Abraham and Paul -- Whither and Why?

Have you ever felt called to go forth?  I have. 

There are times when something stirs inside me, and I am moved to strike out into a wilderness, across which there are no trails, the other side of which I cannot see.  For example, this happened when I—and then my wife Channa after me—when we were moved to strike out from Judaism, which we had loved during the past twenty-five years, into a desert of spiritual dryness.  For what purpose were we going?  What should we find? 

Biblically, I turn my attention to another striking-out, described in Genesis 12:1-2a.  This is the incident known as “The Call of Abraham,” although Abraham was still known only as Abram when the call arrived for him.

Here are the circumstances.  Abram’s father, Terah, had three sons, the other two being Nahor and Haran.  The whole family dwelt in Ur of the Chaldeans, which was a rich and sophisticated center of pagan worship near the headwaters of the Euphrates River, where a famous ziggurat had been erected.  When Terah’s sons grew to be men, all three took wives.  Abram married Sarai (later to be called Sarah).  Sarai bore no sons for Abram because she was barren.  Nahor married his brother Haran’s daughter, his own niece, who was named Milcah.  We do not learn the name of Haran’s wife—the mother of Milcah—but she bore Haran two children, Milcah and also Lot. 

            In time, Terah decided to migrate with parts of his family to the land of Canaan, which was a strenuous 1,500 mile journey, first traveling westward, to skirt the northern edge of the desert, and then following easier terrain southward—with more water for the sheep.  Scripture provides us with no explanation for this decision on Terah’s part, other than the simple statement that Terah decided to enter Canaan.  As regards Terah’s decision, there is no hint that the Lord instructed him to go forth. Terah took Abram and Sarai along, as well as his grandson Lot, and, presumably, their households and herds as well. 

            The first part of the journey was short.  There was a settling place for the extended Terah family, called Haran—in this case, Haran was a place name.  The family settled in Haran for a time, perhaps because Terah was infirm.  Terah died at Haran, having reached the venerable age of two hundred five years.  At that time, Abram was seventy-five. 

            Then comes the Scripture passage about which I am curious, referenced above.  Settled at Haran, after his father’s death, Abram may have been perplexed what to do.  His father had initiated this journey.  Now that his father was no longer there, what was Abram’s responsibility?  Here’s how Scripture reads.

 

                        Now the Lord said to Abram,

                        Go forth from your country,

                        And from your relatives and from your father’s house

                        To the land which I will show you;

                        And I will make you a great nation,

                        And I will bless you, and make your name great.

 

            In Hebrew, the words I bolded above—Go forth—are the two words Lekh Lekha.  Even if you do not read Hebrew, you can still intuit that these two words are very similar to one another.  Lekh, that word by itself, provides us with the entire sense of the passage—go—and it would have sufficed by itself.  My Jewish friend Steve, a Hebrew scholar, introduced me to this linguistic conundrum.  Why does Scripture use the double form, when the single form would have been enough to convey the meaning?  Lekh Lekha literally means either “go to you” or “go for you.”

            Many readers will know that this passage, after all, is a key passage in Judaism.  It is one of the clear statements legitimizing the People Israel’s patrimony and promising its destiny.  Given the centrality of the passage, textual subtleties are important for us to study so we may determine, if we are able, what they have to tell us.  

What did the Lord mean?  Perhaps He was saying to Abram, “GO TO YOU.”  Perhaps He was saying, “GO FOR YOU.”

Scripture does not give us assurance that, before the Lord spoke to Abram in this manner, Abram had any particular relationship with the Lord.  This call may have been Abram’s initial experience of the peremptory voice of the Lord.  There seems, though, to have been great knowledge on the part of the Lord regarding Abram’s character, even if the knowledge was one-sided at the time He called to Abram.     

“Go to you.”  “Go for you.”  What is meant by “you?” 

After Genesis is done, and after Abraham—as then called—is dead, we can look back and see that Abraham is the sole patriarch who is identified as a “friend of God” in the Old Testament.  For example, we see Ezra identify him that way in 2 Chronicles 20:7 and the voice of the Lord Himself speak of Abraham that way in Isaiah 41:8.  So…the Lord knew Abram’s nature and his future before Abram knew much—or anything—of the Lord.  The “you” toward whom the Lord instructs Abram to proceed is not his own personal “you.”  It is the corporate “you,” who will come to embody all of the People Israel and their backstory of religious and cultural justification, along with their righteousness in following the Lord’s will and covenant.  The Lord is calling Abram to become what the Lord already knows Abram will become…the man who may therefore be named “friend.” 

Abram did not have a conversion experience.  Simply, Abram did what he was instructed to do.  He did not know why, except that the Lord promised he would make of Abram a great nation, which must have seemed unlikely on the face of it, since Sarai was barren. 

Abram did not change from being something beforehand to being something else afterwards.  He was who he was to become all along. 

I am thinking about this because of the “go forth” which Channa and I experienced in our migration from Judaism to evangelical Christianity.  We were called to begin a spiritual journey with no knowledge of our belief destination.  Many have spoken of our event as a conversion; I have done so, too.  However, the truth is not that we changed from a settled beforehand to a new afterwards.  The truth is that we were called to become who we already were, but who we had not yet known we were. 

The great conversion model of Christianity has always been the experience of Saul, when he became Paul…even his name changed!  (Saul’s/Paul’s experience is described in Acts 9.) Christians ever afterwards have studied this event and concluded that the man was one thing before his Damascus Road vision, and another thing after it.  He was a Jew, then he was a Christian. 

At least for Channa and for me, the model does not hold up; nor—in my opinion—does it hold up for Paul either.  Our experience was a little like Paul’s (though by no means as important).  Paul was a Roman citizen who was raised and was educated as a Jew, and he fought against the new “Way,” the local term for Jews who believed Jesus was the promised Messiah. Shortly, though, Paul experienced Jesus appearing before him and striking him blind.  Paul changed his mind about the Way, but…he was still a Jew.  There was not anything else he could have been.  The term “Christian” had not yet been coined, nor, more importantly, was there any theology, any creed, any piety, or any orthodoxy of sanctified governance established to support doctrinal dogmatics and corporate identity.  It was too early. 

Paul was a Jew who believed in the Way.  That is, Paul believed that Jesus—a Jew—was the Messiah, and that Jesus would save Paul and other Jews from sin, against which they all struggled incessantly, if they would only believe in Him. Gentiles could get in on the salvation, too; all that was required was belief.  Paul preached mostly to gentiles when he was on his journeys because he infuriated his fellow Jews, who were content, for the most part, with their present way.  During his journeys, Paul continued to live and to act as a Jew (albeit as a Jew of the Way), but also as a Jew who had become whom he personally was supposed to become…called forth to become so by a theophanic event, rather as Abram, centuries before, had been called forth to become Abraham.  Paul was supposed to become a Jew who believed in the Way and who preached it.  So, that’s who he became.

Some people are puzzled when Channa and I state that we are Jews and Christians.  The accepted conversion model for change negates this as a possibility.  However, as one who has experienced the event, I negate the conversion model.  Being called forth is more subtle than the model allows.  The Lord knows Channa and me, as who He knows us to be, for His purposes.

We did not change; we became more so. 


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Reach me directly, if you like, at dikkon@dikkoneberhart.com