Abraham’s silence over Isaac communicates so much.
So Abraham got up early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water, and gave them to Hagar, putting them on her shoulder, and gave her the boy, and sent her away. And she departed and wandered about in the wilderness of Beersheba.
When the water in the skin was used up, she left the boy under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him, about a bowshot away, for she said, “May I not see the boy die!” And she sat opposite him, and raised her voice and wept. God heard the boy crying; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter with you, Hagar? Do not fear, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Get up, lift up the boy, and hold him by the hand, for I will make a great nation of him.” Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.
Genesis 21:14-19 (NASB)
There are a number of anomalies and odd statements in Genesis 21 that seem to hint at something, or reinforce a lesson.
Look at this word חֵמֶת (chemet). Some translations say “bottle,” but it’s a wineskin. Here it’s full of water.
You may remember from Genesis 18 how Abraham demonstrated his hospitality to the three angels – he brought them bread and water, which is echoed here. Later, Lot in Genesis 19 offers the angels bread, but in that chapter, no water is mentioned.
This word chemet is only found four times in the scriptures, and three of them are here in this passage about Hagar and Ishmael.
Chemet, chemet, chemet… with water.
The fourth time it’s mentioned, the context is quite different. Also, it seems quite related to Genesis 19.
“Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbor,
Pressing him to your bottle,
Even to make him drunk,
That you may look on his nakedness!
Habakkuk 2:15 (NKJV)
The phrease “look on his nakedness” is a euphamism for sex.
Perhaps Abraham’s water for Hagar and Ishmael is meant to stand in continued contrast against the unkindness and lack of hospitality in Sodom and Gomorrah, where the men wished to force themselves onto other men.
So Abimelech rose early in the morning, called all his servants, and told all these things in their hearing; and the men were very much afraid.
Genesis 20:8 (NKJV)
Why does the text tell us that Abemelech’s men were afraid?
In this chapter, we read that God appeared to Abimelech by dream and threatened his life unless he returned Sarah to Abraham. Abimelech tells his servants, and then the text says that “the men” were afraid.
There are speculations about the precise locations of Gerar (likely near the Negev region in Southen Israel) and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (near the Dead Sea), but it’s assumed that the places were about 40 to 50 miles from one another.
The rabbis note that by the time Abraham arrives, the people of Gerar could still see the smoke from the burning cities.
Perhaps the arrival of a prophet of the God who destroyed the cities was enough to terrify everyone. But the text doesn’t say “everyone” was afraid. It doesn’t give a vague pronoun here, even though it could have.
It said “and the MEN” were very afraid.
While the commentaries don’t say this, I wonder if “the men” are mentioned here to tie us back to the cities that were destroyed. There were wicked men in Sodom and Gomorrah, and perhaps the men here considered their own life choices and wondered if they were next.
One Jewish commentary says that perhaps the men were afraid that Abraham would not intercede for them and shield them from doom.
The men were very frightened. They were afraid that Avraham would refuse to pray for them.
Haamek Davar on Genesis 20:8:1
We already know that Abraham is a man who pleads on behalf of others. Perhaps here, God is teaching him to pray not just for his own people, but for the well-being and protection of others as well.
Given that, consider Abraham’s view: He pleads with God for mercy, to which God said “ok, for the sake of so few, I’ll spare the cities,” but then the cities are destroyed. Abraham got up in the morning to see smoke billowing up.
What must Abraham think?
Perhaps this goes unresolved for Abraham. And perhaps life is like that sometimes.
So it came about, when God destroyed the cities of the surrounding area, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the destruction, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived.
Genesis 19:29 (NASB)So Abram went away as the Lord had spoken to him; and Lot went with him. Now Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.
Genesis 12:4 (NASB)
The rabbis connect Genesis 19:29 to Genesis 12:4, and suggest that Lot was not just spared from the destruction of Sodom, but from the destruction of Haran as well.
Both cases are because of Abraham.
Fire and brimstone seems particularly destructive and thorough.
The rabbis suggest may have been due to the geography. The cities that were destroyed happened to be within the borders of the Holy Land that God promised to Abraham. The Holy Land is a place that devours and then vomits out wickedness.
So they brought a bad report of the land which they had spied out to the sons of Israel, saying, “The land through which we have gone to spy out is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people whom we saw in it are people of great stature.
Numbers 13:32 (NASB)
The rabbis point to the spies who scouted out the Promised Land, and suggest that the spies reported correctly, but they did not understand the reason for the land’s behavior.
So Moses must explain to his people before they enter: This is a Holy Land. It must be treated as Holy.
“Now the future generation, your sons who rise up after you and the foreigner who comes from a distant land, when they see the plagues of that land and the diseases with which the Lord has afflicted it, will say, ‘All its land is brimstone and salt, burned debris, unsown and unproductive, and no grass grows on it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in His anger and in His wrath.’
Deuteronomy 29:22-23 (NASB)
But perhaps there is another teaching here that coincides with this.
The “total” destruction isn’t actually total. It’s a part of the bigger land. The land is your heart.
But Lot’s wife, from behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.
Genesis 19:26 (NASB)
Why was Lot’s wife punished for looking back (literally, “behind him,” referring to Lot)? And why a pillar of salt?
Genesis doesn’t say, but there are rabbinical thoughts on this that run through scripture.
One explanation is that Lot’s wife dies because when she looked back at the cities being destroyed, what she saw was the very presence of God in fire and smoke, dwelling in the land. It’s the same “don’t look” that’s given as a warning in Exodus 19.
Same fire and smoke. Same warning.
Then the Lord spoke to Moses: “Go down, warn the people, so that they do not break through to the Lord to stare, and many of them perish.
Exodus 19:21 (NASB)
But why a pillar of salt? What does it mean?
This part is less clear, but the rabbis suggest the punishment is often like the sin. In the same way they wonder if the forbidden fruit was a fig (Adam/Eve clothed themselves in fig leaves), perhaps the salt points to salt-related sin.
The Midrash tells a story of Lot’s wife, being from Sodom, having the same inhospitable heart as everyone else there. So when someone came to their door and asked for a bit of salt, she said no!
From Rashi:
ותהי נציב מלח AND SHE BECAME A PILLAR OF SALT — By salt had she sinned and by salt was she punished. He (Lot) said to her once: “Give a little salt to these strangers” and she answered him, “Do you mean to introduce this bad custom, also, into our city?” (Genesis Rabbah 50:4).
Rashi on Genesis 19:26:2/cite>
Is it true? Is it what happened?
Who knows? But it does have a certain elegance to it, and I think it’s a good way to remember the story, and to remember to be generous and kind to strangers.
And also, don’t stare at the presence of God.
Now Abraham got up early in the morning and went to the place where he had stood before the Lord; and he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the surrounding area; and behold, he saw the smoke of the land ascended like the smoke of a furnace.
Genesis 19:27-28 (NASB)
In Genesis 11, which covers the Tower of Babel, I wrote about the relationship between the bricks and the furnaces that made them, tying bricks and furnaces to human bondage. To Empire.
So when Abraham sees “the smoke of a furnace” (literally kiln), I wondered about the connection.
The word for “furnace” here is כִּבְשָׁן (kivshan), and it is not the same word used in Daniel for the furnaces in Babylon. That word is אַתּוּן (atun).
Both mean “furnace.”
The Babylonian furnace is tied to human bondage and enslavement. But what about the kivshan here in Genesis 19?
Perhaps kivshan isn’t man’s furnace, but God’s. Here in Genesis, it’s used to describe fire and brimstone from heaven, but later, it describes the very presence of God, descending on Sinai.
Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the Lord descended upon it in fire; and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the entire mountain [a]quaked violently.
Exodus 19:18 (NASB)
This presence is tied to a different picture of “bondage” or “enslavement.” Here, we have the 10 Commandments that show up in the next chapter, followed by several chapters of laws and ordinances, which all culminate in the commitment made in Exodus 24. The whole time, and for the next 40 days, God is the Fire on the Mountain.
Then Moses came and reported to the people all the words of the Lord and all the ordinances; and all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words which the Lord has spoken we will do!”
Exodus 24:3 (NASB)
Kivshan, or “God’s furnace” as I’m calling it, has an interesting root: כָּבַשׁ (kavash) which means… bondage. Slavery.
But this isn’t slavery under man. In scripture, this word is most frequently used to describe ordered servitude under God, starting in Genesis 1.
I. to subject, subdue, force, keep under, bring into bondage
– 1. (Qal)
– – 1. to bring into bondage, make subservient
– – 2. to subdue, force, violate
– – 3. to subdue, dominate, tread down
– 2. (Niphal) to be subdued
– 3. (Piel) to subdue
– 4. (Hiphil) to bring into bondage
Strongs H3533 כָּבַשׁ: kavash
God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Genesis 1:28 (NASB)
This word is often used to describe land being subdued for God’s people, for God’s purposes, which makes the Exodus kavash so poignant: God’s presence is tied to commitment. That commitment is akin to being a “slave” for God.
It sounds quite awful, unless you know that God is Good.
But there’s something else here. In Micah, we read that God, in His great compassion, will kavash our iniquities. Capture it, subdue it, wrestle it down and cast it into the depths of the sea.
He will again have compassion on us,
And will subdue our iniquities.
You will cast all our sins
Into the depths of the sea.
Micah 7:19 (NASB)
So what we learn is that the furnaces of man (Babylon) are a corruption of the furnace of God, because slavery under the boot of Empire is not like slavery under God who loves us.
The furnace of God is God’s own presence among us, wiping out our sin and cleansing us.
When they had brought them outside, one said, “Escape for your life! Do not look behind you, and do not stay anywhere in the surrounding area; escape to the mountains, or you will be swept away.”
Genesis 19:17 (NASB)
There’s a fascinating view in the Jewish commentaries regarding angels:
An angel can only do the ONE thing it was tasked with doing: rescue, heal, bless, destroy, etc. Just one thing. That’s why two were sent in Gen 19. One to rescue Lot, and one to destroy the cities.
ויחזיקו AND THE MEN LAID HOLD [UPON HIS HAND]– One of these was commissioned to rescue him whilst his fellow was to overthrow Sodom; that is why it is stated (v. 17) “And he said, escape”, and it is not stated “And they said” (Genesis Rabbah 50:11).
Rashi on Genesis 19:16:1
And here as well:
ויוציאה, “they took him outside;” there is a letter ו missing before letter ה, to hint that only one angel, i.e. ויוציא, singular, the angel Gavriel, had been charged with the task of saving Lot.
Chizkuni on Genesis 19:16
The rabbis asked about this anger and poured over the scripture to understand it better.
God is a righteous judge,
And a God who shows indignation every day.
Psalm 7:11 (NASB)
On the one hand, Psalm 7 teaches us that God is angry every day. In verse 11, some translations say “anger at the wicked,” but this is not what the text says.
It says anger. Every day.
So in response, the rabbis then ask, “if God is angry every day, surely God is not angry all day long.”
In Psalm 30, they point out that God’s anger only lasts “for a moment.” (phew!)
For His anger is but for a moment,
His favor is for a lifetime;
Weeping may last for the night,
But a shout of joy comes in the morning.
Psalm 30:
But then, how long is “a moment?”
There are several answers they provide as possibilities. Among them, this is my favorite:
“One fifty-eight thousand, eight hundred and eighty-eighth of an hour, that is a moment.”
God’s anger lasts a moment. And how long is a moment? One fifty-eight thousand, eight hundred and eighty-eighth of an hour, that is a moment.
Berakhot 7a:8
This translates into 1.01 seconds. God is angry for just one second per day! But… when?
Which second of the day is reserved for God’s anger?
One teaching says that nobody knows, except for one person in the world: Balaam, the wicked. If you recall, he’s the one who tried to curse Israel, but God flipped the script on him, causing him to bless Israel instead.
Then he took up his discourse and said,
“The declaration of Balaam the son of Beor,
And the declaration of the man whose eye is opened,
The declaration of him who hears the words of God,
And knows the knowledge of the Most High,
Who sees the vision of the Almighty,
Falling down, yet having his eyes uncovered:
Numbers 24:15-16
The teaching says Balaam had secret knowledge of the exact moment God would be angry. Balaam tried to focus that anger at Israel to curse them, but he was unsuccessful. And so they suggest that even though Balaam knew the moment of God’s anger, God simply withheld his anger during that time, leaving only blessings available for Balaam to use on Israel. They point to Micah 6:5 as a remembrance of God witholding His anger.
It’s a fun thought, but it’s weird to think that Balaam would have this secret knowledge. It feels like a stranger-than-normal kind of thing.
Another teaching says that God’s anger occurs specifically at sunrise, linked to the kings of the earth setting their crowns on their heads at sunrise, giving their worship to the sun, and this teaching points to Sodom and Gomorrah.
The sun had risen over the earth when Lot came to Zoar. Then the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah from the Lord out of heaven,
Genesis 19:23-24 (NASB)
There’s a figure of speech that’s related to this: “the moment of God’s anger,” which is tied to when the sun rises, or more specifically, “when the rooster crows.”
And this is also tied to when a curse is possible, tying back to Balaam’s story.
A certain heretic who was in Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi’s neighborhood would upset him by incessantly challenging the legitimacy of verses. One day, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi took a rooster and placed it between the legs of the bed upon which he sat and looked at it. He thought: When the moment of God’s anger arrives, I will curse him and be rid of him. When the moment of God’s anger arrived, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi slept. When he woke up, he said to himself: Conclude from the fact that I nodded off that it is not proper conduct to do so, to curse people, even if they are wicked.
Berakhot 7a:19
Isn’t that interesting?