Seth Arar Human Being & Citizen On Gods Choosing Abraham One question that many scholars raise

on Genesis is the motive behind Gods choosing Abraham. Why, when the story says nothing of his actions beforehand, is Abraham picked from the rest of the people? One could say that God picks Abraham because he knows that Abraham will be obedient once picked. This implies that Abraham is obedient once picked, which is shown through his actions. This would also imply that God has some knowledge of the future, which is neither explicitly stated nor implied through the majority of the text. Instead, a better interpretation could be that God has set up a precedent for favoring those who obey him and punishing those who try to get too close to him. Therefore, Abraham was obedient to God before God chose him, even though the text does not give an example of Abrahams obedience. God strongly favors those who are obedient and punishes those who are not. Originally, God punishes Adam and Eve for ignoring his command not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge. In the story of the Flood, Noah is rewarded for listening to God and building the ark, and so he is saved. In Gen. 2:17, God says, very explicitly, from the tree of knowledgeyou shall not eat. However, in this first instance of sin, Eve listens to the serpent and convinces Adam to eat from this three with her. Because this disobedience is the original sin, God has perhaps a special dislike for those who disobey him and a special love for those who do obey him. The Flood is an example of God favoring obedience. Before he sends the flood, God warns the Earth by saying, I will wipe out the human race I created from the face of the earth, from human to cattle to crawling thing to the fowl of the heavens, for I regret

that I have made them. (6:7) God told this to the entire earth, in an effort to get them to shape up, as a race. He is angry that the human women are copulating with the Nephilim and so threatens to destroy the earth. In another interpretation, since Noah has gained favor with God, God tells it to only Noah, who then, in a prophet-like role, tries to warn the rest of the land, none of whom listen and subsequently perish. Either way, Noah is the righteous person who listens to and obeys God and is rewarded with life and the position as patriarch of the human race. Noahs obedience, either by recognizing that what God says, He means, or by attempting to convince people that they should become better people also convinces God not to wipe out cattle, crawling things, and the fowl of the heavens. Similarly to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, a small group of righteous people, in this case, Noahs family, save a larger group, the animal kingdom. God cements his positive attention to those who obey him with Noah. Abraham also obeys. He does not challenge Gods power, father children with a divine being, or kill anyone. Instead, he obeys Gods commands to go to Haran and from there, Canaan. God rewards this compliance by promising Abraham many children. It is Abrahams monotheism, as compared to Pharaoh and Melchizedeks polytheism or belief in the wrong god(s), that keeps Gods loyalty to Abraham. God sends a plague on the Egyptians when Sarah is in Pharaohs house, in defense of Abraham. After the incident with the king of Salem, God again promises Abraham that his reward shall be very great. (15:1) To honor the covenant, God has Hagar stay with Abraham and Sarah to raise Ishmael. Gods covenant is sealed first with a sacrifice, similar to Noah, and then with a new command: all males must be circumcised. Again, Abraham obeys and is rewarded, this time with a second son, Isaac.

This submission to Gods will leads up to the binding of Isaac. In 22:2, God tells Abraham to Take, pray, your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac, and go forth to the land of Moriah and offer him up as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I shall say to you. The ambiguity of the distance and the particular location adds to the trust that Abraham must place in God. Abraham truly and absolutely follows this command. God has promised Abraham many times that he will have a great lineage through Isaac, but since Isaac is a child at this point, this would be impossible if he were killed. In his faith, Abraham forgoes logic and reason. If he considered what he was doing, he could reason that either God would stop him or he would have another son, in order to complete the lineage. This justification would not allow for all his faith to be in God and coupled with his trance-like repetition of Here I am whenever God calls him indicates that Abraham has no mind for rationality when God asks him to do anything. This absolute obedience solidifies his favor from God. Abrahams convincing God to save Sodom and Gomorrah is not an example of a man overstepping his role as human. He is very well aware of what he is doing, as Alter puts it, walking a dangerous tightrope in reminding the Judge of all the earth of the necessity to exercise justice. (Gen., 82) Even though Abraham is the only one to step forward, he uses such formal language and submissive arguments that his place is clearly known. After his first, bold argument, in 18:27-8, Abraham says, Here pray, I have presumed to speak to my Lord when I am but dust and ashes. Abraham proceeds to bring the number of innocent down to ten, keeping the smaller number until the end of his bid. He uses these techniques to establish his lesser rank, but still plea for the forgiveness of the city, because Abraham is not only obedient, but also righteous.

It is now clear that God favors those who are obedient. In fact, he seems to favor them more than those who only walk with him, such as Enoch, who only gets one or two lines of acknowledgement. At a point in Genesis where not much information is given about the selection of Abraham, God has demonstrated that if a man is righteous and obedient, like Noah, he will be selected and promised children and land. While there is nothing explicitly saying that Abraham was obedient, he demonstrates true and absolute obedience through the rest of his story. This implies that he was obedient before God chose him and it is because of that that God did choose him. Not only does this interpretation allow for Gods lack of knowledge about the future, it also sets Abraham up to be the father of Israel. When God asks Adam, Where are you? after Adam has eaten the fruit, Adam tells God that he was hiding. Abraham does not hide. He does not hide when God tells Abraham that He is going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, but stands up to God, albeit in an unassuming, modest way that gets the point across. Abraham does not hide when God tells him to kill his own son, but tells God I am here, every time He asks. When God chooses Abraham, he is choosing someone who will demonstrate loyalty. As Abraham never outsteps his boundaries, he never loses favor with God; until his death, God consistently provides for him. So why does God choose Abraham to begin with? The precedent that has been set up indicates that Abraham must have been obedient to God before God chose him. Some scholars believe that the specific act of obedience lies beyond Genesis. In Joshua 24:2-3, God says: Long ago, your ancestors Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor lived on the other side of the Euphrates, and they worshipped other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan and made his offspring many.

This could imply that God chose Abraham for being the first monotheist, i.e. Abraham did not (or had stopped at some point to) serve other gods, such as El Elyon. It is of utmost importance to God that humans respect him, based on his actions when Adam and Eve learn what is right and wrong, when Cains sacrifice is not good enough, when the daughters of men lie with the Nephilim, and when the tribes of man attempt to reach heaven. This is only one possible explanation for the specific reason God chose Abraham, but it is clear that Abraham was obedient and continued to be so.