Nonfiction review: The Woman Who Named God

By: JUDITH CHETTLE SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT | Times-Dispatch
Published: October 11, 2009

NONFICTION

Biblical accounts of Abraham's relationship with Sarah and Hagar have always been problematical, and even more problematical was Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac.

For historian and writer Charlotte Gordon, the challenge in her thoughtful "The Woman Who Named God," though, is to understand the men and women in the novella-like drama as individuals. To ask what they did and why, rather than "is it true and what does it mean?"

Drawing on scholars, experts and modern translations, Gordon also seeks to understand her protagonists' legacy, which continues to affect our world. As the father of three major faiths: Judaism, Islam and Christianity, Abraham played a vital role in the Bible, yet curiously "no comets blazed across the sky the day he was born," and no angels announced his birth. Instead, his most notable characteristic seemed to be his wife Sarah's inability to bear children.

And yet this fact would shape the whole story, as Abraham and Sarah left present-day Iraq at God's command to found a great nation.

Abraham, unlike his father, believed in only one God, and this God, as Gordon notes, is the fourth character in the drama. Abraham obeys God's command to move first to Canaan and then to Egypt, where Abraham pretends Sarah is his sister. There the Pharaoh presents them with Hagar, an Egyptian princess, who became Abraham's slave as well as the mother of his eldest son, Ishmael.

Gordon examines all the familiar features of the story but pays particular attention to the human feelings of jealousy and distrust that affected the trio. Not that the divine intervention and acts are scanted. As Gordon notes, Hagar not only was the founding mother of the Arab nation, but fleeing Sarah's cruel treatment, she encounters God.

There in the Negev desert, she became the first person in the Bible to name God. Calling him El Roi the all-seeing, she not only conversed with God but also defined him as a being who could 'see' people and their needs. Thus, she introduced the revolutionary idea that God, unlike his pagan counterparts who ignored people, was actually concerned about Hagar's plight.

Gordon offers perceptive insights into an ancient story whose consequences continue to reverberate. She also notes that, despite current animosities between their descendants, both Isaac and Ishmael traveled to Hebron to bury their father without incident.

Judith Chettle is a Richmond-based book reviewer and writer.