"And the Lord said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, and go into a land that I will show thee: and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee and magnify thy name; and thou shall be blessed: and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee: and in thee shall all tribes of the earth be blessed."(1) Now it is to be observed that two things are promised to Abraham, the one, that his seed should possess the land of Canaan, which is intimated when it is said, "Go into a land that Iwill show thee, and I will make of thee a great nation;" but the other far more excellent, not about the carnal but the spiritual seed, through which he is the father, not of the one Israelite nation, but of all nations who follow the footprints of his faith, which was first promised in these words, "And in thee shall all tribes of the earth be blessed." Eusebius thought this promise was made in Abraham's seventy-fifth year, as if soon after it was made Abraham had departed out of Haran because the Scripture cannot be contradicted in which we read, "Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran." But if this promise was made in that year, then of course Abraham was staying in Haran with his father; for he could not depart thence unless he had first dwelt there.Does this, then, contradict what Stephen says, "The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran?" (2) But it is to be understood that the whole took place in the same year,--both the promise of God before Abraham dwelt in Haran, and his dwelling in Haran, and his departure thence, --not only because Eusebius in the Chronicles reckons from the year of this promise, and shows that after 430 years the exodus from Egypt took place, when the law was given, but because the Apostle Paul also mentions it.
CHAP.17.--OF THE THREE MOST FAMOUS KINGDOMS OF THE NATIONS, OF WHICHONE, THAT IS
THE ASSYRIAN, WAS ALREADY VERY EMINENT WHEN ABRAHAM WAS BORN.
During the same period there were three famous kingdoms of the nations, in which the city of the earth-born, that is, the society of men living according to man under the domination of the fallen angels, chiefly flourished, namely, the three kingdoms of Sicyon, Egypt, and Assyria.Of these, Assyria was much the most powerful and sublime; for that king Ninus, son of Belus, had subdued the people of all Asia except India.By Asia I now mean not that part which is one province of this greater Asia, but what is called Universal Asia, which some set down as the half, but most as the third part of the whole world,--the three being Asia, Europe, and Africa, thereby making an unequal division.For the part called Asia stretches from the south through the east even to the north; Europe from the north even to the west; and Africa from the west even to the south.Thus we see that two, Europe and Africa, contain one half of the world, and Asia alone the other half.And these two parts are made by the circumstance, that there enters tween them from the ocean all the Mediterranean water, which makes this great sea of ours.So that, if you divide the world into two parts, the east and the west, Asia will be in the one, and Europe and Africa in the other So that of the three kingdoms then famous, one, namely Sicyon, was not under the Assyrians, because it was in Europe; but as for Egypt, how could it fail to be subject to the empire which ruled all Asia with the single exception of India? In Assyria, therefore, the dominion of the impious city had the pre-eminence.Its head was Babylon,-an earth-born city, most fitly named, for it means confusion.There Ninus reigned after the death of his father Belus, who first had reigned there sixty-five years.His son Ninus, who, on his father's death, succeeded to the kingdom, reigned fifty-two years, and had been king forty-three years when Abraham was born, which was about the 1200th year before Rome was founded, as it were another Babylon in the west.
CHAP.18.--OF THE REPEATED ADDRESS OF GOD TO ABRAHAM, IN WHICH HE PROMISEDTHE
LAND OF CANAAN TO HIM AND TO HIS SEED.
Abraham, then, having departed out of Haran in the seventy-fifth year of his own age, and in the hundred and forty-fifth of his father's, went with Lot, his brother's son, and Sarah his wife, into the land of Canaan, and came even to Sichem, where again he received the divine oracle, of which it is thus written: "And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said unto him, Unto thy seed will I give this land." (3) Nothing is promised here about that seed in which he is made the father of all nations, but only about that by which he is the father of the one Israelite nation; for by this seed that land was possessed.
CHAP.19.--OF THE DIVINE PRESERVATION OF SARAH'S CHASTITY IN EGYPT, WHEN ABRAHAMHAD CALLED HER NOT HIS WIFE BUT HIS SISTER.
Having built an altar there, and called upon God, Abraham proceeded thence and dwelt in the desert, and was compelled by pressure of famine to go on into Egypt.There he called his wife his sister, and told no lie.For she was this also, because she was near of blood; just as Lot, on account of the same nearness, being his brother's son, is called his brother.Now he did not deny that she was his wife, but held his peace about it, committing to God the defence of his wife's chastity, and providing as a man against human wiles; because if he had not provided against the danger as much as he could, he would have been tempting God rather than trusting in Him.We have said enough about this matter against the calumnies of Faustus the Manichaean.At last what Abraham had expected the Lord to do took place.For Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who had taken her to him as his wife, restored her to her husband on being severely plagued.And far be it from us to believe that she was defiled by lying with another; because it is much more credible that, by these great afflictions, Pharaoh was not permitted to do this.
