In Genesis 21:12 it amazed me to see God telling Abraham to “Listen to whatever Sarah tells you,” which meant meeting her demand to kick the teenage Ishmael and his mother out of the family home.

But in God softening Abraham’s response to Sarah and focusing his mind on “listening” to her, it prepared Abraham very nicely for what happened next. Because in verse 22, Abimelech king of Gerar dropped by for a visit, along with Phicol the commander of his forces. This was the same Abimelech who’d torn a strip off Abraham back in chapter 20:9, yelling “You have done things to me that should not be done,” because Abraham’s blunder in Gerar had put Abimelech’s entire nation at risk (4). 

So it’s not surprising that Abimelech brought along his top general to witness Abraham swearing before God that in future Abraham would “not deal falsely” with him or his children and descendants ever again (21:23). But he too then contributed to the softening of Abraham when he told Abraham to his face, “Show to me – and to the country you’re now living in as a foreigner – the same kindness I have shown to you.”  

This was somewhat humbling, because Abraham was God’s choice, but here was a secular king educating him on mutual kindness being the key to people getting along and dealing with difficult issues. Fortunately, Abraham took it on the chin and formally agreed to being kind in return (24). But right after that he put his foot in it again when, instead of the softly, softly approach he’d just agreed to, he storms up to Abimelech in verse 25, “complaining” the king’s servants had seized control of a well Abraham had dug (30). To Abraham’s acute embarrassment, Abimelech replies that he knew nothing about the well being seized – since Abraham hadn’t bothered to inform him about it (26).  

It was a much softened Abraham, therefore, who “brought sheep and cattle for Abimelech” (27), followed by the two men making another treaty confirming the well belonged to Abraham (30-31). Again, mutual kindness saved the day, and Abimelech and Phicol (happily) “returned to the land of the Philistines” (32). Abraham, meanwhile, had obviously learnt something from this episode, because he stayed without further incident in Abimelech’s kingdom “for a long time” (34). 

It also prepared him nicely for the next potentially delicate incident in his life, when “Negotiating a burial site for Sarah”….(next blog) 

P.S. “Abimelech” was a title, not a personal name. The same title for the king of Gerar comes up again in Genesis 26. Same title, different man. 

In Genesis 21:11, Abraham is deeply distressed about his wife’s demand to have Ishmael forcibly removed from the family home. He loves Ishmael, who by now is around sixteen years old, with the exciting years of his adult development ahead. But the grumpy old step mother wants rid of him, as though the boy’s future and his life are of no concern to her. Only her own son counts. 

How deep the stab was to Abraham’s heart can be measured by the depth of tenderness shown him by God in verse 12. It’s as if God is saying to him, “Abraham, Abraham, don’t distress yourself so, I’ll take care of him, you’ll see.” In fact, verse 13, “I’ll make your son by the maidservant into a nation too, because he is your offspring.” 

I Imagine it was still a heartsick Abraham, though, who “Early next morning gave food and water to Hagar,” and off she and Ishmael went into “the desert of Beersheba” (14) – which on its western edge, near Gerar where Abraham had been (20:1), was close to Egypt Hagar’s homeland, so the food and water Abraham supplied would likely have been enough to get her safely there. Abraham himself had travelled to Egypt, so he would have known the route and how long it would have taken, and the supplies needed.  

But instead she ended up wandering around and getting lost (21:14). In the heat of the desert the water ran out, and Hager knew – even with her son tucked away in the shade (15) – the situation was hopeless. She couldn’t bear to watch him die, so she walked away, sagged onto the desert sand and wept (16) – which got the teenage Ishmael crying too.  

But “God heard the boy crying” (17) – such tender words in Scripture – and from Elohim too, the covenant keeping God, because this was a covenant keeping situation, having just promised Abraham that he’d make Ishmael a great nation. He assures Hagar, therefore, that he will fulfill his promise to Ishmael, so go back and take her son by the hand (18), at which point Elohim opened her eyes to a well of water nearby (19), and from that point on he “was with the boy as he grew up” (20). 

None of this Abraham would have known about. But the tender God had assured him that all would be well, and here we get to see the tender God doing just that for Ishmael. Which led to “The softening of Abraham” too….(next blog)

In Genesis 21:2, little Isaac the miracle baby is born. Sarah is ecstatic: “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age” (7).

And when nursing time was over, “Abraham held a great feast,” so he was ecstatic too, at this impossible little marvel squirming away in his one hundred year old arms. 

But joy soon turned into despair, one of those awful things that happens in this life of ours, like the disintegration of a child’s marriage after the joy of the wedding. Or the exciting plans for expanding the family business and then the loss of it all because of the pandemic lockdown. Or the joy of winning a race after years of dedicated preparation, only to be told you’ve been disqualified for stepping out of your lane.

For Abraham, joy turned into despair when Sarah got in a right huff when she saw Ishmael, “the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham, poking fun at Isaac” (9). Ishmael by this time was a strapping lad in his mid-teens, but not being the only treasured son anymore had likely soured his view of his younger brother. Jealousy can ignite cruelty, so it’s not surprising that Sarah turned fierce in protecting Isaac. 

She cornered Abraham and spat out the words, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son” – not a very nice thing to say, when Ishmael was also Abraham’s son – but then Sarah’s surprising statement, “for that slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac” (10). 

Prophetically she was spot on, because the promises God made to Abraham would be continued through Isaac, not Ishmael – but Abraham loved Ishmael, so Sarah’s demand that he throw his son out of the family home “distressed Abraham greatly” (11). 

Joy had turned into deep despair. Which is when God as Elohim, the mighty Creator and Director of his creation, tells Abraham, “Do not be so distressed about the boy and your maidservant. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you.” In other words, “Don’t panic – it’s a mess, yes, but I can work round it,” much like driving in the wrong direction and the car’s navigation system sorting it out for us. Because this is how God reveals himself to Abraham: “I can sort it out, so don’t be so distressed” – an example of which we see next in “The tender God in action”….(next blog) 

In Genesis 18:10, YHWH told Abraham, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.” At the time that promise was made, Abraham was ninety-nine years old, and Sarah eighty-nine. 

Since Abraham died at 175 (25:7), and Sarah at 127 (23:1), we can shave almost a half off their ages to fit our ages today, so imagine having a child in your eighties as a father, and giving birth to a child just after you got your old age pension. 

Understandably, then, when YHWH first made that promise in Genesis 17:17, Abraham couldn’t help laughing to himself. How embarrassing, then, when YHWH told him that the name of the son would be Isaac, meaning “he laughs” (19). So every time Abraham looked at his son he’d be reminded of laughing to himself when YHWH made his promise, knowing that YHWH knew he was laughing too.

And the same for Sarah, because she’d had a good snicker behind a tent flap too on hearing YHWH tell her husband she’d have a son in a year’s time (18:10, 12). It was even more embarrassing for her, though, because she lied to YHWH about laughing, and he told her, “Ahem, my dear, yes you did laugh” (15).   

A year later, Genesis 21:1, God visited Sarah exactly as he said he would and “did for Sarah exactly what he’d promised.” Sarah’s reaction was priceless: “God has brought me laughter. And everyone who hears about this will laugh with me” (6). Actually, it’s maybe more like laughing at you, dear Sarah, because how could you have thought YHWH was joking? YHWH is YHWH. When he makes promises, he sticks to them. 

Like the promise he made to us to birth us into a new person, a new creation, transforming our old dead self into something resembling Jesus. But now it’s my turn to ask, “Are you kidding?” – because I know me, and I’m about as capable of producing anything remotely resembling Jesus as Sarah was having a child at age ninety. But that’s what YHWH promised, that he’ll “sanctify us through and through, keeping our whole spirit, soul and body blameless until the the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,” 1 Thessalonians 5:23 – because, verse 24, “The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.” He sticks to his promises. Which explains why he told Abraham, when upsets happened in his life: “Do not be so distressed”….(next blog) 

When Abraham found out what YHWH had in mind for Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18, he “approached YHWH and said, ‘Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?.…Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of fifty righteous people in it?’” (23-24).

He wasn’t being snippy with YHWH, he was being highly respectful (27, 30, 32), but he also deeply felt the need to put in a word for the good people, and for YHWH to spare the city for their sake. And to his surprise, perhaps, YHWH immediately responded favourably – that if there were just ten good people in Sodom, he would reverse his decision to blast the city to smithereens for its wickedness (32).

But why did YHWH respond so favourably? Well, back in Genesis 15:6, YHWH had credited Abraham with righteousness, so here we have an example of the “prayer of a righteous man being powerful and effective” (James 5:16). And according to James it has the power to save lives too (20), which is exactly what Abraham’s request to YHWH did on behalf of the good people in Sodom – it saved their lives. 

There’s another example of the same thing happening in Genesis 20, when YHWH told Abimelech king of Gerar in a dream that he was “as good as dead” if he took Abraham’s wife for his own (2-3). But, verse 7, Abraham “will pray for you and you will live.” And that’s despite Abraham being the one at fault, for calling his wife his sister and making Abimelech think she was available. 

But Abimelech was a good man, because on being threatened with destruction by YHWH, he too, just like Abraham on behalf of Sodom, appealed to YHWH, “Lord, will you destroy an innocent nation?” (4) And that’s when YHWH told him that Abraham “is a prophet and he will pray for you” (7). Which Abraham did in verse 17: “Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, his wife and his slave girls so they could have children again” – and in so doing it would spare the nation too. 

And here we are now, descending into a Sodom-like society too, but there are many good people – also like prophets – exposing the growing evil at risk of their own lives. Without these people hounding the villains, how much further into what is “detestable” to God (Ezekiel 16:50) would we be? And how many lives, and livelihoods, and even whole nations, are these good people saving? I can’t do that, but I can pray for those who can, knowing too that “YHWH sticks to his promises”….(next blog)  

2 Peter 2:6 says that God “reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes and condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is coming to the ungodly.” Scripture, therefore, definitely has Sodom existing, as a true life example of what God does to societies that have gone too far down the evil route. 

But does Scripture also give us clues to Sodom being a real city in an actual location? Well, we know from Genesis 13:10 that Lot “saw that the whole plain of the Jordan was well watered, like the land of Egypt,” so he “set out toward the east” (11) and “lived among the cities of the plain and pitched his tents near Sodom” (12). 

That helps pinpoint a location, because Abraham and Lot were camped between Bethel and Ai at the time (13:3, 5), which are north and west of the Dead Sea. From that high vantage point, Lot could look east to “the whole plain of the Jordan,” a lush circular area of prime fertile land north of the Dead Sea, watered by the River Jordan down its middle, much like the Nile River in Egypt (10). Lot chose his spot well.

Genesis 14:2 identifies five cities in that area: Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar. All but Zoar would be burnt to a cinder according to Deuteronomy 29:23, so if they did exist then evidence of a catastrophic fiery end from “burning sulphur raining down out of the heavens” in sufficient quantity and power to “overthrow the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the entire plain, including the people and the vegetation,” leaving nothing but a smoking ruin (Genesis 19:24-28), should show up somewhere in the archaeology in that area. Which it has.

Digging into the largest site in that area has turned up evidence of an extinction event – similar in scale to a superheated cosmic airburst by a meteor – that melted pottery, created a layer of ash up to two metres deep, and blew down fortified walls up to six metres thick. The pottery, architecture and other items date the timing of the extinction to the Middle Bronze Age, 18th century BCE, when Abraham and Lot were alive. 

If it is Sodom, then take it from Jesus in Luke 17:26-30 that a similar event is coming and for the same reason, when a society is so proudly evil it has become detestable to God (Ezekiel 16:49-50). But we’ve also got Abraham’s example, that when he begged God to spare the good people, “he remembered Abraham” (19:29) and spared them. So next blog, “Praying for the good people”…. 

Sodom’s evil culture was so powerful it nearly got Lot killed. Angels had to drag him and his family out of the city to prevent them being destroyed along with everyone else (Genesis 19:16).

So God “brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived” (29), but the power of Sodom’s culture remained. It’s like the saying, “You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy,” because Lot and his family had been taken out of Sodom, but Sodom was still having its effect on them.  

Lot’s daughters’ solution, for instance, to preserving their family line when there were no men around, was to get themselves pregnant by their father (31-36). Lot had no idea what they’d done because his daughters had got him too drunk to know. Interesting that in their rush out of Sodom they still managed to bring enough wine with them to get their dear old Dad drunk out of his mind.

It’s also interesting that one of the telltale signs of Sodom’s descent into evil was the sexualizing of their culture, and look at the effect that then had on Lot’s daughters. How could they have excused such an obviously awful act with their father in their own minds? But that’s the power of an evil culture; it can twist one’s thinking into going along with it, and even believing it’s the right thing to do. 

Witness the sexualizing of our own western culture, treading the same downward track that Sodom took, and how it’s influencing our most hallowed Christian institutions into excusing and even celebrating same sex unions, ordaining practicing homosexuals and lesbians, condoning drag queen story times for children, and accepting gender fluidity – all in blatant contradiction to Scripture. 

But take a leaf out of Lot’s daughters’ book, who felt not the slightest twinge of guilt or even a question in their minds that what they were doing might not be what God would want them to do. The power of Sodom had clearly done a real number on them. So how scary is it to see that same power weaselling its way into our culture today – and especially into our most visible Christian institutions as well? 

Are they so haughty they don’t care? If so, take a leaf out of God’s book and his reaction to Sodom: “They were haughty…Therefore I did away with them.” Ezekiel 16:50. But – on the other hand – “Did Sodom really exist?”….(next blog)

Sodom was a city with no fear of God, which is odd because its king and all its people, along with all their possessions, had been recovered by Abraham in a daring night-time raid on the kings who had seized them (Genesis 14:11-16). 

So the king of Sodom knew Abraham well, and personally went out to meet Abraham on his victorious return (17). He may also have met Melchizedek, the “priest of God Most High” (18), so the king had been in close contact with godly men. Abraham had also refused any compensation for rescuing the king (23-24), so the king knew what a good man was. 

Good, because in the previous chapter “the men of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the Lord” (13:13), so hopefully this latest episode with Abraham in chapter 14 had created a change of heart, and especially toward God, because both Melchizedek and Abraham had credited the victory to “the Lord, God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth” (14:20, 22).  

But there’s no record of any change of heart toward God. Instead the “outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah” was “so great and their sin so grievous” (18:20) that God decided to see for himself if things were as bad as reported (21).  

It was bad all right, because when Lot, Abraham’s nephew, the one good man left in Sodom, cried out to the mob, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing” when they wanted to sexually assault his two male guests (19:7), they totally ignored him, and even refused the offer of his daughters instead. The only thing that stopped the mob from breaking into Lot’s house was being struck blind by the angels (9-11).  

How fitting, when they were so blind to their wickedness. But it’s how God reacted to their wickedness that sends a shudder through the ages, because when the “outcry against (Sodom) was so great the Lord sent angels to destroy it” (13). When the point was reached that no fear of God had created a culture so totally bent on evil, God destroyed it.

The scary part of that is Lot and his family having to be dragged out of Sodom by the two angels (15-16). A warning through the ages, therefore, about “The power of an evil culture”….(next blog) 

It’s not surprising that God wanted to wipe Sodom off the map, seeing what happened to two of his angels there. Men from all over the city, young and old, had gathered at Lot’s home where the angels were staying, demanding Lot push his visitors out the door so they could homosexually gang rape them (Genesis 19:4-5). 

One has to wonder how Lot got himself in this situation in the first place. We know he liked the look of that land (13:10), but somehow he’d ended up living in the city, and even “sitting in the gateway of the city” as one of its elders and judges (19:1) – probably because his uncle Abraham had done such a great favour to the king of Sodom back in Genesis 14:11-17.  

But why did Lot stay in the city, when 2 Peter 2:7 tells us he was “distressed by the filthy lives of the lawless men” in it? There’s a clue in Genesis 19:7, because when Lot steps outside his home to reason with the mob he addresses these filthy-minded men as “brothers.”  

Brothers? But according to Ezekiel 16:49-50, the people of Sodom were “arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me.” Sodom sounds like the typical snobbish attitude of the urban elite today, that so easily sucks people into thinking they’re a superior breed of humans who are entitled to doing whatever they please, no matter how detestable it is, or how much their personal excesses and weird ideas about how the world should be run destroy the lives of others. For Lot to consider such an entitled, lust-filled, selfish mob as brothers suggests he may have become such a political animal as a city elder that he was afraid to make waves – a very dangerous situation for him to be in, because in verse 50 God says of Sodom, “Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.”

And here was Lot, about to be done away along with them – and deservedly so too, because when he finally did stand up against the mob in defence of the two angels in Genesis 19:7, he offered his two virgin daughters to the mob instead (8). 

Fortunately – very fortunately – God is both power and mercy, “for the Lord was merciful” to Lot and his family (19:16) and got them out of the city before he unleashed his power on it. Which made me hope, as our world descends into a Sodom-like hole too, that God will extend his mercy to the good people who are also distressed today, and he helps them rise above its suffocating influence and escape the catastrophe that comes to a society “When there’s no fear of God” in it….(next blog)  

There’s a simple and obvious answer to that question: God is revealing himself as both YHWH and Elohim in the New Testament in the person of Jesus. And the Holy Spirit made sure that was understood right off the bat in Acts 2:36 when Peter shouted to the crowd, “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” 

The Greek for “Lord” in that verse comes from kyrios (or kurios) meaning “power” or “might.” Which fits Jesus perfectly, because as Jesus himself said in Matthew 28:18, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” And in Philippians 2:10-11, “at the name of Jesus every knee should bend….and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” In Jesus, therefore, we see the mighty Elohim power of God, “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion,” Ephesians 1:21. And just as the mighty Elohim pronounced his divine justice and judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah, Jesus has been appointed to judge the whole world with divine justice too (Acts 17:31). So Jesus very much represents the mighty Elohim side of God that Abraham came to know. 

But Jesus is “both Lord and Christ,” the meaning of which is made clear in Acts 3:26, because “When God raised up his servant, he sent him to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.” It’s in Christ that “we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins” (Ephesians 1:7). It’s in the life and death of Jesus as the Christ, therefore, that we see the deeply caring and loving YHWH side of God that Abraham also came to know. 

And it’s our belief in both these sides of God, as revealed in Jesus, that’s now credited to us as righteousness, Romans 4:24. It’s our belief, first of all, that “he was delivered over to death for our sins” as our Saviour (25), but also that he was “raised as Jesus our Lord from the dead for our justification” (24-25). He’s both our Lord and Saviour, and identified as both from the moment of his birth in Luke 2:11, as the “Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.” Which is why we refer to him as “Christ Jesus our Lord” or as “the Lord Jesus Christ,” in recognition that he’s our loving YHWH who saved us from our old life of death, but he’s also the mighty Elohim who’s transforming us into an entirely new creation. 

And what God did next in the city of Sodom in Genesis 19 showed Abraham both his YHWH and Elohim sides too, that “God is both power and mercy”….(next blog)