How Strange the Way of Providence

Parashat Vayeira ("And [God] appeared [to Abraham]") forms the critical midpoint of the Abraham narrative. Its diverse episodes all display a single theme: the miraculous ways of divine providence. We are repeatedly made aware of the precarious situation of God's promise to Abraham that he will be the progenitor of a great nation. To begin with, Abraham and Sarah have no son: He is an old man, and she is long past the age of childbearing. But God appears to them, announcing that Sarah will indeed bear a son. (Is it any wonder that she laughs at the thought, as memorialized in the name Yitzhak?) And, miraculously, this comes to pass.

Twice more in our parashah, God's promise to Abraham comes under threat, first from Hagar and Ishmael, then, paradoxically, from God. Abraham now has two sons, each the firstborn to his mother: Which will inherit the promise? Throughout the patriarchal narratives, it is against social convention, the younger son whom God chooses: Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Ephraim. Each symbolizes God's choice of the people Israel, though they are but latecomers to the land of Canaan. So Ishmael and Hagar must be banished (though they, too, come under God's providential care and are saved from death in the wilderness). Then God seemingly imperils the promise by demanding Isaac's sacrifice on Mount Moriah. Only at the last moment, once Abraham's faithfulness has been displayed, is it revealed that God does not desire the sacrifice of the firstborn but that a vicarious animal sacrifice will serve in his stead. In each of these paradoxical narratives, the ways of God defy human convention and expectation: They are truly miraculous!

Another major episode recounts a different aspect of God's providence: punisher of human offenses. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed because of their moral depravity. This is typified by their violation of the basic code of hospitality to strangers (and pointedly contrasted with Abraham's gracious hospitality to the same strangers, who turn out to be divine). Abraham's intercession on behalf of Sodom―"Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?"―provides a powerful model for arguing with God in subsequent Jewish tradition.

We often imagine that the "truly" religious person's attitude toward life is one of quiet confidence and faithful conviction. Indeed, Abraham in our parashah is often held up as the model. Yet, listening deeply to both the words of the Torah and its silences, we perceive as well moments of profound anguish and despair, of anger and argumentation. These, too, are an authentic part of Abraham's pilgrimage, and our own. It is precisely in the paradoxical character of the Torah's narratives―their contradictions, supreme ironies, sudden reversals, and defiance of conventional expectations―that their truth lies. Therein we both recognize ourselves and perceive glimpses of the Divine.

For further reading: Nahum M. Sarna, Understanding Genesis (Schocken Books, 1970)

At the time of this writing in 1996, Rabbi Richard S. Sarason, Ph.D., was professor of Rabbinic Literature and Thought, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati.