Hi Jim You wrote:
> But it wouldn’t make sense, would it, to tell us once, much less twice, > that at that time there were Canaanites dwelling in the land of Canaan? Why > would that fact cause both Abram and Lot to leave the Bethel area, which is > the context here? Wherever both Abram and Lot or either of them went in > Canaan, there would always be Canaanites in the land of Canaan. If H-KN(NY > means the tribe of the Canaanites in those two verses, in the plural, how > does > that explain Abram’s wise decision that both Abram and Lot should leave the > Bethel area, and also that there was no need for Abram and Lot to continue to > sojourn together? (i) If the Canaanites and Perizzites were potentially > hostile tribes, shouldn’t Abram and Lot have stayed together (whether at > Bethel > or elsewhere), despite their quarreling herdsmen? The way I always used to read this was not so much that the Canaanites were hostile (cf. Abraham's covenant with Aner and his brothers), but that in addition to the huge numbers of Abraham and Lot's flocks, the Canaanites also used part of the land, making the available land even less for the tent-dwellers'/pastoralists' flocks. Thus the emphasis is simply on the fact that the available land became "too narrow" for both Abraham and Lot, especially since there were other (sedentary?) tribes in the land as well. That they both left Bethel can simply be explained by the fact that the grazing in the area has been exhausted by the combination of flocks (at least until the veld has had some rest). Regards Chavoux Luyt _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
