We are about halfway through the story of Abraham in the Bible. His life story in Genesis is traditionally divided into two “Torah Portions”–Lech Lecha and Vayera. As we just finished Lech Lecha, I wanted to toss out all the context and just enjoy myself telling the first part of Abraham’s story the way that extra-biblical Jewish writers did to tell the story more creatively.
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Hi! I’m Miss Tyler! Welcome to this week’s episode of Context for Kids, where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel, where I usually post slightly longer versions.
This week, we’ll be doing something that we haven’t done in a long while, which is telling the story of what we have learned so far about Abraham’s life with God. This is a very ancient Jewish way of dealing with the Bible in such a way that we can use the Bible to tell the stories we want to tell. Let’s face it: the Bible doesn’t have much in the way of what people are thinking on the inside or how they feel about what is happening, and there are just huge gaps. Ancient Jewish sages (even before the time of Jesus) would rewrite these stories—making them more fictional, which means that there’s a lot of made-up stuff added in. Sometimes, the made-up stuff was pretty wild and even silly, but mostly it was just normal stuff added in to help teach morality lessons. A morality lesson helps people to understand what is and is not good, acceptable, and healthy. If you have heard the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, then you know that it wasn’t ever meant to be an accurate story about a real boy who liked to prank the people of his town into thinking that there was really a dangerous wolf nearby, but a morality story about the foolishness of lying and how it can get people into a lot of trouble. The boy who kept yelling that there was a wolf in town was in big trouble when there actually was one—he got gobbled up because no one would believe him when he was finally telling the truth. Jesus told stories like that, called parables, about things that hadn’t ever really happened but taught people the truth about how things are in the Kingdom of Heaven. The Boy Who Cried Wolf is also a true story, in a way, even though it is made up. It tells the truth about what happens and what can happen when we lie so much that no one believes us anymore. But it is still fiction.
What I am going to do this week is tell the story of how Abram and Sarai left their home to follow God until they were renamed Abraham and Sarah and became a set-apart household for God at the end of chapter seventeen. So, we will start at the end of chapter eleven, and let’s see how our understanding of the story has changed based on what we have learned together over the past year (and I just checked, it was a year ago that we started with “A Man Called Abram”). Let’s start the story:
God had been looking over the whole earth. He had a plan to save the people whom He had created to be His image-bearers. Not just some, but all. Things had been messed up ever since Adam and Eve decided that being their own gods was a good idea, but after the flood, God promised that He wasn’t interested in trying to kill everyone just to try and make things better again. God knew that as long as people’s hearts and minds were selfish and cruel, they would always come up with terrible things to do to each other and to the whole planet. God had been waiting, and God found a man named Abram who wasn’t perfect but who had the right kind of heart and mind to begin a new family on the earth that could learn to do things differently than everyone else.
Abram was an old man—seventy-five years old, actually—and he lived with his wife Sarai, his brother Nahor, and his father Terah in Haran until their father died. They had started out in Ur, in the land that would one day be a part of the mighty Babylonian Empire but had left many years ago and ended up settling down in good pastureland near the Euphrates River. Because they were a family that took care of animals, called shepherds, they needed a lot of space with enough grass to feed their sheep, goats, cattle, and also the animals who carried heavy loads for them. It was a good life, and they were a rich family—they even owned a great many slaves whom they had bought all the way back in Babylon, as well as on their journeys, and many who had been born into slavery. In ancient times, owning slaves was like having electricity. It was how you got a lot of things done, and they believed that slaves deserved to be slaves and their owners deserved to be owners, even though that’s strange to us now. But that’s what made sense to Abram and Sarai because that was normal where they came from, as well as everywhere they would go until they died. God had to start somewhere, and there were no perfect people who thought all the right things. Abram and Sarai would do—especially since they weren’t the goal of God’s story. They were just the beginning. The goal was Jesus.
God shocked Abram one day while he was sitting beneath a tree talking to his shepherds about the things that needed to be done with the flocks and herds before sundown. At first, Abram thought he was just imagining it, but then he heard someone calling his name, and there was no one else around who seemed to notice. Suddenly, the voice was clear in his head, and his heart and entire body felt like it was prickly and more alive than ever before. The voice was impossible to ignore, and Abram found that he didn’t want to ignore it.
“Go, leave this place. Leave your relatives behind and follow Me to a new place. I will make you into a great nation of people. I will be with you, and I will make your name famous and respected. Because of you, other people will be blessed. I will do good for everyone who is good to you, and I will make sure the people who are against you won’t succeed in their plans to harm you.”
Abram had never heard a god speak before. His father’s idols sure hadn’t said anything to anyone in his family. Now that his father was gone, there was really nothing keeping Abram in Haran—after all, they only ended up there because his father, Terah, had wanted to go to the Land of Canaan. They had settled down in Haran when Terah got too old to travel anymore and they had made a comfortable life for themselves but Haran had never been their final destination. This voice that was so strong and clear, Abram wanted to follow it even though it would take him away from the protection of his family. That was a tough decision to make because he and Sarai had no children and she was now too old to have any. He had been counting on his family to care for them as they got older, as they had all done for Terah at the end of his life. His nephew Lot was restless and wasn’t satisfied with the land they were living in, and so when Abram began to pack up to leave, Lot asked to go with them. The voice had told Abram to leave behind his family but he couldn’t stop Lot from traveling with them, and they could use a young man around just in case. When they had all gathered up their possessions, their flocks and herds and their people, they set out following the voice which led them south to the Land of Canaan.
Canaan was the home of many tribes of people and quite a few rich cities. As a wealthy man with large flocks and herds, the local people were happy to have him dwelling nearby. As Abram wasn’t warlike, the wealth he brought to their region and the opportunities to trade and do business with him were good for everyone. They could trade their crops, pottery, baskets, and metalworking for wool and other animal products. In time, Abram made friends with an Amorite named Mamre and his brothers. They knew they were stronger together than apart when bandits and robbers or soldiers came through the area, and so they made an agreement to help each other in case of attack. But there was nothing they could do to help each other the year that the rain didn’t fall, and hail damaged the crops.
Egypt was the best place on earth to get food—everyone knew that. They didn’t need rain because they had the Nile. Egypt was also famous for welcoming foreigners and being willing to sell food to them, so Abram and Sarai packed up and headed to the south and then to the west until they came to the border of Egypt. But Abram became more and more frightened as they drew near because his wife was incredibly beautiful. Up till now, they had been with family or united with other households for safety and few people would even see Sarai but that was about to change. They would be under the watchful eye of the mighty Egyptian Empire and Sarai would definitely be noticed. But they had to eat, so what could Abram do?
“Sarai, look, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. You know this. Up till now, not many powerful men have gotten to see you. But we are strangers here without friends, and I can’t hide you anymore. If a man wants to take you for his wife, and he is powerful enough, he’ll just kill me and take you and then what will happen to all of our slaves? I need you to take one for the team and just go along with me telling everyone you are my sister. Worst comes to worst, it will go better for everyone this way. Our only alternative is to go back and starve to death.”
Sarai frowned. Abram had told her about the promises of the voice but he didn’t sound like he was believing them anymore. Maybe it was all in his imagination, after all, and they should have never left Haran. But she knew their household would be starving before too long, and their animals as well. They needed the food that they could only get in Egypt. Lot and his family had decided to go east toward the Jordan River, but Abram wasn’t willing to live that close to the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Egyptians had a good reputation for being hospitable but the rumors about how the men of Sodom treated foreigners was enough to keep him away. Yes, Sarai knew they needed to eat and so she agreed, but she kept her scarf as close around her face as she possibly could.
But she was seen at the border, and the Pharaoh’s men knew that if they brought him such a beautiful woman, that they would be rewarded greatly. Abram was given great riches in exchange for her, and she was taken to the palace where she was made the wife of the King of Egypt. She was dressed in fine clothing and jewelry, her head was shaved and a beautiful wig was placed on her head. She was also given a young girl named Hagar as a personal slave. But then bad things started happening to the people living in the house of the Pharaoh. Everything was going wrong and so Pharaoh prayed to his gods and all his priests and household did the same. When he found out that the problems began the very day Sarai was brought to him, he was angry and demanded to talk with Abram.
“You sinned against me and my whole house and my country! You lied to me and told me that she was your sister. I gave you money and animals and slaves in exchange for her. I did what was right even though I could have easily taken her, but you did what was wrong. Take your wife and get out of here! I would kill you if I could, but these curses came on us because of you so I must send you away instead so that your gods won’t be angry with me.”
When Abram and Lot were together again, they had both gotten a lot richer and they had so many animals and tents and people that they didn’t fit in the same place anymore. Abram told Lot that they needed to separate forever, so that their people would stop fighting. Abram gave Lot first choice and so Lot looked around and took the best land around the Jordan River for himself and left the rocks and hills to his uncle Abram. Lot was heading back to the area of Sodom, where he camped right outside of the city. He was able to do good business with the rich asphalt miners and became even richer, while Abram lived near Mamre and his brothers in the hill country. God was very happy that Abram wasn’t with Lot anymore, because Lot made really bad and selfish decisions, and so God told Abram that He would be giving Abram all the land as far as his eyes could see—including the very best of the land that Lot selfishly took for himself. God told Abram to walk through all of the land, that it belonged to him and his descendants. And Abram did just that before settling down again near his friend Mamre the Amorite.
But just because Lot was gone didn’t mean that Abram was off the hook for bringing him along when God said to leave him back in Haran. A marauding group of kings—the great king Chedorlaomer of Elam and the three kings who did whatever he told them to do—came to get revenge against the five kings who lived near Lot. They were kings of very wicked cities, where the men hurt any visitors who came to their cities. They must have liked Lot because not only did he successfully camp beside Sodom, but now he had moved into a house in Sodom. Those five wicked kings had once made a covenant to do everything that the great king wanted but then they decided to join together and fight against him instead. They wanted the money from their asphalt mining all to themselves and didn’t want to give a bunch of it to a king who lived so far away. Maybe they thought they were so far away that the great king wouldn’t want the hassle of doing anything about them but they were wrong. King Chedorlaomer, the big cheese, not only beat the snot out of the five kings and robbed their cities of everything and took the people who lived there as slaves, but he was fighting everyone else in the Land of Canaan too. Those five wicked kings got everyone in a ton of trouble.
But when someone told Abram about what had happened, and that Lot had been taken along with everyone else, he must have groaned and rolled his eyes. Lot was family, so Abram had to help or no one would respect him anymore. Lot was only there in the first place because Abram let him come, and now Abram could definitely see why God said to leave his family behind. Lot was a handful of trouble, for sure. Abram took Mamre and his two brothers and all of the men in their households and went after the four kings, who were traveling slowly because they had a ton of people walking with them and lots of loot. Amazingly, all those shepherds were able to kick those kings and their men to the curb—in fact, they chased them all the way out of the Land of Canaan. Abram must have been thinking to himself, “Wow, God kept His promise—He really did bless everyone on my side because we were able to beat the snot out of these kings and all their fighting men!”
On his way back home, Abram met King Melchizedek, who said he was a worshiper of the Most High God, the creator of Heaven and Earth. Melchizedek had brought out bread and wine for them, and Abram was so happy about it that he gave Melchizedek 10% of everything they got from the kings. The King of Sodom (who had been hiding in the empty asphalt pits when his people were kidnapped), told Abram that he could keep all the money as long as he gave all the people to the king of Sodom. That wicked king just wanted all the people for slave labor so he could get rich again. Abram was totally disgusted and told him that he didn’t want anything from Sodom.
When he got back home to his camp in Hebron, God came to Abram in a vision (a dream he had while he was awake) and said to him, “Don’t be afraid! I am your protector! This will all be worth it because I will reward you!” But Abram sadly said, “No reward matters because I don’t have any children—I have to give everything to one of the slaves that was born in my household!” God disagreed and replied, “No, you are going to have a baby—go outside and look at the stars, that’s how many descendants you will have, and they will be too many for anyone but me to count.” Abram remembered that God had safely brought him to the Land of Canaan and had blessed everything he had, and he believed God. God was very happy that Abram did the right thing and trusted His promise, “I am the God who has been with you since you left Ur with your father so that you could have this land for your own.”
Abram asked, “How can I know that I will have the Land?” God replied, “Go and get a three-year-old cow, a three-year-old goat, a three-year-old ram, and a dove and a pigeon.”
Abram knew exactly what that meant as he had seen this done many times in Canaan and back in Ur where he grew up. Abram got the animals (he was still dreaming), killed them quickly, and then cut each of them in half. He made two rows of them, with a path down the middle. And he waited and waited and waited. The birds came and he shooed them away, until it became very dark and Abram couldn’t stay awake. The darkness swallowed Abram up and he was very afraid. But then he heard the voice of God speaking to him, “I am telling you the truth. Your descendants are going to live in a country as foreigners for four hundred years, and they will be treated harshly and taken as slaves. But I will judge the people holding them as slaves and your descendants will leave that country very wealthy. But you will die here after a good, long life. The Amorites who are coming to live here will grow powerful and very wicked, and they have to be judged before your descendants return. But it isn’t time yet.”
Abram was waiting for God to show up so that they could walk the path together between the animals, so he would know that there was a forever agreement between them. But instead, fire and smoke appeared on the path and went through without Abram, while God made the promise to give him the Land again. That told Abram that God was making this promise not just to Abram but to Himself and that He would do anything He had to do to make it happen. That was the greatest guarantee in the world because it meant that Abram couldn’t do anything to mess it up. What a relief that was!
But then ten more years went by and there was still no child for Abram. Sarai was very concerned, but it was also very normal in her world for a woman to give her slave to her husband as another wife if she couldn’t have a baby. Abram figured that this must be the way God wanted them to make things happen, and according to the laws of the land, Sarai had every right to do this. No one asked Hagar’s permission, and they never even called her by her name, but she became Abram’s second wife and it wasn’t very long before they found out she was having a baby. But Sarai still expected her to work as a slave and Hagar believed she was too important to do that. After all, she was having the baby that everyone wanted. Sarai couldn’t have a baby, which made her look cursed to all the other women. Hagar started to resent Sarai because she saw herself as more than a slave, but that’s all Sarai thought she was. And Sarai made it clear that Hagar’s baby belonged to Sarai. That must not have seemed reasonable to Hagar. And so Hagar disrespected Sarai so much that Sarai complained to Abram.
“It’s your job to tell everyone where they belong and who’s the boss and what the pecking order is. That slave girl of mine thinks she is more important than me because she is pregnant, and it is all your fault!” Sarai yelled. Abram sighed and shrugged. He was happy that a baby was on the way but wasn’t happy about all the drama. Instead of handling it himself, he said, “She’s your slave, do whatever you want to her.” Sarai went back to the tent where Hagar was reclining and beat her so badly that Hagar was afraid her baby would die—she ran away, heading south to go back home to Egypt.
But the Angel of the Lord found her at a spring of water on the way and called her by her name and asked where she was going. Hagar explained her terrible situation to the angel, and the angel told her, “You need to go back, it isn’t safe here. Make Sarai happy and do whatever she tells you because you are going to have a baby boy and you will name him Ishmael (which means “God hears”). You will have more descendants than you can imagine and your son will be a mighty man, clever and resourceful and he will be a thorn in everyone’s side.” Hagar named God “El-Roi” because she saw God and He saw her.
Hagar went back and did what she was told, and she had a baby boy. She named him Ishmael, and Sarai didn’t claim him as her son. God was right when He said that the child would belong to Hagar and not to Sarai.
Thirteen years later, God returned to Abram and made him another promise, “I am El Shadai (God Almighty). I want you to be my representative on the earth and to live the way I command you. I am going to make our covenant official, and you will have more descendants than you can possibly imagine. Your children will become many nations, and the kings of those nations. Your name will be Abraham, because you will be the father of all these people groups. And my covenant will be with your children too. I will make it all happen, and your part is to become circumcised so that the people from the nations around you will see you as my priests and your household as devoted to me. So, every man in your entire camp needs to be circumcised. It’s a forever thing for all your children until the end of time. It’s a sign of the agreement between us. And never call your wife Sarai ever again. Her name is Sarah. She is a princess and nations and kings will come from her as well. She’s going to have a son!”
Abram laughed at the thought of old Sarah having a baby when she was ninety, but he was also sad, “But what about Ishmael? Can’t he be my heir?? I love him!”
God said, “No, but I will bless him. Ishmael will be a great man, but it has always been my plan for Sarah to have a baby in her old age—It will be an amazing miracle and a sign that your family is special. Sarah will have her baby around this time next year, and he will be called Isaac (which means laughter) and my promises to you will also be to him and his children.” God left before Abram could ask anything else and Abram obeyed God on that very day and circumcised every man in the camp. Everything was different now. The whole world had changed. God had taken another step toward Jesus by moving the people He chose into the place He chose and teaching them how to trust Him more and more. Exciting and sad times are ahead for Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael, and Isaac. The next Torah portion is called Vayera and stretches from Genesis 18 to the end of Genesis 22.
I love you. I am praying for you. I hope you are excited to hear the next chapter of the story. You know so much about the first three Torah portions of the Bible—Bereshith, Noach, and Lech Lecha. Just think of how much more you will know a year from now!