by C. A. Gray
“Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to 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, your offspring also can be counted.”
I caught my breath, dropping my eyes from the land to the sand that had gotten trapped in my sandals and stuck between my toes. Then I gazed with new wonder at the dust of the ground.
So not just offspring, but— I will make of you a great nation , the Lord had said the first time I heard Him speak. A huge nation, apparently!
“Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you,” the Lord said to my spirit.
Yes, Lord, I said in my spirit, and hurried to obey. I told my servants to move our tents to Hebron, by the oaks of Mamre. I went to explore the land that was now mine by divine right—mine and that of my myriad offspring! As I walked, I imagined them. The dust under my feet was a picture of how many there would be. I pictured cities of the future, using what I had seen in Egypt as a guide for how they might look. And the people of my nation going about their lives: soldiers and tradesmen, shepherds and priests, women and children. I heard their laughter, their haggling, and at times their bickering.
When I returned to our tents at Hebron, my heart was full. I had seen the future, and the how was not my problem. God made the promise; He would see that it came to pass. There I built an altar to the Lord of smooth stones for sacrifice, just like I did the first time the Lord appeared and spoke to me. I did this because, after what I had seen and envisioned, my heart demanded a response. The Lord was so good to me.
Later, as the years slipped by with no sign of a promise fulfilled, I was grateful to have built the altar for another reason. The Lord had given me one sign, of the dust under my feet. Yet I saw the dust daily, and did not always think of my offspring to come when I did so. But for the altar, there might have been times when I would have been tempted to think I’d dreamed the whole thing. But it was there, real and unchanging, and I remembered when I looked at it how I’d felt when I constructed it. I tried to conjure those feelings of hope and gratitude again, but now they were tinged so heavily with disappointment and heartsickness that the positive emotions were hard to remember. I’d begun to convince myself that when the Lord spoke of my offspring, perhaps He had not meant my physical offspring. Perhaps he meant that one of my servants would inherit from me, and his offspring would be counted as mine. It would be his offspring that would populate the grand city of my imagination.
As I stood looking out over the land the Lord had given to me by promise as the sun went down, beside the oaks of Mamre, suddenly, the Lord came to me again. I knew He was not physically beside me this time, that it was a vision, but the glowing appearance of the man was the same.
“ Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; your reward shall be very great,” He said.
Lovely words, and I did believe them, but they were so non-specific. So my reply came out of my wounded heart. “ Lord God, what will You give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus? Since You have given me no son, one who has been born in my house is my heir. ”
“ This man will not be your heir,” the Lord replied, “but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir.” Suddenly—in my vision or in reality, I did not know—twilight slipped to darkness. The Lord led me out from beneath the spreading oaks, and pointed up to the heavens. Like every night, the magnificent deep blue sky was spangled with stars as far as the eye could see, and beyond.
“Now look toward the heavens and count the stars, if you are able to count them. So shall your descendants be. ”
I looked, but I could no more number the stars than I could number the sand beneath my feet. Tears of gratitude leaked onto my now wrinkled cheeks. When the promise was at last fulfilled, the years of waiting and heartache would not matter anymore. They would be forgotten in joy.
I do not know how long the vision went on. Perhaps I slept before the Lord, meditating on his great promise. When it was daytime, and I could again see the land before me, the Lord went on, “ I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it. ”
Remembering the long, unchanging years since the last time the Lord had spoken this promise to me, I said, “ Lord God, how may I know that I will possess it? ” I did not doubt that I would, but—like the stars in the heavens were a new sign of the promise of offspring, I wanted a new sign to cling to for the land. Something to combat the doubt, when it next came knocking.
The Lord said to me, “Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”
The vision lifted. I was alone again, and went at once to my herdsmen to comply in excitement. I knew what this meant: the Lord planned to cut a covenant with me! When any two kings or landowners or great men wished to join in covenant, the strongest bond of fellowship there is, this was how it was done. If the Lord would do that , then surely there would be no more room for doubt!
I hurried back to the place where I had met with the Lord yesterday at nightfall, and slaughtered the sacrifices. Then I sawed all the animals except for the birds in half, separating them in the usual manner in preparation. And I waited for the Lord to appear.
He did not appear for hours yet. I washed the blood from my hands. The sun rose high, and began to descend again. The birds of prey eventually spotted my sacrifice, and swooped down to investigate. I shooed them away. As I waited, since I could not yet see the stars, I looked at the sand. I closed my eyes and imagined the city I’d first envisioned all those years ago…
Sometime during the evening as the sun went down, my imaginings slipped into dreams. At first it was no dream at all, but deepest blackness, as if I’d fallen into an abyss where there was nothing but night. Then the Lord’s voice came to me in the dream.
“ Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years. But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age. Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the wrongdoing of the Amorites is not yet complete. ”
When the Lord finished speaking, I saw—dream or vision now? I was not sure—two objects appear before me: a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch. I knew that the furnace represented the bondage of my offspring of which the Lord had just spoken, a symbol of oppression. Just as certainly, I knew that the flaming torch was the holiness of the Lord Himself. These two objects passed between the pieces of my sacrifices. My throat constricted. The Lord had cut the covenant with Himself . Without my participation at all! That meant it was unconditional: there was nothing I could do to stop the promise from coming to pass. He would do it.
The Lord spoke again the promise He had given me before, only this time it was an unconditional covenant: “ To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates: the land of the Kenite, the Kenizzite, the Kadmonite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Rephaim, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Girgashite, and the Jebusite. ”
I awoke the next morning so filled with hope and joy that it was as if the last ten years of disappointment had never happened. I’d never yet told Sarai of the Lord’s promise for descendants, as her barrenness was a very sensitive subject. I had hoped I would not have to tell her, and she might simply conceive one day without my having to say a word. But today I could not hold it in. I told her everything, from the original picture of the sand from the Lord, the vision of the land when we first arrived, to the vision and dream from the last twenty-four hours, of the stars in the sky and the Lo
rd’s unconditional covenant. After all, the Lord had cut the covenant with Himself! We had nothing to do with it!
But Sarai was not excited, like I was. In fact, she grew very quiet as I spoke, and withdrew from me. I frowned, and asked her, “What is wrong?”
“The Lord has promised you offspring,” she said at last. “ You . Not me.”
I blinked at her, confused. This had never occurred to me until this moment. I had simply assumed that if the offspring were from my own body and not an adopted servant, then they would be Sarai’s as well. She was my only wife, after all. But, now that I thought of it, the Lord had not specified this, had He?
Sarai sucked in a breath, and straightened her spine. Then she fixed me with a steely gaze that I knew hid great pain.
“ The Lord has prevented me from bearing children,” she said. “Why don’t you have relations with my slave woman. Perhaps I will obtain children through her. ”
I suspected Sarai meant this as a test, and not an actual suggestion. Still, I considered it. If the Lord had blessed my body and not hers, what other option was there? Besides, the practice was not unheard of. Hagar belonged to Sarai; therefore, children she bore would also be counted as hers. It was rational. I therefore did as Sarai suggested, and took Hagar as a second wife.
Hagar conceived quickly, and confirmed this to us within a few months. I should have been overjoyed—this was the fulfillment of the Lord’s promise!—and yet. Strife had come into my home. Hagar, who had always been submissive and pleasant to Sarai in the past, now paraded about as if she were a queen, and spoke to Sarai with contempt. Sarai hid her bitter tears from me as best she could, but I caught her weeping several times when she thought she was alone. I tried to comfort her, but I knew Sarai blamed me as well as Hagar: she was jealous of my relationship with her, as well as of the child on the way. It did not matter that it had been her idea now: the pain was too poignant for rationality. When I forced her to speak to me, she lashed out.
“ This is all your fault!” she cried. “I put my servant into your arms, but now that she’s pregnant she treats me with contempt. The Lord will show who’s wrong—you or me! ”
I had never learned in all our years of marriage how to handle my wife when she was in a fit of temper like this. My default was to placate as best I could, which I did now. “ Look, she is your servant, so deal with her as you see fit. ”
Sarai narrowed her eyes at me. “I most certainly will.” Drying her tears, she straightened and stalked away from me. I let out a heavy sigh, grateful the confrontation was over, at least.
The next day, word from my other servants came that Hagar had fled into the wilderness. Perhaps I should have felt protective—after all, she too was my wife now, and she was carrying my child. The child of God’s promise: the very one upon whom all my hopes for offspring hinged. I should have gone after her. But I kept envisioning that hard, hurt look in Sarai’s eyes. She was a difficult woman at times, but I loved her. I never wished to cause that look again.
So I did not pursue Hagar; but she returned to us anyway, and approached me with an amazing story.
“An angel came to me and told me to return to my mistress and submit to her,” she told me in private, “and also told me that the Lord would multiply my offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude!”
I exhaled sharply as she spoke. Again, I should have been excited, since this coincided so exactly with what the Lord had said to me. And yet, I felt disappointed instead. Sarai had been right. The child of God’s promise to me would come from Hagar, not from her, the wife I loved.
Hagar went on, “And the angel said that I would bear a son, and that I should call his name Ishmael, because the Lord had listened to my affliction. He said that he would be ‘This son of yours will be a wild man, as untamed as a wild donkey! He will raise his fist against everyone, and everyone will be against him. Yes, he will live in open hostility against all his relatives.’ This was at the spring that lies between Kadesh and Bered!”
I forced a smile. “Then we shall call that spring, Beer-lahai-roi,” I said, which meant The Well of the Vision of Life. Hagar beamed back at me, now so filled with joy that she even did as the angel commanded, and submitted to Sarai again.
In the fullness of time, Hagar bore a son, just as the angel had said. We called his name Ishmael. I was eighty-six years old.
In the following years, Sarai’s monthly flow ceased, and with them died my hopes that the promised child from the Lord would come from her. My attachment to and love for Ishmael increased after that, as I resigned myself to the idea that he must be the child of promise. Hagar and Sarai were civil to one another, but never more than that; as for Ishmael, Sarai could hardly stand to look at the boy. I tried not to let this bother me, as I understood it was more about Sarai than about him. I explained this to him too, once he was old enough to understand and mind that she despised him.
Sarai and I were scarcely more than civil with one another in subsequent years, truth be told. I was saddened by this, as I loved my wife still, and wished she would let me comfort her. But again, I understood that she was angry with the Lord, and not with me. After all, it was my seed whom He had blessed, and at her expense. Every day, she had to watch my child of God’s promise by another woman grow strong in her sight.
Then, when I was ninety-nine years of age, everything changed.
While I surveyed the land the Lord had given to my offspring, the Lord appeared before me once more, so blindingly white that I could scarcely look at him. At first I was too stunned to move. The Lord said then, “ I am El-Shaddai—‘God Almighty.’ Serve me faithfully and live a blameless life. I will make a covenant with you, by which I will guarantee to give you countless descendants.” The paralysis left me, and I fell on my face before the Lord. He continued, “This is my covenant with you: I will make you the father of a multitude of nations! What’s more, I am changing your name. It will no longer be Abram. Instead, you will be called Abraham, for you will be the father of many nations. I will make you extremely fruitful. Your descendants will become many nations, and kings will be among them! I will confirm my covenant with you and your descendants after you, from generation to generation. This is the everlasting covenant: I will always be your God and the God of your descendants after you. And I will give the entire land of Canaan, where you now live as a foreigner, to you and your descendants. It will be their possession forever, and I will be their God.”
The Lord continued to speak, as I digested this. Most of what He had said had been said before—all this I knew, except that my name had now changed. Abram, which meant Exalted Father, had now become Abraham, Father of a Multitude. The previous word from the Lord had been that I was to be a great nation. Would I now be a multitude of nations?
“Now as for you,” the Lord continued, while I was still lying on the ground, “ Your responsibility is to obey the terms of the covenant. You and all your descendants have this continual responsibility. This is the covenant that you and your descendants must keep: Each male among you must be circumcised. You must cut off the flesh of your foreskin as a sign of the covenant between me and you. From generation to generation, every male child must be circumcised on the eighth day after his birth. This applies not only to members of your family but also to the servants born in your household and the foreign-born servants whom you have purchased. All must be circumcised. Your bodies will bear the mark of my everlasting covenant. Any male who fails to be circumcised will be cut off from the covenant family for breaking the covenant. ”
As the Lord spoke about this most unusual sign of the covenant, I pictured gathering the hundreds of men in my household and explaining to them what the Lord had told me. They trusted and obeyed me implicitly, and yet—if anything might stretch that trust to the breaking point, it was this. Last time the Lord had cut a covenant with me, it had been unconditional. Now, I had a part to play. I would obey, whether I understo
od or not. Of course I would obey. He was the Lord.
God continued to speak: “ Regarding Sarai, your wife—her name will no longer be Sarai. From now on her name will be Sarah. And I will bless her and give you a son from her! Yes, I will bless her richly, and she will become the mother of many nations. Kings of nations will be among her descendants .”
I looked up at the Lord now, so shocked that I laughed aloud, incredulous. I was wise enough to hold my tongue, but I could not help thinking, Will a child be born to a man a hundred years old? And will Sarah—for so she is now—who is ninety years old, give birth to a child? Yet I could not miss the significance of the Lord changing her name as well as mine: from Sarai, meaning princess, to Sarah, meaning princess of a multitude.
My thoughts then went to Ishmael, the boy who, I’d convinced myself, would be the child of the Lord’s prophecy for the last thirteen years. So sure had I been of this that I had ceased to believe or look for another, and I had learned to love him, despite all the strife he had caused in my household. It was hard to reverse the direction of my dominant thought all at once. So when I spoke at last, what I said was, “May Ishmael live under your special blessing!” Did I mean instead of a child by Sarah? Lord forgive me; I suspect I did.
God replied, “ No, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac .” I winced inwardly—the name Isaac meant laughter. The child himself would be an everlasting reminder of my first reaction to God’s word. “ I will establish My covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I will bless him, and make him fruitful and multiply him exceedingly. He shall father twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation.”
My heart eased at this—for if the Lord did indeed give me a child by Sarah, I shuddered to think how she might take retribution upon Ishmael for the years of misery he unknowingly caused her. Even if he was not the child of promise after all, I still cared deeply for the boy, and did not wish for him to be cast out in the cold. None of this was his fault.
