Abraham Serving the Three Angels, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1646. Wikimedia
Abraham’s Hospitality: Is God a Good Guest?
Abraham famously receives three divine guests and hosts them lavishly (Genesis 18:1–15). Anthropological fieldwork on the etiquette of hospitality in Mediterranean-type societies allows us to better understand Abraham as host and his divine visitors as guests.
Published: November 3, 2023
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Last Updated: September 7, 2026
While אֹרֵחַ carries the sense of “guest” in Modern Hebrew, in the Bible it refers to a traveler or wanderer.
The story partly parallels the Sodom and Gomorrah narrative. Editor’s note: See Sara Milstein, “The Story of the Concubine at Gibeah: A Satire on King Saul,” TheTorah (2017).
Editor’s note: For an assessment of these narratives as reflecting Bedouin culture, including the addendum, “Yael breaks the Host’s Code,” see Clinton Bailey, “Abraham and Lot’s Bedouin-Style Hospitality,” TheTorah (2019).
For an earlier study in which I apply this method, see Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme, “Invitation to Murder: Hospitality and Violence in the Hebrew Bible,” Studia Theologica: Nordic Journal of Theology 73 (2019): 89–108.
Julian Pitt-Rivers, “The Law of Hospitality,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2 (2012): 501–17; Julian Pitt-Rivers, The People of the Sierra, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971).
Pitt-Rivers, “The Law of Hospitality.”
Philip F. Esler, “Social-Scientific Models in Biblical Interpretation” in Ancient Israel: The Old Testament in Its Social Context, ed. Philip F. Esler (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006), 3–14.
See Esther J. Hamori, When Gods Were Men: The Embodied God in Biblical and Near Eastern Literature (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2008), 5–13.
Unless otherwise indicated, translations follow NJPS, with modifications.
For a detailed discussion of the shift from singular to plural in Abraham’s speech as he addresses the men, see Hamori, When Gods Were Men, 65–67.
My translation. On the particle נא, see Paul Joüon and Tamitsu Muraoka, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, 3rd reprint of 2nd ed. with corrections, Subsidia Biblica 27 (Roma: G&B press, 2011), 105c.
A less lavish alternative would have been to slaughter a kid or a lamb rather than a calf. See Oded Borowski, Every Living Thing: Daily Use of Animals in Ancient Israel (Walnut Creek: AltaMira, 1998), 77–78; and Cynthia Shafer-Elliot, Food in Ancient Judah: Domestic Cooking in the Time of the Hebrew Bible (Sheffield: Equinox, 2013), 145.
Shafer-Elliot, Food in Ancient Judah, 145.
See, e.g., Lot (Gen 19:3), the Levite’s father-in-law (Judg 19:4), and the old man in Gibeah (Judg 19:21).
Thomas Bolin, “Exchange, Justice, and Mercy in Genesis 18–19,” in Patronage in Ancient Palestine and in the Hebrew Bible: A Reader, ed. Emanuel Pfoh, The Social World of Biblical Antiquity 12 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2022), 282–301 (at 290).
Editor’s note: On different approaches to interpreting this episode, see Ben-Zion Katz, “God’s Appearance to Abraham: Vision or Visit?” TheTorah (2013).
Hamori, When Gods Were Men, 11–12.
If the guest were a normal mortal visitor, he would be unaware of Sarah’s thoughts and immediate reaction (Hamori, When Gods Were Men, 68).
Claude Levi-Strauss, The Origin of Table Manners: Introduction to a Science of Mythology, vol. 3 (London: J. Cape, 1978), 507.
