Genesis 12:1

Genesis AN EXAMPLE OF FAITHGenesis 12:1 - Genesis 12:9 . I We stand here at the well-head of a great river-a narrow channel, across which a child can step, but which is to open out a broad bosom that will reflect the sky and refresh continents. The call of Abram is the most important event in the Old Testament, but it is also an eminent example of individual faith. For both reasons he is called ‘the Father of the Faithful.’ We look at the incident here mainly from the latter point of view. It falls into three parts. 1. The divine voice of command and promise.-God’s servants have to be separated from home and kindred, and all surroundings. The command to Abram was no mere arbitrary test of obedience. God could not have done what He meant with him, unless He had got him by himself. So Isaiah 51:2 put his finger on the essential when he says, ‘I called him alone.’ God’s communications are made to solitary souls, and His voice to us always summons us to forsake friends and companions, and to go apart with God. No man gets speech of God in a crowd. If you desired to fill a person with electricity, you used to put him on a stool with glass legs, to keep him from earthly contact. If the quickening impulse from the great magnet is to charge the soul, that soul must be isolated. ‘He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me.’ The vagueness of the command is significant.

Abram did not know ‘whither he went.’ He is not told that Canaan is the land, till he has reached Canaan. A true obedience is content to have orders enough for present duty. Ships are sometimes sent out with sealed instructions, to be opened when they reach latitude and longitude so-and-so. That is how we are all sent out. Our knowledge goes no farther ahead than is needful to guide our next step. If we ‘go out’ as He bids us, He will show us what to do next. ‘I do not ask to seeThe distant scene; one step enough for me.’ Observe the promise. We may notice that it needed a soul raised above the merely temporal to care much for such promises. They would have been but thin diet for earthly appetites. ‘A great nation’; a divine blessing; to be a source of blessing to the whole world, and a touchstone by their conduct to which men would be blessed or cursed;-what was there in these to fascinate a man, unless he had faith to teach him the relative importance of the earthly and the heavenly, the present and the future? Notice that the whole promise appeals to unselfish desires. It is always, in some measure, elevating to live for a future, rather than a present, good; but if it be only the same kind of good as the present would yield, it is a poor affair.

Genesis 12:1 . We have here the call whereby Abram was removed from, the land of his nativity into the land of promise. This call was designed both to try his faith and obedience, and also to set him and his family apart for God, in order that the universal prevalence of idolatry might be prevented, and a remnant reserved for God, among whom his true worship might be maintained, his oracles preserved, and his ordinances established till the coming of the Messiah. God seems also, by sending him into Canaan, a country given up to the most gross, cruel, and barbarous idolatry, even the sacrificing of their own children to their idols, to have intended that he, and the other patriarchs descended from him, should be witnesses for God to these nations before their destruction; which is the plan God has generally, if not always, pursued; seldom, if ever, destroying a people for their wickedness, till he has sent his truth, in one form or another, and his witnesses among them.

Concerning the circumstances of this call, we may receive further information from Stephen’s speech, Acts 7:2 , where we are told, 1st, That the God of glory appeared to him, to give him this call, and that in such displays of his glory as left Abram no room to doubt. 2d, That this call was given him in Mesopotamia; and that, in obedience to this call, he came out of the land of the Chaldeans, and dwelt in Charran or Haran about five years: and from thence, when his father was dead, by a fresh command, he removed him into the land of Canaan. Get thee out of thy country — Now, by this precept, he was tried whether he loved God better than he loved his native soil, and dearest friends: and whether he could willingly leave all to go along with God. His country was become idolatrous, his kindred and his father’s house were a constant temptation to him, and he could not continue with them without danger of being infected by them; therefore God said, Get thee out. Hereby also he was tried whether he could trust God farther than he saw him; for he must leave his own country to go to a land that God would show him; he doth not say, it is a land that I will give thee: nor doth he tell him what land it was, or what kind of land; but he must follow God with an implicit faith, and take God’s word for it in general, that he should be no loser by leaving his country to follow God.

XII. (1) Now the Lord had said unto Abram.—Heb., And Jehovah said unto Abram. There is no new beginning; but having briefly sketched the family from which Abram sprang, and indicated that he had inherited from them the right of primogeniture, the narrative next proceeds to the primary purpose of the Tôldóth Terah, which is to show how in Abram Jehovah prepared for the fulfilment, through Israel, of the prote-vangelium contained in the promise made to Eve at the fall (Genesis 3:15). The rendering “had said” was doubtless adopted because of St. Stephen’s words (Acts 7:2); but it is the manner of the Biblical narrative to revert to the original starting point. Thy country.—A proof that Abram and his father were no new settlers at Ur, but that the race of Shem had at this time long held sway there, as is now known to have been the case. Thy kindred.—This rendering is supported by Genesis 43:7; but it more probably means thy birthplace. It is the word translated “nativity” in Genesis 11:28. where its meaning is settled by the prefixed “land;” and the sense is probably the same here. If so, the command certainly came to Abram at Ur, though most of the versions suppose that it happened at Haran. A land that I will shew thee.—In Genesis 11:31 it is expressly said that the land was Canaan, but possibly this knowledge was concealed from the patriarch himself for a time, and neither he nor Terah knew on leaving Ur what their final destination would be.

1 . Now the lord said ] Lit. “and Jehovah said.” The narrative opens with characteristic simplicity, and with the abruptness possibly indicating its selection from a group of similar traditions. the lord said ] Here, as elsewhere, we must not suppose that “the word of Jehovah” was accompanied either by any external manifestation, or by an audible sound. God in old times “hath spoken unto the fathers” even as He speaks now to those who hear His voice, “in divers manners” ( Hebrews 1:1 ). out of thy country … kindred … father’s house ] See Genesis 24:7 . The threefold tie of land, people, and home, is to be severed. Abram is to lay the foundations of the Chosen People independently of any obligation or favour due to local environment or personal association. He is to rely only on his God. Thus the first trial of the patriarch’s faith requires him, ( a ) to renounce the certainties of the past: ( b ) to face the uncertainties of the future: ( c ) to look for and to follow the direction of Jehovah’s will. Cf. Hebrews 11:8 , “by faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out … and he went out, not knowing whither he went.” the land that I will shew thee ] The country is not designated by name: an additional test of faith.