Who was Abraham?
When they lived Placed in the second millennium BC, in the patriarchal period
In short
Abraham is the first of the patriarchs of Israel. The book of Genesis presents him leaving his land at a call, receiving the promise of a lineage he could not see arriving, fathering a son by the servant Hagar, receiving Isaac in old age, and being led up a mountain to sacrifice him.
- Written by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 9 min read
Abraham is recognised as a founding figure by Jews, Christians and Muslims, which probably makes him the most widely shared character in religious history. Each of the three traditions reads him differently, and each has added stories that Genesis does not tell. This page stays with what is in Genesis.
And what is there is far more uneven than the reputation suggests. The man tradition calls the father of believers spends half the narrative trying to solve a slow promise on his own, and the other half discovering that this does not work.
The call and the departure
The order that opens Abram’s story is deliberately staged: leave the land, then the kindred, then the father’s house. It moves from the widest circle to the most intimate one, and the destination is withheld — he will learn it on arrival.
The text records his age at departure: seventy-five. This is not the start of an adventurous youth; it is a man leaving behind an entire life already built. He takes his wife, his nephew and what he owned.
Soon after arriving, a famine pushes the group into Egypt, and there the first uncomfortable episode happens: fearing he will be killed on account of Sarai’s beauty, Abram asks her to present herself as his sister. The manoeuvre works in terms of survival and places his wife in a household that was not hers. The narrator reports and does not comment — and reports it again, almost identically, a few chapters later.
11And when he was close to entering Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai: “I know you to be a beautiful woman.
12And when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘She is his wife.’ And they will put me to death, and retain you.
13Therefore, I beg you to say that you are my sister, so that it may be well with me because of you, and so that my soul may live by your favor.”
The request made to Sarai, with the calculation spoken out loud. Read it without rushing to an explanation: the text presents this neither as a failure nor as admirable cunning, it simply records it.
The promise, and twenty-five years of waiting
The promise of descendants is repeated several times, and with each repetition the couple’s age makes it less plausible. In chapter 15 it acquires its best-known image: Abram is taken outside and invited to count the stars.
The sentence that follows — that he believed, and this was reckoned to him — became one of the Old Testament verses most quoted in the New. Paul uses it in Romans and Galatians to argue about faith; the letter of James uses it to argue about works. Both are reading the same verse, and it is worth knowing that before picking a side.
Twenty-five years pass between the promise and the birth of Isaac. That interval explains nearly everything questionable that Abraham does.
5And he brought him outside, and he said to him, “Take in the heavens, and number the stars, if you can.” And he said to him, “So also will your offspring be.”
6Abram believed God, and it was reputed to him unto justice.
The scene and the sentence. Notice that the text describes no emotion: it records the step outside, the invitation to count, the promise and, in the next line, the inward response. The economy is typical of Genesis.
Hagar and Ishmael
After ten years in Canaan with no child, the solution comes from Sarai: Abram is to father an heir by the Egyptian servant Hagar. This was a recognised legal arrangement in the ancient world, and the text narrates it in administrative terms.
What happens next is not administrative. Hagar conceives and begins to look on her mistress with contempt; Sarai mistreats her; Hagar runs into the desert while pregnant. It is there, alone, that she receives a promise of her own and does something nobody else does in Genesis: she gives God a name.
Ishmael is born and raised in the household. Years later, with Isaac already born, mother and son are sent away — and the text follows them into the desert again, a sign that the narrative does not treat them as a detour to be forgotten.
1Now Sarai, the wife of Abram, had not conceived children. But, having an Egyptian handmaid named Hagar,
2she said to her husband: “Behold, the Lord has closed me, lest I give birth. Enter to my handmaid, so that perhaps I may receive sons of her at least.” And when he agreed to her supplication,
3she took Hagar the Egyptian, her handmaid, ten years after they began to live in the land of Canaan, and she gave her to her husband as a wife.
4And he entered to her. But when she saw that she had conceived, she despised her mistress.
The proposal, the agreement and the immediate consequence, in four verses. Notice who speaks: the initiative is Sarai’s, the decision is hers, and Hagar is not consulted at any point.
The laugh
In chapter 17 the covenant is formalised and the names change: Abram becomes Abraham, Sarai becomes Sarah. It is here, and not after any test, that the renaming happens.
And it is here that he laughs. On hearing that he will have a son by Sarah, Abraham falls face down — and, face down, he laughs and does the arithmetic under his breath: a hundred years, and ninety. In the next chapter, at the tent, Sarah laughs at the same promise, and the text keeps both laughs. The son’s name, Isaac, is built on the Hebrew word for laughter.
17Abraham fell on his face, and he laughed, saying in his heart: “Do you think a son can be born to a one hundred year old man? And will Sarah give birth at the age of ninety?”
Abraham’s laugh, and the arithmetic that comes with it. The gesture of reverence and the disbelief happen in the same verse, which is a far more complicated portrait than "father of faith" usually suggests.
The bargain over Sodom
Abraham standing before Sodom is the strangest scene in his story, and the most modern. He does not ask, does not beg, does not resign himself: he negotiates. He starts at fifty just men and works down, ten at a time and then five at a time, to ten.
The argument he uses is not sentimental. It is legal, and it carries an accusation inside it: would it be consistent with justice to destroy the innocent along with the guilty? The question is put to God, about God, and the text does not rebuke it. Keep this scene in mind: it is the most explicit licence the Old Testament gives for arguing with God from a moral objection.
22And they turned themselves from there, and they went toward Sodom. Yet in truth, Abraham still stood in the sight of the Lord.
23And as they drew near, he said: “Will you destroy the just with the impious?
24If there were fifty of the just in the city, will they perish with the rest? And will you not spare that place for the sake of fifty of the just, if they were in it?
25Far be it from you to do this thing, and to kill the just with the impious, and for the just to be treated like the impious. No, this is not like you. You judge all the earth; you would never make such a judgment.”
26And the Lord said to him, “If I find in Sodom fifty of the just in the midst of the city, I will release the entire place because of them.”
The opening of the negotiation. Follow the chapter to the end to watch the numbers come down in full — and notice that the one who stops bargaining is Abraham, not the one he is bargaining with.
The mountain
Chapter 22 is the hardest text in Abraham’s story and one of the hardest in the whole Bible. The order comes without explanation: take the only son, the beloved one, to a place that will be shown to him, and offer him there.
The narrative is built on silence. Abraham does not argue — the same man who bargained for a city of strangers says nothing at all for his own son. The journey takes three days. Isaac carries the wood and asks the single question of the scene, which is about the missing animal. His father’s answer is still ambiguous today.
The order is stopped at the last possible moment, and the stated reason is that Abraham’s fear of God has been shown. Nothing in the text explains why it needed showing. Jews, Christians and Muslims have read this passage differently for centuries, and none of the readings makes the chapter comfortable — which may well be the point.
After that, Genesis narrates Sarah’s death, the purchase of a burial plot, Isaac’s marriage and finally Abraham’s own death. The burial is carried out by Isaac and Ishmael together, and it is the last time the two appear side by side.
1After these things occurred, God tested Abraham, and he said to him, “Abraham, Abraham.” And he answered, “Here I am.”
2He said to him: “Take your only begotten son Isaac, whom you love, and go into the land of vision. And there you shall offer him as a holocaust upon one of the mountains, which I will show to you.”
The order, with three qualifiers stacked on the word "son" — only, and beloved, and named. The text piles the terms up on purpose, and the effect is to make the sentence heavier with each word. Note also the place name: this edition follows the Latin and renders it as the land of vision, where Hebrew-based translations read Moriah.
6He also took the wood for the holocaust, and he imposed it upon his son Isaac. And he himself carried in his hands fire and a sword. And as the two continued on together,
7Isaac said to his father, “My father.” And he answered, “What do you want, son?” “Behold,” he said, “fire and wood. Where is the victim for the holocaust?”
8But Abraham said, “God himself will provide the victim for the holocaust, my son.” Thus they continued on together.
The climb, with Isaac carrying the wood and asking his question. The repetition of the line about the two of them going on together, before and after the exchange, is the narrator’s way of marking what that silence costs.
What the text does not say
Biblical figures gather layers of tradition that Scripture does not support. Telling the two apart does not diminish the story — it gives back what is actually written.
What is commonly said
Abraham smashed the idols in his father’s shop before leaving Ur.
What Scripture says
Genesis tells none of this. The first thing the text says about him is genealogical, and the second is the order to leave. There is no childhood episode, no conversion scene, no confrontation with the family religion.
Where it comes from: The story comes from the Jewish interpretive tradition — it appears in Bereshit Rabbah, a collection of rabbinic commentary on Genesis — and it is also told in the Qur’an. It reached Christian preaching by that route and is now repeated as though it were biblical.
What is commonly said
Abraham is the model of a faith that never wavers.
What Scripture says
The same text that records his trust also records the laugh at the promise, two occasions on which he presents his wife as his sister to protect himself, and the decision to father an heir by the servant rather than keep waiting. Genesis hides none of it, and any reading that makes him a man without wobble has to skip whole chapters.
What is commonly said
Isaac was a small boy when he was taken up the mountain.
What Scripture says
The text never gives his age. What it does say is that Isaac carried the wood for the sacrifice up the mountain, which describes someone strong enough to do that, and that he talked with his father on the way up. The age in the illustrations is the illustrator’s choice.
What is commonly said
God changed Abram’s name to Abraham as a reward for passing the test on the mountain.
What Scripture says
The renaming happens in chapter 17, five chapters before the mountain episode, and it is tied to the covenant and the promise of descendants — not to any test passed. The same applies to Sarai, who becomes Sarah in the same passage.
Where this person appears
1Then the Lord said to Abram: “Depart from your land, and from your kindred, and from your father’s house, and come into the land that I will show you.
2And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and magnify your name, and you will be blessed.
3I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
4And so Abram departed just as the Lord had instructed him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.
The call and the departure, with the age recorded at the end of the passage. The order opens in three concentric circles — land, kindred, house — and the destination stays undisclosed until the last moment.
5And he brought him outside, and he said to him, “Take in the heavens, and number the stars, if you can.” And he said to him, “So also will your offspring be.”
6Abram believed God, and it was reputed to him unto justice.
The stars, and the line about belief being reckoned as justice. It is the verse the New Testament returns to most when it discusses Abraham, and it is worth reading here, in its original setting, before meeting it quoted in Paul or in James.
4And God said to him: “I AM, and my covenant is with you, and you will be the father of many nations.
5No longer will your name be called Abram. But you will be called Abraham, for I have established you as the father of many nations.
The covenant and the change of name, in one breath. The new name does not describe what he is at that moment — he still has no son by his wife — but what was promised, which turns the name into a daily reminder of the waiting.
10And he reached out his hand and took hold of the sword, in order to sacrifice his son.
11And behold, an Angel of the Lord called out from heaven, saying, “Abraham, Abraham.” And he answered, “Here I am.”
12And he said to him, “Do not extend your hand over the boy, and do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, since you have not spared your only begotten son for my sake.”
The interruption, at the last possible gesture. Notice that the stated reason looks backwards, at what has been demonstrated, and offers no justification whatever for the original order — the reader’s question is left unanswered in the text.
7Now the days of Abraham’s life were one hundred and seventy-five years.
8And declining, he died in a good old age, and at an advanced stage of life, and full of days. And he was gathered to his people.
9And his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the double cave, which was situated in the field of Ephron, of the son of Zohar the Hittite, across from the region of Mamre,
The death and the burial. The detail that usually goes unnoticed is that the two sons bury their father together, despite everything Genesis has narrated between them.