WE'RE ALL (HALF) BROTHERS

Blogging Genesis 25:1- 18

 25 Abraham again took a wife, and her name was Keturah. ² And she bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. ³ Jokshan begot Sheba and Dedan. And the sons of Dedan were Asshurim, Letushim, and Leummim. ⁴ And the sons of Midian were Ephah, Epher, Hanoch, Abidah, and Eldaah. All these were the children of Keturah.

When Sarah, Abraham’s first wife, died her son Isaac was devastated.  He mourned for three years (Genesis 25:18) and only got a handle on his grief after he married Rebekah and they moved in to his mother’s old place (Genesis 24:67).    Around the same time Abraham moved on, too.

He remarried (That’s wife #3)  to a young woman named Keturah.  Now Abraham was north of 150 years old that point, and we don’t know Keturah’s exact age, but she was young enough to have 6 successful, non-miraculous pregnancies. 

I know Abraham was a great man, a prophet, chosen by God to be the patriarch of the Jews and the ancestor of Christ --- but how RICH was Abraham to convince someone’s father to marry his young daughter to a 150 year old immigrant.  I know it’s in the Bible, but EWWW!!

Altogether, Abraham the Hebrew had 3 wives and 8 sons.  Three became famous patriarchs in their own right.  Scripture says that Ishmael, Abraham’s oldest, became a king. What else do you call the father of 12 princes (Genesis 25:12-16)?  Ishmael’s most famous descendant, according to Islamic tradition, was the prophet Muhammad. 

Midian, one of Abraham’s sons by Keturah founded the Midianites. 

Isaac’s twin sons founded the Edomite and Israelite nations, respectively.

The Lord kept His promise to Abraham.   I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you (Genesis 17:6).  Notice the plurals.  In the Judeo-Christian tradition we focus on the genealogy of the Jews, but not all of Abraham’s kids were Jewish, and some of his non-Jewish kids were believers.

The Midianites were generally pagan, but centuries later, there were Midianite priests who ministered to the Lord.  One of them was Reuel, aka Jethro, who mentored his son-in-law, a descendant of Isaac named Moses (Genesis 2:16-21).

Abraham’s story demonstrates that whatever our national and ethnic differences, if you go far enough back  we are all brothers, at least half-brothers, to even our enemies. 

Some of our racial siblings come to this moment from a position of greater privilege.  Abraham showed favoritism to Isaac.     

And Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac. But Abraham gave gifts to the sons of the concubines which Abraham had; and while he was still living he sent them eastward, away from Isaac his son, to the country of the east  (Genesis 25:5-6). 

God didn’t tell screw over most of his kids in his will; that was all on Abraham’s poor parenting.  Unearned privilege happens. But, when Father Abraham died, his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the field of Ephron the son of Zohar the Hittite (Genesis 25:9)

Two half-brothers, one a Jew and one a Muslim, came together to mourn their Hebrew dad and bury him in a Canaanite tomb purchased on Hittite land.

The history of nations, ethnicities, and religions in the Bible is not nearly as neat and simple as we usually tell it.  The “good guys” weren’t always good, and the enemies of God’s people weren’t always enemies of God.  The Bible described genuine faith outside of the proper religion (Matthew 8:10), and Biblical genealogies confound any attempt to assign labels of ethnic “purity” to any group.  Our attributions of blood and our claims to soil are mostly recent or mythical. 

And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring (Acts 17: 26-28).

Like Ishmael and Isaac, we are at our best when we get ignore the divisions our ancestors created and we remember that we all have the same Father.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

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