Covenant

God told Abram: 

"Leave your country, your family and your father's home

 for a land that I will show you.

I'll make you a great nation and bless you.

I'll make you famous, you'll be a blessing.

I'll bless those who bless you;

Those who curse you, I'll curse.

All the families of the Earth

Will be blessed through you."

So Abram left, just as God said, and Lot left with him.

Abram was seventy-five years old  when he left Haran.

-Genesis 12: 1-5 (The Message)

This is another sort of beginning, it's not as big as "let there be light," but it's big.  It's the story of a relationship between God and humanity.  Up until this point it has been a bit rocky: Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (the one thing they weren't supposed to do); Cain slew his brother Abel in a fit of jealousy and rage, people got wicked and God sent a flood, people built a tower and God had to confuse their language.  The arrogance and sin of humanity as a whole was getting on all of God's nerves.

So he decided to focus in a bit more, on one family, he found a guy in Ur of the Chaldees (later Babylon, modern day southern Iraq) named Terah, Terah was the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran.  Terah started a journey that he would not finish, out of the "Fertile Crescent" between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.  We learn about the importance of that place in Social Studies as Mesopotamia, one of the "cradles of civilization."  Terah, we are told, is headed to Canaan, which will eventually become Israel, the Promised Land, but it's not really "promised," yet; it's just Canaan.  One of Terah's sons was named Haran, but after marrying and fathering three children: Lot, Milcah and Iscah, Haran died and Terah seemed to get restless.  Nahor was happy enough to marry the older daughter of his brother Haran, Milcah (things were often kept pretty close in the family in those days).  Abram was married to a woman named Sarai, and Sarai, we are told with an air of tragedy, is barren. Nahor and Milcah are pretty well set up in Ur, and presumably Iscah gets married off, so Terah decides to take off for a faraway place where he and his less fortunate descendants, Abram with his barren wife and his orphaned grandson Lot.

Terah gets to a spot about halfway to Canaan, via the long route, up around the fertile crescent of the rivers. Remember, he's moving with family and livestock and everything, not just trekking across the wilderness. He's a semi-nomadic shepherd and there are people and towns all over, who maybe don't want Terah just hanging about with all his hungry sheep, goats and camels.  Terah gets to place where he has a little space and some good grazing, and either by coincidence or by the impact of Terah's memory of his lost son, the place is called Haran.  In those days things got named for a reason mostly, so one might imagine that Terah was still a bit broken up about his son and called the place where he would live out his days Haran.

Terah never gets all the way to Canaan, but after he dies Abram, his wife Sarai and his nephew decide to keep going towards that place. Abram still needs to make his bones, he's getting on in years and he still has no heir, his father's house is a good place but if he ever wants to be anything but the Son of Terah who never amounted to anything on his own, he's got to get out and go.

God (remember God, the Creator?) sees something in Abram, and it's not that Abram is a shining star.  Abram has a certain tragedy to him.  In those days, without children and heirs something the ancient people called nahala would be lost. Nahala is sort of like inheritance or birthright, but even more important than wealth, it is also your memory, and some sense of immortality through being remembered by generations.  Without progeny, the likelihood of that gets seriously diminished.  Abram sees that reality coming at him full steam, maybe Lot will be the one to carry it forward, but who knows.  At pretty much any minute the fate of Haran could befall him or whoever plan B, C, or D might be.  But God promises Abram that he will be something, that he will be a great nation, that he will be blessed and he will be a blessing, and not just him, but through him all the peoples of the Earth would be blessed.

Abram is both inspired and troubled by this promise from God. On the one hand, he has hope that somehow, despite everything he knows, he might not lose the nahala of his ancestors.  But he is old, and Sarai is barren, even though she is beautiful enough to catch the eye of a Pharaoh.  Mistakes are made, Abram has a hard time learning to trust God, he always thinks he has to take things into his own hands. He makes grand, bloody sacrifices; he makes a baby with Hagar and calls him Ishmael, he even goes so far as to almost sacrifice Isaac, the boy that he and Sarai finally have together, all because he thinks that he somehow has to appease the God who made this promise to him.

In his defense, most of the gods that Abram knew about would indeed have demanded such things.  Most of the gods that the ancient people told stories about were capricious, vengeful and bloodthirsty, because they were figments of the imaginations of people who were capricious, vengeful and bloodthirsty.  But the God that spoke this promise to Abram was a different thing.  This God didn't need anything, because this God made everything.  This God didn't need sycophantic worship, this God wanted a true relationship.  This God had learned that the only way to really have that true relationship with these creatures called humans was for God to do all the work.

God makes the covenant and Abram tries to respond the best he can, sometimes he gets it, other times he's a dangerous lunatic, but God never gives up on him, and eventually he gets a new name, Abraham.  He goes from being an insignificant nomad, worried that he was somehow going to lose the nahala of his ancestors, to being the man that everyone who believes in this one true God will claim as their ancestor in one way or another, through Isaac, or Ishmael directly (Jews and Muslims) or through Isaac indirectly via Jesus who is the Christ.

For Abram to have imagined what the world looks like because of him, would have been beyond belief, yet here we are, because of the covenant.