We know the destination, the covenant, the near-sacrifice of Isaac... but what about the very beginning?
According to Legends of the Jews, a vast compilation of Jewish folklore by Rabbi Louis Ginzberg, Abraham's birth was anything but ordinary. It was a birth shrouded in fear, prophesied in the stars, and targeted by a ruthless king.
See, Nimrod, the king, wasn't just some ruler. He was a cunning astrologer, and the stars told him a troubling tale: a man would be born who would challenge his authority and expose the falsehoods of his religion. Imagine the paranoia! What would you do?
Nimrod's response, according to this legend, was drastic, to say the least. Driven by terror, he consulted his advisors. Their advice? Infanticide. Build a massive house, gather all pregnant women, and kill every newborn boy. Girls were to be spared and celebrated.
The text describes the construction of this monstrous house – sixty ells high (that’s about 90 feet!) and eighty ells wide (roughly 120 feet!). A chilling symbol of tyranny and fear. Seventy thousand children, the legend says, were slaughtered. Seventy thousand! Can you even fathom such a tragedy?
As Midrash Rabbah poignantly asks, "Is there injustice with God?" (Genesis Rabbah 38:7). The angels themselves were horrified. They cried out to God, "Seest Thou not what he doth, yon sinner and blasphemer...who slays so many innocent babes?"
God, of course, saw. "I neither slumber nor sleep," He responded, "I behold and I know the secret things and the things that are revealed." Justice, it seems, was on its way.
This is where Terah, Abraham's father, enters the story. He was married to Emtelai, and she was pregnant. Three months into the pregnancy, Emtelai began to show, and Terah grew suspicious. He feared breaking Nimrod's decree.
"What ails thee, my wife?" he asked, noticing her pale face and swollen body. She tried to dismiss it, but Terah wouldn't be fooled. He insisted on examining her. But here's where the miraculous intervenes. When he touched her abdomen, the child shifted, hiding beneath her breasts. Terah felt nothing. "Thou didst speak truly," he said, relieved. A miracle, plain and simple.
But Emtelai knew she couldn't hide the pregnancy forever. As her time approached, she fled the city in terror. She found refuge in a cave in the desert. It was there, in that hidden sanctuary, that she gave birth to a son – our father, Abraham.
The cave, it's said, was filled with light from the child's face, a light as brilliant as the sun. Yet, joy was mixed with fear. Emtelai lamented, knowing the danger her son faced under Nimrod's reign. "Better thou shouldst perish here in this cave," she cried, "than my eye should behold thee dead at my breast."
In a heart-wrenching act of both love and desperation, she wrapped the baby in her garment and left him in the cave. "May the Lord be with thee," she whispered, "may He not fail thee nor forsake thee." And so, the future father of a nation, the man who would challenge empires and redefine faith, began his life alone in a cave, his fate hanging precariously in the balance.
What does this origin story tell us? Perhaps it's a reminder that even the most extraordinary lives often begin in the most humble – and perilous – of circumstances. And that even in the face of seemingly insurmountable evil, hope, like a newborn child, can find a way to survive.