Genesis - Parashath Vayera.

GENESIS - PARASHATH VAYERA.

Abraham receives mysterious visitors, who bring good tidings and ill.  The course of Lot's life is changed forever.  Abraham's long-promised blessing finally appears, but family strife ensues, and Abraham's faith is tested.

ALIYAH 1 [18:1 - 14] - ABRAHAM'S THREE VISITORS.

Three angelic visitors appear to Abraham as he sits by his tent in the afternoon.  While Sarah prepares refreshment, they deliver the news that in a year's time, Sarah will have a son - much to Sarah's incredulity.

ALIYAH 2 [18:15 - 33] - MISSION TO SODOM.

Abraham sees the men off; two continue toward their next destination, the evil city of Sodom.  The text now reports the Creator first contemplating, and then speaking directly to Abraham:  "The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is very great!  Let Me go down and see ...".  The idiom of G-d "going down" to a wicked city to appraise the behavior of its inhabitants recalls the story of Babel.

Abraham bargains with G-d, securing the Creator's agreement to spare the city if even ten righteous people can be found there.  G-d departs from speaking with Abraham, and "Abraham returned to his place."

(If Abraham had instead continued to Sodom with the two angels, bringing his family with him, then - counting four humans of both sexes from each of Lot's and Abraham's families, plus the angels - there would have been exactly ten righteous people in Sodom.)

ALIYAH 3 [19:1 - 20] - LOT'S TWO VISITORS.

The angels find Lot sitting "in the gate" of Sodom; he's sitting literally inside the gate, because fortified cities had "a large chamber at the gateway" (Alter, p.60, note).  This detail emphasizes the urban setting, in contrast to Abraham's vantage point by his tent in the wilderness.  Lot invites them to his home for dinner, rest, and safety.  When the men of Sodom learn of the visitors, they demand Lot give them over, and threaten to break down his door.  The angels strike the attackers with blindness and urge Lot to flee with his family.  

ALIYAH 4 [19:21 - 21:4] - DESTRUCTION OF SODOM; AVIMELEKH AND SARAH; BIRTH OF ISAAC.

Lot arrives at dawn at the small town of Tzo'ar [צֽוֹעַר], and Sodom meets its end in classic Biblical fashion, in a rain of fire and brimstone; Lot's wife, looking back, is turned into a pillar of salt.  Lot then flees Tzo'ar for a deserted cave with his two daughters.  They must have assumed that "[the destruction of Tzo'ar] had been merely delayed" (Steinsaltz, p. 100, note on 19:30).  The daughters, assuming the destruction is worldwide, conceive a plan to propagate the human race.

Abraham journeys south, where he repeats the "wife / sister" deception upon Avimelekh, King of Gerar.  Avimelekh, warned in a Divinely-inspired dream not to touch Sarah, rebukes Abraham.  "Unlike Pharaoh in chapter 12, who bestows gifts on Abraham as a kind of bride-price, the noble Abimelech offers all this bounty after Sarah leaves his harem, as an act of restitution."  (Alter, p. 67, note on 21:14.)  At the beginning of Chapter 21, Sarah conceives and bears the long-awaited son.

ALIYAH 5 [21:5 - 21] - SARAH EXILES HAGAR; ISHMAEL AND THE ANGEL.

Sarah derives the name of Isaac [ יִצְחָק‎ | yitzchaq] from the verb "to laugh", recalling her own amused reaction at first hearing the prophecy (18:12); the word can also mean "playing" and can sometimes have other connotations as well (as we'll see in 28:8).  Isaac is circumcised and weaned, and Abraham gives a feast.  Sarah notices Ishmael laughing (or joking, or playing, or doing something - it's that verb again) and becomes angry; she demands that Abraham send Hagar and Ishmael away, and G-d orders Abraham to obey.

Wandering in the desert with their water depleted and on the point of dying, Hagar and Ishmael are saved by an angel who directs them to a well of water.  Ishmael survives and grows up to be a great hunter, and Hagar finds him an Egyptian wife.

ALIYAH 6 [21:22 - 34] - ABRAHAM AND AVIMELEKH.

Abraham and Avimelekh resove a dispute concerning a well, and seal a pact with the transfer of seven ewes in Be'ersheva [באר שבע]; the place name means "well of the oath" (or alternatively "well of the seven").

ALIYAH 7 [22:1 - 24] - THE BINDING OF ISAAC.

The passage relating Abraham's offering up of Isaac is one of the most challenging in the Torah, and many commentaries have been written on it.  It's impossible for me to do it justice here.  Clearly the endpoint is to emphasize G-d's unequivocal rejection of human sacrifice; but, like Abraham and Isaac's three-day journey, it's getting there that's the hard part.  Yoram Hazony insists that "at no point does Abraham intend to murder Isaac" (Hazony, p. 119), but I think it's difficult to square this reading with 22:10.

For me, what's clear is that the Creator only commanded Abraham to offer Isaac (literally, "raise him up" [ וְהַֽעֲלֵ֤הוּ | ha'alehu ]) - not to kill him - as Rashi points out.  In Rashi's reading, G-d laconically tells Abraham, "I told you to take him up, now bring him down."  (Rashi on 10:2.)

Now, with Hagar and Ishmael gone and the urban center of Sodom in ruins, Abraham's future lies with his son Isaac.  [874]