Abraham and Lincoln
The Gettysburg Address & The Burial of Sarah
Abraham Lincoln recognized slavery not as the South’s sin, but as America’s sin, for which the North also suffered divine retribution.
Last week I learned that two pictures exist of Abraham Lincoln in Gettysburg. Here is one of them:
Seated amidst the throng milling around him, bare-headed, looking down, Lincoln reflects the magnitude of the moment - quiet dignity, gravity, grief, perhaps guilt. It was a profoundly religious moment for him as well. Maybe he felt, or at least sought, God’s presence.
Something about this picture evokes for me what the scene of the Biblical Abraham dedicating his wife Sarah's burial place in the Cave of Machpelah could have looked like.
I spoke about it from the pulpit this past weekend.
Both Abraham and Lincoln did not speak long. They each had the humility to not impose themselves on the proceedings, but stayed out of the way and let the power of the moment and the place speak for themselves. Abraham and Lincoln both had the wisdom to be silent, to listen and channel something larger than themselves.
The Gettysburg Address was only 10 sentences long, 271 words. Some of them are, “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here.”
The text tells us that Abraham came to Hebron “לִסְפֹּד לְשָׂרָה וְלִבְכֹּתָהּ - to eulogize Sarah and to cry for her.” In a Torah scroll, one letter in that phrase - “כֹּ” - is written in miniature. A Midrashic explanation has it that the diminished letter in this phrase demonstrates how Abraham did not overly extend the eulogies or the crying (what he said is not even recorded in the text for posterity).
Both Abraham and Lincoln had the perspective to know that they were coming to a sacred place, not creating one. I think this is how they both understood that being there, among the dead, carried obligation for the living.
It is fascinating how, in both cases, this has to do with reunifying a social order that had broken apart.
For Lincoln, “…we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.” Gettysburg was about continuing the “unfinished work” of those who fought and died there, a “rebirth of freedom” in a reunited country, so that they would not have died in vain.
A series of rabbinic traditions understand that Abraham had previously recognized the Cave of Machpelah as a holy site. In particular, one Midrash states that when Abraham went to slaughter a calf to feed to the three men who visited his tent, it ran into the cave. Following it, Abraham sensed great holiness, even proximity of the Garden of Eden. When Abraham returns with the calf, the men give him the miraculous news that Sarah and he would soon have a son. Perhaps the foretelling of the birth of Isaac, through whom he and Sarah would live on, was the holiness that Abraham perceived. How powerful it must have been for Abraham to return to that very spot as Sarah’s life ended and her legacy began.
Burial of Sarah, by Gustave Dore (1866) The episode seems to spur Abraham to focus on finishing her “unfinished work,” bringing back together the pieces of his then-splintered family and ensuring its continuity - so that Sarah’s work should not be in vain. He marries a woman named Keturah, who the Midrash identifies as Hagar. He sends his servant to find a wife for Isaac, who is brought to Sarah’s tent. He puts his affairs in order. When he dies, he is buried by his two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, who by that time have children of their own.
Both Abraham and Lincoln understood their obligation was to reunite families/nations that had drifted apart. But they both also refused to compromise on their own principles.
In his second inaugural address, describes America as a nation founded “on the proposition that all men are created equal.” Lincoln believed that the Southern way of life, based on the rejection of that proposition, was fundamentally unAmerican - and unGodly. As
wrote recently:
Lincoln faced a reunifying nation where half were bitterly disappointed, devastated really, by the turn of events. The other half was jubilant. And what did he do? While affirming both sides in a skillful pastoral way, he pointed to the undeniable justice of God. He combined being a pastor to a broken nation with being a prophet for a better world. In doing so, he demonstrated that the pastoral work of binding wounds and healing communities never takes place separate from the call for justice.
When Abraham died, he was buried by Isaac and Ishmael, together. By that time, Abraham’s family was really two families, each with its own patriarch, place of primary residence, and way of life. Abraham understood his own legacy continuing exclusively through Isaac, not through Ishmael. Like Abraham Lincoln, Abraham the Patriarch chose sides, even as he led his family through a reunification, with branches that certainly did not see eye to eye on major issues.’
Perhaps Abraham and Lincoln were able to accomplish this because they also recognized their own responsibility. They didn’t just judge others from a distance, but included themselves as part of the larger collective.
Abraham Lincoln recognized slavery not as the South’s sin, but as America’s sin, for which the North also suffered divine retribution. As Lincoln said at the Second Inaugural, “If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him?”
We don’t have direct textual evidence of the Biblical Abraham feeling responsibility over Sarah’s death (according to the Midrash, a result of the near-sacrifice of their son), his possible estrangement from Isaac (with whom he does not descend the mountain), or his expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael from his home. But the way that the story ends leaves us a series of tantalizing dots for those who would want to connect them in that way.1
We know something about living amidst sharp division. Four lessons that Abraham and Lincoln teach us:
Speak less. Listen more.
Be part of something larger than yourself. Feel a sense of obligation to it.
Unity doesn’t come from eliding or papering over differences. We need to be true to who we are.
As Lincoln said, “Let us judge not, that we be not judged.” But, as Lincoln did, never stop seeking justice - and there is more than enough responsibility to go around.
Photo by Virginia Simionato on Unsplash
As a fascinating aside, here is one writer saying that the small letter in the Torah means that Abraham did feel responsibility for Sarah’s death, and here is another saying the exact opposite.