T H.E seA R 0 F U l Y SSE S
417
with the comparatively far more manifest gods of the surrounding
Near Eastern world. The Jewish concept of God is less a cause than
a symptom of their manner of comprehending and representing
things.
This becomes still clearer if we now turn to the other person in
the dialogue, to Abraham. Where is he? We do not know. He says,
indeed: Here I am-but the Hebrew word means only something
like "behold me," and in any case is not meant to indicate the actual
place where Abraham is, but a moral position in respect to God, who
has called to him: Here am I awaiting thy command. Where he is
actually, whether in Beersheba or elsewhere, whether indoors or in the
open air, is not stated; it does not interest the narrator, the reader is
not informed; and what Abraham was doing when God called to
him is left in the same obscurity. To realize the difference, consider
Hermes' visit to Calypso, for example, where command, journey,
arrival and reception of the visitor, situation and occupation of the
person visited, are set forth in many verses; and even on occasions
when gods appear suddenly and briefly, whether to help one of their
favorites or to deceive or destroy some mortal whom they hate, their
bodily forms, and usually the manner of their coming and going, are
particularized in detail. Here, however, God appears without bodily
form (and yet he "appears"), coming from some unspecified place–
we only hear his voice, and that utters nothing but a name, a name
without an adjective, without a descriptive epithet for the person
spoken to, such as is the rule in every Homeric address; and of
Abraham too nothing is made perceptible except the words in which
he answers God:
Hinne-ni,
Behold me here-with which, to be
sure, a most touching gesture expressive of obedience and readiness
i~
suggested, but its delineation is left to the reader. Moreover the
two speakers are not on the same level: if we conceive of Abraham
in the foreground, where it might be possible to picture him as
prostrate or kneeling or bowing with outspread arms or gazing up–
wards, yet God is not there too: Abraham's words and gestures are
directed toward the depths of the picture or upwards, but in any case
the undetermined, dark place from which the voice comes to him
is not in the foreground.
After this opening, God gives his command, and the story itself
begins: everyone knows it; it unrolls with no interpolations in a few
