1Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: 2And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:
3And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
4So Abram departed, as the LORD had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran.
5And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.
6And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the land.
7And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the LORD, who appeared unto him.
8And he removed from thence unto a mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west, and Hai on the east: and there he builded an altar unto the LORD, and called upon the name of the LORD.
9And Abram journeyed, going on still toward the south.
This is it for tonight, just some of the easier posts. The story gets a lot more interesting in so many ways and there are so many questions to be answered. This then is the story of Abram later to be called Abraham. Basically it is believed Abram means father and Abraham means father of many or multitudes. The story starts with God telling Abram to leave his people and go to a new land. This again is a period of separation, God often uses that time to deal with people personally or give them time to unlearn things.
God promises Abram a few things if he leaves all his family, he promises him that he will become a nation, that he will be famous, he promises him that those who bless him will be blessed and that those who curse him will be cursed. That is a lot of blessing. Finally, he promises him that through him the whole world will be blessed. Which of those blessing do you think moved Abram the most, truth is, we don't know. I would like to think he did it because he wanted the world to be blessed because of what he did.
We now come to Abram's first mistake, he leaves as God told him; but, he took Lot with him and he had been told to separate himself from his family. Instead they all head off and go to Canaan where God tells Abram that someday all of that land will be his descendents. It will all belong to his family, his children and their childrens. Abram's response to this was to build a temple to God; but, God did not ask him to do so.
If God did not ask Abram to build him an alter then we must wonder where the idea came from in the first place. Is it possible that God removed him from this family because they built alters to false idols? It is possible; but, unlikely that Abram came up with the idea of alters on his own. People sacrifice things on alters to Gods when they believed there were many Gods. The most likely thing is that the rest of Abrams family used to sacrifice on alters and that upon meeting God he did what he knew. Later in the story we see very clearly that Abram knew what alters were for and God had to stop him from using it in a certain way.
The story of Abram is of someone meeting God and trying to understand what a God is, who he is and what he is like. It is a developing relationship with Abram learning slowly and overtime how things work with God.
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