Building
Building something new
12 Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
4 So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5 And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, 6 Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. 8 From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the LORD and called upon the name of the LORD. 9 And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.
the term the place may indicate the presence of a Canaanite shrine, as the final sentence hints. If so, it was a foretaste of things to come that at this stronghold of other gods the Lord revealed his presence, allocated the land to his servant and received formal homage.
12:6–9. significance of altars. Altars function as sacrificial platforms. Their construction can also mark the introduction of the worship of a particular god in a new land. Abram’s setting up of altars in each place where he camped defines areas to be occupied in the “Promised Land” and establishes these places as religious centers in later periods.
He renewed the homage as he journeyed (8; cf. 13:4, 18), and there is force in the contrast between pitched and builded (8), the one for himself, the other for God. The only structures he left behind him were altars: no relics of his own wealth.
By this solemn act of devotion Abram made an open profession of his religion, established the worship of the true God, and declared his faith in the promise.
37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
“the most beautiful, perhaps the only very beautiful, spot in Central Palestine”
Abram’s altars stood in the oaks of Moreh, and Mamre, in Bethel, and upon Moriah. Abram, and the patriarchs generally, served also the important purpose of preaching through their lives repentance to the Canaanites, as Noah was such a preacher for his time. For God leaves no race to perish unwarned. Sodom had even a constant warning in the life of Lot.
will I give this land Now occupied by the Canaanites. Undoubtedly a great promise, that the Canaanites should be dispossessed, and their country given to the offspring of a childless old man already over seventy-five years
Abram’s obedience was rewarded by an enhancement of the promise, a land that I will show you (1) becomes this land (cf. the introduction on the theology of chs. 12–50). God’s gracious promise prompted Abram to repeated acts of thankful worship, he built an altar (
Abram becomes a nomadic shepherd, seeking to discover God through his experiences. With his wife Sarai and nephew Lot, he travels from Mesopotamia down through Canaan to the Negev desert. At Shechem, the heart of the future ‘Promised Land’, Abram builds an altar to the Lord, much as astronauts might plant their national flag on the moon.
Should any one ask, whether he could not worship God without an altar? I answer, that the inward worship of the heart is not sufficient, unless external profession before men be added. Religion has truly its appropriate seat in the heart; but from this root, public confession afterwards arises, as its fruit.