The vision shifted. Abraham saw something that struck closer to home than the cosmic sins of Cain and Desire.
He saw an idol standing inside a Temple.
The idol of jealousy. It looked like the woodwork his own father Terah used to make, but its body was of glittering bronze. Before it stood a man, worshipping. In front of the worshipper was an altar, and upon the altar a slaughtered boy, killed in the presence of the idol.
Abraham cried out: "What is this idol? What is the altar? Who are the ones being sacrificed, and who is the sacrificer? And what is this Temple that I see, beautiful in its design, its glory like the radiance beneath Your throne?"
God answered: "What you see, the Temple and the altar and the beauty, is my idea of the priesthood of my glorious Name. In it dwells every prayer of man, and the rise of kings and prophets, and whatever sacrifice I ordained among my people who shall come from your descendants."
The Temple was God's own design. Sacred. Beautiful. A dwelling-place for prayer and prophecy.
"But the statue which you saw is my anger, the provocation by which the people who shall proceed from you will anger me. And the man you saw slaughtering, that is he who incites murderous sacrifices, which are a witness to me of the final judgment, from the very beginning of creation."
Abraham was seeing the idolatry that would corrupt his own descendants. The image of jealousy placed inside the holy Temple (Ezekiel 8:3), the abomination that would provoke God's wrath. Not the sins of strangers. The sins of his own people. Child sacrifice. Idol worship. All of it inside the house that God Himself had designed.
I saw there the likeness of the idol of jealousy,7 having the likeness of woodwork
such as my father was wont to make, and its statue8 was of glittering bronze; and before it a
man, and he worshipped it; and in front of him an altar, and upon it a boy slain in the presence
of the idol.
But I said to Him: “What is this idol, or what is the altar, or 9who are they that are
sacrificed,9 or who is the sacrificer? Or what is the Temple which I see that is beautiful in art,
and its beauty (being like) the glory that lieth beneath Thy10 throne?”
And He said: “Hear, Abraham. This which thou seest, the Temple and altar and beauty,
is my idea of the priesthood of my glorious Name, in which dwelleth every single prayer of man,
and the rise of kings and prophets, and whatever sacrifice I ordain to be offered to me among
my people who are to come out of thy generation.11 But the statue which thou sawest is mine
anger12 wherewith the people13 anger me who are to proceed for me from thee. But the man
According to Pirke de R. Eliezer xxi. Cain was the offspring of Eve and Sammael.
In Ep. Barnabas xv. 5 the Devil is called “the Lawless O n e” ( Ò <@:@H): when His Son shall come,
and shall abolish the time of the Lawless One (cf. also 2 Thess. ii. 8).
N ot ice that here and below certain evil tendencies are personified (Impurity, Theft, Desire ; t h e
catalogue seems to have been i nf luen ced by the Decalogue, Comm andm ents vii., viii., x.) In later
Kabbalisti c b o o ks such tendencies are personified as demons; cf. e. g. The Testament of Solomon, § 34
(J.Q.R., xi. 24; 1899), where seven female demons appear before Solomon bearing such n am es as
“Deception,” “Strife,” “Jealousy,” “Power.”
The bracketed clause is missing in S.
A, also (instead of there).
Omitted by S. Perhaps the clause is an interpolation; in any case the text appears t o b e co r r upt. The
word here rendered scorn (moltshanie, lit. “silen c e” ) i s sometimes used in this sense, expressing
“contempt,” “scorn”; see D’yachenko’s Church Slavonic Dictionary, s.v.
Cf. Ezek. viii. 3, 5.
Or body.
K, who is the sacrificed one.
S, my (a scri bal mistake?).
The whole sacrificial system an d t h e L ev i t i cal cultus are of divine origin, and embody the divine
i deal. The “rise of kings and prophets” is apparently in volved in it as a subordinate development from i t .
The tone of the pas sag e is reminiscent rather of Jubilees. In apocalyptic literature such allusions to the
cultus are rare.
“The image of jealousy” is correctly explained here as meanin g th e im age which provokes God’s
jealousy or anger. Idolatrous practices in Israel are referred to.
K omits the people.
whom thou sawest slaughtering—that is he who inciteth murderous sacrifices,1 of (sic) which
are a witness2 to me of the final judgement, even at the beginning of creation.”
Why Sin is permitted (Chapter XXVI.).
