Why ‘God’ loved Isaac more than Ishmael
KTemoc Konsiders
I refer to some parts of RPK’s Much ado about nothing (part 2), wakakaka those which states:
According to Genesis, Abraham had a wife named Sarah who was barren and could not give him any children. Sarah had an Egyptian slave named Hagar, so Sarah told Abraham to use Hagar as a surrogate mother since she (Sarah) could not give Abraham any children. Hagar soon became pregnant and not long after that Sarah, too, became pregnant. So now both of them were pregnant. Hagar’s son was named Ishmael while Sarah’s son was named Isaac. But Ishmael was elder to Isaac since he was born first.
Sarah soon became jealous and told Abraham to get rid of Hagar and Hagar’s son, Ishmael. So Abraham dumped both of them in the desert and left them there. God, who called Himself, El Shaddai, then appeared and told Sarah that she will become the mother of all nations.
Now, there are two things to note here. First of all, God acknowledged Isaac (the younger brother) and not Ishmael (the elder brother) as the true successor and heir to Abraham.
and
Oh, by the way, Jews practice circumcision, an Egyptian practice at that time — and Hagar was Egyptian while Sarah was not. Does this mean the Jews follow Hagar and not Sarah?
Let me comment on the last part first, that of circumcision.
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| Gulp, I don’t like the look of what appears to be a pair of pliers (on right) what’s that tool on the left? |
RPK is correct that circumcision was then an Egyptian practice. The Egyptians were probably the first people to conduct circumcision, but then only among the royals and nobility.
Please note that when we refer to the biblical Egyptians we’re NOT talking about today’s Egyptian who are and have been mainly Arabs, and of course mainly Muslims since Prophet Mohammad (pbuh) introduced Islam to the Middle-Eastern world.
The biblical Egyptians were a different race, no, not even the people of Ptolemy’s and Cleopatra’s who came later and were mainly Macedonians and Greeks, remnants of Alexander’s army. The original Egyptians were in a race of a much earlier era, and have since long gone; no one other than perhaps historians of ancient Egypt or Egyptologists know where they are now – perhaps in Padang and Negeri Sembilan wakakaka.
In a post earlier this year titled B-D,the new G-D of ‘Truth’ I had written about the same thing.
Strangely, for the Hebrews, a people who despised the Egyptians for their pagan beliefs, yet they adopted many Egyptian practices, including that of circumcision – see my post B-D, the new G-D of‘Truth’. Of course the Hebrews would claim that Abraham circumcised himself to show his covenant with YVWH.
OK then, we might as well begin our discussion with Abraham who the Bible told us came from Ur of the Chaldees, as in Genesis 11:27-31, which say:
27 Now these are the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot.
28 And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.
29 And Abram and Nahor took them wives: the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah.
30 But Sarai was barren; she had no child.
31 And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son’s son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there.
Abraham was born around 2000 BC according to those who also believed that Adam and Eve and their Fall happened around 4000 BC). But archaeologists said that Chaldeans (of the Chaldees) didn’t even exist until around the sixth to fifth century BC, nearly 1500 years after Abraham’s time.
Thus the claim that Abram (before he became Abraham) came from Ur of the Chaldees was likely a latter day invention (or writeup) at a time (around 530 BC) coincidentally when the Judeans were incarcerated as slaves in Babylon and first wrote down the oral tradition of Abraham’s story while compiling the written Hebrew Bible Tanakh).
Now, just note Genesis 17:17 which says Abraham became hilarious when God told him he would have a son:
Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? And shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?
This tells us that the age gap between Abraham and Sarah was 10 years.
OK, flashing back to earlier, specifically 25 years earlier, to Genesis 12:4, we have (before he changed his name to Abraham):
So Abram departed, as the Lord had spoken unto him: and Lot went with him: and Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran.
Abraham was already 75 years old when he was instructed by God to leave Haran after his father died. Therefore Sarah was sixty-five years old. It also tells us that there was a gap of at least 25 years between entering Egypt and having their son Isaac.
In Genesis 12:14-15 we have:
And it came to pass, that, when Abrams was come into Egypt, the Egyptians beheld the woman that she was very fair.
The princes also of Pharaoh also saw her, and commended her before Pharaoh: and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.
When entering Egypt, Abraham wanted Sarah to pretend she was his sister. The biblical reason was that he was afraid of being killed if it was known she was his wife, for he anticipated Sarah would attract lustful attention. And he was right. Pharaoh was told of her beauty, took her into his Palace and rewarded her ‘brother’ generously.
Here, some questions begged to be asked.
(1) What did Egyptians see in a 65 year old Hebrew woman that made them acclaim she was fair, and recommend the beauty to the Pharaoh, and why would a Pharaoh, who could have any woman in the land, want an old crone as his lover?
(2) Did the Pharaoh have his naughty ways with Sarah after taking her into the Palace?
(3) What was a pastoralist (shepherd) like Abraham doing in a cosmopolitan city like Ur (remembering Ur existed only 1500 years later)? One would expect him to live in a tent in a rural area, but we are told he came from Ur of the Chaldees.
(4) Then, what would be the likelihood of a foreign commoner, a mere pastoralist, even allowing for his beautiful 65-year old wife, coming into contact with the royal house of Egypt, namely the princes and the Pharaoh? (Genesis 12:15) Can a great empire like Egypt be so small that a mere foreigner, on entering its border, would come into contact with or to the knowledge of its princes?
(5) Why is there a leitmotiv surrounding Abraham and Sarah of the man and wife pretending to be brother and sister, a King taking (or attempting to take her) the wife, God intervening to return the wife to the husband, and the husband profiting greatly from the separation? The leitmotiv may be discerned in:
