12:7-9
The Lord appeared to Abram and said “To your offspring I will give this land”. At the time the land belonged to the Canaanites, and Abram and Sarah were unable to have children. Abram built an altar there.Altars were built to mark significant events and to serve as a means of remembering them. Abram moved on. When we have been given a promise that will take some time to fulfil, it does not mean that we sit down and do nothing in the interim. We need to get on with life, and there was much that needed to happen in Abram’s life. Abram built another altar and called upon the name of the Lord. If God’s promises are to be fulfilled in our lives then we need to call upon the name of the Lord.
12:10
We now get one of the first incidents demonstrating Abram’s failings. It is interesting that we get this almost alternating pattern of success and failure. Abram has just made the momentous decision to leave his land and follow God, based purely on the promise of God. One might be inclined to think what a great man he is. In one sense he is great, but he is also deeply flawed, just like you and me. There was a famine in the land, so Abram went down to Egypt. With the Nile Egypt was presumably less affected by the famine. While later in the Bible, after the exodus, Israel was repeatedly warned against going to Egypt, at this point no such warning had been given. Furthermore, in the time of Joseph and Jacob they were explicitly told to go to Egypt. So going to Egypt was not necessarily a problem here.
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