Genesis 13

Abram and Lot Part

Back from Egypt, Abram returns to his altar at Beth-el. When the herdsmen quarrel, he gives his nephew Lot first choice of the land; Lot takes the well-watered Jordan plain, and the Lord then shows Abram the whole land and promises it to him and his seed for ever.

Genesis chaptersChapter 13 of 50

Soon after Abram’s return from Egypt, while he was living in tents in the hill country of Canaan. The text gives no year. Read with footnotes in Gospel Library

Start reading

Background

Genesis 13 follows straight on from the famine and the sojourn in Egypt (Gen. 12:10–20).

Genesis 13 follows straight on from the famine and the sojourn in Egypt (Gen. 12:10–20). The Book of Abraham, Abraham’s own account, breaks off as he goes down into Egypt (Abr. 2:21–25); this chapter picks up the story as he comes back. With him is Lot, the son of his brother Haran (Gen. 11:27), whom the Lord had told him to bring: “Arise, and take Lot with thee” (Abr. 2:6).

Abram is now a herdsman with a large household, living in tents and moving his flocks between pastures in the hill country and the dry south. It was not an empty country. The hill country had fortified towns, and Abraham and his family “would not have wandered in a barren land devoid of settlement.”

The chapter does three things the rest of Genesis builds on. It separates Lot from Abram, so that Lot’s story goes its own way toward Sodom (Gen. 14:12; Gen. 19:1). It repeats and enlarges the promise of land and seed first given at Shechem (Gen. 12:7), and verses 14–18 belong with Gen. 12:1–3 and chapters 15 and 17 among the passages of the Abrahamic covenant. And it brings Abram to Hebron, a place he came back to often and, in the end, “the burying place of Abraham and his family.”

The chapter has three parts: the return to Beth-el (verses 1–4), the quarrel and the parting (5–13), and the promise and the move to Hebron (14–18).

The thread through the chapter

Genesis 13 is a story about looking. Lot “lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan” (verse 10).

Genesis 13 is a story about looking. Lot “lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan” (verse 10). It was well watered, like Eden, like Egypt, and he chose it for himself. Only after Lot has gone does the Lord speak, and He uses the same Hebrew words: “Lift up now thine eyes, and look” (verse 14). Lot looked one way and took one valley. Abram, who had given up the choice, is told to look north, south, east, and west, and is given all of it, to him and his seed for ever. “Having given up some of the more fertile parts of the land in a generous gesture… Abraham receives a promise of even more land.”

Altars frame the chapter. It opens with Abram going back to the altar between Beth-el and Hai, where he “called on the name of the LORD” (verse 4), and it closes with a new altar at Hebron (verse 18). Between them a family quarrel is settled because Abram would rather lose the best pasture than lose a kinsman: “for we be brethren” (verse 8).

Tap any highlighted phrase to open a note beneath its versein the margin.

Verses 1–4

Back to Beth-el

In plain words

Abram went up out of Egypt into the Negev, the dry south country, with his wife and everything he had, and Lot went with him. Abram was very rich in livestock, silver, and gold. He moved on by stages from the Negev to Beth-el, to the place between Beth-el and Ai where he had camped at first and where he had built an altar. There Abram called on the name of the Lord.

1 And Abram went up out of Egypt, he, and his wife, and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the south.

2 And Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold.

Context #

Rich enough to need room

Abram came out of Egypt a wealthy man, and the wealth is what causes the trouble in this chapter.

Abram came out of Egypt a wealthy man, and the wealth is what causes the trouble in this chapter. The Hebrew word for “rich” is kaved, literally “heavy, weighty”: Abram was weighed down with goods. Some of it came from Pharaoh, who “entreated Abram well for her sake: and he had sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she asses, and camels” (Gen. 12:16). Some had been gathered in Haran (Abr. 2:15). Abraham’s servant later credits all of it to the Lord: “the LORD hath blessed my master greatly” (Gen. 24:35).

Much of it walked on four legs, and livestock need grass. “Because livestock need land to pasture, as their wealth grew, Abraham and Lot were no longer able to live in close proximity.” Verse 6 says it plainly: “their substance was great, so that they could not dwell together.”

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Avram R. Shannon, “Abraham: A Man of Relationships”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 279–310.

3 And he went on his journeys from the south even to Beth-el, unto the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Beth-el and Hai;

4 Unto the place of the altar, which he had made there at the first: and there Abram called on the name of the LORD.

Related Scriptures #

Back to the first altar

Abram heads back from Egypt to the altar he had built before the famine.

Abram heads back from Egypt to the altar he had built before the famine. He had gone “on still toward the south” (Gen. 12:9), into the Negev (Hebrew negev, the “south-country,” the region south of Judah), and from there down into Egypt. Now he retraces the route, back up through the Negev (verse 1) to the place between Beth-el and Hai, “unto the place of the altar, which he had made there at the first.”

The Book of Abraham, in his own words, tells what he had done at that spot: “there I built another altar unto the Lord, and called again upon the name of the Lord” (Abr. 2:20). It also shows what calling on the Lord meant. At his earlier altars Abraham “made an offering unto the Lord, and prayed” (Abr. 2:17), and “offered sacrifice… and called on the Lord devoutly, because we had already come into the land of this idolatrous nation” (Abr. 2:18). Returning to this altar was going back to “a sacred place for him to confer again with the Lord.”

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. RoseAnn Benson, “Lot: Likened to Noah”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 311–34.

Verses 5–13

The quarrel and the parting

In plain words

Lot, who traveled with Abram, also had flocks, herds, and tents. The land could not support them both; they had too much to live side by side. Abram’s herdsmen and Lot’s herdsmen quarreled, and the Canaanites and Perizzites were living in the land as well.

So Abram said to Lot, “Let there be no quarrel between you and me, or between your herdsmen and mine; we are family. The whole land is in front of you. Let us separate. If you go left, I will go right; if you go right, I will go left.”

Lot looked up and saw the whole Jordan plain, watered everywhere, like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, as far as Zoar. (This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.) Lot chose the whole Jordan plain for himself and set out eastward, and the two separated. Abram stayed in the land of Canaan. Lot lived among the cities of the plain and moved his tent as far as Sodom. And the men of Sodom were very wicked, great sinners against the Lord.

5 And Lot also, which went with Abram, had flocks, and herds, and tents.

6 And the land was not able to bear them, that they might dwell together: for their substance was great, so that they could not dwell together.

7 And there was a strife between the herdmen of Abram’s cattle and the herdmen of Lot’s cattle: and the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelled then in the land.

Context #

A land already full

Abram and Lot were not alone in the land, which helps explain why there was not enough pasture: the hill country had to support their herds and those of “the native peoples” too.

Abram and Lot were not alone in the land, which helps explain why there was not enough pasture: the hill country had to support their herds and those of “the native peoples” too. The Canaanites were not one nation; the Bible pictures “a patchwork of peoples and places,” and the Perizzites are among the peoples whose land is later promised to Abram (Gen. 15:19–21).

In a country like this, “grazing and water rights would have been shared between members of the same kinship group or their allies, prompting outside groups to move their flocks elsewhere in search of pastures without tribal claims.” Local herdsmen and migrating ones could “come into conflict with each other.” Abram and Lot were newcomers with large herds, and the quarrel between Abram’s and Lot’s herdsmen “seems to have been a quarrel over pastureland.” Abram’s answer, in the next verse, was to divide it.

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. George A. Pierce, “The Ancestors of Israel and the Environment of Canaan in the Early Second Millennium BC”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 163–92. Avram R. Shannon, “Abraham: A Man of Relationships”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 279–310. RoseAnn Benson, “Lot: Likened to Noah”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 311–34.

8 And Abram said unto Lot, Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdmen and thy herdmen; for we be brethren.

Language #

Brothers, though uncle and nephew

Lot was Abram’s nephew (Gen. 11:27), but Abram says, literally, “we are men, brothers” (anashim achim).

Lot was Abram’s nephew (Gen. 11:27), but Abram says, literally, “we are men, brothers” (anashim achim). “Brethren” here “clearly refers to general kinship rather than to a specific relationship as brothers,” and the next chapter calls Lot Abram’s “brother” again (Gen. 14:14). The narrator picks the word up when they part: “they separated themselves the one from the other” (verse 11) is in Hebrew “a man from his brother.”

What Abram proposes fits his world. Among kin, the usual offer was to share: a letter from the archives of Mari says, “Let my sheep and your sheep pasture together. Pasturage is plentiful here.” When there was not enough, pasture could be divided. An Assyrian text records such an agreement: “Puli-ila holds wadis while Barḫalanum holds the steppe. Between them is a stela.” In parting peacefully, “Abraham and Lot are following a pattern known from their day.”

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Avram R. Shannon, “Abraham: A Man of Relationships”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 279–310. John Gee, “The Wanderings of Abraham”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 251–78.

9 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 depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left.

Context #

The elder gives up the choice

Abram had the right to choose first, and he gave it away. He was the elder and the head of the family.

Abram had the right to choose first, and he gave it away. He was the elder and the head of the family. “Lot had been nurtured and protected by Abraham, and Abraham was the patriarch of the clan. Abraham could have taken his rights and given Lot what was left.” Instead, “although Abraham is the elder of the two, and so would be able to claim any part of the land for himself, he offers the choice to Lot.”

One reading sees faith in the offer as well as generosity: Abram left the choice to the younger man “in the confident assurance that the Lord would so direct the decision, that His promise would be fulfilled.” Nothing in the text suggests he regretted it. There is “not a trace of resentment in Abraham,” and in the next chapter he arms his household to rescue Lot (Gen. 14:14–16).

Sources: Genesis 12–17: Abraham—Father of the Faithful, Old Testament Student Manual: Genesis–2 Samuel (Church Educational System, 2003). Avram R. Shannon, “Abraham: A Man of Relationships”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 279–310. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

10 And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar.

Imagery #

Like Eden, like Egypt

Lot measures the Jordan plain by two famously fertile places. The “plain” is the kikkar, the “round” of the Jordan valley.

Lot measures the Jordan plain by two famously fertile places. The “plain” is the kikkar, the “round” of the Jordan valley. “The garden of the LORD” is Eden; Isaiah sets the two names side by side, “her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD” (Isa. 51:3). Egypt, which Lot had just left, was “the land rendered so fertile by the overflowing of the Nile.”

The narrator breaks in to tell the reader how it ends: this was “before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.” The plain Lot saw as a garden became the land Moses describes as “brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth” (Deut. 29:23). When Abraham looks toward it again, “the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace” (Gen. 19:28).

The five cities of the plain “probably stood at the southern end of the Dead Sea,” but scholars have not been able to connect them “to any specific place, with the notable exception of Zoar,” the town that the next chapter also calls Bela.

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. “Gomorrah”, Bible Dictionary. Avram R. Shannon, “Abraham: A Man of Relationships”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 279–310.

11 Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan; and Lot journeyed east: and they separated themselves the one from the other.

12 Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent toward Sodom.

Language #

Toward Sodom

The Hebrew says that Lot moved his tent ‘ad Sedom, “as far as Sodom.” The preposition ‘ad means “as far as, even to, up to,” and this verse is listed under that sense; modern…

The Hebrew says that Lot moved his tent ‘ad Sedom, “as far as Sodom.” The preposition ‘ad means “as far as, even to, up to,” and this verse is listed under that sense; modern translations have Lot “moved his tent as far as Sodom,” emphasizing “the location rather than the orientation of Lot’s tent.” Either way the direction is clear. Here Lot camps at the edge of Sodom; in the next chapter he “dwelt in Sodom” (Gen. 14:12); and when the angels come he “sat in the gate of Sodom” (Gen. 19:1).

The King James wording has given a latter-day apostle a picture. Elder L. Tom Perry said that Lot “pitched his tent facing Sodom,” and that “most of the problems that Lot later encountered in his life, and there were several, can be traced back to his early decision to position the door of his tent to look upon Sodom.” Of Abraham he said, “We do not know which way Abraham’s tent door faced,” but he pointed to verse 18, where Abram built an altar at Hebron: “While I do not know, I personally believe the door of Abraham’s tent faced the altar he built unto the Lord,” as King Benjamin’s people faced their tents toward the temple (Mosiah 2:6).

Genesis does not say why Lot chose as he did. “The text is silent as to the reasons for Lot’s selection,” a silence that “may be taken either as an indictment or as a mere statement of fact.” Peter calls him “just Lot,” a “righteous man” who “vexed his righteous soul from day to day” among the wicked (2 Pet. 2:7–8).

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, National Council of Churches, 2021; on BibleGateway. RoseAnn Benson, “Lot: Likened to Noah”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 311–34. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. L. Tom Perry, “The Power of Deliverance”, general conference, Apr. 2012.

13 But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the LORD exceedingly.

Related Scriptures #

Sodom, becoming wicked

The verse looks ahead to chapter 19 and warns the reader what kind of place Lot has moved toward.

The verse looks ahead to chapter 19 and warns the reader what kind of place Lot has moved toward. Joseph Smith’s revision of Genesis words it differently and adds the Lord’s judgment: “the men of Sodom becoming sinners and exceedingly wicked before the Lord the Lord was angry with them.” What those sins were, scripture says in several places. Ezekiel names “pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness,” and adds that Sodom did not “strengthen the hand of the poor and needy” (Ezek. 16:49). Chapter 19 tells the rest (Gen. 19:4–13).

Sources: Old Testament Revision 1, The Joseph Smith Papers. RoseAnn Benson, “Lot: Likened to Noah”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 311–34. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Verses 14–18

The promise and the altar at Hebron

In plain words

After Lot had left him, the Lord said to Abram, “Look up from where you are, north and south, east and west. All the land you see I will give to you and to your descendants for ever. I will make your descendants like the dust of the earth: if anyone could count the dust, your descendants could be counted too. Get up and walk through the land, its length and its breadth, for I will give it to you.”

So Abram moved his tent and settled by the oaks of Mamre at Hebron, and there he built an altar to the Lord.

14 And the LORD said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward:

Language #

Now Abram lifts up his eyes

The Lord answers Lot’s look in verse 10 with the same two verbs. Lot “lifted up” (nasa) his eyes and “saw” (ra’ah); now the Lord says, “Lift up (sa) now thine eyes, and look…

The Lord answers Lot’s look in verse 10 with the same two verbs. Lot “lifted up” (nasa) his eyes and “saw” (ra’ah); now the Lord says, “Lift up (sa) now thine eyes, and look (re’eh)” (see the thread above).

The timing matters as well. The Lord speaks “after that Lot was separated from him,” using the verb Abram himself used when he said, “separate thyself” (verse 9). Abram had given up the first choice, and the promise follows “after Abraham’s show of generosity.”

Lot is not forgotten. His descendants, the Moabites and Ammonites, later receive their own land from the Lord: “I have given Ar unto the children of Lot for a possession” (Deut. 2:9). “Lot’s seed might not have been given the promised land, but they were given a promised land.”

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Avram R. Shannon, “Abraham: A Man of Relationships”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 279–310. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. RoseAnn Benson, “Lot: Likened to Noah”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 311–34.

15 For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever.

Related Scriptures #

For ever, an everlasting covenant

The land is promised “for ever” to a man who would own no more of it than a grave, and Joseph Smith’s revision of Genesis ties the promise to an everlasting covenant.

The land is promised “for ever” to a man who would own no more of it than a grave, and Joseph Smith’s revision of Genesis ties the promise to an everlasting covenant. It adds a line just before this verse: “and remember the covenant which I make with thee; for it shall be an everlasting covenant; and thou shalt remember the days of Enoch thy father.” It is in his manuscript and in the footnote to verse 14.

His revision of Genesis 9 tells what the covenant with Enoch was. There the Lord tells Noah of “the everlasting covenant, which I made unto thy father Enoch; that, when men should keep all my commandments, Zion should again come on the earth, the city of Enoch which I have caught up unto myself,” and that “the general assembly of the church of the firstborn shall come down out of heaven, and possess the earth” (JST Gen. 9:21–23). Latter-day Saint scholars read these passages as one covenant, running from Adam through Enoch and Noah “on down to the Abrahamic covenant”: “the covenant is best elaborated in connection with Abraham wherein it is called an ‘everlasting covenant’…. He was not the first to receive it.”

The answer, then, reaches past Canaan. The meek “shall inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:5) when it is sanctified for “the poor and the meek of the earth,” so “that bodies who are of the celestial kingdom may possess it forever and ever” (D&C 88:17–20). “Thus, Abraham’s seed (the faithful) will have the earth throughout all eternity as well as during mortality.” And the seed are all who receive the gospel, who “shall be called after thy name, and shall be accounted thy seed” (Abr. 2:10).

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. George A. Pierce, “The Ancestors of Israel and the Environment of Canaan in the Early Second Millennium BC”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 163–92. Old Testament Revision 1, The Joseph Smith Papers. Joseph Smith Translation, Genesis 9, Gospel Library. Aaron P. Schade and Matthew L. Bowen, “Moses 7: Enoch’s Vision of the Earth, the Savior, and Zion’s Return”, In The Book of Moses: From the Ancient of Days to the Latter Days (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 313–38. George A. Horton Jr., “Insights into the Book of Genesis”, In The Joseph Smith Translation: The Restoration of Plain and Precious Truths, ed. Monte S. Nyman and Robert L. Millet (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1985), 51–70. Genesis 12–17: Abraham—Father of the Faithful, Old Testament Student Manual: Genesis–2 Samuel (Church Educational System, 2003).

16 And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered.

Related Scriptures #

Dust, stars, and sand

The promise is made to a man with no children: “Sarai was barren; she had no child” (Gen. 11:30).

The promise is made to a man with no children: “Sarai was barren; she had no child” (Gen. 11:30). Stephen notices the same thing: God promised the land “to his seed after him, when as yet he had no child” (Acts 7:5). A numerous posterity heads the list of the covenant’s promises.

The image grows as the story goes on. Here the seed is dust; later it is stars (Gen. 15:5), and then stars and sand together (Gen. 22:17). When the promise passes to Jacob, both parts of this chapter come with it: “thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south” (Gen. 28:14).

Latter-day revelation carries the count past this life. Abraham’s seed were “to continue so long as they were in the world; and as touching Abraham and his seed, out of the world they should continue; both in the world and out of the world should they continue as innumerable as the stars” (D&C 132:30). And the Lord adds, “This promise is yours also, because ye are of Abraham” (D&C 132:31).

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Genesis 12–17; Abraham 1–2, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025).

17 Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee.

Related Scriptures #

Walking a land he never owned

The Lord tells Abram to walk the land, and he spends the rest of his life doing so.

The Lord tells Abram to walk the land, and he spends the rest of his life doing so. “Through the course of Abraham’s life, he travels up and down the land of Canaan, in preparation for the divine promises to inherit it,” and the altars he builds at places like Shechem, Beth-el, and Hebron “define and delineate the land for his descendants.”

He never owned it, apart from a grave. Stephen says God “gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on” (Acts 7:5). In Canaan Abraham lived in tents, and when Sarah died he had to buy a burial plot (Gen. 23:3–20), the only piece of the promised land he ever legally owned. Hebrews makes that the measure of his faith: he “sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles,” because “he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Heb. 11:9–10). He and his family “died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off” (Heb. 11:13).

Sources: Avram R. Shannon, “Abraham: A Man of Relationships”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 279–310. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. John Gee, “The Wanderings of Abraham”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 251–78. George A. Pierce, “The Ancestors of Israel and the Environment of Canaan in the Early Second Millennium BC”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 163–92.

18 Then Abram removed his tent, and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar unto the LORD.

Context #

Hebron and the oaks of Mamre

Abram settled not on a “plain” but by trees: the Hebrew is elonei Mamre, “the oaks (or terebinths) of Mamre.”

Abram settled not on a “plain” but by trees: the Hebrew is elonei Mamre, “the oaks (or terebinths) of Mamre.” Such a tree was a landmark, often “marking shrine, & hence used in topographic designations,” and named for its owner. Mamre was a man, an Amorite who with his brothers was “confederate with Abram” (Gen. 14:13).

Hebron lies about 20 miles south of Jerusalem and more than 3,000 feet above the Mediterranean. Excavation there has found a town of the Middle Bronze Age with a fortification wall “faced with a stone rampart” and “a tower adjoined to the city wall.” It became the family’s burial place: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Leah were buried there, and Jacob asked to be (Gen. 23:19; Gen. 49:29–32), and centuries later it was David’s first capital (2 Sam. 5:3–5). The first thing Abram does there, as at Shechem and Beth-el, is build an altar to the Lord.

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Hebron”, Bible Dictionary. George A. Pierce, “The Ancestors of Israel and the Environment of Canaan in the Early Second Millennium BC”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 163–92.

Seeing Christ in Genesis 13

The promise in this chapter is made “to thee… and to thy seed” (verse 15). Paul reads that seed as one person: “Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ” (Gal. 3:16). His words point back to this verse and to Gen. 17:7–8. Among the promises of the covenant, “Jesus Christ would be born through his lineage,” and the inheritance passes through Him to all who are His: “if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 3:29).

Abram also receives the promise in a Christlike way. He yields his right to a younger kinsman for the sake of peace, and the incident “provides an excellent insight into Abraham’s Christlike nature.”

Worth exploring next

Abraham’s own account of the journey. Read Abr. 2:15–25 beside Gen. 12:4–20 and verses 1–4 of this chapter.
Lot’s story continued. Gen. 14:12–16; Gen. 19; 2 Pet. 2:6–9. RoseAnn Benson, “Lot: Likened to Noah,” in From Creation to Sinai (BYU Religious Studies Center), reads Lot with the help of the Joseph Smith Translation and the Book of Abraham.
One everlasting covenant. JST Gen. 9:21–25 (in the Joseph Smith Translation appendix); Moses 7:62–64; D&C 132:29–31.
Strangers and pilgrims. Heb. 11:8–16; Acts 7:2–5.

Sources & further reading

The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub.
Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.
New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, National Council of Churches, 2021; on BibleGateway.
Old Testament Revision 1, The Joseph Smith Papers.
Joseph Smith Translation, Genesis 9, Gospel Library.
“Gomorrah”, Bible Dictionary.
“Hebron”, Bible Dictionary.
Genesis 12–17; Abraham 1–2, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025).
Genesis 12–17: Abraham—Father of the Faithful, Old Testament Student Manual: Genesis–2 Samuel (Church Educational System, 2003).
Avram R. Shannon, “Abraham: A Man of Relationships”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 279–310.
John Gee, “The Wanderings of Abraham”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 251–78.
RoseAnn Benson, “Lot: Likened to Noah”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 311–34.
George A. Pierce, “The Ancestors of Israel and the Environment of Canaan in the Early Second Millennium BC”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 163–92.
Aaron P. Schade and Matthew L. Bowen, “Moses 7: Enoch’s Vision of the Earth, the Savior, and Zion’s Return”, In The Book of Moses: From the Ancient of Days to the Latter Days (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 313–38.
George A. Horton Jr., “Insights into the Book of Genesis”, In The Joseph Smith Translation: The Restoration of Plain and Precious Truths, ed. Monte S. Nyman and Robert L. Millet (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1985), 51–70.
L. Tom Perry, “The Power of Deliverance”, general conference, Apr. 2012.
The Epistle to the Galatians, The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges; online at Bible Hub.
Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub.

I’ve studied Genesis 13