Scripture Studies
Chapter 5
Abraham, Our Father
Abraham, Our Father
Read:
 Genesis
11:31 – 12:9
– 13:2-18
– 14:17-20
–
Abraham, Our Father
 The
builders of the Tower of Babel
tried to make a name for themselves
 “Shem”
 Without God’s help
 They worshipped pagan gods
 Eventually Abram was born
Abraham, Our Father
 Abram
came from Ur (Mesopotamia)
 It was a large trading city
 People from all over the area came
there to trade, etc.
 Many of the traders were nomads,
with no permanent home
Abraham, Our Father
 Abram’s
family had probably been
wandering traders
 Abram’s nephew Lot decided to
travel to Canaan
 Abram went with
 Perhaps because of conquests in
the area, perhaps for other reasons
Abraham, Our Father
 They
got sidetracked and ended up
settling in Haran
 Terah died
 Abram was seventy-five years old by
this time
 It was then that he received his call
from God
Abraham, Our Father
 Genesis
12:1-3
 Abram immediately and
unconditionally accepts his call from
God
 In prayer, it’s the will that matters,
not the words
Abraham, Our Father

God’s promises to Abram:
1.
A Land and a Nation
Kingship and a Name
Blessing for all Nations
2.
3.
Abraham, Our Father
 The
promise of a Land and a Nation
will be fulfilled in Moses
 The promise of Kingship and a
Name will be fulfilled in David
 The promise of Blessing for All
Nations will be fulfilled in Jesus
Christ
Abraham, Our Father
 The
opening verse of the Gospel of
Matthew reminds us that the whole
plan of salvation goes back to
Abraham
 “The book of the genealogy of
Jesus Christ, the son of David,
the son of Abraham”
Abraham, Our Father

In order to gather together scattered
humanity God calls Abram from his
country, his kindred and his father’s
house (Gn 12:1) and makes him
Abraham, that is, “the father of a
multitude of nations.” In you all the
nations of the earth shall be blessed.”(Gn
17:5, 12:5; cf.Gal 5:8; CCC 59)
Abraham, Our Father


God would reinforce each of these promises
individually with covenant oaths at three
different points in Abraham’s life
At age seventy-five, Abram was chosen to
carry out the first step in God’s plan for our
salvation after the fall of Adam and Eve
Abraham, Our Father


How much faith do you think would that have
taken?
Could you do it, especially knowing that none
of the promises would be fulfilled in your
lifetime?
Abraham, Our Father
In-class assignment:
 Write a short essay on this question:
 “If God called me to leave my home
and family and go to a different land,
what would be my response?
 You may be asked to read your essay in
class when you’re finished

Abraham, Our Father
 But
God’s not through with Abram
yet
 Just leading his people to a new
place is far from all of what he asks
Abram to do
Abraham, Our Father
 Sometimes
people take on a new
name to signify a change in their role
in life
 Most women take their husband’s
last name when they get married
 This is often done when people
enter religious orders
Abraham, Our Father
 The
famous writer Thomas Merton
became Father Louis with he
entered the Trappist Order in the
1940s
 These name changes signify that the
person has taken on a new role in
Christ
Abraham, Our Father
God’s promise to Abram was difficult for
him to accept
 He was already seventy-five years old
 He and his wife had never had any
children
 How could be become the father of a
great nation?

Abraham, Our Father
In Abram’s time, having a large number
of children was regarded as a blessing
 Abram might have wondered why he was
cursed (not favored) by having no
descendants
 Although his travels had made him
wealthy, he had no son to carry on his
name

Abraham, Our Father
 God
had promised Abram many
things
 But Abram questioned how these
things could be done, and dared to
express his doubts to God
 Genesis 15:1-3
Abraham, Our Father
 It
seems perfectly reasonable that
he would have questions, under the
circumstances
 God had promised to do something
extraordinary, beyond human reason
 Genesis 15:4-6
Abraham, Our Father
 God’s
promise must have seemed
unlikely to Abram
 He essentially asked God for “proof”
 God spoke to Abram in a dream and
assured him of the covenant
 But still Abram was uncertain
Abraham, Our Father




Remember that polygamy had become
acceptable through Lamech
It was also accepted that a wife could give her
husband a female slave as a concubine
A concubine was a woman who lives with a
man but is not his wife
In this case, it was a female slave, an Egyptian
woman named Hagar
Abraham, Our Father
 If
Hagar had a child, Abram and
Sarai could claim it as their own
 Compare this with surrogate
arrangements today
 Hagar’s child was named Ishmael
 He became the father of the Arabs
(and so the father of the Muslims)
Abraham, Our Father
 When
King Hussein of Jordan made
peace with Israel a few years ago,
he said something like
 “Today there is peace between the
children of Abraham”
Abraham, Our Father
 But
Ishmael was not the heir Abram
had been promised
 Abram was then 86, Sarai probably
about 76
 When Abram was 99 years old, God
appeared to him again
 Genesis 17:1-8
Abraham, Our Father
God’s promise to Abram is again
confirmed
 Genesis 17:9-14
 God prescribes circumcision as a sign of
the covenant
 Jews AND Muslims (the children of
Abraham) are still ritually circumcised
today

Abraham, Our Father
 Circumcision
is a permanent
marking of the flesh
 It signifies a permanent covenant
 But that was not all
 God has something else in mind for
Abram and Sarai
Abraham, Our Father
Genesis 17:15-16
 Again a name change
 Sarai is renamed Sarah
 Even though Sarai was 89 years old,
God promised that she will conceive and
bear a son
 But that was too much for Abram to
accept

Abraham, Our Father
 Genesis
17:17-19
 Abram laughed at the idea that he
and Sarai were to become parents in
their old age
 The son of Abram and Sarai was to
be named “Isaac”
Abraham, Our Father
In Hebrew, Isaac means “he who laughs”
 God changed Abram’s name to
Abraham, signifying that he would be the
father of a multitude of nations
 also changed Sarai’s name to Sarah,
which means “Princess” or “Queen”

Abraham, Our Father
In response to God’s command,
Abram had himself and his entire tribe
circumcised
 Circumcision was already a custom in
some ancient cultures at the time,
including Egypt

Abraham, Our Father
The mass circumcision included
Ishmael, who was then 13 years old
 13 was then the customary age for
circumcision among the Egyptians
 It is still near-universal among the
Jews and the Muslims, and practiced
by many other cultures

Abraham, Our Father
 But
it’s typically done shortly after
birth now
 Although it has been the practice in
many secular cultures, many are
questioning it now
Abraham, Our Father
 In
his camp, Abraham is approached
by three strangers
 Hospitality to strangers was a
custom in the East at the time
 It would have been considered rude
for Abraham not to receive them,
offer them food and drink, etc.
Abraham, Our Father
 It
turns out that his visitors were God
and two angels
 They told him that Sarah would
conceive and bear a son
Abraham, Our Father
Abraham was God’s choice to lead His
people
 Abraham needed to know how God dealt
with unrighteousness
 Sodom and Gomorrah had developed a
reputation as seriously sinful places
 God chose them to demonstrate the
consequences of sin

Abraham, Our Father
God shared his plans with Abraham
 He would destroy Sodom and Gomorrah
 But Abraham’s nephew Lot and his family
lived in Sodom
 Abraham hoped he could persuade God
not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah

Abraham, Our Father




So we see Abraham trying to negotiate with
God
What if there are fifty righteous people?
What about forty? Thirty? Twenty? Ten?
Finally Abraham convinces God to spare
Sodom for the sake of ten righteous people
God sent angels on kind of an “inspection
tour”
Abraham, Our Father
Lot’s family was composed of six people
 Abraham thought he had it made
 Surely there can be just four more
righteous people in Sodom
 Again Abraham’s nephew Lot offered
hospitality to strangers
 But the people of Sodom sought to rape
the strangers

Abraham, Our Father
 To
allow this would be a great sin
against the virtue of hospitality
 For one thing, as his guests, the
strangers were under his protection
 Lot even went so far as to offer the
mob his own daughters (obviously,
the wrong thing to do) to protect the
strangers
Abraham, Our Father
The angels intervened to save Lot’s
family and the strangers from harm
 The innocent were allowed to escape
through the mercy of God
 They were ordered to flee Sodom and
never look back
 “Never look back. Somethin’ might be
gainin’ on you.” (Satchel Paige)

Abraham, Our Father
 But
Lot’s wife just had to look back
 She was turned into a pillar of salt
 Everything Lot had was destroyed
 A barren land with a poisonous sea
(the Dead Sea) was left in the place
of the civilization he knew
Abraham, Our Father
Lot’s home was no more, and he could
not return home
 Lot’s daughters turned on him, got him
drunk, and tricked him into fathering two
children with them in an incestuous
relationship
 These two children would be the
progenitors of the Moabites and the
Ammonites, later enemies of Israel

Abraham, Our Father




The Catechism of the Catholic Church is
clear in it teaching on incest (CCC 2388)
Incest is intimate relations between two
people in the degree of kinship within which
marriage is prohibited
Mother, daughter, father’s wife, mother’s
husband, sister, brother, etc.
First cousin is also a prohibited degree
under canon law, but this can be dispensed
Abraham, Our Father
In the Spring, Sarah gave birth to Isaac
 But Sarah did not like Ishmael,
Abraham’s first-born with the Egyptian
slave/concubine Hagar
 Sarah demanded that Ishmael and Hagar
be sent away
 Perhaps she had forgotten that the whole
thing was her idea in the first place

Abraham, Our Father
But throughout the Old Testament,
whenever someone breaks the
marriage covenant by taking more
than one spouse, the result is always
jealousy and pain
 Abraham loved Ishmael, but agreed to
exile him and Hagar
 God reassured Abraham

Abraham, Our Father
Ishmael would also be the father of a
great nation (the Arab people, the
Muslims)
 But Isaac would be the one to carry on
the divine covenant
 Everything depended on Isaac
 But then God asked a strange thing of
Abraham

Abraham, Our Father
Genesis 22:1-2
 God asked this of Abraham to test his
loyalty and commitment, and the depth of
his faith
 Although Abraham had shown that he
had the courage to bargain with God, and
would rather have given his own life than
his son’s, he obeyed God’s command
 Genesis 22:3-8

Abraham, Our Father
 Isaac
carried the wood for the
holocaust on his own shoulders
 Isaac probably did not resist
 He allowed himself to be tied up and
sacrificed
 He submitted as a willing participant
in the sacrifice
Abraham, Our Father





But the story has a happy ending
Genesis 22:11-14
In all probability, the people who lived in the
region routinely practiced human sacrifice
But this episode with Abraham and Isaac
would be remembered by the Israelites
They were to understand that their God
would never demand a human sacrifice of
them
Abraham, Our Father

For Christians, the sacrifice of Abraham is a
type for the sacrifice of Christ
Isaac
Christ
A father offers his beloved son
The Father offers His beloved
Son
The son submits to the father’s
will
The Son submits to the Father’s
will
Isaac carries the wood for his
own sacrifice
Jesus carries his own wooden
cross
God Himself provides the
sacrifice
God Himself provided the perfect
sacrifice
Abraham, Our Father
The mountains of Moriah were the hills
around Jerusalem
 On one of the peaks, the Temple would
be built where the whole nation of Israel
would offer sacrifice to God (Temple
Mount)
 Some say this is the mountain on which
the sacrifice of Isaac took place

Abraham, Our Father
Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the
Rock are in this location (Temple Mount)
today
 On another, Jesus would offer Himself as
the last sacrifice (Golgotha)

Abraham, Our Father
Genesis 22:15-17
 To Abraham, it must have seemed that
the hard part was over
 The promised blessings had arrived
 Abraham lived a long life, and saw his
son married and well-established
 It must be time to kick back and enjoy life

Abraham, Our Father
But not so fast . . .
 We know that the Chosen People would
sin and sin and sin again
 But God would not forget the Covenant
 God would always continue to use the
descendants of Abraham to bring
salvation to the world

Abraham, Our Father
 Read
the excerpt from St.
Augustine’s City of God and the
Commentary on Genesis 12:1-6 on
page 102 of the textbook
 Note the major points made in these
selections (same page)
 Be prepared to respond orally to the
study questions
Abraham, Our Father







In what city did Abram grow up?
Who were Abram’s brothers?
How old was Abram when he first heard God’s call?
What lesson can we learn from Abraham’s
submissiveness to God?
What were the three promises God made to Abram?
Through which of Abram’s descendants are these
promises fulfilled?
What does Matthew 1:1 remind us?
Abraham, Our Father






Why did a firepot and a torch pass between Abram’s
sacrifices after he had questioned God about his
promises?
What was the sign of God’s covenant with Abram?
What were God’s promises to Abraham?
What was to be the sign of the covenant between God
and his people?
How old was Sarah when she was told she would have
a son?
What was the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah?
Abraham, Our Father






How should those who have homosexual tendencies
be treated?
Who was Lot and why did he have to leave his city?
How are God’s actions at Sodom and Gomorrah signs
of both his judgment and mercy?
Why were Ishmael and his mother thrown out into the
wilderness?
In what ways was the proposed sacrifice of Isaac a
“type” of the Lord’s sacrifice on the cross?
What city was built on the mountains of Moriah?