Parashat Vayyera
Why does Abraham argue with God over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, but not over abandoning Hagar and Ishmael, or over killing his own son, Isaac?
In Parashat Vayyera, Abraham betrays a strange set of personal priorities. Still recovering from his recent circumcision, Abraham leaps at the chance to offer hospitality to strangers on their way to Sodom. While entertaining them, he learns that God plans to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because of their wickedness. Abraham enters into a lengthy and highly stylized argument with God over these plans:
“Will You sweep away the innocent along with the guilty? What if there should be fifty innocent within the city; will You then wipe out the place and not forgive it for the sake of the innocent fifty who are in it? Far be it from You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty, so that innocent and guilty fare alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly? (Genesis 18: 23–25)”
Abraham eventually bargains God down from fifty to ten, but ten righteous men are not found in Sodom or Gomorrah, and so the cities are destroyed. Later in the portion, God tells Abraham to follow Sarah’s desire to banish Hagar and Abraham’s son Ishmael from their community. The text says that Abraham was distressed over this decision, but there is no record of an argument with God on the matter. Abraham banishes Hagar, sending her off with only bread and water. Ishmael nearly dies of thirst in the wilderness as a result.
Finally, God tells Abraham to take his son, his favorite son, the one he loves . . . Isaac, and kill him. God gets no argument from Abraham. There is no talk of the rights of the innocent, no defense of the righteousness of Isaac. In fact, the text says that Abraham hastened to obey. He got up early the next morning and set off with his son, fully intending to offer him on Mount Moriah as a burnt offering.
In combination, these stories leave us with the impression that Abraham is far more concerned with the welfare of strangers than shalom bayit in his own home. Indeed, halfway through this portion, Abraham has made a second attempt to pimp out his wife Sarah to a king in exchange for material comforts (Genesis 20:3). And by the beginning of next week’s portion, his son Isaac is no longer speaking to him. When his wife drops dead from the distress of learning that her husband was planning to kill her only son, Abraham snaps out of his stupor and arranges a lavish burial for her.
Abraham seems eager to enter into an argument with God over the welfare of people he barely knows, but is all too willing to comply with commandments that would tear his family apart. He is left a widower, estranged from his beloved son, clinging to the promise that his descendants will outnumber the stars in the sky. This is not the behavior of a “family man,” at least not by 21st century standards. Yet he is remembered as righteous and is hailed as an example of unfaltering faith in God and God’s promises.
It is difficult to make sense of this paradox. It is easy to walk away from this portion scratching one’s head, asking “why, God, did you choose to build a nation from these people?” Perhaps that is exactly the point. Our Scriptures are littered with the tales of deeply flawed men and women who demonstrate their skewed priorities through their everyday choices. God does great things through them in spite of themselves. Let us remember that even our revered patriarchs could not hold their families together. “Lest we think too highly of ourselves” (Romans 12:3).
I find myself greatly encouraged by the life lesson at the conclusion, but I also find myself defensive of Abraham and the assessments made on the way to that powerful end. I have no doubt that my defensiveness stems from my own struggles to reconcile contradictions between what I understand as HaShem's instructions and what I think is appropriate as a husband and father. That said, I would appreciate seeing some additional perspective on why not arguing with God about instructions that would appear to harm his family is considered a flaw
Could it be that Abraham’s faith in God was so strong, knowing that God would protect, care, and fulfill his promises regarding and his family, that the cares of his own family appeared to be second fiddle to those who did not posses such faith? On many occasions, one can find themselves crying out or helping those less unfortunate because they do not possess the ability to cry out to God for themselves. Yet, if one possesses a mature faith, like Abraham, it can allow us to not worry as much about what can, will, or does affect our own households. The examples you sited regarding Abraham’s decision to not haggle with God may have been small tests of faith for Hagar, Sarah, and Isaac. Hagar should have known Abraham’s God in some capacity. Why did not she call out to God for help? Sarah participated in the impossible by giving birth to a promise in old age yet did not have the insight to believe God’s powerful enough to save him and succumbed to fear. Isaac’s leaving may have been due to his wanting to rely on his father’s faith instead of understanding how it is cultivated – through action. Thanks for your commentary. It got the little men in my head to stop playing ping pong!
Del, your response/challenge is exactly the reaction I had hoped to provoke. Would be interested to hear your own reflections …LT, could it be? Yes, it could be. But the text doesn't make that clear. The thing that is so frustrating about this parasha is that it only tells us WHAT happened … not how or why or what motivated all these life & death decisions. I mean, you could write a 7-book series of novels on this "year in the life of Abraham!" I'll readily admit that I didn't have a lot of time to look into the Midrash and see if anyone else had asked similar questions. I'm sure there are much more thoughtful voices out there on this topic. Thanks for wrestling with me.Anonymous, what part of "Abraham pimped his wife out to 2 kings on 2 separate occasions" is "not Judaism?" It's right there in the text. If you read it in Hebrew, it's even more obvious what's going on.
My perspective mirrors LT's. We are told that Abraham was one who would obey HaShem and command his household after him. I would think that those of his own house would have a front row seat to view this relationship in action, and that perspectivee would warrant the benefit of the doubt. Of course, I can say from personal expereince that a front row seat to his personal flaws could fuel the doubt side of the eqution, making it challenging to go along with tough instructions from HaShem.So in summary, I'm sure Abraham had flaws. I'm not sure the actions referenced in the blog are in that number.
Could it be as simple as family were choices he made and he lived with the trials of Hagar & Ishmael plus the long awaited trail of his son, and the trials that came with pimping out his beautiful wife. Therefore first he silently accepted his correction. Second this is answers in which he praying. With Sodom and Gomorrah Abraham allowed Lot to make the choice. Therefore Abraham again steps up to make the correction and prays/appeals to our Creator on Lot's behalf.
I’ve been wondering about those things myself. It seems though, that Abraham wasn’t the only one in his family who cared more for the welfare of strangers than his own family. How could Lot offer his two daughters to be raped by a gang of men in Sodom rather than surrender two travelers (Genesis 19:8)?
Over at Chabad.org’s parsha column, Rabbi Tzvi Freeman makes a helpful observation about the difference between the way that God presents his plan to judge Sodom and the way God earnestly asks Abraham to take Isaac and offer him.
The presence of the word נָא in God’s request קַח־נָא — “Take”–may support Rabbi Freeman’s reading. נָא is one of those untranslatable Hebrew words; it accompanies requests, and sometimes has a note of pathos in it, like begging “please,” as in when God strikes Miriam with leprosy, and Moses asks God, “אֵל נָא רְפָא נָא לָֽהּ”–as the old JPS translation puts it, “Heal her now, O God, I beseech Thee.”
Ilana Goldhaber-Gorden takes yet another angle on pp.1-2 of September’s issue of Sh’ma journal, which focused on the Akeidah, which plays up the rabbis’ “larger-than-life,” “archetyp[ical]” readings of Abraham and suggests that it’s exactly for this reason that the story happens this way. I think it’s worth a read (as is the entire issue–I loved the collection of takes on the Akeidah story from all different angles: Abraham, Isaac, Sarah, the ram, the knife, the altar, the mountain!).
Shabbat shalom, all.