Abram, Sarai and Lot all arrive in the Promised Land and God actually appears to Abram for the first time and makes him two more promises that help to explain his very first promise to Abram! But uh oh, what problem will this cause with Lot? We’ll talk about sacred groves, regional gods, altar building and what it meant for Abram to “call on the Name of the Lord” outside a Canaanite city.
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Hi! I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to another episode of Context for Kids where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel.
(Parents, all Scripture this week comes from the Christian Standard Bible).
Abram passed through the land to the site of Shechem, at the oak of Moreh. (At that time the Canaanites were in the land.) The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. From there he moved on to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. He built an altar to the Lord there, and he called on the name of the Lord. Then Abram journeyed by stages to the Negev.
We have some really cool things to talk about this week. We’re going to talk about the Oak of Moreh, about God’s first physical appearance to Abram, why Abram built an altar outside of Shechem and why he called on the Name of the Lord. But what about this Oak of Moreh? I mean, it sounds important and I don’t want to skip over it but the truth is that we really don’t know. Moreh is the Hebrew word for teacher, and an oak is a type of tree—we have a lot of them here in America, do you have oak trees where you live? They are huge and they can be really wild looking with branches twisting everywhere and they have truly funky looking leaves and drop acorns. Oaks kinda just do whatever they want to do. And throughout the book of Genesis, we will see the oak trees mentioned quite a bit—we see them here in Shechem and again in Hebron. If you look at a really big oak tree, it’s easy to see why Abram would want to be under one. Lots of shade, let me tell you, and in the summer in Israel, an oak tree must have looked like an oasis or paradise! But what did the trees often mean to the Canaanites who lived in the land? Well, we know that they believed that groves of trees, especially oaks, poplars, and terebinth, were holy sites and they would build altars there to their gods and would sacrifice to them. In fact, when the Israelites later turned from God, they would also worship in what were called sacred groves. A grove is a group of trees. The prophet Hosea tells us that they were pleasant places to worship because of the shade. That makes sense to me. Burning up an animal in the summer would have been truly unpleasant. Being under the trees where it could also be breezy would be much nicer than being out in the open.
Now, we don’t know that this tree was used for that at all, but we do know that the Canaanites believed that groves of living trees were very sacred, special, and holy to their religion. In fact, whenever anyone wanted to irritate the people who worshiped in sacred groves, they would cut down all the trees and sometimes burn them too. The only way that a sacred tree could remain sacred after it was cut down was if someone carved an idol out of it and placed it in a shrine where it could be taken care of as though it was a real god. It’s like I always say, and this goes for every culture I have ever studied, “The first rule of sacred tree club is, don’t cut down the sacred tree or it’s nothing but a hunk of wood.” For them, the most important thing about the trees they made burnt sacrifices under was that they were alive. The people of the ancient world were very focused on more food, more animals, and more babies and so they cared for these trees and wanted them to be alive. If you read the stories of the Kings of Israel in the Bible, you will see a lot of them killing those trees so that people wouldn’t worship there anymore.
And so here we have Abram at the Oak of Moreh—and it was probably a landmark in those days. You know, something that everyone knew the name of and where it was. Like, if I said, Abram was at Niagara Falls or at Old Faithful then everyone in America knows where they are but in a thousand years, people might not have any idea of what I was talking about or where it was. Oak of Moreh means Oak of Teacher or Teaching Oak and we aren’t quite sure what anyone did there. Did they ask their gods questions under that tree? Was there a school? Is that where the judges of the city of Shechem sat and handled arguments? We just don’t know and, remember, there are a lot of things we don’t know and that’s okay—but just like today, by asking and exploring we can learn a lot even if we didn’t come out with a definite answer. Not knowing the answer to everything is what makes life interesting!
Second thing I wanted to point out, again, Moses wants us to know that the Canaanites were in the Land—but I am going to tell you something that I want you to remember through the rest of Genesis. The Canaanites really don’t mess with Abram, at all. In fact, they are far more civilized than we would expect them to be and sometimes they are even better behaved than Abram! It doesn’t mean that they are good people but they do seem to understand that being friendly with Abram is a good thing for them. God told Abram that he would bless those who bless him and the Canaanites do seem to figure that out pretty quick. We aren’t going to see problems until the times of Isaac and Jacob, really, Abram’s son and grandson. That isn’t what we would actually expect, right? Well, not everything and everyone that is dangerous to our relationship with God is going to be mean or obviously bad. And some things and people that seem obviously bad, actually aren’t. That’s why we need to stick close to God or else we will just go by what we think we see and that doesn’t always work out for the best.
But something surprising and shocking happens here in Shechem that is easy to miss, even though it gets said twice. God appears to Abram and talks to him. What the heck? I mean, how did that happen and what does it even mean? Did Abram see a person or a blinding light or what? Or maybe a burning bush like Moses saw? Well, it’s super irritating but we just don’t know and what’s more, we never find out either. It just says that, “The Lord appeared to Abram.” And of course, we have to remember that if it doesn’t explain it to us, it isn’t the point and it isn’t all that important but how can we not be super curious? This may be the first time we see this happen but it won’t be the last and when God appears to someone it is always somewhat mysterious. When God appears to someone, we have a word for that. It’s called a theophany but don’t worry, there won’t be a test at the end. A word like that won’t usually come in useful in real life. Not even if you get a PhD.
What the Bible wants us to notice is what God says to Abram, because that’s going to be a huge oopsie and Abram is going to begin to realize that he has made a big mistake. God says, “To your offspring I will give this land.” Uh oh. Do you know what offspring means? It means children. You know who it doesn’t mean? It doesn’t mean a nephew like Lot. Do you remember when God told Abram to leave his entire family back in Haran but he didn’t entirely obey that command. Instead, he brought along his adult nephew Lot. You see, when a couple couldn’t have children in the ancient world, they would often adopt another younger grownup to be their heir, and he would get all their stuff when they died but he would also take care of them when they got too old to care for themselves. God told Abram that He would make him into a great nation, but that takes a lot of people. God didn’t tell Abram exactly how that was going to happen and so I think Abram brought Lot along to adopt him, kinda as a guarantee. But now God is giving Abram a bit more information. He pretty much said, “I am going to give this land to your kids, not to Lot’s kids.”
Things are going to get awkward now. Abram has a lot of promises but still doesn’t have much in the way of information. All he knows now is that his children will inherit the land of the Canaanites. God didn’t say anything about Sarai, his wife, being a mom—just about Abram being a dad. But fortunately, Abram has learned his lesson now and will never try to make things happen on his own again, right? WRONG! But that’s a story for another day. Let’s review God’s promises to Abram: I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name famous, you will be a blessing to others, I will bless the people who are good to you, I will be an enemy to anyone who treats you badly, and I will bless all the people of the world through you. And now we have another promise: I will give this land to your children.
But right now, Abram’s focus isn’t on Lot and how he is going to solve that problem. Instead, he builds an altar, a mizbeach (miz-bee-ach), and calls on the Name of the Lord. So, what does that mean and why would he do that? Seems kinda risky doing that sort of thing right outside the city of Shechem at their oak tree. But there is a good reason for it because up to this moment, God has promised that Abram would become a great nation but never promised him children or land and now in one fell swoop, God has promised him not only this land but that it will belong to his children—which means he is actually going to have children! Believe me, if there has been one thing on his mind more than anything else over the last fifty years, it’s been wanting kids. The people in his life would be giving Sarai the stink eye, wondering why she was cursed and what she had done wrong. They would be thinking that Abram had to be some kind of fool to stay married to her instead of ditching her and getting a new wife. The whole situation was just crazy and now he’s gone off into the great unknown following a voice from Heaven who wants him to give up the family gods. To his family, nothing about Abram would make any sense. He was a seventy-five-year-old man with no family, no home, and no prospects for his life getting any better because he was abandoning their gods. And I am betting that sometimes Abram wondered if he was just crazy too.
But now, everything has suddenly changed. His children will get this land—which means that he won’t ever see it happen. But that’s okay because now he can see the great nation and his great name beginning to take shape. The day I found out that I was going to be a mom was the happiest day in my life because I couldn’t have babies either and, unlike Abram, God told me that I never would but that Mark and I would adopt two boys. You know what I did? I worshiped God like crazy and thanked Him! And that’s what Abraham did too. He built an altar and called on the Name of the Lord! Why were those two things so important? Well, God had told Abram to leave his family and home to go to the place that God would show him. And now Abram knows that this is the place God was leading him! It’s like God said, “Good job Abram, you made it! Now, here’s the next part of the promise!” And God is so kind that He didn’t even yell at Abram for bringing Lot along. God is way kinder and much more patient when we blow it than we are with each other, right? I am afraid that I might have told him, “Ugh, Abram, you goober-head, I told you to leave Lot at home and you’re going to regret bringing him!” But then, I am not as loving as God is.
So, Abram built an altar but doesn’t offer a sacrifice. As Abram travels, we will see him build a lot of altars and he won’t always offer a sacrifice on them. And scholars wonder why but it seems that a lot of them believe that Abram was setting up landmarks, or monuments, to show that this Land belonged to God and that He should be worshiped there instead of the gods of the nations. And Abram called only on God’s Name there—instead of calling upon the names of the gods that the Canaanites thought owned the land. If that is correct then what he was doing was setting up something like a boundary stone so that future generations could see where God had made the promise to Abram so that they could say, “Wow, here is where God made the promise at the Oak of Moreh and now it has come true!” In Isaiah, the prophet tells us that the reason God gives us a promise for the future isn’t so that we can figure out what is going to happen, but so that when it does happen we can go, “Oh my gosh, God promised it ahead of time and it happened! No other god has ever been able to do that!”
When Abram built the altar and called on the Name of the Lord, it was like he was putting everyone on alert that he wasn’t going to follow the gods of Shechem—like Baal Hadad, Asherah, El, Astarte and Mot. He was saying that there was only one God whose Name he was going to call on, worship, and depend upon. But why was that such a big deal? We’ve talked before about what they believed in those days. They believed that certain gods were in charge of certain areas of land. They believed that Egypt was controlled by the gods of Egypt, like Ra, Osiris, Horus, and Isis and that Babylon was controlled by Marduk, Ishtar, Tammuz, and Shamash. They didn’t think that these were the same gods that just had different names. Their mythology, their stories, were all very different as though they were entirely different “people”. I said people and no they aren’t people and they aren’t even really gods but you know what I mean. So, when you went to a new place, if you wanted to be blessed and favored, you had to do one of two things—your gods had to beat the snot out of the gods of that place and move in to replace them or rule over them as their kings and queens or you had to worship them by offering sacrifices to them at their altars and temples. Because everyone believed that they controlled what was going on in their own lands.
But Abram wasn’t doing either of those things! What God had told him would have seemed very strange. Like, say the King or Queen of your country (if you have one) told you to go to another country and then said that you could have whatever place you ended up at. And you’d say, “Dude, you are out of your mind. You can’t give away another country’s land to me. You don’t have that kind of power! If I want that land I either have to buy it or the king of that country has to give it to me!” But that is exactly what God told Abram and Abram believed Him. In a few more chapters, God will make Abram another promise and Moses tells us that when Abram believed what God was telling him, it was counted to him as righteousness. But what does that even mean? Righteousness is one of those words that everyone uses but most people don’t actually know what it means. The Bible has a lot of words like that.
I want you to imagine a courtroom, with a judge and lawyers or you might call them barristers or something different. But two people come into a courtroom to try to prove who is right about something. And they will tell their sides of the story and why they think they are right, and it is the job of the judge (or the jury) to decide which person they believe—which person is being honest and is right in what happened. Now, they aren’t being judged about the rest of their life. Just because a person robbed a bank ten years ago doesn’t mean that a car crash was their fault. The judge isn’t deciding who they like the best or who they think is a good or bad person. All they care about is who was to blame for the car accident when both people are saying it wasn’t their fault. And you know people really do lie to judges in court when they should just be honest. But the judge will look at the evidence and he will decide who is right and who is wrong. Or you might say who is innocent and who is guilty. The word righteous means that someone was found to be right about something. And so, when we believe what God says, we are called righteous not because we are so awesome, all that and a bag of chips, or so totally good. That’s not what righteous means. We are called righteous because we are right to trust God and He will prove that we are right when Jesus comes back as King. Abram didn’t have any proof that God would keep His promises, but He trusted God anyway and God, as a judge of the situation, was saying that Abram was right to trust Him even though it would be a long time before all of His promises happened.
So, if you trust God then you are righteous about that, you are right to trust Him and the people who don’t trust Him are wrong. That doesn’t mean they are bad people—it just means that they aren’t right about that one thing. If you crash into them with a car, then they will be righteous and you won’t when it comes to who is to blame for the accident. I know that isn’t how people use that word but that is what it means. It doesn’t mean perfect, or totally good—it just means to be right about something when another person is wrong, that’s all.
All of these promises are in our Bibles to prove that God is able to make anything happen that He wants and that even when we get impatient and mess things up, that we can’t stop what He wants. And more than that, even when Abram did things that were wrong, and sometimes really wrong, God never gave up on him or decided to use someone else instead. And because of that, we can trust Him. He isn’t sitting around waiting for you or me to do something bad enough that He will just kill us or hate us. He doesn’t work like that. The story of the Bible is a story about how God can always be trusted—even when things go wrong and it seems like He doesn’t love us anymore. He doesn’t slam down on us when we are wrong, He guides us into doing what is right. And sometimes that can be hard to believe, especially because people don’t act that way at all but can be really mean over even the smallest mistake. But when we want to see what God is really like, we need to look at Jesus.
There was no bigger mistake in the entire history of life on earth as when Jesus was killed as though he was a terrible criminal. And I know that to call it a mistake is really not the right word for it, but it was definitely a huge mistake. And you would think that if God was to ever want to punish anyone for doing something really terrible and wrong, it would have been for that. But Jesus showed us God’s love for us when we commit even the most terrible sins—He said, “Father forgive them, because they don’t understand what they are doing.” If Jesus asked the Father to forgive them after they tortured Him and made fun of him and were killing Him, just think about how God looks at you when you make a mistake. Even big mistakes, like we are going to see from Abram—God has this amazing way of being understanding about them even when we make those mistakes because we don’t believe Him or don’t trust what He is telling us. God doesn’t save us so that He can expect us to be perfect the very next day—He works with us over the course of our entire lives to prove to us how trustworthy He is. He doesn’t want us to trust Him because we are too scared not to, He wants us to trust Him because we love Him and know Him and have learned that He can always be trusted. But we live in a world where people aren’t very trustworthy, and they can hurt us and trick us and lie to us so it is impossible for us to believe right away that God could be so entirely different from everyone we have ever known. But He is.
Abram went to Canaan not because He trusted God perfectly, but because he made a choice to trust that something special was happening to him. Abram was just like a baby, or a kitten or a puppy learning to trust their family not to hurt them and to take care of them when they need something that they can’t get for themselves. When Abram went it was like he was saying, “Okay, I am going to trust that you aren’t just leading me out in the middle of nowhere to kill me,” because that was the sort of thing that the gods his family worshiped would do to people—just for fun. Just imagine the faith it took for Abram to decide to believe that this God was any different from all the others he had learned about while growing up. Abram was very brave to make that decision and to take that first step. But he didn’t totally trust God because he brought Lot along with him. God didn’t want Lot to go because He knew what would happen if he did, and Abram is going to regret bringing him in the future. God has a lot of different reasons for telling us not to do something and usually it is to keep us out of getting into trouble either right away or later. Because we don’t understand, we might think it isn’t a big deal if we do our own thing, but God always knows best. People don’t always know best, but God always does so we can trust Him. People don’t know the future, but God does.
Sometimes in your life, God is going to ask you to just jump into the unknown and trust Him that things will be okay. He did that with my husband and I in 2000, when He told us to go ahead with something that was very scary—and it was difficult for a whole year afterward but God kept us safe the entire time even though we were often scared and unsure. But when it is God telling us to do it, it will always be worth it.
I love you. I am praying for you. And I want you to think about the times in your life when you were dealing with something scary and God helped you to deal with it.