I will bless those
who bless you and curse him that curses you and through you shall be blessed
all the families of the earth.
12:3
I have no doubt that when Avraham attacked the doctrines of his fellow-men who
adhered to erroneous views, he was denounced and scorned. When he submitted to this treatment for the
sake of God, God said to him, “I will bless those who bless you…” the result was
that, as we see today, most people of the world agree in acclaiming him, and
being proud of him, so that even those who are not his descendants claim to be
his descendants – and there is no one who opposes his views.
Maimonides (12th
Century)
Now this portion of scripture is
not completely elucidated…However, the reason for God’s promising Abraham this
reward is that the people of Ur did him much evil on account of his belief in
the Holy One…and he fled from them to go to the land of Canaan…The Torah,
however, did not want to deal at length with the opinions of idol worshippers
and explain the matter…
Nachmanides (13th
Century)
I will bless each nation in
accordance with the respect it will give to the Jewish spirit. No nation will be able to deprive you of your
inner vitality, but those who will seek to restrict or stunt the physical existence
of the seed of Abraham, I will deprive of the inner vitality they themselves
need in order to survive…We are not told that God would merely act as a
protector….I will shape you into a great nation. All natural conditions will be against it, so
that it will be obvious for all to see that God Himself has been the creator of
this nation…
Samson Raphael Hirsch (19th
Century)
I have pointed out that the story
of Abraham is to be understood only in relation to its place in biblical
history, between the story of the failure of the first human race and the story
of the growth of the people Israel under the shadow of the call and the
promise…Scripture does not state its doctrine as doctrine but by telling a
story and without exceeding the limits set by the nature of the story. It uses the methods of story-telling to a
degree, however, which world literature has not yet learned to use…
Martin Buber
(20th Century)
Had Adam kept this one
commandment…a creature of dust would have established an eternal relationship
with God…(with Abraham) this is where God reveals that
the good fortune of Abraham’s descendants is only a step toward God’s ultimate
promise. In the end, all the families
of the earth will be blessed, period! …God has not given up on His plans for
all of humanity to accept ethical monotheism, but understands that everyone
cannot be educated at the same time. One
family, one nation, ready to obey the Divine, must perfect itself, and then
become the teachers through whom the entire world will learn to do likewise.
Shlomo Riskin (Contemporary)