Father Abraham had… eight sons

not Ishmael

As a recurring refrain, we encounter in the book of Genesis the phenomenon that the begetting of the promised heir is consistently problematic. Abram’s offspring was to be as the stars of heaven (Gen.15:5), yet his wife Sarai turned out to be barren (Gen.11:30). When hope for offspring through Sarai seemed entirely lost, Sarai herself suggested to Abram that the promise be fulfilled through her maidservant Hagar. And Abram listened to his wife, and Hagar bore a son, named Ishmael. Abram was eighty-six years old at the time (Gen.16:16). Then, thirteen years later—by then Abram was ninety-nine years old (Gen.17:1)—God told him that Ishmael was not the son of the promise, but that the promised son would be born from Sarai. To which Abraham laughingly responded with the words:

“Shall to a hundred-year-old a child be born? And shall ninety-year-old Sarah bear?”
— Gen.17:17 (CLNT)

Deadened

Sarai had already proven barren many years earlier, and the Bible records that by that time “it had ceased to be with Sarai after the manner of women” (Gen.18:11), i.e., she no longer menstruated. While that may sound self-evident, we must realize that in those days, the lifespans of people—and likewise the duration of their fertility—are difficult to compare to the situation as we know it today. It is true: after the global flood, lifespans dropped drastically, so that in the days of Moses a lifespan of one hundred and twenty years was already considered exceptionally old (Deut.34:7). Even so, Abraham still reached the age of one hundred and seventy-five years (Gen.25:7), and his wife Sarai lived to be one hundred and twenty-seven years old (Gen.23:1). But one thing is certain: for both Abraham and Sarai it was out of the question that either of them could still (at respectively one hundred and ninety years of age) bring forth a child. In the New Testament, this fact is explicitly mentioned:

“And, not being infirm in faith, he considers his body, already deadened (being inherently somewhere about a hundred years), and the deadening of the matrix of Sarah, also…”
— Rom.4:19 (CLNT)

Both Sarai and Abraham were, in terms of fertility, “deadened.” This had long been evident in Sarai’s case, but Abraham, too, had by now become impotent and (put ambiguously) was no longer able to preserve his lineage. But Abraham believed in resurrection and experienced it in his own body. As the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews also emphasizes:

“Wherefore also, from one, and that of one who is deadened, there were begotten according as the constellations of heaven in multitude, and as the sand by the seaside innumerable.”
— Heb.11:12 (CLNT)

Not seven sons

God, as it were, generated life from the dead through resurrection (Latin: erectio), thereby portraying the truth of the Evangel. Incidentally, Abraham did not regain his potency just once, but even permanently. For after the death of Sarai, we read that Abraham took Keturah as (a concubine) wife (Gen.25:1,5), and with her he fathered another six sons: Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah (Gen.25:2), who in turn also became progenitors of various nations. In this way, Abraham truly became a father of many nations (Gen.17:4). In total, then, Abraham did not become the father of (the proverbial) seven sons, but of eight sons.

Eight

The number eight again refers to the day of circumcision (Gen.17:12), which stands as a symbol for fertility (“exceedingly fruitful”; Gen.17:6). It is illustrative that in circumcision the foreskin is removed and the fruit of the oak (read: the glans) is exposed. And consider that the word for “oak” (elon in Hebrew; Gen.12:6) is directly related to the word for “oath” (alah; Gen.24:41), and thus again points to God’s promise to Abraham, which He had sworn to him under oath!

Delen: