The Wanderings of the Patriarchs
Map of the Wandering of
the Patriarchs
Abram obeyed God and took his family and went. On his journey he visited many places and eventually he came to the land of Canaan and became a pilgrim there. The Lord appeared to him again and promised that his descendants would inherit the land and would be a blessing to the whole world. One particular seed (descendant) would be the savior of the world.
Genesis 12:1 - Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee:
Genesis 12:5 - And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.
Genesis 12:7 - And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the LORD, who appeared unto him.
Wandering of Abram in the Bible Encyclopedia - ISBE
Abram
1. Period of Wandering:
Abraham, endowed with Yahweh's promise
of limitless blessing, leaves Haran with Lot his nephew and all
their establishment, and enters Canaan. Successive stages of the
slow journey southward are indicated by the mention of Shechem,
Bethel and the Negeb (South-country). Driven by famine into Egypt,
Abraham finds hospitable reception, though at the price of his
wife's honor, whom the Pharaoh treats in a manner characteristic of
an Egyptian monarch. (Gressmann, op. cit., quotes from Meyer,
Geschichte des Alterthums, 12, 142, the passage from a magic formula
in the pyramid of Unas, a Pharaoh of the Fifth Dynasty: "Then he
(namely, the Pharaoh) takes away the wives from their husbands
whither he will if desire seize his heart.") Retracing the path to
Canaan with an augmented train, at Bethel Abraham and Lot find it
necessary to part company. Lot and his dependents choose for
residence the great Jordan Depression; Abraham follows the backbone
of the land southward to Hebron, where he settles, not in the city,
but before its gates "by the great trees" (Septuagint sing., "oak")
of Mamre.
Full Article
Abraham from Smith's Bible
Dictionary
Abraham
(father of a multitude) was the son of Terah, and founder of
the great Hebrew nation. (B.C. 1996-1822.) His family, a branch of
the descendants of Shem, was settled in Ur of the Chaldees, beyond
the Euphrates, where Abraham was born. Terah had two other sons,
Nahor and Haran. Haran died before his father in Ur of the Chaldees,
leaving a son, Lot; and Terah, taking with him Abram, with Sarai his
wife and his grandson Lot, emigrated to Haran in Mesopotamia, where
he died. On the death of his father, Abram, then in the 75th year of
his age, with Sarai and Lot, pursued his course to the land of
Canaan, whither he was directed by divine command, Ge 12:5 when he
received the general promise that he should become the founder of a
great nation, and that all the families of the earth should be
blessed in him. He passed through the heart of the country by the
great highway to Shechem, and pitched his tent beneath the terebinth
of Moreh. Ge 12:6 Here he received in vision from Jehovah the
further revelation that this was the land which his descendants
should inherit. Ge 12:7 The next halting-place of the wanderer was
on a mountain between Bethel and Ai, Ge 12:8 but the country was
suffering from famine, and Abram journeyed still southward to the
rich cornlands of Egypt. There, fearing that the great beauty of
Sarai might tempt the powerful monarch of Egypt and expose his own
life to peril, he arranged that Sarai should represent herself as
his sister, which her actual relationship to him, as probably the
daughter of his brother Haran, allowed her to do with some semblance
of truth. But her beauty was reported to the king, and she was taken
into the royal harem. The deception was discovered, and Pharaoh with
some indignation dismissed Abram from the country. Ge 12:10-20 He
left Egypt with great possessions, and, accompanied by Lot, returned
by the south of Palestine to his former encampment between Bethel
and Ai. The increased wealth of the two kinsmen was the ultimate
cause of their separation. Lot chose the fertile plain of the Jordan
near Sodom, while Abram pitched his tent among the groves of Mamre,
close to Hebron. Ge 13:1 ... Lot with his family and possessions
having been carried away captive by Chedorlaomer king of Elam, who
had invaded Sodom, Abram pursued the conquerors and utterly routed
them not far from Damascus. The captives and plunder were all
recovered, and Abram was greeted on his return by the king of Sodom,
and by Melchizedek king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who
mysteriously appears upon the scene to bless the patriarch and
receive from him a tenth of the spoil. Ge 14:1 ... After this the
thrice-repeated promise that his descendants should become a mighty
nation and possess the land in which he was a stranger was confirmed
with all the solemnity of a religious ceremony. Ge 15:1 ... Ten
years had passed since he had left his father's house, and the
fulfillment of the promise was apparently more distant than at
first. At the suggestion of Sarai, who despaired of having children
of her own, he took as his concubine Hagar, her Egyptian main, who
bore him Ishmael in the 86th year of his age. Ge 16:1 ... [HAGAR;
ISHMAEL] But this was not the accomplishment of the promise.
Thirteen years elapsed, during which Abram still dwelt in Hebron,
when the covenant was renewed, and the rite of circumcision
established as its sign. This most important crisis in Abram's life,
when he was 99 years old, is marked by the significant change of his
name to Abraham, "father of a multitude;" while his wife's from
Sarai became Sarah. The promise that Sarah should have a son was
repeated in the remarkable scene described in ch. 18. Three men
stood before Abraham as he sat in his tent door in the heat of the
day. The patriarch, with true Eastern hospitality, welcomed the
strangers, and bade them rest and refresh themselves. The meal
ended, they foretold the birth of Isaac, and went on their way to
Sodom. Abraham accompanied them, and is represented as an
interlocutor in a dialogue with Jehovah, in which he pleaded in vain
to avert the vengeance threatened to the devoted cities of the
plain.
Full Article
The Bible Mentions "Abram" in many places:
Genesis 11:27 - Now
these [are] the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram,
Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot.
Genesis
11:29 - And Abram and Nahor took them wives:
the name of Abram's wife [was] Sarai; and the name of
Nahor's wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah,
and the father of Iscah.
Genesis
12:10 - And there was a famine in the land: and Abram
went down into Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine [was] grievous
in the land.
Genesis
13:8 - And Abram said unto Lot, Let there be
no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdmen
and thy herdmen; for we [be] brethren.
Genesis
12:7 - And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and
said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an
altar unto the LORD, who appeared unto him.
Genesis
12:5 - And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot
his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered,
and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to
go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.
Genesis
15:18 - In the same day the LORD made a covenant with
Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from
the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:
Genesis
11:31 - And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot
the son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his
son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from
Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came
unto Haran, and dwelt there.
Genesis
16:5 - And Sarai said unto Abram, My wrong
[be] upon thee: I have given my maid into thy bosom; and when she
saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes: the LORD
judge between me and thee.
Genesis
14:19 - And he blessed him, and said, Blessed [be]
Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth:
Genesis
16:6 - But Abram said unto Sarai, Behold, thy
maid [is] in thy hand; do to her as it pleaseth thee. And when Sarai
dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face.
Genesis
12:1 - Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get
thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's
house, unto a land that I will shew thee:
Genesis
12:16 - And he entreated Abram well for her
sake: and he had sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and
maidservants, and she asses, and camels.
Genesis
13:12 - Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan,
and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched [his] tent
toward Sodom.
Genesis
12:18 - And Pharaoh called Abram, and said,
What [is] this [that] thou hast done unto me? why didst thou not
tell me that she [was] thy wife?
Genesis
15:12 - And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell
upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell
upon him.
Genesis
12:6 - And Abram passed through the land unto
the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite
[was] then in the land.
Genesis
13:14 - And the LORD said unto Abram, after
that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look
from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and
eastward, and westward:
Genesis
14:14 - And when Abram heard that his brother
was taken captive, he armed his trained [servants], born in his own
house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued [them] unto Dan.
Genesis
14:22 - And Abram said to the king of Sodom, I
have lift up mine hand unto the LORD, the most high God, the
possessor of heaven and earth,
Genesis
13:18 - Then Abram removed [his] tent, and
came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which [is] in Hebron, and
built there an altar unto the LORD.
Genesis
15:2 - And Abram said, Lord GOD, what wilt
thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house
[is] this Eliezer of Damascus?
Genesis
14:23 - That I will not [take] from a thread even to a
shoelatchet, and that I will not take any thing that [is] thine,
lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abram rich:
Genesis
15:3 - And Abram said, Behold, to me thou hast
given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir.
Genesis
15:13 - And he said unto Abram, Know of a
surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land [that is] not
theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four
hundred years;
Nehemiah
9:7 - Thou [art] the LORD the God, who didst choose
Abram, and broughtest him forth out of Ur of the Chaldees,
and gavest him the name of Abraham;
Genesis
11:26 - And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram,
Nahor, and Haran.
Genesis
12:14 - And it came to pass, that, when Abram
was come into Egypt, the Egyptians beheld the woman that she [was]
very fair.
Genesis
14:21 - And the king of Sodom said unto Abram,
Give me the persons, and take the goods to thyself.
Genesis
17:5 - Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram,
but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I
made thee.