It’s been a while since I posted anything on Abbott’s Almanac. I have several reasons or excuses to offer. I spent a ten-week summer holiday on the Washington coast, and I was busy fishing and updating a vacation rental we bought there as investment property. I didn’t want to write about the election because I am not passionate about the results. Don’t get me wrong, I am deeply partisan and extremely interested. I understand how emotional everyone gets these days about politics. Clinical and detached is how I take my politics. Kinda like my dad and football. I had lots to say, but no story to tell. After the election, I did write a piece about polling, pollsters and prophetic prognostication by the numbers, but my editors told me it read like one of my meandering monologues in conversation. It was not yet an essay - rather than rewrite it, it sits idle in my substack queue, unsent.
I have been listening to a book, The Money Plot: A History of Currency's Power to Enchant, Control, and Manipulate. The author, Fredrick Kaufman promotes his new book by saying, “money is the most powerful metaphor.” Right off the bat Kaufman makes his argument that from the beginning, girls and women, wives and daughters have been the first and most valuable currency. He proffers his evidence:
I would argue one step further: The first form of money was not the carefully carved shell of an ostrich egg or a polished cowrie, but a woman’s body. Bodies played an important role in Stone Age economies. Anthropologists have noted that “primitive” Congolese actuaries computed compensation for the accidental death of an innocent person from a neighboring group as ten iron hoes, an ox, and one girl. The girl did not serve as payment in and of herself, as she was delivered to her lessees (so to speak) on a provisional basis for the sole purpose of giving birth to a child (replacement cost). Once the female body had successfully executed the process of producing another body, its status as a medium of transfer and as a token of value was redeemed, the risk of social discord mitigated, the transaction balanced and settled.
Kaufman, Frederick. The Money Plot (p. 48). Other Press. Kindle Edition.
I’m listening and the author makes his case - but I keep thinking to myself, “What about Abraham?” Abraham is a character on which all of history pivots. I get Kaufman’s point about the money, the bride price and all that. He tells us in the past, the girls in the Batetela tribe in Congo answered yes to a marriage proposal of “I love you” with the three words, “bring the money.” Love, marriage and the baby carriage are all fundamentally transactional - that is Kaufman’s point and that is why Kaufman never gets to Abraham. The obvious reason is Abraham doesn’t fit the mold. Kaufman has to exclude Abraham from the story otherwise his ancient, compelling, narrative of women are currency, collapses in contradiction and ruin. St. Paul said it: “Abraham is the father of us all.” And Abraham was not into transactions. Abraham was a covenant man. And a history of bride price that omits the story of Abraham and Sarah is both woefully and willfully deficient.
Abram, (God changed his name to Abraham late in life) means, ‘exalted father.’ The name ‘Abraham’ means, ‘father of multitudes.’ And the biblical record is clear, Abraham is a rich and powerful man, albeit unconventionally wandering in a land he does not possess with a huge retinue of servants, who care for his even larger flocks and herds and can, on one occasion, muster three-hundred-plus men-at-arms for war. Central to Abraham’s story is his wife, Sarai, whose name is also changed along with Abram’s from a particular, localized ‘princess’ to ‘Sarah’ the universal princess or ‘mother of nations.’ Sarai is Abraham’s half-sister, they have the same father, but not the same mother.
The character development of both Abraham and Sarah is superlative. I know of no other ancient narrative remotely like it. Both Abraham and his wife are three-dimensional protagonists of exquisite refinement and depth. I object to the title of Kaufman’s book “Money Plot” for a variety of reasons. If the history of man is merely a history of transactional economy, if money is the plot, not man himself, then money, not man, is the measure of all things… I don’t like Kaufman’s plot, and I refuse to believe it is comprehensively true. I think Marx wrote a play similar to Kaufman’s and every time the communists perform it; the ending is always unhappy.
Musing about a ‘bring the money’ relationship between Abraham and Sarah is enough to choke a man in a horselaugh. Those of you who are familiar with the story know that Abram has no son. His heir is his steward, Eliezar of Damascus. Why no son? Abram could, ‘bring the money’ and buy any number of wives who would bear him an army of sons and heirs. Abram is not only the founding monotheist, but he is also uniquely monogamous. He refuses to imagine there is a transactional solution. He wants a son, and he is waiting for Sarai and God to give him one. He does not take it upon himself to resolve the problem. He is not like other men.
Sarai is like other women in at least one respect. She wants to give her husband a son. So much is this the case that she imagines she can give Abram children through her Egyptian bondwoman (slave) Hagar. Abram has no solution, but Sarai is practical, and she acts. It’s transactional, but it’s not about the money. So, Sarai said to Abram, “See now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing children. Please, go in to my maid; perhaps I shall obtain children by her. And Abram heeded the voice of Sarai.” “So he went into Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress became despised in her eyes. Then Sarai said to Abram, “My wrong be upon you! I gave my maid into your embrace; and when she saw that she had conceived, I became despised in her eyes. The Lord judge between you and me.” Sarai is clearly in touch with her emotions. She knows how she feels. “My wrong be upon you!” “Abram said unto Sarai, Behold, thy maid is in thy hand; do to her as it pleaseth thee. And when Sarai dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face.”
If we are going to call Abraham and Sarah a metaphor of faithfulness, we have to consider something about their relationship as brother and sister in addition to being man and wife. This is their agreement; that Sarai will be Abram’s sister when it comes to foreign potentates and princes in Abram’s wanderings. Both of them seem to understand Abram will or could get killed because of the beauty of his wife. He will be well received if he is the brother, possibly his life will be forfeit if he is her husband. The story is told three times in the scripture, twice with Abraham and Sarah, once with Abraham’s son Isaac and his wife Rebekah. The same story is recounted more or less faithfully in the Quran also. In fact, there are two Suras (coherent sections) in the Quran that talk about Ibrahim’s wife Sara, whereas her nameless Egyptian handmaid whom Sara gives to Ibrahim “to wife” remains unnamed in the Quran even as she bears him the first son Ismail.
Whereas Kaufman imagines everything is transactional and money is the metaphor. I think men tend to fight over, and fight for, women. “If I had a million dollars, I’d buy your love.” I can understand that - But if you are going to buy love, better set it up on the installment plan. My father told me he thought many marriages became unhappy because couples tended to quit courting. And courtship is a competition - it’s how civilized men fight over women. Prostitution is transactional. You can buy sex; affections have to be won. There is a reason why homicidal violence is the leading cause of death for women in the workplace - and that’s a very static statistic too. The face that launched a thousand ships (of war) was not a man’s mug. In the end, there is something a priori we can understand about ourselves observing the behavior of the stallions, bulls, and rams when we watch over our flocks and herds. Qabil and Habil, (Cain and Abel), of the Quran are commanded to offer sacrifice by their father Adam. Why? Qabil doesn’t want to marry the ugly sister, hence the envy directed at Habil. In Genesis, chapter four, near the end of the chapter, the same chapter as Cain and Abel, we meet Lamech. Lamech is a bloodthirsty polygamist, the son of Cain. He tells his wives, “…for I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt.’ My point - fighting is not the same as trading and money is not always a powerful metaphor.
Back to the strange faithfulness of Sarai and Abram in Pharaoh’s kingdom. I imagine Abram is not afraid of a fight. He certainly defeated Chedorlaomer and the alliance of kings who had taken his nephew Lot captive along with the other inhabitants of the plain. In those days the spoils of war were the wives and the little ones along with weapons and the booty. Kingship was the reward for the leader in battle. Abram’s behavior was different to say the least. Returning in triumphant victory, first Abram meets Melchizedek, the king and priest of Salem, who blesses Abram - and Abram gives Melchizedek a tenth of all. The King of Sodom then urges Abram to keep everything, returning only the people to the city. Abram replies, “That I will not take from a thread even to a shoe latchet, and that I will not take any thing that is thine, lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abram rich: Save only that which the young men have eaten, and the portion of the men which went with me, Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre; let them take their portion.”
Abram is not afraid to fight. But he doesn’t fight for the same reasons other men fight. That is the context we need to understand Sarai and Abram’s strange bargain in Egypt. Abram chooses to trust God rather than his own strength. If Abram is ready to fight for his nephew Lot, why wouldn’t he be ready to fight for his one wife, Sarai? Later in this story, Issac, Abram’s son, shows he has the same character as his father Abraham when he digs another well, a new well, rather than fight over the well his men just dug. Abram and his son Isaac are strangers in the land where they dwell, and they are men of faith, not men at arms, and are nonetheless powerful and fearsome. One reason they wander, they are too powerful to dwell in a fixed place, the Canaanites say, “Depart, you are too great to dwell here with us. If you imagine Abram is flakey, fearful and faithless to his wife Sarai then you have to square that with the other Abram who, at the very least, is fearless, faithful and an intrepid warrior/entrepreneur. Melchizedek, the mysterious Priest/King of “Salaam” Salem, i.e. “Peace,” sums up the man: “Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; And blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand.”
“Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.” He never doubted God could do the impossible. He believed Sarah could bear him a son in her old age. “Is anything too difficult for God?” He believed God would fulfill His word and make Isaac (the great prophet Ishaq in the Quran) the father of the covenant nation. When God told Abraham to offer up Isaac as a sacrifice, Abraham was able to square the contradiction - evidently believing that God could raise his son Isaac, even from the dead. Abraham believed nothing was too hard for God. But he did have the good sense to wait and tell Isaac’s mother, Sarah about what he was going to do, after they returned from the mountain of sacrifice.
Fredrick Kaufman says, “money is the most powerful metaphor.” What he means is, life is transactional. The age of show business (the internet) makes the idea that transaction equals life believable. Everything is pay-per-view. Yes, the sperm donor lives in Israel and the ovum came from a Swede and the surrogate was a Russian woman living in the Ukraine and the buyer can’t arrange pick-up because of, well, the troubles. “Who is my mother?” It’s easy to imagine how reducing life to an endless series of transactions will not end well.
Two final parts to the story. First: “And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which she had born unto Abraham, mocking. Wherefore she said unto Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman and her son: for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac. And the thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight because of his son. And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called. And also of the son of the bondwoman will I make a nation, because he is thy seed. And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and took bread, and a bottle of water, and gave it unto Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away: and she departed, and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba.” The Quran adds that Hajar asks, “Did Allah tell you to do this?” Ibrahim answers Hajar, “yes.” Hajar tells Ibrahim, “Then it will be well.”
When Sarah dies, Abraham needs a burying place, to put his dead out of his sight. He had come and wept and mourned for Sarah, and now he asks the sons of Heth for a place to bury his dead. They tell Abraham he is a mighty prince among them, and he may bury his dead anywhere, none of them will withhold their sepultures. But Abraham wants to own the burying place. He asks to buy the field of Ephron, which Ephron promptly gives to Abraham. Buy Abraham refuses the gift and requires a transaction. He will buy the field. Ephron opens the negotiations with a great price and seems surprised when there is no bargaining. Abram simply pays the price stated. And the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the field, and the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders round about, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession in the presence of the children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city. In life, Abraham lived by faith. In death, he wanted clear title to the place where he would bury Sarah. A transaction, a purchase was required. When the Jews first come to a town, before they build a synagogue, they buy a place to bury their dead. They remember their father, Abraham.
And his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron the son of Zohar the Hittite, which is before Mamre; the field which Abraham purchased of the sons of Heth: there was Abraham buried, with Sarah his wife.
Abraham and Sarah have been an inspiration to believers for most of history. They are a metaphor for faithfulness, and perhaps faithfulness is a metaphor for truth. I won’t dispute with Kaufman that there are a whole lot of transactions going on. Always have been and always will be. Kaufman is a smart guy, and he knows his title rhymes with, “The Money Shot.” Kaufman knows we live in the Age of Show Business.
The important things are priceless. There is a commandment, “Thou shalt not prostitute thy daughter, lest the land fall into whoredom.” We need a different metaphor - ‘money’ won’t do for the important things. “Faithfulness is everything.” Let us choose faithfulness as a metaphor for living a meaningful life. Keep the faith and keep your covenants. Save the transactions for burying your dead.