When we left our friend Abram last week, he had finally, at last, said goodbye to Harran, goodbye to even Upper Mesopotamia, and set out on the great adventure with God. He'd brought his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, their retinues of servants and associates, and their flocks and herds down through Syria and into the region we'd know as Canaan. He did all this because he'd heard the voice of the LORD urging him to leave behind his father's house and go to a land that the LORD would reveal in time, where the LORD would bless and magnify and multiply Abram and make him a channel of blessing to all the families of the whole earth somehow (Genesis 12:1-5).
After Abram had penetrated the northern borders of Canaan, he meandered quite a way until, at Shechem in the land's heart, “the LORD appeared to him” – whatever exactly that was – and assured Abram that “to your seed I will give this land” (Genesis 12:7). In response, Abram built a commemorative altar to the LORD's manifestation there, making the soil over the roots of Moreh holy ground. Then, though, Abram moved a couple dozen miles south, pitching his tent in the mile-long stretch between Bethel to the west and a ruin-heap to the east. There, in that liminal space, once more Abram built an altar, stacking stone onto stone 'til it stood. And before it, with all his household gathered 'round, Abram called on the name of the LORD (Genesis 12:8).
It was worship, to be sure, an act of devotion. But maybe also a question. See, so far the LORD hasn't told our friend Abram very much. God has given him promises galore that'll make your head spin, no doubt. He hinted he'd reveal to Abram a land, and it seems like God has, since he's said that at least the Shechem area would be given to Abram's seed. But God hasn't defined where exactly that leaves Abram here and now. Does Abram have a place to be? Where is Abram supposed to stop? Is this home, or a mere waystation? What now, God?1
Abram is standing before the altar, calling upon the name of this God he's trying to get to know, and all Abram hears is the wind. “Abram is not shown the land; he must figure out how to discern it.”2 And so we read next that “Abram journeyed on” (Genesis 12:9). Abram's quest was, so far as he could tell, still unfulfilled. He had yet to find a home. He hadn't discovered what could be his, or where he belonged; or, if he had, he nevertheless still had more to explore. And so a weary Abram trudged further south, still searching for something. Despite being in the earthly land of promise, Abram hadn't found his rest.
“Abram journeyed on, still going towards the Negeb” (Genesis 12:9). The Negev is a massive chunk of south Canaan, and its name comes from the Hebrew word for 'dry.'3 While the southern Negev is pure desert, the northern Negev these days gets an average of twelve inches of rain per year – almost as much as Los Angeles gets in a typical year, which year sadly isn't – but you won't see even a drop of rain during a Negev summer. But though there was a “forest of the Negeb” (Ezekiel 20:46) and there were some settlements in the east, most of the Negev was known for being rocky and desolate, and Isaiah calls it “a land of trouble and anguish, from where come the lioness and the lion, the adder and the flying fiery serpent” (Isaiah 30:6).
So Abram's come to the northern Negev, likely arriving in the winter months he'd expect to be rainy season and looking forward to when the north Negev gets “fertile and green in the spring.”4 But “now there was a famine in the land” (Genesis 12:10). Weak clouds blown in from the western sea hadn't let loose anything that winter. Seeds of grain and grasses stayed dormant in the rocky soil. The water table dropped below the reaches of the wells. As Abram's flocks and herds chewed dry grass devoid of nutrients, they cried out their complaints. He understood how they felt. His livestock dwindled away; he was forced to take them one by one for food. And before long, supplies were running low. Abram's family and their dependents weren't getting all their vitamins and nutrients themselves. Weakened, some were falling prey to disease.5
Abram was hanging on, confused but clinging to hope, trying to “be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him” (Psalm 37:7). But then, maybe, one of Abram's servants breathed his last, leaving behind barely skin and bones in Abram's hands. These people came with him on the journey, having no say in the matter, depending on Abram to feed them – and he'd let this one die of starvation, with others looking like they'd soon follow. And so “eventually the situation becomes impossible.”6 Can Abram afford to keep waiting patiently?
As Luther put it, “the Lord is putting his faith to the test by this very trial, which surely was not a small one.”7 “Abram is tested by famine..., by so great a famine,”8 because – as the Bible now underlines – “the famine was severe in the land” (Genesis 12:10). If this were a run-of-the-mill famine, that would surely be a trial, but there might be hope. But this was a heavy famine, more extreme than most; it maybe was building for years, each one compounding the destitution. And in this long hour of trial and tribulation, this enforced fast Abram hadn't chosen and worried to undergo, Abram sure wished he could turn these desert stones to bread (cf. Matthew 4:3).
At this desperate point, Abram surely looked around and said to himself, “I am really not living my 'best life now,' am I?” This situation had gotten dire. And maybe that had taken Abram by surprise. I mean, what had the LORD said so emphatically back in Harran? “I will bless you” (Genesis 12:2). This God had repeated the enticing word 'bless' over and over again, making it the linchpin of the whole message, the lure to break Abram away from safety and security up north. And so Abram undertook that pilgrimage of obedience, hundreds of miles, in the natural expectation that, when he reached the land meant for him, the blessing would go into effect.
And what could blessing possibly mean, if it doesn't include, at a bare minimum, the necessities to stay alive and keep alive those you love? Later on, when Moses sketches Israel's potential blessings in Canaan, he does so by saying that “blessed shall be the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle..., blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl..., and the LORD will make you abound in prosperity” (Deuteronomy 28:4-5, 11). That, Abram would say, is the logical inference to draw from what God had told him. But it isn't what he's found. What Abram is experiencing – no rains, so no grains and grasses, frustrating his efforts to survive – is some of what Moses lists as God's curse (Deuteronomy 28:20-24); and for the prophets, famine in Canaan can be an act of judgment, that “when a land sins against me,” says God, “I break its supply of bread and send famine upon it” (Ezekiel 14:13). This is exactly what Abram doesn't deserve, exactly what doesn't make sense.
Doesn't one psalmist claim that “the LORD is gracious and merciful; he provides food for those who fear him” (Psalm 111:4-5)? And doesn't another psalmist announce that even when the Negev's wildlife “suffer want and hunger,” yet “those who seek the LORD lack no good thing” (Psalm 34:10)? Abram feared the LORD, Abram sought the LORD – so where's his daily bread, where are his good things? How, Abram must wonder, is he being blessed when he's going to bed hungry, and when he's losing all he's got, and when the people who trusted in him are dropping like flies? What kind of blessing is this even supposed to be, then? The promises God had given are crashing head-first into what one commentator calls “the contrasting reality of the present.”9 There's a problem here, and it's that “famine is incompatible with the promise that Abram would be blessed in the land.”10
God called him to this far country – so Abram had believed, and Abram had acted on that faith. And when God then promised this land to at least Abram's descendants (whatever was in store for Abram personally), Abram had rejoiced and given thanks, as is right and just. But now that he's started to test-drive this land, it's handling like a real lemon. Abram is certainly not “walking in sunlight all of his journey.”11 What does it mean when “the promised land proves even more unpromising”?12 What do you do after you've closed the deal and moved in and you realize it's a fixer-upper at best, and might be a hopeless dump? “Some land!” Abram might be tempted to scoff.
I mean, doesn't another psalmist promise the LORD's people that “in the days of famine they have abundance” (Psalm 37:19)? These were days of famine, all right, but Abram sure has no abundance. That same psalmist adds that in all the days of his life, “I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread” (Psalm 37:25). Abram puzzles in practice to see how he's not forsaken, and he'd be begging for bread if anyone around him had any left. So if those verses don't quite fit Abram, maybe – he has to wonder – maybe the same goes for the psalm's advice to “trust in the LORD and do good, dwell in the land and feed on faithfulness” (Psalm 37:3). Can he trust in the LORD? Can he feed on faithfulness? Should he even dwell in this land at all?
This “famine was severe in the land,” weighing heavily on Abram and Sarai and Lot and all their people and the animals (Genesis 12:10). Abram couldn't know the parable yet, but, like the Prodigal Son, Abram's gone on “a journey into a far country, and... a severe famine arose in that country..., and no one gave him anything” (Luke 15:13-16). And in the story, the Prodigal Son “came to himself” and realized that he had to leave that far country, had to go somewhere there was “more than enough bread” (Luke 15:17). Abram faced a choice like that, only home to dad wasn't an option. Abram could either stay put in the Promised Land, could be still and know that the Lord is God, could trust passively on the Lord to provide (Psalm 37:5-7); or Abram could take action for himself and his dependents, even if that course of action might be hard to reconcile with Abram's calling – even if it might be a leave-taking without a homecoming.
Some readers, then and now, feel that Abram really didn't have much choice in the matter – that Genesis repeats the mention of the famine and draws attention to its heaviness as if to justify Abram. As St. Augustine read it, Abram “was compelled by the stress of famine” to take his leave,13 and some modern scholars agree that the severity of the famine “effectively clears Abram of any blame in his decision to leave the promised land.”14 Others reason that “Abram sees the famine as a sign from God that he is in the wrong place and needs to move on.”15 But to where? There's one obvious direction, which Abram's watched others already take.
And that direction is down through the desert to Egypt. See, Egypt was a river civilization based on the Nile, and the Nile brought north fresh rich topsoil and flowing water from the blessed rains down in Africa. It was mighty rare that a famine in Canaan, often caused by local issues in the Mediterranean weather, coincided with a famine in Egypt based on issues in central African weather.16 That's why it wasn't an uncommon thing, when famines got bad enough, for residents of Canaan to flee across the border – with or without permission – in a desperate bid for refuge and sustenance in Egypt.17 Abram no doubt watched many go; now he followed.
And so “Abram went down to Egypt,” marching his way through a series of deserts through the Sinai peninsula towards Egypt's border fortresses (Genesis 12:10). Had he done the right thing? Was this passing the test, or not? Was he acting in faith? For what it's worth, God later had sharp words for his “stubborn children... who set out to go down to Egypt without asking for my direction, to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh and to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt” (Isaiah 30:1-2). It raises questions about whether Abram had made “a move in the wrong direction – a spiritual decline.”18 We know where his body is – where's his heart, his soul?
What's more, we're told that “Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there” (Genesis 12:10). Sojourning isn't the action of a tourist. A sojourner is a resident alien – he may not be able to quite integrate into the land of his sojourn, but he's an immigrant who might stay years or decades or even a lifetime. Now, it's totally possible, from what the text says, that Abram expects to be in Egypt just “one or two years” and then return, trusting the “emergency... would not last forever.”19 Maybe. On the other hand, many Canaanites who went to Egypt to flee famine “stayed on and assimilated into Egyptian culture” over time, a temptation Abram might be courting.20 Abram's “prepared to settle there indefinitely,”21 “staying in Egypt for an extended period of time.”22 Maybe he still hopes his seed will inherit some day, but for the foreseeable future, Abram bids the promised land goodbye.
Now, in fairness, many early Christians of great wisdom and holiness wanted to defend Abram here. Some saw the famine as a judgment on the Canaanites, and said that innocent Abram was, like Daniel later on, carried with them to “help the victims of famine..., to cure the sufferers” of their sin; or they viewed Abram as effectively a missionary sent to the Egyptians, “not falling but rescuing them” by sharing his wisdom with them,23 so as to “make the light of his own virtue conspicuous to everyone.”24 Some suggested this is why God allowed that famine, so he could “show the Egyptians Abraham's devotion and to encourage them to imitate the patriarch's virtue.”25 Accordingly, these readers insisted that Abram passed the test of the famine, that he wasn't “alarmed or disturbed” by the gap between promise and provision, “but rather keeping his resolve undeterred in his belief that without doubt what was once promised him by God was in fact firm and secure.”26
I'd love it, for Abram's sake, if that's true. But when I look Abram in the eye, I see a man who's thrown in the towel and taken his growling stomach on the run. Readers of Genesis ancient and modern have felt that in this episode Abram “fell away from the firmness of his faith,”27 that he “fails the test,”28 that he “displays... a lack of trust in God,”29 that he's perhaps “disillusioned with God” and “lost interest in the promises.”30
It seems as though what's motivated Abram's move is fear, and that fearful heart is something he carries with him. By the time he's nearing the border and “about to enter Egypt” (Genesis 12:11), Abram is gripped by “alarm and dread,” with “fear and trembling for his very life,”31 filled with “fear of violent death at the hands of his hosts.”32 Abram is convinced, he tells his wife Sarai, that given her attractiveness, the Egyptians wouldn't have any qualms over killing him to get their hands on her: “they will kill me, but they will keep you alive” (Genesis 12:12). Some ancient Jews guessed Abram had a prophetic dream that proved this to him,33 and others imagined that the Egyptians had a known reputation in that department34 – that's how they defended Abram's fear as rational and well-founded. But Genesis itself “hardly supports Abraham's fear.”35 What we see on display here is that when Abram's faith is shaken by his circumstances, fear and insecurity creep in; and, when they're allowed to fester, they give birth to mistrust, paranoia, and xenophobia. Abram sees the Egyptians as a feared 'other,' and so he leaps to the worst assumptions about them, because he's already feeling despair. So some modern scholars charge that Abram's “fear demonstrates a lack of trust in God's recent promises,”36 and that Abram is “lacking confidence in God's ability to take care of him and protect him.”37 From there, he comes up with a solution of his own, “thinking of the potential for gaining wealth” in the situation even if it takes what some readers dub a “selfish and unprincipled action”38 – even as Abram's ancient defenders say that he simply “took care of what he could, as much as he could, and he gave over to God what he could not take care of.”39
But that's not what I see. I see Abram hitting a low point, and getting himself into a compromising situation, as a result of his paranoia and prejudice against the Egyptians, which results from his fear, which results from his despair, which results from his shaken faith in the promises of God, which results from the shock of the severe famine against the background of his expectation of blessing. At no point after the famine begins do we read that Abram called on the name of the LORD or that he prayed; in fact, his doomsday predictions to his wife are the first recorded words Abram utters in the Bible. This isn't the kind of uplifting picture of Abram we're used to – but Abram is still a newer believer, in a way, and the hard truth is that “even the most eminent men have fallen” from time to time.40 Abram isn't a superhero, a man made of different stuff than you or I. Abram is a work in progress. Abram doesn't get an A+ in God's class – not without some extra credit late in the semester. But Abram's stumbles have as much to teach us as his wins.
Because we can relate to Abram's struggle. Sometimes our expectations turn out to be short-sighted. We expect that, when we're faithful to God, then things should go more smoothly. There oughtn't be so many setbacks. If we go where he tells us, we'll know because we start to thrive and flourish there – or so we're tempted to think. But Abram learns a different lesson. Faith isn't smooth sailing; it's not “happy all the day.”41 Our promised lands in life aren't always clear, and they aren't always healthy. Sometimes we're uprooted. Sometimes the famines last long; sometimes the fires rage and take everything. Sometimes it's a backhanded blessing buried in the pain, and sometimes the blessing tarries long at the warehouse and the delivery estimates leap to and fro.
Of course, if we skip ahead to the close of Abram's days and look back, we realize that not a word has failed – he was indeed blessed richly; it's just that his expectations started out too simple, as so often do ours. In the end of it all, Abram “died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar” (Hebrews 11:13). As one medieval monk wisely put it, in the promised “land of Canaan,” Abram and his crew “never ceased from laboring and struggling against their enemies,” including the force of famine, “in order that they might understand... that they should seek by preference another country after this one, by which they might truly enjoy heavenly blessing and eternal rest.”42 If the famine strikes, if fulfillment here doesn't fulfill, it teaches us, not that the promise wasn't true, but to not settle short of what's in store.
Contrary to what Abram might have at first thought and what plenty of flashy modern ministries will assure you, St. Paul says that God “has blessed us in Christ,” not with every material blessing in the earthly places, but “with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:3). In fact, as the children of Abraham through our union with Christ, St. Paul tells us we're “heirs of God and fellow-heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Romans 8:17). Read all together, the Bible makes very clear that this life isn't likely to make sense to us – not without keeping the eyes of faith open.
We may, like Abram, be compelled to the clutches of contradiction, or so it seems, where God's gifts feel broken and the promises look like frauds and hunger roars loud. But “who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine...? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:35-37). And as we conquer, we discover what David prayed: “And now, O Lord GOD, you are God, and your words are true, and you have promised this good thing to your servant; now therefore may it please you to bless the house of your servant, so that it may continue forever before you” (2 Samuel 7:28-29). Until then, “though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food..., yet I will rejoice in the LORD” (Habakkuk 3:17-18). Amen.
1 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 132.
2 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 134.
3 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 92.
4 Stephen K. Ray, Genesis: A Bible Study Guide and Commentary (Ignatius Press, 2023), 132.
5 John A. Beck, “Biblical Famine and Its Impact on Southern Canaan,” in Barry J. Beitzel, ed., Lexham Geographic Commentary on the Pentateuch (Lexham Press, 2023), 166-168.
6 John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 218.
7 Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 12:10, in Luther's Works 2:289.
8 Bede, On Genesis 12:10, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:250.
9 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 93.
10 James McKeown, Genesis (Eerdmans, 2008), 80; cf. John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 217.
11 Henry J. Zelley, “Walking in Sunlight All of My Journey,” <https://hymnary.org/text/walking_in_sunlight_all_of_my_journey>.
12 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 272.
13 Augustine of Hippo, The City of God 16.19, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/7:208.
14 James McKeown, Genesis (Eerdmans, 2008), 80.
15 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 133.
16 John A. Beck, “Biblical Famine and Its Impact on Southern Canaan,” in Barry J. Beitzel, ed., Lexham Geographic Commentary on the Pentateuch (Lexham Press, 2023), 169-170.
17 James K. Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition (Oxford University Press, 1997), 53-58; Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 2003), 318-319.
18 John C. Lennox, Friend of God: The Inspiration of Abraham in an Age of Doubt (SPCK, 2024), 65.
19 Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 12:10, in Luther's Works 2:291.
20 James K. Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt: Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition (Oxford University Press, 1997), 60-61.
21 James McKeown, Genesis (Eerdmans, 2008), 82.
22 Brian Neil Peterson, Genesis: A Pentecostal Commentary (Brill, 2022), 128.
23 Didymus the Blind, Commentary on Genesis 12:10-13, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 132:199-201.
24 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 32.10, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:262.
25 Theodoret of Cyrus, Questions on Genesis 78, in Library of Early Christianity 1:159.
26 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 32.5, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:258.
27 Augustine of Hippo, Answer to Faustus the Manichean 22.34, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/20:322, attributing this to anonymous other readers.
28 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 216.
29 Iain W. Provan, Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters (Baylor University Press, 2014), 183.
30 James McKeown, Genesis (Eerdmans, 2008), 81-82.
31 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 32.11, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:262-263.
32 Joseph McDonald, Searching for Sarah in the Second Temple Era: Images in the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, the Genesis Apocryphon, and the Antiquities (T&T Clark, 2020), 40.
33 1QapGen 19.14-17, in Daniel A. Machiela, The Dead Sea Genesis Apocryphon: A New Text and Translation (Brill, 2009), 70-71.
34 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.162, in Loeb Classical Library 242:81.
35 John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 219.
36 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 213.
37 Tremper Longman III, Genesis (Zondervan, 2016), 169.
38 Alex Varughese and Christina Bohn, Genesis 12-50: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2019), 45.
39 Augustine of Hippo, Questions on the Heptateuch 1.26, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/14:25.
40 Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 12:11-13, in Luther's Works 2:293.
41 Johnson Oatman, “I'm Happy Since I Found the Lord,” <https://hymnary.org/text/im_happy_since_i_found_the_lord>.
42 Bede, On Genesis 12:10, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:251.
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