Shabbat Vayeyra
Avraham Challenges God
Vayera is a fascinating combination of episodes. It’s not just because of the range of different and significant incidents. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the incest of Lots daughters, the interaction with Avimelech the king of the Philistines and the relationship between Avraham and Sarah, the birth of a son, and the exile of Hagar. Finally, the binding and near sacrifice of Isaac, the Akedah.
Theologically, there is an underlying current that presents two of the biggest challenges to faith in a critical world. The first centres on the conversation between God and Avraham before the destruction of Sodom. God says that he must inform Avraham in advance of what is going to happen, and then Avraham pleads with God not to destroy the city, in case there are some good people there and it would be unfair that the innocent suffer at the hands of the guilty. In the famous words of Avraham himself “Will the judge of the universe not do justice” ( Bereishit 18:22-25). What Chutzpah! How dare a human being to say this to God. And yet what a wonderful idea which implies that we have every right to do so.
The issue that most people who challenge religions today use is how can God allow so much injustice and cruelty in the world. Particularly at this moment when ironically, we are almost seeing a repeat of Sodom and Amora’s inhumanity, examples of what horrible things we humans are entirely responsible for.
There are two conclusions that we can draw from our Biblical story. The obvious one is that in the end Avraham agrees that Sodom deserves its fate because it was a corrupt evil place. The other is that God’s justice is not the same as our justice. To think of God as a human judge is to demean the idea of God. The Torah does indeed use language as if God were a human, but clearly God is not. How else could it convey Godly ideas? All of us can think of situations in which innocents died, either for medical reasons, warfare or natural disasters. We can debate forever as to whether we call this justice or fairness. After all warfare in the Torah, with its casualties and collateral deaths is seen as necessary sometimes. Avraham had to go to war to free his nephew which means that people were killed.
God is not human, and divine actions cannot be judged by the same standards as we humans are bound by. Then comes the story of the Akedah. It is interesting that in the non-Jewish world this episode is described as the Sacrifice of Isaac. But we call it the Binding of Isaac. And that’s what Akedah means. We are introduced to this episode with the clear instruction to understand that this is a test. “And God tested Avraham.” It is not intended as a moral command. If Christianity chose generations later to draw a parallel between the Binding of Isaac and the crucifixion of its founding myth, only they will be able to see the logic in that.
The conclusions that I draw from these episodes are these. In the realm of the Divine, we cannot understand the nature of something that is supposed to be totally non-physical. We may think that we can bargain with God. But consider all the conflicting demands humans expect God to resolve in their favour. They can’t all be granted.
In the end the only thing we can be certain about (as opposed to having absolute faith in something) is where we have a clear written source or instruction. This is the genius of the Jewish emphasis on the idea of mitzvah, a commandment as being the ideal channel between us in the physical world and God in the spiritual world.
But we need to be aware of the danger of assuming that when we hear voices or where we think we hear God speaking to us, this is an instruction. We humans are so easily misled. We create false gods for ourselves. The lesson of the Akedah is that we should not be paying attention to voices as much as to the message. The text says that God “cannot hide from what I’m going to do to Abraham because I know him, that he will command his sons and his household after him to keep the way of God which is to be righteous and to follow justice (Bereishit 18:19). It it is not some intangible abstract theological relationship that is the issue here, so much as having a way of life, which influences our behaviour, and which enables us to pass on these values to the next generation. You cannot always pass on feelings, but you can pass on right actions .
Bereishit Chapters 18-23
Rabbi Jeremy Rosen lives in New York. He was born in Manchester. His writings are concerned with religion, culture, history and current affairs – anything he finds interesting or relevant. They are designed to entertain and to stimulate. Disagreement is always welcome.
