14... STARRY STARRY NIGHT
Based on  GN Chs. 11-23. Read more there.

 
Here we cross a frontier – between pre-history & ‘real’ time. And we also cross other frontiers now the Hebrew world’s first real person comes striding, well, riding, maybe, onto the scene, about 1850 years before Jesus. Leaving the more generalised ‘world’ questions from before, we move on to questions such as, ‘Is there really only one God out there & not many gods?’ ‘How come we Hebrews are chosen to be ‘special’ to this one God?’ ‘Can we really have a personal faith in & relationship with this God?’ As the stories focus more & more on the Hebrew people, we begin to find answers to our questions not in parables or myths any longer, but in happenings in the real lives of this new, emerging people in a new emerging world.

Our newcomer is introduced as Abram, who has grown up in Ur in today's Iraq, then when his father leads his family in migration there, lives in Haran in modern Turkey before moving via Egypt to Palestine. (We should read much of what follows against a background of wide-ranging migrations by nomadic tribes through the Middle East.) One night in a vision [GN 15] God takes Abram out to look at the stars & tells him, "You will have as many descendants as there are stars!" YHWH renames him Abraham (father of a multitude) to indicate his new status as ambassador of YHWH the One True God. Yet Abram & his wife (renamed too, to Sarah) have no children! Despite this God promises them & their descendants all the land from the Nile in Egypt to the Euphrates that runs through today’s Turkey, Syria, & Iraq. What a prospect! As Adam & Eve became representative parents of humankind, Abraham & Sarah become parents of a new race, the Hebrews. Sarah apparently cannot bear children, so, as is common then, she gives her slave girl, Hagar, to Abraham so he can produce children through her. That, then, would mean Sarah is legally no longer childless. But this will not fulfil the promise YHWH has made. God is talking about a child for Abraham & Sarah! When Hagar becomes pregnant, Sarah, jealous now, treats her so badly she runs away. But YHWH tells Hagar to go home & He will make her child the fore-runner of a great people too. 

God makes a further covenant with Abraham [GEN 17], very down to earth, involving circumcising each boy-child born as a perpetual mark of the Hebrews' duty to God. (Sadly, the girls don't count for much in those days, but maybe they don't mind giving this one a miss!) This covenant is very selective & personal compared with the more general one made with Noah that can be seen up in the sky by anyone. In GEN 18 we find an intriguing story, a vision of some kind, of YHWH appearing in the person of three men or angels, it's not at all clear which, who visit Abraham & Sarah while they are camped at Mamre in Palestine & confirm God’s earlier promises. (Early Christians become adept at putting a Christian spin on old Hebrew stories, & interpret this one of YHWH 'visiting' Abraham & Sarah in the person of three angels, maybe human messengers of course, as a foreshadowing of God as the Holy Trinity. The story continues in No.15: Hold that knife, Hold your fire!

Question: Do we see anything beyond the stars when we gaze up at them?