Parshas Vayeira

Shlomo opens with a happy birthday to Yehuda, then picks up three days after Avraham’s bris. Hashem makes the day especially hot so the guest-loving Avraham can rest, but Avraham still sits at the tent entrance waiting. Three angels arrive in human form: one to heal Avraham, one to announce Yitzchak’s birth, and one to destroy Sodom. Avraham runs to host them, has them wash their feet, and prepares a full meal (some say it was matzah). The angel announces that Sarah will have a son within the year; she laughs, denies it, and the moment passes. Hashem then tells Avraham that Sodom and its sister cities will be destroyed for their crimes. Avraham bargains down from fifty righteous people to ten. The episode pauses for the famous Sanhedrin story of Eliezer in Sodom and the bloodletting lawsuit. Two angels continue to Sodom, where Lot insists on hosting them despite the ban on hospitality. The mob surrounds the house; Lot offers his daughters, the angels pull him inside, and the attackers are struck blind. Lot’s sons-in-law mock the warning. The angels hurry Lot, his wife, and two unmarried daughters out, forbidding them to look back. Lot is allowed to settle in the small city that becomes Tzoar. Fire and sulfur overturn the cities; Lot’s wife looks back and becomes a pillar of salt. In a cave, the daughters believe the world has ended, get their father drunk, and the older names her son Moav while the younger names hers Ben-Ami (later Amon).

Avraham and Sarah next go to Gerar. Abimelech takes Sarah, believing she is Avraham’s sister; an angel stops him in a dream and he returns her with gifts, asking Avraham to pray for him. During her stay the palace’s orifices were sealed; they reopen once she leaves. Yitzchak is born, receives a bris, and the barren women around Sarah also conceive. At the weaning feast Yishmael’s influence becomes a problem; Sarah insists he and Hagar leave. Hashem tells Avraham to listen to her. In the desert of Be’er Sheva, Yishmael is near death; Hagar sets him under a tree and cries. An angel shows her a well and he is saved, because judgment is based on the present, not the future. Avraham and Abimelech make an alliance sealed by seven ewes over a disputed well. The tenth and most famous test follows: the Akeidah. Two backgrounds are given—the Satan’s challenge or the exchange between Yitzchak and Yishmael about who has sacrificed more. Avraham saddles the donkey himself, travels three days with two attendants, leaves them behind, and ascends with Yitzchak. Yitzchak asks to be bound so the offering stays kosher. As Avraham raises the knife an angel stops him; a ram caught in the thicket is offered instead, with the wish that it be accepted as if it were Yitzchak. Hashem reaffirms the promise of countless descendants who will inherit the land, and Rivka’s birth is announced so Avraham knows the line will continue. The episode ends by teasing next week’s Chayei Sarah.