The LORD tells Abram to leave his country and his family and to go to a land that he shows him. I am still wondering if God is making personal human shaped appearances like he did in Eden. The descriptions don't say otherwise.

God promises to makes Abram's name great. I asked my girlfriend and she'd never heard of him and to be fair I don't remember him from Sunday School or the Roman Catholic primary school I attended. I'm not sure I've heard of his nation either, let's see.

So God will bless Abram, Abram himself will be a blessing, God will bless those who bless Abram and curse those who curse him and in him all families of the earth shall be blessed. That sounds a little messianic. One thing though, if someone curses him are they then cursed for doing that but also blessed because they are part of a family of the earth? Another question... Who is this guy? He doesn't seem to have done anything to curry God's favour. Maybe he killed someone, that usually gets God's praise.

So the land that Abram is leaving is

Haran

, he left in 2023AE.

So Abram, His wife, His nephew Lot and... Does "the souls that they had gotten" mean slaves? or servants? all went to Canaan under the instruction of the LORD. Isn't

Haran

in Canaan? Canaan, named after Abram's great-great-grandfather's nephew/slave?

He travelled through a number of places to get there.

So the LORD puts in a tangible appearance and hands over the land that Abram is in to Abram's seed, of course

Sarai

is barren and so Abram has no children. (I'm not sure if Canaan is a town or a country at this point, it may of course be both) Abram builds an altar, presumably for animal sacrifice?

So having been given some land for his non-existent progeny Abram moves to a mountain and pitches a tent and builds another altar.

Having built two altars, He picks up his tent and keeps going south. Is the LORD still showing Abram the way? It seems very much like the Lord indicated that Abram should stop when he appeared to him. Why is Abram still going? Are

Sarai

and Lot and his the house slaves still with him?

There is famine in Abram's new land so he abandons it for a short stay in Egypt.

Just before he and

Sarai

get to Egypt he pulls her aside and says, "Look here, I know that you are very Beautiful..."

"...and because you are so beautiful these Egyptian men will kill me to have you..."

"...So say you are my sister so that they won't kill me, alright?" This doesn't strike me as very courageous. What's his business in Egypt anyway? If he knows the Egyptians will kill him, why go at all?

He was right, the Egyptians saw

and thought she was pretty hot.

I think this means that Pharaoh (which one?) married or otherwise took

into his

.

For which he paid Abram handsomely, I do wonder if Pharaoh would have paid so much if he'd known that

was barren. I'm thinking that before accepting all of these goods for his wife, this might be a good time for Abram to man up and say 'Sorry Pharaoh, you can't marry/consort with my wife' and accept the consequences, he could at the very least as the guardian of his 'sister' refused the sale. Perhaps he thought it a good deal,

was barren after all.

Right. the LORD punished Pharaoh because he consorted with a married woman, a married woman he was basically tricked into accepting into his house and who Abram didn't didn't see as valuable enough to step in and save. Abram's name is great indeed.

Good question!





Wise move. Although... does Pharaoh believe in the LORD (adonai?) at this point? I'm not aware of any Ancient Egyptians sharing Hebrew God beliefs. Perhaps Pharaoh attributed the plagues to a different Deity (or just perhaps the LORD is actually one of the Egyptian pantheon?)

Good. I don't think Abram had any business in Egypt anyway.

The LORD makes a grand gesture by giving an entire country to Abrams seed, of which Abram has exactly none on account that his wife is barren. This seems like a particularly empty gesture.

Despite the LORD only telling Abram to go as far as the Land which he with show him, Abram takes it upon himself to builds a couple of alters and move on to Egypt.

Abram, who's name shall be great, is not only a coward but a profiteering coward who took a dowry for his 'sister' when he could have stopped the whole thing by being honourable and telling Pharaoh that Sarai was actually his wife.

Pharaoh (whichever one) Acknowledges the plagues and seems to understand that they have come from the LORD. is this LORD fellow part of the Egyptian pantheon?

God's treatment of Pharaoh is remarkably unjust. Pharaoh seems very much to be the victim in this story. He saw a girl he liked and, as was the custom of the time, paid a more than fair dowry to marry her. He's ripped off on two counts firstly he isn't made aware that the woman he's paid for is unable to bear children, a feature that is quite important in a bride of the time. Secondly he is duped into marrying a woman who is already married for which God sends plagues upon his house. Could an omnipotent God have not seen that Pharaoh was not at fault?

NB. The misogyny in the above observation is inherent to the text of the Bible and in no way reflects my personal attitudes toward women or marriage.

Next up. Next up. Genesis 13.

Genesis 12SaraiSaraihouseholdSaraiSaraiWhat have we learned?