BEMA 217: Midrash — Isaac’s Bad Eyes

Transcription Status

2 Oct 24 — Initial public release

28 May 24 — Transcript approved for release

Midrash — Isaac’s Bad Eyes

Brent Billings: This is the BEMA Podcast with Marty Solomon. I’m his co-host, Brent Billings. Today, we dive into some of the midrash surrounding the story of the binding of Isaac. What really happened to Isaac on that mountain and what does this have to do with Isaac’s blindness?

Marty Solomon: Oh, yes. I can remember learning what we’re going to share today, I learned it in a discussion group. I remember the first time I encountered this, just learning the midrash surrounding this story. I just started full-on weeping when I started just reading it, considering the implications. It was so good, so good. It’s probably one of my favorite lessons that I have learned just on my own.

I have an amazing set of experiences and lessons from Ray and our time in Egypt or Israel and Turkey. I’ve got all kinds of fantastic things, and those are special. Those are something that are in a different category, but then there are lessons that you learn, you learn from books, you learn from study. This is just one of those things that just jumped up and smacked me out of nowhere, in a place that was totally unexpected, and just absolutely loved it.

This little lesson comes with a tad bit of backstory. We did Session 1, Brent, back in 2016. What was the episode number that we talked about the binding of Isaac? What we’re dealing with here?

Brent: That would have been Episode 11, “Here I Am.”

Marty: Episode 11, “Here I Am.” We’ve talked about the chiasm in that story, just wonderful favorite conversation. Fohrman has some incredible teaching on it over at Aleph Beta. Might as well plug that again in the show notes, in the links there. Brent will link Episode 11, link Aleph Beta. Just some great teaching there.

This was back in 2016. We had just started the podcast. I was still doing discussions. Brent, this was before I moved, before my new role and job as president of Impact took me in a different direction. This was way back at the beginning. I have this discussion group in Pullman, Washington with Washington State students. I was there, we were digging into the story. I just had a great crew of students. Not a massive number of them but just a really cool havurah, a group of students.

One of them, I don’t believe she would have called herself a follower of Jesus, a believer, but she was the daughter of a rabbi. I can’t remember if he was a Messianic rabbi or not. None of these things really matter to me, but if I remember right, he was based over in Israel and that whole region. I can’t remember where he was at, but really intimidating to have her in my discussion group because I was always aware that she knew a lot of little tidbits or at least she had access to them.

She was almost, I feel like, maybe just leaning into and learning more and more about her Jewish faith, and BEMA was allowing her and giving her a beautiful excuse to do that, and I loved that. Knowing she had this rabbi as a father, boy, I tell you, anytime that she was in the middle of class and texting on her phone, talk about making you nervous. I was always like, “Who are you texting?”

[laughter]

“Are you texting your dad?” Probably drove her nuts. Anyway, we’re in this class, in this discussion group. I think we were one episode past Episode 11. I think we might have been talking about Episode 12, and somebody in the group, not her but somebody else, raises their hand, or maybe they didn’t, but they asked a question. They said, “Marty, I’m back on the last passage and I want to know, why does Isaac not come down the mountain with Abraham?”

I was like, “What?” They’re like, “Why doesn’t Isaac come down the mountain with Abraham?” I’m like, “What are you talking about? Of course, he comes down the mountain.” “No, no, no. You’ve taught me to look at the Text and to notice the details, and it’s very straightforward, Isaac doesn’t come down the mountain with Abraham.” I was like, “What?” That sounded so good, so juicy, so Biblical that I dove in there and sure enough. Brent, go ahead and read us Genesis 22 and give us that verse 19.

Brent: This is at the end of that whole story. Then Abraham returned to his servants and they set off together for Beersheba, and Abraham stayed in Beersheba.

Marty: Very particular, who are the characters in that paragraph, Brent?

Brent: Abraham and his servants.

Marty: Abraham and his servants, and not a mention of who?

Brent: No Isaac anywhere.

Marty: No Isaac anywhere. Just to review, the story is very clear, all the way up to this point, Isaac is very prevalent. Can you read us—let’s do verses 3-8.

Brent: Early the next morning, Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son, Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son, Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father, Abraham, “Father?” “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied. “The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son,” and the two of them went on together.

Marty: That is twice—and that was a part of the chiasm, if you remember back to Episode 11, “the two of them went on together” are repeated parts of the chiasm, on either side of the chiasm—but elsewhere, right where you started, Brent. “Early the next morning, Abraham got up, loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants, his son, Isaac.” This story is very adamant. All throughout there, it kept mentioning Abraham and his son, Isaac. Isaac and Abraham, and the servants. Then when they leave the servants, it’s Isaac and Abraham, but then at the end of that, can you read us, just to remind us, give us verse 19 one more time.

Brent: Then Abraham returned to his servants and they set off together for Beersheba, and Abraham stayed in Beersheba.

Marty: When that student asked me that, I was like, “Oh my goodness, there has to be—” I was just so convinced reading that verse. I’m like, “There has to be midrash about this.” I can’t remember if I asked her, if I looked over, but that gal in my discussion group was texting. I’m like, “Are you asking your dad?” She’s like, “Yes, yes, yes.” I’m like, “Okay, excellent. If he texts you back, I want to know what he says, if there’s anything.”

We went on with the class. Not very long later, she says, “Hey, my dad texted me back. He said that in fact, there’s two different dominant streams of midrash surrounding this idea.” I’m like, “Oh, goodie. We’re about ready to learn something new.” She told us the less popular version, according to her father, is that Abraham actually did—he went through with the sacrifice and actually sacrificed Isaac. That Isaac was obedient even to the point of death and was actually sacrificed. Then three days later, according to this midrash, he rises from the dead. There’s a resurrection three days later—which, for all of us Jesus followers, if all the lights on your dashboard are not blinking at this moment, [chuckles]—so helpful.

Brent: When does that midrash date to? Do you happen to know?

Marty: I don’t have the exact quotation and I don’t know where it traces back to, but I want to say it was early because I remember thinking about the passage in Hebrews and I remember trying to track that down. I believe that concept and that midrash was super early. Can you give us the verse I’m thinking about, Brent? Read us Hebrews 11. Somewhere in the middle there where it talks about Abraham sacrificing Isaac.

Brent: By faith, Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promise was about to sacrifice his one and only son even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in the manner of speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.

Marty: Again, that expression there in the Greek, in “the manner of speaking,” what’s actually literally being said there by the author of Hebrews? I think that it could be a definite play on, in my mind, it seems more obvious to me, that’s a play on that midrashic thought. How far does that midrash go back? Who exactly quoted it? I wanted to say that one was really, really early. The other midrash extreme, I don’t think is as early, at least in its fully developed-ness we’re going to discuss today. I think the midrash we’ll discuss today is a little bit later. That midrash feels to me to be super early.

Again, if you remember one of the common emails I got, Brent, when we were going through Session 3, and I would talk about Jesus talking about how he would be dead, and three days later he would rise and reference his resurrection. One of the big things that I always mentioned is that Jesus was never wearing his what…? I always called, whenever Jesus was talking about this, I’d always be like, “I don’t think he’s saying this, because he’s putting on his…”

Brent: Oh God goggles.

Marty: God goggles. A lot of people love that, but a lot of people would also email me and go, “Well, I don’t think that’s true because there’s no way he could say these things if he didn’t have his God goggles on.” One of the things they would bring up is his reference to the resurrection, which there’s all kinds of textual criticism that we would need to engage about. I’m not going to go there today, but there’s all kinds of layers to that.

One reason why Jesus could say that is if there’s any kind of Mishnah era, Second Temple conversation swirling about Isaac, and the binding of Isaac, and a three-day resurrection, it’s not crazy that Jesus would be able to find things. There’s references in the prophets to three days that God will do things in three days. It’s not crazy. Nevertheless, I’m really getting sidetracked here, Brent. Better pull me back to the real passage. I say all that to say, what an interesting little midrash.

However, she went on and she said, “My dad says, there’s a second stream, that’s a little bit more popular.” This stream of midrash says that Isaac was so traumatized by what happened on top of the mountain, which I just pause mid-sentence right there in her explanation, and I go, “Well, yes.” [chuckles] Have you ever wrestled with what it must have been like to have been Isaac on top of that mountain as we go through that story? We always talk about Abraham and we talk about what God was teaching Abraham, but then there’s this other player in the story, which is most definitely Isaac. Does that always seem like an interesting thought process for you, Brent?

Brent: Yes. I’m looking at this passage again and it does seem like it explicitly says, “Abraham returned to his servants.” We have that, but in between, it seems like Isaac recedes into the background where he’s referenced by Abraham and by the angel, but he’s not actually doing anything.

Marty: Sure. That’s actually interesting as you look at that in the language. Yes, sure.

Brent: Abraham looked up, and there in a thicket, he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it. Obviously, Abraham is the father here. Whatever he does is going to be representative of the group or on behalf of the group or whatever. It’s just because Isaac is explicitly mentioned so frequently up to that point, it just makes it stand out a little more, I feel like.

Marty: Yes, absolutely. All of this is super understandable. If we’ll quit making this just some religious fantasy story and we’ll actually let this be a real story that we’re supposed to be getting pulled into, like everything else we study in the scriptures. You’re supposed to be drawn into this story. That is an unbelievably traumatic, and I’m going to specifically pinpoint, religiously traumatic experience.

That was important as I immediately started listening to this midrash for the very first time as she’s talking to her dad. I immediately started to associate how important this story is and was for so many of us that have our own stories of trauma at the hands of bad readings of the Bible, bad understandings about who God is. Here’s Abraham having to go through his journey with God and there’s that story, but that story is without a doubt impacting a son who is very directly involved in this spiritual journey of his father.

She went on, she said, “This midrash says that he’s so traumatized that he doesn’t come down the mountain with his dad, that he runs off. He separates himself from his father.” Now see, the other stream of midrash talks about Isaac’s obedience, Brent. The other midrash, it talks about his resurrection. It’s the stream of midrash that says, Isaac, he tied his own hands up. He was one that laid himself on the altar, essentially. He was the one that was so obedient. He was actually the person of even greater faith than Abraham was, Isaac. Because of his faith, because of his obedience, his obedience and faith, because of that he gets to experience resurrection, which is a beautiful midrash. I’m not taking anything away from that.

But the other side is a little bit more human. It’s a little bit more flesh and blood. It’s a little bit more real to me. It’s connected to a little bit more raw human experience and emotion. It says that he took off and he bails and does not go home with his father, which is interesting because you have the end of Chapter 22, but then the narrative picks up at the beginning of Chapter 23. Read for me what the first two verses of Chapter 23 are.

Brent: Sarah lived to be 127 years old. She died at Kiriath Arba, that is Hebron in the land of Canaan, and Abraham went to mourn for Sarah to weep over her.

Marty: Sarah dies and the midrash goes different directions. Some midrash says that she dies while Abraham is gone with Isaac, that she’s dead when they get back. Some midrash doesn’t say that, but if Isaac doesn’t come back home, his mother dies. He never goes back to see his mom. His mom dies before he’s able to ever get back. Just imagine all the trauma and—I don’t if I want to call it dysfunction. I don’t know if that’s the right word, but the very human craziness that everybody is experiencing in this story. The pain, the disruption, the heartache, all of that.

What else do you see in those two verses, Brent, as you look at that? Is there anything that jumps out to you? Sarah lived to be 127 years old. She died at Kiriath Arba, which is Hebron, which is that where they’re at? Can you remember, Brent? Do you remember where they’re at in this story?

Brent: I do not.

Marty: At some point, they’re going to end up at Beersheba. That’s where Abraham is staying, that’s where I understand they’re at when he’s told to go sacrifice. What about the next verse? Tell me what sounds funny to you about this? “Abraham went to mourn for Sarah and weep over her.” What is odd about that to you, Brent?

Brent: It seems repetitive, I guess.

Marty: Do you see anything else? “Abraham went to mourn for Sarah.”

Brent: I guess he wasn’t there.

Marty: He’s not with Sarah. Whatever happens. I remember doing my memorization of this passage this year, and this is not how the Bible typically talks about husbands mourning their wives. The wife dies and the husband might mourn her, but they don’t go to mourn her. The language here suggests that she’s at Kiriath Arba, and I’m sure there’s —I don’t know. There’s so many things I don’t know.

By the way, Brent, we don’t link the exact midrash for these episodes. I do that on purpose because, I think I’ve said this, I’m going to say this again, Brent, there’s so many things I don’t know. I am not trained to handle the midrash. I simply want to pass on beautiful little nuggets that I’ve learned from somebody else, because if I start quoting midrash and dealing with midrash, I am now out of my league, and I am not trained actually to interpret this stuff, but it’s so much fun to go learn it and to go study it. If I can tell you where to look and which questions to ask, that’s what we’re going for here.

I’m sure the midrash has all kinds of stuff about this, Brent. I don’t know what it is, but when I read that, I think to myself, “What was it like, what did Abraham tell Sarah before he set out to kill her son?”

Brent: Yes, no kidding. [chuckles]

Marty: What was that conversation like? Did he say anything? Did she catch wind of it, or did he tell her, and what was that like? Because I would imagine that would have gave her reason to get up and move somewhere else to go to Hebron. Can you feel the family strife? Can you feel the strain, and the tension, and the trauma? Oh, my goodness. He goes to mourn for Sarah—his wife. Then the next chapter, Brent, Chapter 24, just tell me the big idea, what’s going on in Chapter 24?

Brent: It’s when they’re finding a wife for Isaac.

Marty: They’re finding a wife for Isaac, which all of a sudden, I think that’s when I started just breaking down when I started considering this midrash. I’ve always read that story and I assumed that Isaac was with them. Isaac was at home. It was time for him to find a wife, but okay, if he didn’t come back with his dad, he’s not living at home, his mom has died, Abraham’s alone, on his own, and he sends away for a wife, he sends a servant to find a wife for a son, Brent, who’s no longer even at home.

Abraham is not even going to know if his son is ever going to come back home, and yet he sends Eliezer away, which now explains why Eliezer’s conversation with Abraham is, “Okay, but what if she doesn’t want to come back with me? Should I just go take Isaac to her?” Which makes sense. He’s like, “Well, what if she doesn’t want to come back to a home where she doesn’t know if her husband’s ever coming back to? Because we know Isaac’s not coming back here. Do you want me to go get Isaac and take him to her?” Abraham says, “No, absolutely not. You bring her back here.”

The thing about the midrash, Brent, the thing that’s always so frustrating is that it just feels so arbitrary. It just feels like they take one detail, this one verse about, “Well, Isaac didn’t come down the mountain,” and you’re like, “Well, it doesn’t say he didn’t come down the mountain, Marty, and there’s a whole lot of projection going on here. There’s a whole lot of stuff that we don’t know, and the midrash is just making up all this story.”

Yet the more and more I deal with the midrash, the more and more convinced I become that it’s hardly ever making up a story. It’s always referencing stuff that we’ve always just glossed over in the Text. Brent, can you read for me Chapter 24, verse 62?

Brent: Now Isaac had come from Beer Lahai Roi for he was living in the Negev.

Marty: The Text stinking tells us he’s not living at home. [laughs] When I found that, I just fell out of my chair that night, because the Text even tells us he’s not at home. He has been living in the—that midrash didn’t make this up. It’s sitting right there in the middle of the Bible. He’s not even living at home. Now, by the way, where is Beer Lahai Roi, Brent? Can you remember that? We’ve seen that in the text before.

Brent: In the Negev, it says.

Marty: Sure.

Brent: I’m not sure where.

Marty: Who was connected to Beer Lahai Roi? That’s a well—be’er means well—Lahai Roi, somebody named the well Beer Lahai Roi, who was it?

Brent: Was it Abraham?

Marty: No, but it’s somebody connected with Abraham.

Brent: I don’t remember.

Marty: It was somebody that was sent away with her son and she looked up and saw a well, and she named the well Beer Lahai Roi, “The Lord who sees me,” she said. Her name was Hagar, and her son was Ishmael. It makes all kinds of weird, poetic sense that Isaac runs off to go live with his step-mom, his half-mom? I don’t know how that works in that culture, Hagar.

What the midrash actually says in a weird twist is that he goes to live with, of all people, Melchizedek, speaking of the book of Hebrews. It says that Isaac goes and he lives with Melchizedek during this time. Nevertheless, I digress, more midrash that I’m not trying to talk about, but the midrash is so much fun. He’s living in Beer Lahai Roi.

Let’s read this section here. Let’s pick up where Rebekah agrees to go back, agrees to be married to Isaac, and apparently agrees to marry a man that she’s not even sure if he’s going to be at home when she gets there. Let’s set the stage. She just said she’s willing to do this, go on this crazy adventure, and Eliezer is taking her back home. Go ahead and pick up in verse 59 of Chapter 24, Brent.

Brent: They sent their sister Rebekah on her way, along with her nurse and Abraham’s servant and his men, and they blessed Rebekah and said to her, “Our sister, may you increase to thousands upon thousands. May your offspring possess the cities of their enemies.” Then Rebekah and her attendants got ready and mounted the camels and went back with the men. The servant took Rebekah and left. Now Isaac had come from Beer Lahai Roi, I can’t remember how you said that, for he was living in the Negev, he went out to the field one evening to meditate.

Marty: I’m going to interrupt you here. He goes out, he’s come up from Beer Lahai Roi. Now, if you look at the map, if you assume that Abraham is living in Beersheba, and he sent his servant all the way up north to Horan to get a wife. Now they’re coming back from Harran to where, Brent?

Brent: I guess to Beersheba, but—

Marty: Yes.

Brent: Beer Lahai Roi is on the way?

Marty: No, that’s exactly my point. He’s been living, Beer Lahai Roi is more towards Egypt. It’s going to be west and south of Beersheba, and Harran is going to be dead north. For some reason, Isaac is up at least north enough of Beersheba that he is intercepting them, and the phrase there—What was he doing in the field, Brent? What does it say in your English translation?

Brent: He went out to the field one evening to meditate.

Marty: To meditate. What that word actually means in the Hebrew, if you look it up, is to muse pensively, which is a different image than just meditate. He is out there a little confounded, a little torn up, whatever you want to call that. He is out in the field, having himself a moment. Let’s pick up where you left off.

Brent: The footnote on that does say that the meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain. They’re hedging a little bit. He went out to the field one evening to meditate, and as he looked up, he saw camels approaching. Rebekah also looked up and saw Isaac. She got down from her camel and asked the servant, “Who is that man in the field coming to meet us?” “He is my master,” the servant answered. She took her veil and covered herself.

Marty: Can you catch the gravitas of that? If we understand some of the midrashic context here, this isn’t just like she sees somebody coming in the field, she’s like, “Who is that?” The servant is like, “It’s Isaac.” If all this stuff is true, can you imagine Eliezer’s like, “That’s Isaac.” “Who’s this man coming?” I imagine Eliezer, like, open-mouthed, “That’s him, that’s your husband.” [chuckles] For whatever reason, he’s in the middle of this field, that’s him coming. I just absolutely love that. Nevertheless, go ahead.

Brent: Then it just says, then the servant told Isaac all he had done.

Marty: Is that all I gave you to read?

Brent: There’s one more verse.

Marty: Yes, go ahead.

Brent: Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother, Sarah, and he married Rebekah. She became his wife and he loved her, and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.

Marty: I am so moved by that story. Let me be really clear here. A while ago on Twitter, somebody contacted me because of my treatment on Abraham. I hope I was more clear than this, but they were early on in the story. They felt like one of the things that I was saying was that everything that Abraham did was our righteous example. We should look at the life of Abraham and all of his actions and say, “You know what? That’s the model for faith.”

I definitely want to honor Abraham as the father of our faith. I think that’s very clear in the scripture. He’s the father of our faith, but I never wanted to imply that everything he ever did and all of his actions—Abraham is great, he’s no Jesus, that all of his actions were the things that we’re supposed to emulate. What we see so often is Abraham’s humanity. I think we said often throughout Session 1 that Abraham was far from perfect, right, Brent?

Brent: Yes, I think so.

Marty: Yes. We did not want to insinuate that everything Abraham does is the model, but sometimes it’s the model for what not to do. Don’t go down to Egypt. Don’t try to pawn your wife off, because it’s the only way that you can see making ends meet. There are so many things that he does that are not necessarily the model. They don’t fit into nice binary categories. It’s not like those actions were all bad, and these actions over here were all good. No, he’s just a human being, trying to figure out how to walk with God and making a ton of mistakes.

In this case, I’m trying to withhold judgment here, Brent. I don’t know. I read the story, it seems like God asked him to do this whole burning of Isaac thing. That seems like a test from God. As I read the story, it sure seems like that was prompted by God to ask him and invite him to do those things. We talked about that in Session 1.

At the same time, when I consider Isaac, I hear and I consider somebody who has been impacted, who has experienced religious trauma at the hands of parents, at the hands of a father who’s trying to figure out how to love the Lord his God with all of his heart and all of his soul and all of his mind, and he’s trying to do the right thing. Yet at the same time caused traumatic harm to his child. I am not saying yes, I’m not saying no, I’m not saying that’s good, I’m not saying it’s bad. I’m saying, how many of us have experienced that reality? Does that make sense, Brent?

Brent: Yes.

Marty: When I see this story, I try to withhold judgment of what did Abraham do right, what did Abraham do wrong. All I know is that Isaac had an experience like so many of us had. I know that my parents for the most part were trying to do the best job they could with faith. They were trying to hand me and it came out through the lens of fundamentalist Christianity and all this stuff I had to deconstruct later. I didn’t suffer nearly the trauma that so many people had to, I totally understand that, but there are things that I had to deconstruct, I’ll use the term loosely and lightly. I had to deconstruct some religious traumatic experiences from my own story.

I love teaching this to a room not full of college students but to a room full of their parents because there are so many of them that have adolescents or late adolescents or young adults or kids that are in their 30s and 40s, and they look back and they go, “Did I screw up? I had my Abraham on the mountain moment. I was trying to do what God asked me to do. I don’t know if I did it right or wrong. I know that God met me, but I don’t know what happened to my kids.”

This story, I look at this story, and again, I see Abraham and I’m not saying that he’s the model of faith in this story. What I’m saying is he’s a man who trusts the story. It is so moving to me. Abraham could have looked at this and went, “Man I jacked this all up. My family’s destroyed. My wife has died. She never got to say goodbye to her son. My son doesn’t even want to talk to me anymore.” He could have just thrown in the towel.

Yet Abrahams sends Eliezer to get a wife for his son because that’s his job as a dad. He just keeps trying to do the best job he can and keeps believing in love, and trust, and acceptance, and second chances, and forgiveness. However the story works, Isaac sees it. He sees the fruit. He doesn’t know all the backstory, just like we talked about with Joseph, Joseph didn’t know all the backstory with his dad.

Isaac doesn’t know all the backstory with his dad Abraham. He doesn’t know the story of Rebekah yet. He doesn’t know all the things that happened with Eliezer at the well, but there’s something about what his dad is doing and who Rebekah is. These people who are willing to trust what God’s doing in the world, they’re showing up, imperfect, getting it wrong, but they’re showing up and there’s something about it that Isaac sees. He says, “Man, if this is what God is doing in the world,” and he goes back home and he lives with Rebekah in his mother’s tent. It’s just such a good story.

This isn’t a formula. It’s not a guarantee that if you feel like you screwed your kids up and you just hang in there like, “All the Isaacs come back home.” No, sometimes the Isaacs don’t come back home. There’s no guarantee here in this story that this is some formula that works, but it’s this ancient story of an experience that I find unbelievably moving and compelling.

I’ll end with just a little bit more midrash. Just because it’s moving and compelling, doesn’t mean that it's a happy ending, everything got put back together. There’s still ripple effects. There’s still trauma. There’s still therapy that’s needed. The midrash will go on to say that while Isaac was lying on the altar, and I could be butchering this midrash—again one of the reasons why we don’t work directly with it and link it because I have no business making declarative statements.

The midrash tells a story about how the angels were watching as Abraham was getting ready to sacrifice Isaac, and they didn’t know what was going to happen. They didn’t know what God was up to. They didn’t know what was around the next corner. They’re crying, they’re weeping, the angels are. Some of the tears of the angels fall into the eyes of Isaac as he lays there on the altar. The midrash says, “Those tears give Isaac ayin ra’ah” Do you remember the phrase ayin tova and ayin ra’ah, Brent? Where did that show up? What is that?

Brent: We talked about it in the Gospels where Jesus is talking about how you view people, whether you have a good eye or a bad eye.

Marty: The good eye, what did that mean to have a good eye?

Brent: To see people in a favorable light.

Marty: Yes, to be generous with your perspective, to believe that there was more than enough in the world to go around, to have a perspective of abundance rather than a bad eye which would be a perspective of…?

Brent: Of not enough. I need to hold things selfishly for myself because if I don’t, I’m not going to have enough.

Marty: That scarcity worldview in comparison to an abundance worldview. A worldview that chooses to see the good rather than a worldview that chooses to see the bad. The midrash acknowledges this experience with Isaac. It says, as the angels cried, this is where Isaac got, if you remember, his—give me the opening verse of Chapter 27, Brent.

Brent: When Isaac was old and his eyes were so weak that he could no longer see.

Marty: There’s that phrase. When he’s old and it talks about his blindness, and of course we think physical blindness. That’s not necessarily incorrect, but the midrash says there was so much more. It was more than just a physical blindness. It was also a bad eye from his traumatic experiences that caused him to see the world in a negative. That trauma caused him to see—understandable trauma. I’m not blaming Isaac. “He should have had a good eye. He should have chosen—” no, no, no.

Sometimes our trauma and our life circumstances affect us in a way that’s not just like snap your fingers and redeem it. Sometimes it deeply scars us and impacts us. Here is Isaac with his trauma, and yet this trauma is going to continue to play a part. We’re all over the place historically in these episodes here in Session 6, but we’ve already talked about what happens with Jacob and Jacob and Esau and how Isaac the blind one, Isaac with a tainted perspective, Isaac with potentially a bad eye, Isaac with bad eyes who names Esau Esau, but names Jacob Jacob, and if you remember, Rebekah, who refuses to it.

You can see the dysfunction. You can see the trauma having consequences. You can see the real-life experiences here. Again, I just want to take two steps back and go, I’m not judging that. I’m not saying good or bad. I’m just saying it is. If we can start relating to the book of Genesis as, “I have these experiences. This is what life is like for me,” then what we can see is that God never leaves us in the midst of that and there’s always room to trust the story and always ways that the story can be redeemed.

We can even learn little tricks of the trade along the way of how to redeem those stories not in a formulaic, this is how you get rid of your bad eye, but just in an acknowledgement that there is trauma and there are bad eyes. Yet it doesn’t mean that the story is over. It doesn’t define where the story has to end, but the story can keep going. You can keep sending away for a wife, for a son who’s not even home. You can hang onto the narrative of God trusting that somewhere love, and light, and truth, and grace, and forgiveness.

Trust the story even when you’ve messed up, trust the story even when it’s not pretty, trust the story because there’s still goodness waiting. Sometimes Isaac’s hanging out in a field, north of home, way north of his home. Sometimes we’re in the right place at just the right time. God shows up and breaks into our story and gives us a little bit of light and a little bit of hope and keeps the thing going. There’s just so much in here I just love so much. I’m going to stop, Brent, and let you wrap up the episode. What do you think about all that?

Brent: I was looking at that meditate word the NET translates it “relax” apparently, and in their notes they point to the NASB and NIV as translating it “meditate,” and they say that NRSV translates it “to walk.” It’s just this casual, relaxed. I don’t quite know what I’m doing here, but I just wonder, what was going through Isaac’s mind at that time?

He’s been away for such a long time, but he knows about the promise and he knows about where he’s supposed to be, and he’s just restless and he’s like, “I don’t even know why I’m going to do it, but I’m just going to go wander around in that area and just be closer to whatever the promise is that God supposedly had for my family. I don’t understand how that’s going to work out because my dad tried to kill me, but I’m just going to go be there.” There it all happened again. There it came back together.

Marty: Yes. It’s so good. Good thoughts.

Brent: I think that does it for this episode. We’ve packed a fair amount of stuff into 40 minutes or whatever.

Marty: Yes. I have been so floored by this lesson. It has just rocked me to the core. I think I taught on it three times in 2018, 2019. I think it was 2018. I did three different sermons throughout the year. It just deeply, deeply impacted me at just what it means to keep walking the path and being able to acknowledge the real stuff, and yet walk the path anyway because God shows up.

Brent: It’s so much better to have the story be relatable like this.

Marty: Absolutely.

Brent: These aren’t these high and mighty patriarchs who are just a notch below Jesus in the perfection level. They were humans, and they were trying to follow God the best they could, and they made some really big mistakes sometimes. I think there’s just so much comfort we can take in that.

Marty: Absolutely.

Brent: Go back and review Episode 11—that story where we talk about the chiasm. That’s a great perspective on the story, and as we went through it the last time, that’s when we learned this whole story. Another example of a lot has happened in a few years. Review that and check out the other links we put in the show notes. If you want to get a hold of Marty, you can find him on Twitter at @martysolomon, and I’m at @eibcb. Thanks for joining us on the BEMA Podcast. We’ll talk to you again soon.