The Torah introduces us to Abraham at the most critical moment of his life. God appears to Abraham with a world-changing command:
This is the moment that launches monotheism into human history. This is the man who will father the Jewish people and transform civilization itself.
Yet something is missing from the text. Something glaring.
The Bible tells us nothing about why Abraham deserved this calling. No backstory. No explanation of his righteousness. No list of his virtues or accomplishments. God simply chooses him, and Abraham goes. Compare this to Noah, whom God explicitly selects because he was “a righteous man, blameless in his generation” (Genesis 6:9). The text makes Noah’s worthiness crystal clear. But Abraham? Silence.
The Sages filled this void with stories. The Midrash describes young Abraham smashing his father’s idols, surviving Nimrod’s furnace, and discovering God through philosophical reasoning. These tales are beautiful and instructive. But they appear nowhere in the biblical text itself. The Torah’s silence is deafening. If Abraham’s past merits were the reason for his selection, why doesn’t Scripture mention them?
Rabbi Pinchas Polonsky explains that the answer arrives much later in the narrative, almost as an afterthought. God is preparing to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, and He pauses to explain something fundamental about Abraham’s role:
Read that verse again carefully. God does not say, “I chose Abraham because he was righteous in the past.” He says, I have singled him out so that he will instruct future generations.
Abraham was chosen for what he would do, not for what he had done.
This distinction shatters conventional religious thinking. We assume God’s favor flows from our accomplishments. Do good, get blessed. Sin, get punished. Past performance determines present standing. But the Torah’s treatment of Abraham operates on entirely different principles.
Abraham represents a radical idea: God invests in potential, not rĆ©sumĆ©s. The Creator looks at Abraham and sees not just who he is, but who he can become ā and more importantly, what his descendants can accomplish. “I have singled him out,” God says, because his future holds promise. Because he will teach justice and righteousness. Because he will build something that lasts.
This is why the exodus from Egypt follows the same pattern. Rabbi Pinchas Polonsky brings a teaching from the Sages: when the Egyptians were drowning in the Red Sea, Egypt’s guardian angel protested to God: “Master of the Universe, You show favoritism! Why do You save the Israelites but drown the Egyptians? Both practiced idolatry in Egypt!” God answered him: āIt is true that in Egypt they behaved in many ways the same. For the Israelites, however, I grant a miraculous salvation outside the natural course of events, because of their potential to soon accept the Torah on Mount Sinai (and bring that Torah to humanity). For the Egyptians I perform no such miracle, leaving them subject to only the natural course of events, for they have no such potential. And so they perish under the waves.ā
The Israelites did not earn the splitting of the sea through prior virtue. They received it because of their future mission. Their redemption was an investment in what they would become, not a reward for what they had been.
Western civilization, shaped by Abraham’s revolution, understands that human life has meaning, not just causes. History moves toward goals, not just away from origins. Your future matters more than your past. This is why repentance works. This is why change is possible.
Some religions see only causes. You suffer today because of sins in past lives. The wheel turns, the scales balance, and you are trapped in chains of causation stretching back to infinity. But the God of Abraham breaks those chains. He calls on a man with no recorded past and gives him a future that will transform the world.
This is why modern Israel exists. God invests in the future, and the future requires a people in their land, fulfilling their purpose, bringing divine light to the nations.
Abraham’s story teaches us that God is not merely an accountant reviewing your ledger of good deeds and sins. He is an architect building the future, and He invites you to join the construction. Your past does not disqualify you. Your mistakes do not eliminate you from the plan. What matters is whether you have the potential to fulfill your purpose ā to become who you were meant to be and accomplish what you were meant to accomplish.
The Torah’s silence about Abraham’s past is not an oversight. It is the whole point. Your rĆ©sumĆ© does not impress God. Your potential does. The question is not what you have done, but what you will do. Not who you were, but who you will become.
This is the faith that built Western civilization. This is the faith that sustains the Jewish people. This is the faith that should drive every person who claims to follow the God of Abraham: Stop looking backward for validation. Start looking forward to your calling.
The past is silent. The future is calling. Answer it.
To learn more of Rabbi Pinchas Polonskyās insights on the Bible, orderĀ The Universal Torah: Growth & Struggle in the Five Books of Moses ā Genesis Part 1Ā today!
