Was Abraham a thief?
Genesis 22
13 And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.
How convenient for Abraham! Just when he needed to find a ram to
sacrifice on the altar that he and Isaac had built, there it was. The
believer in Divine providence will see this as evidence of God's
concern for Abraham, shown in this very practical way. But the critic
may take a different view, and see this incident as evidence that
Abraham was a thief for stealing another man's ram. At first this may
seem to be a very reasonable way of looking at the event. This ram
could not have been one of Abraham's own flock, for he had left his
herdsmen about fifty miles away at Beersheba. He had not brought the
ram with him, so it must be concluded that it belonged to somebody else.
This accusation against Abraham could not be answered satisfactorily
until the code of laws of that time in history was found. Abraham lived
under the laws of Hammurabi, the sixth king of the first dynasty of
Babylon. He was more famous as a lawmaker than as a warrior. His code
of laws was found by archaeologists at Susa in Iran, inscribed on an
immense stele of black diorite stone. The British Museum has a
carefully made copy of it on display. After extolling King Hammurabi as
the shepherd of his people, it lists 282 paragraphs dealing with the
laws that the king had gathered and enacted. Among these laws is one
concerning any animal that has become trapped, such as a ram caught in
a thicket. This law states that such an animal was to become the
property of whoever freed it from its toils. Thus Abraham was well
within his rights, when he rescued the ram, to regard it as his own
property. He was thus free to offer it as a sacrifice. By the law of
the land, Abraham was not a thief.
Copyright © 1994-96 by Philip P. Kapusta