John Bytheway:               00:00:01              Welcome to part two with Dr. Carli Anderson, Genesis 18 to 23.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:00:07             We’re gonna skip to chapter 21 where the promise gets fulfilled. So she got the promise, it had a little bit of laughter in it. Then we move to verse one. The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did unto Sarah as he had promised. That word visited it’s paqad in the Hebrew and it can be to visit, it can be to appoint. It has a specialness to it. It marks it as a very important thing to be visited of the Lord, to have that interaction, but also to have a special appointment. I’m seeing that Sarah is gonna be able to step into her matriarchal power. The Lord visits Sarah, he paqads. It’s a special ritual, moves her into a new space and Sarah conceived and bear Abraham a son in his old age at the set time that God had spoken. Abraham called the name of his son that was born to him whom Sarah bear to him, say it with me. Yitzhak. Right.

                                           00:01:08             We get down in verse six, a little song that Sarah kind of sings to explain the naming. Sarah said, God made me to laugh so that all that here will laugh with me. Verse seven. And she said, who would’ve said unto Abraham that Sarah should have given children suck for I have born him a son in his old age. The laughter behind it, God has made me to laugh. So I wanna bring in a Jewish tradition that sees in her song something special. It’s from Genesis Rabbah, which is a midrash text. Midrash in the Jewish tradition is commentary and adding a little bit more explanation to the story. Midrash asked the question, so God made Sarah laugh, but what does that mean for us? And then the answer in this is when Sarah was able to laugh and have her miracle and remember everything she’s gone through, then actually that laughter rippled out and more and more people started having miracles.

                                           00:02:04             There were women who were barren who had children. Blind people were able to see, lame people were able to walk. Midrash talks about that it wasn’t just Sarah’s miracle, it rippled out and created more of the miraculous in the world. I love that for so many reasons because Sarah and Abraham being so tied to the covenant that impacting the world in a miraculous way, but also just thinking of the Savior who’s gonna be one of Sarah’s descendants through whom many miracles take place. He is one of the kings that belongs in her lineage as part of her matriarchhood. It’s just majestic in its scope.

John Bytheway:               00:02:48             We often call Abraham a father of nations. When you read that verse, kings of people shall be of her and you said shall belong to her. Could we call Sarah a mother of nations then? That seems like we could say that too.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:03:02             Yeah, I think so.

Hank Smith:                      00:03:04             Carli, this is fantastic. I’m looking through these chapters and I have John, how many new notes do you have? I can’t even find places to write. I’m running out of post-Its. Let’s keep going. What’s next?

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:03:16             I’d like now to reframe Hagar. We’ve told the story from Sarah’s side. Now I wanna tell the story from Hagar’s side and help you appreciate how the text really treats her with a lot of respect and power as well. To give you a little bit of background on her in some chapters before chapter 21, which is where I’m gonna focus, she starts as a maid servant. She’s gonna have a child part of this kin group and then she’s gonna get a new title. She’s gonna be called bondwoman or handmaid. Those are different terms in Hebrew and we don’t need to get too much into it except I want you to appreciate that she’s elevating. She got in trouble for the disrespect, playing with the hierarchy a little bit or not handling the respect as well. But even with that, she’s able to move into a really powerful place.

                                           00:04:08             Actually by the end of this chapter is gonna be her own matriarch of her own line. That was the promise of the angel. I also wanna remind you that when the angel talks to her and appears to her, the promise she gets the wording is really similar to Abraham’s. So it’s setting her up as an equal to Abraham as well. But then also she does this really amazing thing in Genesis 16:13. She names God, she gives God a title. She says, you are El Roi, the God who sees, she’s the only person in scripture that gives God a name. God gives other people names, but she gives God a name and then the well is named after that. Where we are now with Hagar is she’s moved up in the kin system, the kin group. She’s not a shiphchah anymore. That’s the Hebrew for a maid servant.

                                           00:05:05             She’s now an amah. It’s translated differently in the English, but it’s usually handmaid or bondwoman and I wanna talk about that just briefly because the amah is a level up for her. Just like Sarah’s leveled up and Abraham’s leveled up, Hagar’s also leveled up and amah, this research is still pretty new, but what scholars are seeing is that the shiphchah seems to be a slightly lower position in the kin group than an amah. Usually when like a surrogate mother has the surrogate child, then they become an amah. They’re in a different place in the kin group and we’re still trying to figure out what that looks like ’cause we’re looking back thousands of years to trying to figure out what they knew that we don’t know. We can see there’s a difference. She has more respect and she’s treated as a mother in the family.

                                           00:05:57             So she’s definitely very much in a new position which she deserves. We also know that she had the promised son. Ishmael has been born. When Isaac is born, it looks like Ishmael’s probably around 13 years old. Long time coming for Sarah, but Ishmael is part of the family and integrated well. And then we have in chapter 21 verse eight, this little small note that says the child grew and was weaned and then Abraham makes a great feast. It’s a party for him. Children probably were weaned between two years and four years old, so we’re gonna put that to the 13 age for Ishmael when he gets circumcised, that puts Ishmael in this next part of the story around 17 or 18. That’s important for the context of what’s gonna happen next because at 17 or 18 Ishmael’s getting close to like marriageable age, he’s gonna need a wife soon and that’s gonna add a whole new dynamic.

                                           00:06:59             What’s happening in the family if we bring this in, Isaac’s still little, but Ishmael’s an emerging adult that helps to build the context for this. I’m just gonna go to verse nine. This is a really hard verse for people to understand like even scholars don’t quite know what’s going on with this. Okay, so in verse nine it says, Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian whom she had born unto Abraham mocking. This word mocking is wildly the same root as all of the laughter and the Isaac roots, Tzachaq, so it’s Isaac’s name, but in a slightly different conjugation. It’s actually a participle. Sarah sees that he’s doing this action, whatever it is, it’s laughing and nobody quite knows even to this day how to handle it. One scholar sees it as taking Isaac’s maybe even authority. He translates it that Ishmael is Isaacing, he’s taking Isaac’s position in a way, it’s just ongoing at this point.

                                           00:08:07             Seems to just be happening as a matter of course, maybe even in that participle form of Isaac. And then another scholar actually looks at this and says that this is actually a clear hint that Ishmael is ready to get married. He’s marriageable age and he’s, we need to find him a wife. What does that do to the power dynamics? What’s gonna happen? This is the toughest verse for Sarah and Hagar I think. Verse 10, wherefore she says to Abraham, and this is the translation, but I’ll go through the Hebrew so you can hear it in a different way. Cast out this bondwoman and her son for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even Isaac. This is the tough part when everybody hears this, they’re like, Sarah is so mean. There are a couple of ways you can translate this and work with the Hebrew and even some word plays or some illusions that really quite soften it and maybe even make it amazing.

                                           00:09:04             Something happening in nine is Ishmael is getting older and there’s something going on with Isaacing or questions about what’s gonna happen with his position. What is he actually heir to? He’s given a promise by an angel through his mom. Abraham has some promises, but we also know that Sarah now has a son who is also an heir. So we’ve got two heirs. It’s emotional and it’s relational, but it’s also legal. This is a dynastic question we have to ask. What’s really interesting is when Sarah says in the Hebrew that cast out this bondwoman, she uses the word amah. That’s why I brought up those titles. She didn’t say shiphchah, she didn’t make her lower than she was. She said amah. She said the handmaiden, she honored where Hagar is, the idea of casting her out. It can be to cast out.

                                           00:10:02             This is the same route that is used to describe Adam and Eve being cast out of Eden. It also has agricultural movement to it and force to it. There’s a growing to this. Now hold that thought because I’m gonna keep going. So when she says cast out, move out. You can see like the growth for Adam and Eve in Eden versus the growth once they leave, we know that story. They might even think, oh wait, okay, so they need to leave this place where it’s been safe, where it’s been sweet, where they have everything they need now they need to move out for some growth. That might be what the listeners or the readers are having come to their mind, is this Eden myth. That’s a possibility. There’s other ways to do it, but I’m gonna hold that and see if it works logically through the rest of the verse.

                                           00:10:54             Sarah says, garash garash, move this ahma out, move this handmaiden honoring her new position out and also her son. Then the Hebrew because she will not inherit. I wanna go into grammar again and talk about this verse. It’s yerosh is to inherit or he will inherit or lo yerosh. He will not inherit. This could also be what’s sometimes called a subjunctive. That’s just a fancy word for shoulda woulda coulda. We need to move her out and her son out because he shouldn’t have to share an inheritance with my son. Not he cannot because I’m being greedy for my son, but it could be Sarah and it reads very well this way. Both ways read fine in the Hebrew. What if this is Sarah saying move them out from this safe space. These boys both need room to grow and if he stays here, his inheritance will be less.

                                           00:12:00             That’s a possibility for reading this because you can hear that that works really well in the Hebrew. Not he shall not inherit, but he should have to inherit with Isaac, they both have really great promises. When these boys are born, they’re already princes, they’re already royal. You can read it. It works in the Hebrew to have Sarah being nasty and like get ’em out ’cause I’m not sharing, could be that. It could also, and several scholars see it as this, it could also be Sarah saying this needs to be different because both boys sharing isn’t the promise. These boys have individual destinies they have to follow. If we keep them here, one or both of them might not follow them. When I talk about this with my students, I joke, boys are rowdy, they need space, but also like these boys have destinies. If you read it that way, then this is Sarah acknowledging the promise that the angel gave to Hagar when that angel took Sarah’s baby away from her.

                                           00:13:06             There’s a lot of poignant beauty if you read it that way and it reads fine that way in the Hebrew you can read it quite easily. This is Sarah saying, I know the prophecy for my son and I know the prophecy and promise for your son. For them both to have their destinies, we have to split. Super beautiful that Sarah is the one and she would be the one because she’s the gevirah. She’s the great lady. So she would say this has to be different for everybody to fulfill their fullest destiny. This might be Sarah acting in wisdom. If you look in verse 11, Abraham doesn’t like this idea. Like I said, I see Abraham as somebody who just, he loves his family, he wants his family around. He lost his family, he’s lost a brother. He had to leave his family. He loves having his family around. This is me putting a characterization on Abraham, but I see he doesn’t wanna break up this beautiful thing and this is a little bit like what happens in Eden, Eve is like I’m seeing some things and Adam’s like, oh no, we don’t do that. Right?

Hank Smith:                      00:14:09             How about we stay here? How about we don’t leave? Yeah.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:14:13             Now Sarah is becoming a type of Eve right? In this own way and that term for cast out and garash that it’s the term for get out of Eden, move out.

Hank Smith:                      00:14:23             It’s loaded. It’s supposed to bring back those memories.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:14:26             There’s that poetic, that stylized intent. Abraham doesn’t like it. We might not even like it without even this background. You might be like, Sarah, why are you so mean?

Hank Smith:                      00:14:37             Wow. Yeah.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:14:39             Sarah is doing the right thing. Hey John, will you read verse 12?

John Bytheway:               00:14:42             And God said unto Abraham, let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad and because of thy bondwoman. In all that Sarah hath said unto thee hearken unto her voice, for in Isaac shall thy seed be called.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:14:57             Basically God says Sarah’s right. Now if Sarah’s being mean, and again the translation, it really sounds that way. The term bondwoman, it kind of sounds like she just doesn’t want her around. She doesn’t want to share the inheritance. If we can let Sarah be this noble, amazing woman that she’s been so far and that people all over that region have noticed and even the Lord has noticed, then this fits better. This fits better as a woman who’s like Eve watching what’s happening and saying we can’t grow here. I think there’s a different way and that way involves moving out and then God says, Sarah’s right.

Hank Smith:                      00:15:44             I think my wife is gonna have me memorize that verse in all that Sarah hath said unto thee hearken unto her voice, she is right.

John Bytheway:               00:15:52             We’ll call this the Hank’s law.

Hank Smith:                      00:15:56             Hank’s Law.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:15:56             She can just pull that out of her pocket anytime.

Hank Smith:                      00:16:00             That’s interesting. That completely changes the story here.

John Bytheway:               00:16:05             Yeah.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:16:05             It does, doesn’t it?

Hank Smith:                      00:16:06             And our perception of Sarah, yeah, it fits her role. It fits how close she is to God and her understanding of what’s supposed to happen. I love it.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:16:17             Yeah, she’s doing another hard thing. She’s willing to do it. She’s thinking of others and she’s honoring the prophecy that took away her first hope. So it’s just so poignant and beautiful. She’s acting with a wisdom. She’s seeing things that not everyone is seeing and asking for that to be. So Hagar really is gonna have a cool moment here with Abraham and the wording moves her into a really beautiful leading responsibility. God says to Abraham, don’t be distressed. I don’t want you to be upset about it. Do what Sarah says. Sarah’s right. There’s an interesting element, a couple of interesting words I wanna bring into because we’ve been talking about how there might be echoes of Eden in this part of the story. God says, Sarah’s right, whatever Sarah says, do that and then the Hebrew ki bi Yitzchak, because in Isaac, (Hebrew) zara, so that would be seed is gonna be named to you.

                                           00:17:20             It’s an awkward phrase, but I wanna suggest maybe even like a possible ritual illusion to remember we talked about naming and how naming moves people into kingship. It’s that the offspring is gonna be continued through him, but also the offspring is gonna be named through the descendants of Isaac. That might be a ritual illusion. I’m not sure I can say much more about it, but there’s something there. You see it mirrored but in different wording in verse 13, as for the son of the amah, the handmaiden, this is Hagar, I will set him up as a nation, so it’s (Hebrew), I’m gonna set him up. And you do that with kings. You put them in a place where they can be seen, a high place or it’s elevated, it’s ritualistic in its way and his seed will also be yours. We’ve got two matriarchs that are setting up independent lines, working in the covenant in their specific ways that seems to satisfy Abraham.

                                           00:18:21             We don’t get another objection. And this next verse is really, really pretty for Hagar. I wanna go through it slowly if we can. Abraham rises up early in the morning and he takes bread and he takes like a water skin is usually how they’ll translate a skin of water and he puts it upon Hagar translating from the Hebrew here. So the King James might be a little bit different. He placed it upon her shoulder. Now that word shoulder is gonna be important ’cause the next thing that happens in the verse is, and also the child. In like even artistic renderings of this, sometimes you’ll see Hagar and she’s like looking scared and she’s got like one water skin and a little thing of bread and she’s got this baby on her or like a kid. Okay, hope you live. If you read it in English, it can read like that pretty easily.

                                           00:19:11             But the Hebrew is so stylized. First of all, the word for the boy is yeled, but that’s a little child. But we’ve already established he’s not a little child. He’s a grown man. That’s a symbolic word. He gives her water, he gives her bread, and then he gives her the son, the yeled, and he puts it on her shoulder and the shoulder is a really unique word. There’s scholars who look at this with the idea of the shoulder that he puts it on her shoulder, the water skin and the bread and the yeled and the boy who’s not a boy, he’s a grown man and he sees it as Abraham giving her responsibility, governing power over this child’s life. Now she now is the primary person who’s gonna care for this child who makes decisions for this child or this boy, he’s a grown man, for Ishmael.

                                           00:20:03             This shoulder in other places in scripture can be used as a symbol for governance, for responsibility and even maybe kingship. You know this from the very famous Isaiah 9:6, and the government shall be upon his shoulder. There is another Isaiah verse in chapter 22 verse 22 that talks about authority being placed on somebody’s shoulder. You’ll see this in Nehemiah in a slightly different way. They don’t wanna give their shoulders, their authority away. They wanna keep their freedom and in Zephaniah 3:9 too. So there’s places where shoulder becomes symbolic of royal power leadership, if that makes sense. What’s happening here probably is Abraham not casting Hagar out, but giving her the royal charge. She’s now the queen. This is her lineage. She’s the queen. She’s making decisions for it. It’s freedom. It’s also setting up the promise with that idea of royalty for her son.

                                           00:21:05             She’s the queen. He’s the prince, and they now go, she’s under his authority. They see this as reflected in the fact that she picks a wife for Ishmael later. If he was still in Abraham’s household, Abraham would pick the wife, but Hagar picks the wife, so she has legal royal authority. She’s being invested with this power by Abraham in this verse. You can read it as he just gave her some stuff and hope she lived. Actually, what I think is going on here is that he says, okay, we’re gonna do what we said we’d do. You’re right. The boys can’t inherit together. I now invest thee with this authority to be the matriarch over this line. And then she goes out into the wilderness of Beersheba. Then there’s one more cool word that I think you’ll like. It has to do with further down on the verse.

                                           00:21:58             It says, she departed and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba. So you can picture her just like if we think about it in normal ways, she’s got food, water, a kid who’s 17 or 18, right? We hope she finds water before everything runs out. But I don’t think it’s that. I think it is stylized and the wandering also reinforces that there’s some really cool recent scholarship that looks at this root ta’ah to wander and sees in it an allusion to not wandering like, where am I? What’s going on? more wandering strategically, which echoes what the nomadic people that will be the descendants of Ishmael do in the desert. They wander strategically. They don’t settle down necessarily, right? Like think of bedouin or nomadic communities. They wander, they know where the water is, they know where the wells are, they know where the oasis are.

                                           00:22:53             They wander strategically and it isn’t a straight route. It’s very strategic. This scholar sees it as a word play on what her descendants, what Ishmael and Hagar’s descendants are gonna do in the wilderness down by Beersheba in that area. It changes how you read the verse because she’s not just wandering and we hope she doesn’t die. She’s been invested with authority by Abraham to lead this line, to be this matriarch also is learning the ropes maybe or she’s setting up the skillful knowledge of the desert that their, she and Ishmael’s descendants are gonna have. Remember, this is mythic. Like I said, it doesn’t mean not true. It’s these are the ancestral myths of these people and you can hear it in the words that loosens it so much. I think it makes it quite beautiful for everybody.

Hank Smith:                      00:23:45             Yeah. Doesn’t seem like she got shoved away and she ran outta water later in the day.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:23:51             Yeah. We get to the part of the story where she can’t find water, gives her story a little bit more nuanced. She’s been wandering skillfully, which implies she knows how to find water in a desert. We know it because there’s shrubs nearby, which means there’s gotta be water underground somewhere. She knows what she’s doing. She’s looking for the thing, expects it to be there and it’s not there. Here is her parallel to what happens for Sarah and what happens for Abraham. All three of these are gonna lose or almost lose a son and I wanna set it up too because like when I was saying earlier about how our individual experiences can shape our faith and it becomes really unique kinds of faith. The faith that Sarah developed is gonna be different. Hagar has to develop the faith of doing something alone. She’s not with the family anymore.

                                           00:24:44             She had to get out of that place and grow, create the inheritance, right? She had to do it alone. That’s its own experience. The faith that you have to develop. If you’ve ever been a single parent or if you’ve ever had to bear a really heavy responsibility alone, you know what it is to dig deep and try to figure it out. Then you also know that sort of shock when you’re like, I’m here. It should be here. What’s happening and it’s not there. The miracle story then is she’s looking for water. It should be there and it’s not there when the water is gone. I don’t think this is the same water Abraham gave her. I think in the wandering, she’s getting water, she knows where to find the water, but at this place that looks like there should be water there, it’s not.

                                           00:25:32             Now she’s feeling that pinch, that stress. She goes down a distance and it says a bow shot away and this bow shot away is an illusion to again, the ancestral tradition. Ishmael’s descendants are gonna have archery and bowmanship, it brings in that. That’s a little mythic illusion. Then she says, I don’t know what to do. I don’t think I can watch my child die. Again the challenge, it’s really poignant. She’s had to go out alone. This was the right thing. God said it, everybody knew it, and Abraham invests her with authority. She’s making it work. She’s doing well and setting up these patterns for her ancestry, but then it, the thing she thinks should be there isn’t there. You can relate to experiences of that where like I showed up and it should be here and it’s not here, so what do I do?

Hank Smith:                      00:26:23             It’s very similar to Sarah’s story. I had a promise and it’s not gonna happen.

John Bytheway:               00:26:29             Not in the way you think anyway. Yeah.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:26:33             I don’t think I can watch it happen. I can’t watch the promise disappear. I can’t watch the boy die. Like with Sarah. Sarah’s came a little bit later. Hagar comes almost immediately. It’s an angel.

Hank Smith:                      00:26:46             Carli, so far I have to tell you, Sarah has come to life for me and Hagar. You feel their stories more. There’s a lot of heartache and pain and growth and God working individually with each woman.

John Bytheway:               00:27:05             We never want these just to be names in our scriptures.

Hank Smith:                      00:27:08             You’ve said we were gonna do three people today, Sarah, Hagar, and I’m guessing now we move to Abraham?

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:27:15             Correct. We’re gonna go to Abraham now. Their stories parallel each other. We talked about how each of them is gonna lose or almost lose a child. Spoiler alert, but you probably know what happens in Genesis 22. This is a family dealing with really complicated problems, complicated issues around like surrogacy and the legalities and friendship and relationship. It’s all kinds of difficulties on the ground, but it’s still beautifully symbolic, beautifully told in a way that calls in imagery from Eden and calls in imagery of royalty and special lines and princes and again, these are ancestral stories for the ancient people. They’re seeing themselves in the story. They’re seeing their families, their lineages, but it’s also just about a family trying to navigate how life is sometimes hard and it’s hard to be in a family and sometimes it’s hard to grow and sometimes you get disappointed.

Hank Smith:                      00:28:19             You added another layer by telling us, okay, not only are these stories not written in English, they’re written a long time ago and the people reading them, there’s things written in there for them. They’re not as ancient. They’re ancient compared to us.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:28:37             These descendants are gonna be neighbors, they’re gonna be cousins. Yet you still don’t lose the majesty, the majesty of what’s happening for these royals. It’s all acknowledged. These are royal lines, these are special sons, these are special women. This is a special family.

Hank Smith:                      00:28:52             Maybe just one takeaway is God can take a family with a lot of complicated issues and use them for his purposes, right? Yeah. That gives us all a little bit more hope.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:29:04             Right? Because Abraham and Sarah and Hagar, it’s a spiritual lineage. We’re adopted into these families. They head these families. This is their story. Complicated and messy. It’s encouraging. Whatever I’m going through, what I don’t seem to be getting right.

Hank Smith:                      00:29:23             Yeah.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:29:23             There’s still hope for me.

Hank Smith:                      00:29:24             Yeah, and then God’s gonna use our family.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:29:27             Yeah. Exactly.

Hank Smith:                      00:29:30             Okay. Tell us about Abraham.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:29:32             I love Abraham’s story. I mean this is the one we know well. This is the one that we tell. It’s a beautiful story and it has gorgeous parallels to Christ and the plan of salvation. Also, in thinking about the parallels with what’s just happened for Sarah and Hagar, we’ve been looking at them. I wanna read this also with an eye for Abraham’s faith and for the way that he moves through his challenge for his exquisitely difficult trial, the thing that he has to overcome and experience. There’s some really beautiful poetic language in this text that we can play with to help you appreciate how it was told. It is still, I think even today understood by scholars and by people who study the Bible as literature to be one of the most beautiful chapters in the entire book. It’s beautifully written, it’s beautiful in the Hebrew, it’s beautiful.

                                           00:30:29             Even in translation, the narrative style pulls you in. I mean the story itself will pull you in, but the way it’s told is also quite beautiful. We’ve gone through all of this. We’ve got the princes set up. They’re in their separate territories in Genesis 22. We get this in verse one, the setup. This is again more dramatic irony. We the readers know what’s happening maybe even before Abraham does in verse one, we get it set up and it came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham. Now I wanna change that because the Hebrew has a sense of tempting, but it really is a sense of trying. This is, I need to see where you’re at Abraham, so it’s not a tempting. I’m gonna pull you over here and see if you’ll go. It’s more of I need to see where you’re at. It’s nasah.

                                           00:31:23             It’s this idea of a trial really. Basically I need to see how you’ll respond to the situation. We’re setting that up. God’s gonna do that, and then there’s this lovely interaction between God and Abraham that I wanna highlight. This would be stylized. Then it will have echoes later in some of the stories, the biblical stories. God says to Abraham, and he just says his name, Abraham. (Hebrew). Hineni, that’s God says Abraham and Abraham says, here I am. So this word hineni is a really interesting word. It’s like an acknowledging of yourself, like a I’m right here. You can use it almost as a beginning of something and look, this happened. Something like look would be the hine. It’s got a sense of pause, but it’s also got a sense of identifying yourself in a place and it’s also used in some sacred settings.

                                           00:32:24             So a similar exchange is gonna go on between the boy prophet Samuel and God. It’s gonna have this kind of interaction. God says someone’s name and then they say, here I am. It also happens in Isaiah. Isaiah six, Isaiah’s going to respond to God saying, here I am. Abraham is beginning this situation with God saying, Abraham and Abraham says hineni. There’s a lot of ways you could look at this, but what I see in this is it’s preparing Abraham for again the next level. I’m gonna pull you up to this next level, which I feel like happens to us a lot in life. We get through things, we go through a trial, we settle in maybe, and then we’re like, okay, okay, I learned a lot. I’m all right, and then they’ll be the next thing, but it’s about growth. We didn’t come necessarily just to like sit on a beach and play a ukulele, although I would really love to do that.

Hank Smith:                      00:33:22             So it’s like Abraham, we’re moving up again. I wonder if Abraham’s like, okay, I know what this means.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:33:33             Hineni that word, that Hebrew word is gonna appear multiple times in the story and it’s gonna be used in interesting ways. Abraham is always saying it, I’m here. Here I am showing up, being there. John, will you read two?

John Bytheway:               00:33:49             Okay, Genesis 22 verse two, and he said, take now thy son, thy only son, Isaac, whom thou lovest and get thee into the land of Moriah and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains, which I will tell of.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:34:08             Awesome. In the English you can see that he is stating multiple times identifying who you’re supposed to take. What’s beautiful about this is it moves us step by step and zeroes in on a specific, we get multiple ways of thinking about Isaac, our Isaac, our rejoicing, laughter, son. You can also see it’s inching closer and closer to specifics and each one is so poignant. I want you to take your son, the one you really love. I want you to take Isaac, now in Jewish tradition, I just wanna share this because I think it’s nice you can hear the pacing in it. It also gives it a little bit of depth. This is also in Genesis Rabbah that midrash when they see this repetition of, we haven’t quite gotten to the name yet and now we’re going to Isaac. They imagine this conversation. God says to Abraham, take your son, and Abraham says, I have two sons.

                                           00:35:08             God says your only one, and he says, each is the only son of his mother. God says the one you love, and Abraham says, I love them both and then God says, Isaac, it pulls that pace out a little bit more and you can appreciate each one of those words. Another really interesting thing is that the only one, take your son, your only son. This one is a really interesting word and it’s gonna be a repeated word. It’s (hebrew) or it comes from this root yachad. The root can be only, it can be solitary, but it can also imply unity. There’s a unity, a oneness, but also a singleness. A solitariness. It’s gonna bounce back and forth between those, but I love this word in this passage because it’s not hard to see types of Christ that this is a similar story about Christ and his atoning sacrifice and how there is someone that takes the place of Isaac so that sacrifices take place on the temple mount in Jerusalem, but then there is the last sacrifice that’s Christ.

                                           00:36:27             Take your son, your only one, the one you love, your beloved son. Take Isaac, the rejoicing laughter one, the joyful one, and then offer him as a burnt offering on one of the high places that I’m gonna show you. The burnt offering, this word is olah. There were lots of different kinds of sacrifices and offerings in the Bible and the biblical text ways you could do this. What the olah is the offering that you would bring to the temple or that you would offer up when you wanted absolute communion with God, wasn’t that you had like that you’re worried about something that had happened or you wanted be grateful and say thank you. The olah is where you just take the whole animal and you just put it on there and you let it burn and it’s symbolic of your whole self, the deepest kinds of consecration, putting yourself right on the altar, emptying your sense of self, even absolute consecration.

                                           00:37:28             That’s what he’s asking. I want you to offer him up as an olah, as a deep, deep consecrated act. Go up to the mountain just like wells are places where you’re like, oh, something good’s gonna happen. Mountains are also good places in the biblical text. If you’re going up to a mountain, something interesting, something good, probably something sacred is gonna happen. Mountains carry that connotation. We’ve got wells, we’ve got mountains. Take them up on a mountain. Then you get in verse three, a kind of a slowing down of the pace. Here’s the test, here’s what I’m looking for. Your son, the only one, the one you love, Isaac. Then we get what Abraham does and what scholars have noticed is that this pace, we get him slowly gathering things to get ready to go. That’s one verse and then like miles get covered in a couple of verses, we go really fast.

                                           00:38:25             Then when we get to the mountain, it’s gonna slow down again and this is part of the literary style. You can hear it and you can see that in the English really well, but it’s really lovely storytelling to pull us into the story and find the beauty in the story. The next morning, Abraham saddles his ass and he takes two of his servants and his son Isaac. He split the wood for the burnt offering and he set it out for the place which God told him. He doesn’t wanna leave to do it. Can you kind of hear it like we get details on how he’s preparing and getting ready to go. You can hear the hesitation in the telling of the story. Then on the third day, Abraham looks up and he sees the place from afar. What I wanna focus on is verse five.

                                           00:39:08             There’s some beautiful stuff that happens in the Hebrew that you might miss in the English. Abraham says to his servants or to his young men, abide here with the ass and I and the lad will go yonder and worship and come to you again. Sounds pretty cut and dry. Each one of those descriptions of what he and Isaac are gonna do are really interesting, and this is grammar, but it’s a really interesting conjugation and it’s called a cohortative. Don’t freak out about the word. The cohortative just means it’s a command to the first person. Usually when I think of a command, I’ll be like, hey, take your shoes off or hang your hat over there. The you is implied. Sit down, eat the sandwich, whatever, the you is implied, I’m commanding a you. I’m commanding a person. In the cohortative, it’s a command to yourself or to the collective, so I can say to myself, I command you to do this or I will you to do this. I wish this to be done. Let me or I shall, is often ways that it’s translated. It has a sense of will, like I will this to be so. If I was gonna command myself to eat a cookie, I would be like, I shall eat a cookie. Let me eat a cookie. It’s not common in English, but it does show up a lot in Hebrew.

Hank Smith:                      00:40:26             It’s common in my house. I shall eat a cookie.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:40:31             I shall eat a cookie. You get in the sense of it because it’s, you want it to be like, I want that cookie so bad.

Hank Smith:                      00:40:40             So when he says, I am going to yonder and worship, that’s what he means? I.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:40:45             Yeah, but notice it’s not I, it’s we. I want you to see that because you can see Abraham’s faith, you can see where Abraham would like this to go and how he remember he wrestles with God, he negotiates, he knows he can talk to God. He can tell him what he wants. He can tell him what he thinks. Verse five, he says, I and the lad will go yonder. The two of them, they’re gonna do it in the Hebrew, you can see it’s the we. It’s two of us, two together. We will go up. It’s a command, so we shall or I will, that we are gonna go up to (hebrew) to that place. You can almost see him pointing in the telling of the story. Also a cohortative, we are going to worship the two of us. We are going to worship and we’re gonna do the thing. We’re gonna do the ritual, we’re gonna do the worship. Then come again to you. That’s also a we. It’s not singular and it’s cohortative. I will that we return (hebrew) I willing, let us both return. Let us not just me, he knows what he is supposed to do. You can see his faith. It’s so powerful to me.

Hank Smith:                      00:42:05             Is there an element of trust like this is gonna work out?

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:42:09             Yeah, that’s what I see. Even maybe an element of prayer. He’s saying, we’re gonna go up, we’re gonna worship and we are gonna come down.

Hank Smith:                      00:42:21             Both of us.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:42:22             That’s a we. That’s not clear in the English, but it’s very much there in the Hebrew.

Hank Smith:                      00:42:28             I wonder if he thinks, okay, I’m gonna go through with this, but that God’s gonna bring him back. Maybe something like that. Maybe he’s not gonna stop me, but something’s gonna happen.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:42:40             Yeah, we get a hint of what he’s thinking. When Isaac asks a little bit later in verse seven, Isaac asks, we’ve got the fire, we’ve got the wood, but where’s the sheep? In verse eight, Abraham says, it’s God who will see to the sheep, God’s gonna provide this sheep, so we get a hint of what he’s thinking. Now you can read it. It’s got a lot of irony. In fact, if you’re just listening to the story or you’re just reading it and it’s style in it’s poetic form, yeah, what’s gonna happen? How is this gonna be solved? And also you can see Abraham’s hope. He’s like, God’s gonna provide. We don’t really know what he’s thinking except that we know he wants them both to come down and he’s trusting that God’s gonna provide a way. Then in verse six, I wanna go back to that. Do you remember that root yachad that is both solitary and alone or only, but also unity?

                                           00:43:35             It comes back into the telling in verse six, Abraham takes the wood for the burnt offering and he lays it upon Isaac his son and he takes the fire in his hand and the knife, and they went both of them together, that both of them together. It’s that same root. Yachad, it’s yachdav, the two of them together, there’s unity in that one. The last time we saw it was, take your son your only one, but now it’s the two of them and it’s they’re united. They’re going together. Now there’s gonna be a little exchange and then we’re gonna get it again. The two of them walk together and you can see that both of them together. Another little interesting element in this verse is that there have been exchange noticed is that Abraham gives Isaac the wood and Abraham has the fire and the knife in his hand.

                                           00:44:29             Those are the dangerous things. That’s the lethal stuff. Abraham has that in his hands. One interpretation of that is that Abraham is holding it because it’s gotta be his job. Another interpretation is that he’s holding it because he wants to keep it as far away from Isaac as he can before anything has to happen. Does that make sense? So he’s holding the lethal stuff. Isaac is also holding the wood. You can see a beautiful parallel of holding the wood that ties to the idea of Christ and the cross and the wood and the tree.

John Bytheway:               00:45:05             I don’t remember when I made this note. Might have been four years ago, but I had next to verse five, and we come to you again inserting the word we in the NRSV and I have, maybe God will raise him again. Maybe that was the, like you said, we’ll come back to you, both of us. Maybe God will raise him again. Whoa.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:45:27             Yeah, he’s got faith. It’s a willingness. I need this to be, it’s like it’s a command, not even willingness. That’s not even the right word. It’s a command I want this to be. So then they take the instruments and they walk the two of them together. That phrase is gonna come up again in verse eight. In between that, between the first expression of them walking together in unity, and the second one is a conversation that happens and it’s Isaac. He asks in verse seven, Isaac spake unto Abraham, his father and said, my father, notice that. What does Abraham say? Isaac starts the conversation, my father, so he calls him by name. Then he said, Abraham responds. What does he respond? Do you see it?

Hank Smith:                      00:46:12             Hineni.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:46:13             Hineni good. There it is again. He responds to Isaac in the same way he responds to the Lord. He is like, here I am. It’s so poignant. It’s so powerful there. Isaac starts this conversation in that same sacred transaction that Abraham and God were having. Here I am, my son. Isaac says, behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb? And Abraham in verse eight says, my son, God will provide himself a lamb for the burnt offering. Then we get the repetition of the phrase that we had right before this conversation and the two of them walked together. It sandwiches that conversation. So if you’re listening skillfully, you’ll hear, they walk together. Isaac says, dad, where’s the lamb? Right? And Abraham says, God will provide. It’s just loaded. Does Isaac know what’s happening? What’s the explanation for this? We do know that after that conversation, Abraham says, God will provide, and they walk together and I would translate it even in unity. They’re walking together in unity. It could be subtext, right? There’s an exchange that’s not verbal, but the implicit between the two of them. I also really love that idea of unity that you can see mirrored in the story with Isaac and Abraham, but you can also see that mirrored in Christ in his unity with the Father, that they walked together in that unity and that oneness.

Hank Smith:                      00:47:50             It’s getting very intense as you read. Yeah. Even though we all know what’s gonna happen, it’s still, ooh,

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:47:57             The pace is just so perfect and what’s being emphasized is so poignant. The idea of questions that are being asked, they’re still moving forward in unity, and Abraham still has his faith. God’s gonna provide, God’s gonna provide, and then in verse nine, they arrive at the place in which God had told Abraham, Abraham builds the altar and lays the wood in order. We’re slowing back down. This is the same pace as when he was packing to go. You get a play by play of what’s happening every minute instead of a couple of verses where they wandered for three days. You’re feeling the anguish, you’re feeling, this is the moment the miracle’s gotta come. I’m holding that faith and I’m keeping that in my heart. I want that to be true. He builds the altar, they lay the wood, they bind Isaac, slow, slow, slow and lays him on the altar upon the wood.

                                           00:48:50             It’s just wild because you can hear momentum leading up to this verse 10, and Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son. It’s up in the air. This story is so poignant that there’s actually images across the three Abrahamic traditions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, that show Abraham with his hand up with a knife in it and Isaac and then the angel, the angels show up to keep things okay. They keep the covenant alive, they fix the situation. Here he is with his hand up and the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven. God says, Abraham. Abraham. Interesting that he says it twice, right? First time he just said it once. I am, I’m here I am. In the act ready to do this thing that I don’t wanna do. And then of course verse 12 and he said, lay out thy hand upon the lad. Neither do anything unto him. For now, I know that thou fearest God, seeing that thou hast not withheld thy son, thy only son from me, and there’s that only again, that yachad root.

Hank Smith:                      00:50:05             You better be the most punctual angel ever like you cannot be late to this.

John Bytheway:               00:50:13             Isn’t it, how God waits until the last minute sometimes before intervention? Absolutely last minute. Okay. We’re gonna put to death all the believers, have a nice night at the going down of the sun in 3 Nephi.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:50:31             I had a friend who said once God loves a photo finish. It does seem that way. Faith requires pushing the edges. To build it, you have to get pushed. The strength that comes from it, it’s just like spiritual strength training. There’s something about it getting pushed just to the edge to just see if you can hold it

John Bytheway:               00:50:55             Forevermore we refer to Abrahamic tests as the ultimate.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:51:00             That’s really true. It becomes our type of all big trials. You remember in the beginning, it’s an olah. This is a consecration, but it’s also a nasah. It’s also a test. This is a test to see how consecrated is Abraham. It’s frightening. Even what is happening and what seems to be being required, there is that level of total consecration, just total trust.

Hank Smith:                      00:51:30             This is pulling at, I think every part of him, emotionally, physically, spiritually from the Pearl of Great Price this is like childhood trauma even he’s facing. The Lord is, let me put you face to face with the ultimate nightmare. Do you trust me? Everybody walks out. Even the Lord is like, you really impressed me there. Right?

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:51:57             Don’t you think that’s how the Lord is with us? When we go through these tough times and these trials that feel so heavy or that push us to the brink where your back is against the wall, it’s now or never Lord. I love that you said, I think even the Lord was impressed because I think he’s impressed with us too.

Hank Smith:                      00:52:18             There’s something that I know John loves to quote and John, I actually have the exact story here that you’ve quoted to me many times. This is Truman G. Madsen. It’s called The Power from Abrahamic Tests. Brother Madsen says, once I was in the valley known as Hebron, now beautifully fruitful, and where tradition has it, there is a tomb to Father Abraham. As I approached the place with Elder Hugh B. Brown, I asked, what are the blessings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Elder Brown thought for a moment and answered in one word, posterity. Then I almost burst out why then was Abraham commanded to go to Mount Moriah and offer his only hope of posterity? It was clear that this man, nearly 90, had thought and prayed and wept over that question before he finally said Abraham needed to learn something about Abraham.

John Bytheway:               00:53:22             Wouldn’t you say we learn more from our hard experiences than from our easy ones, but I don’t pray for hard experiences.

Hank Smith:                      00:53:31             The end of that talk, brothers and sisters, today we need Abrahams. We need those who are willing to stand and who having done all, stand. We have people now and need more who can listen to the living word and the present commitment of the Lord Jesus Christ through his prophets and stand. May God help us respond and become Abrahams.

John Bytheway:               00:53:58             I like that word stand when you think of the word stand and standards that come from it, and the opposite of stand would be to shrink or buckle or wilt or compromise. Be a standard bearer. Do you stand with the leaders and represent their view to the people, or do you stand with the people and represent their view to the leaders? Which way do you face? Where do you stand? Those are all tough questions.

Hank Smith:                      00:54:26             And how do you feel if you’re Abraham and you went the distance? Is that why he names the mountain the name of the place?

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:54:34             Yeah. Thank you for taking us there. Yeah, he names the mountain. There’s so much that’s beautiful about this name. This mountain is gonna be traditionally the place of the temple. When scholars look at this, they’re seeing this as the sacrifices that are gonna take place on the temple mirror this story, and then also echo ahead to Christ who is the person that makes faith possible.

John Bytheway:               00:55:01             A lot of people are very interested in that real estate right there.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:55:06             Yeah, it’s true.

Hank Smith:                      00:55:09             The descendants of Isaac worshiped there for however long, and now the descendants of Ishmael worship there. Yeah.

John Bytheway:               00:55:15             Yeah.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:55:16             Sacred to all three Abrahamic traditions.

John Bytheway:               00:55:19             And on one of our first days, Hank and one of the first Old Testament lessons, and Come, Follow Me, is to look for Jesus in these stories. Parallels here are pretty hard to miss.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:55:33             Yeah. The way it’s told. It just brings them up.

Hank Smith:                      00:55:37             Think of Jehovah watching this play out, knowing that when it plays out for him.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:55:47             Wow. That’s powerful.

Hank Smith:                      00:55:48             There is no,

John Bytheway:               00:55:49             There’s no angel to stop him.

Hank Smith:                      00:55:53             He and his father will go through with this. Right?

John Bytheway:               00:55:58             He will like Isaac it seems, a lot have wondered about this if Isaac was submitting to this, that Jesus will.

Hank Smith:                      00:56:06             Seems like it. Yeah.

John Bytheway:               00:56:08             Be a willing sacrifice.

Hank Smith:                      00:56:11             Even after every time I’ve read this, the way you walked us through it, Carli, I am. Oh, I gotta breathe here. I’m like, oh, okay.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:56:21             It’s such a powerful story. I love that it was written so beautifully. I mean all of, I think all of the Genesis stories especially are written so beautifully, but this one, there’s just something in it that is relatable but also cosmically, vastly a type of the whole beauty of the plan of salvation.

Hank Smith:                      00:56:42             Yeah. We’ve had, we have one father, two mothers, two sons, and so many separate journeys.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:56:50             Yeah, parallels but different.

Hank Smith:                      00:56:53             And Jehovah working with each one, giving promises to each one. Testing each one. Carli, I laughed really hard today. You really pulled on my soul here with this last story of Abraham and also talking about Hagar and Sarah, how do you wanna wrap this up?

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:57:12             Taking us to verse 14, the very end of the story, right after they see the ram and the ram becomes the sacrifice. So Isaac lives, Abraham’s faith came through and God showed up right in the nick of time. This story ends with a word play that’s actually gonna be pulled in by Christ later when he’s talking about Abraham. I think you’ll like how he brings us full circle, but let’s look at verse 14 first. There’s some Hebrew in here. It’s anglicized Hebrew, but does anyone wanna try it?

Hank Smith:                      00:57:51             Go for it John.

John Bytheway:               00:57:54             Genesis 22:14, and Abraham called the name of that place, Jehovah-jireh, as it is said to this day, in the Mount of the Lord, it shall be seen.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:58:08             This is an ideology. This is a verse that says, here’s why this place has this name and here’s what this place means because of this name and this story. It’s like a little bow at the end of the story, but it also marks the place that that’s where this happened. We’re hearing it in 2026, but the ancient people would hear it too and understand that this is the place where the sacrifices happen, and this is the story about why they happen the way they do. And it’s interesting because that literally reads, the Lord will see, or the Lord sees continually like the Lord is watching this, and then it says, and to this day it’s called in the mountain of the Lord it shall be seen. It’s both an active and a passive the Lord sees, and then this is where it will be seen. Let’s go to John chapter eight, verse 56, and I need to shout out to a friend and colleague, Matt Bowen who wrote about this and saw this connection. It’s really very beautiful.

Hank Smith:                      00:59:14             Matt’s been on our show before a couple of times.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         00:59:17             The connection here is gonna tie all of our stories together. This is Christ talking about Abraham. He’s referring to this mythic story. Again, when I say myth, I never mean not true. It’s just a really symbolic, full, culturally weighty story. He pulls in the word play. Verse 56, your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and was glad. What you can see in here is seeing Abraham, seeing, which is how we end this story. The Lord sees, and it will be seen on this mountain, but also there’s rejoicing and that actually might be a tie to Isaac. Remember, Isaac is joyful laughter Yitzhak means to rejoice and laugh. What’s beautiful to me about this verse is it’s Christ. Knowing these stories, knowing these people, knowing these figures and saying in a beautifully poetic way, possibly bringing in Isaac with the rejoicing and bringing in the seeing and Abraham on the mountain and all of it together, is a way that salvation comes to the human family with sacrifice and seeing and rejoicing and these covenant people, this beautiful covenant family.

Hank Smith:                      01:00:47             Carli, isn’t Jesus standing at the exact same spot?

Dr. Carli Anderson:         01:00:53             Yes. Yes. Good. I’m glad you saw that.

Hank Smith:                      01:00:58             I have been here before.

John Bytheway:               01:01:00             Feast of Tabernacles. Oh yeah.

Hank Smith:                      01:01:03             Thou art not yet 50 years old. You’ve seen Abraham and Jesus says, not only have I seen Abraham, I’ve been right here with Abraham.

John Bytheway:               01:01:13             That’s really awesome.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         01:01:16             The story and the experience and all the faith and then the salvation, the being that’s gonna bring it about all there in place and space and story. It’s rejoicing. Ultimately, it’s just gonna be rejoicing.

Hank Smith:                      01:01:32             Carli, I can’t tell you how wonderful this has been. John, I say this a lot. I know when I’m feeling the Holy Ghost is when I don’t want it to end and I wanna be a better person. Carli, this is our family. We don’t realize we’re doing family history when we study these stories right.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         01:01:54             I like that. Yeah.

Hank Smith:                      01:01:55             Even though John and I don’t speak the Hebrew, you opened it enough to us to where I feel like we got closer to the original.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         01:02:02             Good. I’m glad you saw that. I’ve felt that there’s something about it that really opens up the stories and makes them rich.

Hank Smith:                      01:02:12             Thank you for your time, Carli. Thank you.

John Bytheway:               01:02:14             Yeah.

Hank Smith:                      01:02:16             John, we absolutely need to thank two people. Gaylene and Russell Anderson in Sandy, Utah. They gave us this opportunity. Carli’s parents.

Dr. Carli Anderson:         01:02:27             I’m really lucky. My parents are the reason that I, you’re making me cry guys. My parents are the reason that I have this spiritual curiosity. They brought these stories to life for me, my mom and my dad when I was little. They encouraged me in my study and I am what I am because of them. Thanks for the shout out. They deserve it.

Hank Smith:                      01:02:51             Beautiful. A perfect place to finish. We want to thank Dr. Carli Anderson for being with us today. It has been pure joy. We want to thank our executive producer Shannon Sorensen, our sponsors David and Verla Sorensen. In every episode, we remember our founder Steve Sorensen. We hope you’ll join us next week. We’ve got more of Genesis to cover on followHIM. As a thank you to our wonderful listeners, we’d love to gift you the digital version of our book, Finding Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. It offers short, meaningful insights drawn from our past Old Testament episodes. Visit Follow him.co. That’s follow him.co to download your free copy today, and you’ll also find the link to purchase the print edition. Thank you for being part of our followHIM family. Of course, none of this could happen without our incredible production crew. David Perry, Lisa Spice, Will Stoughton, Krystal Roberts, Ariel Cuadra, Heather Barlow, Amelia Kabwika, Sydney Smith and Annabelle Sorensen.