The Ten Tests of Abraham

The Mishna tells us (Ethics of the Father 5:3) that God tested Abraham ten times. But, the Mishna does not list what the tests were. It seems like a foundational part of our faith is underspecified.

What were the goals of these tests? What material did Abraham need to master? What was he supposed to demonstrate in these tests? The Mishna also does not pose or answer these questions.

There is no unanimity about what the tests were. If you look at some of the opinions, it is not even clear why some of them are tests at all. For example, the fact that Sarah was taken to Pharoah is often listed as a test. But Abraham was mostly passive. If anything – it was a test of Sarah or Pharoah. If we knew what was being tested for, we would better understand why these were tests.

Here is the list of ten tests according to Maimonides:
1. Departing Charan to move to Canaan
2. A famine
3. The taking Sarah to Pharoah
4. The battle of four kings versus five
5. Abraham’s taking of Hagar as a wife
6. Circumcision at age ninety-nine
7. The king of Gerar taking Sarah
8. God’s command to send away Hagar, against Abraham’s preference.
9. The expulsion of Ishmael
10. The binding of Isaac

Based on this, let’s analyze what is being tested for.

In Why Abraham I derived that Abraham had three key attributes which qualified him to be the progenitor of the Chosen People. He believed in God’s ethical compass. He had the ability to transmit the heritage of God’s word. He demonstrated obedience to God’s commands.

Let’s contrast these qualifications with the ten tests. Given that we claim that the three attributes of belief, obedience, and commitment to transmission are the qualifications, and that the tests are the qualifiers, there must be some mapping between the tests and the attributes. If we can demonstrate this, then we would better understand why these are tests and what is being tested.

The first nine tests can be arranged in three groups of three. In each of the three groups, there is one test for obedience, one for belief, and one for commitment to transmission. At every step of the way, God is testing Abraham on all characteristics.

Let’s demonstrate that in detail. The tests (1) to leave one’s birthplace, (6) circumcision at age 99, and (8) the expulsion of Hagar address obedience. To leave one’s birthplace severs all previous relationships. Circumcision at age 99 is physically hard. Expelling his wife, Hagar – which Abraham was clearly reluctant to do – must have been very hard. Yet Abraham obeyed those commands.

To discuss the tests related to belief, we must elaborate on what “belief” means in this context. The mere fact that Abraham believed in God was not the issue. Of course he believed in God – he was a prophet – and he communicated with God! Belief in God means something much deeper.

In antiquity there were others who believed in God – or more often in multiple gods. But in their view, the gods often spent time in competition with each other. They did not necessarily have mankind’s welfare as their top priority. Abraham’s belief was in an involved, ethical God who cares about what happens on earth.

Let’s examine tests (2) a famine, (4) the battle of four kings versus five, and (9) the expulsion of Ishmael. These all represented events that Abraham could easily have felt that they were indications of an uncaring God who did not fulfill commitments. In the case of the famine – right after Abraham was promised the Land of Canaan, a famine caused him to leave Canaan. In the case of the battle, God had promised Abraham that he would become a great nation. At that point in time, with no children of his own, Abraham’s closest disciple was Lot – yet Lot was captured in the battle causing embarrassment to Abraham. But in both of these cases, Abraham continued to belief in the involved, ethical God.

The expulsion of Ishmael more strongly challenged Abraham’s belief in an ethical God. Abraham always treated Ishmael as a full son, and a potential heir. When God told Abraham in Chapter 17 of Genesis that Isaac would be his heir – Abraham did not thank God – he only asked that Ishmael could also be an heir. That was the ethical, caring behavior he hoped to see from God. Yet Ishmael was banished. In this instance as well, God took action that went against Abraham’s intuition of the correct ethical compass – but he continued to believe, thereby passing the tests.

Abraham was committed to transmission. He and Sarah worked as a team to teach God’s ways to everyone, and they always expected that as a couple they would have descendants that would continue a covenant with God. But tests (3) taking of Sarah to Pharaoh, (5) Abraham’s marriage to Hagar, and (7) taking of Sarah to Abimelech all challenged whether Abraham could continue on the path of transmission – with Sarah potentially out of the picture. Yet he persisted undeterred in his mission.

The tenth test, the binding of Isaac is often viewed as the most significant test. References to that test are made throughout our prayers. It is the only test of Abraham which is actually called “a test” in the Torah. It is not surprising that the binding of Isaac – the final exam – tests for all three properties. Abraham was obedient when he was asked to do an incredibly difficult task. Although he believed in an ethical God, and the potential sacrifice of his son seemed to contradict that belief, he went on believing that somehow he was misunderstanding God and in the end God would act ethically. Similarly, Abraham continued his commitment to transmit the word of God despite seemingly being asked by God to make it impossible to transmit to his own heir. Such was his commitment to transmit.

The demonstration that the ten tests were testing exactly for these three qualifications is a powerful proof that these are indeed the qualifications that Abraham needed to demonstrate to become the progenitor of the Chosen People.