Unseen Multitudes

Unseen Multitudes Comparative commentary by Diana Lipton Cite Share Show Bible Passage The three artworks in this exhibition draw attention to three features of Genesis 15, in which Abram (later Abraham) laments his lack of an heir; cuts a covenant with God; and receives a divine assurance about the promised land. Dornith Doherty’s Husk Corn (Landrace), from Archiving Eden (2008 to present) highlights the fourfold occurrence of the Hebrew word zera, ‘seed’: Abram complains that since he has no ‘seed’ (offspring), his servant will be his heir (v.3); God promises Abram that his ‘seed’ (descendants) will be as numerous as the stars of heaven (v.5); God warns him that his ‘seed’ (offspring), will be enslaved (v.13); and finally, God promises to give Abram’s ‘seed’ (descendants) the land of Canaan (v.14). One issue raised by Doherty’s multi-year global project to photograph seed banks and create artistic representations of the seeds they preserve is selection. Some seed banks are built but later compromised by war or unanticipated climate conditions. Some countries and geographic regions lack the desire or the wherewithal to build seed banks in the first place. In both cases, their seeds will not be preserved for future generations. What about Abram’s seed? He did, of course, go on to have sons of his own: one with Hagar (Genesis 16:15); one with Sarah (Genesis 21:2); and six with Keturah (Genesis 25:1–4). Did Abram just happen not to have daughters? Or did he perhaps have daughters who, since they did not count as heirs, were not worth documenting for posterity? And if the latter is true, should we (do we?) visualize men and women when we read in Genesis 15 about the ‘seed’ of Abram who will be enslaved and then owners of the land of Canaan? Or are women never really ‘seed’ in the Bible? Pierre Soulages’s black painting sheds light on the role of darkness in Genesis 15, in which Abram experiences a mahazeh, vision. Though not a dream, halom, it’s surely a ‘vision of the night’. God tells Abram to go outside and count the stars; a ‘great darkness’ (the dead of night, or a psycho-spiritual event, or both) falls on Abram; and ‘after the sun had set’, God appears in the form of a smoking oven and a flaming torch. Why is Genesis 15 so emphatic about darkness? Abram built his first altar by the oak at Moreh (Genesis 12:6–7), and later, God appeared to him ‘by the oaks of Mamre in the heat of the day’ (Genesis 18:1). The Akedah, the near-sacrifice of Isaac, took place on a mountain, Mount Moriah (Genesis 22:1–19). It’s easy to understand why proximity to trees or great height mark biblical locations as special, even sacred. Both deep shade in hot sun and spectacular views induce a sense of awe. But darkness can also make a space seem spiritually significant. Geographic markers vanish, creating a feeling of infinity. Familiar objects look mysterious. In the dark, we fear the unknown, the unseen. And, above all, the line between heaven and earth dissolves in the blackness. The depth, texture, and play of light and dark in Soulages’s black-on-black painting, especially bearing in mind the caves and the abbey-cathedral that influenced the artist, helped me see how darkness shapes the sacred space of Genesis 15, a text I thought I knew well but hadn’t previously read in the dark. Zohar Gotesman’s No Relief spotlights references to enslavement in Genesis 15. With its reassurance that Abram will have an heir, and its promise of a land for his multiple descendants, this chapter is overwhelmingly positive. But embedded within it is the ominous threat of four hundred years of captivity (v.13). In the ancient Near East and beyond, slavery erased identity. An enslaved person was no longer the son of his father, but his master’s son. In this very chapter, Abram describes the enslaved man under his control as the ‘son of my house’ (v.3). Enslaved people are often discussed en masse. They are part of their ancestor’s projected history, as in this chapter, but for the most part, they have no stories of their own to pass to their descendants. ‘Our forefathers were slaves in Egypt’ (Passover Haggadah)—that’s about it. The lives of these enslaved people are not demarcated by lifecycle rituals. Unlike Abram, they will not be buried with their ancestors at a ripe old age. For me, Gotesman’s isolation of one enslaved person from a larger group serves as a model for recovering the individual identities of the people mentioned in Genesis 15. Abram was one and his descendants were many. That’s the message of this chapter. But I choose to foreground a single person—moreover a worker, like Gotesman’s enslaved, rope-tugging labourer—and to tell myself her story.