abraham's life

It's been an interesting week getting into the reading this week. A few notes for thought.
First, it's been of special note to me to compare Abraham with the kind of righteousness Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount. Throughout Paul's letters Abraham is the righteous man par excellence, and I'd like to hear some thoughts on how Abraham fits into Jesus' sermon.
Second, I've been able to see more clearly this week some of the patterns that Sailhamer talked about in his commentary between the life of Abraham and the narrative of Israel that will take place starting in Genesis 43 through Exodus 20. I've written at great length about the purpose of that comparison in a paper last semester. You can find that here: www.andywittonline.com , click "papers". For those of you who won't read it, the main thing to look for in the reading coming up in Genesis and Exodus is what happens after the sojourns in Egypt. We saw that Abraham settled in the land of Canaan (Gen. 13), had great victory in battle (Gen. 14), and was blessed (Gen. 14). In the end, Abraham was found to have faith (15:6) and was obedient to God's law (26:5). The exact opposite happens to the people of Israel after their sojourn. They don't even have the faith to enter into the land (Num 14:11; 20:12), let alone win battles (Num. 14:39ff) or obey the laws (Exo. 32). What are we to make of that?
Third, and this is kind of in response to an earlier post about Melchizedek, I recently realized that Melchizedek was the first person to bless Abraham after the promise in 12:1-3. No wonder the psalmist (Ps. 110) and the epistle writer (Heb 5-9) paid such attention to him.
~aw