THE PEOPLE BEGIN TO BUILD THE TOWER OF BABEL; THEY ARE MADE TO SPEAK IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES, AND ARE SCATTERED OVER THE EARTH. ABRAM AND LOT COME INTO THE LAND OF CANAAN. LOT GOES TO LIVE ON THE PLAIN OF JORDAN. ISAAC IS PROMISED. ISHMAEL IS BORN.
AND God gave to Noah's sons children of their own. They, when they grew up, had children too, so that after a while there came to be a great many people in the world once more.
Now we should think that these people would have been very careful not to offend God. They knew how the men who had offended him before, were punished, and though God had promised never to send another flood, there were many other ways in which he might punish them. He might send sickness upon them, or give them no food, and leave them to starve, or he might send down fire from heaven to burn them. But they seemed to forget this, and as their hearts were wicked, they went on as the men before the flood had done, sinning against him.
There was only one language in the world then. The people all talked alike, and could all understand each other; and as they journeyed from the east they came to a plain in the land of Shinar, and stopped there. And they said one to another, Let us make brick and build a tower whose top may reach to heaven. And they began to build it. We are not told why they wanted to build this tower. But God, who saw their hearts, knew that it was for some wicked purpose. Perhaps they did not believe God's promise, that he would never send another flood on the earth, and thought, if he should send one, this tower would be so high that the waters could not overflow it, and. they would climb up into it and be safe. Or perhaps they built it as a sort of temple, or church, not to worship God in, but idols.
And the Lord came down from heaven to see the tower which the people were building, and he saw it and was displeased. Then he did a wonderful thing to stop them. He made them, all at once, begin to speak in different languages, such as they had never spoken before. They could not go on building now, because they were not able to understand each other's words. Therefore they had to cease building before the tower was done. After that, they would not all of them wish to live together any more. Only those would wish to live together who talked the same language, and they would go off to some place where they could be by themselves. This is the way that people came to live in different parts of the world.
The tower which they tried to build, but which God would not allow them to finish, was called the tower of Babel. Babel means confusion. When the people began to talk in different languages, so that they could not understand one another, it made confusion there. Therefore it was called the tower of Babel.
Many years after these things, there lived in the land of Ur a man named Abram. The people of that land worshipped idols. And God told Abram to leave his home and his relations, and go to another land which he would show him. Abram did not know what land it was, yet he left his friends and his home as he was commanded to do. For he had faith; he believed that God would bring him to the land he had told him of.
Abram was seventy-five years old: and he took his wife, whose name was Sarai, and his brother's son, whose name was Lot, and they started to go to the land which God had promised to show him. It was a long journey there; he had to cross over a wide river and a desert, where the country was lonely and wild. Yet God took care of him and of those who were with him, and brought them safely to the promised land. It was called the land of Canaan.
And Abram came to a place in Canaan called Shechem. While he was there God spoke to him and told him he would give all that land of Canaan to his descendants. Abram's descendants were his children and his children's children, who should live long after Abram himself was dead. They were to live in the land of Canaan, and it was to be their land. And Abram built an altar at Shechem. Afterward he left Shechem and came to a mountain, and there built another altar and offered up a sacrifice to the Lord.
And he went on journeying through the land. Other people were living there then, but God kept them from doing him any harm. And there was a famine in the land. It is a famine in any place when the grain and the grass will not grow there, so that the people have nothing for themselves or their cattle to eat. And now there was a famine in Canaan. Therefore Abram went into another country called Egypt, and Lot, his brother's son, went with him. Egypt was a good way from Canaan. Abram did not go there to stay, but only to wait till the famine should be over in Canaan, and after it was over he and Lot returned again. And they came to Shechem, where Abram had first built an altar in the land; and there he offered up a sacrifice to the Lord.
Now Abram was very rich: he had much silver and gold, and a great many cattle. Lot had cattle, too—herds of cattle and tents; for he and Abram did not live in houses, but in tents. It was better for them to live in tents than in houses like ours, because they moved so much oftener than we do. After they had been long enough in one place for their cattle to eat up the grass there, they left it and went to another. Then they took down their tents and carried them wherever they went. Beside, they did not need houses as we do, because it was never so cold in that country as it is here.
Abram and Lot had, each of them, a great many cattle, and they had men called herdsmen to take care of their cattle; and these men quarrelled. Abram's herdsmen and Lot's herdsmen quarrelled with each other. When Abram heard this, he spoke to Lot about it. And how did he speak? Did he say, This is my land; God has given it to me, and you must move away somewhere else? No; he spoke kindly to Lot, and said, Let there be no strife between me and thee, and between my herdsmen and thy herdsmen. Then Abram told Lot he might go to any part of the land that he chose to live in, and Abram said he would go to another part.
And Lot chose the plain of Jordan. The Jordan is a river, and the plain of Jordan was the level country through which the river flowed. Then Lot took his cattle and his herdsmen and went away from Abram to live on the plain of Jordan. And some cities were there; one of them was named Sodom. The men of Sodom were very wicked, yet Lot went to live in that city. He was not a wicked man himself, he served God; but he went to live among wicked men, because there he might have better pasture for his cattle and so increase his riches. He should not have done this, and we shall see afterward how much trouble it caused him.
After Lot had gone, the Lord spoke to Abram, and told him he would give all that land, as far as he could see it, to him and to his descendants. And God said he would make Abram's descendants so many that no one could count them. Then Abram moved his tent and came to a place called Hebron, and there he built an altar to the Lord. This made three altars he had built since he came into Canaan; so we see, as he journeyed from one place to another, he loved to have an altar near him, that he might offer up sacrifices and worship the Lord.
And there was war on the plain of Jordan. Four kings came there with an army, and fought against the city of Sodom where Lot lived, and they gained the victory. Then they went into the houses and carried off the spoil, that is, food and money and goods, and everything that they wanted. They took some of the people, and Lot also, away with them as captives, or slaves. When Abram heard of it, he gathered his servants together and followed after them. The Bible tells us he had three hundred and eighteen servants. This was a large number for one person to have, but Abram owned great flocks of sheep and herds of cattle and camels, and he needed many servants to take care of them. And beside his servants, some of the men of the land who were his friends, went with him to help him against the four kings.
And he came up with them and fought with them, and God gave him the victory. Then he took all the captives and the spoil which they had carried away, and brought them back to Sodom. As he was coming there Melchizedek, the king of a city called Salem, who was also a minister of God, came out to meet Abram, bringing him bread and wine. And Melchizedek blessed Abram, that is, he asked that God might bless him and be good to him; and he thanked God for giving Abram the victory. And Abram gave the king a tenth part of all the things he had taken from his enemies. When the king of Sodom saw how Abram had brought back the captives which the four kings had carried away, he said to him, Give the captives to me that I may send them to their own homes again, but keep the spoil for thyself. But Abram said he had made a promise to God not to keep anything for himself. The men who had gone with him to help him, might take their share of the spoil, he said, but he would take nothing.
After this God spoke to Abram and told him, that he was his friend. But Abram said that God had never given him a child. Then God promised to give him a son. And he brought Abram out and told him to look at the stars as they shone in the sky, and asked him whether he could count them. And God said that Abram's descendants should be as those stars, so many they could not be counted. God told Abram also, that his descendants should live in another country, away from Canaan, and that the people there would treat them cruelly for many years. Yet God said he would punish the people who treated them so, and afterward would bring Abram's descendants out of that land with great riches. But this was not to happen until long after Abram was dead, for God told him he should live to be an old man and should die in peace.
And Sarai, Abram's wife, had a handmaid; that is, a woman who was her servant. The woman's name was Hagar; she came from Egypt, perhaps when Abram came from that country after there had been a famine in Canaan. But Hagar displeased her mistress Sarai, and Sarai was angry with her and punished her. Then Hagar fled into the lonely wilderness where no one lived, so that she might not be punished again.
And the angel of the Lord found her there by a spring of water; and he asked where she came from and to what place she was going. She answered that she had fled from her mistress Sarai. Then the angel told her to go back to her mistress and obey what she said to her; he told Hagar also that she should have a son whose name should be Ishmael, and that he would be a wild man: he would fight against other men, and other men would fight against him. So Hagar went back to Sarai, and afterward God gave her a son whose name was called Ishmael.
When Abram was ninety-nine years old God talked with him again, and Abram bowed down with his face to the ground while God talked with him. And God told him again that his descendants should be very many, and some of them, he said, should be kings. And God made a covenant, or agreement, with Abram and his descendants, and said that he would be their God. And he promised again to give them the land of Canaan for their own land. And he said to Abram, Thy name shall not any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; which means, the Father of a great many people. And Sarai's name, he said, should be Sarah, which means, Princess. So the Lord changed both their names. And he promised again to give Abraham and Sarah a son, whose name should be Isaac. Then, after the Lord was done talking with him, he went up from Abraham toward heaven.