11. Abram and Lots more
One has to ask, given that near-eastern names tended to carry symbolic meaning, what did Lot's name really mean? If he had a lot of anything, I would have asked him to cut down and do with less of it ... foolishness that is. He opted to live in a materially desirable, morally bancrupt culture, down in a valley, far below the strategically advantageous highlands where Abram lived. Thus he never saw the trouble coming that he and that wretcheded town should have anticipated in those heady, violent times. Then one day they came for Sodom, plundered it and dragged away the inhabitants, including luckless Lot.
When news reached Abram, he formed a posse and divided his forces into three, surrounding and overwhelming them at the tar-pits of Siddim (oil deposits were already evident). He returned with all the goods and people that had been plundered, but would have nothing to do with the king of Sodom, who wanted to trade the goods for all the souls that Abram had rescued. What Abram did want was to offer tithes and sacrifices to a mystical high priest, Melchizedek, who evidently had no beginning nor end of days ... perhaps Jesus, a priest after the order of Mechizedek (Hebrews 6, Psalm 110:4, Genesis 14), was the same person and maybe Abram saw a preincarnation of Jesus ... I don't know. What I do know is that Abram ate a covenant meal of bread and wine with the priest, and he was then blessed by Him.
Not to be outdone, Lot then got into more trouble, not realising that the king of Sodom was a bad leader, a type of Satan, who dealt in souls and corruption. Lot should also have known that Sodom was not where he belonged .... but he was a slow learner. He should have stayed closer to Abram, a truly great, competent man and a living example in a world of contradictions.
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1. Abram's call
"Get out of from this place", echoed the divine voice through the stillness of the night (Acts 7:3). Abram fell to the ground and shivered. "Get up, take your family and belongings and go where I lead you. He lay there all night long, unable to move, but resolved to do as God had commanded. In the morning, Sarai contended with him, arguing that they had little or no living knowledge of this God. Yet Abram stood firm, utterly riveted. It was done, he would go and his family with him. His father, Terah, tried to dissuade him, yet he carried on loading his belongings. So Terah had Abram locked up with his own gods to reflect on his rashness. In the night Abram stood before each god, willing it to speak, but when nothing happened he struck the idol down in anger. Soon the floor was strewn with debris and Abram realised just how bankcrupt that pagan culture was. In the morning, Terah raged at what had happened, but Abram just said "I asked your gods for advice, but they couldn't agree on anything and started fighting amongst themselves". So Terah told Abram to take his family and go.
Ur was an ancient city in southern Mesopotamia, located near the mouth (at the time) of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers on the Persian Gulf and close to Eridu. It is considered to be one of the earliest known civilizations in world history. Because of marine regression, the remains are now well inland in present-day Iraq, south of the Euphrates on its right bank, and named Tell el-Mukayyar [1], near the city of Nasiriyah south of Baghdad.
The site is marked by the ruins of a ziggurat (right), still largely intact, and by a settlement mound. The ziggurat is a temple of Nanna, the moon deity in Sumerian mythology, and has two stages constructed from brick: in the lower stage the bricks are joined together with bitumen, in the upper stage they are joined with mortar. The Sumerian name for this city was Urim. Source: Wikipedia
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6. Abraham, what have you done?
Mark Twain observed: "If statistics are right, Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of smoke lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning, are also way out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all ages: and has done it with his hands tied behind him. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?"
It started with Abram, who sired a nation that birthed a savior - and the govenment shall ultimately rest on His shoulders. This series looks deeper into the towering, yet solitary life of the great patriarch. Abram (Genesis 13), having passed out of the lands of Sumeria, he lifted up his eyes and looked out across Canaan. "This is the land I will give to you and your descendants. Look to the North, South, East and West ... for wherever you place the souls of your feet, that is the land that I have given you. That small, significant parcel of land, at the center of the world, by the crossroads of the ancient trade routes, is the land that God gave to the Jews and it remains the most contested piece of real-estate in history. It is the cradle of monotheism, the birthplace of the redeemer, the place of sorrows where God intermediated for all. There the destiny of nations and the march of history will reach its climax when Messiah breaks through the clouds with ten thousands of His saints .
5. Abram followed a promise
Abram and Lot shepherded their flocks, herds and people across the vast, open plains of Mesopotamia, towards the distant lands of Canaan. They cut deep paths in the dry, dusty earth, in search of pasture and wells for their livestock. When they found good pasture they would camp for days and weeks at times, moving forward at an unhurried pace, but always following the leading of God, towards the land of promise.
At night they slept under a great canopy of stars that filled the heavens and twinkled in the blackness of the sky. This was the dwelling place of the great God. The sun and moon deities of Ur had been confined to the ziggurat, where chaldeans worshipped tangible but otherwise impotent symbols of contrived gods. Now as the heavens unfurled above him, God began to unveil the mysteries of His heart to Abram. Unlike the gods he had left, this God could not be left behind or confined by time or place. Abram walked with God, the great shephed, a tent in the wilderness, a wellspring of life, the eternal pasture of his soul, a guiding radiance through the long, still nights and a compelling vision by day. Across the burning sands, beyond the distant hills, lay his destiny in God.
3. Farewell to Ur
Abram was 37 when he departed from Ur of the Chaldees in ancient Mesopotamia. He left in 1528 BC. Ur was part of modern day Iraq, on the river Euphrates, near to Eden. Abram left fertile abundance for the barren solitude of the desert. He knew not where he was going, but followed a divine call.
He took with him, his wife Sarai, his brother in law, Lot, his father, his tents, household and flocks. At the crest of a hell he looked back and bid a final farewell to the bustling city of Ur. His last view was of the towering ziggurat of Ur, home of the sumerian moon god. After leaving, Abram turned towards the North-West, to Haran, where Terah died and was buried. It was the beginning of a 600 km journey that would effectively last one-hundred and thirty eight years. It would establish him as the founder of the hebrew nation and father to the three primary world religions. He was a strong, resilient man, single minded man, set aside by God for an eternally significant purpose in a world that barely grasped the concept of a monotheistic God.
4. Abram, followed a call
After the death of Terah, God called Abram again (Genesis 12). He told him to leave that country (Mesopotamia and its pagan ways) and head towards a country that God would yet show him (Canaan). God promised to make of Abram a great nation with a land of their own. He also declared a blessing over him and swore to bless those who blessed him, but to curse those who cursed him. God did not just throw these things randomly at an unsuspecting Abram. Though I speculated earlier that he may have sacrificed a child as part of his pagan past, I submit that Abram was a deep thinker, who intensely searched after God and ultimately walked with the creator, but the favour of God came at a great personal price to Abram. The contrasts on his path helped to divide between his godless past and God-centred future. He was forced to contemplate the directionlessness of the Chaldean moon-god against the backlight of a vast canopy of stars that reflected the certainty of God's divine purposes. God also contrasted the dark heart of paganism (the futility of human sacrifice to non-gods) in the light of His own heart (a covenant borne out of God's sacrificial gift to us). Each step towards his own destiny stripped Abram of the misconceptions and follies of his past. Gradually God had invested his own heart in that one solitary giant to establish an oracle (Romans 2) of truth and a beacon of reason in a dark, godless world.
2. Heading out
"Abram, pray to the gods before you go", shouted Lot and Sarai. "I do not trust these gods", he replied. "I put my only son through the fire and what did it ever get me other than bitterness and a childless marriage. That was an offence to the Great God and it is enough that I must pay for that with my own life, but I will not stay in my error. I will not bow to gods of wood and stone ever again. The living God, the creator of the heavens and the earth has called me out of this culture, to forsake everything. I will follow Him."
Sarai, pleading now, cried back, "But Abram, this God you now serve, has He given you a son? Has He heard your prayers?" Abram shouted back so the whole village could hear him, "Noah obeyed the same God and built his ark, then God delivered him from judgement. I will follow the God of the ark, who establishes His testimony in us and delivers us from all evil. I too am building an ark, a bridge that will lead us across from this barren, pagan world into His eternal abudndance".
7. Abram left the cradle
The Hellenists gave the term "Mesopotamia" to the regions below modern day Baghdad, between the Tigris and Euphrates. It is a region that has held strategic interest to the great nations of history, even to the present era. It was formely regarded as Sumerian after possibly the oldest city of recorded history, Sumeria. The region was one of a handful of city states that served as a cradle to early civilisation. It is my own theory that Eden lay beyond the current water courses, below the waters of the Arabian gulf. As the earth cooled, water condensed into the great basins of the world and also reduced the high humidity levels of the highlands, resulting in a migration to the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates. The area provided the birth place of mid and near east civilisations and it was clearly also the place where early bible incidents took place, including the building of the tower of Babel and the settlement of the sons of Shem, son of Noah: they were the ealiest semites (shemites).
Abram emerged from this fairly advanced, but pagan and (if Babel is anything to go by) willful culture. He left it all behind, to face another contradiction in the dry, barren wastelands towards Canaan. He left a fertile, progressive but spiritually barren cradle, for a dry, dusty but spiritually fruitful plain, where he grew up and became a significant man and father in God. As he entered Canaan, he camped between Bethel, the house of God and future touchstone of Israel, and Ai, a heap of ruins that symbolised the corrupt, uncertain remnants of his past.
8. Lot strove with Abram
God had called Abram. Lot merely went along for the ride. Yet even as a passenger, Lot gleaned many of the rewards of being under Abram's wing. Nonetheless, the two men represented divergent world views that paved the way for conflict between their descendants. The call of God was like a sword, defining the two men and distinguishing Abram. It was another contradiction that set a pattern for God's dealings with people, for He uses our apparent contradictions and dilemmas to clarify His own values, ways and purposes - He never sets out to destroy, but uses our life experiences to establish us and equip us for our future inheritance. However, the way any two people respond to God's working in their lives can lead them down divergent paths and turn family or friends into long term enemies, because the path chosen by one will always provoke the other.
The contradictions between the two men came to a head when they contended for common pasture. This led to division and consequently the two needed to decide where to live. Abram had enough confidence in God's calling and favor to let his foolhardy relative choose the best of the land together with the riches and prosperity of a worldly culture. Even then Abram realized that things are never quite as they seem, whilst things that many despise often lead to the rich rewards of God. Thus it happened that eventually Abram had to rescue Lot when envious neighbors contended for the same prize. He subsequently also rescued Lot from the corruption and decadence that prosperity brought. Eventually, Abram's descendants annexed all the land that Lot had claimed, but the land of promise was blessed and transferred to Abram and His descendants as a perpetual heritage. Abram's advantage lay in the certainty of God's favor and the call over his life - it enabled him to make astute, log-term decisions and bide his time until God realized a far better outcome in his life.
9. Abram's indiscretions
It fascinates me how honest and real the bible is. It tells us how it was and never white-washes the indiscretions of great people for the sake of a divine reputation. It is to God's own glory that He could achieve so much with such imperfect souls and it is to our benefit that He is willing to do so. The king of Egypt thought Sarai was a great beauty and Abram disclaimed her as his sister to protect his own skin. He did that twice, but Sarai seemed to understand him better than we can and certainly God remained silent on the matter, except insofar as such incidents were recorded in scripture.
Then came a defining moment when Sarai convinced Abram to sire a son through her handmaid. The boy, Ishmael strove with Abram's eventual heir and became a fugitive. Centuries later Ishamel's children would still be a major thorn in the side of Isaac's decsendants. His indiscretion assumed the possibility of compromising on God's promise to ensure a male heir to Abram. It gave him a son alright, but plenty of troubles besides.
Sarai eventually so despised the proud arrogance of Hagar, Ishmael's mother, that she banished the woman from Abram's camp. Yet God blessed Ishmael anyway, for he was Abram's offspring. Abram's indiscretion was costly, yet so are the compromises we make in pursuit of God's promises. He is faithful to fulfill all His promises, but equally resolute in making us live with the consequences of our short-sightedness.
10. A covenant made, Genesis 15
A warm desert wind caught the flap of his tent and swished in the stillness of the night. Abram lay awake staring at the ceiling, his heart pounding with a sense of occasion. The wind caught the flap again and blew it wide open, giving him a brief glimpse of a starry sky. He rolled, got to his feet, stepped through the tent and looked up at a vast canopy of stars that covered the sky. The camp remained silent as he crept away, up an embankment, outside the camp, where he lay down to gaze at the sky.
"Abram, count the stars". Abram rolled over and fell on his face in the dust, but kept silent. "As you see the stars, so shall your descendants be for number ... as numerous as the sands of the seashore. But the child you have sired, shall not be your heir, for you shall have your own son. I am the God who called you out of Ur to this land, which I have given to you and your descendants".
Abram lay still for hours, but as the morning sun streaked across the sky he got up, descended to the camp and took what he needed for a sacrifice. He spoke to no one, but led a heifer and a lamb into the hills. As the last star blinked out in the light of dawn, he mounted a hillock where he gazed out of over the land of his inheritance and worshipped God.
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12. Melchizedek
There is much speculation about Melchizedek, including a widely held notion that He was an incarnation of God (Jesus), a view advanced by thirteen fragments found with the dead sea scrolls of Qumran. There is no theological support for this idea, but no one doubts that He was a mysterious figure.
Our best record of Melchizedek is found in Hebrews 7, which declares Jesus as a priest of an "order", the order of Melchidekek. This has precedence over the Levitical order and was esteemed by Abram.
What we do know from Hebrews 6 is that Melchizedek was the king of Salem. He was the original king of peace. Hebrews 7 compounds the mystery surrounding the man, by indicating that he was without father or mother (which arguably meant there was merely no record of his lineage) and without beginning or end of days (he suddenly appears and disappears in biblical records).
We also know that Abram esteemed Melchizedek so highly that he worshipped Him and paid a trubute (tithe) to Him of the spoils taken from Chedarloamer. This at least points to someone who, like Abram, worshipped the true God, something which may be assumed to have been quite common in that time. He was effectively the first king of Jerusalem and a type of Christ, the last and ultimate king and priest of the same city.
Finally the priest, whose name means "My King is righteous", served bread and wine to Abram and then blessed him. Jesus instituted the same covenant meal, but the fact that Melchizedek blessed Abram suggests a very significant person, as biblically the less is always blessed by the greater.
