Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

If things were as Bellori assumed, and angels’ surroundings are shadowy and constantly changing, then every proximity, even for the briefest period, like the one in the desert before Hagar, or the one by Jericho before Joshua, must have been very strenuous for them. From all the intermingling days, with all their confusion of infinitesimal events, they were required to earmark a particular moment, retain it for long enough to go into it, and stamp it with a preordained action. Not just the stream of days, but that particular day, not just the stream of hours in this day, but that particular hour, not just the stream of minutes in this hour, but that particular minute. Not just the stream of people through the days, but this particular person right now. Not just eyes and mouths, ears and hair, but these eyes, this mouth, these ears, this hair. Moses, Isaac, Jacob, Hagar, Joshua, Elijah, Ezekiel, David, Daniel, Tobias, Abednego, Gideon. And Abraham. The Lord and his angels revealed themselves to him many times, but of all of these it is especially the appearance in front of the tent that Bellori finds noteworthy. Because it was bereft of splendor. Abraham was sitting in his tent in the middle of the day, and saw the Lord and two of his angels approaching, they were tired and hungry, and Abraham washed their feet and gave them food. The revelation has none of the aura of unfamiliarity and ambiguousness of the burning bush that Moses saw in the desert, or the spectacular show that surrounded the Lord when Ezekiel saw him. The impression given by the divine beings was one of dusty travelers, long accustomed to the solidity of the earth, rather than one of heaven’s light and luminosity. From the words exchanged when Abraham greeted them, they seemed attentive and concentrated. What they did while Abraham was preparing the meal for them is not mentioned in the text, but under the circumstances — they sat for more than an hour in the shade of the tree, presumably tired and exhausted from the traveling and the heat — it is likely that they relaxed their grip on reality a little, and the surrounding events consequently melted together to form their usual flickering and gauzy present for them. One moment Abraham was bowing deeply to them from the tent opening, the next the frightened bellows of the calf came to them, and the shepherd sitting on his haunches with a stick in his hand before his flock of sheep was in the next far out on the plain, like a leaf swept away by a sudden puff of wind. And hardly do they hear the sizzling of fat dripping into the fire, and smell the delightful aroma of roast calf, than Abraham is standing before them with a dish of food in his hands. How they reacted is impossible to say with certainty. Perhaps they looked up at him as he came, perhaps they nodded gratefully in thanks, perhaps they just began eating without noticing him. The latter is the most plausible, not least because the character of Abraham has something passive about it in the next sentence. He waited on them himself under the tree while they ate .

When the Lord and his angels meet Abraham, they speak with one voice. They said , it says. This phenomenon is widespread in scripture. The revelations to Hagar, Moses, Gideon, and Abraham are all marked by this doubt about who they’re really seeing and hearing: the Lord or the Lord’s angels. It’s as if the two things merge into one another. What is unusual about the meeting with Abraham, according to Bellori, is that this nebulous relationship is actually clarified.

First “they” ask where Sarah is.

“She’s inside the tent,” Abraham replies.

Then suddenly “the stranger” says:

“I will come back to you this time next year, and then your wife Sarah will have a son.”

Sarah hears this. She’s in the opening of the tent, and what she hears makes her laugh scornfully to herself. She’s no longer a woman in the full sense. She’d given up hoping for children a long time ago.

Now it isn’t “they” or “the stranger” but “the Lord” who speaks:

“Why does Sarah laugh and think: Shall I really have a child now that I’m so old?” he asks. “Is anything impossible for the Lord? At this time next year I will come to you again, and then Sarah will have a son.”

But Sarah denies it.

“I didn’t laugh,” she says.

“Yes, you were laughing,” says the Lord.

The movement from “they” via “the stranger” to “the Lord” is striking, particularly as it is so obviously the same voice that lies behind the latter two. Why is it initially “the stranger” who was to come back in a year, and then “the Lord”? What is the purpose of this subterfuge? Is the subterfuge important in itself?

Bellori thought so. He emphasized the fact that the Lord’s identity was picked out just as the situation changes. From being formal and neutral it suddenly becomes charged. When they arrived, they were met according to all the rules of hospitality, they had their food in peace and quiet, and kept the same distance from Abraham all the time. The question as to Sarah’s whereabouts, is neutral, so the common identity is retained in the following promise that they will have a son, which is what begins to charge the situation, so one of the three is picked out; and then, when Sarah’s misgiving is revealed, that one is named as the Lord. The rest of the situation shows quite clearly that this is no accident. When the Lord and his two angels get up to travel on, Abraham goes a bit of the way with them. The Lord thinks: There is a great outcry over Sodom and Gomorrah; their sin is very grave . He begins to ponder whether to let Abraham into his plans to destroy the two cities. When he decides he will, the Bible says: When the men turned and went toward Sodom, Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Abraham drew near him and said, “Wilt thou really sweep away good and bad together?”

Yet again the Lord and his angels are separated as soon as a doubt occurs. From being ostensibly one and the same when they arrived, it is the Lord alone who deals with Sarah’s doubt and mirth, the Lord alone who thinks about whether he should let Abraham be a party to his plans, the Lord alone who listens to his remonstrances.

But why does God pay this visit anyway, what is it he wants to achieve — and what significance has it for us?

It isn’t to announce to Abraham and Sarah that they’re going to have a son, because he’s already done that, in a vision Abraham had when he was ninety-nine. Nor is it to impart Sodom and Gomorrah’s fall to Abraham, as he only begins to consider that halfway through, as Abraham is seeing them off. In other words, the entire visit seems improvised, something that happens on the way to something else, a kind of rest before their real mission, the sounding of the state of things in Sodom and Gomorrah. In this case there would be no reason to include the event in holy scripture. But as it is included, it must mean that there is a significance somewhere.

But where?

The interlude with Abraham leads seamlessly into the story of the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah, which together form the angels’ longest biblical revelation by far. The fact that the text follows the angels closely all the way, and that their presence is not linked to one particular task, which in that case could have been effected as speedily as the other tasks related in the Bible, is an indication according to Bellori that it’s the angels’ actual presence that constitutes the point of the passage. That that was where the significance lay. It is notable that the word angel isn’t used at all during the visit to Abraham, and that they are named only as they arrive at Sodom. The use of names runs like a current beneath the surface commentary of the text; that the Lord’s identity is singled out just when it runs into doubt or difficulty isn’t accidental, it’s as if the current is forced up to the surface just there, and the same is true of the term angels . They leave Abraham as men, they arrive at Sodom as angels.