A few miscellaneous remarks are suggested by some of the circumstances of Abraham’s history:--
1. The ancient method of ratifying a covenant by sacrifice is illustrated in the account given in Gen. xv, 9, 10. The beasts were slain and divided in the midst, and the persons covenanting passed between the parts. Hence, after Abraham had performed this part of the ceremony, the symbol of the Almighty’s presence, “a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp, passed between the pieces,” verse 18, and so both parties ratified the covenant.
2. As the beauty of Sarah, which she retained so long as quite to conceal her real age from observers, attracted so much notice as to lead to her forcible seizure, once by Pharaoh in Egypt, and again by Abimelech in Palestine, it may appear strange, that, as in the east women are generally kept in seclusion, and seldom appear without veils, she exposed herself to observation. But to this day the Arab women do not wear veils at home in their tents; and Sarah’s countenance might have been seen in the tent by some of the officers of Pharaoh and Abimelech, who reported her beauty to their masters.
3. The intentional offering up of Isaac is not to be supposed as viewed by Abraham as an act sanctioned by the Pagan practice of human sacrifice. The immolation of human victims, particularly of that which was most precious, the favourite, the first-born child, appears to have been a common usage among many early nations, more especially the tribes by which Abraham was surrounded. It was the distinguishing rite among the worshippers of Moloch; at a later period of the Jewish history, it was practised by a king of Moab; and it was undoubtedly derived by the Carthaginians from their Phenecian ancestors on the shores of Syria. Where it was an ordinary usage, as in the worship of Moloch, it was in unison with the character of the religion, and of its deity. It was the last act of a dark and sanguinary superstition, which rose by regular gradation to this complete triumph over human nature. The god, who was propitiated by these offerings, had been satiated with more cheap and vulgar victims; he had been glutted to the full with human suffering and with human blood. In general it was the final mark of the subjugation of the national mind to an inhuman and domineering priesthood. But the Mosaic religion held human sacrifices in abhorrence; and the God of the Abrahamitic family, uniformly beneficent, had imposed no duties which entailed human suffering, had demanded no offerings which were repugnant to the better feelings of our nature. The command to offer Isaac as “a burnt offering,” was for these reasons a trial the more severe to Abraham’s faith. He must therefore have been fully assured of the divine command; and he left the mystery to be explained by God himself. His was a simple act of unhesitating obedience to the command of God; the last proof of perfect reliance on the certain accomplishment of the divine promises. Isaac, so miraculously bestowed, could be as miraculously restored; Abraham, such is the comment of the Christian Apostle, “believed that God could even raise him up from the dead.”
4. The wide and deep impression made by the character of Abraham upon the ancient world is proved by the reverence which people of almost all nations and countries have paid to him, and the manner in which the events of his life have been interwoven in their mythology, and their religious traditions. Jews, Magians, Sabians, Indians, and Mohammedans have claimed him as the great patriarch and founder of their several sects; and his history has been embellished with a variety of fictions. One of the most pleasing of these is the following, but it proceeds upon the supposition that he was educated in idolatry: “As Abraham was walking by night from the grotto where he was born, to the city of Babylon, he gazed on the stars of heaven, and among them on the beautiful planet Venus. ‘Behold,’ said he within himself, ‘the God and Lord of the universe!’ but the star set and disappeared, and Abraham felt that the Lord of the universe could not thus be liable to change. Shortly after, he beheld the moon at the full: ‘Lo,’ he cried, ‘the Divine Creator, the manifest Deity!’ but the moon sank below the horizon, and Abraham made the same reflection as at the setting of the evening star. All the rest of the night he passed in profound rumination; at sunrise he stood before the gates of Babylon, and saw the whole people prostrate in adoration. ‘Wondrous orb,‘ he exclaimed, ‘thou surely art the Creator and Ruler of all nature! but thou, too, hastest like the rest to thy setting!--neither then art thou my Creator, my Lord, or my God!’”
ABRAHAMITES, reported heretical sects of the eighth and ninth centuries, charged with the Paulician errors, and some of them with idolatry. For these charges we have, however, only the word of their persecutors. Also the name of a sect in Bohemia, as late as 1782, who professed the religion of Abraham before his circumcision, and admitted no scriptures but the decalogue and the Lord’s prayer. As these were persecuted, they too were probably misrepresented, and especially as their conduct is allowed to have been good, even by their enemies.
ABSALOM, the son of David by Maachah, daughter of the king of Geshur; distinguished for his fine person, his vices, and his unnatural rebellion. Of his open revolt, his conduct in Jerusalem, his pursuit of the king his father, his defeat and death, see 2 Sam. xvi-xviii, at large.
ABSOLUTION, in the church of Rome, is a sacrament, in which the priests assume the power of forgiving sins. The rite of absolution in the church of England is acknowledged to be declarative only--“Almighty God hath given power and commandment to his ministers to declare and pronounce to his people, being penitent, the absolution and remission of their sins: He pardoneth,” &c. In this view it is innocent; and although any private Christian has a right to declare and pronounce the same doctrine to his neighbour, the official publication of the grace of the Gospel is the public duty of its ministers in the congregation, since they are Christ’s “ambassadors.”
ABSTINENCE, forbearance of any thing It is generally used with reference to forbearance from food under a religious motive. The Jewish law ordained that the priests should abstain from the use of wine during the whole time of their being employed in the service of the temple, Lev. x, 9. The same abstinence was enjoined upon the Nazarites, during the time of their Nazariteship, or separation, Num. vi, 3. The Jews were commanded to abstain from several sorts of animals. See [Animal].
The fat of all sorts of animals that were sacrificed was forbidden to be eaten, Lev. iii, 17; vii, 23; and the blood of every animal, in general, was prohibited under pain of death. Indeed blood was forbidden by the Creator, from the time of the grant of the flesh of beasts to man for food; this prohibition was continued under the Jewish economy, and transmitted to the Christian church by Apostolic authority, Acts xv, 28, 29. (See [Blood].) The Jews also abstained from the sinew which is upon the hollow of the thigh, Gen. xxxii, 25; because of the shrinking of the sinew of Jacob’s thigh when touched by the angel, as though by that the part had been made sacred.