Setting: Genesis 11:29-30 Extra-biblical Sources:
Bereishit Rabbah 39:1
Commentary from Vilna edition of Midrash Rabbah
We sat on an outcropping overlooking the great Euphrates near a stand of reeds. It was not a dark night, for Nanna and the other gods shone brightly in the sky, but we could clearly see the distant flickering light that was Nusku’s fire consuming Terah’s compound.
I was not in a right state of mind and bitterly I said to my little brother, “Abram, great ‘friend’ of Enki - or ‘El’ as you call him - tell your friend to command Enbilulu to divert some of these powerful waters and extinguish the fire that burns up our homes and our lives.”
He sat in silence.
I continued: “Enki is a king among the Annunaki, Abram, but he is not a friend of man, and whatever authority he has delegated to the others he no longer retains for himself. The world is not a place of harmony. Life is struggle. Gods and men are at war. It is cowardice to deny it.”
Still he said nothing.
“Why does your ‘El,’ god of water and friend of man, stand by and watch with us as the world burns.”
Abram looked at me with a soft and gentle gaze. “Nahor, Terah’s house is a magnificent house. It is a palace. Even a birah. It is worth defending. It is worth protecting. It is a shelter for man and beast, a paradise in a chaotic cosmos.”
He paused and I wondered if I was somehow meant to find some kind of reassurance in his declaration that what was burning was indeed precious.
Softly, he went on.
“For all of its splendor, we have left our birah to hide here in the dark. How can you ask why El has abandoned our birah, when it is plain to see that we have abandoned it, too. How can you ask why El does not defend our world, when we do not defend it ourselves?”
“My standards for the Annunaki are higher than my standards for men.” I replied.
“Are they?” Abram asked. “Do your Annunaki not engage in every form of pettiness and treachery and lust that man engages in, only more so? Yet I commend you in your instinct to look for a higher god. One unlike man. One holy. I seek Him, too.”
I stared at him there in the darkness, unwilling to seriously entertain the thought that I somehow want gods at once more wicked and more holy than I.
“Where is he? This ‘holy one’ you seek, Abram? Where is he?”
“I fear He has abandoned His birah. Perhaps we will find him out here in the desert.”
-
That night we set a watch with Abdhulraman and his son Eliezer taking shifts overseeing the guard.
I was not sleeping when Abram approached my makeshift tent in the middle of the night and whispered quietly to me. I sat up and crossed my legs and took a moment to collect myself, and at first his words made no sense to me.
“Milcah or Iscah?”
He stared at me with anticipation and then continued: “If you should choose Milcah I would take Iscah, but if you should choose Iscah I would take Milcah, for I love them both as my own sisters.”
As my mind cleared and his meaning gradually became clear to me I stared at him in disbelief. “Abram, Iscah is barren, you know that as well as I do, and Milcah will have no trouble finding a suitor in any town in Chaldea. Do you really suggest what you seem to be suggesting?”
“It could be years before we are established in another town, and Milcah and Iscah are already at the age of childbearing. They need support, and stability, now. Haran’s name must be preserved. We are his closest kin.”
“Abram, Iscah is barren! And a thousand prayers to Inanna have not changed that. Your guilt over what happened to Haran drives you to act hastily in this matter,” I replied.
At that, he sat in silence beside my bed for so long that I thought I might have convinced him to lay aside the matter for another day. Then he spoke once more.
“I will wed Iscah when the days of mourning for Haran are ended. Who knows? The old women may be wrong. She may yet be able to conceive. And if not, would that change the fact that Iscah needs a redeemer?”
I knew that what Abram spoke would come to pass. He would marry Iscah and I Milcah, and so we would redeem our older brother’s daughters.
It was always this way with Abram. He would run, not walk, to help the most despised and unfortunate among us.
“Very well,” I said, and rolled over as if there were any chance of sleep.