This chapter is our introduction to Hagar, Sarai’s Egyptian maidservant. We see how Hagar was exalted and then brought down. When Hagar fled and was at her lowest point, we discover God had His eyes on Hagar and had a purpose for her and her unborn son.
The name of Abram’s wife is recorded as Sarai. Is this a name or a title? If a title, what does it mean for her and for us as her daughters in faith?
An important part of the everlasting, single-side, faith-based contract God made with Abram involved this strange and graphic “vision” of animals cut in pieces, scavengers, darkness and God appearing as a smoking oven and a torch. Many scholars explain this away as a common form of ancient deal-making.
Some claim they’ve had “a vision from the LORD,” telling them a new teaching or to do this or that. However, in the Bible a vision accompanies “words of the LORD.” In other words, God speaks then He shows — gives “vision” — to understand what He has said.
Commentators claim that Melchizedek (seen in Genesis 14) was just a man. Why then do the Psalms and the letter to the Hebrews connect Melchizedek to the Messiah and to Yeshua?
Abram wasn’t a man of war, but he fought a relatively major war for the time to rescue Lot. Afterward, he met the mysterious Melchizedek, who is mentioned in eternal terms in Psalms and the Apostolic letter to the Hebrews. Who is that man?
Many have faulted Lot for choosing the good land on the plains near what later became known as the condemned city of Sodom, yet he really was “veiled righteousness” on display in the city. Abram’s choice of places to settle also had lasting consequences.