Abraham, Father of Believers
After the dispersion of Babel, God changes his manner: instead of dealing with the whole of humanity, he chooses one single man, Abraham, and makes of him the source of a blessing for all the nations. With his call begins the history of salvation properly speaking, which will run through the whole Bible: a long patience of God, a promise kept against all expectation, and a faith that, tried to the very end, becomes the model of all faith.
The Call and the Promise
Abram lives at Ur, then at Haran, in the midst of peoples who serve other gods. It is there that God calls him, and the call is an uprooting: to leave the country, the kindred, the father’s house, all that, for a man of that time, made his identity and his security. “Leave your country, your kindred, and your father’s house, for the land that I will show you.” Genesis 12:1 To this uprooting, God joins a threefold promise: a land, a numerous descendance, and through him a blessing for the whole world. “I will make of you a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name so great that it will become a blessing… In you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” Genesis 12:2-3 This last word already opens the whole horizon: what God begins in one single man is destined for all the nations that Babel had scattered. And Abram obeys without bargaining; at seventy-five years, he sets out on the word of God alone toward a land he does not know. Faith begins with this bare trust, which advances toward a promise that as yet nothing guarantees.
The Covenant and Faith
Yet the promise meets an obstacle: Abram grows old, and his wife Sarai is barren. One night, God leads him outside and shows him the sky. “Look up to the sky and count the stars, if you can… So shall your offspring be.” Genesis 15:5 To this childless man, God promises an innumerable descendance, and Abram, against all evidence, hands himself over to the word of God. This trust is counted as his very righteousness. “Abram had faith in the Lord, and the Lord counted it to him as righteousness.” Genesis 15:6 This verse becomes the foundation of all the doctrine of justification: man is set right with God by the faith that abandons itself to his promise, before any work. God then seals a solemn covenant, binding himself by an ancient rite in which one passes between divided animals. “On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, To your offspring I give this land.” Genesis 15:18 Later, he gives him a new name, Abraham, “father of a multitude,” and a sign graven in the flesh, circumcision, which will mark his people as that of the covenant. “every male among you will be circumcised.” Genesis 17:10
The Promise Put to the Test
The promise, however, is slow, and Abraham’s faith wavers at times. Pressed by the waiting, he tries to help God in his own way: from his servant Hagar is born a first son, Ishmael, who will not be the heir of the promise. Then God himself comes, under the form of three travelers whom Abraham welcomes at his tent, by the oaks of Mamre, and renews the promise of a son for the following year; Sarah, who listens, laughs in disbelief, and God takes up this laughter with a question that carries all of faith. “Is anything impossible for the Lord?” Genesis 18:14 It is also before Abraham that God prepares to judge Sodom, and Abraham dares to intercede for the city, bargaining step by step for the salvation of the just, until he uncovers the heart of the judge. “Will not the Judge of all the earth do what is right?” Genesis 18:25 At last, when all human hope is spent, God acts in pure grace: Sarah, old and barren, bears Isaac, whose name means “he laughs,” the son of the promise born not of the strength of man, but of the gift of God.
The Sacrifice of Isaac
Then comes the supreme test. God asks of Abraham what is dearest to him, the long-awaited son in whom rests the whole promise. “Take your son, your only son, the one you love, Isaac; go to the land of Moriah, and there offer him as a burnt offering.” Genesis 22:2 Abraham obeys without a word, climbing the mountain with his son, who himself carries the wood of the sacrifice, an image the tradition will recognize in Christ carrying his cross. To Isaac, who wonders at the absence of a victim, Abraham answers with a word of pure faith. “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” Genesis 22:8 At the last moment, as he raises the knife, the angel stops him: God did not want the death of the child, but the surrender of a heart that refuses him nothing. “Now I know that you fear God: you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” Genesis 22:12 A ram caught in a bush is offered in place of Isaac, and Abraham names the place of this deliverance. “The Lord Provides.” Genesis 22:14 On this mountain where the father did not spare his son, but where God provided a victim in exchange, is already sketched the mystery of Calvary, where the Father will not spare his own, and will give him for all. Thus Abraham becomes the father of all believers, the one whose tried faith traces the road of ours.