[Teachldsseminary] CHAT - Faith Strengthened by the Old Testament re: (TEACH: Abraham, posterity, and Sarah)

[Mary E Anderson]

Reading the post including the insights about faith, Abraham and
Sarah (included below) brought another wave of gratitude for what
studying and teaching the Old Testament is doing for me.  I
literally feel a transformation.  

One big test of faith for me is that my husband has not accepted
the gospel.  I am an adult convert and was baptized six years
into our marriage.  It is now thirty two years later and my
husband is still content to attend the church of his youth.  I am
at peace because my patriarchal blessing includes the promise of
an eternal marriage.  The transformation part for me has so much
to do with understanding that we are a convenant people.  I have
known that and reminded of it many times but it has never been so
clear to me.  When we have talked about eternal marriage in our
class I felt on a firm foundation in teaching that because we are
a covenant people we marry in the temple.  That is it.  The
patience and faith of Abraham, Sarah and others in ancient times
has strengthen my testimony about keeping the faith and about
eternal marriage even though I am still waiting.

Now I pray that through the spirit that what I feel can benefit
my one seminary student who is already a spiritual giant.

Happy Thanksgiving
Mary - EMS - First Year Teacher of One
Greeting Cards 24/7
http://GreetingCardGoldmine.com
 

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Visitors from Zion: Three Holy Men and Their Mission
Chapter 8, part 1 of The Blessings of Abraham:  Becoming a Zion
People By E. Douglas Clark

    I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and
on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine
angels round about you, to bear you up. - Doctrine and Covenants
84:88

Looking Forward with an Eye of Faith

>From the first divine promise made to Abraham about his
posterity, the
years of continuing childlessness had turned into decades of
delay. And yet, as one scholar observes, still Abraham "believed
the promise, although from a human aspect everything spoke
against it." [1] Or, as eloquently expressed by the Danish
philosopher Soren Kierkegaard,

By faith Abraham received the promise that in his seed all races
of the world would be blessed. Time passed, the possibility was
there, Abraham believed; time passed, it became unreasonable,
Abraham believed ... There is no song of Lamentations by Abraham.
He did not mournfully count the days while time passed, he did
not look at Sarah with a suspicious glance ... Abraham became
old, Sarah became a laughingstock in the land, and yet he was
God's elect and inheritor of the promise that in his seed all the
races of the world would be blessed ... What is it to be God's
elect? It is to be denied in youth the wishes of youth, so as
with great pains to get them fulfilled in old age. [2]

How had Abraham maintained his faith in the long-delayed
promises? We have already seen his constant gratitude and praise
to God for blessings already bestowed - apparently a key to
Abraham's faith. For as one of his faithful latter-day
descendants observed, "I have discovered that if I insist on
tormenting myself with obvious facts, I cannot hold on to the
precious peace that is His Gift. But if I give heartfelt praise
to our Father in Heaven while in the midst of my trials, He
grants me instant peace, strength, and abiding hope." [3]

It is an expression of the principle articulated by Moroni, who
explained that God has never worked miracles for men "until after
their faith," so that when they finally "saw with their [mortal]
eyes" what they had hoped for, it was only after "they had beheld
[it] with an eye of faith" (Ether 12:18-19).

So had Abraham looked ahead with an eye of faith, continually
leaning upon the divine promises through the years as he offered
"myriad prayers," says Josephus, for the fulfillment of those
promises. [4] In the words of the Apostle Paul, Abraham "against
hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many
nations, according to that which was spoken" (Rom. 4:18).
Meanwhile, in selfless exercise of his faith and priesthood, he
offered prayers for the welfare of others, including prayers for
childless women, and they would conceive. [5]

God had confirmed to Abraham that his heir would be a son issuing
from his own body, but nothing had been said about Sarah being
the mother. Her faith had been firm as she had interpreted the
promises of posterity to Abraham as any reasonable wife would, to
mean that she was to be the mother. As the promises had been
renewed from heaven time after time, her hope and expectation had
been renewed and reinvigorated. But months had turned into years
as they endured "the anguish of childlessness." [6]

Such an anguishing trial might well have damaged many a marital
relationship, but not this one. He "had simply loved her the more
tenderly, making the deepening of his love for her entirely
clear. Not only had he made no complaints, never even mentioned
the word 'barren,' he had refused to allow anyone else to do so
either." [7]

But at some point Sarah, who had always thought of the promises
of posterity as applying to her also, begin to consider another
possibility. For those promises, she reasoned, had never
mentioned her directly. A decade after their return out of Egypt,
she came to Abraham and suggested that he marry her maid, Hagar,
whom Sarah had taught in the things of righteousness and who, as
reported in Jewish tradition, "walked in the same path of
righteousness as her mistress." [8] Sarah's words to Abraham are
reported in Genesis, the very first time Sarah speaks in the
Bible: "See how the Lord has prevented me from bearing children.
I beg you [or 'please' [9] ] now, go and sleep with my maid, and
perhaps I will have a son through her." [10]

By those words, according to Jewish tradition, Sarah "took the
blame for childlessness upon herself rather than seeking to blame
her husband," [11] and thereby demonstrated her "spiritual
strength: she was not jealous of her handmaid, but acted with the
purest of motives" and even with the prompting of the Holy
Spirit. [12] Modern rabbi Amos Miller comments:

The secret of the wonderful marital relationship between Abraham
and Sarah was that when things went wrong neither sought to blame
the other or to find fault with the other. If fault was to be
found, each found it within himself. This remains the secret of a
happy marriage to this day. [13]

Abraham and Sarah were living the law that the Lord would give to
their latter-day descendants seeking to build Zion: "See that ye
love one another. . . . Cease to find fault one with another. . .
. And above all things, clothe yourselves with the bond of
charity, as with a mantle, which is the bond of perfectness and
peace" (D&C 88:125).

Sarah's language also suggests, according to the
nineteenth-century rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, that Abraham was
reluctant to do what his wife was suggesting. "Sarah wants to do
it only for his sake, but she knows that he would not do it for
his own sake; hence she says . 'perhaps I [will have a son
through her].' If Abraham would not want to do it for his own
sake, then let him do it for the sake of his wife because she
wants it so badly." [14]

Such was the mutual love and loyalty of this couple, each putting
the other first even in the matters that touched their hearts
most deeply. Their relationship illustrates the truth taught by
President Gordon B. Hinckley that "if you will make your first
concern the comfort, the well-being, and the happiness of your
companion, sublimating any personal concern to that loftier goal,
you will be happy, and your marriage will go on throughout
eternity." [15]

Modern revelation adds that Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham "because
this was the law" (D&C 132:34), a statement confirmed by Bible
scholars who note the obligation of an infertile wife after ten
years to bring her husband a second wife to bear children. [16]

But it was also one of the great acts of Sarah's life, noted
Erastus Snow, done out of "love and integrity to her husband" so
"that he might not be childless because she was childless." [17]
It was the ultimate sacrifice, a decision made, no doubt, after
much soul searching and prayer. Sarah was by no means giving up,
nor did this mark a loss of hope; both Rashi and Nachmanides held
that Sarah still harbored the expectation that God would yet
bless her some day to conceive, but that for now, as throughout
her life, Sarah was acting in righteous and under divine guidance
in the matter. [18]

She was acting out of love, and "did not render herself distant"
from Abraham, [19] but kept her heart knit together in love with
his. According to a modern Muslim scholar, it was because of this
unselfish act of Sarah that God would eventually reward her with
a son of her own. [20]

But up to now the yearning of her heart was not forthcoming,
having grown more elusive with each passing year. Indeed, as
difficult as Abraham's long trial of childlessness had been to
him, "Sarah must have been the one most deeply hurt by her
barrenness." [21] And yet, at this time of profound personal
grief, out of the greatness of her loving heart poured forth only
soothing words of hope for Abraham, as reported by Philo:

Do not let the trouble of my barrenness extend to you, or [your]
kind feeling to me to keep you from becoming what you can become,
a father, for I shall have no jealousy of another woman ... And
if our prayers for the birth of children are answered the
offspring will be yours in full parenthood, but surely mine also
by adoption. But to avoid any suspicion of jealousy on my part,
take if you will my handmaiden ... proved and tested by me for
many years from the day when she was first brought to my house,
an Egyptian by birth, but a Hebrew by her rule of life. [22]

Philo further reports that Sarah's words instilled in Abraham
"increased admiration for the wifely love, which never grew old
and was ever showing itself anew, and her careful forethought for
the future." [23] Even still, Abraham accepted Sarah's proposal
only after receiving revelation on the matter, [24] whereupon
Sarah magnanimously declared to Hagar, "Happy art thou to be
united to so holy a man." [25] Abraham married Hagar, who
immediately became pregnant - even though, in the poignant words
of modern writers, "as Hagar's belly swelled with child, Sarah's
womb remained empty." [26]

Hagar, although remembered as a woman of righteousness and faith,
[27] began to "despise" (NIV Gen. 16:4) Sarah and treat her with
"contempt" (NRSV Gen. 16:4) and "disdain." [28] Her unbearable
insolence included claiming that Sarah's infertile condition
proved her spiritual inferiority. [29] Sarah's reaction is
reported by Genesis, which tells that she went to Abraham and
said: "The wrong done to me is your fault! I myself put my maid
in your bosom; now that she sees that she is pregnant, I am
lowered in her esteem" (JPST Gen. 16:5).

Genesis then reports the following words by Sarah, words which
the English reader would automatically suppose were part of what
Sarah said to Abraham: "The LORD decide [or, 'Let the LORD judge'
(GTC Gen.
16:5) [30] ] between you and me" (JPST Gen. 16:5). These
adversarial words color the immediately prior sentences, making
Sarah's entire communication to Abraham appear angrily divisive.

But it was Judaism's greatest grammarian and all-time Torah
authority, Rashi, who pointed out that the Hebrew word "between
you" in this passage is written with a feminine indicator for the
person being addressed, showing - according to Rashi and other
Jewish sources - that Sarah's statement about the Lord judging
was addressed not to Abraham but to Hagar. [31]

Other Jewish sources agree that Sarah was invoking the Lord not
against Abraham, but against anyone who would try to cause
dissension between her and Abraham. [32] Sarah's commitment to
build Zion by being of one heart with her husband was of highest
priority, even when she felt wronged.

By Abraham's supportive response to Sarah - "Your maid is in your
hands; deal with her as you think right" (JPST Gen. 16:6) - he
was apparently hoping that his soft answer would turn away
Sarah's wrath. [33] In any event, Abraham's reaction to Sarah
shows that "he willingly accepts any corrections that come from
her." [34]

As Genesis tells, the pregnant Hagar fled. But an angel appeared
to her by a spring of water in the wilderness, and instructed her
to return to Sarah. That her child would play an important role
in God's plan is evident from the blessing the angel then
pronounced upon Hagar, in the name of the Lord: "I will so
greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for
multitude" (NRSV Gen. 16:10). The angel even designated the name
of the son she was carrying in her womb: he would be called
Ishmael, meaning "God has heard." For, as the angel explained,
the Lord had heeded Hagar in her distress.

The angel further assured Hagar that the freedom that she had
sought would in fact be enjoyed by her son. The closest an
English translation can come to what the angel then said about
Ishmael is that he would be "a wild donkey of a man" (NJB Gen.
16:12), a phrase that can strike the modern ear as pejorative.
But the Hebrew word is not the term for a domesticated donkey,
but rather for a particular species that lives wild in the desert
and, according to biblical scholar Gordon Wenham, "looks more
like a horse than a donkey, and is used in the Old Testament as a
figure of an individualistic lifestyle untrammeled by social
convention." [35] As explained by some of Judaism's most
prominent authorities, the angel's description of Ishmael carries
no negative sense whatsoever, but means "a free man among men,"
enjoying the freedom of the desert. [36]

And according to Samson Raphael Hirsch, the angel's words in
naming Ishmael and then prophesying about his freedom constituted
instruction to Hagar in the "basic ideal" she must seek to
instill in her son, and which alone would truly make him free: an
awareness of that Divine Providence - memorialized by the name
Ishmael, "God has heard" - that watches over the deeds of men and
assists them in their suffering. [37] In short, Ishmael was,
according to the words of the angel, destined to be a great man.

Hagar returned and bore Ishmael, giving Abraham a son at long
last. It was part of the divine plan, for as latter-day
revelation explains, "from Hagar sprang many people. This,
therefore, was fulfilling, among other things, the promises" (D&C
132:34). Islamic texts tell of the tenderness of the relationship
between Abraham and Ishmael, while Jewish tradition reports that
Abraham loved him. [38]

Meanwhile, the faithful Sarah remained barren. What trials God
requires of His most faithful!

1.  Rendtorff, Men of the Old Testament, 16.

2.  Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 32.

3. Gretchen Clark, private correspondence to family members,
March 20, 2001 (quoted by permission).

4.       Judean Antiquities 1.228, in Feldman, Josephus, 90,
reporting
what Abraham told Isaac years later.

5.       Genesis Rabbah 39:11, in Freedman, Midrash Rabbah,
Genesis, 1:320.

6.       Kasher, Encyclopedia of Biblical Interpretation, 2:214.

7.       Mastro, All the Women of the Bible, 382.

8.       Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 1:237.

9.       Hirsch, T'rumath Tzvi, 79. Or "pray," in Fox, Five Books
of
Moses, 68, and Alter, Genesis, 66.

10.   Genesis 16:2, in Mitchell, Genesis, 29.

11.   Miller, Abraham Friend of God, 69, quoting Tanchuma Buber,
Vayera 32.

12.   Kasher, Encyclopedia of Biblical Interpretation, 2:215.

13.   Miller, Abraham Friend of God, 69.

14.   Hirsch, T'rumath Tzvi, 80.

15.   Gordon B. Hinckley, "Excerpts from Recent Addresses of
President
Gordon B. Hinckley," Ensign, December 1995, 66.

16.   "What Sarah did, then, was ... in conformance with the
family
law of the Hurrians, a society whose customs the patriarchs knew
intimately and followed often." Speiser, Genesis, 121. As
emphasized by other commentators, the practice was far more
widespread than the Hurrians. See Wenham, Genesis 16-50, 7;
Sarna, Genesis, 119; Westermann, Genesis 12-36, 239; and von Rad,
Genesis, 191.

17.   Journal of Discourses, 23:228.

18.   See Tuchman and Rapoport, Passions of the Matriarchs,
14-15.

19.   Chavel, Ramban, 211.

20.   Moyers, Genesis 193.

21.   Hirsch, T'rumath Tzvi, 79.

22.   On Abraham 43, in Philo VI, 123.

23.   On Abraham 43, in Philo VI, 123, 125.

24.   Doctrine and Covenants 132:34-35: "I, the Lord, commanded
it."
Jewish sources similarly report that Abraham accepted Sarah's
proposal only after being "instructed" to do so "by the holy
spirit." Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 1:237.

25.   Genesis Rabbah 45:3, in Freedman, Midrash Rabbah, Genesis,
1:381.

26.   Tuchman and Rapoport, Passions of the Matriarchs, 16.

27.   See Kasher, Encyclopedia of Biblical Interpretation, 2:219.

28.   Genesis 16:4, in Vawter, On Genesis, 214.

29.   Kasher, Encyclopedia of Biblical Interpretation, 2:216-18.

30.   Or, as in NRSV, "May the LORD judge . . ."

31.   Kasher, Encyclopedia of Biblical Interpretation, 2:217-18,
quoting Rashi; Rashi on Genesis 16:5, in Rashi, Commentary, 135;
Scherman and Zlotowitz, Bereishis: Genesis, 1(a):544-545; Culi,
Magriso, and Argueti, Torah Anthology, 2:111.

32.   Kasher, Encyclopedia of Biblical Interpretation, 2:217.

33.   So Wenham, Genesis 16-50, 8-9.

34.   Didymus the Blind, On Genesis 2:41, in Oden, Ancient
Christian
Commentary, 2:45.

35.   Wenham, Genesis 16-50, 10-11, spelling out "Old Testament"
where
original has "OT."

36.   For example, Rashi said this phrase (from Genesis 16:12)
means
"liking the wilderness." Rashi, Commentary, 137. Ibn Ezra, the
learned Spanish commentator of the twelfth century, interpreted
the phrase to mean "free among men." Kasher, Encyclopedia of
Biblical Interpretation, 2:221. Nineteenth-century scholar Samson
Raphael Hirsch translated the phrase as "a free man among men."
Hirsch, T'rumath Tzvi, 81.

37.   Regarding the rest of what was prophesied of Ishmael in
Genesis
16:12, the next phrase is "his hand against everyone, and
everyone's hand against him" (JPST). Nahum Sarna has suggested
that this is a general prediction regarding Ishmael's descendants
with regard to the "unceasing tension that exists between the
sedentary and nomadic populations in the Near East." Sarna,
Genesis, 121. But if this phrase refers personally to Ishmael,
then in context it again seems to speak of a desert existence
where, in the open spaces, danger could come from any quarter.
Accordingly, speaking of the entire verse, modern scholar Gordon
Wenham notes that it "describes Ishmael's future destiny, to
enjoy a free-roaming bedouinlike existence. The freedom his
mother sought will be his one day." Wenham, Genesis 16-50, 10-11.

38.   The meaning of the final phrase that the angel tells Hagar
- "He
shall dwell alongside all is kinsmen" (JPST) - is disputed, but
the most likely translation seems to be that Ishmael will dwell
"alongside" or "in the face of" or "in the presence of" his
brothers or kin. See Speiser, Genesis, 117: "in the face of";
Fox, Five Books of Moses, 68: "in the presence of."

39.   Hirsch, T'rumath Tzvi, 81.

40.   See Levner, Legends of Israel, 87; Bialik and Ravnitzky,
Book of
Legends, 40.

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