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Who is Abraham and what’s his job? For an excellent discussion of the nature of Abraham’s family vocation, see Cyrus Gordon, “Abraham and the Merchants of Ur,” Journal of Near Easter Studies 17, No. 1 (1958), 28–31. Gordon connects the Patriarch narratives to laws laid out in Akkadian tablets from near Ugarit, where in the Hittites restricted the operations of traveling merchants in their territories. The parallels between traveling merchants—who plied their trade not just in gold and silver but also in livestock—and Abraham are striking. Even moreso is the consistent interaction of Abraham with rulers of the various city-states he frequents throughout his wanderings.
Abraham’s not some nomadic man aimlessly journeying to Canaan on the whim of his God, but someone whose livelihood is tied explicitly to migrating through different cities and communities to trade in goods. Gordon highlights the oddity of Abraham purchasing Machphelah from the Hittites as further evidence of his wealthy merchant status, as Hittite law forbade foreign merchants from owning land within the boundaries of Hittite territory. It would follow, then, that the author of Genesis would devote as much real estate in the text as he does to emphasize the good will that Abraham had earned among those with whom he’d done business.
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Abraham’s journey to Egypt as just a part of doing business. Any attempt to read some kind of moral failing into Abraham’s choice to leave Canaan and work toward Egypt is generally unreasonable. Not only is it perfectly natural for a wandering trader to, well, wander, but God also gave him zero instructions at this point to establish a permanent residence in Canaan. Abraham’s not failing to trust the promise of God by continuing his journey, because God at no point prohibited a journey. The trouble Abraham gets into in Egypt has far more to do with his status as a powerful and wealthy merchant than some kind of failure to trust his God.
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The nature of the ceremony that Abraham undergoes alongside God. Block notes an eighth-century document that outlines the procedure for cutting animals as part of the covenant ceremony (Covenant, 85). However, he fails to address the large cultural and time gap between the Aramaic treaty documents and the events of Genesis 15. He does cite an eighteenth-century text that alludes to the slaughter of an animal in the process of making formal peace, but it’s difficult to see a clear connection to the far more intricate ritual of Genesis 15. Better to abandon the idea entirely that the ritual was meant to communicate some kind of covenant and was, instead, an oath-taking ceremony that joined an infertility-removal ceremony (see following note for discussion).
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The animal-cutting ceremony as a fertility ritual, rather than covenant-making ceremony. On this argument that the covenant-cutting ritual is an inadequate way to view Abraham and God’s actions here, see Gordon Johnston, “The Smoking Brazier and Flaming Torch in Genesis 15:17 in the Light of Ancient Near Eastern Literature and Ritual,” Paper presented to the Cognate Languages and Literature Study Group, National Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, November 2008.
Johnston does an excellent job laying out the various rituals common to Ancient Mesopotamia that include the torch and brazier (themselves odd inclusions in any oath- or covenant-making ceremony) and showing they were part of a commonly used ceremony called the Ritual of Anniwiyanis that aimed to guarantee a son for an otherwise childless man. The ritual included the patient sleeping, a pathway between split halves of animals, and a torch and cook pot. Johnston’s proposal solves many of the issues that the traditional “covenant cutting” interpretation creates. It’s not an act of covenant-making at all, but instead God communicating through a ritual that was not only well-known to Abraham, but also highly appropriate for the fundamental problem Abraham faced: lacking a son.
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The uniqueness of Hebrew circumcision. Daniel Block does an excellent job of laying out the uniqueness of Hebrew circumcision over against contemporary nations’ view of the ritual (Covenant, 97). For more on circumcision as practiced in the Ancient Near East, see Francesca Stavrakopoulou, God: An Anatomy (London: Picador, 2021), 130–31.
In general, the Hebrew practice of circumcision was unique in the ancient world not because it was practiced at all, but because it was applied to infants rather than pubescent males entering manhood.
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The nature of evil in Sodom and Gomorrah. There’s quite a bit of argument on the nature of the men of Sodom and their wickedness. For a good overview of the issue, see Brian Doyle, “The Sin of Sodom: Yād̲aʼ, Yād̲aʼ, Yād̲aʼ? A Reading of the Mamre-Sodom Narrative in Genesis 18-19.” Theology & Sexuality 9 (September 1998), 84–100. Doyle presents a thorough examination of the twin narratives in view in this chapter and focuses primarily on the literary wordplay of the Hebrew word “to know” throughout the narrative. I find his approach compelling.
Contra that, see Brian Peterson, “Identifying the Sin of Sodom in Ezekiel 16:49-50.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 61, no. 2 (June 2018), 307–20 for a response to recent moves that seek to remove any kind of overt sexual sin from the Sodomites. Peterson deals explicitly with Ezekiel 16 to show that the condemnation of Sodom wasn’t solely for their lack of inhospitability, but their collective wickedness, including their proclivity for sexual violence.
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The importance of locating the sacrifice of Isaac in the literary context of Genesis. As readers familiar with Jesus and the New Testament, we’re easily tempted to see in Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac explicit overtures of Jesus’s death on the cross. Even the stuck ram becomes a model of substitution that we ply into the text of Genesis.
But in context, the sacrifice of Isaac vignette drives toward the question of Abraham’s faithfulness to his God—something that’s been in question consistently as far as Isaac is concerned. Abraham’s success with Isaac, however, affirms beyond a shadow of a doubt for God that this new-Adam candidate does indeed trust him. See Block, Covenant, 110 for a fuller treatment of the narrative—particularly of the Hebrew concerning Abraham’s fear of God.
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The scope of the story after the death of Abraham. It’s tempting to read the high points of Genesis eschatologically—everything pointing toward the final remaking of the world and the ultimate reign of Jesus over all creation. But for the purposes of the narrative, the horizon sits much closer. At this point, the focal point of the biblical authors is the fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham to give his descendants the land of Canaan. Period. In the overall context that we’ve set up here so far, however, that seems too narrow. Too small. I’ll admit I also race to the eschatological end too quickly because a people in a land many centuries ago seems an inadequate fulfillment of God’s promises.
I think the fundamental problem is again that we’re too familiar with the end of the story. The way that the patriarchal narratives unfold, though, invites us into the intimate relationship God has with just one little family. And, as we’ll see when we turn to Exodus, it makes a world of difference to envision God as unproven on the international stage. What he has promised seems far out of even his reach as a family deity, let alone a cosmic remaking of the fabric of reality. Again, I’m not advocating we see the God of Genesis as weak or impotent. But that we allow the story to grow our understanding of God on its own terms. And, for Genesis, that means close horizons.