Why did God choose Abraham?
At the beginning of Parashat Lech Lecha, it seems that God’s command to Abraham comes out of the blue: “Go forth from your land, and from your birthplace, and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” We don’t know anything about Abraham except his lineage, which was just described at the end of the last parasha. The question becomes even stronger when we compare this to the beginning of Parashat Noah, when we hear very clearly why Noah is chosen to build the ark and survive the flood: “Noah was a righteous man, perfect in his generation; Noah walked with God.”
The Midrash famously describes how Abraham as a young child recognized the Divine, and even tried to convince his father of the falsehood of idolatry, breaking his idols and placing a hammer in the hand of one of the idols to highlight how silly it is to think that the idols have power. However, in the simple reading of the Torah, there is no mention of this. So why was Abraham chosen?
