Abraham Pleds for Sodom and Gomorrah

Genesis 18:20-32 is the story of Abraham negotiating with the Lord to spare the cities if there are 50, 40, 30, 20 or just 10 righteous to be found in the city. Now I'm not sure why it says "city" since it sounds as if Sodom and Gomorrah are two places. Time to ask google I guess. After browsing a bit I'm not sure that Gomorrah features too strongly. So for now let's just ask what was demonstrated by the text? It was one of the readings in mass I think just last week.

Obviously two points are being made. The first is that even Abraham thinks there is a lot amiss in Sodom, for his first figure is 50 righteous. We don't know how big a place Sodom was. This doesn't sound like a very large percentage of the population though. So Abraham doesn't think much of this bunch. The Lord says He'll spare the city if 50 righteous can be found. Then Abraham proceeds to negotiate Him down. Abraham had to feel pretty comfortable with God to just start this kind of a conversation. The Lord is demonstrating both that He is a friend of Abraham, after all He's made these generous promises to him, and that He is merciful. Of course we will find soon enough that there are not even ten righteous men in Sodom.

Chapter 19 tells the story of Lot and the events that overtook the angels when they reached Sodom. There are a number of very bizarre features to the story, not the least the willingness of Lot to give his daughters to the crowd. What is that all about? The refusal of the crowd suggests that they wanted to sexually abuse men not women, hence no doubt the fact that this event has generally been seen as a condemnation of sodomy. Certainly it seems much more than mere lack of hospitality. The story ends with an even more bizarre event which is Lot's daughters getting him drunk so they can have their will with him and preserve the family line. These must have been really ugly daughters or the area must have really been short of men, at least men that would be acceptable suitors. So what is this all about? The video below shows you what the site of Sodom and Gomorrah looks like today. I wondered as I watched it if anyone was allowed to actually cut into the ash and see if the apparent city walls and such were really in there. Fascinating question. SEE THIS ACCOUNT

Meandering

Saturday, the Sabboth ... has come and I've been thinking about what I want to do with the Bible Surfing blog. I really like thinking about religious themes and reading the scripture. I'm not all that sure what my beliefs about the scripture are and I think I talked about that some time back.

I'm in a men's bible group and we meet once a week, although I often can't make it since I have conflicts on Thursday nights fairly often. Each of the men uses one or more translations of their choice and that's at least part of the fun of it. We're always getting into something like: "Read your verse twelve again! I can't believe it. It says almost the exact opposite of my verse 12." We're reading proverbs right now. Other times it's just an argument over adjectives or the emphasis.

Things like that make me a little reluctant to imagine that the bible, at least in translation, is the word for word literal word of God. Sorry, too many problems with that. This doesn't mean that the original documents were not Divine Revelation, although I think a rigid dictation theory is ridiculous too.

C.S. Lewis makes the point about John 7:17 ¹⁷If anyone chooses to do God's will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. — Lewis takes this as meaning that true understanding of God's teaching requires an obedient heart before all else.

I think it is important to read scripture broadly too and not merely expect to understand the meaning by proof texting. Every scrap of scripture occurs in a context and understanding demands not only understanding the text but understanding the context in which it was written and delivered. Failing that we are likely to generalize from specific guidance and vice versa.

I've been thinking that maybe I'll just start putting up reflections possibly on the scriptures the men's bible group are reading or perhaps what spiritual books the spiritual book club is reading. I'll probably go back and do a little more Genesis too.

Stopping By ...

It will soon be a year since I've added anything to BibleSurfing and I actually feel rather regretful about that. When I started I didn't have any particular plan of action or anything, just the thought that I was interested in a ramble through scripture so I started at the beginning. I didn't really have any intention of moving linearly through the bible, although that was pretty much what I did at the beginning. I'm going to try to turn over a new leaf and get back to at least some regular contributions.

I'm a member of a little spiritual book club at church. There are just a few of us. We pick some spiritual book to read each month. Sometimes we take a few months to go through a book. Since I'm a member of three book clubs, that one, one on C.S. Lewis and another on G.K. Chesterton, I'm always reading a few books.

I think I'll try to figure out a pattern of meditation to use as my rule for working on this blog. I'll share that as I figure it out.

The book we are working through right now is a good one. It's called "Devotional Classics" and you can see it at Amazon HERE So far we're only in the second section. It has 52 weeks of readings with discussion questions which can be used for personal reflection and meditation. It's ecumenical so there are readings from all sorts of Christian sources. Worth a look if you're looking for a book for a spiritual book club.

The Promise and Who Will Be Spared?

It has been some time since I updated the Bible Surfing blog. I view it as an opportunity to contemplate the scripture and think and reason about it. But in my own journey I've had a few surges in the rapids to negotiate. I had surgery for prostate cancer in June. I call it the "attack of the robots" because it was robotic surgery and as a techie I thought that was pretty neat. Then with all the confusion and chaos in the political arena (see my POLITICAL BLOG) I've been rather distracted.
Returning to Abraham I find Chapter 18 a little bit confusing. Let's see why. In verses 1 through 6 we find the encounter Abraham has with the Lord near the great trees of Mamre. The questions that pop into my head are: 1) How does Abraham so easily recognize the Lord?, and 2) What are the "great trees of Mamre"? I can't really answer the first question. The passage says (verse 2) "Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby." and it isn't quite clear if this is the Lord and two men or a separate event of three men just after the Lord has appeared to Abraham. I suppose it could be either. The passage doesn't make it at all clear which. The number three of course, due to later associations, puts me in mind of the Trinity. So are these three all manifestations of the Lord, or are they the Lord and two angels, or is the Lord separate and there are three men or angels associated with the Lord. Since this passage is contiguous with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah we will see more of these "men."
In wondering about the significance of the "trees of Mamre" I did some googling around which is my wont. I am not a deep researcher when I'm thinking about these things. I'm not a biblical scholar. I'm a techie geek scientist who loves writing and poetry and metaphor but not literature research so much. But I did stumble upon this reflection on the tree of Mamre which I think worth reading. It isn't clear why the trees of Mamre are mentioned except perhaps as a land mark. As I read various posts I found that the tree believed to be related at least as a descendant of the tree of Mamre was an oak that is now dead that is itself only some 300 years (another site says it is over 5000 years old) old and so not, of course, the original tree of Mamre. Perhaps it is just that trees are rare in the desert that made it a landmark. There seems to also be traditions linked to the tree: "A long-standing tradition is that the Oak of Abraham will die before the appearance of the Anti-Christ. The oak has been dead since 1996." So there are confusing elements of story about the symbol of the tree.
Verse three tends to make me more comfortable with the idea that there may be a Trinitarian link here — but one has to be careful with translations. Still notice that Abraham extends hospitality of water to wash their feet and rest and goes (verse 6) to have Sarah bake bread and then has a servant kill a choice tender calf. So we have some rather extravagant hospitality and to the request that the Lord stay, the verse says "they (i.e. collectively) answered" which I suppose is a small point, but tends to support the idea that "Lord" is being applied collectively.

The Promise

Then they ask after Sarah who is in the tent. There is the prophecy that Sarah will have a son. Sarah overhears this and laughs since she and Abraham are old. Despite her age she refers to having a child as a pleasure. I liked that since it is so at odds with our current culture of death which sees children only as burdens and something to be limited or avoided. Finally Sarah laughs at the thought and there is here a somewhat peculiar exchange. The Lord asks why Sarah laughed and Sarah is afraid and lies, saying "I did not laugh" and the Lord corrects her. It's a little detail and a slightly odd one. One might reasonably ask I think, "Why was Sarah afraid?" I don't know the answer. Perhaps it was wrong to correct strangers in her culture. Perhaps she too recognized the Lord and was in awe and concerned that her laugh would be miscontrued. Just a little detail: "Sarah laughed." And of course the prophecy was fulfilled.

Abraham negotiates

Then comes one of the more interesting passages in scripture when Abraham negotiates with God for the survival of Sodom and Gomorrah. The crux of the matter is whether the righteous should suffer for the sins of the rest? It is a matter of justice. Abraham takes the part of a defense attorney pleading for the rights of the righteous not to suffer the same fate as the guilty. He negotiates from fifty righteous down to ten righteous before the Lord goes on. Each time the Lord promises to spare the cities for the sake of the righteous even if there are only ten. The towering lesson here is that the wicked are spared punishment for the sake of the righteous. If there are no righteous men, perhaps all will be destroyed.

Thoughts: Revelation as a Conversation with God

I have been traveling through Genesis slowly. This work is a process of slow and continuing reflection on each passage. I don't have any grand design except to try to understand without any preconceptions. For that reason I'm not drawing on many outside resources or even trying particularly to be authoritative or to appeal to authority beyond common sense.

My general presumption is that with which anyone might approach a sacred book, that of respect and a spirit of acceptance. I don't have a settled theory of revelation beyond what might be called a conversational theory. Such a theory presumes that there is a God and that He is capable of communicating with man, but does so rather as another might communicate, conversationally, but with some capacity to communicate power and grandeur so that His communications are accepted as what they are, authoritative from a divine being.

In such a communication God would find those He converses with limited by their own understandings. God doesn't turn a man or woman from a man or woman of their time to a man or woman of another time. Their cosmology and general understanding of the universe is a given. Any communication has to work in that context.

If we, who come so much later, are to understand revelation in this way, we have to first understand the likely mind of the people to whom God is communicating. They appear to be nomadic tribespeople. They live in a polytheistic world filled with a sense that spirits are in all living things. The lifeforce is literally in the blood of living things. We have to tread with light feet and try to suspend our own judgments which are themselves rooted in a lived reality so very different. Whenever we encounter something that seems a little strange, we probably should inquire about what it might have meant to people who lived so long ago.

It is also important to remember that we read in translation. This too means that a lens of interpretation, that of the translator, separates us from the original writers who may themselves have been redacted. Little is certain except that a great gulf of years and cultural shifts and sensibilities separate us from the original conversation. Such is my understanding of revelation assumed here as a background as we contemplate continuing through Genesis.

Covenant of the Circumcision

Chapter 17 continues with the Covenant of the Circumcision:
9 Then God said to Abraham, "As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. 10 This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. 11 You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. 12 For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner—those who are not your offspring. 13 Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. 14 Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant."
In the New Covenant of Christianity we will see a new sign of the covenant which replaces circumcision, the sign of Baptism. This sign of the covenant and this action of sealing the covenant is no less significant in Christianity. Notice that Abram, now Abraham, is instructed to circumcise all those born in his household. Later when we see entire households entering into Christianity we have to see this in the light of the new circumcision. The early Church found this significance of Baptism as the new circumcision to be the warrant for infant baptism.
The point is that the covenant is not the culmination of an intellectual argument of assent, but a commitment of faithful servitude as servants and as Mary says "handmaidens" of the Lord. We are instructed to follow and be part of a saved people, a household of the Lord.

The Covenant (continued)

I was reflecting on Genesis 15:12-21
—

¹² As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. ¹³ Then the LORD said to him, "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. ¹⁴ But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. ¹⁵ You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. ¹⁶ In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure."

¹⁷ When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. ¹⁸ On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates- ¹⁹ the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, ²⁰ Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, ²¹ Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites."

It is apparent from the text that the covenant and the visitation by the Lord came in a dream. During this entire sequence Abraham is in a deep sleep. It begins when he falls into a deep sleep as the sun sets and the dream continues without any indication that Abraham awoke.