Torah Pearls – Vayyera – Genesis 18:1-22:24 – Nehemia Gordon & Keith Johnson
Who were the three men Abraham saw? What can we learn from the cheeseburger of the Bible? What is the meaning of the name Isaac? Was the sin of Sodom really homosexuality? Was Ishmael scoffing, mocking, or something else altogether? The Torah clearly states that human sacrifice is an abomination to God, how then are we to understand the command to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac? “In your seed, all the nations of the earth may be…grafted”?
Nehemia Gordon – Ezekiel 18 & 33
Join us for this year’s Tanakh Tour of Israel!
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Hello and good morning I hope all is well with all of you today, have a blessed week all of you….
One thing that was revealed in our Torah studies this week is that the 2 messengers were, in accordance with the Torah, used to bring witness against Sodom & Gomorra in order to bring about judgement. There must be 2-3 witnesses as we all know.
This prompted an additional search into the Tower of Babel. Once again, it references “Let us” when they were going down to confuse the languages. We see this in Genesis 2 as well. Further study is needed in reviewing Noah and the flood…
Hi Jono,
I noticed that you guys skipped over the fact that Sarah was in Hebron when she died (separate from Abraham). It says in verse 2 of Beresheit 23 that Abraham came to mourn for her. One interpretation that I think makes sense is that the Akidah (binding) of Isaac was something that broke up the family with Abraham and Sarah appear to have been living apart. The Rabbis and the book of Jasher has some elucidation on this, (with the understanding that Jasher is extra-Scriptural). It is said that Sarah was so distraught because she either knew what Abraham was kill Issac, or was told that Issac was dead. So, she fled to Hebron in grief and died shortly after that. (we are not clear how old Isaac was at the time of the Akidah, though the Rabbis think he was in his late 30s). I know you don’t have unlimited time for each parsha, I just thought it was worth bringing up…
Regards
-Chris Dees
I’m fairly new to studying the Torah and I found these on YouTube SpiritualBabies. They are a great deal of fun and have given me a lot to think about.
I did look up the word מצחק (Genesis 21:9) and I have found that צחק mostly is translated as “laugh”.
I do see in Genesis 19:14 where כמצחק is translated “to jest” in that Lot’s sons-in-laws thought he was “jesting” when he told them about the messengers destroying the city.
I also see where מצחק is translated in Gen 26:8 in regards to the relationship between Isaac and Rebekah and in Genesis 39:14 לצחק in regards to Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. My gut says that the word means a concept or feeling and cannot be translated completely into English?
The best I can come up for צחק is that it is the feeling of joy or elation as a response to a stimulus.
It is a very awkward topic, I have to say. I bring it up only because sometimes I think Yah gets a bad rap because the punishments (in this case Ishmael does something that was created to be a positive thing, but he did it under inappropriate circumstances making it a very negative, damaging and thus forbidden thing) sometimes do not seem to fit the crime. Perhaps, if we actually knew the crime, we might not judge so harshly.