“Abram, Abram!”
Chapter 2, part 2 of The Blessings of Abraham: Becoming a Zion People
By E. Douglas Clark
With Abraham lying bound on the altar, his death already seemed a fait accompli, for the odds appeared overwhelming. With the vast multitude gazing on, Abraham was apparently given a final opportunity to recant.
Jewish tradition tells of Satan appearing in human form and urging Abraham to save himself by bowing down in worship to Nimrod. Abraham refused. [1] Even Abraham’s mother urged her son to “bow down to Nimrod and convert to his faith, and you will be saved.” Again Abraham refused, whereupon his mother said to him: “May the God whom you serve, save you.”[2]
As the solemn sacrificial ceremony proceeded to its climax, the priest of Pharaoh grasped the knife and raised it above Abraham. Meanwhile, according to Jewish tradition, the angels on high were pleading with God to allow them to intervene and save Abraham. [3] But it was Abraham’s own prayer that he reported later:
As they lifted up their hands upon me, that they might offer me up and take away my life, behold, I lifted up my voice unto the Lord my God (Abr. 1:15).
According to Jewish tradition, Abraham “raised his eyes heavenward” with a “confidence in God [which] was unshakable.” [4] Al-Tabari reports that Abraham also raised his head heavenward. [5]
As told in the Book of Abraham, “the Lord hearkened and heard, and he filled me with the vision of the Almighty, and the angel of his presence stood by me, and immediately unloosed my bands” (Abr. 1:15). Abraham heard a heavenly voice call his name twice – “Abram, Abram!” [6] – while “the Lord broke down the altar of Elkenah, and of the gods of the land, and utterly destroyed them, and smote the priest that he died” (Abr. 1:20).
That the angel was visible to the onlookers is attested in Jewish and Muslim traditions, [7] which also tell of a great earthquake [8] and of a cataclysmic fire that consumed many thousands of onlookers. [9] Meanwhile, says a Turkish source, “in Abraham’s breast there was the fire of his love for the Lord.” [10] Abraham’s deliverance was an unprecedented miracle, noted the Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, and its fame would soon spread to the kings of the earth. [11]
Those present that day who witnessed the miracle and escaped the destruction were, as told in the Book of Abraham, smitten with a severe famine (Abr. 1:29-30). “There was famine in all the countries,” according to a Turkish account, and “there was no food to be found.” [12] It was recompense for the harm that had been designed for Abraham when he had been deprived of sustenance and had then seen the priest lift his hand to inflict the death blow, and it was sent by the Almighty: “God took away the rain from them,” reports one Islamic tradition. <[13]
When the angel of the presence spoke, it was with a message from the Lord, who called Abraham’s name twice and declared: “Behold, my name is Jehovah, and I have heard thee, and have come down to deliver thee, and … I have come down to visit them, and to destroy him who hath lifted up his hand against thee … to take away thy life” (Abr. 1:16-17).
Abraham’s vision of the Almighty was remembered by the New Testament character Stephen, who, just before receiving his own vision of the Almighty, attested that “the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran” (NIV Acts 7:2). Stephen’s vision came as he was being martyred, on his way to the God of glory.
Pivotal Event
Had Abraham died on the altar in Ur after his vision, he also would surely have gone to God as one of history’s courageous martyrs, secure in his eternal reward. But it was far more than Abraham’s fate that was at stake that day. “What if … ?” is the thought-provoking question posed by a group of historians who analyzed some of history’s most pivotal events and how the world would be different if any one of those events had gone differently. [14]
But none of those events matches what was hanging in the balance on that fateful day in Ur over three millennia ago when Abraham was strapped to an altar. What the world would have been like had he perished that day will become more evident as his story unfolds, but suffice it to say for now that in God’s grand design, Abraham’s work had just begun as the divine instrument of blessing and transforming the world.
It was poetic justice, then, that God had not just saved Abraham, but had done so in the most visible and dramatic fashion possible, and in a way that vindicated him in the eyes of all. Abraham had insisted that the idols were devoid of any power to deliver, and now God had delivered Abraham by breaking down the idols – even as Abraham had broken them down before.
Abraham’s remarkable deliverance from death is memorialized to this day in a Muslim teaching to “consider and understand the trials given to the prophets,” as, for example, “Abraham with Nimrod and with his father.” Indeed, God’s protection of Abraham remains a living reality for Muslims, who direct their prayers to Him “who [did] succour Abraham against his foes.” [15] Judaism similarly declares that “we … pray … to him who answered Abraham.” [16]
But Abraham’s deliverance would prove to be not just inspirational but actually a pattern of things to come. Many years hence, the same God who had delivered Abraham would call him to lay his beloved son Isaac on an altar in a sacrificial rite. And even more striking is what young Abraham’s deliverance from the assembled powers of darkness portended about the last days, when Abraham’s righteous posterity will be vastly outnumbered by enemies bent on their destruction (1 Ne. 14:13-14). Again the earth will quake (Moses 7:61; D&C 88:87), and the Lord will descend with his angels (Jude 1:14-15) to deliver Abraham’s righteous seed and destroy their enemies (1 Ne. 22:17, 22; 2 Ne. 30:10).
Speaking of the great event, the great Isaiah foretold that those “diligent for evil shall be wiped out” by the same Lord “who redeemed Abraham” (JPST Isa. 29:20, 22). [17] One apocryphal source even specifies that when the Lord comes “to work vengeance on the nations … all their idols will he destroy” [18] – a repeat of Abraham’s experience. Abraham’s miraculous deliverance on the altar in Ur may well be history’s most prophetic similitude of the Second Coming.
Changing His World
Young Abraham had desired to change his world, and God honored that desire by rescuing him in a way that already began some dramatic changes. So marvelous, in fact, was Abraham’s deliverance that many of the onlookers, including Nimrod’s own officials and ministers, believed in God and bore witness to others of God’s power and that Abraham was his servant. [19] In addition, “many followed Abraham home, and brought their children to him, and said, ‘Now we see that the God in whom thou trustest, is the only true God; teach our children the truth, that they may serve Him in righteousness.” [20]
It was but the beginning of tremendous change for the world, for the Lord had designated Abraham as a divine instrument of change: “I [will] … take thee away from thy father’s house, and from all thy kinsfolk, into a strange land which thou knowest not of; and … I will lead thee by my hand” – echoing an ancient Jewish source telling that Abraham was saved from death when God “put forth His right hand and delivered him.[21]
The voice of the Lord continued: “And I will take thee, to put upon thee my name, even the Priesthood of thy father, and my power shall be over thee. As it was with Noah so shall it be with thee; but through thy ministry my name shall be known in the earth forever, for I am thy God” (Abr. 1:16, 18-19).
The Lord spoke these words, the Book of Abraham tells, through “the angel of his presence” (Abr. 1:15-16). Who was this angel of the presence? Read in isolation, the Book of Abraham passage may seem to indicate that the angel was Jehovah himself: “my name is Jehovah, and I have … come down to deliver thee” (Abr. 1:16). Later, however, the Book of Abraham makes it clear that the angel of the presence was not the Lord but indeed one of his angels, as Abraham tells the Lord: “Thou didst send thine angel to deliver me” (Abr. 2:13; and see 3:20).
In the Book of Abraham, the angel remains unnamed, but a passage in the Joseph Smith Translation of Genesis seems to suggest a connection with Enoch, whose priesthood, we are told, not only allowed mortals to be “translated and taken up into heaven” but also to “subdue principalities and powers” and to “break every band” (JST Gen. 14:31-32). And so had Abraham’s bands been broken as the principalities and powers about to destroy him were subdued by the divine power of God’s mighty angel.
The angel of the presence is mentioned in Exodus (23:20-21), and is identified as Enoch in Talmudic tradition [22] and, as we shall see, in apocryphal Enoch sources. All suggest that the angel of the presence who rescued Abraham from the altar was none other than his forefather Enoch, about whom Abraham would later learn by reading Enoch’s record.
From Zion above had come Enoch to rescue Abraham, the man who had already begun to establish Zion in his own heart. It is an event never to be forgotten: at the very moment of the seeming greatest triumph of the forces arrayed in their sanctimonious might to destroy Zion below, Zion above broke through, triumphant. And so shall it happen again.
[1] . Gorion, Mimekor Yisrael, 1:45.
[2] . Maaseh Avraham Avinu 6:41-63, in Levy, A Faithful Heart, 60-61.
[3] . Gorion, Mimekor Yisrael 1:45.
[4] .Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 1:201.
[5] .Brinner, History of al-Tabari, 59.
[6] .As written in the original Book of Abraham manuscripts of Abraham 1:16.
[7] . See Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 1:200-201; 5:213; and Al-Rabghuzi, Stories of the Prophets, 2:104-105.
[8] . See Al-Rabghuzi, Stories of the Prophets, 2:104; and Pseudo Philo 6.17, in Jacobson, Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, 1:100.
[9] . Pseudo-Philo tells that 83,500 people perished in the earthquake when “burning fire leaped forth out of the furnace” into which Abraham was thrown. Pseudo Philo 6.17, in Jacobson, Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, 1:100.
[10] . Al-Rabghuzi, Stories of the Prophets, 2:104.
[11] . Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer 52, in Friedlander, Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, 420.
[12] . Al-Rabghuzi, Stories of the Prophets, 2:99.
[13] . al-Kisa’i, Tales of the Prophets, 145.
[14] . See Cowley, What If?; and Cowley, What If? 2.
[15] . Padwick, Muslim Devotions, 169-70.
[16] . Urbach, The Sages, 117.
[17] . Compare King James translation: “all that watch for iniquity are cut off” by the Lord “who redeemed Abraham.”
[18] . Testament of Moses 10:7, in Charlesworth, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 1:932.
[19] . Gorion, Mimekor Yisrael, 1:45-46.
[20] . Baring-Gould, Legends of the Patriarchs, 160.
[21] Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer 26, in Friedlander, Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, 188.
[22] . Sanhedrin 38b, in Epstein, Babylonian Talmud; and see discussion in Barker, The Great Angel, 78-79, 90-94. The angel of the presence is mentioned in Doctrine and Covenants 133:53, without being expressly named. In the larger context, it may be significant that in the following verses, which specify prominent past prophets who “shall be in the presence of the Lamb,” it is Enoch who is mentioned first. Verses 54-55. (It should also be noted that verses 54-55 cannot syntactically be read as a continuation of those whom the Lord carried [verse 53] because of the ending of verse 55, which tells that Enoch and others mentioned “shall be in the presence of the Lamb.”)