Rabbi [Guest Name] unpacks Genesis 12-15:21, where Abraham’s pragmatic yet flawed act of presenting Sarah as his sister in Egypt (Pharaoh taking her) underscores human responsibility amid divine ambiguity. His later choice to let Lot take Sodom’s fertile land—despite its wickedness—hints at covenantal detachment, while rescuing Lot from captors reveals Abraham’s dual role as peacemaker and warrior. The unconditional covenant (Brit ben-Habatarim) with God, promising land from the Nile to Euphrates only after the Amorites’ moral collapse, contrasts with pagan gods’ conditional deals, exposing a timeless tension: trusting God’s promises without demanding proof, a challenge shared across faiths today. [Automatically generated summary]
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There's another element here that I'd just like to throw in for a minute.
And that's the issue of faith.
God had spoken to Abraham.
Right?
God had told him to move out to begin with.
And God had told him already that through you, all the families of the earth will be blessed.
So then, why didn't he simply rely on God?
Why didn't he just say, hey, nothing's going to happen to me.
No, you, Sarah?
Oh, sorry.
We've got it made.
God's on our side.
He promised me such and such.
He's appeared to me.
That's an interesting question, and I think there's an answer to it, and there's an important answer, and this I haven't seen in the commentaries.
This is an answer that I come to, but with deep conviction.
And that is you can't rely on God if you can help yourself.
You can't.
Oh, no, that is a basic religious principle.
God is not a celestial butler.
You must do what you can do for you.
You cannot say God will bail me out.
Oh, yeah, Sarah, no problem.
Let's go into Egypt.
You know, they look at pretty women, then they take them and kill the husbands, but it won't happen to us because God's on our side.
You cannot speak like that.
Even Abraham, who's been talked to by God personally, can't talk like that.
And that's critical stuff, that you can't walk around saying God's going to bail me out of a circumstance.
What does faith in God therefore entail is a very great question, and I'm going to talk about that to a certain extent today, too.
But please beware of that question.
Why didn't Pharaoh kill Abraham when he finally did realize that he was her husband?
Because he knew that he had gotten whatever he had gotten, and it's not fully clear.
Some say impotent, some say some sort of venereal disease, some say some disease.
It's not fully clear.
He was just hit by God.
And he knew it was from God.
How he knew it was from God, I don't know either.
That's not knowable.
But the assumption, I have to take the stories at face value.
By the story, we see that Pharaoh knew that it was from God and understood immediately what was the issue.
And at that point, he wasn't about to fiddle around with God.
But you make an interesting point there.
Maybe Pharaoh wasn't as bad as Abraham had made him out to be.
Then you have a good question.
See, what if you suspect that they may kill you and take your wife, but in fact, maybe they won't?
That enters the realm of the non-understandable.
By the way, here's another interesting question.
Why didn't Abraham answer Pharaoh?
There's total silence.
Absolute silence.
Pharaoh yells at Abraham, why didn't you tell me?
You got me ruined by God here.
I ended up with your wife.
Why didn't you tell me?
And Abraham says nothing.
My suspicion is he had nothing that he could say.
What's he going to say?
Well, frankly, I think you are such slime.
And your society is so miserable that if I would have announced it, you'd have killed me.
Is he going to tell the truth?
You understand?
There are times when it is better to shut up than to make a lie as an excuse, because the only answer is the truth, and the truth won't get him anywhere.
It's not going to help, and it's only going to be insulting to a man who's already had a pretty rough time of it and looks like the honorable victim.
Though the record of Pharaohs does not lead one to assume that they all felt that way.
Well, this beautiful woman is a man's wife, and therefore I will certainly not touch her.
Listen, what did King David, who wasn't a Pharaoh, do when he saw a beautiful woman who was his top general's wife?
He got him killed.
Uriah the Hittite.
Okay, you don't have to go to Pharaoh's.
Here was a Jewish king doing exactly that.
Hey, he's a beautiful woman.
I'm going to send this man off.
Right?
So I think it was pretty widespread practice, and fair to say that that's exactly what would have happened.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
He was shown exactly.
He had been hit by God, and that's the reason you're saying that he, not because he had this great moral conscience.
Oh, God, how could you think, Abraham, that I, Pharaoh, this moral, civil creature, would ever do such a thing?
It's almost laughable.
I don't believe he's this honorable victim.
I think it's laughable.
I think that's what he said because he thought it was from God.
By the way, isn't it interesting how this is a precursor of the plagues on Pharaoh later?
That's exactly what it says.
God wore plagues on Pharaoh's.
That's like a dress rehearsal.
I just want to see how many plagues work on a Pharaoh until I get what I want.
But it is fascinating, this precursor type of idea, isn't it?
Anybody else on this?
Yes.
Yeah, exactly.
My point.
It was totally common.
Especially of a stranger.
Exactly.
Yes, God did bail him out of it.
That is true.
In the final analysis, it was necessary.
But you, the human, can't rely on that.
You can't act as if God will bail you out.
If God does, God does.
But you must act.
I mean, I hate clichés, but God helps those who help themselves, I think, is a very, very valid one.
And there's a very basic Hebrew principle, altismochal Hanes, do not rely on a miracle.
Does it speak at all about the value of a man versus a woman in ancient times?
It certainly does.
Women were property to a very large extent.
Oh, I see.
Oh, no, I would not make that inference.
I would not infer that Abraham was saying, well, she's only a woman, so we can get rid of her.
And I'm a man, and therefore my life is mine.
I don't think so.
I mean, I can't prove it, but I don't think that that was the issue.
I think that the issue was this is the only way to save ourselves.
And literally, ourselves.
Because you're finished if I'm gone.
I have more to tell you about what sister means, but now I would like to take a vote.
How many think Abraham did the wrong thing?
Okay, so it was somewhat convincing of an argument.
If you still think it's wrong, I'm just curious.
Will someone representing the wrong position, just joking, I was a play on words, will somebody representing the position that it was wrong, please tell me why you still think it was wrong?
Yeah.
Sin was lack of reliance and faith of God.
Who else thought of still thinks it's wrong?
Yes?
I said, he's leaving a famine.
And also, by the way, you know, we don't know, this stuff is condensed time.
He may not have realized that that was the law in Egypt when he left to go to Egypt.
He may have gotten there and realized it.
Have you never gone to a place and then realized what sort of place it was rather than knowing it beforehand?
That's my suspicion that that was what happened.
He got to a place, saw the morals of the place, and said, uh-oh, look at where we are.
Okay, let me, yes.
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Here is her final, here is her question, which I'll pose as the final one from that perspective.
Whether he said, which is a good way of summarizing it, whether he said that Sarai is his sister or his wife, she's taken by Pharaoh.
Is that clear?
Her fate is identical in either case.
It's actually worse if he says husband, because then he's dead, and she has no hope of getting out.
At least the other way, maybe he could bribe Pharaoh five years later or something.
But her question is, what kind of man is it?
What kind of love is it for a wife to know that another man is sleeping with my wife?
Okay, would you rather be dead and never see your wife again?
Or would you rather have this miserable circumstance?
Let me tell you something.
I mean, it's for you to answer, not for me to answer for you.
I will only tell you this.
Much of life does not consist between a miserable alternative and a beautiful alternative.
Much of life consists of a miserable alternative and a more miserable alternative.
It is so important to understand that.
Remember what I told you about Genesis?
It's real life.
This is real life.
You won't have this dilemma, I promise you.
You'll have different ones between miserable and more miserable.
Countries have it.
Should the United States of America have supported a right-wing corrupt dictator when the alternative was a communist takeover?
My arguments were yes, because I didn't think that the alternative was democracy in some cases, but communism.
And I thought that communism was worse than a miserable right-wing hoodlum.
Because far more people die, because communism lasts much longer than right-wing hoodlums, and so whatever.
I'm not going to get into the argument now, but I'm merely saying I remember having that argument on a global scale just during the Cold War, which is not too long ago.
And I kept saying that was the choice, not between democracy and this right-wing bumpkin, but between a right-wing bumpkin and a left-wing totalitarian.
And it happens very often.
And that realism strikes me as very powerful in this particular thing.
I don't think he was pleased to know that his wife was in Pharaoh's place.
By the way, as it happens, Pharaoh probably didn't sleep with her.
Apparently, the implication is that he was about to or that she went into the thing, but before he could do anything, he got real sick.
Yes.
This is, yeah, now this is interesting.
This is the worst case reading of Abram's conduct.
That it wasn't just to save his life, but to become a very rich man.
However, however, I'll tell you what mitigates against that.
Number one, that the fact remains that his life was involved.
Number two, you will see later that he is not a materialist, that he refuses all wealth on two occasions, which we'll come to.
Okay, which I think might actually argue on his behalf in that way.
But you're right.
The worst case descriptions of Abram say, look at that.
Gives his wife to become a rich guy.
No, let me go on now.
Okay, why tell the story?
Why tell this story?
Remember, I always ask in a biblical text, why is it related?
What is there to be learned?
I think for a number of reasons.
Number one, tell you the type of world in which Abraham lived.
It is very important for us to understand what the monotheistic battle was against.
When you look at what the Torah eventually developed in terms of morality and then look at the world that it came from, it becomes far, far more of an achievement and a necessity.
I think that's one reason.
I think another one is the honesty of the text.
Jewish heroes are never perfect.
Whatever one is to say, even if it was the right thing, he doesn't look perfect in this thing.
I mean, there is, you are left, the reader is not left with a view of Abraham as saintly, but as a very shrewd guy who sits down very pragmatically and weighs the issues.
I agree with that in the final analysis, but I don't leave with a saintly view of Abraham.
I don't leave with a bad view of him.
I agree with him.
But I want you to understand that, and it's part of the Torah's thing to present the great Jews as flawed, real human beings, from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob to Joseph to Moses to King David, finally.
Okay?
And that, by the way, as I've said to you, I think in the past, it gives me, at any rate, it lends credibility to the text that I'm reading.
Also, I can relate them.
Can't every one of you, whether you agree with him or not, do you not relate to him?
But if the man had made, said, look, I have but one life, and to give it up for the chastity of my beautiful woman, whom I know is equal to me, even though the rest of civilization understands that women are chattel.
But I, Abraham, the father of my people, know that she is created in the images.
Abraham's Tragic Dilemma00:05:15
I mean, that could have been done.
Couldn't it have been done?
But who would relate to him then?
You'd go, wow, and then turn the page.
You see, though, that's very important.
This is a real live character with a miserable decision.
Famine, Pharaoh, or death.
Okay?
That's the great, you know, he didn't even have, they used to have those things with the doors.
Behind one was a lion, behind one was a princess.
He had one had a lion, one had a tiger, and one had a rhinoceros.
So it's very different.
That's most of life is like that.
It is not the princess or the lion.
It's the lion or another miserable for Stunken animal.
And so, you know, that's.
However, having said all that, one final thing here.
Gunther Plout thinks he sinned.
I didn't want to tell you that before we had the second vote.
I want to read to you what Gunther Plout writes, whom I respect dearly.
Okay?
He has a whole thing on it, and then he writes, since both Sarah and Pharaoh were put in jeopardy by Abraham, The proper judgment would seem to support Nafmanadi's comment, it was a sin.
The rabbis generally assumed it was a sin.
Isn't that interesting?
And I don't agree with that, but Plout says it seems to support it.
If he were here, Rabbi Plout, that's a great question.
Can you do a sin and still do the right thing?
Yes.
Nah, that's a great question.
And I'll tell you an interesting thing on that.
One interesting recurrent theme on Religion on the Line that I've had with the clergy was this question.
I'd say, is it always wrong to lie?
And most of the clergy would say, especially the Catholic priests on this particular issue I remember best, would say yes.
Lying is a sin.
So I'd say, what if a man is chasing a woman, you know he wants to rape her, and you know where she ran, and the rapist says to you, well, excuse me, sir, could you please tell me where the woman I want to rape ran?
What do you say?
And they said, you try to do the best you can without lying.
And I said, tell the biggest whopper you could possibly come up with, because it's not even a question.
And they come back and say, look, telling a lie is always a sin.
It might be necessary on occasion, but it's still a sin.
And there is something to that.
I have come, in other words, I have moved.
I'd still tell the lie, but I wouldn't say that I didn't sin.
I did the right thing, but in the circumstances, it has a sinful element.
Maybe it has a sinful element is a better word that said I sinned.
But it wasn't pure.
The truth is, you should tell the truth.
You may have to not tell the truth on occasion, but there is a danger, obviously, that the moment you say this case I have to tell a lie, what case don't you have to tell a lie?
It's still a lie.
And I'll give you another example.
Why was it that King David was not given the task of building the holy temple?
It is Jewish tradition throughout that it's because he killed too many people as a warrior.
He had to be a warrior.
He was in right wars.
He was in correct wars.
The wars were not immoral war.
But still, the man who used the sword shouldn't build the temple.
So his son Solomon, King Solomon, builds the temple.
And I, who am very anti-pacifist, very, who believe that moral wars are moral wars, fighting Nazis was a beautiful act.
Nevertheless, killing is a tragedy.
Let's put it this way.
If sinful isn't good, tragic is.
What Abraham did remains tragic, though right.
I would say that about capital punishment.
I am for capital punishment.
But there isn't any part of me that does not acknowledge the tragedy, the awfulness of taking a human life deliberately.
I know that.
It's not something I jump for joy over.
It's to me a necessity, a moral necessity.
And that's what I think Plout and Nathmonides are saying here, and it is a valid point.
It was a tragedy that he had to give his wife. to another man as if she were property.
The Choice of Abraham00:08:42
But there was no choice.
That's the point.
And that's the power of this story just stuck in there.
If the Torah is a teacher and Torah means teacher, that's what it's about.
Folks, here's real life.
It doesn't defend Abraham, the Torah.
That's part of the beauty of it.
There's no defense of Abraham here, and there's no condemnation.
None whatsoever.
Read it as you wish.
Some say he sinned, some say he didn't, some say it was necessary.
That's the beauty of this text.
You have to learn from it.
Okay, it's a wonderful, and by the way, it happens later twice.
That's what's part of the fascinating element of Genesis, but I'm taking it in the order and I'm not jumping around.
Okay, we are up to, let's see, 13.
What verse on 13?
Huh?
Oh, we are?
Oh.
Okay, one minute, one minute, one minute, one minute.
Okay.
No, wait, wait.
Oh, 13.1.
Yes, thank you.
All right.
From Egypt, Abram went up to the Negev with his wife and all that he possessed together with Lot.
Okay.
Now, Abram was very rich in cattle, silver, and gold, and he proceeded by stages from the Negev as far as Bethel to the place where his tent had been formerly between Bethel and I. You recall that when I mentioned that earlier.
The site of the altar which he had built there at first.
And there Abram invoked the Lord by name.
Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, so that the land could not support them staying together.
That apparently was the way it was in that world.
If you had a lot of sheep and cattle and so on, you had to be in different areas.
That's, I guess, because of the grazing and whatever other factors.
The land could not support them staying together, for their possessions were so great that they couldn't remain together.
So there was quarreling between the herdsmen of Abram's cattle and those of Lot's cattle, the Canaanites and the Perizzites within dwelling in the land.
Abram said to Lot, Let there be no strife between you and me, between my herdsmen and yours, for we're kinsmen.
Remember, this is Uncle Abram talking to nephew Lot.
Is not the whole land before you?
Let's separate.
It's clear he did not think much of his nephew.
He wanted to get rid of him.
Let us separate.
If you go north, I'll go south.
If you go south, I will go north.
In other words, I'll do anything to get rid of you.
Wherever you want to go, you choose.
I mean, isn't that what it means?
Isn't that obvious?
It's one of those things to be inferred, but it's correct.
Lot looked about him and saw how well watered was the whole plain.
You're going to love this.
How well watered was the whole plain of the Jordan.
Okay?
All of it.
This was before the Lord had destroyed Sudom and Gomorrah.
Here's one of those parenthetical sentences.
I love them.
Just to help you keep up the narration.
Remember, then it became desolate, because the reader at this time is already seeing a desolate Sodom and Gomorrah.
It was already as if you've ever gone down to Sidome.
It's a big salt nothing.
So how could Lot look at the place where Sodom is and go, wow, it's that fertile and rich?
So it's explaining you, this is before it was destroyed.
It was really rich.
By the way, it happens to be archaeologically valid that there was a time when it was extremely fertile and green and wet.
Just want you to know that.
It's an interesting point.
So this was before God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, all the way to Tzohar, like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt.
So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of Jordan, and Lot journeyed eastward.
Thus they parted from each other.
Abram remained in the land of Canaan while Lot settled in the cities of the plain, pitching his tents near Sidom.
A wise choice.
Now the inhabitants of Sidom were very wicked sinners against the Lord.
Now this is interesting.
There's a phenomenal amount of irony in Genesis, constant irony.
Why does Lot choose?
He goes according to what seems to be the most fertile area and picks what?
Sidon.
It would be as if somebody had left you off in California and said, choose anywhere to live, and you got telescopic vision and you go, Las Vegas.
Because it looked so glamorous.
And that's what he loved.
The glamour, it looked unbelievably rich, and he'll take it.
But even the next sentence tells you it was a miserable place to live.
But Lot didn't care.
Lot cared about money.
This is an example that I said earlier to show that money was not that interesting.
Remember, he was the uncle.
As the uncle, he could have said to Lot, listen, I'm going to go to Sidome and that area and the Jordan plain where I know it's rich, and you go elsewhere.
But no, the uncle said to the nephew, you choose.
Now, by the way, as you will see with Moses, except in reverse order, we have here the stories of Abraham after God picks him, whereas we have the stories of Moses before God picks him.
Okay?
But the stories nevertheless fill you in.
You want to know who the father of monotheism is, who the father of the patriarch of the Jews is.
So there's a lot to tell you about.
So too with Moses.
I want to know who was this Redeemer of the Jews from Egypt.
Why did God choose?
Now you're finding out about the choice of Abraham later.
Remember that I told you I had a theory as to why there was silence before.
But now there is, this is who God chose.
And there is probably more stories about Abram than anybody else except perhaps Joseph and Moses and probably more than Joseph.
I'd like to add up the words.
It would be interesting to find out.
It's just a huge amount about Abraham.
So one of the stories is here that he's a peacemaker.
He sees there's an argument and he's totally self-sacrificing.
Let's not argue.
You, Lot, and your herdsmen, choose what you want, and you go where you want, and there's no problem.
And he solves the problem.
Lot ends up in Sidom, which was a poor choice.
Okay.
One other thing.
You see the next sentence 14, verse 14.
And the Lord said to Abram, after Lot had parted from him, raise your eyes and look out from where you are to the north and the south, to the east and the west.
For I will give, for I give all the land that you see to you and your offspring forever.
I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, then your offspring too can be counted.
That's how numerous your offspring will be.
Up, walk about the land through its length and its breadth, for I give it to you.
And Abram moved his tent and came to dwell at the oaks of Mamre, which are in Phevron, and he built an altar there to God.
Notice verse 14, where it said, And God said to Abraham, God said all these things after Loth had parted from him.
One of the commentators makes the point that for God to complete all of what he had to say with Abraham, he had to get rid of all of his family.
They were a burden from the past.
The last links to his father's family of idol worshipers was the nephew Loth.
You see, it's so interesting.
Why were those words there?
And God said, after Loth departed.
Because only then could God relate.
It's something for us to know.
Maybe sometimes we too need to leave our origin to talk to God.
It's something to think about.
Leaving Origins To Talk To God00:05:00
There is another thing of phenomenal importance here, and that is the land in Judaism.
There is no parallel fully to this in Islam, and none whatsoever in Christianity, which is not to say better or worse, it's simply to say that there is no parallel.
The importance of the land to Judaism cannot be overstated.
And I say this as one who does not live in that land.
So I certainly am not saying this with any axe to grind or promoting my own choice in life.
But intellectual honesty demands that we acknowledge how important the land of Israel is to Judaism.
So much so that the rabbis later said, Jew moves to Israel, it is as if he has fulfilled the entire Torah.
Now, of course, they say that about 20 other things, too.
So, you know, you have to take it slightly tongue-in-cheek.
But they meant to say this is where it's at.
That this is what God intended for the Jews.
To build a holy society.
But you can only build a holy society in a place.
Judaism is profoundly physical.
It is the most corporeal religion of the monotheistic religions.
It is bound to land, bound to people, bound to family, bound to law.
It is not metaphysical a religion.
It has metaphysical elements, but the religion itself is uniquely physical.
That is why the mitzvot are physical.
The laws of Judaism are very physical.
And you will take this meat and you will eat this way and you will slaughter this way and you will take this branch of palm and you will take this citron, this ethro, and you will wash your hands this way.
It is a very physical religion.
You will wear fringes on your garment, and you will go three times a year up the mountain in Jerusalem to bring the sacrifices.
It's a very physical religion, and the reason is because we live in a physical world.
And if you don't invest the physical with holiness, if you separate holiness and physical, then you will have a bad world.
The purpose of Judaism is to sanctify the non-sanctified.
It's to sanctify the physical, which is not sacred.
You make the land sacred.
After all, that land was lived on by Canaanites and Perizzites and others, and it wasn't sacred.
You make it sacred.
And that is why God warns the Jews in Deuteronomy and elsewhere, if you live as bad as the others who lived in there live, the land will vomit you out, and those are the words it uses, just as it vomited them out.
You Jews are here.
You seed of Abraham are here to lead a sacred life on this soil.
That's what I have made you for.
That's what I have chosen this area for.
That we have tried, and I am as guilty as any Jew, to much more spiritualize Judaism than it is.
It's filled with the spiritual, but it's not just the spiritual.
It is very physical.
And that is why it can be seen by some people as a lower form in some ways of religiosity, being preoccupied.
What is it that Jesus is reputed to have said?
It is not, and tell me if it's Jesus or if it's someone else.
I believe it's in Matthew.
It is not what goes into your mouth that matters, but that which comes out of your mouth.
It's not an argument here with Jesus or whoever is attributing that to Jesus.
It is a statement of difference.
Judaism holds that what goes into your mouth is important.
Of course what goes out of your mouth is important.
But what goes in is also important.
That you must lend to time, to space, and to place sanctity.
What Goes In, What Comes Out00:14:13
This is the beginning of it.
This land I give you, and this is the land over which the battle for humanity will take place as I, God, see it.
That's Judaism.
The Jew embodies it.
The Jew is physical, and the land is physical.
That is part of the reason, I'll talk about this much later on, why I don't believe the Torah talks about a hereafter.
Whereas what happens after you die is a very major theme in the New Testament.
It is not talked about in the Torah.
It is simply ignored.
The physical, sanctifying this physical world is the preoccupation of the Torah.
And it starts with the land.
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
God promises in 16, as I just read to you, God promises to Abram that his seed will be numerous, and yet Sarah has still not Sarah can't give birth.
Here is an example, by the way, of where you could imagine Abram standing there and going, huh?
And by the way, he does that.
He actually asks God later on, how exactly are you going to do it?
You will see.
That's again the humanity of it.
Even if it's God speaking to you and it doesn't make sense, it still doesn't make sense.
Even if it's God.
That's what's so remarkable about a little bit.
Now, all of this is completely stopped for a moment.
Remember the Tower of Babel story?
Just came out of nowhere and then back to the other story.
You have that a fair amount here.
And here, all of a sudden, chapter 14, exactly the same thing.
And I will not read the whole chapter.
This is one of the times I'll just summarize.
Now, when Amrothel, king of Shinar, Menel Shinar, Ayoch, the Meleth of El Asar, Kedela Omer, the king of Elam, and so on and so on, were there, were the kings of nations.
They all started fighting with each other.
That's most of chapter 14, the names of kings and places where they fought.
But it ends with 1411.
The invaders seized all the wealth of Sidom and Gomorrah and all their provisions and went their way.
They also took Lot, the son of Abram's brother, and his possessions and departed, for he had settled in Sidom, in case you forgot.
Okay?
Sidom lost the war.
People were taken away, and that included Abram's nephew, Lot, whom he was just dying to hear from.
Now, verse 13 in chapter 14, a fugitive brought the news to Abram the Hebrew.
All of a sudden, by the way, Abram's called a Hebrew.
This is the first time it's used.
And all the research I have done has led me to believe that nobody knows what it means.
There are those who say, I'm sure some of you know, that it's related to a nomadic people of the time called the Habiru.
There's total debate whether that's true.
To me, what strikes me as the most logical is to look at the word in Hebrew.
And in Hebrew, La'avor means to pass, to go on, to, if you will, wander.
And that's really both, I think, literally and hermeneutically what Jews are, wanderers.
And started off as wanderers.
They got the Torah as wanderers and have been wanderers for a good part of their history.
It's really Abraham, the other, the wanderer.
Anyway, he got the news, right?
He was at the oaks of Mamre, the Amorite kinsmen of Eshkol and Naner, and so on, these being Abram's allies.
When Abram heard that his kinsmen, who's that Loth, had been taken captive, he mustered his retainers, borne into his household, numbering 318, and went in pursuit as far as Don.
At night, he and his servants deployed against them and defeated them, and he pursued them as far as Khovab, which is north of Damascus.
That's quite a trip, by the way.
So that was a good little battle just to get his nephew whom he didn't like.
He brought back all the possessions.
He also brought back his kinsmen of Lot.
Now, if that doesn't give it away, here is one of those rare moments I am convinced of deliberate humor.
Brought back possessions, I am, he brought love, and his possessions, and the women, and the rest of the people.
So, which gives you an idea, perhaps, of women back again.
Oh, yes, and the women were brought back.
At any rate, this is important because it tells you another thing about Abraham.
First, he was the peacekeeper, right?
What have we seen about Abraham?
These are important things.
We saw that Abraham was a peace lover.
He made peace between the battle, between his men and Lot's men.
Wherever you want to go, please, just so long as we have peace.
And now, though, he's a warmaker.
So was Moses.
And there's a very big lesson here, I am convinced.
A great leader has to know when to fight and has to know when to make peace.
Moses knew when to kill an Egyptian, and Moses knew when to just speak up and make peace.
You can't only be a peace lover, and you can't only be a war lover.
You have to know when both are necessary.
It's as true today as it was when this was written.
A leader who is a pacifist won't work.
I'm talking about the leader of all.
It's a given movement.
Like in the case of Gandhi, the peaceful, peaceful or non-violent resistance was very appropriate, but it's a separate issue.
He was not against the violent nation being against the English.
Nonviolent resistance against the Nazis would have been suicidal.
You have to know when to fight and when to make peace.
And it depends on who your enemy is.
At any rate, Abraham obviously knows how to fight.
Okay, when he returned from defeating Kedullah Omer and the kings with him, the king of Sidom came out to meet him in the valley of Shavel.
Let's see, I was with it in Hebrew 17, sometimes the English.
Okay, which is the valley of the king.
And Malheed said, that king of Shalem or Salem brought out bread and wine.
Okay, that this king did.
He was a priest of God Most High.
Now, that's very interesting.
This was a monotheist king.
A non-Jew monotheist is described here.
It happens later, too.
Just wanted to point that out to you.
And he blessed him, saying, Blessed be Abram of God Most High, creator of heaven and earth, and blessed be God Most High, who's delivered your foes unto your hand.
And Abram gave him a tenth of everything.
Okay, which is impressive.
Again, again, the generosity of the man.
Then the king of Sadom, it's a slight contradistinction to Kedullah Omer.
The king of Sadom said to Abram, Give me the persons and take the possessions for yourself.
But listen to this.
Abram said to the king of Sadom, and here's where I said to you earlier, that it shows that he was not materialistic, I swear to the Lord God Most High, creator of heaven and earth, I will not take so much as a thread or a sandal strap of what is yours.
You shall not say, it is I who made Abram rich.
But rather, who is it who made Abram rich?
God.
Okay, it's interesting.
He refused all of what he was to be given.
For me, nothing but what my servants have used up.
As for the share of the men who went with me, Aner Eshtola, Manrel, let them take their share.
Okay, we are up to chapter 15, and we have something very new.
For the first time, Abraham will speak to God.
The whole time, if you notice, God has been speaking to Abram.
Finally, Abram speaks.
Sometime later, this is 15:1, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, Now, by the way, this is God speaking in a vision, and later you'll see that God spoke when he was asleep.
There is one exception to these, and that is Moses, where it even says, not in a vision and not in a dream, but face to face, God spoke to Moses.
The communication to Moses was unique.
In other words, you and I don't know what divine revelation directly is, obviously, unless any of you tell me otherwise after class.
And I have a fine, fine doctor that I will.
No, I'm joking about that part, but I would be curious if any of you had direct revelation.
At any rate, there are levels of revelation, which means, therefore, that in some way, even those who get divine revelation don't get it as clearly as, let's say, Moses did.
There is still a human fog, perhaps, in the way others may have gotten revelations.
It's just an interesting point to dwell upon.
It isn't God revealed himself, spoke to Moses, spoke to Isaac, Abraham, Jacob, and it's all the same.
It is not.
And here is one example: He came to Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram.
I am a shield to you.
Your reward shall be very great.
And now, remember what I said?
Listen.
But Abram said to God, O Lord God, what can you give me, seeing that I shall die childless, and then one in charge of my whole household is the one from Damascus, Eleazar?
He had hired, as it were, had made this Eleazar the head of his household, who, by ancient Near Eastern law, then inherits the household because you don't have a son.
So here is an interesting thing.
Let me ask you: if God spoke to you, first of all, you'd be so thrilled to know that God was there and knew you.
It's like Woody Allen said, and I mentioned this on the radio: if God would only sneeze, I would be happy.
I just want to sneeze.
That's how we moderns feel, right?
A lot of us, that's all I want, is a sneeze.
But it's interesting, you would think, therefore, God speaks to him.
Now, why would he ask a question?
And I mean this, I'm not sure I have an answer.
If he knows that God is God, God is the creator of the universe and promises things, what's the question?
Okay, I mean, this is the, you know, if the God who made the earth and sun and moon and planets and stars probably can give me a child, there's a good chance based on his track record.
So you would think that you wouldn't have all these questions to God.
On the other hand, it's very normal.
It doesn't make sense, as I said earlier, even if God says it, if it doesn't make sense, people will ask.
And this, by the way, is, I think, virtually uniquely Jewish.
Of having those talked to by God answer back.
And Jews do this to this day.
I mean that with absolute sincerity.
Jews have a very vibrant, those who think about God.
Many Jews have been thoroughly secularized, tragically, but a very vibrant relationship.
Mainly anger.
Yes, I would say that the number of Jews who are angry with God is probably greater than the number of Jews who love God.
I'm not saying that's good at all.
I don't think it's good.
I think you can have both.
I think it's gone overboard.
But I would say most Jews are walking around saying, oh, God, how could you let six million die?
Oh, God, how do you let kids with cancer?
Etc., etc., etc.
But it's very part of our tradition.
Our patriarchs answered back.
He answers back.
The first person spoken to, the first Jew at least spoken to by God, answers back.
Remember, Noah didn't answer back.
An ark?
Certainly, sir.
Remember, we went through that?
His total silence the whole time?
You name it.
The day, the wood, I'm your man.
Not Abraham.
Abraham has got already some Jewish characteristics.
That it is a fascinating, it is a fascinating thing.
Faith and Trust in God00:10:28
So he says, Exactly, how am I going to do that?
What can you give me since I'm going to die childless?
And worse, the one who's in charge is this guy from Damascus, Eleazar.
Abram said further, since you have granted me no offspring, my steward, that's Eleazar, will be my heir.
The word of the Lord came to him in a reply.
Shut up.
Not true.
The word of the Lord, just see who was following.
The word of the Lord came to him in reply, That one shall not be your heir.
None but your very own issue shall be your heir, your own seed.
That comes from you.
He took him outside and said, Look toward heaven.
By the way, I wonder if it's still the vision, or he got up now.
It's interesting.
He took him outside.
Was it in the vision or not?
Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you're able to count them.
And he added, So shall your offspring be.
And because he put his trust in the Lord, God reckoned it to his Abraham's merit.
I would say the number of times that Genesis 15:6 has been cited to me by Christian pastors that I've been in dialogue, it probably by now has entered the thousands.
This is about as frequently a cited Hebrew Bible phrase as Protestants in particular will cite.
And because he put his trust in God, God reckoned it to his merit, or considered it meritorious, or however the translation might be.
Evelyn, what translation do you have on that?
Good.
So what does it say?
15:6.
Okay, which is in some ways more fully literally accurate.
Abraham believed in God and got credit to his righteousness.
Christians use this, Protestants use this, not Catholics, but Protestants use this as one of their basic text phrases for the belief that faith is what saves rather than works.
Because they say, look, this is what God said about Abram, that it was his faith in him that he counted toward his merit.
Now, I don't read that from it.
What I do read is that it is critical that you be faithful.
But not that faith alone is the issue.
Again, I don't want to get into a theological argument on one of the most ongoing of these debates.
But it is true that God here is stating the importance of faith.
Now, what does faith mean?
There are two elements to faith with regard to God.
One is, I believe God exists.
The other is, I believe in God.
But when people say I believe in God, they usually mean I believe God exists.
That's not the issue.
To believe God exists is not what the biblical faith is about.
The Hebrew Bible takes faith in God as a given.
Faith in God means trusting in God.
You get the difference?
It's all the difference in the world.
Listen, you know your next-door neighbor exists.
There's no question about that.
Question is, do you trust him?
That's the issue with God.
There is no issue in the Bible whether God exists.
It would be absurd.
It would be an intrinsic absurdity.
Of course God exists.
There are those who may believe in other gods, but there's no question about a God existing.
The question is, do you have trust in this God?
That's what Abraham had.
He's old.
His wife is old.
He's promised descendants who number the stars in the sky, and he believes that.
So the issue for Abraham was never, is there a God?
Who's he talking to?
Of course he believed God exists.
The question is, do I believe in God?
Do I trust him?
And that he did.
That's what the merit here was that is talked about in this very important little verse.
And that, by the way, is our modern dilemma.
A lot of people believe in God, but don't have faith in him.
That's a big difference.
That's really worthy of an entire evening on its own, and I won't develop it at any length.
But I do want you to think about that issue.
The difference between knowing God exists or believing God exists, and on the other hand, actually having faith in God's word.
That's the issue.
That's the issue for the Jew.
It's the issue for the Muslim.
It's the issue for the Christian.
Do you have faith that God means what he says?
And that takes faith.
I believe God exists.
It's a little difficult sometimes to believe that God really will work things out in this world.
It looks too miserable.
It looks too messy.
That's the question in life.
And when I read this, I get more faith.
I told you that this stuff builds my own faith.
I understand now that's the issue.
The issue was, he's not an atheist, Abraham.
The issue was that he believed him.
And by the way, God had no track record to be believed.
That's very important.
God has a track record.
If God came to a Jew today, a new Abraham, said, you know, listen, I'm going to promise you the following.
That Jew could say, I believe you, because listen, 3,200 years of Jews staying alive proves to me that your covenant, which we're going to come up to, is true.
I understand that.
You're good for your word, including the miserable stuff you promised.
You're good for your word.
But Abraham had no basis of saying that.
All he knows is he's been thrown out of his father's house.
He was very happy and wealthy.
He got thrown out of there.
He has no more relatives left.
He gets stuck with Pharaoh, gets embarrassed at the least in Egypt with his wife in bed with the king, is gallivanting around the world, ends up having to rescue his nephew, whom he couldn't stand to begin with.
And in the meantime, he's getting older.
His wife is getting older, and God keeps telling him, you see that sand?
And the next time, you see those stars?
It's a little overkill here.
And he finally says, well, you know, it's a little difficult.
And then God answered him back, and then finally it's clear he still has faith.
That's the issue.
Do you have faith in God?
Now, if God didn't make a promise to you, God did make a promise collectively.
That's the issue.
I believe in God's collective promises.
God didn't make a promise to Dennis.
But I do believe that God made a promise to the Jewish people.
If I didn't believe that, I would not be Jewish.
I would not stay Jewish after the Holocaust if I did not believe that God were involved with the Jewish people.
I think it's an interesting decision to stay Jewish after Hitler, but it's not a very rational one.
There has to be, in the final analysis, some really good reason that you would risk it again, given the suffering that is involved often in being a Jew.
And that I believe in.
I do believe, and this, as I say, the studying of this increases my belief each time.
Well, God does say that to him in 15:6, or actually the Torah says it of him.
Then God said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land as a possession.
And he said, It's interesting.
He still has questions.
Right after he's praised for having all this faith, two verses later he asks God the following: God, how will I know that I am to possess it?
Isn't that interesting?
I just find, you know, it's not, these are not snotty questions like some of my callers on KABC.
You know, it's just a very nice way of posing the thing.
Excuse me, God, but how exactly will it come about?
In other words, he posed it not as challenge, but as curiosity.
I was just wondering, how is it going to happen?
So the answer is real helpful.
God answered, Bring me a three-year-old heifer.
See, that's what you call a non-sequitur.
A three-year-old she-goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtle dove, and a young bird.
There are a few moments like this that a good humorist could make a tremendous film without in any way, any way departing from the text.
Another one is with Moses.
Moses says to God, finally at the burning bush, Who are you?
What's your name?
That's exactly what he asks.
And God answered, I am who I am.
And I always imagine at that moment Moses think, oh, now I know.
Gee, that's really clear.
Thank you very much.
This ends the whole issue.
And you have this.
It's exactly the same thing here.
Look, how am I going to know that I'm going to possess this land?
I'll tell you how.
Bring me a turtle dove and a she-goat.
Isn't that terrific?
I just, but what did he do?
The next verse?
Covenant and Dispossession00:10:44
He brought up all these and cut them in two, placing each half opposite the other.
But he did not cut up the bird.
Birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, and Abram drove them away.
Now, in all seriousness, Abram must have known what was about to happen, or he would have truly been confused.
Because if you ever answered anybody that question, you know, well, just bring me a turtle dove and a couple of she-goats, they would not understand what you meant.
The assumption is that Abraham actually did.
These were ways in which major religious deals, as it were, were cut in the old days, very old days, in the ancient world.
In other words, he knew something was about to happen.
As the sun was about to set, a deep sleep fell upon Abram.
You see, again, and a great dark dread descended upon him.
He was in fear for good reason.
And God said to Abram, Know well that your offspring shall be strangers in a land not theirs.
Right?
We're talking, of course, about Egypt.
And they will be enslaved and oppressed 400 years.
But I will execute judgment on the nation they shall serve.
And in the end, they will go free with great wealth.
As for you, because, you know, there is an element of that.
He was wondering, how am I involved in all of this?
As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace.
You will be buried at a ripe old age.
And they shall return here, that is your descendants, in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.
It's a very important statement.
Who are the Amorites?
One of the people living in Canaan.
I am not going to kick out those people until they deserve to be.
You Jews cannot come into the Holy Land and dispossess innocent people.
You will have to wait till they're miserable enough to deserve it.
And that's a very important moral lesson.
Even though you're my chosen people and I have this great mission to humanity, I can't, I, God, can't do an immoral act for a greater moral purpose.
I can't dispossess innocent people from the land to make my holy people in the land.
You understand how important that is?
You can't do sinful things for greater goods.
It's one of the greatest possible lessons in life.
That's Lenin's old line when making the Russian Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution.
In order to, what is it, in order to make omelets, you've got to break eggs.
So, the eggs were people.
Break people for the greater progress of Soviet society.
Uh-uh.
When the Amorites are bad and in any event would self-destruct, as bad nations do self-destruct, that we know from history, then you'll go in and not until then.
This obviously was not for Abram.
Abram, this was not an issue for him.
This is an issue for us.
This line was for Jews later, much later than Abram, to understand what the moral element of going into the promised land is about.
You can't dispossess innocent people.
And there are a lot of contemporary things to be learned from that, I dare say, but I don't want to get into the most sensitive issue in Jewish life because it's just not germane right now.
Okay.
When the sun set and it was very dark, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between those pieces, the pieces of the animals that he had cut up.
On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying, To your offspring I give this land from the river of Egypt, that's the Nile, to the great river, the river Euphrates, which is, of course, in modern Iraq.
That's the land given to the Jews, to Abraham to the Jews, from the Nile to the Euphrates, which is, of course, vaster than Israel with or without a West Bank, even with Jordan.
The Canites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Riphaim, the Amorites, the Kanaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.
Those were the nations living there.
One word on this, and then with this I'll conclude.
We'll just have to pick up at chapter, oh, perfect.
It works out, chapter 16.
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
In verse 18, God makes a covenant.
This is called the covenant of the pieces, Brit ben-Habatarim, in Hebrew.
This is the first covenant God makes with the Jews.
It is the second covenant God makes with humanity.
Remember the first covenant with the rainbow?
That I have make a covenant that I won't destroy the world again?
Okay.
It's an interesting point that is raised by Plout here, which I would like to read to you.
In a society in which the capriciousness of the gods was taken for granted, writes Nachlam Sarna, the covenant between the pieces, like the covenant with Noah, set religion on a bold, new, independent course.
Do you understand why?
The gods of the world acted capriciously.
They did what they want, just like people do what they want.
People are generally unpredictable.
Or worse, they're predictable.
You bribe them, they'll do this.
What did ancient people do with their gods?
They bribed them.
Sacrifices were bribes, much more than they were thanks or sin offerings.
They were bribes.
I'll give you this, so you give me this.
Okay?
That was the way they were.
What Sorna is saying and Plough brings here is brilliant.
A covenant means no matter what you do, this is what I God promise.
I promise you, I am predictable.
I'm telling you right now, to you, Noah, that I will never destroy the world again.
To you, Abraham, I am telling you, no matter how you act, your children act, it will not affect the fact that I will make you a big people and give you this land.
Okay?
Are you with me?
That's predictability.
That's a covenant.
However, the uniqueness of this covenant, as Platt will say, is that there are no obligations on man.
These first two covenants, unlike later covenants with the Jews, which make demands on the Jews, are only demands upon God.
Abraham doesn't have to do a thing.
Noah didn't have to do a thing.
Both covenants have one outstanding feature in common.
They obligate God but demand nothing of man.
In contradistinction to many later references to Brit, by the way, when a Jewish boy, baby, on the eighth day has a bris, which is, or brit, that doesn't mean circumcision.
It means covenant.
It's too bad it's called, let's go to the circumcision.
It should be let's go to the covenant when we speak in English, because in Hebrew, grit means covenant.
Brit Milah means covenant of the circumcision.
That's the whole term there.
But that's what it is.
That's the covenant.
That's why it's such a big deal.
Contradistinction to many later references to Brit, in which God's covenant with Israel is made dependent on Israel's continued faithfulness, the Bible here makes God's commitment unconditional.
Not only has God created a physical universe, it's a beautiful point.
Not only has God created a physical universe with immutable laws, non-changeable laws, he has established conditions for an unchanging spiritual world as well.
That's what's being said.
I made a law with unchanging physical laws and unchanging spiritual laws.
And I might add unchanging moral laws.
He is a faithful God, faithful in his natural as well as transnatural manifestations.
And unlike the pagan deities whose universes were unpredictable and erratic, God shows himself in the covenant between the pieces to be an El Naaman, a God who is both dependable and trustworthy.
No such religious covenant is known outside of Israel.
This is another unique, unique means, uno.
Only it never happened outside this concept of the covenant.
What the Jews' obligations are, we'll talk about next time when we talk, when we will later talk about covenant, it'll be embellished, but I will explain that next time we go to chapter 16.