THE STORY OF ABRAHAM

ABRAM JOURNEYS TO CANAAN
JAHVEH’S CALL AND PROMISE

J [P 12. 4b, 5]

Abram’s complete faith in God is shown at the very beginning of his story. The risks and uncertainties of such a move as this require very little imagination on our part to appreciate.

Belief by our fathers in the historic verbal truth of his wanderings and those of his family raised the question how the facts came down to posterity. Fatuous suggestions had often to be made, such as that the patriarchs’ wrote “diaries” on burnt bricks which, ever accumulating, they carried about with them!

In this section, we come across the first of many places which in later times were regarded as sanctuaries. Their sanctity was connected with the fathers of the race by means of such stories as we have here about Shechem (12. 6). But in actual fact they were holy places long before the Hebrew migrations. Shechem, for instance, where ancient tree worship was practised, is recorded as early as the 12th Egyptian dynasty (about 2,000-1788 B.C.).

In later times, Shechem was the scene of the split between the northern and southern parts of the Jewish kingdom in the year 936 B.C., when Rehoboam, son of Solomon, found that the northern tribes would not accept him.

After an eventful history Shechem was captured from Syria by the Jews in 130 B.C., but was destroyed in the Romano-Jewish war (A.D. 66-70). Rebuilt as Flavia Neapolis, its adventures continued - to mention four, it was captured by the Crusaders in 1099, by Saladin in 1184, was pillaged by Ibrahim Pasha in 1834, and occupied by the British in 1918. Its modern name is Nablus.