James Nisbet Commentary - Genesis 12:4 - 12:5

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James Nisbet Commentary - Genesis 12:4 - 12:5


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

‘
I DO NOT ASK TO SEE THE DISTANT SCENE’

‘So Abram departed, as the Lord had spoken unto him; … and they went forth, to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.’

Gen_12:4-5

I. This text may be paraphrased geographically, by saying that it contains a direction to the Law and the Gospel to move westwards, like the sun. The forefather of the Jews was ordered to quit his home for a land that looked westwards; as, long after, the Apostle of the Gentiles was ordered to commence travelling westwards, turning his back on the east. Our text limits the earlier dispensation to a single branch of the Semitic race; Paul’s ‘marching orders’ threw open the later dispensation to all the families of the earth. As we cast our eyes upwards along the stream of time to the call of Abraham, we are met on all sides by decisive tokens of a worldwide purpose. Abraham was called 430 years before the law was given; but could any place have been selected more felicitously for its programme than the country to which Abraham moved? Palestine was, by desert, river, and mountain, as closed to the east as it lay open by sea to the west; and thus was as fitted for a nation that was to be kept separate for ages in utter exclusiveness and isolation, as it was also ready to become the starting-point at another time of a system with cosmopolitan aims and designed especially to spread in the west. That system had hardly been inaugurated before it commenced moving of itself, slowly and majestically, to a destination traced for it by no human hand.

II. The inspired writers themselves never dreamt of the Gospel turning out, as it has done, an essential maritime power. Instead of the Gospel diverging eastwards to convert the East, the East poured westwards in countless hosts after the Gospel. Nation after nation burst over Europe with the vehemence of a cyclone, and shattered in pieces the whole fabric of the Roman empire. All the new comers became followers of Christ. The most striking part of the Gospel programme is yet to come—namely, the conversion of the Jews. The Jews have been compelled to wait as long for their conversion as the Gentiles did for their call; yet both events were foretold with the same clearness at the beginning of each dispensation. The conversion of the Jews, whenever it occurs, will be like the transformation scene of the old English play, a scene of overpowering brilliancy, the beginning of the end.

Rev. E. S. Ffoulkes.

Illustration

‘Family life began with Adam and Eve after the Fall. City life began with Cain. National life began with Abraham. History seems to emerge from the shadows and to be seen more clearly now.’ We are now half-way between Adam and Christ; the date 2000 b.c. As Noah could almost remember Adam, so, and more truly, Abram could almost remember Noah. Three long lives touching one another, or nearly so, cover the history of men thus far. Babel and the confusion of tongues must have prepared the way for national existence. A universal language might be convenient, but it would hinder rather than help patriotism and individuality. Abram is the first great emigrant. From Ur with its high civilisation, to Haran; and then by-and-by from Haran to Canaan. In God’s guidance of Abram we see perhaps the earliest example of the principle of purifying by separation. Ur, from whence Abram came out, was full of abominable idolatry. The Moravians at Herruhut, the pilgrim fathers in Massachusetts, illustrate this in later times. God says to His people, Come ye out from among them and be ye separate.’