Hot answers tagged abraham
10
An answer is in some of the text you elided:
20 And the LORD said: 'Verily, the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and, verily, their sin is exceeding grievous.
21 I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto Me; and if not, I will know.'
Then the men leave -- the number is ...
8
The text in Genesis does not say "only-begotten" but does say "only". The beginning of the verse is:
וַיֹּאמֶר קַח-נָא אֶת-בִּנְךָ אֶת-יְחִידְךָ אֲשֶׁר-אָהַבְתָּ, אֶת-יִצְחָק
My literal translation:
And he said: please take your son, your only [one], whom you love, Yitzchak
The word translated "your only [one]" is יְחִידְךָ . The same root, ...
6
As the text says, Avram was 75 when he left Haran. So, either Terach was 130 when Avram was born, or Avram left while Terach was still alive.
The medieval commentator (and compiler), Rashi, argues for Avram leaving during Terach's lifetime, based on Gen 12:4:
and Terah died in Haran: [This happened] after Abram had left Haran and had come to the land ...
6
Short Answer: Abram did indeed depart from Haran after his father died, as the Old Testament indicates, and as the New Testament explicitly claims. (Terah was 130 years old when Abram was born.)
Good question. (This happens to be one of the most commonly asked -- and addressed -- "discrepancies" in Scripture.)
The problem is in the modern Western reading ...
6
Why did Abraham stop there?
From the narrative we can see that Abraham was clearly reluctant—out of pure fear, apparently—to question God's judgment.
When asking for 45 in Genesis 18:27, he starts with:
Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes
When asking for 30 in Genesis 18:30:
May the Lord ...
5
I don't think there is a physical link. As you point out, he fathered Ishmael by Hagar 13 years before. To me that indicates the infertility is Sarai's. If there is a link between Isaac's birth and this circumcision, it would be that now God was ready to fulfill the promises of Gen 12 and 13 and gave Abram and his descendants a sign to show they were in ...
4
When the Tanak was first written, it was written without vowels. In the early Middle Ages (ca AD 800), scribes known as the Masoretes added the system of vowel points (niqqud or "diacretic markings") that are used in pointed Hebrew texts since then. Other systems were developed at roughly the same time (as Hebrew became less of a spoken language), but only ...
3
In the tanakh Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov are the three patriarchs of the Jewish people, beginning with a covenant with Avraham (Gen 12, 15, 17) and culminating in God revealing himself and giving his torah (Ex 20) to the family of Israel (i.e. Yaakov, after God's messenger renamed him (Gen 32)). God speaks directly to these three patriarchs.
God ...
3
He knew that eight was not enough to save the world in Noach's time, so that sets a lower bound. This leaves the question of why stop at ten and not nine; the answers there rely on other sources beyond the biblical text, so I don't know if they're on-topic here.
To answer your last question, God did not destroy the few righteous found there, though he did ...
3
This question is interesting in its own right, but all the more so in light of John's pronouncement in Matthew 3:9 that God is able from stones to raise up children for Abraham.
One way we might understand the argument in Exodus 32 is to note that Moses does not ask God to remember his promise so much as to remember his servants to whom he made the promise. ...
2
The classic Jewish commentator Rashi quoting the Medrash and the Talmud says:
and Abraham weighed out to Ephron: עֶפְרֹן is spelled without a “vav,”
because he promised much but did not do even a little [i.e., he
promised the cave as a gift but took a great deal of money for it],
for he took from him large shekels, viz. centenaria [worth one ...
1
Before Moses, there is possibly no other name more appropriate for God other than the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The reason is that God called Abraham out to populate a land given to a people that would serve him and then repeated the promise to Isaac and Jacob. The promise was to select a 'certain race', and how this particular line along that race ...
1
You are correct in noting that His promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob could have been fulfilled through Moses. However, consider verses 11-12. Moses points to two aspects of the Exodus that would be affected by a rejection of Israel:
God demonstrated His mighty power in bringing out the Israelites from Egypt. This would effectively be wasted effort on ...
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