abraham destroyed idols bible verse

The simple reader of Maimonidesand even the not so simple readerwas likely to feel that the loss of Gods body was almost equal to the loss of God. 5 From . [24]See, for example, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman,The Bible Unearthed: Archaeologys New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts(Touchstone, 2002). President Nelson shared the following story last April: I adored my parents. So, one day when I was very young, I went to our basement and smashed on the concrete floor every bottle of liquor! Rabbi Yehudah said: It applies even to unclean animals. Rabbi Yehudah said to them: But wasnt the sciatic nerve forbidden to the sons of Jacob, and they were permitted to eat unclean animals! They said to him: The law was stated at Sinai but was included in its proper place. For a summary of the issues surrounding pre-Sinaitic rules, see the entry in theEncylopedia Talmudit, One may not learn [rules] from the time before the giving of the Torah, (vol. Wisely, Abram was not looking back to the home and comforts he had left behind in Ur. 2 And Sarai said to Abram, "Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Although these events have halachic weight in Jewish tradition, this is not because they happened in the past (before the revelation at Sinai) but because they were included in the Torahs narrative at Sinai.[15]. What if only ten can be found there?" He answered, "For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it." I simply believe it. Because of the signs in the heavens that were associated with his birth Nimrod tried to kill him at that time. It is about humanitys religion and its faith, its moral struggles, its successes and failures, its hopes and aspirations for greatness, its dream of breaking into the world of the infinite and clinging to God. Abraham responds that clouds hold water. 58 Dost thou not know, or hast thou not heard, that this evil which thou doest, our ancestors sinned therein in days of old, and the eternal God brought the waters of the flood upon them and destroyed them all, and also destroyed the whole earth on their account? Writing, not just in these examples, is a reality substitute of great value. Conjunctive waw | Verb - Piel - Conjunctive perfect - second person masculine plural, Noun - masculine plural construct | third person masculine plural, Noun - feminine plural construct | third person masculine plural, Verb - Qal - Imperfect - second person masculine plural | Paragogic nun, Conjunctive waw | Noun - feminine plural construct | third person masculine plural, A Phoenician goddess, also an image of the same, Verb - Piel - Imperfect - second person masculine plural | Paragogic nun, Conjunctive waw | Noun - masculine plural construct, gods -- the supreme God, magistrates, a superlative, Noun - masculine singular construct | third person masculine plural, Holy things must be eaten in the holy place, and holy things must be eaten in the holy place, Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers, OT Law: Deuteronomy 12:3 And you shall break down their altars (Deut. You may unsubscribe from Bible Gateways emails at any time. are also to be treated as idols." I am not surprised, therefore, at the literary prowessvery much like human literary prowessdemonstrated in Torah by its author. 12They faithfully brought in the contributions, the tithes, and the consecrated things; and Conaniah the Levite was the officer in charge (N)of them, and his brother Shimei was second. 29 And Abram took the savory meat from his mother, and brought it before his fathers gods into the chamber; and he came nigh unto them that they might eat, and he placed it before them, and Abram sat before them all day, thinking perhaps they might eat. For an overall discussion of his approach by other scholars, see: Yosef Ofer (ed. By submitting your email address, you understand that you will receive email communications from Bible Gateway, a division of The Zondervan Corporation, 3900 Sparks Drive SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546 USA, including commercial communications and messages from partners of Bible Gateway. Donate. One of the questions that occupies philosophers of history as a discipline has been, to what extent can a historian really reconstruct the past and to what extent is he or she actually reshaping it? This is a false dichotomy. 15[i]Under his authority were (P)Eden, Miniamin, Jeshua, Shemaiah, Amariah, and Shecaniah, in (Q)the cities of the priests, to distribute their portions faithfully to their brothers by divisions, whether great or small, 16without regard to their genealogical enrollment, to the males from [j](R)thirty years old and upwardeveryone who entered the house of the Lord (S)for his daily obligationsfor their work in their duties according to their divisions; 17as well as the priests who were enrolled genealogically according to their fathers households, and the Levites (T)from twenty years old and upward, by their duties and their divisions. Thus, we can say that there is no reason not to ascribe great literary prowess to God. 2 The sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras. Abraham told him that a woman came in to make an offering to the idols. Enter code SPRINGSTUDY15 and have answers to your Bible questions at your fingertips. It is this perspective in particular, and the interpretation of the event expressed in it, that is of interest, religiously speaking, for within this retelling of the event lies its religious value. Please support us. [6]In my book, I deal with this in chapter 4. Can these idols in which thou trustest deliver thee? On the other hand, Haran needed to see that Abraham would be saved by God before believing, and because of this, Haran was not saved from the fire by God. Whether our actions motivate us to work for labor and the downtrodden or peace in Israel, we activate a certain "Abraham" within to destroy the idols of prior perspectives and belief systems, and . The main purpose of contracts and newspapers, for example, is to translate the real worldwhere a deal was struck or something worth describing occurredinto writing. Burn their Asherah poles and cut down their carved idols. I cannot thank them enough for the happy homelife they created for me and my siblings. [21] Did the elephant really need the ant in order to make dust-clouds in the desert? "[5] There is no description of a biblical interaction between Nimrod and Abraham. 10 These are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Nevertheless, juxtaposed to this more moderate phrasing, we placed a more radical one. Furthermore, this objection often remains inchoate and not fully articulated. New American Standard Bible, Copyright 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. 48-49 [Hebrew]. [7], There are several different ways in which this Midrash has been discussed. My thanks to Hillel ben-Sasson for sharpening this point. [28] Although they believed that the great and majestic body of God was not comparable to their small and weak bodies, nevertheless, they could not let go of a God with some sort of a physical body. 15 And Terah his father was in those days, still captain of the host of king Nimrod, and he still followed strange gods. The idols argued about which one should eat the offering first, then the largest idol took the stick and smashed all the other idols. idols of any kind. 41). [19]InThe Guide of the Perplexed(3:31), Rambam sharply criticizes people who believe that it would be best not to ascribe positive human characteristics to God. In a world where there are many doubts about the historicity of core events in the Torahs narrative,[24] establishing the palace of Torah upon a higher foundation would seem to be a constructive goal. 30 And Abram viewed them, and behold they had neither voice nor hearing, nor did one of them stretch forth his hand to the meat to eat. Haran is the son of Terah, brother of Abraham, and the father of Lot. How can virtual classrooms help students become more independent and self-motivated learners? One reason why they did so was, that he had gone into those places which his father considered sacred, and among the wooden gods which were there, and, being filled with anger that his father should bow down and worship gods of wood and stone, he broke them. 5As soon as the [c]order spread, the sons of Israel abundantly provided the first fruits of grain, new wine, oil, honey, and of all the produce of the field; and they brought in abundantly (H)the tithe of everything. Kula was formerly the Rosh haYeshiva of Yeshivat HaKibbutz HaDati in Ein Tzurim. The Midrash is also used by James Kugel, the chair of the Institute for the History of the Jewish Bible at Bar Ilan University in Israel, in his book The Bible As It Was, published in 1997 by Harvard University, to look at how stories from the Bible have been changed to how they are taught in the modern day. [26] Therefore, even if a believers intellectual powers allow him or her to consider the possibility that an ahistorical Torah could be more sophisticated and spiritual than a historical one, nevertheless, he or she cannot ignore the outer voiceor even the inner voicethat makes it difficult to be satisfied with scholarly justifications. The plot point of Abrahams fattempted murder for his beliefs is found in four source texts. 35 And Terah, having heard the noise of the hatchet in the room of images, ran to the room to the images, and he met Abram going out. Perhaps they even needed to be narrated in exactly the way the Torah itself narrates them. Completely erase the names of their gods! Terah responded by saying that they are only statues and have no knowledge. Philip Munoa notes that 'the Testament of Abraham studi- ously avoids physical description of God when describing Abraham's heavenly ascent and tours of heaven explicitly identifying God with 47 And how can you continue to do this and serve gods of wood and stone, who cannot hear, or speak, or deliver you from oppression, thereby bringing down the anger of the God of the universe upon you? Therefore I will prepare fresh savory meat to-morrow, better and more plentiful than this, that I may see what cometh therefrom. But the gods remained mute and without motion before the second offering of excellent savory meat as before the first offering, and the spirit of God came over Abraham, and he cried out, and said: Woe unto my father and his wicked generation, whose hearts are all inclined to vanity, who serve these idols of wood and stone, which cannot eat, nor smell, nor hear, nor speak, which have mouths without speech, eyes without sight, ears without hearing, hands without feeling, and legs without motion!, Abraham then took a hatchet in his hand, and broke all his fathers gods, and when he had done breaking them he placed the hatchet in the hand of the biggest god among them all, and he went out. The believer who adopts this narrative wishes to engage it directly. ! [Terah] took him and brought him before Nimrod (. [14]M.Pesachim10:5. These events occurred at some point in the past, and the Holy Author (God) describes them from the unique perspective of the divine. went away on a journey, and he left Abraham in charge of the store. Dr. It is thou that didst place the hatchet in the hand of the big god, and thou sayest he smote them all. Abraham answered his father, and said: How, then, canst thou serve these idols in whom there is no power to do anything? Once he went on a trip and he placed Abraham in charge of the store in his place. [5]A lot has been written about the principle of the slippery slope. See, for example, the essay by Yuval Cherlow, Halacha and the Slippery Slope,Akdamut23 (5769): 33-48 [Hebrew]. Why is Abraham is cutting up all these animals in Genesis 15? Over the years, the interpretive tradition has taken this statement far out of its original meaning, which refers to the way a person is to behave on the night of the 15thof Nissan, and turned it into a key phrase describing Jewish consciousness in general. (U) Far be it from you! Nimrod the mighty hunter was one of the sons of Kush. , was an idol-maker and merchant in Ur.1 Terah. So Nimrod declares they worship water. Abraham is cast into the fire and is saved by God. 20 And Abram said to his father, My lord, shew them to me I pray thee; and Terah brought Abram into the chamber of the inner court, and Abram saw, and behold the whole room was full of gods of wood and stone, twelve great images and others less than they without number. 13 "Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Thy servants to whom Thou didst swear by Thyself, and didst say to them, 'I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens, and all this land of which I have spoken I will give to your descendants, and they shall New American Standard Bible Now Rachel had taken the household idols and put them in the camel's saddlebag, and she sat on them. 40 And the large one saw their works that they did before him, and his anger was violently kindled against them, and he went and took the hatchet that was in the house and came to them and broke them all, and behold the hatchet is yet in his hand as thou seest. And Abram answered the king, saying, And if there be no power in them why dost thou serve them and cause the sons of men to err through thy follies? 38 And he found Abram his son still sitting in the house; and he said to him, What is this work thou hast done to my gods? Abraham told him that a woman came in to make an offering to the idols. Abraham at last thought he would teach his father a lesson by making a clean sweep of his gods. [21]An ant and an elephant are running through the desert. The consequence was, his father and the idolatrous priests of that day sought to take his life. [29]Continuing on with the example from Rambam with which we began: stating that God lacks any body means that God is not constrained by any physical limitation. Save 15% for life on BibleGateway+ with code SPRINGSTUDY15. And Terah answered his son Abram and said, Behold those who created us are all with us in the house. 5. 15 After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: "Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great." 2 But Abram said, "O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue[ a] childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" 3 And Abram said, "Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of Note: This essay was translated and adapted by Rabbi Dr. Zev Farber, with the approval of Rabbi Dr. Kula, from the introduction to his book, Existential or Non-Essential. 23 And when Abram had gone from them he went to his mother and sat before her, and he said to his mother, Behold, my father has shown me those who made heaven and earth, and all the sons of men. 44 And now surely it is not good for thee nor for the sons of men that are connected with thee, to do these things; are you so silly, so foolish or so short of understanding that you will serve wood and stone, and do after this manner? 71C11132 Haran, Abraham's brother, having witnessed the miracle, decides to undergo the test of fire as well, but is immediately consumed. The interpretive strategy of the received text is paramount takes an entirely different approach, which attempts to encounter the word of God without any mediation. Thou speakest lies to me. 56 0 foolish, simple, and ignorant king, woe unto thee forever. Abraham went thence to his mother, and he spoke to her, saying: Behold, my father has shown those unto me who made heaven and earth and all the sons of men. This point can be expressed in two different ways. These were the feelings of Abraham, and he taught his fathers house, and all around him, as far as he had the privilege. NASB, Zondervan NASB Study Bible, Red Letter Edition, NASB, Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Bible, 2nd Edition, Comfort Print: Holy Bible, New American Standard Bible, NASB, Super Giant Print Reference Bible, Red Letter Edition, 1995 Text, Comfort Print, NASB, Thinline Bible, Large Print, Red Letter Edition, 2020 Text, Comfort Print, NASB, Thinline Bible, Red Letter Edition, 1995 Text, Comfort Print, NASB, Thinline Bible, Red Letter Edition, 2020 Text, Comfort Print. A man walked in and wished to buy an idol. 14Kore the son of Imnah the Levite, the keeper of the eastern gate, was in charge of the [h]voluntary offerings for God, to distribute the contributions for the Lord and the most holy things. These events are seennot without causeas being singular and special. Once he went on a trip and he placed Abraham in charge of the store in his place. Abraham had three wives: Sarah, Hagar, and Keturah (by date when Douay-Rheims Bible And when he had destroyed the altars, and the groves, and had broken the idols in pieces, and had demolished all profane temples throughout all the land of Israel, he returned to Jerusalem. Abraham's father in fact agrees with Abraham regarding idol worship unlike the Qur'anic version! Child sacrifice was one reason for the Babylonian captivity (verse 36). But Abraham, trying to reason with his father, said that probably the gods had got to fighting among themselves and had killed one another. [1] According to Jewish tradition, Terah was an idolater. can they hear thy prayers when thou callest upon them? As I was leading a discussion in the beit midrash on this subject, one of the participants pushed back against this approach. [b](P) 23Then Abraham approached him and said: Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Launched Shavuot 5773 / 2013 | Copyright Project TABS, All Rights Reserved, script type="text/javascript"> 635-637 [Hebrew]). On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.". Access 50+ premium resources. 50 And Terah, seeing all that Abram had done, hastened to go from his house, and he went to the king and he came before Nimrod and stood before him, and he bowed down to the king; and the king said, What dost thou want? Although the book focuses on a period of time later than that discussed herethe period of David and Solomonnevertheless, the rhetorical force of the essays that express reservations similar to that expressed aboveessays that come from very different scholarsdemonstrates the tangible reality of the emotional power that stands behind the truth problem. I must admit that I could not personally identify with any of the (admittedly thoughtful) analyses in that collection, and this is probably due to my own alternative way of thinking about this problem, as described in this essay. Abraham asked him how old he was and the man responded 50 years old. Abraham then said, You are 50 years old and would worship a day old statue! At this point the man left, ashamed. The firstborn of your sons you shall give to Me. One approach (the older and more nave one) claims that the job of a historian is to make a copy of the past and place it, as-is, before present day students of history. Muhammad describes Abraham's anguished attempts to reason with His father and persuade him to accept a new divine Message this way: "O my Father! He did his Ph.D.in Jewish thought atBen Gurion University, focusing on the writings of Rav Kook. All rights reserved. Will not the Judge(V) of all the earth do right?(W), 26The Lord said, If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake. So Nimrod declares they worship clouds. 45 And forget the Lord God who made heaven and earth, and who created you in the earth, and thereby bring a great evil upon your souls in this matter by serving stone and wood? The way the Sages understand Scripture is quite different. 2And Hezekiah appointed (B)the divisions of the priests and the Levites by their divisions, each according to his service, both the priests and the Levites, (C)for burnt offerings and for peace offerings, to serve and to give thanks and to praise in the gates of the camp of the Lord. Will you really sweep it away and not spare[c] the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? [20]For more discussion on this question, see the position of R. Mordechai Breuer as he expressed it first inDeot12 (Winter 5720): pp. Later, a woman walked into the store and wanted to make an offering to the idols. 57 I thought thou wouldst teach thy servants the upright way, but thou hast not done this, but hast filled the whole earth with thy sins and the sins of thy people who have followed thy ways. Idols Are Destroyed 31 Now when all this was finished, all Israel who were present went out to the cities of Judah, broke the memorial stones in pieces, cut down the [ a]Asherim and pulled down the high places and the altars throughout Judah and Benjamin, as well as in Ephraim and Manasseh, until [ b]they had destroyed them all. [22], Getting accustomed to this kind of thinking about the Torah is required, in my opinion, if a person wishes to acquire the ability to raise his or her faith in Torah from a peripheral attachment to an essential attachment to its contents. 51 And he said, I beseech thee my lord, to hear meNow fifty years back a child was born to me, and thus has he done to my gods and thus has he spoken; and now therefore, my lord and king, send for him that he may come before thee, and judge him according to the law, that we may be delivered from his evil. Abraham responds that people withstand wind. Regarding this, seePinkasei Ha-Raayahvol. Our analysis of the truth problem leads us to this summary statement: Whenever we as readers encounter a description of an event in the Torah, the main concern for us as students of Torah is not the reality of the event as it happened but the event as described in the biblical narrative. 14 And Abram knew the Lord, and he went in his ways and instructions, and the Lord his God was with him. One day I jumped on the streetcar and went to an LDS bookstore to find a book about the Church. See:The Guide of the Perplexed, 1:1. And Abram hastened and went from the chamber to his fathers outer court, and he found his father sitting in the court, and all his servants with him, and Abram came and sat before him. The Bible says we should put living in a righteous manner above all other pursuits of the flesh and mind. At this point, Terah took Abraham to Nimrod. Commentary on Parashat Lech-Lecha, . Abraham's father, Terah, joined the adamant opposition to his son in Harran, which indicates that he had continued to cling to his profession of making and selling idols. The only similarity that one finds here is Abraham advising his father about the futility of idol worship. When Abrahams father learned what had happened, he of course was greatly exercised; he inquired of Abraham who had done it. 2Ch iiCh ii ch 2 chr 2chr). Genesis 11:26 After Terah had lived 70 years, he became the It is thou that didst place the hatchet in his hands, and then sayest he smote them all. Abraham did destroy his father's idols though. Powered by WordPress. Christian Standard Bible Even for such a person, something still lingers from the dissonance required in reframing the story as ahistorical. Something went wrong while submitting the form. One time a woman came carrying a dish of fine flour. Abraham told him that the gods had had a quarrel among themselves, and, said he, here is the fellow, (pointing to the big one he had spared) that did it. Said the father: My son, why do you tell me such a thing. Finally, Abraham is not punished . My gods cannot fight; they have legs, but they cannot walk; they have arms, but they cannot use them; they have eyes and ears, but they cannot see nor hear. Why, father, said Abraham, is it possible that you worship a god that cannot hear or see, walk or use himself at all? The god of the Christians, according to their own description of him, being a god without body, parts or passions, would be as unlikely to hear them when they called upon him, as were the gods of Terah, Abrahams father, when he called upon them. As I came to understand the Word of Wisdom, I wanted my parents to live that law. The Bible tells us the Lord said to him: Get thee up from thy fathers house, from the land wherein thou wast born, and go up to a land I will show unto thee, and which I will afterwards give unto thee for an inheritance. And we are told that he went up, not knowing whither he went. 4, It is said Abrahams father was an idolater, and that he had a number of gods in his house. According to this second phrasing, the events described in the Torah are part of Gods narrative; whether this narrative has a basis in historical fact doesnt matter. In response to the first question, I admitted that I am not trying at all to prove that the biblical author was God. 19Also for the sons of Aaron, the priests, who were in (U)the pasture lands of their cities, or in each and every city, (V)there were men who were designated by name to distribute portions to every male among the priests and to everyone genealogically enrolled among the Levites. This Midrash can be interpreted as an example of persecution against those of monotheistic beliefs during a time when polytheism dominated.[8]. 16When the men(A) got up to leave, they looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way. In many ways, the challenge faced by such a person is similar to the one faced by Rambam when he tried and demonstrate to the world that God has no body. 60 And if thy wicked heart will not hearken to my words to cause thee to forsake thy evil ways, and to serve the eternal God, then wilt thou die in shame in the latter days, thou, thy people and all who are connected with thee, hearing thy words or walking in thy evil ways. Studying the real life of the giant among men, our founding father, Abraham the man of faith and kindness, would, in theory, give us an opportunity to uncover the God in which he places his trust. Continue Learning about Religious Studies. As such, writing is secondary to the event itself. Therefore, by necessity we would need to distill from his historical persona what parts of his life were his own choice, (i.e. And why wilt thou not sense the God of the whole universe, who created thee and in whose power it is to kill and keep alive? (R) 25Far be it from you to do such a thing(S)to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous(T) and the wicked alike. that there is a real God, then that God will save him. Would you like updates when content is posted? For an English version explaining Breuers approach, see: Mordechai Breuer, The Study of Bible and the Primacy of the Fear of Heaven: Compatibility or Contradiction, inModern Scholarship in the Study of Torah(ed. can they deliver thee from the hands of thy enemies, or will they fight thy battles for thee against thy enemies, that thou shouldst serve wood and stone which can neither speak nor hear? Hebrews 13:5 - Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. If the religious value of events comes from their being included in the word of God, let us allow God to speak to us in Gods own language, and to tell us the divine story with its entire force. 17Then the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham(B) what I am about to do? Rambam expressed this idea in his unique idiom. They meant the world to me and taught me crucial lessons. Writing, especially in the above examples, allows people who were not witnesses to the events to meet the reality of the event in a mediated encounter. 1, pp. [23]My view here stands in stark contrast with that of Rav Kook, who criticizes the ahistorical approach to biblical narratives. Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. 41 And Terahs anger was kindled against his son Abram, when he spoke this; and Terah said to Abram his son in his anger, What is this tale that thou hast told? The interpretive strategy of the accepted rendition is paramount emphasizes the importance of our mediated encounter with the text, the reading that I was taught by my teacher, and he his teacher, going all the way back to the law given to Moses at Sinai. In short, the tradition is of utmost value. In an ahistorical reading, we exchange Abraham the man, his biographic detailsonly some of which have any connection to Godwith Gods Abraham. [17] Is it surprising that Gods narrative is the story of humanity writ large? Lord. This, however, is when this person accepts the [mitzvot] and fulfills them because the Holy One commanded this in the Torah and informed us through our teacher Moses, that the descendants of Noah had been so commanded (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings, 8:11).

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