Abraham Laughed at His Father's Gods in Their Workshop

Abraham Returns From the Market

Abraham came home from the market carrying the silver from the broken idols his father had sent him to sell. He watered the donkey, spread out the hay, put the money in Terah's hand.

His father's face lit up. "Blessed are you, Abraham, by my gods. You have brought me the price of the gods, so my work was not in vain."

Abraham could not hold it in any longer.

Abraham Answers His Father

"Listen, father," he said. "Blessed are the gods by you, because you are their god. You made them. Their blessing is ruin and their power is empty. They could not even help themselves. How, then, can they help you or bless me?"

He pressed harder. The money Terah was holding was not the gods' doing. It was Abraham's intelligence that had sold the broken pieces at a sympathetic price. The merchants had paid because they felt sorry for the family, not because any idol performed a miracle.

Terah's face darkened. A father in Ur did not hear this from a son.

The Ladder of Worthless Gods

Abraham had been building toward this argument for a long time. He had thought it through in the workshop, watching his father carve, watching people come in to purchase protection and carry it home under their arms. He had worked out a hierarchy of futility.

"Your brother Haran's god Zucheus is made of gold," he told Terah. "Gold is valuable. When Zucheus grows old, he can be melted and recast. That is something, at least. But your god Merumath is stone. If he breaks, he cannot be renewed. And then there is the god Joavon, forged of silver. Silver tarnishes. A man has to polish his own god to keep it presentable."

He climbed the ladder of absurdity rung by rung. Each god was worse than the last by the measure of its material. Wood rots. Clay crumbles. None of them moved. None of them spoke. None of them did anything except sit where they were placed and wait to be credited for whatever happened next, good or bad.

Should the body be subject to its soul, Abraham asked in his own mind, and the soul to the spirit, and the spirit to folly and ignorance? He had been laughing inwardly at these gods for years. Now he was laughing out loud, which is a different thing entirely when your father made the objects you are laughing at and the family income depends on selling them.

The Fire in the Workshop

What happened next, according to the Apocalypse of Abraham, involved fire. Terah's workshop and house burned. In the fire was his son Haran, who had stayed inside. Haran worshipped the gods that were burning. He ran back in to save them and did not come out.

Abraham stood outside and watched. The god who could not protect himself from the workshop fire could not protect the man who ran into the fire for him. Terah came out into the street and mourned for Haran. Abraham did not say anything. There was nothing left to say. The argument had resolved itself in the most terrible way possible.