The Nations of Abraham: Explaining Israel’s Position in the Persian Empire

English for the Pentateuch is from CJPS with adjustments; other biblical texts are NJPS with adjustments.  

Notably, this chapter transfers the “great nation” status to Ishmael (Gen 17:20).  

In another blessing from El Shaddai in Gen 35:11, we find the similar expression “assembly of nations,” and in 28:3, “assembly of peoples” (לקהל עמים) adopted by Isaac in his blessing on Jacob. See discussion below.

He uses this reading to defend the idea that converts can refer to themselves as descendants of Abraham, since this is the meaning of the phrase “father of a multitude of nations.” Rabbi Yehudah is likely interpreting the name אברם as אב-ארם, father of Aram. For more on the historical context of this passage, see, Yael Wilfand, “Roman Concepts of Citizenship, and Rabbinic Approaches to the Lineage of Converts and the Integration of their Descendants into Israel,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 11 (2020): 45–75 [65–70].

For some source critical discussions of the blessings to the patriarchs in the Pentateuch, see Marc Zvi Brettler, “The Promise of the Land of Israel to the Patriarchs in the Pentateuch,” Shnaton 5–6, (1983): vii–xxiv; Joel S. Baden, The Promise to the Patriarchs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

Mark G. Brett, “Yhwh among the Nations: The Politics of Divine Names in Genesis 15 and 24,” in The Politics of the Ancestors: Exegetical and Historical Perspectives on Genesis 12–36, ed. Mark G. Brett and Jakob Wöhrle, FAT 124 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 113–130.

Editor’s note: For a brief discussion on how the documents were isolated by source critical scholars in the early days of critical Bible scholarship, and how the names of God fit into the model, see Zev Farber, “Documentary Hypothesis: The Revelation of YHWH’s Name Continues to Enlighten,” TheTorah (2014).

That said, the correlation is not perfect, as we encounter a different wording in v.7: “I will take you as my people” (ולקחתי אתכם לי לעם) rather than promising a “multitude of nations” (המון גוים). Thus, the explanatory power of the documentary hypothesis may be more limited here.

See the extended discussion in Nili Wazana, All the Boundaries of the Land: The Promised Land in Biblical Thought in Light of the Ancient Near East, trans. Liat Qeren (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013), 97–126. See also Yigal Levin, “The Geopolitical Context Behind the Boundaries in Numbers 34,” TheTorah (2014), who contrasts these Persian Period boundaries (“the expansive map” in Gen 15:18) with the earlier 26^th dynasty boundaries, reflected in the description of the land in Numbers 34 (“a medium sized map”).

Jakob Wöhrle, “Abraham amidst the Nations: The Priestly Concept of Covenant and the Persian Imperial Ideology,” in Covenant in the Persian Period, ed. Richard J. Bautch and Gary N. Knoppers (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015), 23–39.

E.A. Speiser, “’People’ and ‘Nation’ in Israel,” JBL 79 (1960): 157–163; see further, Mark G. Brett, “Nationalism and the Hebrew Bible,” in The Bible in Ethics, ed. John W. Rogerson, Margaret Davies and M. Daniel Carroll R. (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1995), 136–163; Dominik Markl, “Die ‘Nation’ in der Bibel: Kosellecks Begriffsgeschichte und biblische Übersetzungsgeschichte,” in Kritische Schriftsgelehrsamkeit in priesterlichen und prophetischen Diskursen: Festschrift für Reinhard Achenbach, ed. Lars Maskow und Jonathan Robker, BZABR 27 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2022), 405–416, exploring the interactions between translational and conceptual histories.

Bernard M. Levinson, “The First Constitution: Rethinking the Origins of Rule of Law and Separation of Powers in Light of Deuteronomy,” Cardozo Law Review 27 (2006): 1853–1888. Modern constitutional arrangements undercut the power of monarchs, either by constraining the crown or by eliminating the crown altogether, as outlined in Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). The Torah does both of these things: it effectively eliminates the crown from the legal arrangements in Exodus through Numbers, and it allows for the possibility—only a possibility—for a native king in Deut 17:14–20, who remains subject to a divinely given torah. Mark G. Brett., Locations of God: Political Theology in the Hebrew Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 34–53.

See especially Jean-Louis Ska, “The Call of Abraham and Israel’s Birth Certificate (Gen 12:1–4a),” The Exegesis of the Pentateuch, FAT 66 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 46–66. See also, Erhard Blum, Die Komposition der Vatergeschichte, WMANT 57 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1984).

Specifically, we cannot be sure whether the opening promise to Abram of his becoming a “great nation” (Gen 12) was part of an early J document, or alternatively, whether this was an adaptation introduced in the Persian period. Either way, YHWH’s first revelation to Abram does not mention a king, and in this respect it agrees more with the constitional vision of a great nation in Deuteronomy (Deut 4:6–8).

If the composition of Chronicles is anything to go by, adapting earlier texts would have been the norm, and the fluidity of biblical texts in Hellenistic times only reinforces that point.

Regarding the term “sly civility,” see the classic work of Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), and compare the postcolonial approach in Anselm C. Hagedorn, “Local Law in an Imperial Context: The Role of Torah in the (Imagined) Persian Period,” in The Pentateuch as Torah: New Models for Understanding Its Promulgation and Acceptance, ed. Gary N. Knoppers and Bernard M. Levinson (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 57–76.

Mark G. Brett, “The Imperial Context of the Pentateuch,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Pentateuch, ed. Joel S. Baden and Jeffrey Stackert (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 443–462.