Lessons from Genesis: A Study Companion Volume 2

By Dennis McCallum

In this second volume, veteran Bible teacher, Dennis McCallum takes you into a moving and exciting study of Genesis 12-end. This narrative,

• Is accessible to even new readers
• Briefly answers modern attacks on the text
• Is ideally arranged for partner or group reading
• Faithfully keeps the big picture in view

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Paradigm Publishing
• Release date: May 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9798988508762

Dennis McCallum

Dennis McCallum is founder and lead pastor of Xenos Christian Fellowship, a nontraditional church composed of several hundred house churches. He also leads Xenos' college ministry at Ohio State University. A graduate of Ashland Theological Seminary, he is the author of several books, including The Death of Truth. Dennis and his wife, Holly, live in Columbus, Ohio. Their three adult children lead house churches at Xenos.

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1 The Toledot of Terah

Genesis 11:28-12:5

We ended volume 1 with a list of the descendents of Noah's son, Shem. That list brought us to the family of God’s chosen man, Abram, and his chosen woman, Sarai.

Moses introduces the next portion of the story with his usual transition: "This is the account [toledot or family story] of Terah (11:27). Terah had three sons. One of them, Haran, died young. Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans" (11:28). But before Haran died, he had a son named Lot.

Abram married Sarai, whom we later discover is also his half-sister (20:12). Such a marriage must have been permissible in that culture. Nahor’s wife, Milcah, was his niece (11:29). We also learn that Sarai was barren.

The whole family originally lived in Ur of the Chaldeans. That’s the name of a large and very advanced city south of Babylon.

In 1927, Leonard Woolley excavated the site of ancient Ur. He discovered:

In its time, Ur was a city of enormous size, scope, and opulence which drew its vast wealth from its position on the Persian Gulf and the trade this allowed with countries as far away as India, owing to its location at a pivotal point where the Tigris and Euphrates run into the Persian Gulf.¹

So Abram lived in one of the most opulent, wealthy cities in the ancient world. This beginning point contrasts sharply with his later environment.

At the end of Chapter 11 we read,

Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. (v. 31)

So they were headed to Canaan (later Israel) but never made it. They stayed in Haran for years. Although this passage says Terah made the move and brought his kids along, we later read God saying to Abram, "I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it (15:7).

So even though it was Terah (not a believer) who led the move, evidently God had put it in his mind to do so. Terah was acting to bring about this portion of God’s will without knowing it.

That’s not unusual. In many places, scripture describes people advancing God’s will without knowing or intending to do so. A good example comes from Acts 4:37-38, where Peter says,

For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur.

The villains who conspired to put Jesus on the cross were doing exactly what they wanted to do. But God used their blood-lust for his own purposes. He foreknew what would happen, and in fact, his predestination is normally based on foreknowledge (Romans 8:29).

Abram’s family

The year is roughly 2050 B.C. Abram, later renamed Abraham, is 75 years old. Somehow he has made contact with God—or more likely, God had made contact with him.

That contact wasn’t through his family. We later learn from a prophecy uttered by Joshua, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘From ancient times your fathers lived beyond the River, namely, Terah, the father of Abram and the father of Nahor, and they served other gods’ (Joshua 24:2).²

This earlier call is probably what New Testament preacher, Stephen has in mind when he says, The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, and said to him, ‘Go out from your land…’ (Acts 7:2-4). This first call in Ur is not recorded in Genesis, although it is implied.

God also declared through Moses, Then you shall announce before the Lord your God: ‘My father was a wandering Aramean’ (Deuteronomy 26:5). So Abram was Aramean, not Chaldean. That would suggest his native land was Haran, not Ur. We don’t know why the family was living in Ur, but they might have been merchants, given that Ur was an important port city on the Persian Gulf.

Arameans were an ancient people who spoke, not surprisingly, Aramaic. They lived in the area of Haran (sometimes called Padan Aram) near the Euphrates River. Abram later confirmed he was a native of that area when he sends his servant there referring to it as the land of my relatives (24:27).³

God’s plan for human history

This brings us to Genesis 12, where we see one of the most famous passages in the Old Testament:

Now the Lord said to Abram, Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you. And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. (vs. 1-3)

This is our first view of God’s great Abrahamic Covenant. It’s a clear statement of his plan for Abram and ultimately for the rescue of all humanity. Notice the last statement, And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. This was the obscure, unnoticed launch of the plan that governs the whole Bible from this point to our day and beyond.

The covenant is God’s work. Notice God’s repeated, I will… I will… I will… I will. The sovereign creator God has decided he is going to do something important. But he isn’t going to do it by himself. He also has his chosen man and his chosen family. From here on in the biblical account, God unfolds and enacts this plan, always working through cooperating humans—the people of God.

We now can look at this event with the benefit of hindsight, realizing that the plan began here with God electing a family to become a nation, later known as the Hebrews or the Jews.⁴

The Jews’ mission

God had the Jews record revelation from the prophets, beginning with Moses. This revelation of God—who he is, what he’s like, his moral nature, and his view of humans—the Jews faithfully recorded all of this in our Old Testament.

Along with the knowledge of God’s person, the scriptures continue to develop the picture of God’s plan. He already hinted at this plan in Genesis 3, when he said the seed of woman would crush the serpent’s head. Here, in Chapter 12, it comes up again with the insight that God’s plan will be worldwide in scope and that the Jews will play a central role.

As time passed and the prophets recorded more revelation, the emerging theme of the promised one—the anointed one, the messiah—emerged. The prophets describe the messiah’s future role in the seemingly contradictory pictures of a world-ruling king on the one hand, and as a humble, suffering servant on the other. That discrepancy was resolved when it turned out he would come twice.

God also gave the Jews a separate line of predictive material: so-called typology. Types are symbolic rituals, events, objects, or people that point toward something future. Often, they point toward the person and work of Jesus. For instance, the entire tabernacle system (e.g. animal sacrifices) and the festival calendar (e.g. Passover and the Day of Atonement) are types pointing to Jesus. (More on this later).

Not only did the Jewish people need to write down God’s revelation. They also had to copy it faithfully, teach it to their kids, and carry it to all the lands to which they later migrated. The result was that many copies of the Old Testament scriptures were scattered around the Mediterranean basin, removing any doubt about what the text said, or its antiquity. The more extant copies and locations we have of an ancient text, the more reliable the text is.

As a result, when Jesus came, he didn’t just emerge out of nowhere claiming to be God’s son and the Messiah. Why would anyone believe that? Instead, he could and often did point to the immense body of prophetic prediction and typology in the Old Testament to verify his claims.

Because of the way it was recorded, there could be no doubt that the predictive material predated Jesus by hundreds of years. And therefore, to any honest observer, there could be no doubt: Jesus was the chosen one.

Our place

Of course, God’s plan didn’t end with Jesus’ arrival on the scene. Once he came and underwent God’s judgment for human sin, a new phase dawned. Now, believers can experience the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit. The Spirit also created the body of Christ, with its members mystically united with Jesus and each other. We now understand what God is doing in his plan better than anyone could in Old Testament times, because we have the gospel.

God is pursuing his plan today like never before, with the gospel penetrating every nation on earth, just as he promised Abram. His enemy is also driving his own countermeasures, successfully leading one culture after another into apostasy and denial of the gospel they formerly believed.

Abram’s part

God had some expectations for Abram. Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you’ (v. 1). None of these steps was easy.

Moving away from your country at this time was something people didn’t normally do. Other countries were suspicious of travelers, and the times were lawless. Bandits were common. The warlike atmosphere made countries think any travelers might be spies let alone a large outfit like Abram’s, involving thousands of livestock and scores or perhaps hundreds of herders. That could seem like an invasion.

Leaving his relatives and his father’s house would have been even harder than leaving his country. In a day when family was everything, the last thing anyone wanted to do was leave those closest to them. Unlike today, when families routinely spread across the country for nothing more important than money, ancient families usually stuck together, often living on the same homestead. That’s probably why Abram got stuck in Haran and didn’t leave until Terah was dead.

As we saw earlier, Abram’s relatives were idol worshippers, and they probably had little sympathy for his rejection of their ancestral views in favor of monotheism. God knew that Abram needed to move away from the family consensus if he was going to escape its allure. So when Abram hesitated in Haran for a number of years, God had to call him a second time. This call in Chapter 12 was not the first time God called him, as we saw earlier.

God makes the same call today. Jesus said that unless people hold to him above their loyalty to their parents and wider families, they could not be his disciples.⁵ For many new Christians, their biggest trial is holding loyally to their faith and not succumbing to family pressure to turn away from God.

Other promises

And I will make you a great nation

Today, Jews number more than 14 million worldwide. They would have numbered far more if they hadn’t been persecuted and slaughtered throughout their history. God has kept this promise.

And I will bless you

According to Hebrew scholar, John Oswalt, to bless in the Old Testament means to endue with power for success, prosperity, fertility, longevity, etc.⁶ Blessing is often juxtaposed with cursing, as it is in our passage, when God says, And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse (v. 3). When God is the one blessing and cursing as in this passage, it basically means he is aligning himself with Abram and his family—he’s on their side.

Just as God is aligned with the Jews, his enemy, Satan, is against them. Anti-Semitism comes straight from Satan. In Revelation 12:13 we read, When the dragon saw that he was thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth [the Jewish people] to the male child [Jesus]. And considering that this covenant is still in force, cursing the Jews is a terrible idea. God hasn’t always protected the Jews from damage, but he still curses their persecutors.

And make your name great

When Abram died, nobody in the Middle East or the world shed a tear. He died as a complete unknown. Today, half the human race traces its spiritual lineage directly to this man. Christians, Jews, and Muslims see Abraham as the father of faith. Apart from Jesus, Abram is arguably the most renowned person in human history.

And so you shall be a blessing

The Abrahamic Covenant was a call to a mission. The Jews had privileges, but they also bore a burden. They had to keep a regimen over millennia and withstand repeated attacks from enemies. We can all be glad they got the job done. Although they suffered because of much unfaithfulness and outright apostasy at times, when things came to a head during Jesus’ life, everything was ready. The Jews’ previous work validated Jesus and enabled Old Testament scholars like the apostle Paul and Apollos to see Jesus was from God and his message was true. So through their work the Jewish people have clearly become a blessing to the whole world.

Faith in action

Abram believed God. He packed up his belongings, took his wife and many field hands, and struck off:

So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him; and Lot went with him. Now Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his nephew, and all their possessions which they had accumulated, and the persons which they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan; thus they came to the land of Canaan. (vs. 4-5)

The fellow travelers

Abram’s caravan would have been substantial. In Chapter 14, we will see that Abram was able to muster a small army of over 300 men born in his own house. Where did they all come from?

Some were servants given to Abram in Egypt, as we will see. But it sounds like many were there prior to his time in Egypt. Verse 5 refers to the persons which they had acquired in Haran. The word for persons is nephesh, normally translated souls. These souls that they had won in Haran, suggest Abram and his family won converts as he shared his story and his faith in the Lord. Hundreds of people may have been won to faith.

Taking action

Abram’s actions spoke louder than anything he could say. The most amazing part of Abram’s response is that he didn’t know where he was going! Imagine that. To all the questioners saying, So, where is this place again? he could only answer, I don’t know.

He had God’s word that there was a land which I will show you (v. 1), but that’s it. The author of Hebrews points out this aspect of Abram’s faith, saying, By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going …and he went out, not knowing where he was going (Hebrews 11:8).

Acting on God’s word without knowing the outcome is one of the most important characteristics of faith. God always calls us to follow without knowing exactly what will happen. If we know what’s going to happen, we aren’t really exercising faith. Humans feel a strong urge to ascertain what’s entailed in any call God may give, primarily so we can see whether it fits in with our plans.

Insisting that, I must know where this is headed, is really a sign that I am leading, not God. To truly trust God, we will often need to act on his guidance without knowing where it leads. We may not know the destination, but we know who is leading. That should be enough.

And his nephew, Lot

In Genesis 11:27 we read, Haran became the father of Lot. But then, as we saw at the beginning of the chapter, Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans (v. 28). So Lot’s father died quite a long time before this passage. Lot may have been young, maybe a boy, when his father died. Abram, who was childless, probably took Lot in as a surrogate son.

God’s words in the covenant were, Go forth from your country, and from your relatives, and from your father’s house (v. 1). Lot was a relative, and he was from Abram’s father’s house. Why, then, was he in the caravan?

Abram may have rationalized this compromise by viewing Lot as an adopted son and part of his nuclear family. But bringing Lot turned out poorly, as the text is at pains to demonstrate.

So, Abram wasn’t perfect. Far from it. But his faith was real and powerful, even with this mistake.

The big picture

With Abram and household on the move, the stopwatch of God’s plan that had been standing still suddenly began ticking. It might have been ticking before this, but we’re not sure what God was up to between the flood and his call to Abram. Maybe certain conditions needed to be met. All we know is that with the calling of Abram, God and his dealings with humanity were on the move.

¹Ur, in Ancient History Encyclopedia, ancient.eu/ur/. For a good accessible source on selected useful finds in biblical archeology see Titus Kennedy, Unearthing the Bible, (Eugene OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2020).

² In Genesis 31:53, Abraham’s nephew, Laban apparently thought Terah was a believer, though Laban’s reliability is questionable. But the statement in Joshua 24 comes from God (saying he was not a believer). Maybe he had a conversion later? It would have to come in Haran, because Abram didn’t leave there until after Terah’s death.

³ Abram’s origin in Haran plainly rules out the liberal theory that the presence of Aramaisms (loan words) in the text of the Pentateuch show that it was written much later, in the first millennium BC, even after the Babylonian exile. But the Ras Shamra tablets from the 1500’s BC demonstrate a similar mixture of Aramaic and Ugaritic (closely related to Hebrew). Liberal scholars, of course, never even considered that Abraham was from Aram, or that he even existed. See Gleason Archer, Survey of Old Testament Introduction, (Chicago: Moody Press, 1974) 142-143.

⁴ Judah was a son of the patriarch Jacob, three generations after Abraham. He was the forebear of a tribe named after him. But that was only one of the twelve tribes. It wasn’t until after the divided monarchy and the Assyrian devastation of the northern kingdom (722 BC) that people began to use the name Judah to refer to the whole race. Although most members of the ten tribes in the north were deported by the Assyrians, there were surviving members of every tribe still living in Israel in Jesus’ day. Since the time of the exile, the term Jews has referred to all those descended from Jacob. But that usage arose well over a thousand years after these accounts in Genesis. For examples of early uses see 2 Kings; 25:25; Nehemiah 1:2; or Jeremiah 34:9.

⁵ His statement in Luke 14:26 that people must hate mother and father is an idiom, meaning to love him more than them.

⁶ John Oswalt, TWOT #285, barak. "It [to bless] is frequently contrasted with qālal ‘to esteem lightly, curse.’ Deuteronomy 30:19 shows the Old Testament idea that cursing is death, blessing is life."

2 Abram Tours the Promised Land

Genesis 12:6-9

Abram traveled through the land as far as Shechem. There he set up camp beside the oak of Moreh. At that time, the area was inhabited by Canaanites. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, I will give this land to your descendants. And Abram built an altar there and dedicated it to the Lord, who had appeared to him. (vs. 6-7)

The land

This must be at least the third time God has appeared to Abram—one in Ur, once in Haran, and here.

He was passing through the beautiful hill country that today is the West Bank, probably then, as now, dotted with vineyards, fig trees, and olive trees. Abram was seeing a pleasant land, relatively well-watered for that part of the world.

God now made this land an explicit part of the covenant. The next time God reiterated the covenant, in Genesis 15, he said, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it. Each time thereafter that God repeated the terms of the covenant, he includes the land.

This is one of several reasons theologians should not claim that the church has taken over the Abrahamic Covenant. The church doesn’t own the land in question and never has. We also don’t aspire to own it. So this is a clear disconnect with so-called replacement theology, which teaches that God has transferred the Abrahamic Covenant from the Jews to the church. Paul also rejects that conclusion in Romans 11.

We will examine the question of the Abrahamic Covenant and the church in more detail later. For now we can observe that rather than taking over this covenant, Christians are allowed to participate in some of its blessings along with Abram’s descendants, the Jews.

Calling on the name of the Lord

After that, Abram traveled south and set up camp in the hill country, with Bethel to the west and Ai to the east. There he built another altar and dedicated it to the Lord, and he worshiped the Lord.