Second part:
the ancestors of the people of god
The call of Abram
1 Yahweh said to Abram, “Leave your country, your family and your father’s house, for the land I will show you.
2 I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and in you all peoples of the earth will be blessed.”
4 So Abram went as Yahweh had told him, and Lot went with him.
Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran.
5 Abram took Sarai, his wife, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran. They set out for the land of Canaan.
They arrived at Canaan.
6 Abram traveled through the country as far as Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land.
7 Yahweh appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” There he built an al tar to Yahweh who had appeared to him.
8 From there he went on to the moun tains east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel to the west and Ai to the east. There also he built an altar to Yahweh and called on the name of Yahweh.
9 Then Abram set out in the direction of Negeb.
10 There was famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to stay there for some time, for the famine was severe in the land.
11 Just as he was about to enter Egypt he said to Sarai, his wife, “Now I know you are a beautiful wo man.
12 When the Egyptians see you they will say: ‘That is his wife!’ They will then kill me, but they will let you live.
13 Say that you are my sister, so that they treat me well on account of you and my life be spared because of you.”
14 In fact, when Abram arrived in Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful.
15 Pha raoh’s officials saw her and praised her to Pharaoh. The woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house
16 and be cause of her he dealt well with Abram; he received sheep, cattle, donkeys, menservants, maid ser vants, she-asses and camels.
17 But Yahweh inflicted severe plagues on Pharaoh and his household because of Sarai.
18 So Pharaoh sum moned Abram and said, “What have you done to me?
19 Why did you say: ‘She’s my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife. Now, here is your wife! Take her and go!”
20 And Pharaoh gave orders to his men re garding Abram, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and all that was his.
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Comments Genesis, Chapter 12
• 12.1 Abram was already old. Around him many groups journeyed South, toward Ca na an, in search of better lands. Why should he follow them? His life would be over soon (4) and, he had no children. Could he start his life over again?
God was calling him: “Leave; there is something awaiting you!” And Abraham left. In our own day, economic necessity forces so many im migrants to leave their country without knowing where to go or how their lives will be affected.
Leave… for the land I will show you. Abra ham only knew that God wanted to give him what he had longed for during his entire life and he welcomed this promise. In spite of his age, he was still able to hope for the impossible and this heartfelt readiness, or this ability for rebirth, was more pleasing to God than any good works.
Leave your country, your family and your father’s house. Here we have one of God’s first words in Sacred Scripture. This call to Abraham is still part of legend, like the chapters of Genesis that precede, yet it is also the beginning of a true history which will go on for centuries and which is far from being over: the history of Israel and of the Christian people. We rightly call Abraham the father of believers since the call that he received and his leaving for unknown lands is precisely what happens to us when we begin to believe.
FAITH
Leave your country, your family and your father’s house. To many of us God is more likely to say: “Let go of your own wisdom.” Because if God is speaking to us, it is not to tell us what we already know. God is testing us, he knocks on our hearts to see what the echo will be: will we be able to let go of our own wisdom and enter into his plan? We thought we knew our own worth and where we are to go but—what if God already had plans for us; what if God already knew us better than we know ourselves?
It was not Abraham’s initiative to leave. God called him and by doing that, God liberated him. On account of sin, every person is born and lives as if he or she were in a foreign land. Our own reality is hidden from us as long as we are not rooted in God and in communion with him. Our religions and ideologies, products of our culture, do not permit us to go beyond the limits of a world we make to suit our selves. To become aware of our vocation we need God’s call and we need to be willing to get out of this vicious circle.
Faith will never occur without separation which is why God foresaw it in each one’s life: leaving our parents’ house, beginning to work, getting married…. Faith prepares us to face even more painful separations that will place us entirely at the service of God. As believers, we can never think that we have arrived. Until the end of our lives, we are pilgrims, drawn by an ideal never quite reached and always attentive to God’s signs to see where God is waiting for us.
Abraham rightly responded to the call of God who made beautiful promises to him: therein lies all of faith and chapter 15 of Gene sis will again express the same thing. In the Bible, we find founders and religious reformers like Mo ses. We find the wise and wisdom books. Yet, they are all women and men able to respond when God calls them. The promises that God made to Abraham are equally valid for all believers: thanks to them God’s salvation becomes a reality for the world. This is what the Bible says: in you all peoples of the earth will be blessed.
In a divided world in which everyone defends their own turf, God has chosen a man who does not have his own land in order to begin the Kingdom in which he will gather all people. From then, God chooses the poor and those whose lives are not secure, in order to save the world. To them, as to Abraham, God promises the final City (Heb 11:8).
Abraham’s children: see Mt 3:7; Jn 8:33; Acts 3:25; 13:26; Rom 4:13; Gal 3:8.
Abram and Abraham: Gen 17:5.
• 10. Say that you are my sister, so that they treat me well on account of you. Some people are shocked at the low level of morality in those times, and in Abraham himself. When God called Abraham to make him his friend, he did not change him all at once. This moral change in his chosen people was to be accomplished over centuries: God is patient. Everything in its own time: we would do well to ponder this, since we tend to judge quickly and prematurely.
It is not by chance that this incident is related here: stories tell us important things. God has promised Abraham land. He knows neither where or how it will be given: God never gave much explanation. His first idea is to go and see in the direction of Egypt a rich land with its irrigated valley in contrast with the arid hills of Palestine. There he even surrenders his wife to Pharaoh in order to save his life. Giving his wife is like making an alliance with Pharaoh, with Egypt—and the Israelites will later learn to their detriment that things do not prosper when instead of counting on the Co ve nant with God, they lean on Egypt. Sarah, moreover, is his true wife, the “free woman” who in God’s plan will give birth to Abraham’s heir. Abraham nearly lost everything. God’s blessing will not reach Abraham in the land of the rich: for his descendants Egypt will be nothing more than the land of slavery.