2) Abraham already gifted all his possessions to Isaac before his marriage to Rebbekah. In other words, by the time Abraham married Keturah, he had no possessions left to bequeath. He did, however, give her children a large amount of money as a gift before he passed away.
The Sforno explains that Keturah’s sons were not actually Abraham’s children, but Keturah’s from a previous marriage. If so, no inheritance was expected. This is also consistent with Rashi’s opinion that Keturah’s descendants aren’t required to have a brit. We noted, though, that the Rambam would not agree, since he maintains that Keturah’s descendants are required to have a brit.
Last week we mentioned that the biblical prohibition against an Ammonite or Moabite entering the Jewish nation is not upheld nowadays since Sennaherib, king of Assyria, mingled all the nations and we don’t know who belongs to which nation.
The Rambam writes that the Egyptians in his times were not necessarily descendants of the original Egyptians. They therefore may convert and marry Jews. Yet, he states that the sons of Keturah were interspersed with the sons of Ishmael, which suggests that they were interspersed only with each other. Perhaps, these two nations together are synonymous with the Arabs today. Indeed, the descendants of Keturah and Ishmael were not sent into exile by Sennaherib but much earlier by Abraham.
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Isaac, as the first child to be circumcised on the eighth day, and Abraham, as the first father to circumcise his son at that time, serve as the models for how the commandment of brit milah should be fulfilled.
Yet there is a famous question: Why did Abraham wait until he was an elderly man to fulfill this mitzvah? We know that Abraham kept the entire Torah before it was given, as Rav (Yoma 28b) states based on Genesis 26:5: “Ekev asher sho’ma Avraham b’koli, vayishmor mishmarti mitzvotai chukotai v’torotai – Because Abraham obeyed My voice, observed My safeguards, My commandments, My decrees and My Torahs.” The Gemara notes that he even kept the rabbinical decree of eruv tavshilin. So why did he not circumcise himself? Why did he wait for G-d to tell him to?
There are many answers to this question, but two are most appropriate for this discussion. First, Abraham, through divine inspiration, knew that G-d would eventually tell him to circumcise himself. Since a person receives greater reward for fulfilling a mitzvah he is commanded to fulfill (rather than one he was not commanded to fulfill), Abraham waited to perform a brit until such time that G-d would tell him to.
Second, performing a brit requires harming oneself – a deed that is usually prohibited (Bava Kamma 90b). That’s why Abraham waited for G-d’s instruction.
And yet, we still haven’t answered why Keturah’s childen – born after Isaac – should not circumcise themselves or why the descendants of Ishmael circumcise themselves at 13 or some other age rather than at eight days.
(To be continued)