Reading Genesis 15
In my tardy (but considered) opinion, our first two research questions are most relevant to this week's material, to wit, and somewhat embellished:
I invite your comments on these questions, as well as a number of others I have suggested in my reading notes below; as always, your own particular interests and insights are requested. Below find my inexhaustive reflections on the text.
Genesis 15
In Genesis 14, Melchizedek’s appearance introduces a priestly mediator between Abram and God Most High; in Genesis 15, however, Abram resumes direct communication with the Lord, immediate and unmediated by priest or person. Indeed, Abram’s encounter with the Lord in this chapter appears, for the first time, to be genuinely dialogic: Abram and YHWH converse in an exchange of questions and answers, requests and responses.
The temporal nature of the encounter is difficult to interpret: the Lord first comes to Abram in a vision, but it’s not clear to me whether the vision comprises the rest of the chapter; if it does, then Abram experiences an unusual sleep-within-a-dream. In any case, the conversation, whether occurring in real-time or dream-time, is narrated so as to underscore its passage through time and space. YHWH takes Abram across two crucial symbolic thresholds: the limen of his tent, in verse 5, and the setting of the sun, in verse 17. Whereas the Lord’s first utterance of the covenant in 12:1 occurs in some anarchic beginning outside of history, as Jim as suggested, the reiteration of the covenant in Genesis 15 can be understood to take place in a very different temporal mode, a here-and-now history that moves in human increments of time and space. (Alternately, I suppose, the liminal location of the encounter could be read as conferring a special ontological status of some sort on the conversation. Readers’wild speculation considered opinions solicited.)
The Lord’s utterance in Genesis 15 differs rhetorically from his first pronouncement in Genesis 12, as well, most notably in the introduction of metaphor. In Genesis 13:16 the Lord says, “I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted.” A cognate simile (a species of metaphor) is introduced in in 15:5 to the same effect: “Look up at the heavens and count the stars---if indeed you can count them. … So shall your offspring be.” Dust and star as metonym for earth and heaven; earth and heaven as metaphor for Abram’s family.
Roman Jakobson, of course, has written famously on metaphor and metonymy; I know Ricouer and Derrida have also written on metaphor, though I don’t know what they’ve said; I also am absolutely ignorant of Hebrew rhetoric. If there is anything to be gathered from the appearance of metaphor in the covenant, perhaps one might begin with the trope’s logic of substitution and interruption: dust and star work as conceptual substitutes for offspring, bringing their superabundance---indeed, their unknowable superabundance---to bear on the idea of Abram’s seed. But the substitution of metaphor is accomplished by interruption, rather than by the contiguity of metonymy: star and dust are not continuous, conceptually, with offspring. Interruption, substitution---this is the vocabulary we’ve been using to talk about the Lord’s disruption of the patrilineal logic. Is there a connection? (Readers’wild speculation considered opinions solicited, if the question is interesting.)
This chapter seems to introduce the problems of faith, doubt and knowledge---problems that will reappear surrounding the conception and birth of Isaac. Verse 6 tells us that “Abram believed the Lord, and he [the Lord]? credited it to him [Abram?] as righteousness.” Several verses later, however, Abram seeks a surer knowledge, asking in verse 8, “How can I know that I will gain possession of” the land? In response, the Lord directs Abram to bring him various animals, and upon Abram’s compliance the Lord puts on a miraculous show of supernatural power, assuring Abram that he can “know for certain” that his descendants will ultimately inherit the land. This is clearly a foreshadowing of the episode with Isaac later, but I have no idea what to make of the specifics. I’m certain there’s symbolic meaning to Abram’s various offerings and to the way they are prepared, described in verses 9 and 10, but I’m ignorant. (Knowledgeable readers’ insights solicited.)
Finally, something might be said about the highly atmospheric recounting of Abram’s extraordinary night vision in verse 12-21. Abram’s “deep sleep” and the “thick and dreadful darkness” that falls upon him bring to mind both Adam’s deep sleep at the creation of Eve and the darkness that blankets the formless earth at Genesis 1:1; from both darknesses YHWH brings forth light. (I don’t know the original Hebrew, so I don’t know whether these parallels are supported by the lexis.) Abram knows he has encountered the creator God: in verse 2 he addresses YHWH as “Sovereign,” the term (I think) introduced by Melchizedek at 14:19 that encompasses maker, creator, possessor, and engenderer. (Please correct me if I’m wrong here, Jim.)
It is this context of creation that YHWH gives Abram the extraordinary prophecy of the future of the great nation that will bear his name. This is the first appearance of the word “covenant”, I think, though it is by now the third or fourth iteration of the themes of inheritance and offspring. Here the Lord promises the land not to Abram himself, but to his descendants: the gift is deferred, but also defined. Abram’s descendants will displace---substitute, interrupt---the “Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.” In Genesis 13:14 and 13:17 the Lord invites Abram to claim the borders of his land by seeing and walking its perimeter, an incremental and continuous act of possession. In Genesis 15, however, YHWH installs Abram’s offspring in the land---discursively, at least---in a radically discontinuous, substitutionary fashion. Metonymy and metaphor are coming to mind here, again. Is there anything to be learned from from these differences? (Readers’considered opinions wild speculations solicited.)
1. If Abraham is the paradigm of fidelity to God, then what are the essential elements of this faithful relationship? In particular, is the faithful relationship between Lord and human mediated or immediate? How do questions of faith, doubt and knowledge structure the terms of the relationship?
2. What can Abraham's relationship with God tell us about the nature and possibility of theology? In particular, are the rhetorical forms of dialogue and metaphor relevant to the particular operations of theology?
I invite your comments on these questions, as well as a number of others I have suggested in my reading notes below; as always, your own particular interests and insights are requested. Below find my inexhaustive reflections on the text.
Genesis 15
In Genesis 14, Melchizedek’s appearance introduces a priestly mediator between Abram and God Most High; in Genesis 15, however, Abram resumes direct communication with the Lord, immediate and unmediated by priest or person. Indeed, Abram’s encounter with the Lord in this chapter appears, for the first time, to be genuinely dialogic: Abram and YHWH converse in an exchange of questions and answers, requests and responses.
The temporal nature of the encounter is difficult to interpret: the Lord first comes to Abram in a vision, but it’s not clear to me whether the vision comprises the rest of the chapter; if it does, then Abram experiences an unusual sleep-within-a-dream. In any case, the conversation, whether occurring in real-time or dream-time, is narrated so as to underscore its passage through time and space. YHWH takes Abram across two crucial symbolic thresholds: the limen of his tent, in verse 5, and the setting of the sun, in verse 17. Whereas the Lord’s first utterance of the covenant in 12:1 occurs in some anarchic beginning outside of history, as Jim as suggested, the reiteration of the covenant in Genesis 15 can be understood to take place in a very different temporal mode, a here-and-now history that moves in human increments of time and space. (Alternately, I suppose, the liminal location of the encounter could be read as conferring a special ontological status of some sort on the conversation. Readers’
The Lord’s utterance in Genesis 15 differs rhetorically from his first pronouncement in Genesis 12, as well, most notably in the introduction of metaphor. In Genesis 13:16 the Lord says, “I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted.” A cognate simile (a species of metaphor) is introduced in in 15:5 to the same effect: “Look up at the heavens and count the stars---if indeed you can count them. … So shall your offspring be.” Dust and star as metonym for earth and heaven; earth and heaven as metaphor for Abram’s family.
Roman Jakobson, of course, has written famously on metaphor and metonymy; I know Ricouer and Derrida have also written on metaphor, though I don’t know what they’ve said; I also am absolutely ignorant of Hebrew rhetoric. If there is anything to be gathered from the appearance of metaphor in the covenant, perhaps one might begin with the trope’s logic of substitution and interruption: dust and star work as conceptual substitutes for offspring, bringing their superabundance---indeed, their unknowable superabundance---to bear on the idea of Abram’s seed. But the substitution of metaphor is accomplished by interruption, rather than by the contiguity of metonymy: star and dust are not continuous, conceptually, with offspring. Interruption, substitution---this is the vocabulary we’ve been using to talk about the Lord’s disruption of the patrilineal logic. Is there a connection? (Readers’
This chapter seems to introduce the problems of faith, doubt and knowledge---problems that will reappear surrounding the conception and birth of Isaac. Verse 6 tells us that “Abram believed the Lord, and he [the Lord]? credited it to him [Abram?] as righteousness.” Several verses later, however, Abram seeks a surer knowledge, asking in verse 8, “How can I know that I will gain possession of” the land? In response, the Lord directs Abram to bring him various animals, and upon Abram’s compliance the Lord puts on a miraculous show of supernatural power, assuring Abram that he can “know for certain” that his descendants will ultimately inherit the land. This is clearly a foreshadowing of the episode with Isaac later, but I have no idea what to make of the specifics. I’m certain there’s symbolic meaning to Abram’s various offerings and to the way they are prepared, described in verses 9 and 10, but I’m ignorant. (Knowledgeable readers’ insights solicited.)
Finally, something might be said about the highly atmospheric recounting of Abram’s extraordinary night vision in verse 12-21. Abram’s “deep sleep” and the “thick and dreadful darkness” that falls upon him bring to mind both Adam’s deep sleep at the creation of Eve and the darkness that blankets the formless earth at Genesis 1:1; from both darknesses YHWH brings forth light. (I don’t know the original Hebrew, so I don’t know whether these parallels are supported by the lexis.) Abram knows he has encountered the creator God: in verse 2 he addresses YHWH as “Sovereign,” the term (I think) introduced by Melchizedek at 14:19 that encompasses maker, creator, possessor, and engenderer. (Please correct me if I’m wrong here, Jim.)
It is this context of creation that YHWH gives Abram the extraordinary prophecy of the future of the great nation that will bear his name. This is the first appearance of the word “covenant”, I think, though it is by now the third or fourth iteration of the themes of inheritance and offspring. Here the Lord promises the land not to Abram himself, but to his descendants: the gift is deferred, but also defined. Abram’s descendants will displace---substitute, interrupt---the “Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.” In Genesis 13:14 and 13:17 the Lord invites Abram to claim the borders of his land by seeing and walking its perimeter, an incremental and continuous act of possession. In Genesis 15, however, YHWH installs Abram’s offspring in the land---discursively, at least---in a radically discontinuous, substitutionary fashion. Metonymy and metaphor are coming to mind here, again. Is there anything to be learned from from these differences? (Readers’
posted by Rosalynde at 7:50 PM
9 Comments:
A couple of extremely speculative thoughts about chapter 15:
vs. 1, “after these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision”
This verse marks the first time that the Lord’s “appearance” to Abram is described in this way. In 12.1 it simply says: “The Lord said to Abram . . . ,” 12.7: “the Lord appeared to Abram and said . . . ,” 13.14: “the Lord had said to Abram . . .” What is different here is the use of the circumlocution “the word of the Lord came to Abram.” This construction - with its metonymic description of the Lord as being his “word” – appears to mark a new aspect of mediation, as Rosalynde suggests, in Abram’s relation with the Lord. Perhaps this means that, post-Melchizedek, Abram doesn’t quite resume immediate communication with the Lord?
Also, perhaps it is the introduction of a symbolic dimension to the relationship that allows Abram to do more than simply comply with the requests and commands of the Lord: their relation, now articulated in terms of words and symbols (also demonstrated in the highly symbolic covenant ceremony shortly to follow?), allows for Abram to use words to engage and reply rather than simply offering mute gestures of obedience. If so, is this a step forward or a step back? Is this a sign of Abram growing up - he breaks with the naïve immediacy of his relation to the Lord for the sake of a mediated “adult” relationship? Though the price of such a relationship vis-à-vis the symbolic order appears to be (surprise!) the loss of certainty and the introduction of feelings like shame and fear.
vs. 5, “look up to the heavens and count the stars, if you can count them”
I read a whole series of books over Christmas break about the history of the notion of infinity in religion, mathematics, and philosophy. I’m not sure what to say about this verse at the moment (don’t worry, I won’t let that stop me), but it strikes me as potentially significant nonetheless. What Abram expressly fears is “going to his end” childless (15.2) and what the Lord offers in response is a promise of something endless. What strikes me about the example the Lord gives, however, is that it is not an example of a “potential” infinity. The uncountable “infinity” of the stars (or the sand) is right there, actualized and surveyable (though uncountable) as a complete set right before Abram’s eyes. The stars and sand are an example of a kind of synchronic infinity rather than the diachronic infinity we would normally associate with endless generations of children - generations that may be never ending, but are never present all at once.
This suggests to me (continuing the requested wild speculation) a way of thinking about the relation of eternity (the immemorial, as Jim puts it) to Abram’s present historical moment. Eternity is not another kind of diachronic temporality (one that would be essentially the same as everyday time, but never-ending and uncorrupting), but a dimension of diachronic temporality that is perpetually synchronically available (like the infinity/eternity of the stars in the sky) at any moment of the historical present and available as an interruption of the inevitable movement from cause to effect of historical necessity.
To bring this back around to Roman Jakobson (who I know only second-hand through Lacan), Lacan reads Jakobson’s notion of metonymy as the diachronic dimension of our linguistic experience and metaphor as the synchronic dimension of experience. Metaphor is, for Lacan, the properly symbolic dimension of language that is "eternal" and directly related the formation of the unconscious.
vs. 18, “on that day the Lord cut a covenant with Abram”
It may be worth noting, as many of you likely already know, that in Hebrew the idiom proper to making a covenant is to “cut” a covenant (which some scholars have speculated is an idiom that may find its genesis in exactly the kind of ceremony described here in 15.9-17). At any rate, it’s not insignificant (possibly) that the newly symbolic dimension of Abram’s relation to the Lord is grounded in the “cut” of a covenant.
The symbolic is surely a cut that simultaneously frees us from the tyranny of the immediacy of the senses and the passions even as it splits our identity in two, cutting me off from myself by representing me to myself (I can never quite coincide with myself again now that I’m represented to myself and this moves me to constantly fantasize about a kind of illusory perfection in which I would no longer suffer from this inadequacy – the kind of illusion that is, I think, at the root of every sin, i.e., pride: pretending to be self-sufficient when you are not). Further, the symbolic first loops this representation of myself to myself through the eyes of the Other so that, in a fundamental way, from here on out, the Other is inside me before I am –“extimate to me,” Lacan says - closer to me than I am to myself. Hence the introduction of fear, shame, uncertainty associated with the initiation into the symbolic. This way of talking also resonates in all kinds of ways with Levinas, Derrida, Marion, etc. and their descriptions of the “called subject.” This cut may also prefigure the most significant covenantal cut of all (circumcision) in which Abram will finally be given his promised heir - but only if he submits to a symbolic castration so that the child is never truly his own but the Other’s (i.e., the Lord’s).
Some final thoughts.
Is this kind of cut necessary in order for any threshold or limen to be crossed (see Rosalynde’s discussion of the limen)? Without the cut, are we condemned to the immediacy of whatever IS, forever unable to cross a threshold and arrive at something new?
Is it this symbolic cut that makes possible “metaphor” by allowing for substitution and, hence, precipitates the loss of self-identity (identity with one’s homeland but also the identity with one’s own name – the Lord will make Abram’s name great . . . but only by changing his name)? Metaphor, here, as the axis of substitution and synchronic symbolism may also be key to thinking about the possibility of the ram being substituted for Isaac. Only the opening of the symbolic and metaphorical (with all its problems) allows for substitution/atonement?
All of this appears to me to bear on Rosalynde’s excellent reformulations/ extensions of our general discussion questions: (1) is the faithful relationship between Lord and human mediated or immediate?, and (2) are the rhetorical forms of dialogue and metaphor relevant to the particular operations of theology?
To (1) I suggest: mediate. To (2) I suggest: yes, yes, yes.
Adam, your comments about the symbolic dimension implied in "the word of the Lord," and all the Lacanian apparatus that it suggests, are very stimulating. But they're making the historicist in me nervous. (Frankly, my own comments about metaphor made me nervous in the same way.) In order to make any claims about the symbolic functions of language---or indeed the rhetorical functions of metaphor---in the original text, don't we need to ground them in period-specific Hebrew rhetoric and philosophy? This, at least, was how I was trained to work; however, I'm willing to play by somebody else's rules if I can understand them. Is the idea simply that the deep structures of language and psyche are transhistorical and trans-er,lingual?
Rosalynde,
Great questions.
I certainly don’t intend the above speculation as other than speculative (though, perhaps, speculative in a more literal sense of simply “trying to see what we can see”). And I take it is a complement that it makes the historicist in you (and me) nervous – classically, there is nothing philosophy loves more than to make the historicists and rhetoricians nervous :)
There is also no doubt that some period-specific Hebrew rhetoric and philosophy would be beneficial here (my Hebrew, however, is barely even Hebrew-specific). However, I think that there are certainly some transhistorical / translingual structures in play. I don’t know that we need to be expert in the details to be able to assert (as you rightly do) that there is a newly “symbolic” or “dialogical” dimension to Abram’s and God’s relationship in this chapter (especially in light of the introduction of actual dialogue with God and the institution of a formal, symbolic covenant). I’m also relatively confident that most every assimilation into a symbolic order will involve the kind of subject-splitting alienation Lacan discusses in which we become capable of symbolically registering our own identity only by looping it through a symbolic register that is radically Other to us as non-symbolic “animals.” (And the experience of alienation and exile seems to be fundamental to much of what is happening to Abram.) Further, reading “metaphor” as a way of describing language’s fundamental logic of substitution isn’t entirely necessary, but it’s convenient and, either way, I can’t conceive of a symbolic order that wouldn’t entail substitution as one of its fundamental operations.
Of course, tying these general theses to specific events, uses of words, metaphors, etc. in the text is where things really start to get speculative and in this respect I'm more than happy to entertain (may they proliferate!) alternate readings, etc. Perhaps methodologically, we could say that what I suggest above is certainly more properly theological than historico-critical. As Joe says on another blog: “The more I work with the scriptures, the more I think that the united approach of LaCoque and Ricoeur is the best way to think about the scriptures generally: we should take up all the weight of historical criticism, and then transition from that (and quite naturally) to theological or interpretive questions.” Though I am certainly eager to jump to second task. Please, keep me honest!
My best,
Adam
Joe,
I'm not sure I entirely follow the distinction between a "symbolic order" and a "typological order" - though you propose that we might want to deconstruct this very difference. Could you say more about the distinction? Typology strikes me as being fundamentally structured by the possibility of substitution in a way that is perhaps identical with metaphor. Are you suggesting that the difference has to do with the type of community they engender?
My best,
Adam
I apologize for coming in late on this; I feel like I have about 3 years of background reading to do before being able to fully understand, let alone helpfully respond to, many of the points discussed. Thus, I will unfortunately have little to say about dialogic relations, beginnings of history, and so forth.
What I am able to wonder about is the repetition of the covenant. This chapter marks the third time that Abram has been promised the land, although this time there does seem to be significant extensions of the boundaries of that land. Why does the Lord continually repeat the promise to Abram? Perhaps fruitful thoughts along this line relate to the circumstances in which the recitation occurs. Abram is first promised great posterity and a promised land, as we noted, after his father's death. He is next promised these things after allowing Lot to choose the better part of the land. Finally, in this chapter he is again promised land and posterity after rescuing Lot and dealing graciously with the king of Sodom. Is the Lord enlarging and expanding His covenant with Abram as a consequence of Abram extending his concern for others? Perhaps this has something to do with the interruption of patriarchy we've been discussing. Though the Lord's promise to Abram remains patriarchal (he will have great posterity), the Lord enlarges and expands this covenant in response to Abram's willingness to depart strict patriarchy. I'd be interested to hear other takes on the reason the Lord so frequently repeats the promise.
Also interesting is the Lord's response to Abram's request for proof. As noted, this is the first time in which Abram has become God's partner in conversation. But God responds to Abram's request in something other than language, with a miraculous (and to my modern ears quite odd) display of divine power. For better or worse, though, it doesn't seem like the power of this demonstration lasted long. (There's a reason that Isaac is named "Isaac," one that Abram would probably like to forget.) What does this tell us about divine communication? What does this tell us about the non-verbal communication posited frequently within the Church as a means of knowledge?
I apologize that these thoughts aren't more directly on the topics discussed. I'm hoping that the coming chapters will push our questions and discussions more toward my areas of competence.
I apologize for coming in late on this; I feel like I have about 3 years of background reading to do before being able to fully understand, let alone helpfully respond to, many of the points discussed. Thus, I will unfortunately have little to say about dialogic relations, beginnings of history, and so forth.
What I am able to wonder about is the repetition of the covenant. This chapter marks the third time that Abram has been promised the land, although this time there does seem to be significant extensions of the boundaries of that land. Why does the Lord continually repeat the promise to Abram? Perhaps fruitful thoughts along this line relate to the circumstances in which the recitation occurs. Abram is first promised great posterity and a promised land, as we noted, after his father's death. He is next promised these things after allowing Lot to choose the better part of the land. Finally, in this chapter he is again promised land and posterity after rescuing Lot and dealing graciously with the king of Sodom. Is the Lord enlarging and expanding His covenant with Abram as a consequence of Abram extending his concern for others? Perhaps this has something to do with the interruption of patriarchy we've been discussing. Though the Lord's promise to Abram remains patriarchal (he will have great posterity), the Lord enlarges and expands this covenant in response to Abram's willingness to depart strict patriarchy. I'd be interested to hear other takes on the reason the Lord so frequently repeats the promise.
Also interesting is the Lord's response to Abram's request for proof. As noted, this is the first time in which Abram has become God's partner in conversation. But God responds to Abram's request in something other than language, with a miraculous (and to my modern ears quite odd) display of divine power. For better or worse, though, it doesn't seem like the power of this demonstration lasted long. (There's a reason that Isaac is named "Isaac," one that Abram would probably like to forget.) What does this tell us about divine communication? What does this tell us about the non-verbal communication posited frequently within the Church as a means of knowledge?
I apologize that these thoughts aren't more directly on the topics discussed. I'm hoping that the coming chapters will push our questions and discussions more toward my areas of competence.
Thanks for your response Jeff, and there's no need to apologize. I hope not, at least, since I'm certainly as far outside my area of competence as you are!
I wonder whether there might also be a bibliographic reason for the repetition of the covenant: I know just about nothing of the textual history of Genesis, but perhaps there are issues of authorship and manuscript history that could account for the repetition.
Jeff,
I'd certainly like to echo Rosalynde's response. Competence is something that we are each lacking in a variety of ways and one of our aims in assembling the group we have was to arrange for a productive cross-pollination of interests and vocabularies. I'm wholly in favor of opening up a variety of different discussions in different registers with different concerns. For instance, as has been suggested, I've got some Lacan on the brain, (though its likely that none of us, myself certainly included, are "competent" to talk about Lacan), but I have no interest in the discussion being limited to this narrow vein. May alternate concerns, approaches, etc. proliferate!
Speaking of Lacan . . . I also think that you make an excellent point about the (non?)efficacy of God's non-verbal display of power. The weakness of the enduring persuasiveness of the image (the smoke and fire, etc.) is potentially important when thinking about the different ways in which God can/does communicate with us.
My best,
Adam
Jeff,
I'd certainly like to echo Rosalynde's response. Competence is something that we are each lacking in a variety of ways and one of our aims in assembling the group we have was to arrange for a productive cross-pollination of interests and vocabularies. I'm wholly in favor of opening up a variety of different discussions in different registers with different concerns. For instance, as has been suggested, I've got some Lacan on the brain, (though its likely that none of us, myself certainly included, are "competent" to talk about Lacan), but I have no interest in the discussion being limited to this narrow vein. May alternate concerns, approaches, etc. proliferate!
Speaking of Lacan . . . I also think that you make an excellent point about the (non?)efficacy of God's non-verbal display of power. The weakness of the enduring persuasiveness of the image (the smoke and fire, etc.) is potentially important when thinking about the different ways in which God can/does communicate with us.
My best,
Adam
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