Texts in Conversation
Isaiah calls Abraham God’s friend, the earliest text to give him that title. Jubilees echoes this language and makes it a part of the divine records, saying Abraham was written on the heavenly tablets as the friend of God.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Isaiah 41:8
Hebrew Bible
7 The craftsman encourages the metalsmith, the one who wields the hammer encourages the one who pounds on the anvil. He says of the welding, ‘It is good’18, and nails it down so it won’t fall over. 8 “You, my servant Israel, Jacob, whom I have chosen, offspring of Abraham my friend, 9 you whom I am bringing back from the earth’s extremities and have summoned from the remote regions—I told you, ‘You are my servant.’I have chosen you and not rejected you.
Jubilees 19:9
Pseudepigrapha
8 This was the tenth test by which Abraham was tried, and he was found to be faithful and patient in spirit. 9 He said nothing about the promise of the land which said that the Lord would give it to him and his descendants after him. He pleaded for a place there to bury his dead because he was found to be faithful and was recorded on the heavenly tablets as the friend of the Lord. 10 In its fourth year [2027] he took a wife for his son Isaac. Her name was Rebecca, the daughter of Bethuel (the son of Abraham's brother Nahor), the sister of Laban — Bethuel was their father — the daughter of Bethuel, the son of Milcah who was the wife of Abraham's brother Nahor.
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Notes and References
... In addition to being found faithful, Abraham is said to have been recorded on the Heavenly Tablets as the friend of the Lord. By this the Interpolator seeks to refer to Isaiah 41:8, where God describes Abraham as one ‘who loved Me’ (in some translations, ‘My friend’). This became a famous part of Abraham’s reputation; he is called a ‘friend of God’ in CD 3:2 (partially), 4Q252 Genesis Pesher, col. 2:8; Prayer of Azariah 12; Philo, Abraham, 89 and elsewhere; 4 Ezra 3:14, Apocalypse of Abraham 10:5; Targum Neofiti and other targums on Genesis 18:17, and such early Christian sources as New Testament James 2:23 and 1 Clement 10:1 ...
Kugel, James L.
A Walk Through Jubilees: Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of Its Creation
(p. 113) Brill, 2012
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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