Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“So they made a covenant at Beersheba. Abimelech rose up with Phicol, the captain of his army, and they returned into the land of the Philistines. Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there he called on the name of Yahweh, the Everlasting God. Abraham lived as a foreigner in the land of the Philistines many days.”
(Genesis 21:32-34)

Abraham and Abimelech made a second covenant together (the first one of generational peace, the second over the well). Once they were both satisfied, Abimelech and his military commander returned to their homes.

Abraham commemorated the event by planting a tamarisk tree and calling on the name of the Lord.

Abraham lived among the Philistines as a foreigner. He had the promise that his descendants would inherit the Land, but in the hundred years he lived there, he didn’t see it fulfilled. That didn’t change his trust in it, his belief in it, or his thanking God for it on repeated occasions. Abraham understood trusting God. He didn’t mix his trust with a schedule. Time didn’t matter. It would be because it would be. God keeps His promises. Period.

The sage Ramban writes: ‘AND THEY RETURNED TO THE LAND OF THE PHILISTINES. The sense of the verse is that they returned to their city which was in the land of the Philistines for they lived in the land of the Philistines. However, they abode in Gerar, which was the royal capital, while Abraham dwelled in Beer-sheba, which is in the land of the Philistines, in the valley of Gerar. AND HE CALLED THERE IN THE NAME OF THE ETERNAL, ‘E-IL OLAM’ (THE EVERLASTING G-D). Scripture explains that Abraham called by the name Eternal He Who in His might directs the time.
It may be that heaven and earth are here being called olam (world) [so that the sense of the verse is, “he called by the name Eternal the G-d of the world”], as is a customary expression in the words of our Rabbis. Thus Scripture informs us by this that Abraham called out and informed people of the secret of the leadership of the entire world, namely, that it is in the name of the Eternal, the Mighty One in strength, Supreme in power over all. Now the Rabbi said in the Moreh Nebuchim that this alludes to the principle of the pre-existence of G-d since Abraham let it be known that G-d existed before the creation of time. Onkelos, however, said of the word vayikra (and he called), that it refers to prayer.’

The sage Rav Hirsch writes: ‘Abraham seems to have been prompted to this by the event he had just experienced which gave the place the name of באר שבע. The most important personage of the country, the King of the land, had come to him, the most isolated householder, a man without any real claim to rights, because he had a two-year old baby lying in a cradle of whom the King knew, or had a premonition, that a mighty nation was to grow. As a cautious politician he wanted to form an alliance with the father of that baby so that the descendants of the boy should still know how he and his country had behaved towards their ancestor and gratefully repay that behaviour. In this Abraham saw the beginning of the future which had been promised to him being actually realised. Without Divine direction the King and his general would surely never have sought to make such an alliance with a hundred-year-old greyhead and his two-year-old son, whose political hopes must have appeared simply “laughable”. At באר שבע the place at which is immortalised this whole God-directed contrast: באר, the well the insignificance of the present state, of a man without rights, so dependent, that the peaceful possession of a well he himself had dug has to be acknowledged as a “royal gracious kindness”, and שבע, the oath concluding an alliance with the king who could only have some idea of the promised future great nation that was to be evolved, — at that place Abraham planted a tree which was to grow into a rich blessing bringing happiness to people, and there he proclaimed, not the א׳ קונה שמים וארץ, Who reveals Himself in the laws of Nature, but א׳ עולם, the One Who sows the future with invisible seeds in the present. It was the first trace of God’s constructive work in directing human history that Abraham had to greet, and he celebrated the occasion by perpetuating it by planting a tree in which — perhaps — he laid down his idea of this future. Out of simple unpretentious beginnings, like a tree, and, like it, spreading blessing far around when matured, does the future to which he belongs germinate; and it is God א׳ עולם Who thus plants and nurtures the tree of blessing of the development of the future. Just as here, a God-sent presentiment drove Abimelech to Abraham, and thereby the first respect was planted in Philistine minds which later on grew to the “fear and dread” which kept the “inhabitants of Philistaea in fear and trembling” when God led the people of Abraham to their promised heritage, so, frequently, — long before the events, — such ideas fall from heaven, catch the mind, affect actions, and later on people find it quite “natural” that events happen as they do.’