nto a land which I will show thee." "And I will make thee a great
nation, and will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a
blessing. And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that
curseth thee. And in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed."
So Abram departed with Lot, his nephew, and Sarai, his wife, with all his
cattle and substance, to the land of Canaan, then occupied by that Hamite
race which had probably proved unfriendly to his family in Chaldea. We do
not know by what route he passed the Syrian desert, but he halted at
Shechem, situated in a fruitful valley, one of the passes of the hills
from Damascus to Canaan. He then built an altar to the Lord, probably
among an idolatrous people. From want of pasturage, or some cause not
explained, he removed from thence into a mountain on the east of Bethel,
between that city and Hai, or Ai, when he again erected an altar, and
called upon the living God. But here he did not long remain, being driven
by a famine to the fertile land of Egypt, then ruled by the Pharaohs,
whose unscrupulous character he feared, and which tempted him to practice
an unworthy deception, yet in accordance with profound worldly sagacity.
It was the dictate of expediency rather than faith. He pretended that
Sarai was his sister, and was well treated on her account by the princes
of Egypt, and not killed, as he feared he would be if she was known to be
his wife. The king, afflicted by great plagues in consequence of his
attentions to this beautiful woman, sent Abram away, after a stern rebuke
for the story he had told, with all his possessions.

(M38) The patriarch returned to Canaan, enriched by the princes of Egypt,
and resumed his old encampment near Bethel. But there was not enough
pasturage for his flocks, united with those of Lot. So, with magnanimous
generosity, disinclined to strife or greed, he gave his nephew the choice
of lands, but insisted on a division. "Is not the whole land before thee,"
said he: "Separate thyself, I pray thee: if thou wilt take the left hand,
I will go to the right, and if thou depart to the right hand, then I will
go to the left." The children of Ham and of Japhet would have quarreled,
and one would have got the ascendency over the other. Not so with the just
and generous Shemite--the reproachless model of all oriental virtues, if we
may forget the eclipse of his fair name in Egypt.

(M39) Lot chose, as was natural, the lower