The Rich and Happy Camper

Abraham was born in the Sumerian city of Ur in ancient Mesopotamia.  As a young man Abraham had moved to Haran in northern Mesopotamia where he lived with his wife Sarah.  Abraham and Sarah had no children, but after his brother died Abraham took his brother's son, Lot, into his home and raised him like a son.

One day Yahweh came to see Abraham and said to him, “Pack your bags. I want you to leave your home and move to the land of Canaan.  Take your family and your possessions with you.  I am going to make you the father of a great nation.  I will protect you and see that things go well for you and you will prosper and become wealthy.  Whoever treats you well will be rewarded and whoever does not treat you well will feel my anger.” 

Abraham did as he was told.  In a few days he began the long journey with his family, his relatives, some friends, and all his possessions, from Haran, a city in northern Mesopotamia where he had been living and where he had made his home, to the land of Canaan.  When he arrived at the shrine of Shechem he stopped and camped there near the sacred oak tree worshiped by the people in that area of Canaan. 

Lord Yahweh appeared to Abraham suddenly and said to him, “I am giving all this land around here to your descendants.”  Abraham was grateful and built an altar to Yahweh beside the sacred oak tree.  From there Abraham set off to investigate this new land, arriving eventually in the vast desert known as the Negev.  There was a famine in the desert, crops would not grow and the animals could not find grass on which to graze, so Abraham and his nomadic companions moved on until they arrived at the border of Egypt.

Just before he entered Egypt, he said to his wife Sarah, "Look Sarah, you are a beautiful woman.  When we get to Egypt the men there will see how beautiful you are and they will want you for themselves.  If they know I am your husband they will kill me to get me out of the way so they can have you.  So here's the plan.   We will tell them that you are my sister.  Then I will be safe and my life will be spared.”

When Abraham entered Egypt the Egyptian border guards noticed that Sarah was very beautiful and the word quickly got to Pharaoh that a young attractive woman had entered the country so Pharaoh sent his servants to get Sarah and take her to his palace to become one of the women in his harem.  Because he liked Sarah he was good to Abraham, who he thought was her brother, and gave him gifts of sheep, oxen, donkeys, male and female slaves, and camels, which was customary payment to the nearest male relative when taking a wife.

Yahweh was angry that Pharaoh had taken Sarah as his wife, so he made Pharaoh and those who lived in his palace very sick.  Pharaoh's priests then told Pharaoh that the illnesses were his punishment for taking another man's wife.  The surprised Pharaoh then called Abraham to him and confronted him about trying to pass of Sarah as his sister.  He said to Abraham, "Why did you do this?  You have caused me a lot of trouble.  My friends and family are sick because of you.  Why didn't you tell me that Sarah was your wife? Why did you tell me she was your sister?  Take Sarah, and get out of my palace and out of my country." 

So Pharaoh gave his men orders to send Abraham away, along with his wife, his family and all his possessions.  Abraham left Egypt with Sarah and his nephew Lot and his friends and relatives, and traveled back to the Negev desert, where he had made his camp years before and where he had built an altar for sacrifices to his family god.  Abraham was now a very rich man, with much livestock, silver and gold that Pharaoh had given him. 

When they got back to the Negev desert Abraham and Lot decided that the land was not large enough to support both of them and their families and retainers, because each of them had flocks and herds, and many tents and people, and there were often fights between their herders and their fellow countrymen.  They needed more land for their tribes.

So Abraham said to Lot, “It is not good for us to quarrel among ourselves, or for our herders to fight one another, because we are relatives of the same tribal family.  So that we and our people do not have an occasion to fight with each other, let us go our separate ways.  You go one way, I will go the other.”

Lot looked into the distance and saw that the plain of the Jordan River had plenty of water and the land was fertile like the land of Egypt, so he settled there close to the city of Sodom.  Abraham took his tribal followers and went in the other direction and settled in the land of Canaan. 

Yahweh said to Abraham, after Lot had left, "Look around you in all directions, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever.  I will make your offspring as many as the sands of the earth, and just as the sands are too many to count, so your descendants will be too many to be counted.” So Abraham moved his tent and settled by the sacred oaks at Hebron and there he built an altar to Lord Yahweh.

In those days there were many city states throughout the whole region of Canaan, each with its own king, and there were constant fights among the city states, which made alliances with their neighbors to fight other cities.  In one of these wars the King of Sodom and his allies were defeated.  Lot, who lived near Sodom, was captured and taken away as a prisoner of war, along with his herds and his possessions.  One of the prisoners escaped and went to Abraham to tell him what had happened. 

When Abraham heard that his nephew Lot, his family and servants had all been taken captive, he assembled a force of trained fighters, all men of his tribe, three hundred eighteen of them, and went in pursuit of the enemy and found them.  When night came he split his forces and attacked the enemy camp from two sides and chased the enemy away.  He freed his nephew Lot and recovered Lot's goods and possessions, all his slaves, his women and the rest of his tribe who had been captured with him.  

The King of Sodom was grateful and went to meet Abraham on his victorious return to thank him. Melchizedek, an ally of the King of Sodom who was also priest of the Canaanite god known as God Most High, brought bread and wine, and the allies had a great feast to celebrate the victory.  Abraham offered the kings who helped him ten percent of all the goods and cattle that had been captured in the war as their fee for their services. 

The King of Sodom said, “Just give me my people back, my countrymen and my servants, and you can keep all the stuff you captured as your reward.”

But Abraham said to the King of Sodom, "I swore an oath to God Most High that I would not keep anything that is yours, so that you could not say that you made me rich.  I will take nothing but what the young men have eaten, and the share of goods that belongs to the men who went with me. Let my soldiers take their share."

That said, Abraham and his followers went home.

  

Abraham and his sons are called aliens or foreigners, and this seems to reflect a conscious and valid historical memory by later Israelites about their Hebrew ancestors who were outsiders among the Canaanites, nomadic shepherds who wandered from place to place seeking pastures for their flocks of sheep and goats, unwilling to become city dwellers, setting up their tents in the open land around the cities, and frequently coming into conflict with the Canaanite city dwellers over land and water rights. Historians believe that Abraham, regardless of whether he is a real person, represents one strand of tribal ancestors of the Hebrews, who remembered their origins in Mesopotamia, particularly from the Amorite territory of Haran in northern Mesopotamia, and who were part of the large group of nomadic peoples who moved into Canaan early in the second millennium B.C.  The story is not so much about the person Abraham as about his tribe and it is likely that time was telescoped to produce a narrative, when the facts were much more complex.  For instance the story about Abraham’s birth in Ur, his move with his family 600 miles north to Haran, and his later journey south to Canaan, may have actually occurred over several generations.  Lot is described as the nephew of Abraham, also from Haran.  Later in the story Lot is seen as the head of a separate tribe.  Lot and Abraham are the ancestors of separate but related tribes, both probably moving into Canaan in the Amorite movement into the area.