At the door

A messenger comes to visit

I was visiting someone this week. We spoke about various subjects, and at one point I told how I looked at a personal situation. Then the other person said something that stayed with me: “It really seems as if the Lord sent you, because I suddenly have an answer.”

I found that remarkable. Not because I could now establish that the Lord had sent me there with a special assignment. I do not know that at all. But it did set me thinking.

Sometimes you have a conversation that is quite ordinary for yourself, while for the other person it touches exactly on something he has been struggling with for a long time. Perhaps we have also experienced ourselves that someone said something to us without knowing how much meaning those words had for us.

I had to think of that when I read the parashah Vayera.

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. (Hebrews 13:2)

I have sometimes looked more closely at that word angel. In Hebrew it is mal’ach and in Greek angelos. Both words mean messenger. In Scripture they are also used for heavenly messengers. The word points in the first place to the task someone has: he brings a message across.

By this I do not of course mean that everyone who tells us something that comes exactly at the right moment is an angel. But we may well be addressed through it. Perhaps we should have more of an eye for the encounters God brings onto our path.

Abraham did not know in advance either how his day would unfold.

He sat in the entrance of his tent, by the oaks of Mamre, when the day grew hot. And precisely there this story begins. It says: “And the LORD appeared unto him.”

Last week we read about Hagar, who was found by a well of water by the Angel of the LORD. We also paused there at the Samaritan woman who was addressed by Yeshua at a well.

Now we meet Abraham at his tent.

These are different stories and we must be careful not to simply equate them. But there is something that returns in all these encounters.

The human being did not bring about the encounter himself. It is God who appears, who finds someone, or who begins a conversation.

I find that a fine thought to begin this parashah with. Perhaps because we so easily think that we have to seek God, while Scripture shows us again and again that He seeks people out and speaks to them.

Abraham hurries to receive his guests

The name Vayera comes from the first verse of Genesis 18. In Hebrew it is wajjērā’, from the verb that means to see or to appear.

Abraham lifts up his eyes and sees three men standing opposite him. He rises, runs to meet them and bows himself to the ground.

Notice how carefully Genesis then tells what Abraham does.

He offers water so that they can wash their feet. He invites them to rest under the tree and wants to give them something to eat. But it does not stay with a simple morsel of bread.

Abraham hurries to Sarah and asks her to knead three measures of fine meal. Then he runs to his cattle, takes a calf that is “tender and good” and gives it to the servant, who hurries to prepare it.

Several times there is talk of hurrying, running and hastening.

What strikes me in this is that Abraham himself remains continually involved. He does not leave the guests to their fate and does not only give others the task of caring for them. He receives them personally and remains standing by them while they eat.

That is hospitality that becomes visible in action.

We can of course say that this belonged to the culture of that time. And that is true. But that does not mean we have to place the meaning of this passage outside our own life.

For what does hospitality actually mean for us?

We can open our house, but also our time and attention. We can make room to listen to someone. Sometimes that is not so easy. We have our own occupations, our own cares and a schedule that is often already full enough.

And yet precisely such an unexpected encounter can prove important.

At the same time we must remain wise. Hospitality does not mean that we must simply give every stranger access to our house or to the people for whom we are responsible. The story of Lot will even show us further on why protection can be necessary.

But with Abraham we see something very simple. He sees people standing, comes into motion and receives them.

And during that meal something happens that will change his whole life.

Where is Sarah?

The visitors ask: “Where is Sarah, your wife?”

Abraham answers that she is in the tent.

Sarah listens at the entrance of the tent. And there she hears again the promise that she will have a son.

That was no new promise.

God had already spoken to Abraham earlier about the offspring He would give him. In Genesis 15 Abraham had to count the stars, if he was able to do so. So numerous would his offspring become. In Genesis 17 God had even expressly said that Sarah would bear a son and that He would establish His covenant with Isaac.

But Abraham and Sarah had grown old.

What God promised now lay beyond their natural possibilities. That is precisely the tension that Genesis leaves standing.

Sarah hears the words and laughs within herself.

I can imagine that she thought: how could that still happen now? We have waited so long. My body has grown old and Abraham is also old. Would it then still happen?

The LORD asks why Sarah laughs.

And then follows the question that I consider one of the most important sentences of this parashah:

Is any thing too hard for the LORD? (Genesis 18:14)

That is what it is about.

Not whether Abraham and Sarah still see a possibility. Not whether they understand everything God has promised. But whether the LORD can do what He has spoken.

Sarah then denies that she laughed, because she is afraid. But the LORD answers: “Nay; but thou didst laugh.”

God also knows what she thought within herself.

Yet the promise is not withdrawn.

What God has said stands firm.

At the appointed time

When reading Genesis 18, one word in particular caught my attention, a word that has kept drawing my attention again over the past days.

That is the Hebrew word mo’ed.

In Genesis 17:21 God had said to Abraham that Sarah would bear Isaac “at this set time in the next year”.

In Genesis 18:14 He says again that He will return at the appointed time and that Sarah will have a son.

In Hebrew it says there lammo’ed.

And when we read further, we meet the same expression again in Genesis 21:2.

Sarah conceives and bears Abraham a son, “at the set time of which God had spoken to him”.

I find that remarkable.

God has not only said what He would do. He has also appointed a time for the fulfilment.

Abraham cannot organize that fulfilment himself. He cannot shorten the time and cannot force the outcome. The birth of Isaac is not the result of a human achievement.

That had been precisely one of the difficult points with Ishmael.

Sarah had tried to obtain offspring after all through Hagar. Abraham had gone along with this. That led to a family situation in which Hagar had to undergo much sorrow and humiliation.

Now God says that Sarah herself will have a son.

And that happens at the time He has appointed.

At that word mo’ed my antenna went up, because we also meet it elsewhere in Scripture.

In Genesis 1:14 we read that God gives the lights of heaven to make a distinction between day and night and to serve for signs, for appointed times, for days and years.

There the plural mo’adim stands.

Then we read in Leviticus 23 that God speaks to Israel about His appointed times. The LORD calls them the “feasts of the LORD”, holy convocations that are to be proclaimed at their own times.

Again that same word.

I find that an important connection.

We often speak of the Jewish feasts. That is understandable, for God gave them to Israel. But when you read Leviticus 23, you see that He calls them His own appointed times.

They are the times of the LORD.

The sabbath receives its place there at the beginning of the chapter. Then the yearly feasts are described: Passover, the feast of unleavened bread, the firstfruits and the counting toward Shavuot, the day of the blowing of trumpets, the Day of Atonement, the feast of Tabernacles and the eighth day with its own holy convocation.

The various days have their own ordinances and meaning.

I think we do well to study them carefully.

Not because we can earn our salvation by it or because keeping a calendar would bring us closer to God than His grace brings us. That would precisely pass by what these feasts teach us.

But if God Himself has set times and has attached instruction to them, then it seems important to me that we do not simply set them aside.

In the course of church history we have received all kinds of customs and feast days. Some of them can contain valuable reminders of God’s acts. Yet we must always dare to ask again where our customs come from and what Scripture says about them.

At the same time we must remain honest about what Genesis itself tells.

The fact that Genesis 1:14 uses the word mo’adim does not yet prove that the full feast calendar of Leviticus 23 was already kept then. And Genesis 18 does not say on which feast day the visitors came to Abraham or on which calendar date Isaac was born.

There are Jewish traditions that connect the birth of Isaac with Passover. In addition, Genesis 21 and 22 are read in the Jewish reading tradition on the days of Rosh Hashanah.

Those are interesting connections that are worth studying. But a tradition about the date is not yet the same as a dating that Genesis itself gives.

What Genesis does tell us clearly is that God determines the time of His acting.

That brings me to Habakkuk 2:3, where it speaks of the vision that waits for an appointed time.

Though it tarry, wait for it. (Habakkuk 2:3)

There too stands mo’ed.

Waiting for God’s time asks for trust.

But as we see with Abraham, waiting does not mean that we no longer need to do anything. Abraham keeps living, receives people, prays and acts. He simply does not hold the fulfilment of God’s promise in his own hands.

Perhaps the appointed times of the LORD can precisely help us to learn again to wait, to remember and to look forward.

Not from the idea that the right form forces the outcome, but because God wants to teach us, through His instruction, to live out of what He has spoken.

The laughter of Sarah and the name of Isaac

Something else that strikes me in this parashah is how often laughter returns.

Isaac is called Yitzchak in Hebrew. His name is connected with the verb tsachaq, to laugh.

In Genesis 18 Sarah laughs at hearing the promise. In Genesis 21, when Isaac is born, she says: “God hath made me to laugh.”

What at first seemed hardly imaginable has become reality.

Sarah has reason to rejoice.

But the same word-field sounds very different in other places.

When Lot warns his future sons-in-law that Sodom will be destroyed, he seems in their eyes to be someone making a joke. In Genesis 19:14 a form of tsachaq is used again for this.

And in Genesis 21:9 we see Ishmael laughing or mocking. There too the same root returns.

It is not that every use of the word has exactly the same meaning. The context precisely determines whether it is about joy, mockery or something else.

Yet I find the repetition striking.

Sarah can hardly believe the promise. Lot’s sons-in-law do not take the warning seriously. At the birth of Isaac the laughter receives a new meaning.

It shows how differently people can react to God’s speaking.

And we ourselves do not stand outside this.

Sometimes we can know the Word very well, while we find it hard to imagine that God will really do what He has said. Perhaps because we look mainly at the circumstances in which we live.

Sarah knew her body and her age.

But she had to learn that God’s promise was not bounded by her possibilities.

Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?

The visit to Abraham is not only about the promise of a son.

When the men go on in the direction of Sodom, we read something that I consider perhaps one of the heaviest passages of this parashah.

The LORD says: “Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?”

Then there is again talk of the calling of Abraham and the people that will come forth from him.

In Genesis 18:19 God says that Abraham must teach his children and his house after him to keep the way of the LORD, by doing justice and judgment.

That is very important.

God’s promise to Abraham does not only concern his personal life or the offspring he will receive. His house must also learn how it ought to live before the face of God.

The way of the LORD becomes visible in justice and judgment.

And precisely then Sodom comes into view.

The LORD speaks of the cry that has come up to Him out of Sodom and Gomorrah. The sin of the cities is very grievous.

Abraham understands that a judgment threatens.

Then he does something remarkable.

He goes and stands before the face of the LORD and begins to plead for the city.

Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? (Genesis 18:23)

And then he asks the question:

Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? (Genesis 18:25)

I find that a remarkable prayer.

Abraham does not act as if there is no sin. He does not defend everything the inhabitants of Sodom do. Nor does he ask whether God will set His righteousness aside.

He appeals precisely to that righteousness.

He begins with fifty righteous. Then he asks further: forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty and finally ten.

What strikes me in this is that Abraham keeps asking, while he at the same time realizes Whom he has before him.

He says that he is dust and ashes.

That is no way to make himself important. He knows that he does not stand before God as someone who can call Him to account.

But precisely because he knows God’s righteousness, he dares to plead.

I think we can learn from that.

We can very quickly have a judgment about the world around us. We see injustice, sin and things that go directly against God’s Word. Nor should we stand indifferent toward that.

But how often do we stand in prayer for those same people?

Abraham knew the seriousness of the judgment. Yet he kept pleading.

That brings us to a very personal question.

When we speak of God’s righteousness, are we then also moved with the people who can be struck by that judgment?

Or do we use our knowledge of the truth mainly to distance ourselves from others?

Abraham teaches us that keeping God’s way does not only mean that we ourselves make a distinction between good and evil. It also means that we do justice and that the fate of the other does not leave us indifferent.

Lot in the gate of Sodom

When we come to Genesis 19, we meet Lot.

It is now evening.

With Abraham the visitors sat under the tree, at the entrance of his tent. Now two angels arrive in Sodom, where Lot sits in the gate of the city.

A city gate in that time was more than only a passage. It was also a place where people came together, traded and administered justice.

That Lot sits there tells us something about his place in the city.

Last week we already saw how he chose the well-watered plain of the Jordan. It looked attractive, but Genesis told right away that the inhabitants of Sodom were very wicked.

By now Lot lives in that city.

Yet we also see with him an attitude of hospitality.

He rises, bows before the visitors and invites them to spend the night with him.

At first they want to stay in the street, but Lot presses strongly upon them.

In Genesis 19:3 the Hebrew verb patsar is used for this. It means to press strongly.

And then something striking happens.

When the men of Sodom later surround the house, they use violence and try to force Lot to bring his guests outside.

In verse 9 too the verb patsar stands.

The same verb, but with a wholly different intent.

Lot presses because he wants to give his guests shelter.

The men of Sodom press because they want to humiliate the visitors and use sexual violence against them.

In this we can see something that goes further than only this story.

The force with which someone does something does not in itself yet say whether he acts well.

You can press strongly upon something out of love or care, but you can also press to carry through your own will at the cost of the other.

Therefore we must not only pay attention to what someone does. We must also look at the direction of that action.

Does it serve the other, or is the other used?

That is an important question, also within our religious convictions.

We can be very resolute in something we see as truth. But when that conviction is used to dominate another, we must ask ourselves whether we are still acting in accordance with the truth we say we defend.

The door Lot could not hold shut

The story in Sodom grows ever more threatening.

The men of the city surround the house and demand that Lot bring the visitors outside.

Lot goes outside himself and shuts the door behind him.

There he stands opposite the crowd.

He tries to protect his guests, but his action is not without serious faults.

He even offers to hand over his daughters.

I find that a difficult passage. It shows that Lot, under the pressure of the situation, proposes a decision that brings his own daughters into great danger.

We may not excuse that because he was at the same time trying to protect his guests.

Scripture tells what he did. By that not everything he did is also approved.

Then the men of Sodom press upon him and try to break open the door.

At that moment the visitors stretch out their hands, pull Lot inside and shut the door.

That is a remarkable reversal.

Lot had received the men into his house to protect them. Now they must protect him.

The men outside are struck with blindness and wear themselves out trying to find the door.

What strikes me here is that Lot can ultimately no longer control the situation.

He has acted himself and tried to make his guests safe. But at the decisive moment it is the messengers of God who intervene.

That does not make his hospitality worthless. But it does show where his rescue ultimately comes from.

Not from his own ability to hold the door shut.

The hand that holds Lot

The next morning Lot is urged to leave the city.

The judgment is coming.

Yet we read that Lot lingers.

That is hard to understand when you know what is going to happen. But perhaps we recognize something of ourselves in it too.

We can know that something is not good for us and yet have difficulty letting it go. A place, a habit or a security with which we have bound our life does not always let itself be left behind easily.

Genesis does not tell exactly what Lot thought at that moment.

But it does say what the messengers did.

They seized his hand, the hand of his wife and the hands of his two daughters and brought them outside the city.

And then it is added why:

The LORD being merciful unto him. (Genesis 19:16)

That word mercy points to God’s compassion.

The Hebrew verb used for the seizing of the hand is chazaq. It can mean to hold fast, to strengthen or to grasp firmly.

I find that a remarkable image.

Lot is not rescued because he obeys so promptly.

He keeps lingering instead.

But the messengers of God seize his hand and lead him outside.

In this I had to think of Ezekiel 16.

The prophet speaks there of the sin of Sodom and names among other things pride, abundance and careless rest.

And then he says that Sodom did not strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.

There too a form of chazaq is used.

The city had no care for the weak and the needy.

But the messengers of the LORD seize the hand of Lot.

That is a remarkable connection.

We must not reduce Sodom’s sin to only a lack of hospitality. Genesis also describes the serious threat of sexual violence. Ezekiel shows that the injustice was broader and sat deep in the common life of the city.

A society can be prosperous and yet have no room for the vulnerable person.

And precisely over against that attitude we see here God’s compassion.

The LORD does not leave Lot behind in the city.

I find that a great encouragement.

Not because it is promised here that God will rescue us out of every difficult situation in the same way. Scripture does not teach us that.

But because we see that God’s compassion does not depend on a person who continually does everything right.

Lot was a fallible man.

Yet his hand was seized.

God remembered Abraham

In Genesis 19:29 it is told that God remembered Abraham when He destroyed the cities of the plain and sent Lot out of the overthrow.

That is an important sentence.

Abraham had pleaded for the city.

He had asked whether the Judge of all the earth would not do right.

Sodom was ultimately not spared. But Lot was led out of the city.

By this it is not said that Abraham could force the outcome by his prayer. God remained the Judge.

Yet Genesis expressly connects the rescue of Lot with the fact that God remembered Abraham.

The LORD does not forget His covenant and His own speaking.

Intercession is therefore not without meaning.

We may bring people before the face of God, even when we do not know what the outcome will be.

That is something other than claiming a result.

We bring the other to Him who is righteous and merciful.

The story of Lot’s wife also belongs to this passage. She looks back and becomes a pillar of salt. Yeshua will later, when He speaks of the days of Lot, warn: “Remember Lot’s wife.”

We must not come to that with all kinds of self-devised explanations about her inner state. The text tells that she looked back, while the command was precisely not to look behind.

And after the rescue of Lot there follows yet another especially painful story.

His daughters make him drunk and have relations with him, because they want to bring forth offspring. From the sons who are born, Moab and Ammon come forth.

That is no fine ending to the rescue out of Sodom.

The consequences of sin and wrong choices have not suddenly disappeared because Lot escaped the judgment over the city.

I find it important that we leave this standing.

The Bible does not describe the people God uses in His history as infallible examples. Their faults are not smoothed away to be able to tell a finer story.

Scripture shows their real life.

And precisely in that we learn that God’s faithfulness does not rest on the perfection of people.

Abraham falls back into his old fear

We see that also with Abraham.

After Sodom, Genesis 20 tells that he journeys to the region of Gerar.

And there something happens that seems familiar to us.

Abraham says again about Sarah that she is his sister.

We have read that earlier, when he went down to Egypt.

He is afraid that people will kill him because Sarah is his wife. Therefore he tries to make his own life safe by not telling the full truth.

Sarah was indeed his half-sister. But Abraham conceals that she is also his wife.

I find this a remarkable chapter.

Abraham has met the LORD. He has heard the promise of Isaac. He has pleaded for Sodom and spoken about the righteousness of God.

And yet he falls back again into his old fear.

The faith of Abraham is therefore not described to us as a straight road on which he climbs a step higher after every experience and never falls back into his old behaviour again.

We must remember that well.

We can sometimes think that someone who truly believes must also become continually and visibly stronger, surer and holier.

But when we follow Abraham, we see that his faith is tested and that his old weaknesses are still present.

Abimelech takes Sarah into his house, but God appears to him in a dream and warns him.

The LORD protects Sarah.

That is of great importance, for the birth of Isaac is by now near.

God does not let the fulfilment of His promise be lost through Abraham’s wrong acting.

Abimelech is addressed, Sarah is given back and Abraham must pray for him.

And then again something remarkable happens.

The man who himself acted wrongly is called to pray for another.

God heals the house of Abimelech.

Abraham’s failure is by this not excused. But his failure also does not mean that God has let go of His promise.

That is an important lesson for us.

The ground of our trust cannot lie in the question whether we can point to a perfect line of life in ourselves.

We are indeed called to walk in obedience and to acknowledge our faults.

But the faithfulness of the LORD remains the ground on which we may stand.

And the LORD visited Sarah

Then we come to Genesis 21.

And the LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did unto Sarah as he had spoken. (Genesis 21:1)

In Hebrew the word paqad stands at that visiting.

That word can have various meanings, among them to look after or to give attention. In this story we hear above all that God has not forgotten Sarah.

He does what He has promised.

The text emphasizes that even twice.

As He had said.

As He had spoken.

And then we read that Isaac was born at the appointed time.

What seemed impossible in Genesis 18 has become reality.

Sarah holds her son in her arms.

And then the laughter sounds again.

God hath made me to laugh. (Genesis 21:6)

I find that beautiful.

The laughter of Sarah has not disappeared from the story. But its meaning has changed.

At first she heard a promise she could not understand.

Now she sees the fulfilment.

Abraham circumcises Isaac on the eighth day, as God had commanded him. By this the son of the promise also receives his place within the covenant of which the LORD had earlier given the sign.

The birth of Isaac is therefore not only a personal joy for Abraham and Sarah.

God goes further with the history of His covenant.

But the chapter is not only a festive story.

For while the joy over Isaac is described, tension again arises in the family.

And what about Hagar and Ishmael?

In Genesis 21 we see that Sarah wants Hagar and Ishmael to be sent away.

That touches Abraham deeply.

Ishmael is after all also his son.

It is good not to forget that.

When we read the history of the covenant, our attention goes naturally to Isaac. He is the son through whom the special covenant promise will run on.

But because of that we may not lose sight of Hagar and Ishmael.

Last week we read how Hagar was found in the wilderness.

She called the LORD El Roi, the God who sees her.

And now we read about her again.

Sarah has seen Ishmael laughing or mocking. What exactly lay in that behaviour is not fully worked out in Genesis 21:9. What is clear is that Sarah does not want Hagar and her son to inherit together with Isaac.

God says to Abraham that the covenant line will run through Isaac.

But He also says that He will make Ishmael into a nation.

I find that an important distinction.

God chooses Isaac for a special place in His covenant history. But by that Ishmael does not become invisible to Him.

Hagar departs with her son and ends up in the wilderness of Beersheba.

The water runs out.

She sees no way out any longer and cannot bear to watch her son die.

Then we read that God hears the voice of the boy.

That connects again with his name: Ishmael, God hears.

The Angel of God calls to Hagar from heaven and says that she must not be afraid.

Then God opens her eyes and she sees a well of water.

I find that one of the most moving moments of this parashah.

Hagar had seen no way out any longer.

But God heard the boy.

We must not read carelessly over this. Hagar has truly suffered. First in the house of Abraham and later again in the wilderness.

Scripture does not try to undo her sorrow by looking only at the ending.

But precisely in the midst of her distress we hear that God has not forgotten her.

The LORD who gives Sarah a son at the appointed time also hears the voice of Ishmael.

The special place of Isaac does not mean that God’s attention remains limited to him alone.

That helps me not to misunderstand the election of Abraham and his offspring.

God calls Abraham and gives him a special place in His plan of salvation. But that calling stands, from Genesis 12 onward, in connection with His intention to bless all the families of the earth.

That does not begin with the person who takes a place for himself.

It begins with God’s own speaking.

The everlasting God at Beersheba

At the end of Genesis 21 we read that Abraham and Abimelech make a covenant.

There is talk of the well at Beersheba and the rights connected with it.

This too is a very earthly passage.

Abraham does not live only from spiritual experiences. He must dwell, have water for his animals and make agreements with the people around him.

Faith does not take him away out of ordinary life.

He plants a tamarisk there and calls on the name of the LORD, the everlasting God.

In Hebrew it is El Olam.

I find that name remarkable in this place.

Abraham has by now experienced the birth of Isaac, but the fulfilment of God’s full promise still lies far ahead of him.

He still dwells as a stranger in the land.

The people that will come forth from him must still be born.

But he calls on the Name of the everlasting God.

Abraham’s life is bounded.

God’s promise reaches further than his life.

That is also an important thought for us.

We can sometimes bind our faith so strongly to what we want to see happen in our own time that we forget how great God’s acting is.

Abraham was allowed to receive a son.

But what God would do with his offspring went much further than the years Abraham himself would still live.

Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest

And then we come to Genesis 22.

I think we may not pass over this too quickly.

This is one of the most difficult passages in the Torah.

It begins with the announcement that God tests Abraham.

That is important, for as readers we thereby know something that Abraham does not know at that moment.

God says:

Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest. (Genesis 22:2)

And Abraham receives the command to go to the land of Moriah and offer his son there as a burnt offering, on a mountain that God will show him.

Those words are extraordinarily heavy.

Isaac is not Abraham’s only biological son. Ishmael is there too.

But Isaac is the son God promised to Abraham and Sarah. He is the son through whom the special covenant line will go on.

And precisely that son Abraham must take with him.

I find the wording moving.

Thy son.

Thine only son.

Whom thou lovest.

Isaac.

The text lets us feel what is at stake here for Abraham.

This is the son he waited for so long.

The son of whom God Himself had said that He would establish His covenant with him.

And now Abraham receives this command.

What would have gone on within him?

That we do not know.

Genesis does not tell us what Abraham thought during that night or how he dealt with his sorrow and questions.

We must be careful with that.

We can ascribe all kinds of thoughts to Abraham, but then we tell more than Scripture itself says.

What we do read is that he rises early, saddles his donkey, takes two servants and Isaac and sets out.

On the third day he lifts up his eyes and sees the place in the distance.

Then he says to the servants that he and the boy will go further to worship and will afterward come back.

That is a remarkable statement.

Abraham speaks of coming back, while he has received the command to offer Isaac.

I think we may here carefully see something of his trust.

Not because he already knows how God will solve it.

But because he holds fast to the God who promised him this son.

Where is the lamb?

Isaac carries the wood for the burnt offering.

Abraham carries the fire and the knife.

Then Isaac asks his father a question.

Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? (Genesis 22:7)

I find that perhaps one of the most moving questions in Genesis.

Isaac sees that everything for the offering is present.

Except the animal.

Abraham answers:

God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering, my son. (Genesis 22:8)

In Hebrew the verb that is here translated as provide is connected with ra’ah, to see.

By this we come again to a word that we already heard at the beginning of the parashah.

The LORD appeared to Abraham.

And now Abraham says that God Himself will see or provide what is needed for the offering.

That does not mean that Abraham at this moment already has a full picture of what will happen.

He lays the outcome in God’s hands.

And then they come to the place God has shown him.

Abraham builds an altar, arranges the wood and binds Isaac.

The Hebrew word for binding has led to this story being known in the Jewish tradition as the Akedah, the binding of Isaac.

Abraham lays his son on the wood.

Then he stretches out his hand and takes the knife.

At that moment a voice sounds from heaven.

“Abraham, Abraham!”

And Abraham answers:

Here am I. (Genesis 22:11)

The Angel of the LORD commands him not to stretch out his hand toward the boy.

Isaac is spared.

Abraham lifts up his eyes and sees a ram caught in the thicket by its horns.

That ram he offers in the place of his son.

At this we must pause.

The LORD does not let the offering of Isaac take place.

The son of the promise is not killed.

God Himself intervenes.

I find it important to be clear here.

Genesis 22 is not a general command to believers to put their children, their family or their loved ones at stake in order to prove their faith.

It is a special trial within the history of Abraham and God’s covenant.

And the decisive moment is precisely that God holds back the hand of Abraham.

The LORD will provide

Abraham names the place JHWH Jireh.

The LORD will provide.

Here too the verb connected with seeing sounds again.

The parashah began with God’s appearing to Abraham.

And here, on Moriah, the seeing and providing receive an especially deep meaning.

Abraham had received the promise.

He had seen the fulfilment.

And now he had to learn that even the future of that promise did not lie in his own hands.

I find that a very far-reaching thought.

We can receive something from God and become so attached to it that we ultimately seek our security in that gift.

That can be a possession, a position, a special experience or even a spiritual conviction.

But the gift is not the Giver.

Abraham was allowed to love Isaac. Genesis makes very clear precisely how much his son meant to him.

Yet his trust had ultimately to rest in the God who had given Isaac.

There lies, I think, an important distinction.

Receiving does not mean that we become indifferent about what is given to us.

And letting go does not mean that we may have no sorrow or questions.

But faith teaches us that God’s promise reaches further than what we ourselves can hold fast.

In Hebrews 11 this story is explained again.

The writer says that Abraham considered that God was even able to raise Isaac from the dead.

That is a remarkable explanation.

Abraham held fast to God’s promise, even when the command he received seemed irreconcilable with it.

I do want to speak carefully here.

There are people who have lost a child. Others live with the fear of losing someone they love dearly.

Then we cannot simply say that they should just behave like Abraham.

That would do injustice to the seriousness of their sorrow and to the special character of this story.

Genesis 22 does not teach us that a strong faith takes away every pain.

It shows us how the LORD tests Abraham and how He Himself provides the offering through which Isaac is spared.

The woman from Shunem

When we lay this story beside the haftarah, a remarkable correspondence strikes me.

In 2 Kings 4 we first meet a widow who comes to Elisha because her creditor wants to take her two sons as bondmen.

She possesses almost nothing anymore.

Only a pot of oil.

Elisha instructs her to gather empty vessels at her neighbours and then to shut the door behind herself and her sons.

When she pours out the oil, it keeps flowing until all the vessels are full.

Afterward she can pay her debt and live with her sons on what remains.

Here too we see that faith is not the same as sitting still.

The woman must act.

She must gather vessels, shut the door and pour out oil.

But she cannot multiply the oil herself.

The provision comes from God.

Then we meet a woman from Shunem.

She receives the prophet Elisha each time he comes by.

And what does she do?

Together with her husband she prepares a room for him.

There comes a bed, a table, a stool and a candlestick.

I find that so concrete.

She does not only say that Elisha is welcome. She truly makes room for him in her house.

That makes me think again of Abraham.

He too opened his tent for visitors.

And with this woman, upon her hospitality follows an unexpected promise.

Elisha says that she will embrace a son at the appointed time.

In Hebrew almost the same time-marker sounds as with Sarah.

Again a mo’ed.

Again a woman for whom the birth of a son is no longer self-evident.

And again there sounds unbelief or hesitation.

The woman says: “Nay, my lord, thou man of God, do not lie unto thine handmaid.”

She had not asked for this promise.

But she receives a son.

At the time that was said to her.

The promise is put to the test

Then something terrible happens.

The boy becomes ill while he is with his father in the field.

He is brought to his mother and dies on her knees.

What must that have been for her?

She had not asked for a son.

He was promised to her.

And now he has died.

The woman lays him on the bed of the man of God and shuts the door.

Then she sets out toward Elisha.

On the way she answers briefly that it is well. We must not infer from that that she has no sorrow or that her faith has taken away every fear.

She goes precisely with great distress to the prophet.

When she comes to Elisha, she grasps his feet.

And then she says something that touches me especially:

Did I desire a son of my lord? did I not say, Do not deceive me? (2 Kings 4:28)

There I hear her sorrow.

But I also hear that she goes back to the promise that was given to her.

She had not demanded this son.

He was given to her.

And now she brings the loss back to the one through whom God had spoken to her.

That seems to me an important connection with Abraham.

Abraham had received a son through God’s promise.

The Shunammite had likewise received a son at an appointed time.

And in both stories the life of that son is put to the test in an extraordinarily serious way.

Yet we may not make the stories wholly identical.

Abraham receives a special command from God. The woman from Shunem receives no command to give up her son. She loses him unexpectedly.

Isaac is spared before his death.

The son of the Shunammite is given back out of death.

But in both stories we see people who cannot make safe by themselves the future of the son given to them.

The woman holds Elisha fast and says that she will not leave him.

Elisha goes with her.

He comes into the room, shuts the door behind the two of them and prays to the LORD.

Afterward the boy becomes alive again.

When we read this, we must not draw the conclusion that every parent who only has enough faith will get back a child who has died.

Scripture does not teach that here.

But we do see that the woman, in her distress, seeks the way to the God who had given her this son.

And that her faith is not passive.

She comes into motion.

She travels to Elisha.

She speaks out her distress.

She holds fast.

When does holding fast become wrong?

There lies, for me, an important lesson.

In the FRAME methodology we make a distinction between receiving and grasping.

That difference helps to examine where our security comes from and what we are trying to control.

But this parashah also corrects a too-simple application of it.

For we see that holding fast is not always wrong.

The messengers seize Lot’s hand to rescue him.

The Shunammite grasps Elisha by his feet.

Abraham stretches out his hand toward the knife, but is precisely held back.

The same bodily action can have a wholly different meaning.

Therefore it is not only about the question whether someone grasps something.

It is about the direction in which he acts.

In Sodom we see people who want to use their power to subject others to their will.

With Lot we see messengers who use their strength to lead someone out of the judgment.

With the woman from Shunem we see a mother who clings to the man through whom she received the promise.

And with Abraham we see someone who must learn that even the son of the promise cannot be made safe outside the hand of God.

That distinction I find important.

We can try to force an outcome on the ground of something we have read in Scripture.

But that is not the same as believingly trusting in what God has truly spoken.

Faith does not become stronger by our declaring our own expectation to be a promise of God.

We must carefully distinguish what God has promised, to whom He has said it and how that promise is to be understood within His covenant and His plan of salvation.

Otherwise we run off with our own wishes and use Scripture to confirm them.

But when God has spoken, we may trust in His faithfulness.

And that trust may bring us into motion.

Abraham set out.

The widow gathered vessels.

The Shunammite travelled to Elisha.

And Lot was taken by the hand when he himself kept lingering.

Who stood by the tent?

There is yet another question at which I want to pause in this reading.

Who were actually those three men who visited Abraham?

Genesis 18 begins with the announcement that the LORD appeared to Abraham.

Then Abraham sees three men.

In the conversation the manner of telling alternates between plural and singular. Two of the visitors go later to Sodom and are called angels in Genesis 19.

Abraham meanwhile remains standing before the face of the LORD.

In the Jewish interpretation, among others with Rashi, the three visitors are seen as angels with different tasks.

Within the Christian interpretation there has also regularly been thought of an appearance of the Son before His incarnation.

I myself think of Yeshua at this passage.

But I do want to remain careful in what I say about it.

Genesis 18 does not directly call the three visitors the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Nor is it expressly said that one of the men was Yeshua.

We may therefore not present this as a direct textual fact.

But when I then read John 8, it does become remarkable for me.

There Yeshua says:

Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad. (John 8:56)

His hearers do not understand how He can speak about Abraham in this way.

They ask how He can have seen Abraham while He is not yet fifty years old.

And then Yeshua says:

Before Abraham was, I am. (John 8:58)

I find that an extraordinary statement.

Yeshua says not only something about His knowledge of Abraham.

He speaks about His existence before Abraham.

For me that opens a connection with the appearance of the LORD in Genesis 18.

That connection has a confessional character. John does not say in so many words that Yeshua appeared to Abraham at Mamre.

But when we acknowledge Him as the Word made flesh, we hear in His statement that He did not only begin to exist at His birth in Bethlehem.

There lies, for me, the Messianic depth of this story.

And yet I want the text of Genesis itself to keep speaking.

Abraham met the LORD.

He received a promise.

He pleaded for the people of Sodom.

And later he heard on Moriah again the voice of the Angel of the LORD.

That is the story that is given to us.

The later passages of Scripture may deepen it for us, but they may not be used to lay all kinds of things into Genesis that are not there.

The Lamb that God Himself provides

When I then think back to the question of Isaac on Moriah, it receives a special meaning in the light of the gospel.

“Where is the lamb?”

Abraham answered that God Himself would provide.

On Moriah a ram was given in the place of Isaac.

And in John 1 we hear John the Baptist say about Yeshua:

Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. (John 1:29)

That is for me an important Messianic connection.

Not because every detail of the story about Isaac is automatically a prediction about Yeshua.

But because Scripture shows us further how God Himself provides in the redemption.

The son of Abraham was spared.

Yeshua has given His life.

Paul writes in Romans 8 that God did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all.

By this we come to a deeper fulfilment than Abraham himself could fully survey during his life.

The promise to Abraham, after all, was not only about the birth of Isaac.

From Genesis 12 onward God had said that in Abraham all the families of the earth would be blessed.

The Messiah does not stand outside that covenant history.

He comes precisely from the offspring of Abraham and carries the promise further.

Therefore I find it important not to separate the Torah, the Prophets and the Gospel from one another.

We learn to know Yeshua within the history of God’s acting with Israel.

And when we read that history carefully, our understanding of the gospel also receives more depth.

I am the Door

In reading this parashah, yet another image stayed with me.

The door.

Abraham sits at the entrance of his tent when the LORD appears.

Sarah hears the promise at the entrance of the tent.

Lot sits in the city gate of Sodom when the messengers arrive.

Later he shuts the door of his house against the crowd.

The messengers pull him inside and shut the door.

In the haftarah the widow shuts her door when she pours out the oil.

The woman from Shunem shuts the door of the room in which her son lies.

And Elisha later shuts that same door to pray to the LORD.

These are first of all ordinary doors in real stories.

And they do not all have the same function.

Sometimes a door is opened to receive people.

Sometimes it is shut to protect someone.

And sometimes the shut door is the place where someone prays to God in stillness.

I therefore do not want to act as if the door everywhere in these passages has one hidden symbolic meaning.

But when I read the stories side by side, I do gain an eye for what happens at the door.

People meet one another.

Something is received.

Protection must be given.

Prayer is made.

And sometimes someone must precisely be led through a door in order to remain preserved.

In this I think of John 10, where Yeshua says:

I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. (John 10:9)

In John 10 Yeshua speaks of the sheep and the shepherd.

He calls Himself not only the Door, but also the good Shepherd who gives His life for the sheep.

That is the place where the gospel brings us.

Our preservation does not lie in our ability to keep out every threat ourselves.

We can shut the door of our house, we can take measures to protect one another and we must also bear our responsibility in that.

But by that we do not have our life in our own hands.

Yeshua calls Himself the access to life.

And He is the One who knows the sheep and gives His life for them.

When I read that beside the story of Lot, I understand a little better what it means to be preserved through God’s compassion.

Lot could no longer hold the door shut.

He could ultimately not save himself.

But the messengers of God seized his hand.

And when I lay that beside the story of the Shunammite, I see a mother who brings her distress to God behind a shut door.

The door then becomes for me no means by which I can control God.

It is a reminder of the question where our safety and our trust really lie.

Psalm 121 says:

The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore. (Psalm 121:8)

That is a great promise of God’s preservation.

Not that there will never come sorrow, illness or trial in our life.

But that we may entrust our way to Him who watches over our life.

The promise goes further

At the end of Genesis 22 there follows yet a short report about the family of Nahor, the brother of Abraham.

After everything that happened on Moriah, that may perhaps seem a somewhat unexpected ending.

But this passage too has its place.

Various family members are named, among them Bethuel, the father of Rebekah.

By this something is already prepared of what we will read in the following stories.

Rebekah will later receive an important place in the life of Isaac and in the continuation of the covenant promise.

I find that a fine conclusion to this parashah.

Abraham has received the son of the promise.

He has had to learn on Moriah that the future of that promise lies with God.

And while Abraham does not yet know how the next generation will find its way, Genesis already shows how that history will go on.

God’s acting does not stop where our own overview ends.

That is also a lesson we saw with the appointed times.

The LORD acts in His time.

His covenant and His promises reach further than one event or one human life.

Abraham did not have to survey everything.

He was called to walk before the face of God and to obey what was said to him.

What remains for us?

When I survey this parashah once more, I notice how many different sides of faith come forward in it.

Abraham receives people at his tent.

Sarah hears the promise and laughs.

Abraham stands before the face of God and pleads for Sodom.

Lot tries to protect his guests, but in doing so also makes serious faults. Ultimately he is himself led outside by the messengers of the LORD.

Abraham falls back again into his old fear.

Sarah receives the son that was promised to her.

Hagar and Ishmael are sent away, but God hears the voice of the boy.

And when Abraham has finally received the son for whom he waited so long, his trust is tested on Moriah in the heaviest conceivable way.

What I learn from that is that faith does not mean that we continually understand everything or that our life consists only of victories.

Abraham did not always understand how God’s promise would be fulfilled.

Sarah could hardly believe it.

Lot kept lingering.

And the woman from Shunem went with great sorrow to Elisha, because she did not know how things should go on.

But in all those stories God’s acting remains central.

He appears.

He speaks.

He hears.

He sees.

He remembers.

He provides.

And He does what He has spoken.

That is no reason to do nothing ourselves any longer.

On the contrary.

Abraham hurried to receive his guests.

He kept pleading for Sodom.

The widow gathered the vessels.

The Shunammite set out toward Elisha.

Faith comes into motion.

But it makes a great difference where that motion comes from.

We can be busy providing ourselves with security. Even with Scripture in our hands we can try to pull toward ourselves an outcome of which God has not at all said that it will be given to us at that moment.

Therefore it is so important that we keep listening carefully to what Scripture really says.

What has God spoken?

To whom has He spoken?

What does He promise?

And what does He ask of us?

There I also want to bring in again the appointed times of the LORD.

If God has given times to come together, to remember and to proclaim His great deeds, then we must not look at them only from a distance as something that belongs to the history of Israel.

We may examine what He has taught His people by them and how we, as followers of Yeshua, let our life be shaped by His Word.

Not because the calendar can save us.

Not because a feast in itself proves our faith.

But because God’s instruction helps us to remember Who He is and what He has done.

The form can be of great meaning in this.

A meal, a day of rest, a gathering or a yearly recurring feast can set us again before what God has spoken.

But when the form becomes more important than the LORD to whom it must bring us, we precisely lose its meaning.

That is, I think, something on which we must continually keep watch.

Also when we study Scripture, we can become so occupied with our own interpretation, our conviction or the way in which we have discovered a connection, that we hardly leave room any longer to be corrected by the text itself.

I recognize that in myself too.

Precisely therefore I find it important to begin again and again at the Source.

What does it really say?

What do we read alongside it?

And what is our own conclusion?

When we keep distinguishing that, we may also freely examine and lay connections, without acting as if every thought we receive in doing so is directly spoken by God.

I think back once more to the conversation with which this reading began.

An ordinary visit.

A few words about a personal situation.

And someone who said that it seemed as if the Lord had sent me.

Perhaps it stays with that experience.

That too is good.

We do not need to make of every encounter afterward a special spiritual sign.

But it has shown me again how important it is that we have room to meet one another and to listen to one another.

Abraham began with water, bread and a place in the shade.

He did not yet know how that day would end.

The LORD appeared to him.

And afterward the story went on, with promises, difficult questions, intercession, judgment, rescue and ultimately the trial on Moriah.

What encourages me in that above all is that Abraham did not have to bear everything himself.

God had spoken.

And He remained faithful to His own Word.

That is also where we may seek our rest.

Not in the thought that we can gather enough faith to determine the outcome of our life.

But in the LORD who addresses us, who knows our way and who does in His time what He has promised.

Perhaps we may therefore take along this week above all that question:

On what do we set our trust when we cannot survey the future? On what we ourselves can hold fast, or on Him who first addressed us?

And when we open our door, when we pray for others and when we try to walk obediently, then we may do that in the trust that the LORD preserves our going in and our going out.

The God who appeared to Abraham, who saw Hagar, who heard Ishmael and who provided on Moriah, is God to whom we may entrust our life.

In Yeshua we learn to know Him as the good Shepherd, who gives His life for the sheep.

There lies, ultimately, our hope.

Not in what we manage to make of God’s promises, but in His faithfulness to what He Himself has spoken.