father abraham meaning

The word for "families" or "clans" occurs five times in Genesis 10 (also see Ephesians 3:15) and denotes the most rudimentary human organizational structure. The presence of Lot among the wicked in Sodom captures Abraham’s attention and engages his passions; and Lot becomes the hook for catching and enlarging Abraham’s concern for justice. Noah as father is reduced to mere male-source-of-seed; eliminated is the father as authority, as guide, as teacher of law, custom, and a way of life. And he has known intimately God’s benevolence toward him, in the gift of Isaac. Jabal and Jubal's physical lineage was cut short by Noah's flood and their patriarchies, like Abraham's, sum up activity and not physical descent. Whether we like what Abraham did or not, we have it on the highest authority that Abraham passed the test. The land having been sacralized in perpetuity, Abraham next completes the work of perpetuation by arranging an appropriate marriage for Isaac; no father worth his salt can be indifferent to who it is that his children marry. Placing the wood upon Isaac’s shoulders, taking in his own hands the fire and the knife, Abraham and Isaac ascend the mountain together: “and they went both of them together” [literally, “unitedly,” yachad, from a root meaning “to be one”] (22:6). That God will turn this awful deed into some discernible good, or, more shallowly, that He doesn’t really mean it? “If you were Abraham’s children,” Jesus … Performed soon after birth, it circumcises their pride, reminding them that children are a gift, for which they are not themselves creatively responsible. The word translated fear, yare, means more than simple fright. The same transition between locality and universality is reflected in the names Abram and Abraham, which are both based on the root אבר ('abar), meaning to be strong (or to be able to protect; see below). But what about the righteous for whom he had bargained? As he had said, prophetically but unwittingly, when he sent Esau out at the start of this episode, he would eat but his soul would bless (27:4)—and so it happened. (Rom 4:16-17 ESV) 16 That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring — not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, 17 as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations” — in the presence of the God in whom he believed, … Second, Abraham at the beginning would have been incapable of meeting this test; thus, the test must be interpreted in the light of his education. But, as Robert Sacks has astutely observed, the test is also risky, and not only on Abraham’s side. Classical societies that specialized in forming colonies all over (the Phoenicians, most notably, but also pre-. The three words spoken poignantly verify the paternal-filial tie; and Abraham’s response means “I am fully present to you, my son”—that is, as the father you summoned. Abraham, called by God to be the father of a new nation that will carry God’s righteous ways to the rest of the world, is educated by God Himself in the proper roles of father and founder, and proves his readiness in his final test. Jesus not only represents ultimate sacrifice but also the only thing people from all variously specified cultural backgrounds (low entropy) must eventually agree on (high entropy), namely the summing up of all natural law, unified by what scientists label the Grand Unified Theory, and theologians know as the Word Of God. Political founding and political justice are a sobering business, because political justice is not altogether just. Noah, awakening to discover what Ham had done, curses Canaan the son of Ham, measure for measure driving a wedge between Ham and his own son. Joseph's Egyptian wife bore him his two sons Ephraim and Manasseh, and both became the patriarchs of their respective half-tribes — "half" because Joseph counts as the real tribal head, but also because both were half-Egyptian. Most of these very early states have long gone (or went by other names than modern ones; very early states probably changed names much more often than states do today and were doubtlessly known to their contemporaries by multiple names), but some are clearly recognizable. Not agriculture but burial is the first title to land. The fourth stage of natural state formation is like the third with as main distinction that it has no central government. The citizens of a fourth stage state operate by means of a shared conviction. -Romans 4:16. Imitating God’s practice with him, Abraham enters into a covenant of mutual respect and recognition with Abimelech at Beer-sheba. And there was strife between the herdsmen of Abram’s cattle and the herdsmen of Lot's cattle” (13:6–7). The story of the binding of Isaac is Abraham’s final test. There ensues the momentous conversation between Isaac and Abraham, the only one recorded in the Bible, a conversation that may therefore reveal the core of the relationship between father and son. Encouraged by God’s accepting of his conditions, but thereby also brought into closer alignment with the divine perspective, Abraham has begun to think about justice for a whole city. While it may seem simpler to refer to Him as the God of Abraham, referring to Him as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob emphasizes the covenant that He made first with Abraham and repeated with the following generations. The Bible indicates that a multitude of גוים, goyim, or "nations" is the ultimate form of human society, which is remarkable because since time immemorial people have believed that they could somehow form a global empire that would unite all the nations, dissolve all borders and reign the entire world from one throne. At this stage, the realm of the state covers the known world and thus has no need to mark a physical boundary. It's been famously said that Abraham believed YHWH (and he reckoned that as righteousness; Genesis 15:6). And, in the immediate sequel, we are told “that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot dwelt” (19:29). God, the awesome and transcendent power, wants not the transcendence of life but rather its sanctification—in all the mundane activities and relations of everyday life. Noah, after the flood, turns to the grape and is laid low by drink; without his clothes and prostrate in his tent in a drunken stupor, Noah lies dehumanized and “unfathered,” stripped of all respectability. Indeed, my own approach seems even to me to be too shallow, precisely because I am attempting to be reasonable about this awesome and shocking story. The Assyriologist, Hommel suggests that in the Minnean dialect, … Though a disturbing passion which holds one back from the thing feared, awe also holds one fast, attracted, and transfixed before it. He is the father of us all. More important, God also intends that Abraham share responsibility for the punishment as a result of his participation in the judgment. Abram married half-sister Sarai and adopted nephew Lot after brother Haran died (Genesis 11:27-29). . Abraham, who risked his very life—and with it the divine promise—to rescue Lot in the war of the kings, will certainly not have become indifferent to the fate of his kinsman just because he now has an heir in Ishmael. My theme is the education of the patriarch Abraham, Father of Judaism, father of Christianity, father of Islam. At Sarah’s insistence, Abraham, with heavy heart and great reluctance but with God’s approving endorsement of Sarah’s plan, banishes Ishmael and Hagar, bringing the family for the first time into its proper order and harmony. Many a reader has been perplexed by the fact that Abraham does not plead with God for the life of Isaac, as he had done for the inhabitants of Sodom. Moreover, as Isaac was a wondrous gift and not a paternal possession, as God gave, so God may take back. And Isaac is explicitly said to be grieved by the death of his mother, Sarah, not by the death of his father. plained as “the (not ‘my’) father is exalted . The word המון (hamon), in turn, does not express simply a large number, but the rain-like noise that emerges from a unified but seething throng, and the throng, in this case, consists of autonomous nations. But, for the same reasons, he is not, to begin with, well educated in the successful art of fatherhood, in the work of transmission. The phrase contains no "r", for instance, while our name does. There is no known gap between God’s justice and Abraham’s. In literature this stage would be represented by a naturally growing tree or forest (Psalm 1:3, Ezekiel 31:3). True, shedding of innocent human blood had been pronounced a capital offense (9:6), and Abraham might have thought to refuse to do the deed on those ethical grounds. But this must remain a tale for another day. This concern for personal justice, and especially for the fate of the righteous, is also not disinterested; Abraham surely wants to know whether his own righteousness will be rewarded as promised. However, many in Israel did not follow God the way that they should have. The name Abraham (אברהם) follows from the name Abram (אברם) by inserting the letter ה (he) in front of the final ם (mem), and the name Sarah (שרה) follows from Sarai (שרי) by replacing the final י (yod) with the same letter ה (he). The kings of Babylon invade Canaan to suppress a rebellion against their rule. Our word 'camel' comes from the Semitic noun גמל (gamal), which in turn derives from the verb גמל (gamal), which means to trade internationally with the express objective of cultivating and maturing. Now her father, Abraham Quintanilla, Jr., is the subject of … Abraham's story follows the tower's story directly (Genesis 11), as two sides of the same coin. Brother Haran had a son named Lot and two daughters named Milcah and Iscah. Moses' primary education was Egyptian but he didn't encounter the Lord until he was in Midian, "shepherding the flocks" of his priestly father-in-law Jethro (Exodus 3), who also designed Israel's celebrated judicial system (Exodus 18:12-27). The economic engine of every state is its tax system but Israel, uniquely, employed no tax collectors other than anonymous offer boxes in the temple (Luke 21:1-4). In Islam, the prophet Muhammadclai… Everything points to the fact that Isaac—like so many of us sons—neither understood nor approved of what his father did or stood for; and, you might wish to add, in Isaac’s case for good reason. Here, then, are two ways to formulate the question being asked of Abraham in this final test: Do you, Abraham, desire to walk reverently before God and to be wholehearted (or blameless or perfect) more than you desire the rewards for such conduct? The Lord told Abraham that he would be the father of many nations (אב המון גוים, 'ab hamon goyim; Genesis 17:4-5) — not simply the father of many people but the father of the many nations that were established right after the flood (as listed in Genesis 10). At age 175, his work complete, Abraham “expired, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years; and was gathered to his people. But not every name with b)f refers to God. As the whole story suggests, Abraham, newly a father of the promised-son-of-the-covenant and newly the founder of a new nation, understood that the true father and true founder must devote his offspring and his people to something higher than offspring and peoplehood, even at the cost of losing them. Accordingly, he will strive to devote the nation or the polity to what is truly highest. Not Abram but Terah decided to move away from Ur (means Light) of the Chaldeans (Babylon's ethnically distinct intellectual elite, comparable to the Levites of later Israel) and go to Canaan (which means Trade), but Terah died halfway, in a city also called Haran (which probably refers to Assyria) where they had settled for the time being (11:32). And this lesson could not be more timely. From (1) the verb אבר (abar), to be strong or to protect, and (2) the 3rd person plural pronominal suffix הם (am), their. King Melchizedek's city Salem became the Jebusite stronghold of Jerusalem (2 Samuel 5:6), which indicates that Israel's economic engine as well as its political capital hailed from native Canaanite structures. Halévy’s ‘Revenue des Études Juives’ points to the first part coming from ‘abbir’ meaning strong leader. The form יו (Yu) — that is YHWH without the ה (he) — would thus be on a par with the names Abram and Sarai, and the existence of compound names like Joab (יואב) and Jochebed (יוכבד) demonstrates that this shorter form was indeed used. And they are made aware of the consequences for their children— now and hereafter—of their failure to hearken to the call: “And the uncircumcised male. The content of the promise is clearly political, and its scope is global: Abram will become the blessed founder of a great nation and will acquire a great name, and all the families of the earth will be blessed because of him. They were right, our parents, when they said to us, “Just you wait until you have children! But if we are lucky to live long enough, many of us discover that our parents get smarter as we get older, especially if we are blessed with children of our own to rear. For the time being, the painful lessons of the father’s and the founder’s justice must be allowed to sink in without a word of consolation. We trust a Person. Abraham, when he speaks next, repeats God’s use of “all,” but he clearly hasn't grasped the point. But lurking in these personal concerns are also larger and even more important questions, crucial to Abraham’s relationship to God and to his founding mission. Abraham, his pride suitably humbled, “circumcise[s] his son Isaac when he [is] eight days old, as God had [earlier] commanded him” (21:4). Moreover, as Isaac was a wondrous gift and not a paternal possession, as God gave, so God may take back. These two letters obviously aren't inconsequential formative letters in our name, but if we remove them anyway, what remains is ברה (bara), the assumed root of the noun ברית (berit), meaning covenant. Why? To this point we have been emphasizing how Abraham is being educated to understand that founding a great nation and gaining a great name requires a concern for progeny and transmission, and, in particular, requires rearing one’s sons in full memory of God’s solicitude and care. Later, perhaps, men can learn to love God, but it is the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom. Abraham learns that one must come to care about the righteousness or wickedness of the world, and not only about one’s own kin and one’s own goodness and its rewards. His disrespectful son, Ham, views his father in disgrace and traffics in his shame; he metaphorically kills his father as a father, without disturbing a hair on Noah’s head. I am convinced that Abraham looked upon, communed with and shared bread and wine with the theophanic Alpha and Omega, the Lord of Hosts, Yahweh, the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus Christ! Birth.He was born in Ur of the Chaldees, and was a direct descendant of Shem ( Genesis 11:10-32). As the whole story suggests, Abraham, newly a father of the promised-son-of-the-covenant and newly the founder of a new nation. In this sense at least, he is ever willing to part with his son as his son, recognizing him—as was Isaac, and as are indeed all children—as a gift and a blessing for God. Isaac does not resist being bound, Isaac does not struggle, Isaac does not even cry out. Though he stems from Noah’s pious son Shem, and though he himself was more attached to his father than was his brother Nahor, Abram’s immediate paternal ancestry is not a model for the work of cultural perpetuation. When Israel left Egypt, it was joined by a mysterious "mixed multitude" (ערב רב 'arab rab: Exodus 12:38), which doubtlessly denoted fellow slaves of other nationalities. After all, when we name our dog Bob … We wonder whether something of what he learned as he witnessed the smoke rising from Sodom and Gomorrah may have prepared Abraham for his greatest trial, enabling him to respond without so much as a peep of protest about the suffering of the innocent when God asks him to become not just an accomplice in the death of Lot but an actual killer of his own beloved son. Refusing the spoils of war, Abram attempts to return to his previous life but, we infer, he cannot. We don't know how large this village was, but the chances are excellent that it was of similar or larger size than Israel. Answer: The blessing of Abraham is the gracious heavenly gift that Abraham received as part of God’s plan to create a new nation on earth. And I will make My covenant between thee and Me, and will multiply thee exceedingly” (17:1–2). Continuing (and these are the last words and the last deed of Isaac in the Bible), Isaac bestows on Jacob—fully and freely—the Abrahamic blessing, the proper blessing of the sons of the covenant: Isaac, stepping forward into the paternal role, at long last fulfills his mission as patriarch. From now on, accepting God’s correction, Abraham will do the bargaining solely in terms of the size of the saving remnant. The names Sarai and Sarah reflect the same core idea, but the form Sarai reflects locality and the form Sarah reflects universality. William Cullen Bryant published one version (with music by Luther Orlando Emerson(1820–1915). At this stage, the state experiences no competition and hence neither needs an army nor develops a warrior culture. The difference with a second-stage state, however, is that the realm of a third-stage state is not fixed to a specific location, but coincides with and overlaps the realms of second- and first-stage states. Horrible though it is to say so, the test God devises is perfect: For only if Abraham is willing to do without the covenant (and, indeed, is willing to destroy it himself), out of awe-reverence for the Covenantor, can he demonstrate that he merits the covenant and its promised rewards; only in this way can he demonstrate that he is fit for fatherhood and founding. But Abram remains attuned to matters political, and he still hasn’t reconciled himself to the loss of Lot. And if, perhaps, one still insists that some question of justice is involved, Abraham might well believe, on the basis of his conversation with God about Sodom, that God will neither ask or do anything incompatible with His justice or righteousness. When he comes of age, the son will also come to understand the meaning of the mark of his fathers and their covenant with God; presumably, it will decisively affect how he uses his sexual powers and how he looks on the regenerative and nurturing powers of woman. Isaac's wife Rebekah is obtained when Eliezer heads north with Abraham's camels and "all his master's goods in his hand" and pleads, negotiates and entices but significantly refrains from forcing any transaction (24:5-8). If you want this website to work, you must enable javascript. Justice, not compassion or mercy, is on Abraham’s mind, as it is on God’s. And if, perhaps, one still insists that some question of justice is involved, Abraham might well believe, on the basis of his conversation with God about Sodom, that God will neither ask or do anything incompatible with His justice or righteousness. After all, when we name our dog Bob because "that seems like a good idea," we are surely not suggesting that Bob means "good idea," are we? John 8:56, NASB: "Your father Abraham … The first temple was built and partly funded by Phoenicians (1 Kings 5:1). Cultural discontinuity was part of the cultural teaching on which Abraham was raised. God, suggests Fishbane, is so embarrassed by Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son that He refuses to speak with him directly, but sends his messenger instead. 12:3, “all the families”) will be blessed in his seed. Isaac does not go down the mountain with his father; Abraham now goes alone, leaving his son to fend for himself. His brush with death in battle, his fear of reprisals, and perhaps, too, the irrevocability of Lot’s separation weigh on his mind. The derived nouns אבר ('eber) and אברה ('ebra) refer to the pinion(s) that make up a bird's wings, which in turn means that the ancients saw avian wings as means to protect rather than to fly with (the signature trait of angels, hence, is not an ability to fly but a tendency to protect). For he desperately needs to know whether divine justice bears a sufficiently close resemblance to our human intuition about justice, namely that the good shall prosper and the wicked (only) shall suffer. Israel's economic engine was based on the Canaanite tradition of voluntary contribution, which Abraham encountered with Melchizedek (Genesis 14:20, 28:22, Leviticus 27:30-33, Numbers 18:21-24). Accordingly, he eschews the political perspective (which is concerned with the city) and focuses entirely on the fate of the righteous individuals—and probably for all the reasons mentioned. (without father, mother, without descent, no beginning or end, a continual priest). Multiple families would synchronize into speaking one language. Thus, now he obediently circumcises his son; only later, on Mount Moriah, will he fully understand what it really means. Like Sarai, the name Abram seems to denote a nation's private strength, whereas the name Abraham, like Sarah, reflects the strength that arises from synchronicity among states. His household reordered, Abraham next secures good relations with his neighbors, Abimelech and the Philistines. Such lessons—and they will prove complicated—he must gradually learn through his adventures. Generally and safely speaking, we may say, a test of Abraham's disposition toward God. II. From (1) אב ('ab), father, and (2) רום (rum), to be elevated.
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