The Day of Discovery

He (Abram) went on his journey from the Negev as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, to the place of the altar which he had made there formerly; and there Abram called on the name of the Lord.  --Genesis 13:3-4

 I learned a new word today.  I love learning new things, making new discoveries. The word "anagnorisis" literally means discovery.  It is the point at which there is no more ignorance.  It is often used in the theatre to describe a Greek tragedy.  It is the point in the plot, especially of a tragedy, at which the protagonist recognizes his or her (or some other character's) true identity, or discovers the true nature of his or her own situation.  One example is when the character Oedipus learns that the king that he killed was his own father, and that the widow he married was in fact his mother.

It is the critical moment of recognition or discovery, especially preceding peripeteia; that is, a sudden reversal of fortune or change in circumstances, especially in reference to a fictional narrative.  We get the word "peripatetic" from this term, meaning related to walking; moving or travelling from place to place (itinerant).  It is often used in reference to Aristotle, who made his disciples walk with him as he taught them.

Long before Aristotle, however, we read of the life of Abraham, a peripatetic man who experienced peripeteia resulting in anagnorisis.  Let's look in Genesis 12 and 13 to see what I mean.  Abraham is always seen as a man of faith, who left his home country and followed God to a land promised to his descendants forever.  Before God changed his name to Abraham, however, we see how his faith was tested.

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.  --Genesis 12:1-3

This is called the Abrahamic Covenant, a time where God made a solemn promise to make Abram's descendants into a great nation.  In the very next verse, however, we learn that "Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran."  Is it any wonder, then, that he took his nephew Lot with him on this journey?  Abram and his wife Sarai had no children of their own, and Lot was the closest male relative.  If Abram died childless, then his fortune and inheritance would go to Lot.

However, during the journey from Babylon (where Ur of the Chaldees was located) to Canaan (the future home of the nation of Israel), I believe God taught Abram some valuable lessons.  When they arrived in Canaan, the Lord appeared to Abram and said, "To your descendants I will give this land."

Then he proceeded from there to the mountain on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord.  --Genesis 12:8

 Now, from here on the testings come.  Instead of settling there at Bethel, which means "The House of God," Abram traveled south to the Negev desert.  Not only did he find himself in a desert area, but the Bible says that there was a severe famine in the land.  I don't know if you've ever been to a desert and spent any time there, but during the dry season, food and water are scarce.  The vegetation could not support Abram and his family, much less his flocks and herds.  So he decides to go to Egypt.

I don't know whether God told him to go to Egypt; we don't even know that God led him into the desert.  God seems particularly silent during this period of time.  However, we do know that God was there with him all the while.  Anyway, our peripatetic protagonist makes the decision to go to Egypt, where there is water and vegetation enough for his family and his flocks.  However, when he gets there, he starts to worry.  The worry leads to a bad decision.

It came about when he came near to Egypt, that he said to Sarai his wife, "See now, I know that you are a beautiful woman; and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, 'This is his wife'; and they will kill me, but they will let you live.  Please say that you are my sister so that it may go well with me because of you, and that I may live on account of you."  --Genesis 12:11-13

Abram trusted God enough to leave his home and go to a land that God had promised to him.  However, Abram did not trust God enough to keep him safe in Egypt.  Sure enough, the princes of Egypt saw his wife, and she was so beautiful that they bragged on her beauty to Pharaoh.  She must have been a real beauty queen, because the princes thought she should be in Pharaoh's harem.  When Pharaoh saw her, he gave gifts to Abraham--sheep, oxen, donkeys, male and female servants, female donkeys and camels.  God was making His word come true to Abram, fulfilling the covenant even when Abram strayed into a foreign land.

Giving gifts was a blessing, and God blessed Pharaoh for blessing Abram in that he did not take Sarai into his bed.  Stealing a man's wife was a curse, and God cursed Pharaoh and his household by sending great plagues upon them.  I find it interesting that this was a foreshadowing of events that would happen over 400 years later, when Moses called down plagues upon Pharaoh and the nation, so that when the nation of Israel left, the Egyptians sent them with gold and silver and jewels.  In the same way, Pharaoh did not ask Abram to return all the gifts he had given to Abram, but he did ask Abram to leave.

I think Abram saw God's hand in all of this, and his faith was strengthened.  Look at the first verse of chapter 13: "So Abram went up from Egypt to the Negev, he and his wife and all that belonged to him, and Lot with him."  Contrast that with chapter 12, verse 4, when we saw that Lot was placed in a prominent position, just behind his wife Sarai; now in chapter 13, Lot is mentioned last, almost as an afterthought.  I think that this is significant, because it showed how Abram trusted God: the promise of a great nation would be through his own seed, not through his brother's; he would share his inheritance with his own son, not with his nephew.

If we read further into chapter 13, we will see that Lot's servants and Abram's servants fought over grazing rights and water rights for their flocks and herds.  Abram brings Lot up to the altar he had built earlier, with Bethel on the west and the lush Jordan valley on the east.  Abram asked Lot to choose the place where he would go, and Abram promised that he would go the other direction, so that there would not be contention between their servants and their families.  Lot chose the blessing he could see--the green, fertile valley near the Jordan river.  Abram went west toward Bethel, the house of God.

I think that during this period, Abram's faith grew.  His trust in the Lord reached a turning point, and he shed a lot of his ignorance.  Abram garnered even more of God's blessing after he had made this choice.

The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, "Now lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which you see, I will give it to you and to your descendants forever.  I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth so that if anyone can number the dust of the earth, then your descendants can also be numbered.  Arise, walk about the land through its length and breadth; for I will give it to you."  --Genesis 13: 14-17

God walked with Abram, teaching him to grown in his faith.  Abram realized who he was, by God's grace.  This doesn't mean that Abram was perfect, that he would always trust in the Lord in all his ways.  We know that later Abraham would try again to say that Sarah was his sister in order to protect his life, not fully trusting in God to protect him.  We know that later Sarah would convince him to have relations with a servant girl in order to have a son, not trusting that God wanted the child of promise to be from both Abraham and Sarah.  Ultimately, however, we do see that God worked in all things for their good and His glory.

I hope that you are as encouraged by this as I am.  The more I trust God--trust in His promises, trust in His goodness, trust in His grace and mercy--the more He can use me to bring about His purpose to glorify Himself in me.