Why Did God Choose Abraham?

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He is, on first appearance, an elusive character. We know the name of his father—Terah—and his homeland—Ur. He has two brothers, Nahor and Haran, the Book of Genesis tells us, and a barren wife, Sarai. And we know that at some uncertain time, his father, Terah, gathered the family together, “and they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans for the land of Canaan; but when they had come as far as Haran, they settled there…and Terah died in Haran” (Genesis 11:27–32).

That is all we have learned when, suddenly, in Genesis 12:1, Terah’s eldest son emerges from the shadows. God speaks directly to Abraham (then called Abram), instructing him to leave home, and then blesses him:

The Lord said to Abram,
“Go forth from your native land
and from your father’s house
to the land that I will show you.
I will make of you a great nation,
And I will bless you;
I will make you a name great,
And you shall be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you
And curse him that curses you;
And all the families of the earth
Shall bless themselves by you.”

Genesis 12:1–3

Why does God distinguish Abraham—of whom we know so little—above all the people in the world? Why does God call Abraham?

Sometimes the Bible tells us very little about the towering figures who fill its pages. Early Jewish exegetes, seeking an explanation for God’s choice of Abraham, scoured the biblical texts for further clues to his 018character.^a Piecing together mere hints found in Scripture, they filled in the gaps in Abraham’s story, re-creating the early years that Genesis treats so succinctly. They also offer us tantalizing insights into the values of the communities that wrote these postbiblical texts.¹

These expanded accounts of Abraham’s life can be found in several sources, including the Old Testament pseudepigrapha—a collection of Jewish writings, dating from about the second century B.C. to the second century A.D., that did not make it into the canonical Hebrew Bible. Among the texts are apocalypses, histories, psalms and books of wisdom that are falsely attributed to Adam, Moses, Abraham, Solomon and other figures who lived long before the texts were composed: thus their designation as “pseudepigrapha,” a Greek term meaning “falsely inscribed.”^b Other rich sources are the writings of the philosopher Philo and of the historian Josephus, both first-century A.D. Jews who retell the patriarchal history and Exodus tradition in very different fashions. Further legendary material may be found among the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the writings of an anonymous first-century A.D. author today called Pseudo-Philo, because his work was long misattributed to the philosopher of that name. Each of these versions of Abraham’s story is based, in one way or another, on the cryptic account found in the Bible.

Some of the early Jewish readers of Genesis concluded that Abraham must have already distinguished himself before God spoke to him directly. Although Joshua 24:2–3 explicitly states that “Terah and his 019sons Abraham and Nahor lived beyond the Euphrates and served other gods,” many Jews could not accept that their patriarch had been an idolater. They speculated that Abraham must have already distanced himself from the evils of his parental family and dedicated himself to the God he did not yet know face-to-face. By sending Abraham to Haran, God was seen to be encouraging Abraham to further separate himself from idol worshipers.

One of the earliest accounts of Abraham’s rejection of idol worship and pagan religion is found in the pseudepigraphic Book of Jubilees.² Dating to the mid-second century B.C., Jubilees purports to relate all that was revealed to Moses during the 40 days on Mt. Sinai—including “what was in the beginning and what will occur.”^c Jubilees includes biblical history from Genesis 1 through Exodus 16, although with many omissions and expansions.

The text of Jubilees was not included in the Hebrew Bible, and thus is little known today. But we have evidence that it was extremely important in its day. At least one Jewish sect—the Qumran community that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls—considered the book authoritative Scripture: Indeed, 15 copies of Jubilees were found among the scrolls, and the scrolls cite Jubilees as the source for the true Jewish calendar, which the scrolls claim was ignored by most of Israel (Cairo Genizah, Damascus Document 16.2–4).

According to Jubilees, Abraham’s father, Terah, not only worships idols but also studies “the researches of the Chaldeans in order to practice divination and astrology according to the signs of heaven” (Jubilees 11.8). As a young boy, Abraham recognizes that the people around him have strayed from true religion: “And the lad began understanding the straying of the land, that everyone went astray after graven images and after 020pollution.” So Abraham “separated from his father” and prayed to God to be kept safe from the idolatrous errors of his family and neighbors (Jubilees 11.16–17). The lad’s religious acumen is accompanied by precocious wisdom and creativity: He learns to write at a young age, and invents a new method of planting that saves the crops from a plague of crows. He thus becomes a benefactor to his people at an early age.

When Abraham reaches the age of 28, he speaks with his father Terah about the emptiness of idol worship, pleading with him to worship the God who created heaven and earth:

O father…there is not any spirit in [these idols]
for they are mute,
and they are the misleading of the heart.
Do not worship them.
Worship the God of heaven,
who sends down rain and dew upon the earth,
and who makes everything upon the earth,
and created everything by his word,
and all life is in his presence.

Jubilees 12.1–4

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Terah admits that Abraham is right, but he continues to worship idols out of fear of reprisal from his neighbors, who regard them as true gods. He warns Abraham that he, too, had best keep his monotheistic beliefs to himself so as not to be lynched (Jubilees 12.6–7).

More than three decades later, at age 60, Abraham can tolerate the idolatrous practices of his family and neighbors no longer. Under cover of darkness, he sets fire to the shrine in which the idols are kept. Abraham’s brother Haran, the father of Lot, perishes trying to save the idols from the flames (Jubilees 12.12–14). After the fire, Terah and Abraham and their families leave Ur and settle in Haran. Jubilees offers no explanation for this migration; later authors will suggest that once again the family’s rejection of idolatry lies behind their departure.

Now the stage is set for God to call Abraham. The circumstances are given in much greater detail in Jubilees than in Genesis 12. There is also a critical difference: In the Bible, God first approaches Abraham; in Jubilees, Abraham approaches God.

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One night, Jubilees relates, while Abraham is outside watching the stars, trying to discern what sort of year it will be for rain and crops, “a word [comes] into his heart” telling him that the stars, sun and moon are in God’s hand and that rain will fall according to God’s desire. Abraham then utters a prayer dedicating himself to God and asks where he should make his home: “My God, the Most High God, you alone are God to me. And you created everything…establish me and my seed forever, and let us not go astray henceforth and forever…shall I dwell here in this place?” (Jubilees 12.16–21). This solemn dedication and request for guidance prepares the way for the introduction of the biblical material. Abraham, having professed his loyalty to God (indeed, having himself chosen God), is ready to be called by God, separated from his kin and led to the land of promise. In Jubilees, God responds to Abraham’s plea with the familiar passage from Genesis: “Come forth from your land and from your kin…And I shall bless you” (Jubilees 12.22–23, quoting Genesis 12:1–3).

Jubilee’s retelling of the Abraham story, however, does not simply fill in gaps in Genesis: It also promotes the values of the second-century B.C. community that produced it. Jubilees probably derives from one of the stricter Jewish circles in Palestine, given its importance to the Qumran sect. The conservative Jewish circle that produced Jubilees was apparently disturbed by the increasing hellenization of Palestine. Jubilees refers to a mass defection of Jewish aristocrats from observance of the Law of Moses, and their assimilation to a Greek way of life, in the early second century B.C.:³ “The sons of Israel…will not circumcise their sons according to all of this law…they have provoked and blasphemed inasmuch as they have not done the ordinance of this law because they have made themselves like the gentiles” (Jubilees 15.33–34; see also 23.16–21).

Jubilees responds to this trend by exalting Torah to the status of an eternal law written in heaven and observed and taught by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—400 years before it was written down by Moses.^d Abraham, for example, observes laws that would only later be recorded in Leviticus: He teaches Isaac the proper way to conduct sacrifices and celebrates the festivals of Succoth (the Feast of Booths) and Pentecost (the Feast of First Fruits). By rejecting idolatry and dedicating himself to the one God in the midst of a polytheistic culture, Abraham becomes an even greater example for Jewish readers living as a minority within a dominant Hellenistic culture that practiced idolatry and polytheism.

Abraham’s growing awareness of the evil of idol worship is more fully detailed in the Apocalypse of Abraham, which was probably written in Hebrew or Aramaic near the end of the first century A.D.⁴ The Apocalypse of Abraham is alluded to on rare occasions in early Christian writings and has been preserved only in Old Slavonic. While it seems thus to have had little influence, the text was itself deeply influenced by the tradition of Abraham’s rejection of his father’s idolatry, even rendering this tradition more dramatic. Apocalypses are revelations given to a human being through a supernatural figure (usually an angel) about the invisible world of God, angels and demons, and the places for eternal reward and punishment. They describe the events of the distant past and make predictions concerning the final days. Frequently these visions, many of which were written between 250 B.C. and 200 A.D., reveal that the angelic hosts share the distinctive values of the synagogue community (or later the church) that produced the text. In these apocalypses, God stands ready to execute judgment upon those who have not joined God’s chosen people. It was common for the actual author to attribute such a revelation to a distinguished figure from Israel’s history.

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The patriarch himself is the supposed narrator of the Apocalypse of Abraham. He begins by recalling events from his youth. Once again, Terah is described as an idol worshiper; he even carves his own family gods from stone and wood. As a precocious youth, Abraham sets out to test each of his father’s gods in the hope of discovering which is the strongest. From the beginning, Abraham is a religious inquirer and a skeptic of idol worship.

One day, while Abraham is attending to the rites and services of the gods of his father, he discovers that a statue of the deity Marumath has fallen down. As he and Terah lift the heavy statue to put it back in its place, the head falls off. Terah thinks it of no consequence and simply chisels out another statue. Since his tools are already out, Terah makes five small statues of other gods and sends Abraham out to sell them. Abraham places the gods in a saddlebag and sets off on his donkey.

On the road Abraham encounters some Syrian merchants on camelback. When one of the camels screams suddenly, Abraham’s donkey starts and throws off the bag, smashing three of the statues. Spying the cargo, the Syrians buy the remaining two gods on the spot. After they depart, Abraham throws the broken statues into the river and watches them sink. On the ride home, Abraham begins to wonder whether these were gods after all, for they could not help themselves in the slightest way. His father, he considered, was more of a god than they were, for he made them: “They [the gods] ought to honor my father because they are his work,” Abraham concludes (Apocalypse of Abraham 3.4).

Abraham’s doubts come to the fore one night while preparing dinner. Terah has carved a statue of the deity Barisat out of wood and told his son to start a fire with the chips and cook dinner. Abraham gets the fire going, mockingly warns Barisat not to let it go out and goes to fetch food. When he returns, Barisat has fallen over, and his feet are burning in the flames. Laughing, Abraham proceeds to make dinner. When they dine, Terah gives thanks to Marumath for the meal. Abraham teasingly corrects his father, saying that he should really thank Barisat, since this god willingly “threw himself into the fire” to cook it. Terah, taking Abraham at his word, interprets this as a genuine sign, and he resolves to worship Barisat more fervently.

Grieved at his father’s lack of insight, Abraham openly confronts Terah, saying that his gods are of less value than the fire that burned them. Abraham also insists that the elements should not be worshiped either, for water extinguishes fire, and earth and sun dry up water.

Listen, Terah my father, I shall seek before you the God who created all the gods supposed by us (to exist). For who is it, or which one is it who made the heavens crimson and the sun golden, who has given light to the moon and the stars with it, who has dried the earth in the midst of the many waters, who set you yourself among the things and who has sought me out in the perplexity of my thoughts?

Apocalypse of Abraham 7.10–11

In desperation, Abraham cries out to this true God:

If only God will reveal himself by himself to us!

Apocalypse of Abraham 7.12

This sets the stage for God’s call to Abraham. The call of God given here, overshadowed by God’s judgment upon idolaters, is much more dire and dark than the one recorded in Genesis 12:1–3. A voice from heaven cries out:

Abraham, Abraham!…You are searching for the God of gods, the Creator, in the understanding of your heart. I am he. Go out from Terah, your father, and go out of the house, that you too may not be slain in the sins of your father’s house.

Apocalypse of Abraham 8.1–4

As Abraham sets out, the house and all who remain in it are destroyed by lightning and fire.

Abraham’s rejection of idol worship and search for the one true God became the prevalent explanation for the election of Abraham by God, as is attested by several other Jewish authors. In his tract “On Abraham,” the exegete Philo of Alexandria (c. 13–45/50 A.D.) writes that Abraham studied astrology while living among the Chaldeans but that he rejected it, having received a perception of the true God.⁵ The historian Josephus, in speaking of Abraham as the first to proclaim that there was only one God, invokes Abraham’s knowledge of “celestial phenomena”:

[Abraham] was a man of ready intelligence on all matters, persuasive with his hearers, and not mistaken in his inferences. Hence he began to have more lofty conceptions of virtue than the rest of mankind, and determined to reform and change the ideas universally current concerning God. He was thus the first boldly to declare that God, the creator of the universe, is one, and that, if any other being contributed aught to man’s welfare, each did so by His command and not in virtue of its own inherent power. This he inferred from the changes to 044which land and sea are subject, from the course of sun and moon, and from all the celestial phenomena.⁶

Josephus understands Abraham’s departure from his native land as not entirely the result of God’s call. Rather, in concert with God’s will, Abraham leaves out of prudence, for hostility is mounting against the patriarch on account of his preaching the truth of the one God:

It was in fact owing to these opinions [about one God] that the Chaldeans and the other peoples of Mesopotamia rose against him, and he, thinking fit to emigrate, at the will and with the aid of God, settled in the land of Canaan. Established there, he built an altar and offered a sacrifice to God.⁷

The potential hostility of polytheists towards those who denied their gods—a latent theme in Jubilees (recall how Terah feared reprisal from his neighbors)—is brought to the foreground in Josephus as something Abraham actually endured on account of his monotheistic faith and message.⁸ The story reflects the Jews’ sense of tension with the surrounding Hellenistic and then Roman cultures—both polytheistic.

Frequently, ancient anti-Judaism focused on the uncommon religious beliefs of Jews in general and their refusal to acknowledge other peoples’ gods in particular (what gentile critics denounced as “atheism”).⁹

These accounts of Abraham’s enduring such hostility for his faith inspired Jews to remain faithful to God in the face of strong threat and opposition, and assured them of God’s continuing favor. If they imitated the wisdom and faith of their noble ancestor, readers were promised, they would remain God’s chosen people.

One last example highlights just what it meant to these early Jewish communities to be, like Abraham, chosen by God.

Sometime in the first century B.C. or the early first century A.D., the author known only as Pseudo-Philo produced a paraphrase of Genesis through 2 Samuel, interweaving narratives from Scripture with legendary stories about the biblical characters.¹⁰ Pseudo-Philo links God’s election of Abraham with Abraham’s protest against the building of the Tower of Babel.

In the Bible, Abraham is not explicitly associated with the tower. But the building of the tower and the birth of Abraham appear in the same chapter (Genesis 11). Further, the story of Babel serves as a kind of bridge between the end of the primeval history (Genesis 1–11) and the beginning of the patriarchal history (Genesis 12–50). So Pseudo-Philo, or his sources, used this implicit connection as a starting point.

According to Pseudo-Philo, Abraham is one of 12 men who refuse to contribute bricks to the building of a tower intended to reach the heavens. Their neighbors, incensed at this show of dissent, seize the 12 men and bring them to their chiefs, saying, “These are the men who… would not walk in our ways” (Pseudo-Philo 6.4). When confronted, Abraham and his colleagues declare their knowledge of, and allegiance to, the one God, thus introducing the conflict between monotheism and false worship into the story: “We are not casting in bricks, nor are we joining in your scheme. We know the one Lord, and him we worship. Even if you throw us into the fire with your bricks, we will not join you” (Pseudo-Philo 6.4). All 12 are locked in prison and given a week to repent—or they will be burned alive in the furnace where the tower’s bricks are made. Recognizing that the God whom Abraham serves is powerful, Joktan, the captain of the guard, frees the men. Abraham alone resolves to remain in prison and entrust his fate to God.

When the citizens of Babel come to the prison at the end of the week, demanding the death of the traitors, they find only Abraham. At the insistence of the angry crowd, Joktan reluctantly leads Abraham to the furnace and throws him in, but God sends an earthquake that destroys the brickyard. Flames gush out of the furnace; all those standing around—a total of 83,500 people—are burned to death. But the flames do not touch Abraham, who emerges from the furnace unharmed. Later, when God banishes the surviving, unrepentant builders of the Tower of Babel, he decides to lead his “servant Abram” out of Babylon to the land of Israel, the only land spared the waters of the great Flood—a symbol of God’s special protection of Israel:

I will choose my servant Abram, and I will bring him out from their land and will bring him into the land upon which my eye has looked from of old, when all those inhabiting the earth sinned in my sight and I brought the water of the flood and I did not destroy it.

Pseudo-Philo 7.4

At the time Pseudo-Philo was writing, Jews were censured not only for their refusal to acknowledge gods other than their own but also for what was perceived as their “hatred of outsiders,” their reluctance to interact with their gentile neighbors. This was particularly acute in the cities of the Diaspora, where Jews were a vulnerable minority.¹¹ This story about Abraham might have encouraged Jews to take comfort in the knowledge that, although their allegiance to the one God required some degree of abstinence from the society around them, and although they may have encountered hostility as a result, God would preserve those who refused to join in the Hellenistic world’s rebellion against God and God’s law, whatever form that rebellion took in each new setting.

As we read not just the biblical texts but also the stories and legends that grew up around Abraham and his family, we are invited into the ongoing, vital interaction between believers and the sacred text—a text to which they always return for answers to life’s questions, for moral guidance and for encouragement to persevere in their loyalty to God. Each retelling of Abraham’s story does not simply answer the questions of the curious or bewildered reader. It also reinforces certain ethical values, promotes particular responses to the dominant Hellenistic culture and preserves a strong sense of Jewish identity. Each retelling sheds as much light on the community that produced it as it does on Abraham.

He is, on first appearance, an elusive character. We know the name of his father—Terah—and his homeland—Ur. He has two brothers, Nahor and Haran, the Book of Genesis tells us, and a barren wife, Sarai. And we know that at some uncertain time, his father, Terah, gathered the family together, “and they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans for the land of Canaan; but when they had come as far as Haran, they settled there…and Terah died in Haran” (Genesis 11:27–32). That is all we have learned when, suddenly, in Genesis 12:1, Terah’s eldest son emerges from the […]