Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Genesis · About this commentary
Look from where you are: walk the land
Genesis 13:14-18
14 Yahweh said to Abram, after Lot was separated from him, “Now, lift up your eyes, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, · WEB
God tells Abram to do exactly what Lot did — lift up his eyes and look — and gives him what Lot could only take.
The timing is stated before the speech, and it is the point: Yahweh said to Abram, after Lot was separated from him. Not before, while the choice was pending, and not during. God waits until the generous man has given away the best land and is standing in what is left.
And the first words are a deliberate echo of what Lot did four verses earlier. Now, lift up your eyes, and look from the place where you are. Lot lifted up his eyes and saw the well-watered plain and took it. Abram is told to lift up his eyes and look — from where he is, having chosen nothing.
The difference is in the two verbs that follow. Lot chose; here God says I will give. One man secured the best available land by his own assessment; the other is given the whole country by promise, including the part just taken.
The extent is stated in the four directions — northward, southward, eastward, westward — which is the language of a land grant covering everything visible from a fixed point. And the duration is forever, a word Lot's arrangement conspicuously lacks; within a few chapters the plain he chose will be smoke.
Then the offspring, in an image drawn from the ground he is standing on: I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if a man can count the dust of the earth, then your offspring may also be counted. It is the first of three such comparisons — dust here, stars in chapter fifteen, sand on the seashore in chapter twenty-two — and each is offered to a man with no children at all. Sarai was declared barren two chapters ago and nothing has changed.
The dust is a pointed choice of comparison in this book. It is what the man was formed from and what he returns to Genesis 2:7 Genesis 3:19. The substance of the curse becomes the measure of the blessing.
And then a command that is pure gift: Arise, walk through the land in its length and in its width; for I will give it to you. Walking a territory was how a claim was taken up. Abram is invited to survey what is his, and he will spend the rest of his life doing it as a resident alien, buying nothing, until he pays for a cave to bury his wife in.
He moved his tent, and came and lived by the oaks of Mamre, which are in Hebron, and built an altar there to Yahweh. The oaks stood beside Hebron , in the hill country. Another tent, another altar. The pattern is now established and it is the pattern of the whole patriarchal narrative: temporary housing and permanent worship, in a country he owns none of and has been promised all of.
settled What this mark means