The Abraham Story Part 14: Abraham, Sarah, and Yahweh at the Tent

The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah

We just walked through another cycle of the melody. From God providing the delivering help for the helpless one, the naked one; God splitting in order to provide what his chosen one can't do for themselves; the making of a covenant; but then the abuse of those covenant privileges. All the Genesis 3, 4, 6, all the stuff with Hagar. Hagar gets her own de-creation and re-creation. Avraham and Sarah get their own de-creation and re-creation through the cutting off of flesh as a symbol of the covenant.

So we come through the other side, the covenant's been doubly reinforced, and we have the promise of the chosen son won't be Ishmael. We even know the name of the chosen son, Yitskhaq, Laughter, but he doesn't exist yet. So that's gonna be one of the main themes that's going to meet us in this next section. 

Remember, Lot, Avraham's nephew, he was like a major player in those early chapters, so 11, 12, 13, 14. But right after the flood of the kings' violence and so on, he got rescued and he just disappeared from the story.

The shape of chapters 18 and 19, it's going to begin with Avraham and Sarah up on a high place by a sacred tree in their tent.

And what's gonna happen is Yahweh's gonna show up with two buddies, and they're gonna have a meal under the tree near the tent on the sacred hill. 

So that's that scene. And then Avraham's gonna learn that the outcry of injustice and evil of Sodom has risen up to Yahweh. And Avraham's really concerned that Yahweh's about to make a mistake. And so they have a pretty intense conversation that is fascinating. We're gonna look at that. And then after that is a story about Lot sitting at the gate of the city, and some divine messengers come up with him and they also hang out and have a meal. But that meal does not end well. It ends with the men of Sodom wanting to come and things get real bad real quick, and it leads to the destruction of Sodom. 

So notice both outer frames begin with this meeting of people with spiritual beings or God at their tent or at the gate of the city. And so somebody wants us to ponder the similarities and differences of Lot and Avraham, and then in the middle of them, ponder what Avraham does on behalf of Lot that Lot never even knows about. 

Genesis 18:1–15 CSB

1 The Lord appeared to Abraham at the oaks of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance of his tent during the heat of the day. 2 He looked up, and he saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the entrance of the tent to meet them, bowed to the ground, 3 and said, “My lord, if I have found favor with you, please do not go on past your servant. 4 Let a little water be brought, that you may wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree. 5 I will bring a bit of bread so that you may strengthen yourselves. This is why you have passed your servant’s way. Later, you can continue on.” “Yes,” they replied, “do as you have said.” 6 So Abraham hurried into the tent and said to Sarah, “Quick! Knead three measures of fine flour and make bread.” 7 Abraham ran to the herd and got a tender, choice calf. He gave it to a young man, who hurried to prepare it. 8 Then Abraham took curds and milk, as well as the calf that he had prepared, and set them before the men. He served them as they ate under the tree. 9 “Where is your wife Sarah?” they asked him. “There, in the tent,” he answered. 10 The Lord said, “I will certainly come back to you in about a year’s time, and your wife Sarah will have a son!” Now Sarah was listening at the entrance of the tent behind him. 11 Abraham and Sarah were old and getting on in years. Sarah had passed the age of childbearing. 12 So she laughed to herself: “After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I have delight?” 13 But the Lord asked Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Can I really have a baby when I’m old?’ 14 Is anything impossible for the Lord? At the appointed time I will come back to you, and in about a year she will have a son.” 15 Sarah denied it. “I did not laugh,” she said, because she was afraid. But he replied, “No, you did laugh.”

"And Yahweh became seen," or became visible, "to him among the oaks of Mamre.

And he," that is Avraham, "was dwelling at the door of his tent during the hot time of day." This little phrase, the heat of the day, khom hayyom, it looks graphically similar and reminds you of when Yahweh showed up for the walkabout at the ruakh hayyom, the windy time of day in the garden. Now he shows up in the khom hayyom, the warm time of day.

So God and human meet together on the hill with the trees by the door of the tent.

"Avraham lifted his eyes and he saw, and look, three men, just right there.

And he saw, and he ran from the door of the tent to meet them. And he bowed down to the ground."

"And he said, 'Oh my master, please, if I have found favor in your eyes, please don't pass on from your servant. Let him, that is your servant, take the little bit of water so you can wash your feet. Come recline under the tree so I can take a bit of bread and you can sustain your hearts. Then you can pass on. For this reason, you have passed by your servant.'"

I have water and food. Come under the tree, take some bread.

"And so they said, 'Do as you have spoken.'

So Avraham hurried into his tent to Sarah and he said, 'Hurry, hurry. Three measures of wheat flour.'" If you're confused about the recipe, just go read Leviticus because that's where I got most of this language. So "'three measures of wheat flour, knead it, and let's make some cakes.'" This is all wording from the meal offerings of Leviticus. So they're preparing an offering at the door of the tent.

"Abraham ran to the cattle, and he took a calf, good and tender, and he gave to the young man, and he hurried to make it. And he took curds and milk and the calf that he made and he gave it before them. Now he was standing right by them under the tree and they ate together." So good. Most of us are like, "There's something really important happening here." So you can kind of see what it is.

This is a meeting of God and humans at the door of the tent with meal offerings, communal offerings. And it's a great day under the tree together.

So if you are thinking tabernacle, you're right.

Except we need to think the inverse. This is before any of that. So it's more that what this represents is the lost Eden ideal, of which the tabernacle was a much later kind of symbolic replay. And Avraham doesn't need a whole elaborate ritual in tabernacle. it's just him and God. 

so we've got humans meeting with God, having this meal under a tree. There's food about this tree. Look at this language here, "He took and he gave." By this time, those are just, like, blinking red words.

In Genesis 3, it was the woman. She took and she gave the food and that was not good.

But in this story, it's really good. This is like, we're preparing for a feast here.

So in Genesis 3, the name of the forbidden tree, it's the tree of knowing good and bad or good and evil. Good is the word "tov," bad is the word "ra." Here, the word "good" is "good." And the word "tender" is "rach" So he takes of what is tov and rach and he gives it.

we're watching is a redemption. We're echoing Genesis 3, but this is Genesis 3 upside down. And everything's going right.

He's able to meet with God at the tree on the hill by the door of the tent, and they share a meal together. And it is right and good. And the meat's tender, which if you're a carnivore, that is a really good thing. 

This is our Eden Genesis 3 beat right here, except we've flipped it over, and it's a tragedy turned into a comedy in the scene. 

"So they said to him, 'Hey, where's Sarah, your wife? Where's Princess, your wife?' And he said, 'Oh look, she's right behind us in the tent.' And he said, 'I will surely return to you ‘et khayyah, at the time of coming to life,'" which is a Hebrew turn of phrase, it means the spring, but the time when things come to life. "

'I will return to you at the time of life. And look, a son for Sarah and your wife.'

Now, at that moment, Sarah was listening. She was right at the door of the tent, and the door of the tent was behind one of these guys who was saying this. Now here's something you need to know, Avraham and Sarah, they're really old now, going on in years. And as for Sarah, the way of women had stopped for her," the monthly cycle.

"So Sarah," just like Avraham did in the previous chapter, "she started laughing." And that's not a good thing. In the last chapter when Avraham laughed, it's because, it's unbelief. 

Now she's having her moment of laughter. So she laughs inside herself. 

"She laughs inside herself. And she says, 'After I have become worn out, will I have,'" and she uses the noun Eden.

Most of our English translations will say, "Will I experience delight or goodness?" But it's the noun Eden. "

'After my body's worn out, will I really have Eden? And look, my master, he's really old.'" So this whole scene is designed as a little conversation outside the tent, and then Sarah inside the tent. And you're given this window into her heart and her mind. And it's actually very understandable.

Genesis 16 was not very sympathetic towards Sarah, was it? She's mean and abusive. Here, we're kind of back to, yeah, I get it, I would laugh too.

So then we shift back outside the tent. "Yahweh said to Abraham, 'What is this? Sarah was just laughing on the other side of the curtain. And what she was saying was, "Will I really, actually give birth even though I'm really, really old?"

Is anything impossible? Is anything too difficult or wondrous?'" This is a hard word to translate. Jesus picks up on this, "what is impossible for humans is not impossible for God" in this little saying right there. And he's playing in Greek with what the Septuagint translation was of this little Hebrew phrase right here.

So stop, this is about the birth of seed where there is no seed, or it's about the growth of seed where there's only dry land, where the land seems like a wilderness. 

It's about Eden. It's really the planting of a garden out in the wilderness. And that's her metaphor for having, giving birth to seed.

Avraham, Sarah, and the Eden Tent

After the flood of judgment and the covenant mercy on Avraham in Genesis 17, we expect the story to return to the thematic melody of the garden, and that is precisely what happens. The story of Avraham welcoming the angelic messengers is portrayed as a reversal of Adam’s folly while, in contrast to her husband, Sarah replays Eve’s failure.

God repeats the promise, "'At the appointed time, I will return to you at the time of life. And for Sarah, there will be a son.'" And Sarah, in that moment behind the curtain, she acted deceitfully, she lies.

And she says, "'No, no, I didn't laugh, I didn't laugh.' She said this because she was freaked out.

And he said, 'No no, no, you laughed.'" And that's the end of the scene. 

Avraham’s Generosity, Sarah’s Folly

Okay, so we were doing great. God and humans at the tent on the hill by the door.

There's a meal, we're eating together. And then God makes a promise. He doesn't issue a command, don't eat from the tree. What he issues is a promise.

And then that promise is responded to with a lack of faith. And then when God comes to confront that lack of faith, what we get is deception, there's a lie.

The Hebrew word for deceit or lying, it's the word "kakhash."

The word for "snake" is the word "nakhash."

And that's the word "nakhash." So this is a clever way of saying she's acting like a snake right now.

This is her snake moment. Remember, Avraham's had his snake moments.

And while he's outside the tent, and he is having his redemption moment from Genesis 3, here's Sarah inside the tent. And she's still imitating the nakhash with her kakhash.

So what's gonna happen is the story's gonna move on from this promise, and we're gonna go right into the Lot and Sodom and Gomorrah drama, and this is just gonna hang back there. And it's only gonna get brought up again at the beginning of the next cycle. 

But what we've just done is we've reestablished the melody. We're beginning back at Eden, and things have changed, but they've also not changed. 

And so the question, this just leaves the plot threads just dangling that will have to be picked up later. And so that will happen in chapter 21.

In Genesis 16, both Avraham and Sarah acted foolishly, harming Hagar and doing what was good in their eyes. In this story, Avraham reverses course and acts as a generous host to the angelic figures. Sarah, on the other hand, replays her own foolish failure from chapter 16, and she also mirrors the failure of Eve in Genesis 3

Avraham runs out to meet Yahweh, who appears in the form of three humans, and he persuades them to eat with him under the tree. The food under the tree, however, is a reversal of the forbidden food of the tree in Eden. He is generous and shares what he has with the very person who gave it all to him, his God!

Instead of God providing food for the humans, in this story the man and woman provide food for Yahweh and two angels. This explains the allusions to the priestly preparation of offerings in the food-prep scene in Genesis 18:6-8 (see Lev. 2:1-7) and the emphasis on “the entrance of the tent” where the sacrifices were offered in the priestly ordination ( Exod. 28-29).

Three Angels

Who are, it's Yahweh with two others.

on one level, it's gonna be fairly, there's a surface level answer that's not complicated.

In the next sentence, we're told that two of the men left, and Yahweh stood standing there.

Avraham's gonna have this long conversation with Yahweh. And then these two men are gonna show up in Sodom. And there they are called messengers, mal’akim, angels.

So in the language of Genesis 1, this is Yahweh and a couple of his host, a couple of his heavenly host who went with him on a mission.

And then he just dispatched them to go on the mission. Now that itself, you know, invites all kinds of other interesting questions, but on the surface level, the narrative knows that we're gonna be puzzled. 

And so the fact that there are three throughout the history of Christian interpretation, this really excited Christian interpreters to see here, early seeds of the Trinity. And so I think it just depends on the angle you wanna get at the question from. The Hebrew Bible has a lot of room for talking about the one God of Israel being a complex unity, and that God's word and God's Spirit and God's wisdom can be talked about as if they're independent entities that are divine and yet distinct from God. And so trinitarian thought, it was born out of texts like this.

But at the same time to say that the biblical author had a fully worked out thing, and then this is like the Son and the Spirit, I don't know.

That's kind of cool, but I don't quite wanna go that far.

But I can see why people would be motivated to do that, and I don't think that's essentially a wrong, it's the right ending point. But I am also interested in how a Second Temple Jew in the time of Jesus read and understand these texts. I think that's a valuable perspective to recover. And so trinitarian thought hadn't crystallized, the way we talk about it now, in that period.

did you notice when the messenger of Yahweh was speaking, even just to call this figure the messenger of Yahweh means that it's a being distinct from Yahweh, but yet the messenger spoke first person God's speech as if it was the person of God. And so that's a dynamic with these figures that continues right throughout the Hebrew Bible. The unique thing that's not repeated in any other story is that there's two with the one. 

Abraham Intercedes for Lot

Bibliography

https://bibleproject.com/classroom/abraham

Middleton, J. Richard. Abraham’s Silence: The Binding of Isaac, the Suffering of Job, and How to Talk Back to God. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2021.

Cotter, David W. Genesis. Edited by Jerome T. Walsh, Chris Franke, and David W. Cotter. Berit Olam Studies in Hebrew Narrative and Poetry. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2003.

Josephus, Flavius, and William Whiston. The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1987.

Richard N. Longenecker, “The Melchizedek Argument of Hebrews: A Study in the Development and Circumstantial Expression of New Testament Thought,” in Unity and Diversity in New Testament Theology: Essays in Honor of George E. Ladd (ed. Robert Guelich, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 161.

https://bible.org/article/melchizedek-covenantal-figure-biblical-theology-eschatological-royal-priesthood#P8_421

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Paul J. Kobelski, Melchizedek and Melchiresa (CBQMS 10; Washington DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1981), 126-7.

https://bible.ca/manuscripts/Septuagint-LXX-Shem-was-Melchizedek-Masoretic-chronology-Messiah-Jesus-Christ-priesthood.htm

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