=Ideals represented in Abraham.=—­But it is not as a leader of fortune hunters that Abraham is pictured in the Bible.  No doubt he and his clansmen hoped to better their condition.  But Abraham was a dreamer and a man of deep religious faith.  He believed that he was being guided by his God.  And he believed that in accordance with God’s plan his descendants in the land to which they had come would become a great nation.  Best of all, it seems probable that he dreamed of a nation different from Babylonia.  Certainly he is described as a different kind of a man from the typical Babylonian.  In some respects, to be sure, judging by our Christian standards, he had serious shortcomings.  He did not scruple to deceive a foreigner, nor to treat harshly a slave.  His ideas as to the character of God were far below those revealed by Christ.  Yet he had the Hebrew gift for home and family life.  He was a good father to his son.  And he put a higher value on personal friendship and kindly family relations than on property interests.  When his herdsmen quarreled with those of his nephew, Lot, he said to the latter with dignified generosity and common sense, “Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee ... for we are brethren.  Is not the whole land before thee?  Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me:  if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou take the right hand, then I will go to the left.”  Just what Abraham looked forward to, we, of course, do not know.  Probably his ideas were vague.  Yet it seems that such men as he must have dreamed of a nation great in faith as well as in material wealth; a nation in which money would not be considered more important than justice and kindness; in which home life might be sweet and loving, free from the fear of want or the blighting influence of greed; and in which the door of opportunity would always be kept open even for the humblest.

At any rate, some centuries after the time when Abraham is supposed to have lived, we find a group of shepherd tribes living in and around Canaan, who believed themselves to be descended from the twelve sons of Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, and among whom there was the tradition of a divinely guided pilgrimage from Babylonia to Canaan under Abraham’s leadership just as we have described.  It is a great thing to have memories of noble parents and traditions of heroic ancestors.  These the Hebrews had from the very beginning.

STUDY TOPICS

1.  Look up in any good Bible dictionary, the articles on Babylonia and Hammurabi.

2.  Read Genesis 12, 15, and 24 and form your own opinion of Abraham as a husband and father.

3.  What was Abraham’s most valuable contribution to history?

4.  From any map of western Asia, draw a sketch map showing the Nile, Euphrates, and Tigris Rivers, the Mediterranean Sea, and the general direction of Abraham’s pilgrimage.