Genesis 12

Updated
2001-05-26; 14:31:24utc

"The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." (Ch. 12:1-3).

All three translations: NIV, KJV and RSV put the call of God to Abraham in the past. "The LORD had said...." This concurs with Stephen's testimony in Acts 7:2 - "The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran." However long the waiting period in Haran was, it must have been very frustrating to Abraham to have to wait so long before he was physically able to start moving toward the goal that God had shown him. At the death of his father he is finally free to obey the call of the Lord and to go.

I have had a somewhat similar experience shortly after my conversion. During a campaign by Youth for Christ I felt the Lord called me to go into full time service, but my father opposed the idea and wanted me to get a job. I obeyed him, thinking that God could overrule my dad's objection. He did and about one and a half years later my father passed away. When he died, I knew that I had to start looking for a place to get some formal Bible training and I finally ended up in Brussels, Belgium.

The more I look at the content of God's call to Abraham, the more I believe he must have been frustrated in his waiting in Haran. If God had only told him "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you," it would have been bad enough, but all those promises about blessings without end were included in that call and they were put on hold at the same time.

At first glance it does not seem that much more is involved than the moving of one man and his family from one country to another. At this point it does not look like an event of historic proportions. Abraham probably had no visions of the birth of the Son of God in this world, of the coming of the Holy Spirit upon man and the birth of the Church, when he pulled the door of his house shut behind him for the last time. Or rather when Terah shut the door. Yet Abraham's leaving of Ur was an event of cosmic and eternal proportions, similar to Noah's entering of the ark. It was the end of one dispensation and the beginning of another. (You would almost think I am a dispensationalist when you read these words!)

So it wasn't in Canaan that God told Abraham: "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." It was while he was still living in Ur. He must have committed these words to memory and repeated them to himself during all those years. And so he must have passed them on to Isaac and so finally they came to Moses, who wrote them down centuries later.

How Abraham received this call we are not told. He may have had a dream in which he heard the voice, or God may have spoken to him in an audible way. In Abraham's experience this was the first of a series of 'theophanies' or divine appearances that would reoccur during his life. The important part is that there was no doubt in his mind as to who had spoken to him. When God speaks you know it. C. S. Lewis says so much in his book Till We have Faces.

The way it written the Word of God comes back to him from the past and he realizes that this is the moment at which they take effect. There is a possibility that what is given here as one call and one promise did actually come to Abraham in parts and at different times. But we have no way of knowing this. Obviously the call for departure stems from the time in Ur. But it could be that the blessing wasn't heard until he arrived in Canaan. Even if this is not the case and if the whole came as one call, then the part will only have gained significance in Abraham's experience as he proceeded and found himself in situations where they could be applied.

The blessing can be divided in three parts: 1. The physical aspect; 2. the political aspect and 3. the spiritual aspect.

1. The physical aspect. "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you." At whatever time this promise came, there was a moment that Abraham realized that it was not coming through. The key to becoming a great nation was to have at least one child. And so far he had none. As the years went by it became obvious that Sarah could not or would had have any children. Living in time and space as we all do, Abraham could not see the end from the beginning and the reality with which he had to live, was that this promise was not going to be true. He was going to go down in history as the man who died without leaving behind children. That meant he was not going to go down in history at all. Nobody would remember him. It was the equivalent of being lost for eternity.

We do not need much imagination to see how the devil will have used this in Abraham's life. He had left Ur of the Chaldeans to follow the call of the only true God and it turned out that he had betted on the wrong horse.

2. The political aspect. "I will make your name great and you will be a blessing" He came into a land where nobody knew him. We read in vs. 6 - "At that time the Canaanites were in the land." The Canaanites must have been the offspring of Ham, according to Ch. 10:6, 15-19. For Abraham that was the wrong branch of Noah's children. However was he going to take a prominent position among those people and become a source of blessing to them?

3. The spiritual aspect. "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." Abraham may have drawn the conclusion from this part of the blessing that he was in the line with the offspring that God had promised to Eve. The hope of eternal life must still have been very much alive in his days. If we find it still alive among the tribes of Irian Jaya, Indonesia, forty centuries later, it must surely not have been forgotten at Abraham's time. So Abraham must have believed this to mean that his son would be the Messiah. We can imagine how this promise must have added to the agony when no child was forthcoming.

But at the moment Abraham entered Canaan, he must have been full of expectations. The mention in vs.5 of all the possession and all the people they acquired in Haran seems an indication that there stay there had not been a brief one. Even at this point Lot's wife is not mentioned; so it could be that he did not get married until after they arrived in Canaan.

Abraham's obedience at this point is captured in the words of vs.4 and 5 - " he set out from Haran. .... They set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there." Finally, so many years after God first called him in Ur, he gets to the place where God wants him to be. We read that, after traveling through the land, he first settles at Sechem, at "the site of the great tree at Moreh." How great the tree was, we are not told. It may not have measured up to the redwood trees of California, but we have no way of knowing.

We are told that the Canaanites lived there at that time. So Abraham has arrived, but the place is occupied. He receives divine confirmation, however, that this is the place that God has earmarked for him. In Ch. 12:7 we read: "The LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him."

As far as we can tell this is the first time since Ur that God speaks to Abraham. He knows that he is at the place where God wants him to be. Again we do not know in what form the theophany came to him. But Abraham marks the place of God's appearance with the building of an altar. Which means that he brought a sacrifice. From the word of God to Abraham it is clear that he himself will not possess any of the land. It is also clear that there will be offspring. And the first part of the promise hinges on the second. It is especially this second part which play the main role in Abraham's life. This is going to be his main hope and the source of his greatest temptations.

The building of the altar has a double function. It is a physical reminder of a spiritual experience. Here God spoke to him. The devil often attacks in the realm of our spiritual experiences by telling us that they lack physical reality and therefor they must belong to the realm of our fantasies. By building a physical reminder, the altar, Abraham prevents this kind of attack. Secondly, by building and altar and bringing a sacrifice, Abraham proclaims his own death before God. The sacrifice dies in his place. Only on the basis of total surrender is fellowship with God possible.

The mention that he built an altar "to the LORD who had appeared to him," seems to indicate that Abraham is in the process of getting to know God.

There is no mention of a theophany at Bethel. Abraham takes the initiative here to call upon the Name of YHWH. No reason is given for the move. Most likely Abraham was forced into a nomadic kind of existence because of the availability of grazing grounds for his herds. More likely though did he want to see the land that the Lord had promised to his offspring.

The building of the altar is a reminder to us of the difference and similarity between Abraham's way to approach God and ours. Abraham could not just go into God's presence, without bringing a sacrificial animal, which he had to provide himself. For us the sacrifice has been provided in Jesus Christ. In a certain way this may have made Abraham more realistic in his relationship with God. Because we have been provided for, we often go to God as if no sacrifice were needed. On the other hand is our entrance into God's presence unlimited and more real than Abraham's. The blood of the sacrificial animal provided a covering for Abraham's sin, which made his presence before God tolerable. We have been washed of our sins and have been accepted by God in Jesus Christ without any reservation.

We are not told what kind of sacrifice Abraham brought. It could be that the differentiation of five kinds we read about in Leviticus did not exist yet in Abraham's days. Abraham's sacrifice may have been a combination of the four bloody sacrifices Levitucs ch. 1-7 mentions. If this is true we should feel ourselves closer to Abraham. We enter into the presence of the Lord, because Jesus Christ is the sacrifice for our sin and our guilt; He is our peace offering and our burnt offering. The fact that it is easier for us to approach God harbors the danger of easy thinking on our part. We should never lose sight of the altar when we pray.

Then we read that Abraham called upon the name of the LORD. The first appearance of God to Abraham after his arrival at Sechem must have been a profound and moving experience for Abraham. Abraham probably wanted to catch some of that experience again, but God did not answer or appear to him. We all have to learn to build altars to the LORD, whether He appears to us or not. Our fellowship with Him has nothing to do with the feeling of His closeness or with any other feeling. The reality of it is a matter of faith.

Finally, Abraham's building of an altar at the various places he visited may have been an effort to lay the foundation for the fulfillment of God's promised that Abraham's descendants would inherit the land. Altars make good foundation stones for the fulfillment of God's promises to us.

The verses 9-20 recount the first major failure of Abraham's faith and the damage done to his testimony. We may not sit in judgment over Abraham, because without the grace of God, we have no guarantee that we would have done any better. The famine was a factor beyond Abraham's control. But his reaction to it was not. Up till now Abraham has traveled around in fellowship with God, but when hunger threatens we read of no altar being built or any prayer offered. The move to Egypt was not part of God's plan with his life. If it was, the deal he made with Sarah was most obviously not.

The Pulpit Commentary remarks at this point: "No defence can be offered for a man who, merely through dread of danger to himself, tells a lie, risks his wife's chastity, puts temptation in the way of his neighbors, and betrays the charge to which the Divine favour had summoned him" (Dykes).

I believe the situation was worse than Mr. Dykes puts it. We are not looking at one single incident to which Abraham reacted wrongly. Not only did he do the same thing twice, but it seems that there was an arrangement had been made between Abraham and Sarah that would take effect automatically every time the supposed danger to Abraham's life would occur. We read in Ch. 20:13 that Abraham explains to Abimelech: "And when God had me wander from my father's household, I said to her, 'This is how you can show your love to me: Everywhere we go, say of me, "He is my brother." '" We would almost say 'so much for Abraham's faith!' This seems to blow Heb.11: 8 out of the window: "By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going."

Abraham was scared, because he did not lean on God's promise. His faith had not been tested yet by the postponement of the birth of Isaac. But God had made it clear to him that his offspring would inherit the land. It shouldn't have taken him too long to realize that at least as long as Sarah was not pregnant his life was not in danger.

But I can't imagine what this arrangement must have done to the relationship between Abraham and Sarah. According to Eph.5: 25 "Husbands (should) love (their) wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her."Which means that a man should be willing to give his life to protect his wife. This certainty should be the basis for the wife's security upon which a marriage is built. But Abraham demanded that his wife prostitute herself, because he was afraid to die. How Sarah must have despised him in her heart. Peter says that Sarah called Abraham "her master" (I Pet.3: 6). There is more irony in these words than the surface shows.

But as we said earlier, we should not sit in judgment upon Abraham. There are few examples in the world of husbands who were willing to give their lives for their wives. Also it shows that you can be a hero of faith like Abraham, who is called the father of all who believe, and be full of fear and trembling.

There is no proof that Sarah's honor was violated in a physical way. Most commentaries agree that the period of purification for a woman who was brought into the king's harem was a long one. So most likely the fraud was discovered before Sarah was taken to Pharaoh's bed. But that did not excuse Abraham. It was not because of his arrangements that Sarah was kept pure if she was. The deceit was only overruled by the grace of God.

We are spared the details of Sarah's humiliation in Pharaoh's court. Evidently, it was long enough, so that God could inflict serious diseases upon the king's household. The magicians must have gone to work to find out what caused the sickness and the problems was traced to Sarah. Divine guidance must have helped those men. After a period of time Pharaoh knows the cause of his problems and he calls Abraham. In the meantime Abraham prospers because of his deceit. Most of his riches in slaves and cattle date from this period. Pharaoh probably paid a bride price. Hagar was probably added to his household at this point. I suppose all this must have pricked Abraham's conscience.

It is not clear to me how Abraham figured that he would ever be able to leave Egypt with his wife. Vs.10 tells us that Abraham planned to live in Egypt 'for a while.' The KJV and RSV use the word 'sojourn.' Abraham probably started to turn again to the Lord at this point. The verses 18-20 show us the humiliating way Abraham was kicked out of the country. The fact that he did not have to pay back anything only added to the humiliation. We read: "So Pharaoh summoned Abram. 'What have you done to me?' He said. 'Why did not you tell me she was your wife? Why did you say, 'She is my sister,' so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!' Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had." He did not even leave a testimony behind!