The Promise Made By YAHWEH To Abram Under The Oak Of Moreh

This tree whose Hebrew name can be translated the 'tree of the diviners' owed its name probably to its reputation as a source of oracles, As a rule diviners interpreted the noise of the wind in the branches as the Canaanite deities revealing their will or giving their advice. Thus YAHWEH was to appear to Abram before this venerable tree to impart to him the unexpected message, 'It is to your descendants that I will give this land.'

'Your descendants,' It was no question here of Sovereign protection granted on occasion to a man or even to a family of shepherds or a small clan of Aramean nomads. YAHWEH revealed HIS plan in all its grandeur and simplicity: there was to be a blessing on the patriarch, but also, it can be said, a blessing on his children, on his children's children, on all his descendants in the future. 1 The Chosen People had come into being, even though it was almost by allusion and as yet intangibly. The whole history of Yisrael, a nation led by YAHWEH, is already contained in embryo in this utterance of YAHWEH's in the valley of Shechem. Henceforward YAHWEH possessed HIS own group, through which man's moral and spiritual elevation was to be accomplished. The Chosen People is chosen (namely, Abram's descendants) and the Promised land is promised (that is the land of Canaan, what we nowadays call Palestine 2). The history of Yisrael begins.

Abram followed this further revelation by YAHWEH with a ceremonial thanksgiving. It was the first sacrifice, it appears, that the patriarch had offered to YAHWEH who had led him there. Abram, Bereshith tells us, built there an altar for YAHWEH who had appeared to him (12:7). This was to acknowledge, by a ritual act, YAHWEH over his clan.

Following certain indications furnished by several later passages in the Scriptures referring to primitive times, when the nomad tradition was still a living one, it is possible for us to have a clear idea of what the altar 'built' by Abram was like. There was no question, in the circumstances, of faced stone, of cement, of building in the modern sense of the word, since the wandering shepherd, and especially the ancient Hebrews, had an instinctive horror of putting up a solid, permanent building of squared stone or other materials. It is very probable that Abram set up a sort of platform of beaten earth or a kind of offering table of rough stones, merely heaped one upon another. There the victim was slaughtered and burnt. Moreover, in a subsequent passage the Scriptures will shortly give us considerably more detail on the occasion of a curious ceremony in which Abram officiated as a kohen.

For the moment it suffices to say that the officiant, the high kohen, was by definition the patriarch of the community. There was no priestly hierarchy in the pastoral civilizations. Colleges of priests were only established in history when the people had become established, permanently settled in a particular place with a social organization which had perfected either a system of irrigation or plantations of fruit trees. In the steppes, in the pasture lands or the semi-desert regions the Bedouin sheik is at one and the same time the leader in war, the political head, the principal judge, and by token of this last function, the only one fitted to offer to YAHWEH a sacrificial victim.

Reference to the liturgy of the ancient nomads, as it is revealed to us on occasion by the Scriptures, will enable us to reconstruct, in its general outlines, the ceremony at Shechem, which, from the little that we know, must have begun by calling upon YAHWEH. The people cried out to YAHWEH. This was a further anthropomorphic feature, though very excusable in those ancient times: it was advisable to warn the deity, to attract his attention by cries, to make him come to the meeting-place.

And when the deity was there, invisible but present before the table of offerings on which it was intended to offer him the animal, there could be no question of speaking to him in a low voice, but rather in an expressive and intelligible manner. Indeed, it must be admitted, following certain indications in the Scriptures, that during the sacrificial ceremony those present shouted, even danced, perhaps. This was the way in which it was done among the pagan Arabs. And in Scriptural history, in like circumstances there occurred strange noisy scenes, with much shouting. On the present occasion the noisy, frenzied acclamations were designated in the Scriptures by the term hillel, a derivative of the verb yalal, to yell or roar. In the Hebrew liturgy the moment when the faithful uttered their rather discordant cries was called the halleluyah (acclaim YAHWEH).

At the beginning of the spiritual meeting those present, joining themselves to the petitions or thanksgiving enunciated by the patriarch Abram, prayed standing, motionless, facing the altar, their arms raised with the palms of their hand facing outwards. That was a posture that was long preserved in the Hebrew ritual. It is Sumerian in origin; the primitive statues from the delta of the Euphrates frequently depict orantes in this imploring attitude, a combination of humility, fear and hope.

 1 We shall have occasion to observe that for nearly 2000 years it was a question of human descent; later, with YAHSHUA, it was to be transformed into spiritual descent. See, especially, the animated discussion reported by St Yochanan to the Yisraelites who claimed to be the sons of Abraham. MessiYah answered, 'If you were Abraham's children, you would do what Abraham did' (Yochanan 8: 30-59). And in St Matthew's Gospel we read the statement by Yochanan the Baptist: 'Do not presume to say to yourselves, "We have Abraham as our father"; for I tell you, YAHWEH is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham' (MattitYahu 3: 9). At Shechem, of course, at the very dawn of Scriptural history, it could only be a question of family descent.

2 Palestine: in fact, a rather oddly chosen name. Etymologically Palestine means 'the land of the Philistines' (Pulasati). The Philistines, probably Cretans, very probably inhabitants of the islands or coasts of the Aegean Sea, were neither Semites nor Indo-Europeans and are difficult to classify ethnologically They were adventurers who spread into the Syrian lands and even to the Egyptian delta in about 1200 B.C. Ancient writers called these invaders the 'People of the Sea' Waves of these well-armed, martial warriors seized certain places in Canaan and soon showed their intention of imposing their rule over the wandering tribes. The struggle between the children of Yisrael and the Philistines appears to us now in a very tragic light. In the face of these fearsome opponents the Chosen People on several occasions were to be within an ace of destruction. The coastal region where the Philistines were established was called Palestine. Unfortunately, this same name, by some sort of geographical aberration, came gradually to be used to designate the interior of the country which had not been conquered by the Philistines. The Greeks adopted this mistaken terminology (Herodotus, 450 B.C.), and the Romans followed their example. Thus ironically enough we find the land of YAHWEH's people endowed with the name of its greatest enemy whose domination never really extended over the whole of the land of Canaan.

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