Abraham Continues South
Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” And there he built an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
We now learn more about what Abraham did after he arrived in the land of Canaan. We are told Abraham was given a vision from God reaffirming the promises of descendants and land.
In response to his encounter with God, Abraham built an altar and (for the first recorded time) engaged in formal worship of the true God. He later built another altar to God near Bethel (north of Jerusalem) and “called on the name of the LORD” (verse 8)—a phrase denoting prayer and worship.
We are given very little detail about Abraham’s first sojourn in Canaan. We see that a famine in Canaan (verse 10) caused Abraham to head south through the Negev desert to Egypt. This would be the first of many troubling encounters between Abraham’s descendants and the nation of Egypt.
To learn more about Abraham and his life, read “The Faith of Abraham.”
Tomorrow on the Daily Bible Verse Blog: “Abraham in Egypt.”
