Terah’s Descendants
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What Does Genesis 11:28 Mean?
Genesis 11:26-31
Very early, Lot is associated directly with what the scholars call the "holy line," which came through the Flood via Shem. Adam's life overlapped Methuselah's by 243 years. Starting at the beginning, Adam, we jump to Methuselah, and Adam still lived another 243 years. Methuselah lived right up to the Flood; he probably died in it. However, during his last 98 years, Shem was alive. Shem, then, was a direct connection, along with his father Noah, from Adam and Seth through the Flood.
Shem lived for another 500 years after the birth of Arphaxad, who came when Shem was 100 years old. Shem lived to the ripe old age of 600 years. During the last 150 years of his life, Abraham was alive. Now we have direct connections from Adam to Methuselah to Shem to Abraham. There were 150 years that Shem could relate things directly to Abraham that took place even before the Flood. All of that experience, all of that personal history, could be passed on directly to Abraham, who was the uncle of Lot.
Lot's father, Haran, died, and Abram became Lot's adopted father, his guardian. But do not think that Lot was young. Even if Lot was only 25 years younger than Abram (and he might have been even closer to his age), when they left his own land and went to Caanan, Lot was already 50 years old, and he, too, had lived in close proximity to Shem. So the righteous Shem could pass on the history and the purpose of God directly to Abraham and Lot.
Moses was a couple of generations removed, yet his faith was far greater than was Lot's, who lived during those times. In Lot, we are not dealing with someone with no background and without access to learning the things of God directly from His righteous servants.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Faith (Part Three)
Other Forerunner Commentary entries containing Genesis 11:28:
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