Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible          

Part First- Stories from the First Five Books of the Bible

Story Six- How Lot’s Choice Brought Trouble and Abram’s Choice Brought Blessing

Genesis xiv : 1, to xv : 21

So Lŏt lived in Sŏd´om, and Ā´brăm lived in his tent on the mountains of Cā´năan. At that time in the plain of Jôr´dan, near the head of the Dead Sea, were five cities, of which Sŏd´om and Go-mŏr´rah were two; and each of the five cities was ruled by its own king. But over all these little kings and their little kingdoms was a greater king, who lived far away, near the land of Chăl-dē´a, from which Ā´brăm had come, and who ruled all the lands, far and near.

            After a time these little kings in the plain would not obey the greater king; so he and all his army made war upon them. A battle was fought on the plain, not far from Sŏd´om, and the kings of Sŏd´om and Go-mŏr´rah were beaten in the battle, and their soldiers were killed. Then the king who had won the victory over his enemies came to Sŏd´om, and took everything that he could find in the city, and carried away all the people in the city, intending to keep them as slaves. After a battle, in those times, the army that won the victory took away all the goods, and made slaves of all the people on the side that had been beaten.

            So Lŏt, with all that he owned, was carried away by enemies, who went up the valley from Sŏd´om, and did not stop to rest until they came to the head-waters of the river Jôr´dan, at a place afterward called Dăn. So, all that Lŏt’s selfish choice gained for him was to lose all that he had, and to be made a prisoner and a slave.

            Some one ran away from the battle, and came to Ā´brăm, who was living in his tent under the oak tree near Hē´bron. As soon as Ā´brăm heard what had happened, he called together all the men who were with him, his servants, his shepherds, and his people, and his friends; and he led them after the enemy that had taken away Lŏt. He followed as fast as his men could march, and found the enemy, with all the goods they had taken and all their prisoners, at Dăn, on of the places where the Jôr´dan River begins.

            Ā´brăm rushed upon the enemies at night, while they were asleep, and fought them, and drove them away; so suddenly that they left behind them everything, and ran far among the mountains. And in their camp Ā´brăm found his nephew Lŏt, sage, with his wife and daughters, and all his goods, and, besides, all the goods and all the other people that had been carried away from Sŏd´om.

            Then the king of Sŏd´om came to meet Ā´brăm, at a place near the city of Je-ru´sa-lĕm, which at that time was called Sā´lem. The name of this king was Mĕl-chĭz´dĕk, and unlike most other kings in the land at that time, he was a worshipper of the Lord God, as Ā´brăm was. And the king Mĕl-chĭz´dĕk blessed Ā´brăm, and said, “ May the Lord God Most High, who mad heaven and earth, bless Ā´brăm; and blessed be the Lord God Most High, who has given your enemies into your hand.”

            And Ā´brăm mad a present to the King Mĕl-chĭz´dĕk, because he worshipped the Lord. And Ā´brăm gave to the king of Sŏd´om all the people and all the goods that had been taken away; and he would not take any pay for having saved them.

            You would have thought that after this, Lŏt would have seen that it was frong for him to live in Sŏd´om; but he went back to the city, and made his home there once more, even though his heart was made sad by the wickedness that he saw around him.

            After Ā´brăm had gone back to his tent under the oak trees at Hē´bron, one day the Lord God spoke to him, and said:

            “Fear not, Ā´brăm; I will be a shield to keep you safe from enemies; and I will give you a very great reward for serving me.”

            And Ā´brăm said, “O Lord God, what good can anything do to me, since I have no child to whom I can give it; and after I die, the servant.” For although Ā´brăm had a large family of people around him, and many servants, he had no son, and he was now an old man, and his wife Sā´rāi was also old.

            And God said to Ā´brăm, “The one to receive what you own shall not be a stranger, but shall be your own son.”

            And that night God brought Ā´brăm out of his tent, under the heavens, and said to him:

            “Look now up to the sky, and count the stars, if you can. The people who shall spring from you, your descendants, in the years to come, shall be many more than all the stars that you can see.”

            Ā´brăm did not see how this promise of God could be kept; but he believed God’s word, and did not doubt it. And God loved Ā´brăm because he believed the promise. Although Ā´brăm could nto at that time see how God’s promise could be kept, yet we know not at that time see how God’s promise could be kept, yet we know that it was kept, for the Ĭs´ra-el-īte people in the Bible story, and the Jews everywhere in the world now, all came from Ā´brăm.

            After that, one day, just as the sun was going down, God came to Ā´brăm again, and told him many things that should vome to pass. God said to Ā´brăm:

            “After your life is ended, those who are to come from you, your descendants, shall go into a strange land. The people of that land shall make slaves of them, and shall be cruel to them. And they shall stay  in that strange land four hundred years; and afterward they shall come out of that land, not any more as slaves, but very rich. And after the four hundred years they shall come back to this land, and this shall be their home. All this shall come to pass after your life, for you shall be their home. All this shall come to pass after your life, for you shall die in peace and be buried in a good old age. And all this land where you are living shall belong to you people.”

            So that Ā´brăm might remember this promise of God, God told Ā´brăm to make ready an offering of a lamb and a goat and a pair of pigeons, and to divide them in pieces, and place them opposite to each other. And that night Ā´brăm looked, and saw a smoke and fire, like a flaming torch, that passed between the pieces of the offering.

            So a promise was made between God and Ā´brăm. God promised to give Ā´brăm a son and a people and a land, and Ā´brăm promised to serve God faithfully.

            Such a promise as this, made by two people to each other, was called a covenant; and this was God;s covenant with Ā´brăm.

story-6-how-lots-choice-brought-trouble-and-abrams-choice-brought-blessing.doc

Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible

Part One- Stories from the First Five Books of the Bible

Story Five- The Story of a Long Journey

Genesis xi : 27, to xiii : 18

            Not far from the city of Băb´y-lon, where they began to build the tower of Bā´bel, was another city, called Ûr of the Chăl´dees. The Chăl´dees were the people who lived in the country which was called Chăl´dea, where the two rivers Eū-phrā´tēs and T­ī´gris come together. Among these people, at Ûr, was living a man named Ā´brăm.

Ā´brăm was a good man, for he prayed to the Lord God, and tried always to do God’s will.

            But the people who lived in Ûr, Ā´brăm’s home, did not pray to God. They prayed to idols, images made of wood and stone. They thought that these images were gods, and that they could hear their prayers and could help them. And as these people who worshipped idols did not call on God, they did not know his will, and they did many wicked things.

            The Lord saw that Ā´brăm was good and faithful, though wicked people were living all around him. And God did not wish to have Ā´brăm’s family grow up in such a place, for then they too might become wicked. So the Lord spoke to Ā´brăm, and said:

            “Ā´brăm, gather together all your family and go out from this place, to a land far away, that I will show you. And in that land I will make your family to become a great people, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that all the world shall give honor to your name. If you will do as I command you, you shall be blessed, and all the families of the earth shall obtain a blessing through you.”

            Ā´brăm did not know just what this blessing meant that God promised to him. But we know that Ā´brăm’s family grew after many years into the Ĭs´ra-el-īte people, out of whom came Jē´sus, the Saviour of the world, for Jē´sus was a descendant of Ā´brăm: that is, Jē´sus came a long time afterward from the family of which Ā´brăm was the father; and thus Ā´brăm’s family became a blessing to all the world by giving to the world a Saviour.

            Although Ā´brăm did not know just what the blessing was to be that God promised to give him, and although he did not know where the land lay, to which God was sending him, he obeyed God’s word. He took all his family, and with them his father Tē´rah, who was very old, and his wife, whose name was Sā´rāi; and his brother Nā´hôr and his wife, and another brother’s son whose name was Lŏt; for Lŏt’s father, Hā´ran, who was the younger brother of Ā´brăm, had died before this time. And Ā´brăm took all that he had, his tents, and his flocks of sheep, and herds of cattle, and went forth on a long journey, to a land of which he did not even know the name.

            He journeyed far up the great river Eū-phrā´tes to the mountain region, until he came to a place called Hā´ran, in a country called Mĕs-o-po-ta´mĭ-a. The word Mĕs-o-po-ta´mĭ-a means “between the rivers”; and this country was between the two great rivers Tī´gris and Eū-phrā´tes. At Hā´ran they all stayed for a time. Perhaps they stopped there because Tē´rah, the father of Ā´brăm, was too old to travel further; for they stayed at Hā´ran until Tē´rah died.

            After the death of Tē´rah, his father, Ā´brăm again went on his journey, and Lŏt, his brother’s son, went with him; but Nā´hôr, Ā´brăm’s brother, stayed in Hā´ran, and his family, and children, and children’s children, whom they call “his descendants,” lived at Hā´ran for many years.

            From Hā´ran, Ā´brăm and Lŏt turned toward the southwest, and journeyed for a long time, having the mountains on their right hand and the great desert on their left. They crossed over rivers, and climbed the hills, and at last they came into the land of Cā´năan, which was the land of which God had spoken to Ā´brăm.

            This land was called Cā´năan, because the people who were living in it were the descendants, or children’s children, of a man who had lived long before, whose name was Cā´năan. A long time after this it was called “the Land of Ĭs´ra-el,” from the people who lived in it; and because in that same land the Lord Jē´sus lived many years afterward; we now call it “The Holy Land.”

            When Ā´brăm came into the land of Cā´năan, he found in it a few cities and villages of the Cā´năan-ītes. But Ā´brăm and his people did not go into the towns to live. They lived in tents, out in the open fields, where they could find grass for their sheep and cattle. Not far from a city called Shē´chem, Ā´brăm set up his tent under an oak tree on the plain. There the Lord came to Ā´brăm, and said:

            “I will give this land to your children, and to their children, and this shall be their land forever.”

            And Ā´brăm built there an altar, and made an offering, and worshipped the Lord. Wherever Ā´brăm set up his tent, there he built his altar and prayed to God; for Ā´brăm loved God, and served God, and believed God’s promises.

            Ā´brăm and Lŏt moved their tents and their flocks to many places, where they could find grass for their flocks and water to drink. At one time they went down to the land of Ē´gypt. God did not wish him to live in a land where the people worshipped idols; so God sent Ā´brăm back again to the land of Cā´năan, where he could live apart from cities, and bring up his servants and his people to worship the Lord. He came to a place where afterward a city called Bĕth´=el stood; and there as before he built an altar and prayed to the Lord.

            Now Lŏt, the son of Ā´brăm’s younger brother who had died, was with Ā´brăm; and Lŏt, like Ā´brăm, had flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, and many tents for his people. Ā´brăm’s shepherds and Lŏt’s shepherds quarreled, because there was not grass enough in one place for both of them to feed their flocks; and besides these people, the Cā´năan-ītes were also in the land, so that there was not room for them all.

            When Ā´brăm heard of the quarrel between his men and the men under Lŏt, he said to Lŏt:

            “Let there be no quarrel between you and me, nor between your men and my men; for you and I are like brothers to each other. The whole land is before us; let us go apart. You shall have the first choice, too. If you will take the land on the right hand, then I will take the land on the left; or if you choose the left hand, then I will take the right.”

            This was a noble and generous in Ā´brăm, for he was the older, and might claim the first choice. Then, too, God had promised all the land to Ā´brăm, so that he might have said to Lŏt, “Go away, for this land is all mine.” But Ā´brăm showed a kind, good heart in giving to Lŏt his choice of the land.

            And Lŏt looked over the land from the mountain where they were standing, and saw down in the valley the river Jôrdan flowing between green fields, where the soil was rich. He saw the cities of Sŏd´om and Go-mŏr´rah upon the plain, near the head of the Dead Sea, into which the Jôr´dan flows. And Lŏt said, “I will go down yonder to the plain.”

            And he went down the mountain to the plain, with his tents and his men, and his flocks of sheep and his cattle, leaving the land on the mountains, which was not so good, to his uncle Ā´brăm. Perhaps Lŏt did not know that the people in Sŏd´om, until after a time he was living in that wicked city.

            After Lŏt had separated from Ā´brăm, God said to Ā´brăm:

            “Lift up your eyes from this place, and look east and west, and north and south. All the land that you can see, mountains and valleys and plains, I will give it to you, and to your children, and their children, and those who come after them. Your descendants shall have all this land, and they shall be as many as the dust of the earth; so that if one could count the dust of the earth, they could as easily count those who shall come from you. Rise up, and walk through the land wherever you please, for it is all yours.”

            Then Ā´brăm moved his tent from Bĕth´=el, and went to live near the city of H´bron, in the south, under an oak tree; and there again he built an altar to the Lord.