The life of Abraham in its outward features may be considered under the following topics: economic, social, political and cultural conditions.
1. Economic Conditions:
Abraham’s manner of life may best be described by the adjective “semi- nomadic,” and illustrated by the somewhat similar conditions prevailing today in those border-communities of the East that fringe the Syrian and Arabian deserts. Residence is in tents, wealth consists of flocks, herds and slaves, and there is no ownership of ground, only at most a proprietorship in well or tomb. All this in common with the nomad. But there is a relative, or rather, intermittent fixity of habitation, unlike the pure Bedouin, a limited amount of agriculture, and finally a sense of divergence from the Ishmael type — all of which tend to assimilate the seminomadic Abraham to the fixed Canaanitish population about him. As might naturally be expected, such a condition is an unstable equilibrium, which tends, in the
family of Abraham as in the history of all border-tribes of the desert, to settle back one way or the other, now into the city-life of Lot, now into the desert-life of Ishmael.
2. Social Conditions:
The head of a family, under these conditions, becomes at the same time the chief of a tribe, that live together under patriarchal rule though they by no means share without exception the tie of kinship. The family relations depicted in Genesis conform to and are illuminated by the social features of Code of Hammurabi. (See K. D. Macmillan, article “Marriage among the Early Babylonians and Hebrews,” Princeton Theological Review, April, 1908.) There is one legal wife, Sarah, who, because persistently childless, obtains the coveted offspring by giving her own maid to Abraham for that purpose (compare Code of Hammurabi, sections 144, 146). The son thus borne, Ishmael, is Abraham’s legal son and heir. When Isaac is later borne by Sarah, the elder son is disinherited by divine command (<012110>
Genesis 21:10-12) against Abraham’s wish which represented the prevailing law and custom (Code of Hammurabi, sections 168 f). The “maid-servants”
mentioned in the inventories of Abraham’s wealth (<011216>
Genesis 12:16;
24:35) doubtless furnished the “concubines” mentioned in <012506>
Genesis 25:6 as having borne sons to him. Both mothers and children were slaves, but had the right to freedom, though not to inheritance, on the death of the father (Code of Hammurabi, section 171). After Sarah’s death another woman seems to have succeeded to the position of legal wife, though if so the sons she bore were disinherited like Ishmael (<012505>
Genesis 25:5). In addition to the children so begotten by Abraham the “men of his house”
(<011727>
Genesis 17:27) consisted of two classes, the “home-born” slaves (<011414>
Genesis 14:14; 17:12 f,23,27) and the “purchased” slaves (ibid.). The extent of the patriarchal tribe may be surmised from the number (318) of men among them capable of bearing arms, near the beginning of Abraham’s career, yet after his separation from Lot, and recruited seemingly from the
“home-born” class exclusively (<011414>
Genesis 14:14). Over this entire
establishment Abraham ruled with a power more, rather than less, absolute than that exhibited in detail in the Code of Hammurabi: more absolute, because Abraham was independent of any permanent superior authority, and so combined in his own person the powers of the Babylonian
paterfamilias and of the Canaanite city-king. Social relations outside of the family-tribe may best be considered under the next heading.
3. Political Conditions:
It is natural that the chieftain of so considerable an organism should appear an attractive ally and a formidable foe to any of the smaller political units of his environment. That Canaan was at the time composed of just such inconsiderable units, namely, city-states with petty kings, and scattered fragments of older populations, is abundantly clear from the Biblical tradition and verified from other sources. Egypt was the only great power with which Abraham came into political contact after leaving the East. In the section of Genesis which describes this contact with the Pharaoh Abraham is suitably represented as playing no political role, but as profiting by his stay in Egypt only through an incidental social relation:
when this terminates he is promptly ejected. The role of conqueror of Chedorlaomer, the Elamite invader, would be quite out of keeping with Abraham’s political status elsewhere, if we were compelled by the narrative in Genesis 14 to suppose a pitched battle between the forces of Abraham and those of the united Babylonian armies. What that chapter requires is in fact no more than a midnight surprise, by Abraham’s band (including the forces of confederate chieftains), of a rear-guard or baggage- train of the Babylonians inadequately manned and picketed (“Slaughter” is quite too strong a rendering of the original hakkoth, “smiting,” 14:17) Respect shown Abraham by the kings of Salem (14:18), of Sodom (14:21) and of Gerar (<012014>
Genesis 20:14-16) was no more than might be expected from their relative degrees of political importance, although a moral precedence, assumed in the tradition, may well have contributed to this respect.
4. Cultural Conditions:
Recent archaeological research has revolutionized our conception of the degree of culture which Abraham could have possessed and therefore presumably did possess. The high plane which literature had attained in both Babylonia and Egypt by 2000 BC is sufficient witness to the opportunities open to the man of birth and wealth in that day for the interchange of lofty thought. And, without having recourse to Abraham’s youth in Babylonia, we may assert even for the scenes of Abraham’s
maturer life the presence of the same culture, on the basis of a variety of facts, the testimony of which converges in this point, that Canaan in the second millennium BC was at the center of the intellectual life of the East and cannot have failed to afford, to such of its inhabitants as chose to avail themselves of it, every opportunity for enjoying the fruits of others’
culture and for recording the substance of their own thoughts, emotions and activities