Parashat Vayera - The Consequences of the Covenant

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G-d has come to terms with the Consequences of Creation. This is only temporary, as we shall see – over and over again, G-d will meddle, interfere, lose patience, come close to destroying all humanity, or simply storm off in disgust – but for the moment, G-d has decided to let the world march on. Indeed, it has come rather farther than G-d permitted either the first or second go-round. G-d, in fact, give us a turn and attempts to hand the entire mechanism of Creation over to humans.

When we read the Psukim deliberately, the opening sentences must strike us as strange. “And G-d appeared to him at the terebinths of Mamre…” (18:1) “… and behold: three men had planted themselves opposite him…” The opening Pasuk describes G-d as appearing to Abraham, but in less than a sentence, G-d is replaced by three men, and does not appear again until, provoked by Sarah’s laughter, G-d prods Abraham and asks (1:13) “Why did Sarah laugh?” In fact, the staging of this scene is forced. Sarah is in the tent, while Abraham and the three men / angels are outside. The men announce to Abraham that Sarah will have a child, and she – hiding in the tent and eavesdropping on the conversation – laughs to think that she, at her advanced age, will bear a child. Immediately G-d, who has done and said nothing all Parasha, jabs Abraham in the ribs and asks sharply, “what’s your old lady laughing at?” Sarah – still in the tent – objects “I did not laugh!” to which G-d replies, “Did too!” We can see G-d standing between Abraham and the closed tent flap, G-d’s head snapping back and forth from the man to the goatskin door of the tent. The three man / angels are still sitting beneath the terebinth tree eating their sumptuous picnic and Abraham, as far as we can tell, is still standing by. A very odd scene, indeed.

Odd, too, that the Torah tells us G-d appears to Abraham, and then G-d is replaced by the forms of three men who have stationed themselves before Abraham’s tent. Abraham, alone of his generation, has the gift of clarity of perception. We saw last week that he was the only one to hear G-d’s constant, repeated invitation to all Creation – Lech lecha – Abraham’s hearing is clear. His vision, too, is unparalleled. Abraham forges a Brit, a covenant, a unique relationship with G-d. But in the process, Abraham’s human relationships suffer. He is, by outward standards, a miserable father to his two sons, a poor and hurtfully neglectful husband to his wife, and not much of a son to his father, brother to his brother.

Abraham leaves Haran while his father Terach is still alive and does not return, not even to bury him. His relationship with his surviving brother terminates at the same time – it is not until the end of this Parasha that Abraham is told, as an aside really, by the way – your brother has twelve sons. It takes a good amount of time to father twelve children, spread as they are between two mothers. Where is the family link?

When Sarah sees she is not fertile, she finally prevails upon Abraham to impregnate Hagar, her handmaid. Within two Psukim (16:3-5) things have deteriorated so severely that Sarah (then still Sarai) tells Abram to send Hagar out to the wilderness. Chamasi ‘aleicha! Sarai tells him: “The wrong done me be upon you!” And the word Chamas indicates theft and violence. It is a strong word, expressing a violent emotion. I offered you my handmaid, Sarai is saying, but you did not have to agree so quickly. Clearly, Hagar’s behavior is condoned by Abram, if not actively encouraged. And the family strife occasioned here will have eternal implications.

When G-d appeared to Abram in a night vision and promised Abram offspring, a series of promises and predictions ensued. At 15:13, G-d tells Abram that his descendants shall be strangers in a land not their own. G-d does not identify the land, but tells Abram that the inhabitants of the land will “afflict” – ‘inu – his descendants. The word ‘inui – affliction – is intimately bound up with the Egyptian experience. At the Seder we begin by holding up the Matzah and chanting ha lachm ‘anya – from the same root – the Bread of Affliction. It is not a coincidence that Sarai flies into a rage against Hagar the Egyptian (16:3) and afflicts her (16:6 – va-t’aneha). The play of the word Afflict / Affliction around the all-too-intimate relationship between Abram and the woman of Egypt lays the karmic groundwork for the working-out of the promised tragic destiny of Abram’s descendants: as our mother afflicted the woman of Egypt, so the nation of Egypt shall become the instrument of our affliction.

Chamasi ‘aleicha. You bear the burden of the violent wrong done to me, the theft of my dignity. Let G-d judge between you and me. Harsh words indeed, between wife and husband. But G-d comes to reassure Abram. Sarai will bear you a son, G-d tells him. It is Abram, not Sarai, who laughs derisively, at 17:17. Then he turns to G-d and says: Let Ishmael live before you. That is enough. Abram is saying to G-d: you promised me a son, and I have a son, I have Ishmael. Don’t go muddying the waters with Sarai now that she is old and decrepit. But G-d forces the issue. No, G-d persists at 17:19, Sarai will bear a son, and you will name him Yitzhak, and I will establish my Brit with him as an eternal covenant for his seed after him. The destiny is already being pushed downstream. The Promise was made to Abram in the name of his descendants. Now G-d is telling Abram that the Promise will transfer to his son, the one yet to be born.

To touch briefly on the interlude of Sodom and Gomorrah, let us observe that, at 18:17, we are treated to that rarest of Biblical passages: G-d gives a soliloquy in which G-d, as surely as any Shakespearean character, ponders what is the right thing to do. And G-d finally decides: yes, G-d says, I will tell Abraham what I am about to do.

When G-d does announce to Abraham the pending fate of the two cities, Abraham immediately engages in a famous courtroom argument. In fact, the dialogue can be seen as a Socratic dispute. G-d, the innocent Sophist, says, “I have to kill them because they are unjust.” Abraham, stand-in for Socrates, argues: “You say you are a Just G-d. If so, then you must do Justice. Do you not agree?” And G-d agrees. “But to kill the innocent is not Just. Do you agree?” And G-d agrees. “And so, if there is a certain percentage of the population that is just, they should tip the scales to mercy, rather then permitting them to be swallowed up, the good along with the bad. Do you agree?” G-d, by this point over a barrel, has no choice but to agree.

The dialogue now begins to grow humorous. “OK,” Abraham says. “Now, work with me on this: if there are fifty just people, will you not destroy the cities?”

“OK,” G-d replies. “Fifty is a good number. For the sake of fifty, I will not destroy.”

Abraham, with a Socratic twinkle in his eye, casts a sly glance towards G-d and says, “Soooo… for, uh, like… for the sake of forty… maybe you won’t destroy?”

“OK,” says G-d. “Yeah. For forty just people, I won’t destroy the towns.”

“All right,” says Abraham. “Now, don’t get angry with me, but since you said forty would be OK… how about thirty?”

The scene goes on until Abraham bargains G-d down to ten, at which point G-d abruptly terminates the conversation. Like all of Socrates’ interlocutors, G-d knows that G-d has been bested in this debate. The only response is to storm off in enraged silence, for to speak another word is to lose altogether.

One odd note of the aftermath. Like Noach – in another literary recycling of themes so common to the structure of Torah – Lot is warned by G-d of the coming destruction, and told to flee with his family. Unlike Noach, Lot’s sons-in-law make fun of the old coot and refuse to budge. Like Abram’s relationship with Lot when he took him from Ur Kasdim, Lot’s own daughters will now be childless, their husbands dead, and Lot in some measure responsible for finding them men to father offspring. And like Noach, he will drink wine and fall asleep, and his children will uncover his nakedness. From this union will spring Moab, and from Moab will spring Ruth, and from Ruth, David HaMelech. And when, in Megillat Ruth, Naomi coaches Ruth on how to get her man, Boaz, she tells her to go down to the tent at night when Boaz is asleep, and to uncover his feet and lie there. After all, Naomi seems to be saying, that is how you people behave. It’s where you came from in the first place.

Abraham is a man who separates from his family. He separates from all human society in order to unite himself with G-d. In a striking literary curiosity, Abraham is the only male in the Abrahamic line throughout Sefer Bereshit whose name is not given a meaning. Yitzhak, from Laughter. Ya’akov, from the Heel. Yaakov’s twelve sons are named by their mothers, each one given an entire sentence to describe the origin of his name.

And Abraham? In Talmudic Hebrew, the word Burmah means “a wedge”, from the root Bet, Resh, Mem, meaning To Split, to divide. The name Abram can be read as a verb meaning “I shall split apart, I shall divide.” And Abram, enhanced to become Abraham, does in fact split his family. Indeed, he shatters it. He not only forsakes his father and brother, he also throws over his wife for the maid. We are disgusted when Lot offers his daughters to the crowd in order to protect his guests, but what of Abraham offering Sarah, first to Pharaoh, then to Abimelech, to save himself? Ramban, for one, excoriates Abraham for this double sin, but most Meforshim are not troubled by it.

In abandoning Sarah to her fate, Abraham also splits apart the very meaning of family relationships. She is my sister, he says. When Abimelech confronts him, Abraham – rather than merely saying that he feared for his own life – justifies his treachery by saying, Well, we really are related.

At the end of Lech lecha, when G-d tells Abram that Sarai will have a son, Abram does not tell her. Instead, he tells G-d not to bother. I have Ishmael, Abraham says. Here again, in this week’s Parasha, when the Angels tell Abraham that she will have a son, he does not rush into the tent to tell her the news. Abraham has long since ceased to regard Sarah as his wife.

But when Yitzhak is born, the first one in the family to express love for Yitzhak is his brother Ishmael. All the emotion surrounding the birth of Yitzhak has been narcissistic. Abraham wanting to keep status quo; Sarah, first enraged at Hagar’s attitude, and now reflecting on how people will treat her, now that she has a son of her own. At 21:9, during the feast celebrating Yitzhak’s weaning, Ishmael is seen Metzahek. This word means “making laugh”, from the same root as the name Yitzhak. It is usually translated as “Mocking”. But…

In Parashat Toledot, at 26:8, Yitzhak takes Rivkah to the land of Gerar. As his father before him, Yitzhak tells Abimelech, the king of Gerar, that she is his sister. Later, Abimelech happens to glance out his window and see that Yitzhak Metzahek et Rivkah ‘ishto – he is making her laugh, and in such a way that Abimelech immediately knows they are not sister and brother, but wife and husband. The same word as between Ishamel and Yitzhak. It is a word of intimacy, of a close loving bond, one with a physical aspect. Clearly, Ishmael is playing fondly with his baby brother and making Yitzhak feel loved. No wonder Sarah wants him thrown out.

When, in the ensuing drama, Hagar and Ishmael lie down to die, we witness a powerful foreshadowing of the Akeidah, as well as a distinct scene of members of Abraham’s family trying to take on the Destiny of Abraham.

Hagar lays Ishmael beneath a bush and goes a bow-shot distance away to let him die. Ishmael, let us remember, is sixteen or seventeen years old – the same age as Yosef when he was cast down the pit. Surely this youth must already be used to desert life, must be capable of taking care of himself. Why does he willingly lie down to die? Why does his mother not struggle to save him? Is it because they have a faulty vision, one that tells them that a son of Abraham will be sacrificed, and that his parent will stand by and do nothing?

However it may be, Hagar stands aside, and Ishmael lies down as though purposely intending to die of thirst, and would do so, but for the angel who appears to his mother and opens her vision to what has been there all along: a well. This scene pre-plays the ensuing drama of the Akeidah in all its particulars, tying Hagar and Ishmael to the Abraham narrative. It is a powerful example of characters who are peripheral to the main theme – the the story of Abraham, of Abraham’s descendants, of Abraham’s Promise and Blessing, and ultimately of the story of Klal Israel – and who fervently desire to link themselves to the Destiny of Abraham.

But it is not to be. Ki be-Yitzhak yikare lecha zera’ – “… for in Yitzhak our seed shall be called” (21:12). G-d explains to Abraham – several times, in fact – that G-d’s program is not Abraham’s program. Abraham, who makes the mistake of interpreting G-d’s plan through his own –Abraham’s – lens of human desire, needs to be corrected over and over. Abraham has a son, Ishmael, but G-d must remind him that Ishmael is not the son of G-d’s Promise.

And now, G-d must remind Abraham one last time, one powerful and heartrending time, of what else it is that Abraham has rejected, set aside. A-bram – I shall split apart.

Rashi’s famous commentary on the opening lines of the Akeidah quotes the Midrash which has Abraham playing a specious game with G-d. It is, in fact, a childish replay of the sophist argument we saw played out at Sodom and Gomorrah.

Take your son, G-d says, and Abraham coyly answers: I have two sons. Your only son, G-d explains, and Abraham says: but each one is an only son of his mother. And so on. But what is Rashi pointing to on a deeper level? The interplay of text and Midrash draws our attention to the human tragedy of Abraham’s life: that this man has sacrificed his family to his Destiny. Like so many successful people, Abraham placed his Life’s Work above the value of a happy home life. It is not only executives of Fortune 100 corporations, not only senior partners of major law firms, not only multimillion-dollar investment bankers who put in 120 hour weeks at the expense of their wives and children. With the exception of Yitzhak’s weaning, it is probably a safe bet that Abraham never attended one of his children’s birthday parties, probably never bought Sarah an anniversary gift. Indeed, the little dialogue we have between husband and wife is terse, angry, and singularly lacking in affection, or even in traces of a close relationship. “Fix supper for the guests,” Abraham orders her. “My suffering is your fault,” she upbraids him. “Let G-d be the judge between us.” Hardly the stuff of a happy marriage.

- Take your son.
- I have two sons.
- Your only son. Come on, Abraham, you know who I mean. Have I not said over and over that Yitzhak is the Son of your Destiny?
- “Only”? But each one is an only son – each of his own mother.
- Asher ahavta – The one you used to love…

G-d forces Abraham to confront his own human failings. Will you play word games with me?, G-d seems to say. But two can play at this. You, Abraham, who bested me at your childish philosopher’s dialogue – for I would not have wiped out your precious nephew at all events. I put you to the test, to see if you would stand up for what is right. You passed, but only so much. Moshe, who will come after you, will rightly claim that he outranks you for righteousness – for you, you argued for two cities for the sake of ten men, but Moshe will argue for an entire nation, and for the sale of none, and he shall win.

Two wives, Abraham? “Each is the only son of his mother” – this is your feeble attempt at arguing G-d into a corner? I will show you “which one”. The one you used to love (asher ahavta). The woman on whom you hung all your human hopes and longing and dreams, back when you still had human feelings. Before you became obsessed with your Destiny. With your Promise. Yes, G-d says, I promised you offspring. Yes, G-d says, I promised you a Destiny. But did I command you to forsake your own human relations to embrace the future? Remember, Abraham, how once you loved your young wife Sarai. Remember when she alone was sufficient for you, when love mattered more than children and inheritance and Land and Destiny. Remember, and weep, and take that son of shattered love and bring him up to Me upon the mountaintop. And there we shall see what we shall do.

So much depends upon our reading of the ensuing lines. So much commentary has been written – continues to be written – about this defining moment of Judaism, and of the stepchild faiths that have grafted themselves onto the root of Torah. Rather than argue or criticize or justify what Abraham does, or did, or may or may not have done, let us observe a few points in context.

Where things Divine are concerned, Abraham is gifted with clarity of perception. Yet he can not see in human terms. Hagar and Ishmael voluntarily go off to the desert. Ishmael lies down to die, for he seems to know that the next part of the Abraham destiny is that a parent will willingly see a child die, the child will willingly lay down his life. Hagar, despairing in the wilderness, is so bound to the suffering of her son. So much so that it takes a miracle, the intervention of an angel, for her to see what has been before her al this time: a well. With Abraham it is different. We read several times the phrase, “And Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw.” He saw the mountain – even though G-d stopped speaking to Abraham after the initial command to perform this act, Abraham understands that part of the message, he knows which mountain, and he goes there directly. After the encounter with the angels interrupts the Akeidah, he lifts his eyes and sees the ram. He does not need to be told it is there.

The Ralbag, perhaps alone among major Meforshim, seems to have a post-modern read of the Akeidah narrative, in which Abraham misunderstands G-d’s command. Other major commentators – notably the Ramban (Nachmanides) – have excoriated Abraham for his poor behavior. Now the Ralbag points out that the language G-d uses – “bring him up there for a bringing-up” – in no way implies slaughter. To “make of your son an offering” can just as easily be a formal act of presenting Yitzhak to G-d. A spiritual coming-out party. This is exactly what Moshe will do, for example, with Aharon and the Leviim, when he presents them physically as a Wave-Offering during the inauguration of the Mishkan.

Animal sacrifices were a human invention. The first animal offering was spontaneously hit upon by Hevel, wanting to imitate his brother Cain. We saw that G-d accepted Hevel’s offering, if only because G-d could not accept Cain’s, the reminder of the first Sin in the Cosmos. But humans were not yet permitted to eat animals. What, then, was Hevel doing as a sheep-herder? Was he merely grazing his flocks for wool and milk? And if he did not eat the meat of his charges, how did he bring himself to slaughter one as an offering to G-d? Or was this Gift also a live beast?

However it may have come about, we see that the first animal offering leads directly to the first murder. The second animal offering, likewise, is a human invention. Noach decides to sacrifice animals to G-d in thanksgiving for having come through the Flood. Rashi is clear on this point: Noach reasons that G-d must have told him to bring extra animals (seven pairs of Tahor animals, as opposed to one pair of the others) for the express purpose of bringing sacrifices. No sooner does Noach perform the act than G-d smells the smoke and, disgusted, reflects that the wickedness innate in human nature is in-conquerable and ineradicable. G-d seems to become resigned to this evil and decides to “un-curse” the Earth.

When G-d tells Abram he will have sons, Abram’s response is to build an altar and slaughter animals. (The Hebrew word Mizbeach comes from the root Zevach, meaning Slaughter. There are other words used for structures set up to praise G-d. Yaakov, for example, sets up a Matzeva – a “standing structure” – to signify his encounter with G-d.) G-d expresses repeated frustration with the human propensity to slaughter animals as an act of worship. The ultimate message of the Akeidah seems to be that bringing sacrificial offerings is a slippery slope. You want to kill in my name?, G-d asks. I will show you the ultimate outcome. And Abraham, who understands G-d’s language, but not the language of human relationships, passes the test on the Divine level, but must fail it on the human. For his test combines them – human and Divine.

Take your son, says G-d, and come to Me. In one simple way of approaching this command, we see that the plain meaning of the words – (22:2) ve-ha’alehu sham le’olah – comes out: “bring him up there to the offering.” Ultimately, and unwittingly, this is what Abraham does. He takes his son and brings him up the mountain. There, at the mountaintop, the ‘olah – the Burnt Offering – waits for them in the form of a ram trapped in the thicket. Some minor business intervenes, in which Abraham can not figure out the seeming paradox that his destiny is to be transmitted through this son, yet he, Abraham, is to slaughter this very son. This is not the paradox of faith, but merely the portrait of a man so blinded by his own zeal that he forgets his own human side.

The one you used to love, G-d says. Remember? Remember when you were more human, less Holy? But no, Abraham does not recall. And so G-d leaves him, never to speak with him again. G-d’s various promises are assured, and Abraham will live out his years in comfort and contentment. Perhaps he never will realize what was lost. The hint of his late awakening comes next week, when he invests tremendous time and care in securing a burial place for Sarah. If they could not live together, at least they shall remain together in death.

This Parasha begins with the transfer of Creative power from G-d to humans. The verb va-year takes the creative act of Seeing – the second of G-d’s four fundamental acts of Creation – and puts it in a human context. Abraham, throughout the Parasha, Sees. Hagar, as another example, does not see. Sarah becomes distressed at what she sees. Hagar almost allows her son to die because of what she does not see. The true creative aspect requires that we balance our perception of the Divine with our perception of the Human. This is a task that sometimes even the very greatest among us are not equal to.

Yours for a better world.