Deacon D

 Walk in the Bible - Genesis 20      In verse 1, Abraham is shown leaving - he's leaving the same place he was when he entertained the angels, under the trees of Mamre and he's traveling to Negeb. This chapter tells us that he's staying for a while in Gerar which is the home of King Abimelech of the Philistines. None of the Torah scholars really know why he left. They state emphatically that there was no famine in the land, so that wasn't it, they just simply don't know why he left.      We do know that in Gerar, we have a replay of what happened in Egypt, namely, Abraham told King Abimelech that Sara was his sister. Most of the Torah scholars believe that Abraham did this because he thought the king might kill him to take his wife. Although we have one scholar, Rabbeinu Chananel who postulated that Abraham had divorced his wife, and because she was his half-sister, wasn't really lying. The Bible doesn't support this anywhere in this story. The Bible d...

  Genesis 19 In verse 1, we see that there are now TWO angels. Before ( in Genesis 18:2 there were three angels and we see that the Lord went on HIS way in Genesis 18:33.  That's lead some of the scholars to believe that GOD was actually one of the angels that met with Abraham, face to face! No one's really sure if it was HIM or not, but in either case, we now see that there are TWO angels going to Sodom and Gomorrah. The angels are said to have arrived in the evening, however, some scholars actually think it was closer to sunset for a few reasons, the first being that the gates would have been closed at night to keep out bandits and secondly, the word used for evening "ereb" could mean "evening", "night" or even "sunset".  When the angels arrived, Lot was said to be "sitting in the gate" and this is absolutely correct. At that time each city had two sets of gates, an outer gate and an inner gate. The space between those two...

Genesis 15 In verse 1 we see GOD coming to Abram in a vision. Chizkuni reminds us that the same thing would happen to Jacob in Genesis 34:30 after Jacob and his sons fought and defeated the Shechemites. Even though Abram had been victorious in battle, he still worried that other tribes would come after him to avenge the army that he and his people had defeated. GOD lets him know this won't happen, that HE HIMSELF will protect him against that happening. This is backed up the first words GOD says to Abram.     GOD further tells him his reward will be great, and Abram, the man who had just defeated army much larger than the amount of men he had with him at the time, likely fresh from the battle and not thinking too clearly essentially asks GOD what good that reward would do him since he had no child to inherit it and keep it in his house. Because that was true at this time, he believed that Eliezer, his stewart, would possess all of the rewards GOD had promised him. Now, remebe...