Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“So Abram went, as Yahweh had told him. Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took Sarai his wife, Lot his brother’s son, all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they went to go into the land of Canaan. They entered into the land of Canaan. Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time, Canaanites were in the land.”
(Genesis 12:4-6)

These verses are a great comfort to me in light of who and what Abram became in the future. He is listed in the Hall of Trust (Hebrews 11). He is called a friend by God Himself (Isaiah 41:8; James 2:23). That’s TREMENDOUS. Yet here he is imperfectly obeying. He was told to LEAVE his family (Genesis 12:1). To leave his RELATIVES. Not some. All. Here Abram does obey in leaving, but he brings a relative along. Lot was never meant to come to the Land. Lot was never meant to be there. Lot was not a bad person or an idol worshiper (2 Peter 2:7), but God’s plan for him did not include going with Abram. A lot of heartache and ungodly behaviour could have been avoided if Abram had obeyed. But STILL God used Abram. Abram STILL grew and developed a relationship with God. Abram STILL became God’s friend. Isn’t that a comfort when we realize we messed up? When we chose rebellion instead of obedience? Or when we obey, but not wholeheartedly? I take comfort that when I miss it, I can still turn around. I can find out God’s perfect will and align with that. I can leave rebellion behind and embrace obedience. It is a GREAT blessing and a GREAT mercy. God is SO GOOD to us!

Abram was seventy-five when he started this journey in earnest. He had already begun to be blessed as God said he would. They had no children, but their household and their possessions had grown. It is NEVER too late to be blessed and prosper in our relationship with God. It is NEVER too late to obey and start moving toward where God wants you. It is NEVER to late to embrace a lifestyle of God first. It doesn’t matter what the world tells you, your family tells you, your friends or boss or doctors or coworkers tells you. It doesn’t even matter what your body or your finances tell you. If GOD tells you, then it is possible for you. Do what He says, how He says, and when He says. You will NEVER regret it. Don’t let your mind hold back or refuse what God is extending to you.

This was not a small journey. This was a LONG journey. It was not a particularly safe area. They had to trust God for their lives, their security, and their direction. Abram had not been told WHERE he was going. He was going until the Lord told him to stop. The Lord had said jump, Abram had jumped, and was waiting to find out where he was supposed to land. That is what trust is. Determining in your mind that God is correct, that God can be trusted, and believing that God will not steer you wrong in order to obey Him without the need for exact details. After all, God is GOD. It’s fantastic when He explains things, but we are NOT owed an explanation. We can obey simply because He IS God. Full stop.

Notice that Abram’s wife Sarai is right there with him. She isn’t holding him up. She isn’t complaining. She isn’t being a burden. She is a full partner with him in this journey of trust. She isn’t demanding anything, but instead she is helping and shouldering her share of the burden. Sarai is also trusting God and being obedient. She also has her own spot in the Hall of Trust (Hebrews 11). She is a godly woman and a GOOD wife and partner. She is not less than. She is equal to. As she should be.

Interestingly, when Abram entered Canaan the land, Canaan the man (the son of Ham, the son of Noah) would have been 360 years old and still alive. So was Ham at 565 years old. I don’t know if Ham was living there, but it is probably that somewhere among the hills and fields Canaan was still alive and abiding. After all, the land was named after him and his lineage.

Shechem was a lovely place. Jacob bought some land there in Genesis 33:19. He buried all the idols his entourage had with them there under an oak. He dug a well there (John 4:5-6). It was the burial place of Joseph (Joshua 24:32). It was where Joshua gave his final address to the nation of Israel in Joshua 24. This was where Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:4-26. Sadly, this is also where the rape of Dinah takes place in Genesis 24.

The sage Rashi writes: ‘אשר עשו בחרן [THE SOULS] THAT THEY HAD GOTTEN (literally, made) IN HARAN — The souls which he had brought beneath the sheltering wings of the Shechinah. Abraham converted the men and Sarah converted the women and Scripture accounts it unto them as if they had made them (Genesis Rabbah 39:14). However, the real sense of the text is that it refers to the men-servants and to the maidservants whom they had acquired for themselves. The word “עשה” is used here as (in Genesis 31:1), “he has acquired (עשה) all this wealth”, and (Numbers 24:8), “And Israel acquires (עושה) wealth” — an expression for acquiring and amassing.’

The sage Rabbeinu Bahya writes: ‘A Midrashic approach to the word עשו is found in Bereshit Rabbah 39,14 where it is understood as applying to the converts Avraham and Sarah managed to make in Charan and whom they took with them to the land of Canaan. Avraham converted the males, Sarah the females. This is why the Torah speaks of that phenomenon in the plural, i.e. “they had made, each one separately.” If only Avraham had been busy proselytising the Torah should have written אשר עשה “whom he had made.” We also find that Yaakov did the same as his grandfather Avraham as the Torah speaks of his sojourn in the land of Canaan in these words (Genesis 37,1) וישב יעקב בארץ מגורי אביו, “and Yaakov settled in the land in which his (grand)father had had succeeded in making converts” (Bereshit Rabbah 84,4). From this you learn that Yaakov was also making converts.’

The sage Steinsaltz writes: ‘Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot, son of his brother, and all their property that they had acquired, and the people that they had acquired in Haran; they departed to go to the land of Canaan; and they came to the land of Canaan. The Torah does not specify the route they took, but it can be assumed that they either traveled through Syria and then along the coast of the Mediterranean, or along the international road that traversed present-day Iraq and Syria to Damascus, and then turned south across the Golan Heights until they crossed over the Jordan River into the land of Canaan via one of several possible crossing points. Abram passed through the land to the place of Shekhem, the site where the city of Shekhem would later be built, until the plain [elon] of Moreh. And the Canaanites were then in the land. This observation, which is important for the continuation of the story, explains that the land to which Abram came was not desolate and empty of inhabitants, as were many regions at the time. Rather, it had been inhabited for many years by the Canaanite people.’

The Torah: A Women’s Commentary writes: ‘Sarai. The name means “Princess,” a variant of Sarah. It has been proposed that the name reflects her high status. Shechem. Located forty miles north of Jerusalem, the city is later associated with covenant renewal in Joshua 24. However, it will also be the place of the so-called rape of Dinah (see Genesis 34). Originally Shechem was a sacred city to the Canaanites. Sacred groves were an important feature of cultic sites (note the tree under which Deborah sits in Judges 4:5). Here the “oak of moreh” (literally, the tree “of the teacher”) is apparently a divinatory site where humans gain knowledge with help from the divine. Abraham is thus portrayed as establishing an altar at this ancient sacred space where people encountered God at a time long before Israelite kings, priests, and the great temple in Jerusalem.’