By Joseph Shulam.
The Torah Portion for this Shabbat is Genesis 12:1-17:27.
The Haftarah is from Isaiah 40:27 – 41:16.
Romans 4:1-25 and Galatians 4:21- 5:1 in the New Testament.
This week’s Torah portion is another vital and programmatic text for God’s scheme of redemption of all humanity. Reading the Torah and the Prophets and from the New Covenant is foundational.
The Torah portion in Hebrew is “Lech Lecha.” Lech Lecha are the words that God commands Abraham in Genesis chapter 12:1:
“Now the Lord had said to Abram: Get out of your country, from your family and your father’s house, To a land that I will show you.” (Genesis 12:1 NKJV).
This command of God to Abraham is short and straightforward, but it changed the history of all humanity. We must consider what Genesis 11 tells us: Abraham and his family come from the city of UR, in Babylon, on the shores of one of the two ancient and vital rivers in the world, the Tigris and the Euphrates. We must consider that Abraham was raised in a great city like New York, and his family moved from Ur (New York) to Nashville, Tennessee. From Nashville, Tennessee, God tells him to leave and go to where I will show you; start walking!
Genesis 12:5 states:
“Then Abram took Sarai, his wife, and Lot, his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they departed to the land of Canaan. So they came to the land of Canaan.” (Genesis 12:5 NKJV).
The phrase: “The People (souls) that they had acquired in Haran” is written in this verse. What does it mean? It could possibly mean that Abraham had purchased – Acquired people (souls) in Haran to come with him as his slaves. I assert that this meaning In Hebrew in the Bible and modern Hebrew today is that “Acquire Souls” (people) is the classical word that means to evangelize.
How many men did Abraham acquire in Haran? We read in Genesis 14 that Abraham had 318 trained men between the ages of 20 – and 50 who went with Abraham to fight the five Canaanite Kings from the North of Damascus and took Lot and his family as captives north with them. Abraham organizes these 318 men who are living with him in his encampment and chases the northern enemies – recaptures Lot and his family and the plundered properties of the people of Hebron and other locations. His family took the plundered booty and came to Jerusalem to restore the property the five northern kings had plundered. In that ancient Semitic society, men aged 20 to 50 typically had wives and children, making the number of men with their families over 1000. The Camp of Abraham was made up of people whom Abraham evangelized in Haran – to make souls in Hebrew, which even today translates as convert – Evangelise – convert to Judaism.
Interestingly, on his deathbed, Jacob tells Joseph and his boys the following”
“The Angel who has redeemed me from all evil, Bless the lads; Let my name be named upon them, And the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; And let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.” (Genesis 48:16 NKJV).
In this English translation of the New King James Version, we have a problem with the sentence, “And let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.” The Hebrew written here uses the Hebrew word “vayidgu,” meaning “They fished and let them multiply.”
״דג״ (Dag) means “Fish,” and in this form, this ought to carry the Hebrew meaning of FISH in the form of “THEY, ABRAHAM and ISAAC FISHED” for man and acquired a multitude of men! In Genesis chapter 12:5, we read that Abraham had “made souls in Haran” – or literally, Abraham had acquired souls in Haran.
Here is a more literal translation of Genesis 48:16, including this word:
“The angel that has redeemed me from all evil bless the lads; and let my name be called upon them and the name of my fathers, Abraham and Isaac; and let them be as fishers and increase in the midst of the earth.”
From this passage of scripture, Yeshua utilizes the same concept that He will make his disciples fishers of men like Abraham and Isaac, just as their ancestors did!
How many of us would receive an order to pack up the family and load everything and not know exactly where we are going or when we will arrive? I believe that is why God didn’t specifically say to Abraham, “I am sending you to the land of Canaan!” Because the land of Canaan was a total mess. Within the land, seven nations came from three continents: Asia, Europe, and Africa.
We have the names of the seven nations that inhabited the land of Canaan.
Cannanites – the general term for the inhabitants of the land.
Hittites: A group from Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) who settled in Canaan.
Hivites – Often associated with the northern regions of Canaan.
Jebusites – Inhabitants of Jerusalem before King David conquered it.
Girgashites – A less often mentioned group whose exact location is debated.
Perizzites – Often described as rural dwellers or inhabitants of the open countryside.
Amorites – A significant group mentioned throughout the Hebrew Bible, often associated with the highlands.
These nations represented a mix of ethnicities and cultures that occupied Canaan at the time. Their presence and conflicts with the Israelites are detailed throughout the Torah and the historical narratives from the Book of Joshua to the end of the Book of Kings.
This Parasha also contains the basis for the redemption of the whole world right from the first verses of Genesis 12:1-4.
“Now the Lord had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you, And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Genesis 12:1-3 NKJV.
God’s choice of Abraham and his seed was meant to bless those who bless Abraham and his seed through Isaac, Jacob, and all of Israel.
One of the most essential words in the story of Abraham is a small word transliterated to English as Hineni – “Here I am”! The whole meaning of this tiny word in Hebrew is: “Here I am, Lord! I am ready to do anything you ask me to do!” Abraham used this word to respond to God more than any other character in the Bible. In chapter Genesis 22, Abraham responds to God’s most outrageous demand: sacrificing his son Isaac on the altar. Abraham responds with Hineni – Here I am, Lord, three times.
For this reason, Abraham is considered the father of monotheism—faith in one God. The world after the flood was not free from idolatry. Idolatry was born in the Tower of Babylon, as recorded in Genesis 11, and it is also mentioned in Deuteronomy 4:19 and Deuteronomy 32.
The essence of biblical faith is the belief in One God only. All monotheistic faiths trace their origin to Abraham; he discovered that there is one God and took that truth to the children of Israel and from them to the ends of the world. Yeshua, our Messiah, took the idea of one God across the oceans and the mountains to the rest of the world through his disciples.
Problems with Christianity are not found in the pages of God’s Word, the Bible. The issues of Christianity are in the decisions made by church councils that were convened by pagan priests, without one Jewish Disciples of Yeshua invited to participate in these councils. The agenda of these politburo participants in these councils was to paganize the 4th Century Church and make it a pseudo-restoration of the old Roman Empire. The intention of the church counsels was not spiritual or biblical but political.
The first two of the Ten Commandments express the Biblical belief in One God.
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. “You shall have no other gods before Me.”
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” (Exodus 20:2-6 NKJV)
The apostle Paul makes his stand on this truth 100% clear. This is in no way a negation of the divinity of Yeshua, his sonship, or his Messiahship in any way.
“Yet for us, there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live.” (1 Corinthians 8:6)
The whole Bible is the work of the Holy Spirit of God. It is consistent with this most basic of all Biblical truths – We have one God, the Father of all Creation, and we have Yeshua, the Messiah, who is our Savior and Redeemer sent from God with all authority given to him in heaven and on earth. Yeshua is divine because of the authority given to him by the Father, who is the head over Yeshua, as men are the head over his wife.
1 Corinthians 11:3,
“But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.”
Abraham was the first after the flood to believe in ONE GOD, and his dedication and obedience to that God is the example and paradigm that ought to be adopted by every human being who claims to be a disciple of Yeshua, our Messiah and Lord.
I realize this issue is complicated for people raised in denominational Christianity. I also recognize that it is not an easy concept to understand, but the clear teaching from the commandments to the book of Revelation is that God is one, and at the end of the history of this world, there will be ONE GOD that all shall worship and bow down to Him. Our father, Abraham, the father of all believers, is the pioneer who discovered the oneness of God and spread it through the seed of Israel worldwide.
It all started with the portion Lech Lecha, which is being read in every synagogue worldwide this Shabbat, November 9th, 2024.
If your church doesn’t read the biblical texts, I suggest you sit down with your family and read them.