"Father Abraham"

The Old Testament reading in church this week (the first Sunday of Lent) was Genesis 22:1-18, part of which is God's telling Abraham "I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore" (verse 17).  This reminded me of the song "Father Abraham," which I think I learned in vacation Bible school in 2002 or 2003.  The song consists of only one verse:

Father Abraham had many sons
And many sons had Father Abraham
I am one of them
And so are you
So let's all praise the Lord.

If I recall correctly, after each verse, a body part is called out (like: "Left arm!"), and then that body part is swung in time as the next verse is sung.

After I started thinking about the song again, I realized something about the grammar, specifically that second line: "And many sons had Father Abraham."  It can be understood in two different ways:

In one parsing, the second line is just an inversion of the first.  "Many sons" is still the direct object, and "Father Abraham" is still the subject; it's just that the structure is flipped.

In the other parsing, "many sons" is now the subject, and "Father Abraham" is the direct object.  This could be rephrased as "And many sons had Abraham for their father."

Both parsings illustrate the great number of Abraham's offspring; they just have different perspectives.  They're looking at the same thing from opposite directions, as it were.  To some degree, the fact that this second line could be understood in more than one way is itself an indication of the multitude of Abraham's offspring.