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<\/a><\/p>\nWhen last we left Abram at the end of Gen. 11, he and his father and extended family had journey from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran, which today stands in Turkey on the border with Syria.\u00a0 We\u2019ve already been told they are headed for Canaan, but unfortunately, Abram\u2019s father Terah died in Haran.\u00a0 It is here at the beginning of Gen. 12 of a story that will last into Gen. 25\u2014 the longest single saga that focus\u2019 on one man, until we come to the story of Jacob. We have left the primeval story behind and the focus had narrowed down to one family and their descendants. Not only so, but for the first time we hear about God covenanting with a particular person, Abram, whose name and fortunes and future changes as a result.\u00a0 This process begins at Gen. 12.1 where we hear \u201cand the Lord said to Abram, go from your land and your birthplace and your father\u2019s house to the land I will show you. And I will make you a great nation and you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you and curse those who damn you, and all the clans of the earth through you shall be blessed.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0Though the narrator at the end Gen. 11 knows the story is heading for Canaan, Abram does not know this, he has simply been promised \u2018the land I will show you\u2019.\u00a0 And so Abram, and Lot with him, head south and east. As a reminder, Lot is the son of one of Abram\u2019s brothers whose name is Haran.\u00a0 \u00a0We are also told that Abram was older than me, namely he was 75, when he set out on this adventure.\u00a0 \u00a0The problem is how the ancients reckoned time and age was probably not the same as we do.\u00a0 For one thing, most ANE people seem to have followed a lunar calendar, which meant the New Year kept changing and moving around. If you measure age by a lunar calendar, then you have more years than by a solar calendar.<\/p>\n
So Abram takes his wife Sarai, and his nephew Lot and \u201call the goods they had gotten and the folk they had bought in Haran\u201d and ended for Canaan.\u00a0 Slavery was common throughout the ANE, and it should not be compared to ante-bellum slavery in the southern U.S. for a variety of reasons: 1) slaves were not considered property, but rather persons. As Alter says, they did not lose their personhood once they were bought; 2) they had certain limited rights; 3) they could and were often given enormous responsibilities.\u00a0 Nevertheless, they were not free to go where they wanted and do as they pleased once they had been bought.<\/p>\n
One of the clearest signs of the narrator writing at a later date than the story is the sort of remarks we find for example in Gen. 12.6\u2014 \u201cthe Canaanites were then in the land\u201d, with the implication they were not when the teller or writer of this story lived.\u00a0 Most scholars think these stories were written down much later than the events, so for example when there were no more Canaanites in the land.\u00a0 The scholarly consensus based on destruction layers in the holy land, is that they ceased to exist after the conquest involving Joshua and his successors,\u00a0 so some time in the 13th century B.C. (and obviously after the Exodus in the earliest portion of the 13th century B.C. if not before).\u00a0 Abraham possible dates range from 2100 B.C. to 1800 B.C.\u00a0 so possibly as early as thousand years before the monarchy.<\/p>\n
Here is the helpful summary by my OT colleague Lawson Stone, who has spent much good time commenting on Joshua and Judges:<\/p>\n
\u201cSince there was a new Pharaoh at the time of the exodus, and Ramses II seems the best pick of Pharaohs, I put the exodus ca. 1275 BC (R2 came to the throne 1279 BC). taking the 40 years literally puts the entry into the land about 1235 BC. Since the destruction of Hazor can be securely dated to the 1230\u2019s, that fits well also. Coincidentally, the death of Ramses II and of Joshua would fall within a few years of each other, and shortly afterwards the \u201cLate Bronze Age Collapse\u201d swept over the eastern mediterranean region with the chaos you see in the book of Judges ensuing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Abram crosses into Canaan and stops at Shechem \u2018to the terebinth of the oracle\u2019. At that juncture God says to Abram, to you and your seed I will give this land.\u00a0 There he built an altar to the Lord, but then he pulled up tent stakes and moved on to the high country between Bethel and Ai, and there also he built an altar unto the Lord, but he did not stop there. I fact he went on to the south to the Negev\u2013 the desert south of Beersheba.\u00a0 \u00a0We meant to think of Abram\u2019s existence as nomadic in nature.<\/p>\n
Up to this point in the story Abram has said nothing at all, and not put a foot wrong,\u00a0 and as it turns out, the reason he went all the way to Negev and then on to Egypt is due to severe famine in the land.\u00a0 \u00a0The first words we hear from Abram, are those he says to his own wife Sarai: \u201cLook I know you are a beautiful woman, so when the Egyptians see you and say \u2018she is his wife\u2019 they will kill me while they spare you. So say, please, you are my sister, so it will go well with me on your account, and I shall stay alive because of you.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, sure enough, Pharaoh\u2019s courtiers see Sarai, remark on her beauty to Pharaoh, and Sarai was taken into Pharaoh\u2019s house, and indeed it went well with Abram \u201cand he had sheep and cattle and donkeys and male and female slaves, and she asses and camels.\u201d\u00a0 But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his household with terrible plagues\u00a0 because of Sarai.\u00a0 Furious,\u00a0 Pharaoh summons\u00a0 Abram and says \u201cWhat is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me she was your wife, and so I took her as a wife. Here is your wife\u2013 TAKE HER AND GET OUT! And Pharaoh appointed an escort for Abram and all his people and property\u00a0 Later in Gen. 20, we will learn Sarai is actually Abram\u2019s half sister, but she is also his whole wife,\u00a0 so Abram\u2019s deception of Pharaoh is a serious sin.\u00a0 \u00a0We are meant to assume that somehow Pharaoh learned the truth of the situation from Sarai, and the famous ancient Jewish commentator suggested that the plague in question was a sexually transmitted disease, hence Pharaoh\u2019s inquiry of Sarai who he had had intercourse with, which Alter sees as plausible.<\/p>\n
One of the major mistakes Christians often make in reading the OT is assuming that the \u2018so-called\u2019 heroes of the faith were Christians, or like Christians in their ethics.\u00a0 This is indeed a mistake. Nevertheless, even by OT standard, what Abram did in this story was immoral, and the story makes clear that it was done out of fear of being killed.\u00a0 Abram was no Christian saint, but things could get better.\u00a0 He could become a paradigm of trusting God.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When last we left Abram at the end of Gen. 11, he and his father and extended family had journey from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran, which today stands in Turkey on the border with Syria.\u00a0 We\u2019ve already been told they are headed for Canaan, but unfortunately, Abram\u2019s father Terah died in Haran.\u00a0 It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":68479,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15131],"class_list":["post-68939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abrams-sojourns"],"yoast_head":"\n
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