The morning after the great destruction,
according to Genesis, “Abraham hurried back to
the spot” where he had stood and pleaded for Sodom,
and “as he looked down toward Sodom
and Gomorrah and the whole area of the Plain, he could see only smoke over
the land rising like the fumes from a kiln.”
[1]
Then,
adds the Joseph Smith Translation, “God spake
unto Abraham, saying, I have remembered Lot, and
sent him out of the midst of the overthrow, that
thy brother might not be destroyed ... And Abraham
was comforted” (JST
Gen. 19:35–36).
Lot
had not been mentioned when Abraham had negotiated
with God over the fate of Sodom. In fact, the Lord had gone beyond what he had agreed to by not
only rescuing Lot and his
family, but also by coming and comforting Abraham.
Such was the friendship between the Almighty and
Abraham, and such was Abraham’s friendship with
his fellow men. It is “the first of several instances
in the O[ld] T[estament] when a person or entire
group is preserved through the protective power
of a righteous individual.” [2]
Abraham
was comforted with respect to Lot,
but judging from the depth of his pleading for
the Sodomites
just
the day before, there would have been anguish
in his heart at this moment when he gazed on the
smoke of their destruction written in the sky.
For if, as the Joseph Smith Translation tells,
God spoke to Abraham to reassure him about Lot,
yet no word is reported in reply by Abraham as
he stares in silence, overcome at the destruction
of his neighbors whom he loved.
Like his descendant Mormon (an admirer
of Abraham [3]
) viewing the fallen Nephites, Abraham’s
soul would have been “rent with anguish, because
of the slain” who had “rejected that Jesus, who
stood with open arms” (Morm. 6:16–17). Those same
open arms had welcomed Abraham at the throne,
and would have welcomed Abraham’s neighbors if
they had only been willing to repent.
If
the region had had a newspaper, the headline might
well have been, as two modern writers imagine,
“Sodom and Gomorrah Wiped Out
in Worst Disaster Since Flood.”
Even
so, the region without Sodom surely was a safer and happier place, improving the moral quality
of life for Abraham and his community of Zion. Why then, as Genesis relates without explanation (Gen. 20:1),
and with no command of God to do so, does Abraham
suddenly move?
Tradition
tells that the overthrow had dramatically altered
traffic patterns in the region, making it impossible
for Abraham to offer his customary hospitality. [5] And seeing that travelers stopped coming “and his
gold and silver did not diminish, he was grieved
and distressed,” [6] exclaiming, “Why should hospitality cease from my
house?”
[7]
In
addition, noted the nineteenth-century Russian
rabbi Malbim, Abraham “desired to move about rather
than dwell in one place in order to spread the
knowledge of and belief in ... God.”
[8]
Abraham’s life illustrates Joseph Smith’s
statement that “a man filled with the love of
God, is not content with blessing his family alone,
but ranges through the whole world, anxious to
bless the whole human race.”
[9] This, then, would be yet another occasion in Abraham’s
life when, as remembered in Jewish tradition,
his “preaching was sought by others who thirsted
for God’s Word, influencing him to move on to
other areas ... to further spread the true faith.”
[10]
So,
instead of simply relaxing and retiring peacefully
and graciously amid his substantial wealth, Abraham
does exactly the opposite of what most men would
do: he moves to a place where he could again use
his time, talents, and temporal wealth to bless
his fellow men and preach the gospel and continue
to build Zion. His motives were not money or comfort,
but rather love and service.
Abraham and Sarah moved south to a
mountain region [11]
not far from Gerar, a powerfully fortified
city and one of the biggest settlements in southern
Canaan [12]
— another apt location to preach the
gospel and bless mankind. The king of Gerar was
Abimelech, who soon heard of Sarah’s dazzling
beauty and had her brought to the palace to become
his queen (see Gen. 20). When she asserted that
she was Abraham’s sister, the king legally married
her and heaped royal rewards on Abraham, [13]
looking forward to consummate the marriage.
In
the abbreviated Genesis account, it is not clear
how long she stayed in the palace, although Nachmanides
states that it was many days. [14]
Whatever the exact duration, it was
long enough for Abimelech to experience a sickness
that prevented him from approaching Sarah, and
long enough for the women of Abimelech’s household
to suffer from an inability to conceive,
[15]
which took effect from the time Sarah
entered the palace.
At
some point, Abimelech had a dream in which he
was told he was a dead man because he had stolen
another man’s wife. Protesting that he had done
innocently, God answered that he knew that and
had thus prevented Abimelech from sinning against
God. “Therefore I did not let you touch her. Now
then, return the man’s wife; for he is a prophet”
— the first occurrence of this word in the Old
Testament — “and he will pray [or “intercede”
(JPST Gen. 20:7)] for
you and you shall live. But if you do not restore
her, know that you shall surely die, you and all
that are yours” (NRSV Gen. 20:7).
As
Pharaoh had once done, Abimelech called Abraham
and restored to him his wife, while bestowing
on her a royal robe
[16]
and on Abraham an abundance of sheep,
oxen, slaves, and a sizeable payment of silver.
The king then asked for forgiveness and pleaded
with Abraham to intervene to save the endangered
king and his kingdom. Thus had God arranged it,
so that only by Abraham’s intercession would God
save Abimelech. Rabbinic tradition remembers that
when Abimelech asked for forgiveness, Abraham
“forgave him with a full heart.” [17]
Then,
according to Genesis, “Abraham prayed to God;
and God healed Abimelech, and also healed his
wife and female slaves so that they bore children.
For the LORD had closed fast all the wombs of
the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham’s
wife” (NRSV Gen. 20:17–18).
Jewish
tradition even insists that Abimelech’s wife had
previously been unable to bear a child, but Abraham’s
prayer allowed her to do so. [18]
His prayer is remembered in Jewish
teaching as an illustration of the principle that
“he who prays on his neighbor’s behalf, himself
being in need of the very thing, is himself answered
first.” [19]
Thus
did another king of this world come to know the
superior power of Abraham and his God. So great
an impact did the event have on the king that
he later approached Abraham to enter into a treaty
of perpetual alliance, for, declared the king,
“God is with you in all that you do; now therefore
swear to me” (NRSV Gen. 21:22–23). The well where
the event took place was then called the “Well
of the Oath,” or Beersheba,
[20]
and here Abraham would reside.
Perhaps
the entire encounter with Abimelech was another
divinely orchestrated opportunity that opened
the doors of the gospel to a kingdom by first
convincing the king. And for Abraham’s forgiving
and praying for Abimelech, the Patriarch is remembered
in Jewish tradition as “an exemplar unto all.” [21]
The
Joy of Isaac
Abraham’s
prayer that the curse of barrenness be lifted
from Abimelech’s house turned out to be efficacious
for his own house also, demonstrating that “when
one prays on behalf of another, it is more likely
that God will answer his prayers on his own behalf
as well.”
[22]
As Genesis reports, “the LORD visited
[or ‘singled out’ (GTC Gen. 21:1), or ‘showed
favour to’ (REB Gen. 21:1), or ‘remembered’
[23] ] Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did unto Sarah
as he had spoken. For Sarah conceived, and bare
Abraham a son” (Gen. 20:1–2).
Her
conception had been just several months following
the visit of the three messengers,
[24] and had occurred, according to Jewish tradition,
on the first day of the New Year, Rosh Hashanah,
the day when God remembers all Israel. In synagogues on Rosh Hashanah, the story
of God’s remembering Sarah is still chanted.
[25]
For
Sarah, it was the close of an incredibly lengthy
ordeal of patience, perseverance, and trusting
in the Lord. A rabbinical text states hat the
Almighty rewarded Sarah as He spoke these words:
“You put your trust in Me: by your life! I will
remember you.”
[26]
Thirty-eight long years had elapsed
[27]
since God’s promise to Abraham of a
glorious posterity, thirty eight years since Abraham
and Sarah had first rejoiced in the expectation
of the fulfillment of that promise. Why the decades
of waiting and the long trial of faith? The rabbis
said that it was to increase Sarah’s joy when
she finally was blessed with children, [28]
and to deepen her and Abraham’s dependency
on each other and on the Lord.
[29]
In the words of Hugh Nibley, “It was
Abraham and Sarah,” explains Nibley, “who restored
the state of our primal parents, she as well as
he, for in the perfect balance they maintained,
he is as dependent on her as she on him.” And
“when both sides of the equation are reduced,
the remainder on both sides is only a great love.” [30]
Such
love had seen them through the long years of waiting
for fulfillment of the divine promises, the long
period during which, in the words of Kierkegaard,
Abraham “had fought with that cunning power which
invents everything, with that alert enemy which
never slumbers, with that old man who outlives
all things — he had fought with Time and preserved
his faith.” [31]
His aged wife, well past the season
of child bearing, now miraculously bore a son
in defiance of the laws of nature.
“What
was beyond hope by natural processes,” noted church
father John Chrysostom, “came to be, not by human
processes but by divine grace.” [32]
Never in the history of the world,
says the Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, had a ninety-year-old
woman given birth. [33] Why did the Lord of life, the Creator of all, so
arrange it? Why not grant the long-awaited son
to Sarah during those many years when she could
have conceived normally, without divine intervention?
The
answer would become apparent many centuries later
when, as church father Ambrose observed: “An aged
woman who was sterile brought [Isaac] to birth
according to God’s promise, so that we may believe
that God has power to bring it about that even
a virgin may give birth.”
[34]
Sarah’s miraculous conception, intentionally
arranged by the Almighty as a miracle that had
never been seen since the Creation, is surely
one of the clearest similitudes of the birth of
Him who would fulfill the promise to Abraham and
Isaac that in their seed all nations of the earth
would be blessed.
But
there was yet another miracle, according to Soren
Kierkegaard, a miracle not of biology but of faith.
In an outward respect the marvel consists
of the fact that it came to pass according to
their expectation, [but] in a deeper sense the
miracle of faith consists in the fact that Abraham
and Sarah were young enough to wish, and that
faith had preserved their wish and therewith their
youth. He accepted the fulfillment of the promise,
he accepted it by faith, and it came to pass according
to the promise and according to his faith ...
Then there was joy in Abraham’s house. [35]
Jewish tradition remembers that Sarah
likewise was “overwhelmed with sublime happiness,”
[36] while the Joseph Smith Translation of Genesis reports
her exclaiming that “God has made me to rejoice;
and also all that know me will rejoice with me”
(JST Gen. 21:5). [37] The Hebrew word here translated as “rejoice” can
also be translated as “laugh,” as most translations
of Genesis do. “God has brought me laughter,”
Sarah exclaims, and “everyone who hears will laugh
with me.” She then adds: “Who would have said
to Abraham that Sarah would suckle children?”
(JPST Gen. 21:6–7). Why did she say “children” instead of “a child”?
Because, according to one Jewish interpretation,
she was keenly cognizant that this was the covenant
son whom God would multiply into a host of covenant
people, [38]
a future foreshadowed not only by her
words but by her very experience. In a passage
clearly alluding to Sarah, the prophet Isaiah
described the future of latter-day Israel:
Sing, O barren one who did not
bear; burst into song and shout ... Enlarge the
site of your tent, and let the curtains of your
habitations be stretched out ... For you will
spread out to the right and to the left, and your
descendants will possess the nations. (NRSV Isa.
54:1–3)
It
is the latter-day Zion that Isaiah describes, using their foremother
Sarah as a prototype. “Isaiah used the story of
Sarah’s barrenness,” explains one scholar, “as
a paradigm for Zion and for the future of the people of Israel. For ... Isaiah the real import of the
barren matriarch is not in the past but in the
future: what God did for Sarah is evidence of
what he will do for his exiled people,” so that
“the significance of Sarah’s story is in its relation
to Zion’s story.” [39]
Like
Abraham, then, Sarah foreshadows the future of
her posterity as she holds her beloved infant
whose features, according to Jewish tradition,
were very much like those of Abraham,
[40]
and whose name memorializes the inexpressible
joy of both his parents. His name can also be
interpreted, notes the Midrash, as “law went forth
to the world, or a gift was made to the world” [41]
— a foreshadowing of the latter days
when “out of Zion shall go forth the law” (Isa. 2:3) to bless the nations through
the seed of Isaac and Abraham.
Sarah’s
expression of joy would be repeated by her descendant
Mary in contemplation of her own miraculous conception
of the Son who would bless all nations. “Sarah’s
Magnificat,” observed Christopher Wordsworth,
“is a prelude” to that of Mary, “whose faith ...
perhaps was excited and quickened by a remembrance
of what had been done by God for Sarah, and by
His promise to Abraham and to his seed, to which
Mary herself refers.”
[42]
Sarah
held in her arms, as she well knew, the son of
promise, the future blessing of the world. She
“feels that she is the mother of ‘sons,’ mother
of an entire nation.”
[43]
But
it was the joyous present that now filled her
great soul as she tenderly embraced and — as Genesis
specifically points out — nursed her son, thanks
to the youthful rejuvenation she had experienced.
Sarah’s were the feelings that only a new mother
can fathom, but even more; for her joy ran as
deep as the longing of decades, and as deep as
her sorrow at once having to abandon the idea
of ever being a mother, thinking she had misunderstood
the divine promises to her husband.
And
if Sarah had been physically rejuvenated, so was
he: “God restored him his youth,” reports the
Midrash Rabbah.
[44]
The marvelous event would later be
commemorated with coinage showing on one side
an old man and a woman, and on the other a young
couple.
[45] Thus were their bodies renewed by the Spirit, the
promise made to all who are faithful in obtaining
and magnifying the higher priesthood (D&C
84:33).
The
promise may include the great renewal beyond the
grave when the righteous, in the words of Brigham
Young, will be “clothed upon with all the beauty
of resurrected saints.”
[46]
A Jewish midrash foretells that “in
the world to come every righteous person ... will
be physically rejuvenated and enjoy renewed youth
... Should you wonder at this, consider Abraham
and Sarah” when God rejuvenated them to have a
son. “So too will it be with the righteous in
the world to come.” [47] Accordingly, “just as Isaac was born to Abraham
and Sarah in their old age, so the righteous will
be restored to the splendour of their youth in
the world to come.”
[48]
With
the renewal of Abraham and Sarah came, in the
words of Philo, “a son of their own, a reward
for their high excellence, a gift from God the
bountiful, surpassing all their hopes.”
[49]
It was the beginning of the real life
of Sarah, according to Jewish tradition, the fulfillment
of all her faith and dreams. [50] The news of Isaac’s birth must have been heralded
quickly; as imagined by a modern writer: “Swift
runners reached the outmost posts of Abraham’s
pasture lands with the glad news — Abraham has
a son — the Princess has borne Abraham a son!”
[51]
Similarly
in Christian tradition, the birth of Isaac is
one of the clearest types of the birth of the
Savior: according to Christopher Wordsworth, Isaac’s
birth is yet “another resemblance to Him ... whose
Birth is the cause of joy to all.”
[52] As Isaac’s birth and name were foretold in advance;
as he was conceived only by miraculous means;
as his coming into the world brought great joy
and rejoicing; and as it made possible the blessing
of all mankind — so would be the birth of Isaac’s
descendant Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the world,
the Beloved Son.
Abraham “exceedingly loved” Isaac,
says Josephus. [53]
In fact, as a modern commentator notes,
“It is doubtful that ever a son was born who was
more loved than Isaac. His father and mother …
no doubt, rehearsed over and over again all the
great promises of God that centered in him.”
[54]
And just as the angel had predicted,
Abraham did teach his son to keep the way of the
Lord.
The
Book of Jasher tells that Abraham taught Isaac
“the way of the Lord to know the Lord, and the
Lord was with him.” [55]
Or, in the words of President Spencer
W. Kimball, “Abraham built a strong spiritual
reservoir for his son Isaac, a reservoir that
never leaked dry.”
[56]
But the parental instruction of Isaac
was as much a joint effort as was the mutual faith
that brought about his birth in the first place;
Jewish tradition remembers that Sarah “nurtured
him … empowering him to become Abraham’s covenantal
heir.” [57]
For
his part, Isaac was, according to first-century
Jewish sources, not only “a child of great bodily
beauty” but also “excellence of soul.” And “showing
a perfection of virtues beyond his years,”
[58]
he “won even more the affection and
love of his parents” by the practice of “every
virtue and ... zeal for the worship of God.” [59]
No
wonder Abraham “cherished for him a great tenderness,”
being “devoted to his son with a fondness which
no words can express.” [60]
