CHAPTER VI.

SEPARATION.

Return to Canaan-Lot separates from Abram-The Cities of the PlainRenewal of promise at Bethel-Residence at Hebron-Description of the locality-Hittite allies.

THE famine which had driven Abram into Egypt having passed away, he returned to the southern part of Canaan, whence he had set out, and by easy stages reached his old encampment at Bethel. Here preserved from danger in a foreign land, and greatly enriched in worldly wealth, he offered his thanksgiving unto the Lord, and thought for a time to have had rest. But it was not so to be. What Christ said to His followers, what is a true word to all God's servants-"In the world ye shall have tribulation ;" this was indeed the experience of the patriarch. We Christians know the blessedness of affliction; Abram was learning the lesson. The occasion was this very prosperity which God had bestowed upon him. The large increase of substance in the case of Abram and his nephew necessitated a wider area of pasturage than had formerly been required. And they had not the country to themselves; it was occupied by the Canaanites and Perizzites (Gen. xiii. 7), the former dwelling in the walled towns, the latter inhabiting the woods and mountains and rustic villages. So "the land was not able to bear them." First the herdsmen of the two masters dispute; one will not give way to the other; each uphold their own lord's right to the best grazing district; each are decided against making any concession for the sake of peace. And then the principals are drawn into the quarrel,

and a life-long alienation might have been the consequence of this petty difference. A common interest, common trials and dangers, had united Abram and Lot together; and now their mutual prosperity threatened to cause serious estrangement. But Abram was equal to the occasion. His religion was practical; it ruled his conduct; it entered into every detail of life; it made him unselfish and complaisant. Wealth had not altered his character; his heart was as large, his sympathies were as uncontracted, as ever. He anticipated that beautiful phase of the Christian disposition which Christ inculcated (Matt. v. 39 ff.): "I say unto you, That ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain." He had learned the spirit which animated St. Paul when he enjoined the Corinthians not to be too eager to maintain their rights. "There is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? Why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?" (1 Cor. vi. 7). So with touching disinterestedness and self-denial he allays the rising quarrel. He says to Lot: "Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdmen and thy herdmen; for we are brethren." And then, though he was the elder, and in all respects the superior, from love of peace and in deference to his nephew's inclinations, he waives his own rights. With a noble generosity he exclaims: "Is not the whole land before thee? Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me: if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left." And Lot, who had not the single-hearted faith of Abram, was already growing tired of the nomadic life; he cared not to be a stranger and a pilgrim upon earth, to dwell in tents, waiting for the time of the promise to be fulfilled. He longed for a settled home at once; and when Abram bade him choose his own way, and make his abode wherever he liked, he saw the accomplishment of his desires at hand, and proceeded immediately to carry them out. From the encampment on the east of Bethel, he looked down on a wide reach of country. On three sides, indeed, the view was not inviting to a shepherd's

* Stanley, "Sinai and Palestine," pp. 314, 315.

eye. The verdant valleys were mostly out of sight, and what met the gaze were bare hills, and summit after summit unclothed with trees, and sinking into the blue distance. On the north were the mountains which divide what was afterwards known as Samaria from Judæa; westward and southward rose the bleak hills of Judæa and Benjamin, from which the eye, missing the lower ground on which Jebus stood, passed onwards to the range on the slope of which lay Hebron. But eastward a far different prospect opened. Down a gorge could be seen the circle (ciccar) of the Jordan, the tropical luxuriance of that "region round about Jordan" (Matt. iii. 5), set in its amphitheatre of mountains, with the plain of Jericho almost at the beholder's feet, and brightly green with the verdure fostered by the plentiful streams of the district, watered as "the garden of the Lord," and recalling to the pilgrims' minds the fertility of that valley of the Nile from which they had lately returned. Where the five Cities of the Plain were situated, whether at the north or south extremity of the Dead Sea, has not been absolutely determined. From the spot where Abram and his nephew stood, the southern end could not be seen, as it is shut out by intervening hills; nor could that district have supported a settled population; but the "plain of Jordan" was visible; and that term could not be applied to the south extremity of the sea, as the Jordan never flowed there in historic times, and there is very little available ground in that direction. But these considerations do not occur on the present occasion, as nothing is said of Pentapolis itself being seen, but only of the circle of the Jordan being visible. So Lot looked down on this rich country, and chose it for his new dwelling-place. Little seems he to have cared for the wickedness of its inhabitants, or the possible effects of such association upon his family and household. The civilization of these cities, however corrupt, had a charm for him; he wanted a settled home, and would have it, though it drew him into contamination and peril. He is led by sight, not by faith; he looks to worldly advantage, not to the leading of God's providence. He refuses to see that the Lord had all along been carefully separating the chosen family from corrupting influences, and setting them apart from wicked nations and dangerous associations; and he puts himself in the midst of temptation, choosing what seemed most advantageous • See Tristram, Land of Israel," pp. 359 ff.

...

I

and pleasant, shunning the hard and rugged road of selfdenial and humility. Doubtless at first he had intended to retain as much as he could of his, nomadic life; he had taken his tent with him and pitched it near Sodom. But he did not long keep to this resolution. The attraction of the city proved too strong for his weak purpose. By degrees he relinquished the pastoral life; he made his home in the wicked town; he became an inhabitant of Sodom, and sunk his nationality so far as to betroth his daughters to native Sodomites. The zeal with which he had once followed the example and leading of his uncle had greatly diminished; he, who formerly had left home and country that he might worship the true God in liberty and peace, was now content with a barren protest against the idolatry and wickedness of his neighbours, and thought he had done his duty when he refrained himself from imitating their vices and continued to hold his faith in Jehovah.

Sodom, the chief of these cities, and the other four owed their foundation to the race of Ham, which erected the towers of Babylon, the temples and pyramids of Egypt, and which proved such bitter enemies to the Israelites in succeeding times. To what height of refinement and civilization they had attained cannot be determined, as we have no monuments or remains by which to test their progress; but we know that they were set in the midst of plenty, in a land of singular fertility, and on the high road of the traffic between Egypt and the East. Thus they grew rich and prosperous; they had lost the restraining influence of a pure monotheism, and had learned to worship deities who were served by the indulgence of human passions and degrading lusts. The enervating effects of the tropical climate in which they lived tended to render the inhabitants an easy prey to vicious and corrupt habits. Their civilization, such as it was, did not raise them to culture and refinement, but was displayed in ministering most successfully to sensual enjoyment. "Behold," says the Lord by the prophet Ezekiel (chap. xvi. 49, 50), "this was the iniquity of Sodom; pride, fulness of bread, and prosperous ease was in her and her daughters; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me therefore I took them away when I saw it." The unnatural crime for which Sodom has become infamous is a token of the utmost moral degradation, and the people among

whom such crime prevails has sunk to the lowest depths of evil and is ripe for destruction. God's hand has written His utter detestation of this vice upon every page of history; inhabitants thus guilty the land "spues out." Sodom had its warning before its final destruction, but did not profit by it, becoming only more openly sinful, more unblushingly vile.

Sad and lonely felt Abram at the departure of Lot, so long his companion and friend. He could not but grieve at the careless selfishness which had led his nephew into the midst of the seductions of the godless inhabitants of the plain; he must have felt a solitary man when this last link which bound him to his family beyond the flood was snapped asunder, when he, with none to help him or to confirm his acts and words, was left the only witness for God in all the land. He, whom in default of his own issue he had regarded as his heir and the inheritor of the great promise, had proved himself unworthy of the privilege, had recklessly cast it aside for the ease and comfort of an earthly home. The generous offer had been eagerly seized; and without regard to consequences Lot had taken up his abode where the name of Jehovah was unknown, and in a place whose inhabitants were sinners before the Lord exceedingly. And now to comfort Abram in this trial, and to show him that the separation for which he grieved was a providential arrangement, the Lord made unto him a new revelation, containing a more formal and distinct reiteration of the promises originally given. Some have thought that a glorious vision of the land in all its extent was vouchsafed to him, even as Christ in His temptation was shown "all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them;" but the record merely says thus: "The Lord said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward; for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth; so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it, and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee." Thus largely is his disinterestedness rewarded. He had unselfishly given Lot the choice of the land; he receives the promise of the whole of it. He need have no fear that he had parted with him who was I Corn. a Lap. in loc.

I