God makes himself present to Abraham in various ways. Initially, the precise nature of His manifestation to Abram is vague. Chapter 12 opens "And the Lord said to Abram". Later, after Abram enters Canaan, the Lord not only speaks but appears. In 12:7, the text reads: "the Lord appeared to Abram and said". Yet, the text does not specify this appearance. In 13, the Lord again comes to Abram, but in this instance we can only be certain of his making himself heard. However, His encounter with Abram in 13 is clearly set in a physical space that the Lord interacts with. God directs Abram to look in all directions. Furthermore, the Lord directs Abram to "walk about the land." According to Alter, this is "a common legal ritual in the ancient Near East"(n. and v. 13:17) and God's using it gives him a human dimension that is lacking in the previous encounters. One might argue that God's use of a phrase and practice so culturally specific suggests the extent to which the encounter is a creation of Abram's imagination. Shouldn't God surprise in all ways? Then again, the speech and practice he employs might simply reflect the fact that God must come to man in an understandable and approachable form. In 15, "the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision"(15:1), a machazeh, or, according to Strong's, a "vision (in the ecstatic state)". This is at once a more and a less concrete manifestation. On the one hand, it is not the Lord,but the word of the Lord that comes. That particular phrase seems distancing. However, he does come as more than a voice. Further on, He takes Abram outside and tells him to look at the stars. Yet, throughout this encounter, the text does not indicate that God is manifest as more that might possibly only be present to Abram, or as phenomenon of his mind. In the second divine encounter in 15, He is more manifest and tangible. In this episode, He moves between the sacrifice with a smoking censer. In 17, the Lord "appeared" and "spoke" but his manifestation is rather bodiless. He does ascend at the end (17:22), implying a body that is never specified.
God's appearance in 18 stands out in the specificity of his manifestation. He and his cohorts appear in human shapes. Or, depending, one might say He appears as three men. The shifting use of pronouns and verb tenses points to the confusion surrounding this manifestation; commenting on verse 3, Alter writes, "the Masoretic Text vocalizes [Abram's initial address]...to read 'my lords,' in consonance with the appearance of three visitors. But the vocative terms that follow in this verse are in the singular, and it is only in verse 4 that Abraham switches to plural verbs." Alter speculates that this opening might be the product of two different sources, one testifying to there being one guest with the other depicting three guests. Ultimately, there is some confusion, on a reader's part (and perhaps Abraham's) whether God is one of the three or all three of the guests.
It isn't out of the realm to suggest that Abraham may not initially view his visitors as divine. Having never directly identified themselves as such, the leader hints at it by indicating that, while ostensibly a stranger Abram can't recognize, he nevertheless knows the name of Abram's wife.
The ensuing scene where the visitor promises that "a son shall Sarah your wife have" is poignant and charming. Sarah has been listening at the tent flap; she is like her husband a doer, not content to sit submissively by. God exerts and demonstrates his power to her though, by revealing in a misogynistic way her eavesdropping and her laughter to her husband. Sarah is definitely afraid; like Eve, she believes she can hide from and outsmart the Lord. She first denies she laughed. God insists she did, getting the last word in a comical he-said, she-said exchange. The annunciation of Isaac is delivered in both 17 and 18 to Abram. This differs from the Jacob/Esau annunciations, one to Isaac and another to Rebekah (25:21-22).
The annunciation scene in 18 has parallels to the latter half of Abram's encounter with El Shaddai in 17. In both, God explicitly promises Abram a son through Sarah. In both, he promises that Sarah will bear the child during the same season as the one at which he promises: in 17 "by this season next year (17:22) and in 18 (v.10) "at this very season". In both, the news is met by laughter, Abram's in 17 and Sarah's in 18. These parallels might suggest the redactor has placed versions of the same story side by side in the text.
Yet, if the initial encounter in 18 (v.1-15) are another version of the latter portion of the encounter in 17, they are still clearly attached to the remainder of 18. The events related in Chapter 18 are connected and there is a narrative and thematic integrity to 18. Clearly, a shift occurs, a narrative pivot: the first half is an annunciation and the second half involves God and Abram's discussion of Sodom and Gomorrah. I find the abruptness of the shift startling. After all, God has promised Abram a son through Sarah, his heart's desire, but the text makes absolutely no mention of Abram's response. Instead, after the annunciation, God's back and forth with Sarah, the text moves on with the men. They "arose from there and looked out over Sodom, Abram walking along with them to see them off"(17).
What follows is another of those instances in Genesis where God is seen not only in a human manifestation in terms of appearance, but in terms of his behavior. He seems to be debating with himself whether he should tell Abram about Sodom. Perhaps the debate is occasioned by his just concluded encounter with Sarah and the lack of understanding and doubt with which she greeted the announcement of his will. In deciding on revelation, God reveals an ethical aspect to his covenant with Abram that has heretofore not been mentioned.
In 19, God says "For I have embraced him so that he will charge his sons and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord to do righteousness and justice, that the Lord may bring upon Abraham all that He spoke concerning him." This indicates that the Lord has made himself known to Abram so that Abram knows of the will of the Lord and that Abram, as a man, would be unable to do so absent of this directly supplied knowledge? It also suggests that if Abram fails to know and act according to God's will, according to righteousness and justice, the Lord will not bring about "all that He spoke concerning him." The language employed in many translation suggests that if Abram and his sons fail to do justice, the Lord can't bring about justice.
God's exchange with Abram on Sodom and Gomorrah reads like a tutorial on divine justice, or maybe better, an exercise undergone to acquaint Abram with certain characteristics of the power with whom he's covenanted. The opening seems a performative gesture. If read as a straight up act of the Lord, He would appear to be acting in a human way and uncertain as to just what is happening in Sodom and Gomorrah. One presumes he does know, yet God says "'The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah, how great!...Let Me go down and see whether as the outcry that has come to me they have dealt destruction, and if not, I shall know." Performing in this fashion, he clearly wishes to demonstrate to Abram that he operates according to justice; folks are punished and rewarded for reasons. Moreover, God shows himself getting to the truth of the matter.
Alter sees what follows as "a bargaining exchange"(n.27,p.82). Perhaps it is and Abraham is bargaining to save his nephew Lot. Yet, Abraham stops at ten. Alter informs Abraham "dare not go any lower than ten, the minimal administrative unit for communal organization in later Israelite life," but also points out that Lot and his family number less than ten. So, I'm confused as to what he would be bargaining for in the exchange. But, there is a back and forth and Abraham is acting as mediator here, prefiguring Moses. In the event, God does spare Lot and his family, but he does so for reasons other than justice. In nineteen, the messenger is eventually forced to grab a reluctant Lot by the hand and lead him outside the city. This is done "in the Lord's compassion for him"(19:16). Some lines on in nineteen, the text reads, "when God destroyed the cities of the plain...God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the upheaval as the cities ...were overthrown"(19:29). Unless standards have changed dramatically, Lot hardly seems a righteous figure.
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