Lecture II : Abraham and Isaac (part 2)
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D.
III. And now turn from the Patriarchal household
to its points of contact with the external world.
These are perhaps what most escape us as we
read it for other purposes, and therefore what may be
most fitly noticed here.
1. The general relations of Abraham to the Canaan-
itish tribes have a twofold aspect. On the one
hand, as if with the full consciousness of the
separation which was to exist between his seed and the
tribes of Canaan, and also of its future superiority over
them, he always keeps himself distinct from them: he
professes to be a stranger amongst them; he will accept
no favor at their hands; he will not have any inter-
marriage between his race and theirs; he refuses the
gift of the sepulchre from Ephron, and of the spoils
from the king of Sodom. The tomb of Machpelah is
a proof standing to this day, of the long predetermined
assurance that the children of Abraham should inherit
the land in which this was their ancestor's sole, but most
precious possession. It is like the purchase of the site
of Hannibal's camp by the strong faith and hope of the
besieged senators of Rome.
But on the other hand, there is not in his actual deal-
ings with the Canaanites a trace of the implacable en-
mity of later ages; no shadow cast before, of long wars
of extermination waged against them; no indication
of what, in modern times, has been supposed to be
the origin of so many dark legends, and severe accu-
sations, — the national hatred of rivals and neighbors.
The anticipation of distinctness and superiority is not
more decided in one class of incidents than the absence
of any anticipation of war or animosity is in another.
Abimelech, Ephron, Mamre, Melchizedek, all either wor-
ship the same God, or, if they worship Him under
another name, are all bound together by ties of hos-
pitality and friendship. The times when the Canaanite
is to be utterly destroyed, when the Amalekite is to be
hewn in pieces, when the Jews are to have no deal-
ings with the Samaritans, are still very far beyond
us: we are still above the point of separation be-
tween the various tribes of Syria: distinction has not
yet grown into difference; "the iniquity of the Amo-
rites is not yet full." To overlook the unity, the
comparative unity, between Abraham and the neigh-
bor races of Palestine, would be to overlook one of
the most valuable testimonies to the antiquity, the
general Patriarchal spirit of the record as it has been
handed down to us.
2. Further, there are the more special occasions on
which Abraham is drawn, as it were, out of the pas-
toral or individual life, into wider relations. The chief
of these is the journey into Egypt.
I shall not endeavor here, or elsewhere, to deter-
mine, where uncertainty still prevails, the special
points where the history or chronology of Egypt or
Judea cross each other's path. Neither shall I draw
out at any length, what in this instance is but
slightly noticed by the sacred story, the impression
left by Egypt on the mind of this, the first
of the myriad travellers who have visited the
valley of the Nile. But it is impossible not to pause
for a moment on the few points which the event
suggests to us. It is the earliest known appearance
ine Egypt of the nomadic races of Asia, who, under
the Shepherd Kings, exercised so great an influence
over its destinies in its primitive history, — who, un-
der the Arab conquerors, have not for thirteen cen-
turies occupied it as their own. Charlemagne is said
to have wept in anticipation of the coming misfor-
tunes of his empire when he saw the sail of the first
Norman ship on the waters of the Mediterranean.
And the ancient Pharaoh, whoever he was, might
have wept in like manner, could he have foreseen in
that innocent and venerable figure the first of the
long succession of Asiatic wanderers, like in outward
form, though unlike in almost all beside, attracted to
the valley of the Nile by the very same motives,
coming down from the table-lands or parched valleys
of their own deserts or mountains, because "the famine
was grievous in the land," and sojourning in Egypt,
because its river gave the plenteous sustenance which
elsewhere they sought in vain.
If the Egyptian may have been startled by the
sight of Abraham, much more Abraham may have
been moved to awe by his approach into Egypt.
Whatever may be said in legendary tales of his con-
nection with Nimrod and the Assyrian powers, this
arrival in Egypt is the only indication given by the
sacred historian of any conscious entrance into the
presence of a great earthly kingdom. The very craft
into which the Patriarch is betrayed "as he was come
near to enter into Egypt" is not without is signifi-
cance. "They will kill me, but they will save thee
alive; say, I pray thee, thou art my sister, and it
shall be well with me for thy sake, and my soul
shall live because of thee." His faith and courage
are unnerved at the prospect and at the sight of the
great potentate amidst his princes in his royal house,
with his harem and his treasures around him. Yet
it is also characteristic of the Biblical narrative, that
the impression left upon us by this first contact of
the Church with the World is not purely unfavorable.
It has been truly remarked that throughout the
Scriptures the milder aspect of the world is always
presented to us through Egypt, the darker through
Babylon. Abraham is the exile from Chaldæa, but he
is the guest, the client of the Pharaohs. He dwells,
according to the account of a Pagan historian, many
years in the city of On, where afterwards his
descendants lived so long, and there teaches the Egyp-
tians astronomy. He receives (as we infer from the
sacred narrative) the gifts of male and female slaves,
of asses and camels, with which then as now the
streets of the Egyptian cities abound. He departs
in peace. And such as Egypt is described in this
narrative, such both in its secular greatness and its
religious neutrality it appears to have been in those
of her monuments which alone can be with certainty
ascribed to its most ancient period. The range of
the thirty pyramids, in all probability, even at that
early time looked down on the plain of Memphis.
They remain to indicate the same long anterior state
of civilization which the story of Abraham itself im-
plies, yet exhibit neither in their sepulchral cham-
bers, nor in those which immediately surround them,
any of those signs of grotesque idolatry which give
additional point to the story of the Exodus, and which
exist in the later monuments of Thebes and Ip-
sambul.
3. The next notice of Abraham's connection with
the outer world is of a wholly different kind,
and is far more in accordance with the secu-
lar aspect of his life presented in Gentile historians
than anything else which the sacred narrative pre-
sents. "Abram the Hebrew" (so, as if from an ex-
ternal point of view the fragment, apparently of some
ancient record, represents him) was dwelling in state
at Hebron, in the midst, not merely of his familiar
circle, but of his three hundred and eighteen trusty
slaves, and confederate not merely with the peaceful
Ephron, but, after the manner of Canaanite chiefs
of later times, with the Amorite mountaineers, Mamre
and his brothers Aner and Eschol. Suddenly a mes-
senger of woe appeared by the tent of the Hebrew.
From the remote East, a band of kings had descended
on the circle of cultivation and civilization which lay
deep ensconced in the bosom of the Jordan valley.
They had struck dismay far and wide amongst the
aboriginal tribes of the desert, all along the east of
the Jordan and down to the remote wilds of Petra,
and up into the mountain fastness and secluded palm-
grove of Engedi. In the green vale beside the shores
of the lake the five Canaanite kings rose against the
invcaders on their return, but were entangled in the
bituminous pits of their own native region. The con-
querors swept them away, and marched homewards
the whole length of the valley of the Jordan, carry-
ing off their plunder, and above all the war horses
for which afterwards Canaan became so famous. But
from the defeat in the vale of Siddim had escaped
one who climbed the wall of rocks that overhang the
field of battle, and announced to the new colony
established beneath the oak of Hebron that their
kinsman had been carried away captive. Instantly
Abraham called his allies together, and with them
and his armed retainers he pursued the enemy, and
(if we may add the details from Josephus) on the
fifth day, at the dead of night, attacked the host as
it lay sleeping round the sources of the Jordan.
They fled over the range of Antilibanus, and once
more Abraham beheld the scene of his first conquest,
the city of Damascus, and in its neighborhood, in a
village still bearing the name (Hobah), he finally
routed the army and rescued the captives, and returned
again to the banks of the Jordan. In a vale or level
spot not far from the river, called probably from this
encounter "the vale of the king" or "of the kings," the
victorious chief was met by two grateful princes of
the country which he had delivered; one was the
King of Sodom, the other was one whose name in
itself commands respectful awe, — Melchizedek,
the King of Righteousness. Whence he came,
from what parentage, remains untold, nay even of
what place he was king remains uncertain (for Salem
may be either Jerusalem or the smaller town of which
in after-times the ruins were shown to Jerome, not
far from the scene of the interview). He appears for
a moment, and then vanishes from our view altogether.
It is this which wraps him round in that mysterious
obscurity which has rendered his name the symbol
of all such sudden, abrupt apparitions, the interrup-
tions, the dislocations, if one may so say, of the ordi-
nary even succession of cause and effect and matter
of fact in the various stages of the history of the
Church, "without father, without mother, without be-
ginning or end of days." No wonder that in Jewish
times he was regarded as some remnant of the earlier
world — Arphaxad or Shem. No wonder that when,
in after-times, there arose One whose appearance was
beyond and above any ordinary influence of time or
place or earthly descent, the author of the Epistle to the
Hebrews could find no fitter expression for this aspect
of his character than the mysterious likeness of Melchiz-
edek. But there is enough of interest if we merely
confine ourselves to the letter of the ancient narrative.
He was the earliest instance of that ancient, sacred,
though long corrupted and long abused name, not yet
disentangled from the regal office, but still of sufficient
distinctness to make itself felt: "Priest of the Most
High God." That title of Divinity also appears for the
first time in the history; and we catch from a heathen
author a clew to the spot of the earliest primeval
sanctuary where that Supreme Name was honored
with priestly and regal service. Tradition told that
it was on Mount Gerizim Melchizedek ministered. On
that lofty summit, from Melchizedek even to the pres-
ent day, when the Samaritans still maintain that
"on this mountain" God is to be worshipped, the
rough rock, smoothed into a natural altar, is the only
spot in Palestine, perhaps in the world, that has never
ceased to be the scene of sacrifice and prayer. But
what is now the last relic of the local and exhausted
though yet venerable religion, was in those Patri-
archal times the expression of a wide all-embracing
worship, which comprehended within its range the
ancient chiefs of Canaan and the founder of the chosen
people. The meeting of the two in the "King's Dale"
personifies to us the meeting between what, in later
times has been called Natural and Revealed Religion;
and when Abraham received the blessing of Melchiz-
edek, and tendered to him his reverent homage, it
is a likeness of the recognition which true historical
Faith will always humbly receive and gratefully render
when it comes in contact with the older and everlast-
ing instincts of that religion which "the Most High
God, Possessor of Heaven and Earth," has implanted
in nature and in the heart of man, in "the power of
an endless life."
4. There is yet another occasion on which Abraham
appears in connection, not indeed with the
revolutions of armies or of empires, but with
the more awful convulsions which agitate the
fabric of the world itself. What were the precise
special means by which the fertile vale of Siddim was
blasted with eternal barrenness — how and to what
extient the five guilty cities of the plain were over-
thrown is still a vexed question equally with theo-
logians and geologists. We need only here consider
the aspect of the catastrophe, as it was presented to
the Patriarch. I will not weaken by repetition the
well-known words in which the "Friend of God" and
of man draws near to plead before the Judge of all
the earth against the indiscriminate destruction of the
righteous with the wicked. Such an union of the
yearnings of compassion with the sense of justice and
of profound resignation, such a sympathy with the
calamities, not only of his own countrymen but of a
foreign and detested race, must in that distant age be
counted (to say the least) as a marvellous anticipa-
tion of a higher morality and religion, such as we are
accustomed to think peculiarly our own. Read and
study that chapter well; we may go farther
and fare much worse, even in modern and Christian
times, in seeking a true justification of the ways of
God to man. "And on the morrow Abraham gat up
early in the morning to the place where he stood
before the Lord." The hill is still pointed out
amongst the many summits near Hebron command-
ing a view down into the deep gulf which parts the
mountains of Judæa from those vast, unknown, un-
visited ranges which, with their caves and wide table-
lands, invite the fugitives from the plain below. The
subsequent history of that chasm was like a perpetual
memorial of Abraham's prayer. The guilty cities dis-
appeared forever. The descendants of the innocent fugi-
tives become the powerful nations, of mixed character
and dark origin, — Ammon and Moab.
IV. Lastly, the history of the world and of the
Church requires us to notice the act of faith
which takes us back into the innermost life
of Abraham himself, and marks at least one critical
stage in the progress of the True Religion. There
have been in almost all ancient forms of Religion, in
most modern forms also, strong tendencies, each in itself
springing from the best and purest feelings of human-
ity, yet each, if carried into the extremes suggested
by passion or by logic, incompatible with the other
and with its own highest purpose. One is the crav-
ing to please, or to propitiate, or to communicate with
the Powers above us by surrendering some object near
and dear to ourselves. This is the source of all Sac-
rifice. The other is the profound moral instinct that
the Creator of the world cannot be pleased or pro-
pitiated or approached by any other means than a
pure life and good deeds. On the exaggeration, on
the contact, on the collision of these two tendencies,
have turned some of the chief corruptions, and some
of the chief difficulties, of Ecclesiastical History. The
earliest of these we are about to witness in the life
of Abraham. There came, we are told, the Divine
intimation, "Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac,
whom thou lovest, and . . . offer him for a burnt-
offering on one of the mountains which I will tell
thee of." It was in its spirit the exact expres-
sion of the feeling of self-devotion without which
Religion cannot exist, and of which the whole life of
the Patriarch had been the great example. But the
form taken by this Divine trial or temptation was
that which a stern logical consequence of the ancient
view of Sacrifice did actually assume, if not then, yet
certainly in after-ages, among the surrounding tribes,
and which cannot therefore be left out of sight in
considering the whole historical aspect of the narra-
tive. Deep in the heart of the Canaanitish nations
was laid the practice of human sacrifice; the very
offering here described, of "children passing through
he fire," "of their sons and of their daughters,"
"of the first-born for their transgressions, the fruit of
their body for the sin of their soul." On the altars
of Moab, and of Phœnicia, and of the distant Canaanite
settlements in Carthage and in Spain, nay even, at
times, in the confines of the Chosen People itself, in
the wild vow of Jephthah, in the sacrifice of Saul's sons
at Gibeah, in the dark sacrifices of the valley of Hin-
nom under the very walls of Jerusalem — this almost
irrepressible tendency of the burning zeal of a primi-
tive race found its terrible expression. Such was the
trial which presented itself to Abraham. From the
tents of Beersheba he set forth at the rising of the
sun, and went unto the place of which God had told
him. It was not the place, which Jewish tradition
has selected on Mount Moriah at Jerusalem, still less
that which Christian tradition shows, even to the
thicket in which the ram was caught, hard by the
church of the Holy Sepulchre; still less that wich
Mussulman tradition indicates on Mount Arafat at
Mecca. Rather we must look to that ancient sanctu-
ary of which I have already spoken, the natural altar
on the summit of Mount Gerizim. On that spot, at
that time the holiest in Palestine, the crisis was to
take place. One, two, three days' journey from land
of the Philistines — in the distance the high crest of
the mountain appears. And "Abraham lifted up his
eyes and saw the place afar off." . . .
The sacrifice, the resignation of the will, in the
Father and Son was accepted; the literal sacri-
fice of the act was repelled. On the one hand, the
great principle was proclaimed that mercy is better
than sacrifice — that the sacrifice of self is the high-
est and holiest offering that God can receive. On the
other hand, the inhuman superstitions, towards which
the ancient ceremonial of sacrifice was perpetually
tending, were condemned and cast out of the true
worship of the Church forever.
There are doubtless many difficulties which may be
raised on the offering of Isaac; but there are few, if
any which will not vanish away before the simple
pathos and lofty spirit of the narrative itself, provided
that we take it, as in fairness it must be taken, as a
whole; its close not parted from its commencement,
nor its commencement from its close, — the subordi-
nate parts of the transaction not raised above its
essential primary intention. And there is no diffi-
culty which will not be amply compensated by re-
flecting on the near approach, and yet the complete
repulse, of the danger which might have threatened
the early Church. Nothing is so remarkable a proof
of a divine and watchful interposition, as the deliver-
ance from infirmity, the exaggeration, the excess,
whatever it is, to which the noblest minds and the
noblest forms of religion are subject. We have a
proverb which tells us that "Man's extremity is God's
opportunity." S. Jerome tells us that the corre-
sponding proverb amongst the Jews was "In the
mount of the Lord it shall be seen," or "In the
mountain the Lord will provide," — that is, "As He
had pity on Abraham, so he will have pity on us."
A few words remain to be added on the relation of
this crowning scene of the beginning of sacred history
to the crowning scene of its close. The thoughts of
Christian readers almost inevitably wander from one
to the other; and without entering into details of
controversy or doctrine which would be here out of
place, there is a common ground which no one need
fear to recognize. The doctrine of the types of the
Ancient Dispensation has often been pushed to excess.
But there is a sense in which the connection indicated
thereby admits of no dispute, and which may be illus-
trated even by other history than that with which we
are now concerned. Not only in Sacred, but even
in Grecian and roman history, do the earliest records
sometimes foreshadow and represent to us the latest
fortunes of the nation or power then coming into
existence. Whoever is (if we may thus combine the
older and the more modern use of the word) the
type of the nation or race at any marked period of
its course is also the type of its final consummation.
Abraham and Abraham's son, in obedience, in resig-
nation, in the sacrifice of whatever could be sacrificed
short of sin, form an anticipation, which cannot be
mistaken, of that last and greatest event which closes
the history of the Chosen People. We leap, as by a
natural instinct, from the sacrifice in the land of
Moriah to the sacrifice of Calvary. There are many
differences — there is a danger of exaggerating the
resemblance, or of confounding in either case what is
subordinate with what is essential. But the general
feeling of Christendom has in this respect not gone
far astray. Each event, if we look at it well, and
understand it rightly, will serve to explain the other.
In the very point of view in which I have just been
speaking of it, the likeness is most remarkable. Human
sacrifice, it has been well said, which in outward form
most nearly resembled the death on the Cross, is in
Spirit the furthest removed from it. Human sacri-
fice, as we have seen, which was in outward form
nearest to the offering of Isaac, was in fact and in
spirit most entirely condemned and repudiated by
it. The union of parental love with the total denial
of self is held up in both cases as the highest model
of human, and therefore as the shadow of Divine,
Love. "Sacrifice" is rejected, but "to do Thy will, O
God," is accepted.
Questions have often arisen on the meaning of the
words which bring together in the Gospel history the
names of Abraham and of the true and final Heir of
Abraham's promises. But to the student of the whole
line of the Sacred history, they may at least be
allowed to express the marvellous continuity and
community of character, of truth, of intention, between
this, its grand beginning, and that, its still grander
end.
"Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he
saw it, and was glad."
from The History of the Jewish Church, Vol. I : Abraham to Samuel,
Lecture II: Abraham and Isaac
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1879, pp. 42 - 56
Posted Jul 16, 2018, 2:41 PM UTC
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