Welcome to the One Great Story!. George B. Thompson
encountered many adventures and moments of trial during the years of their journey. You might remember that the two of them never did make it to the land that God promised. That arrival comes many generations later in The Story. On their part of this long sojourn, Abram and Sarai covered a lot of territory. Based on archeological evidence, the move itself from Ur to Haran would have been no small trip. The latter was a few hundred miles north, up the Euphrates River from Ur. Leaving Haran for Canaan (Gen 12:5de) meant another long trip, this time in a southwesterly direction. Once they arrived, Abram received a promise from the LORD that this land would be given to Abram’s descendants (Gen 12:7; compare Gen 13:14–18). Abram then marked the spot with “an altar.” This act indicates that Abram was trusting the LORD and expressing his devotion to this one god, and not to other deities. As we will see many times throughout This Story, Abram and Sarai’s descendants often waffled over their own ultimate trust and devotion.
Abram and Sarai’s descendants often waffled over their own ultimate trust and devotion.
Many locations appear as stopping points for this entourage, both regions and cities: Canaan, Bethel, Egypt, the Negeb, Mamre, Hebron, Sodom, Gomorrah, Kadesh, Gerar, the cave of Machpelah (where both Abram and Sarai would be buried), and others. These locations often figure later, in subsequent episodes with the couple’s descendants. In our own understandable ignorance of their geography and history, today we probably find it easier just to follow the human interactions themselves, between Abram, Sarai, and others who came into this picture. At the heart of these interactions rested the question of succession and inheritance: who would carry this divine promise once the old couple died? They had no children.
Part of what makes the Abraham/Sarah (God later changed their names) episodes of The One Great Story so intriguing is the couple’s way of handling their barren condition. Sarai was worried that she would not have a child, so she offered Abram her young slave, Hagar, as a second wife. Hagar indeed bore Abraham a son, who was named Ishmael. Yet it becomes clear that Ishmael would not be heir to the divine promise, although Hagar received assurance through a divine messenger that her son would be blessed anyway (Gen 16).
In the meantime, God came to Abram and reinforced the original promise, by making a covenant with him (Gen 15 and 17). This covenant assured the couple a very large number of descendants and their own land, Canaan, where they had been living, but as foreigners. For Abraham’s part, he was to circumcise all males as “a sign of the covenant between me and you” (Gen 17:11b). In one version of this covenant episode, the story comments that Abram trusted in the LORD and the LORD’s promise, which God then took “as righteousness” (Gen 15:6) for Abraham. In later chapters, we will see how this one sentence—like a comment that an early storyteller would have interjected into the account—became a key element of The Story’s theological interpretation.
Pause to Reflect When the LORD made a covenant with Abram, the text says that he “believed the LORD” (Gen 15:6). Three other English versions translate the verb in this clause as “put his faith in” (Revised English Bible; New American Bible; New Jerusalem Bible). In your mind, what are the distinctions between the concepts of “believing in,” “trusting in,” and “putting faith in?”
Still, how could this covenant be fulfilled without a male heir? One hot day, the couple was visited by three guests, for whom Abraham displayed gracious hospitality by providing them rest and a meal. The visitors then delivered a promise that Sarah would bear a son in the following year. Sarah laughed as she heard the promise, listening as she was, outside of the tent flap. The subsequent interchanges between God and Abraham—and then God with Sarah—reveal a very human response to an unlikely prediction. Sarah denied laughing, but God didn’t let her off the hook! Yet it was God’s remarks to Abraham that adds to the central theme of The One Great Story: “Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?” (Gen 18:14a). As with the comment just noted above, about Abram’s trust of God for the covenant, this rhetorical question in the episode of Sarah’s laughter becomes a theological linchpin for later episodes of The Story. It will echo often.
As the LORD promised, Sarah bore a son in due season (Gen 21:1–7), and Sarah marked the occasion with a statement about laughter—her own and that of “everyone who hears” (Gen 21:6b). Now Abraham’s other son, Ishmael, and his mother, the Egyptian slave Hagar, were sent out of the camp; but God promised to Abraham that they would be okay and that the boy would establish a people as well, “because he is your offspring” (Gen 21:13c).
A strange twist comes into The Story at this point: God’s command that Abraham sacrifice his only son, Isaac (Gen 22:1–19). Modern sensibilities leave many readers today wondering about the kind of God being represented in this episode, but the incident emphasizes something else instead. As Abraham was moments away from slaughtering Isaac, God stopped him and provided a ram for sacrifice instead. The death of Isaac would have eliminated Abraham’s and Sarah’s successor to the promise, the offspring who already had been promised for that purpose. Abraham’s actions demonstrated complete trust in the LORD, despite the shocking nature of the divine request. His trust, flying in the face of a perplexing and even cruel command, led to a strengthened commitment by God to the promise. Isaac lived, and that promise still stood a chance.
Years of travel, temporary residence, international interactions, origins of new peoples, and divine punishment fill the story of Abraham and Sarah. When Sarah died, Abraham negotiated with the Hittites of Canaan for a burial site (Gen 23). Concern for an appropriate line of succession through Isaac led Abraham to arrange, through one of his servants, a marriage for Isaac with one of his own clan. The episode that tells of finding Rebekah carrying a water jar at a well is full of what must be ancient near Eastern customs and good old-fashioned charm (Gen 24). Not only does Isaac marry Rebekah but “he loved her” (Gen 24:67c). Even though Abraham himself married again and fathered several more children, his lineage, his property, and the divine promise, went with Isaac (Gen 25:5). Then Abraham died, “in a good old age, an old man and full of years” (Gen 25:8), and both Isaac and Ishmael oversaw his burial with Sarah. The first major chapter of The One Great Story comes to a close.
Abraham’s lineage, his property, and the divine vow, did not go to his firstborn—Ishmael—but to the son of promise, Isaac.
The Backstory: Creation, Fall, and All That Stuff
You probably noticed that the telling of Abraham and Sarah’s chapter in The Story is not where the Bible actually begins. Most of us have heard something about the creation accounts at the very beginning of the Book of Genesis. In the first chapter, God creates—in six days from “a formless void” (Gen 1:2a)—first light, then separation of waters, then dry land with vegetation, then lights separating day from night, then creatures in water and birds, then creatures on land, then humans. Chapter 2 provides some variation to the account: God makes a man (adam or “earthy”), situating him in the garden to cultivate it; then God makes birds and land creatures, to which the “adam” gave names; then God realized none of these animals would make a fitting companion for the “adam,” so one of his ribs was fashioned into a woman. Everything now was as it should be.
In one of the earliest biblical episodes, both divine judgment and divine mercy appear together. This happens over and over again in the Bible.
Except that something went wrong—very wrong. Surely one of the most well-known of biblical stories—even if it is often misunderstood—is the one that happens next, the one often referred to as “the temptation.” A wily creature is introduced, the serpent, who talked the woman into believing that it was okay to eat fruit from trees in the garden—even though God had said not to do so, or they would suffer terminal consequences (Gen 2:17). This lapse of judgment by the woman and the man led to severe changes in the terms of their circumstances in the world. Everyone would have a hard life from now on—man, woman, and especially the serpent, who received a curse from God (Gen 3:13–19). For centuries, Christian theology has called this change of circumstances “the Fall,” since it represents how the divine purpose had been thwarted by human disobedience. Things never would be the same again.
Pause to Reflect An old joke about the episode of “the Fall” (Gen 3) says that Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent,