The story of Abraham's Daughter

December 5, 2012
Abraham was the father of all Abrahamic religions, for us is that 6000 years later, given an objective. But how great was the drama of Abraham? How it was with the sacrifice of his only son on the mountain: Was that Ishmael or Isaac was that? Why the wealthy Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael away into the desert with only one bread and one bottle of water?
Abraham, Hagar and her child sent into the wilderness, that was not inspiration by God. There was intrigue, jealousy and competition. According to the Bible and the Torah piece of cake but in reality it was a painful tragedy for everyone who was involved.
Abraham's daughter let there as a spectator her light shine on with her and see how the story is put together like a puzzle. Immediately in the first chapter you will get an idea of the obsession of Abraham and his dilemmas. In the course of the book, the intrigues prove to be even greater.

The book is now the publisher who wants to publish it hopefully.

Abraham's Daughter
July 30, 2013

Chapter 1    Without name.

Her heart was pounding with excitement in her throat. She was so close, with one wrong move could scare him immediately and then she had to look again. Her black hair hung straight down her left cheek and right she did it gently behind her right ear. If not her hair came into the tendon of the arc when he would shoot the arrow.
Silently they crept along the bushes, looking for the goat that they had seen moments before walking. The girl was only twelve but quite adept at shooting game medium. The sun was hot on the dry savannah ground under her feet, which was covered with a thin carpet of dry grass. She struggled to the grass not to crack and almost inaudible slowly put foot for foot down. Away among the trees and bushes was the grass greener, there it was easier to walk. Especially since the ground by the shadow was not so hot. Concentrated to the tips of her toes, she stepped closer.
The buck was at fifty meters of her, grazing. His beautiful heavy horns curled majestically past his head. For a moment he seemed suspiciously been and he looked up with a jerk as if he had heard her. Unsure of her presence, he was going to run, nervous head up into, with short passes, sauntering between the crop; fleeing something he suspected danger but he could not see properly. After about twenty yards he was kept quiet again and assured himself of it that the danger had passed.
Motionless she held her breath and flexed its muscles. Few seconds it took the suspicions of the buck yet. The stately animal lowered his head back down to the tender grasses and continued to graze. She closed her eyes and stretched the bow, opened her eyes and was one with the buck. Her fingers slipped off the tendon and the arch stretched while the arrow through the moist, warm air around and flashed the buck right struck in the heart. With one leap panic rebounded surprised animal still on and almost immediately fell down again. Quickly she ran on the box and cut the neck open after the warm blood gushed from the veins. Admiringly she looked at the soft shiny coat of the animal showing a beautiful brown-gray glow reflected in the sun. She thanked God for her father, Abraham, for the award of this beautiful buck. There was only one God and no other. The tribes around worshiped more gods. For hunting they had a god. There was the god of the lions, a god of the sun and the moon. The tribes had many gods, that it was almost impossible to keep up.
Her father had long ago opted for the one God and the polytheism of his family renounced after an argument with her grandfather, Terah. She had never known her grandfather but heard the stories. Terah was a great sculptor. His pictures were so beautiful that the people gave magical powers to it, and the images were worshiping. Terah did this to good use, and the images were selling like idols, which according to her father, Abraham, many people made unhappy. When her father went around telling that the images were not gods but that there is only one God whose effigy could not be made, he quarreled with Terah, who, along with Lot, the son of Abraham's brother Haran, sent away. Haran was a follower of Abraham's stories about God but was slain. Because Abraham barely spoke to her, she did not know there fine but from the snatches of stories to her half-brother Ishmael she had picked up how Abraham was chased by Terah and had gaps in the story itself but filled. Terah must have been a terrible man because he had slain his son Haran. Abraham had explained to Ishmael that polytheism, people made it so bad. To herself explained Abraham nothing, he even did not speak to her. Because she was a girl and not a son. She was tolerated but not accepted. But maybe one day he would accept her. Perhaps today they now had a beautiful ram.

Now she had to quickly Buck mountains, that would not get the air out of its predators hunting success. She pulled the arrow out of the carcass and dragged the buck to the nearest tree, tied the rear legs to her long rope. With a deft sweep threw the rope over a high branch, hoisted the buck and cut the sheet around the hind legs off. Then she made the sheet to the tail, the tail cut off and made a cut of the groins of the kid to the front legs, deep enough to pull the skin, shallow enough to let the meat intact. After a small start to have made on the hind legs, she pulled the skin of the goat down to the neck and cut the peel. The sheet spread them out on the floor with her face down. The flies had got wind of the carnage and swarmed into the blood under the trestle was dripping on the floor. Some flies gathered on the head. Quickly she cut the front legs to the shoulders loose, the buck turned and cut out the back of the dorsal muscles. The meat they put into the skin. In the hind legs, she made a few quick cuts and cut off the meat from the bone. Finally they cut the belly and pulled to the inside of the back two muscles. The rest was for the scavengers. It all went very fast, they had done it more often. It had to be fast, because scavengers had always quick to notice that there was some pick. Only she would never withstand the wild dogs or lions. The precious meat packed them in, in the skin, leaving it stripped carcass of the goat bags. The ropes were untied and thus bound them together so that the skin of the goat meat in one of the goats skin bag, could be carried without the flies directly in could.
The meat was definitely good food for two days, her mother Sarah, Hagar stepmother, father and her half-brother Ishmael. Her mother, Sarah, was already an old woman, according to her own words to old to have children. She was a handsome woman, despite her advanced age, with thick curly black hair, smooth skin and large, somewhat sad eyes. They often had lost a premature baby and God seemed to give her a son. Her father, Abraham, was an old man and had a few years ago, the young Egyptian woman, Hagar, taken as a second wife, that they might do to him would give a son. Hagar was the daughter of a deceased merchant.
In the time after Abraham and Lot, Terah had left, there was a lot of famine. After wandering they had ended up in Egypt where the Pharaoh was impressed by the beauty of Sarah. Abraham and Lot feared for their lives and told that Sarah was their sister. Pharaoh lavished Abraham and Lot with gifts and took Sarah his wife. When Pharaoh was plagued by drought, and a red Nile, he learned that Sarah was actually Abraham's wife, and that she had a daughter. Abraham had apologized that his God was displeased that the pharaoh Sarah had taken his wife, and that therefore the pharaoh was ravaged by the plague. In order to propitiate God had Pharaoh's daughter Sarah and his fellow merchant, given to Abraham. So was Hagar came into the family. Abraham had the gift of the Pharaoh understood as the work of God and took after consultation with Sarah, Hagar as his second wife.
Sarah had agreed reluctantly; the pressure put on her Abraham had to get a son had been great. After all, had hitherto Abraham and Sarah had only one daughter and the birth of a son, Abraham could follow up, was delayed. The first-born right the first son inherited all of his father, was already an old habit in the family of Abraham. He had been disappointed with a daughter and had pretended they did not exist. She had even been given a name.
Hagar was a sweet kind woman, who was much younger than Sarah. Initially, the language was a problem to communicate well but Hagar was smart and learned quickly.
Whenever Sarah was pregnant again, Abraham sacrificed animals to God to bring him favorable for a son, but none of the sacrifices might benefit. The gesture of the pharaoh, which he gave Abraham a second wife, Abraham was also a godsend to have to have a son now. So Ishmael was born of Hagar, the first son of her father Abraham.

As she walked across the plains with the meat home, she felt satisfied rich. It was now in the heat of the day, the time that the predators shelter from the heat and they could go safely into the plain. What would they say at home? Again she would come home with a nice booty. How happy would they be this time? Her mother Sarah, Hagar and her brother, Ishmael were mostly delighted, not her father. But maybe now. Maybe he let today do notice a trace of admiration when she came home with the catch. For as long as she hoped that one day he knew her hunt for value estimate. Actually, she hoped that every time he would show a little bit of admiration for what they took home. He ate there but never said anything. He even did not speak to her, only her mother and Hagar and Ishmael against. Sometimes she felt that she was invisible to him, or that he was blind to see her. Less than the donkey she was to him, less than ... It filled her with sadness but she pulled on to the others in the family.
They should have a son, like Ishmael, then he had spoken to her. But he did not, she was not of value, even if they caught a buck. Once she started hunting because she had been told that they could be just as good as a son. But Abraham did not accept her as equivalent to a son.

The house was her mother, Sarah. The house was on an open plain and was built of cedar wood that smelled delicious in the hot sun. Around the houses were in groups of servants while the whole area was surrounded by a fence that the bead formed to catch animals in the herd every night and give shelter from predators.
"Mom, look what I caught."
Her mother looked at her and smiled faintly. Her response was unusual, there was something. Her mother avoided her for a reason. Surprised they searched around. There was something unusual, unlike any other, with its reaction mother hid her something. Her father was in the neighborhood and she dodged her why?
"Where is Hagar? Where is Ishmael? "
Her mother shook her head and turned her face away from her.
She dropped the bag of meat. Was something happened? Something dramatic? "Where ...?"
In the distance they suddenly heard someone call Hagar. There was despair in the cry. Not a moment she hesitated; this was an emergency call. Without having to worry about her hunting success she turned and ran in the direction of the cry. If a doe they jump over bushes and shrubs, and over stones until she was just outside the corral at Hagar.
Hagar was in tears at a stone, her wrists were tied to a root of a giant cedar tree. The rope around her wrists had her skin sanded open during her desperate attempts to free himself from the rope.
"Hagar ...?"
Hagar looked at her desolate. "He is with Ishmael ..." She nodded toward the mountain. "He said that God had commanded him to go up the mountain with his son. It does not feel good. I'm afraid of Ishmael, and I could not follow him. "
"For what?"
Hagar burst into tears. "God ... Sarah should give him a son. I'm so afraid to Ishmael, a sacrifice ... "
"Is Sarah pregnant again?"
Hagar nodded. The previous times that Sarah was pregnant, Abraham sacrificed becoming an animal to propitiate God for a son of Sarah, her mother. Pregnancies Sarah had become an obsession. It was now five years since he had taken Hagar as a second wife and a year later, Ishmael was born of Hagar.
She picked up her knife and cut the rope around the wrists by Hagar. "I'm going after them, stay here with Sarah! Only I'm faster and I know the area. "Hagar accepted with visible reluctance, the arguments of the girl.
Immediately put them in hot pursuit. The hot sun shone on her shoulders while climbing inzette against the big mountain in the land of Moriah. Betrayal in the family, it was not true. Through her brain fired all kinds of bad thoughts about what Abraham was going to do on the mountain. She was not reassured. Left and right shots lizards away. She had to watch out for snakes, under rocks and in crevices of the rocks. Every ten meters climb, she had to rest. There was no trace of her father and her brother.
It could not be true, what she suspected. It could not be true that he would be willing to sacrifice his only son instead of an animal, to propitiate God. The thought sparked her anger. If that were true, how could he fall back on the old rituals of the tribes around here that people regularly sacrificed to their many gods? It still was not that Abraham, the proclaimer of the one God, the God which they had grown up and that was better than all the gods of the barbarian tribes would lose in a human sacrifice? Actually, she had never even understood the animal sacrifice. The futility of wasting an animal nota bene was created by God, and that give back to God.
Above, on the ridge, she peered around and suddenly saw in the distance, on the other side of a valley, walking her father with her brother, against the wall of the opposite mountain. Both wore a package of wood on the back. The wood was undoubtedly serve for the sacrifice.
She hurried back down along the side of the mountain slope towards the other slope across the valley, making leaps, occasionally just keeping in balance, half falling and stumbling. The plants and trees were rapidly higher as they approached a babbling brook.
The effort she felt her heart pounding in her head, her throat was dry and as she held briefly stop at the stream and quickly washed her face and made her long black hair wet. She hurriedly drank from the brook and continued her journey continued again. When she was just in time.
During the run, she prayed to God for help. It could not be true that the God of Abraham, demanded from him that he would sacrifice her only brother. If this was the way that God would not be better than the gods of their ancestors. This just could not! How stupid could sacrifice people? How stupid could this sacrifice, and to suppose that God why Sarah would give him a son? How selfish ...
She caught herself that she really imagined argue with God, as if God had to convince the terrible mistake that make Abraham seemed to go. But God knows everything, He is all of course know also what Abraham plans. Yet she was not assured that things would come right in the end.
Actually he deserved no better than that all his children girls. At the same time they realized that all the girls without a name would be the same contempt as they would have to go through. But suppose he would have his way, and a son would get after sacrificing his only son Ishmael. How bad would be the reward of God? Just because Sarah was his first wife. Suppose now that Sarah had a son: This son would be with the sacrifice of Ishmael, the first son, but marked with the death of his older brother. She would hate my new brother for his life, as they make Ishmael would lose.
How distorted must be the spirit of the desperate Abraham, to think that giving the death of his son Ishmael present, the solution would be to the unborn child Sarah as firstborn son, all inheritance rights. As they climbed, they realized that the situation had become more complicated, as Ishmael would live and Sarah would have a son.
For suppose that Ishmael would live and indeed Sarah would have a son. How would distort the relationship between Sarah and Hagar. What hatred and envy the two brothers would grow up? What kind of hatred and envy would take root in their family?
Again she prayed to God: "O God, let the child Sarah, please be a girl?
The slopes were steeper again and occasionally she slipped. After a difficult climb up the path on which she found her father and her brother had walked. She first saw the footprints in the sand. Panting, she ran down the path to the top. The path meandered back and forth, zigzagging along the steep mountainside to the top. On every corner she had breath back and catch my breath. Her throat was dry again by the dusty path, but she had to, she could not give up now.
Her body slowly began to protest the great climb rapidly. The journey was difficult for her twelve year old body. "If God still give her the strength ..." Desperately, she burst into tears, afraid of what they would find up there; the corpse of her brother and her father a murderer?
"... But Father, we have the wood and the fire for the sacrifice ... where is the lamb?" It was the children of Ishmael voice she heard. She had made up lost and Abraham and Ishmael ran across the path just above here. She quickly hid himself against the mountain and had the tension almost vomiting.
"My son, God will provide us with everything," said Abraham of the vote against his son. She hated the lying hypocrisy in response to his son that the sacrifice itself might be.

The young Ishmael was quiet, childlike trusting the word of his father. Both walked slowly along the path. It was fortunate that the little Ishmael them as retarded, otherwise they would never be able to catch them.
Silently she walked up to the next corner and saw just how her father and her brother took the next bend.
They were almost over. A cry of a pair of eagles echoed against the mountainside. She was now close and could not betray themselves. Quickly but cautiously she hurried to the next bend. She dared not tread the path after this bend, until again her father and brother had taken the next bend. On the right trail, they would be able to see her, she might not happen so she remained out of sight until both the angle circumambulated.
Her father would never admit what he would sacrifice, and what if she was wrong and indeed he would sacrifice anything other than her brother. Suppose he indeed had taken him because he loved the boy and wanted him to see the mountain and wanted to teach him how to sacrifice. Suppose it was her mistake and Hagar. Doubtful about the whole situation, she decided that she could take better hidden so they ran the risk either to be sent back or any acceptance of her father wasting final.
On top of the mountain was a plateau. She heard the voices of Ishmael and her father, Abraham. He had begun to rank the woods on a large stone, an altar.
"My father, where is the lamb for the sacrifice?" Asked the little Ishmael again.
Again he replied, "My son, it is God who will provide for everything." He stooped to Ishmael, picked him up and put him on top of the altar. Behind his back he had put a knife behind his waistband and held out his hand to the knife.
She did not hesitate, grabbed a bow and bent the bow while she came out threateningly: "In the name of God, Abraham, my father. In the name of God who has so sweet, hit the boy not to, nor dare him to do anything! I know you do not respect me, but respect God, the only God and no other. He sees that your only son that you would not remember Him. Neither a man nor a woman, nor a child, nor any other life should be sacrificed for him that everything and every life as created out of passion. Not in the future, not the past! "
Surprised Abraham looked around and saw his daughter with the bow and arrow aimed at him. Ashamed but he angrily responded: "How dare you detest your father? How dare you talk about what will and will not happen. "

"Abraham!" It was now another voice spoke from behind the girl. "Abraham, hit the boy not nor dare him to do anything! Neither a man nor a woman, nor a child, nor any other lives will be sacrificed for him that everything and every life as created out of passion. Not in the future, not the past! "An angel stood behind the girl and turned to her as he gently pushed away from the bow and arrow toward Abraham. "What is your name?"
"I have no name ..." she whispered hoarsely and impressed by the angel, while the bow had relaxed.
Angel looked surprised to Abraham and back to her: "Either this be?"
"My father gave me no ..." she whispered again.
The angel turned to opposite Abraham: "How are you disrespectful? It is God who provides for everything, Abraham, and yet you do not trust! "The angel pointed to a bush where a ram was stuck confused with the horns in the branches. "That is the sacrifice which God provides, one third should be given to the poor."
To the girl he said, "From now on, your name Amira, which means 'princess' means." The angel said all: "And your names will be borne in history."

Note of Hans de groot