Notes 25: Nahor's descendants (22:20-24)

SYNOPSIS: A minor genealogical footnote brings to a close the parasha "wayyera", the fourth of Genesis and the second of the three concerned with the story of Abraham.

• Text of the passage in Nawat

This tiny passage updates us about the offspring of Abraham's brother Nahor back in Paddan-Aram. Interestingly, this brief notice does not have the standard format of a regular tol'dot passage, and so probably isn't one in origin. Instead, it is formulated as what purports to be a "dialogue" of sorts in which somebody informs Abraham "how the family is getting along". Together with Abraham, we get to hear a list of his nephews: some are the children of Nahor's wife Milcah (milka), others of his concubine Reumah (r'uma). While most of the list of names is of no consequence for the Genesis narrative as such, the passage has a function as a "historical" note since it provides a conventionalized reference to the presumed tribes of the Aramean people who, in this cosmology, are attributed to the family of Abraham's brother. Israelites and Arameans are viewed as related peoples, and their relationship is symbolized here through the brotherhood of their respective patriarchs, Abraham and Nahor. And then there is the family saga side of things, which will only be concerned with one of Abraham's many nephews.

Most of the names recited here will not be heard of again, but there is one important exception, Nahor and Milcah's eighth and last son Bethuel (b'tu'el). Not that we know much about Bethuel himself as a character, whom Speiser calls "a shadowy figure" (EAS, p. 167). The only time he ever does anything in the Genesis narrative, he does it in unison with his son Laban (lavan) in 24:50, and even then the son is mentioned before the father (JPS): wayyá‛an lavan uv'tu'el wayyom'ru meYHWH yetze haddavar lo nukhal dabber elékha ra‛ o Tov 'Then Laban and Bethuel answered: 'The matter was decreed by the Lord; we cannot speak to you bad or good."' All the other times Bethuel is mentioned it is to indicate who someone else is, e.g. "Laban son of Bethuel." Nonetheless, he is important in this capacity at least, for he was the father of two characters who both play important roles in Genesis: the aforementioned Laban and his sister Rebecca (rivqa). 

When Rebecca appears as a young woman still living at home in ch. 24, we shall see that she rarely speaks for herself but seems to be under the tutelage, not of her father Bethuel, but of her brother Laban, with whom Abraham's servant negotiates about Rebecca's future marriage to Isaac. Both Rebecca and Laban will continue to play significant roles later in the Genesis plot, too. This is surely the reason why Bethuel is singled out in the present genealogical notice, and it may be one reason why this notice is included: listeners to Genesis loved to know all the details about who was related to whom and how. 

It is however very odd, in that case, that the passage now to be read only mentions Bethuel's daughter Rebecca but doesn't mention her brother, Bethuel's son Laban. This may have something to do with differing source traditions, unless the entire mini-passage was inserted into the book later than most of the surrounding materials, and the concern of whoever added it was simply to establish the position in the family tree of Rebecca as one of the Israelite matriarchs and Isaac's future wife. 

Perhaps there is another logic underlying the inclusion of this little text, which comes immediately after the dramatic scene which must have made a deep and formative impact not only on Abraham but no less on the patriarch-to-be Isaac, and now we turn briefly to some information which introduces the matriarch-to-be Rebecca. Soon we shall be reading the story of how the two met...

In addition to naming Bethuel's sons that are specifically stated to have been born of his wife Milcah, the text also lists Bethuel's sons with his concubine; see my note below about the concept of pilégesh. Nothing more is known of most of these sons of Bethuel; to us they are mainly just names. But for some perspective, notice that a few chapters from now (ch. 29-30) we will be reading about the sons of Bethuel's grandson Jacob, and in his case too the list includes the sons Jacob had with his two wives (Leah and Rachel) and his two concubines (Bilhah and Zilpah). 

And here's another thing: Bethuel's sons with Milcah number eight, but those with Reumah are four; and eight plus four makes...? Even though not much is known about most of the names mentioned, commentators (e.g. Speiser) view this as an allegorical list of the twelve tribes of the Arameans, comparable to the lists we shall later encounter of the twelve tribes of Ishmael (ch. 25) and of course those of Israel.

22:22 w'et késed
The name Chesed (késed), a segolate evolved from a protoform like *kaśdu, would be related to the ethnonym kaśdim which is rendered in English as 'Chaldeans' or 'Chaldees' and which occurs in the place name ur kaśdim ('Ur of the Chaldeans') in 11:28 qv.

22:24 ufilagsho
Reumah is spoken of as Bethuel's pilégesh, which is glossed as 'concubine', i.e. a lower-ranking wife. One gets the definite impression from Genesis that this was a commonplace institution and that there was no disgrace associated with it, beyond the simple fact that, by definition, the "official wife" (or wives, cf. Jacob) ranked higher than them. We will be told that Abraham himself had pilagshim (25:6), and Jacob's concubine Bilhah is referred to as his pilégesh in 35:22. It would seem that when counting one's children (or sons), those of one's wives and pilagshim are all listed normally. This perspective surely has a bearing on the story of Hagar and Ishmael; we need to be careful not to read it through a cultural filter that is not inherently pertinent to the text. Hagar was a pilégesh; that did not imply dishonour for her or her son, although it did have implications about the rank of Hagar within the family relative to Sarah; in view of the quandary Abraham finds himself in, the relative status of Isaac and Ishmael seems to have been a more problematic question in their particular circumstances. The origin of the word pilégesh is uncertain but it is not Semitic and clearly is related to Gk. pallakis 'concubine, mistress' and Lat. paelex, pelex or pellex 'ditto'; but since the origins of those words is equally uncertain, we don't know what the relationship between them is (as noted by EAS, p. 167).


END OF SECTION 4

In the third parasha, lekh l'kha, we got to know Abram (later Abraham), a man to whom God spoke; who, having come to the land of Canaan with his kinfolk and herds, took up residence and established relations with the new neighbours; and who received from God a covenant, a b'rit, or pact which established God's promise of a multitudinous offspring (zéra‛) who would inherit the land before him. None of this was a present reality, for Abraham neither possessed the land in which he lived, nor had he resolved the issue of his "seed". In the fourth parasha which we have now concluded, wayyera, we have followed Abraham as his wife Sarah gives birth to Abraham's heir (and heir to God's covenant), Isaac; neighbouring towns anger God with their evil ways and suffer catastrophe; in his own house, his other son Ishmael and his mother Hagar are forced to part ways, to give rise to a people of their own; and lastly, God's understanding with Abraham and his "only son" (y'xido) Isaac is ratified through the most terrible ordeal, or test, of Abraham's trust in God, and so they have clinched the deal: Abraham's the man. Seemingly as an afterthought, at the last moment we have been brought up to date with things over in the other side of the family, the "Aramean" side, seemingly for no particular reason, but there really is one because Isaac is destined to marry a woman from Paddan, who is in turn destined to become the Israelites' second matriarch. Enter Rebecca.