Now it happened one evening,when the red sun had disappeared beneath the dark blue mountain ridges,that Abraham was sitting in front of his tent.He was contented with life,for now at last the promise of Jehovah,made in the old days in the land of Ur,was about to come true.Abraham,who had never had a son,expected his wife Sarah to give him a baby.
He was thinking of this and of many other things,when three strangers came walking down the road.They were tired and dusty and Abraham bade them enter and rest for a while.Sarah was called and she hastily cooked some dinner and afterwards they all sat and talked underneath the tree where they had eaten.
When it grew late,the strangers said that they must be on their way.Abraham offered to show them the nearest road.Then he learned that they were going to Sodom and Gomorrah.Suddenly he recognised that he had been host to Jehovah and two of his angels.
He could well imagine what their mission was,and forever loyal to his own people,he asked that mercy might be shown to Lot and his wife and children.
This Jehovah promised.He went further than that.He promised that he would spare the two cities if he could find fifty or thirty or even ten decent people in either of them.
He does not seem to have been very successful.
For late that evening,Lot received warning that he must at once take his family and bring them to safety,as both Sodom and Gomorrah were to be burned to ashes before morning.He was told to make all possible haste and that he must not waste his time by looking backwards to see what was happening.
Lot obeyed.He awakened his wife and his children and they walked all night,as fast as they could,that they might get to the village of Zoar before morning.
But ere they reached a place of safety,Lot had lost his wife.
She was just a little bit too curious.The sky was red and she knew that all her neighbours were burning to death.
She peeped just once.
But Jehovah saw it.He changed the woman into a pillar of salt and Lot was left a widower with two young daughters.One of these afterwards became the mother of Moab,after whom the tribe of the Moabites was called,and the name of the son of the other was Ben-Ammi.He founded in turn the well-known tribe of the Ammonites.
The sad experience of Lot had greatly depressed Abraham.He too decided to move away from his present whereabouts and farther away from the blackened ruins of the wicked cities and their vile memory.
He left the forest and the plains of Mamre,and once more went westward until he almost reached the shores of the Mediterranean.
The region along the coast was inhabited by a race of men who had come from the distant island of Crete.Their capital city,Cnossos,had been destroyed by an unknown enemy a thousand years before the days of Abraham.Those who had escaped had tried to get a foothold in Egypt,but they had been driven away by the armies of Pharaoh.They had then sailed eastward,and as they were much better armed than the Canaanites,they had been able to conquer a narrow strip of land along the shore of the big sea.
The Egyptians had called these people Philistines,and they in turn called their own country Philistia,or,as we now say,Palestine.
The Philistines were forever at war with all their neighbours,and they and the Jews never stopped quarrelling until the Romans came and made an end to their independence.Their ancestors had been the most civilised people of the western world,when the Jews were still rough shepherds.They had known how to make iron swords when the peasants of Mesopotamia were killing each other with clubs and stone axes.This will explain to you why a few Philistines could for so many centuries hold their own against thousands and thousands of Canaanites and Jews.
All the same,Abraham and his army of retainers marched bravely into the land of Philistia,and settled down near Beer-Sheba.There they built an altar to Jehovah.They dug a deep well that they might have fresh water at all hours,and they planted a grove that their children might enjoy the cool shade of the trees.
It was really a pleasant home and here the son of Abraham and Sarah was born.His parents called him Isaac,which means “laughter,”for surely it was happiness to have an heir when both the father and the mother had given up all hope.
At a matter of fact,during the years of waiting,when it seemed that there would be no descendants,Abraham had taken unto himself a second wife.This was according to the custom of the time and the country.Even to-day,many people in Asia and Africa,who belong to the Mohammedan religion,are allowed to have two or three wives.
The second wife of Abraham was not a Jewess.She was an Egyptian slave girl,named Hagar.Sarah,quite naturally,did not like her at all,and when Hagar had become the mother of a boy,who was called Ishmael,Sarah began to hate the other woman and tried to destroy her.
Of course,it was natural for Ishmael and his half-brother to play together on the farm.Most likely at times they quarrelled,and I have no doubt but that sometimes they engaged in a merry fight.
All this Sarah took with very ill grace.
She was much older and not half as pretty as Hagar.She wanted to get rid of this dangerous rival for her husband's affection for all time,and she wanted to get rid of her right then and there.
She went to Abraham and insisted that he send Hagar and Ishmael away.Abraham refused.After all,Ishmael was his own son and he loved the boy.It would not be fair.
But Sarah was firm,and at last,Jehovah Himself told Abraham that he had better follow his wife's wishes.There was no use arguing.
