Our readings from Genesis this week focus on Abraham, the first patriarch in the Bible, whose name originally was Abram. Abram’s family had settled in Ur of the Chaldeans, a city that was close to where the Euphrates River empties into the Persian Gulf. Abram’s father, Terah, had decided to move his family to the land of Canaan before ultimately settling in Harran, a city in the southeastern area of modern Turkey.
When Abram was seventy five years old and living in Harran, the Lord first spoke to him saying that the time had come to complete the journey his father had begun: to move and settle in Canaan. Abram trusted in the message of God and took his family to the land they were promised. (There was, however, a slight detour into Egypt that involved some interesting deception of Pharaoh about the identity of his wife.) It was in Canaan that God made His covenant with Abram. The technical terminology for what occurred is that God and Abram cut a covenant through an act of sacrifice. In so doing, Abram acknowledged God as the Sovereign Lord, and the Almighty promised Abram that he would become the father of more offspring that there were stars in the sky.
While Abram was still childless with his wife, Sarai, God renewed the covenant with him and added the element of the sign of circumcision. All the male children of Abram’s lineage would receive this same mark on their eighth day of life. In that moment, the Lord also changed the names of Abram and Sarai to Abraham and Sarah, which mean, respectively, “father of a multitude” and “princess.” He also promises them that within the next year Sarah would give birth to a son, who is to be named Isaac.
Sometime after Isaac’s birth, God tests Abraham by telling him to take his son to a nearby mountain and offer him as a sacrifice. This moment is one that many of us struggle to understand, seeing God as a tester rather than as a gracious and loving Father. However, at the end of this passage, God provides a sacrifice in place of Isaac when He sees that Abraham truly fears Him. Walter Brueggemann believes that “to assert that God provides [for us] requires a faith as intense as does the conviction that God tests.”
As Abraham’s days draw near to an end, he wants to see Isaac married to a woman of his own people rather than of the Canaanites. When Abraham sends his servant back to where his own people still reside, God guides that man to Rebekah, who would become Isaac’s wife.
Our Psalm this week reminds us that while earthly rulers exist, they do so only at the Lord’s behest. We should serve God with fear (but not in the way that I fear a snake). We should fear God as the One who created each one of us, who breathes life into our lungs and guides us every day.