took part.  Her attachment to Hashem was as strong as his own, and this made her exceptional physical beauty all the more stunning.  She turned the heads of kings, but her love and loyalty were strictly for Abraham.  She longed so much to see the fulfillment of Hashem’s promises that she was willing to make personal sacrifices for them.  We see this behavior in the other matriarchs, as well, but it is first exemplified in Sarah.  The Sages say that as powerful as Abraham’s gift of prophecy was, Sarah’s was even keener.  She obeyed her husband and told Pharaoh she was Abraham’s sister, not only due to her loyalty to him, but also to her faith in the protection of Hashem.  After Isaac was born, she was able to see Ishmael in a truer light than Abraham, and Hashem told him that she was right to insist that he be sent away from Isaac.  The Sages say Abraham would not have been able to accomplish his work in the world without her. 

Hagar and Ishmael
When Abram and Sarai left Egypt, they brought Hagar back with them.  The Midrash says she was a daughter of Pharaoh.  She saw the godly beauty of Sarai and decided she would rather be a servant in her house than a princess in Pharaoh’s.  When Abram was promised a son of his own flesh, Sarai decided to have Hagar be a surrogate for her.  Once she was pregnant, however, she rebelled, Sarai reacted, and she fled.  At the well in the wilderness an angel came to Hagar to tell her to return to Sarai.  She said nothing.  He gave her the message that her seed would be “multiplied exceeding.”  Still she said nothing.  Then the angel described the son who would be born to her as a “free man” whose “hand shall be against every man and every man’s hand against him.”  This idea of freedom, of not being a victim to anyone, appealed to her.  In Ishmael were spirituality from his Shemite father, Abram, and freedom-loving sensuality from his Hamite mother, Hagar.  This is the foundational mixture that produced the Arab national character.  Ishmael would be the father of twelve tribes and became those nations.  They developed a monotheist concept of Gd from the spirituality of their father, but they lacked the bending to commandments to put the theory into practice.  This was the difference made through the mother, the reason that Sarah herself was essential to the founding of the Nation of Israel. 

Sign of the covenant
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, YKVH appeared to Abram and said to him:  “I am El Shaddai; conduct yourself before Me and become complete.  I wish to set my covenant between Me and you, and to multiply you exceedingly.”—Genesis 17:1-2

At this advanced age Hashem brought Abram into the covenant with the sign of circumcision.  He had left Haran at age seventy-five.  Along the journey Hashem periodically met him again with new aspects to the plan He had for him, expanding upon it, as Abram walked through each phase.  It was only after all those trials of the long journey that he was ready for the sign of the covenant that would initiate the new nation he had been called to father all those years ago.  At this juncture he could have decided to remain a ben-Noah and lived his life as a righteous example for all those around him.  Yet he accepted the covenant and became the first convert, the father of converts, changing his name and entering into a completely new relationship with Hashem for himself, for the nation that would come from him, and for the nations of the world who would be blessed through that nation.  Entering into the covenant through acceptance of the sign of circumcism, was the symbol of total surrender the physicality, being holiness into every aspect of life in this world.  Living this example before the nations was the purpose of the nation that was to be the vessel of Torah—of the light of Gd’s will and truth—for all Mankind.  

May Hashem's Name be praised in all the earth!

Miriam

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