Abram: Terah: Lot—Bushel: Bed: Candlestick
There is an unhappy completeness in the typical character of Abrams life—its triumphs are checkered by defeats, and its virtues blended with failures. It would ill become us to dwell with any complacency on these failures of so great and eminent a servant of God. Nevertheless they are recorded for our instruction and warning; certainly not for our approval and imitation. After all, they were infirmities of a noble mind, they were “spots on the sun,” they were the failures of virtue, not of vice, and originated in a disposition for concession in grace—of all dispositions the most to be desired and feared.
The first case was, that he seemed very slow to sever himself from his home and kindred as God required. Instead of his going boldly and directly forth at the divine call, we read “Terah took Abram." Now in a matter of this sort he ought to have ignored family relationships, for God had told him to leave his kindred. It might have been all very well for Terah to have accompanied Abram, but for Terah to take him! Well, we see the result: they travel as far as Haran, a populous commercial center where several caravan routes converged, but for the man of faith “a dry place,” as the name signifies; and here they settle down until death dissolves this incongruous arrangement and sets Abram free. Other failures are found in the untruthful compact with Sarai—probably it was failure for him to go down to Egypt at all, even to “sojourn” —and in the case of Hagar. In the first failure we see the slowness of the flesh; in the last the haste of it. In every case there is a failing of faith, his especial virtue. So Moses, the meekest man in the earth, fails in his meekness at Meribah: so David, the most valorous, fails in his courage at Gath: so wise Solomon failed in his wisdom; patient Job in his patience; and Paul the greatest of all innovators, yet clings to a rag of the dying ritual, and shaves his head at Cenchrea.
Terah represents a very large and well-known class of persons who start well and stop short in the journey: an encumbrance to themselves and all connected with them. A prosperous and comfortable place like Haran they find very agreeable to settle down in much more agreeable than struggling through a hostile wilderness. And yet it is indeed “a dry place;” and they find instead of true ease they have, like the ass of Issachar, bowed down to a double burden, and that, (like the ass of Buridanus which was said to be placed between two bundles of hay, and could not make up its mind which to eat till it died of starvation,) they have the satisfaction neither of Ur nor of Canaan, the pleasures neither of this life nor of that which is to come. If the influence of these lukewarm and commercial spirits ended with themselves, it would not matter much; for the loss of their services is not of any particular consequence. But unfortunately their influence is extensive and powerful in staying the foot and paralyzing the arm of many an Abram from that day to this. Family relationships are very frequent elements in reference to these things. It is possible that Terah was a real believer, though an inconsistent one: at least it is certain he was a “professor.” There is a great deal about him in the Koran, which represents him as a highly respectable person, moving in the best circles. The eastern authors, all represent him as having been the inventor of images instead of pictures for idols, a material and aesthetic advance in divinity which proves him to have been a man of much religiousness, if not of much religion.
The aim to make the best of both worlds generally results in losing both, like the dog which lost the morsel he did possess by trying to snap at that other morsel which he saw reflected in the water. In this case Hesiod's dictum may be inverted: the whole is considerably less than the half. Augustine said, “God does not wish a man to lose his riches but merely to change their place.” But Terah managed to lose his without their much changing place, leaving them all behind him. Speaking of a lately deceased American millionaire, a man inquired there of his friend, “How much did he leave?” “Every dollar!” was the reply.
Now Lot's case is entirely different; he was “a righteous man:” there is no doubt of that, though probably nobody would ever have imagined such a thing, had not Peter speaking by inspiration, stated it. Instead of being, like Terah, a creditable and religious man of the world, Lot was a really discreditable if not irreligious believer. He was certainly justified by faith, brought into Canaan—fully into the then divine favors and privileges; and yet he was a dishonor to God, a burden and anxiety to Abraham, and a cause of shame and misery to all who were connected with him. Not lost but saved by faith, he yet walked by sight—an uncouth combination. These crossbred beings are never comely and always sterile, and, whether they be symmetrical as a centaur or distorted as a Caliban, they are monstrosities, blotches and warts on the fair face of nature. Lot's name means “hiding” and Terah's “delay": Lot's case is the hiding a light under a bushel (i.e. business); Terah's case is the attempt to hide a light (Abram) under a bed (i.e. ease, slumber, luxury)—at Haran.
Now both these temptations followed Abram in order to extinguish his testimony: he was too noble and elevated a man for so sordid a temptation as the bushel to have much effect on: but these large and dignified natures are peculiarly susceptible to the temptations of ease, otium runs dig., and so he was thus obscured at Haran. No vulgar bushel could have ever covered the brilliant light of David also, but “at the time when kings go forth to battle, David sent Joab” against Rabbah, instead of going himself Sloth began the work which dishonor and death finished. It was the darkest hour of his life.
It would be very incorrect to infer that repose or business prosperity are represented as bad things in themselves; this was the Thessalonian mistake, which the apostle corrects by telling them, (1) “to study to be quiet; and” (2) “to do their own business.” What is condemned is the being so absorbed in either one or the other as to be hindered in the Lord's service. It is not that the bed or bushel is bad; it is putting candles under them that is to be condemned: the best thing that can happen then is for the candle to set fire to the whole concern. Abraham was a candle set on a candle-stick giving light to all the house. The Jewish Rabbis had a saying that “a candle lights a hundred men as well as one.” Abraham's candle has lit a hundred generations and is not out yet. All this notwithstanding that he was a rich man.
But he had inward prosperity as well as outward. Torah was paste in a golden setting; Lot was a diamond in a clay setting— “a jewel in a swine's snout;” but Abraham was a diamond in a golden setting. Torah was like that Spanish Hidalgo whose friends thought him wealthy, but who, in his hidden life, was so poor as to eat with avidity the remains of a beggar's dinner. Lot was like the miser Daniel Dancer, who had enormous wealth but ate scraps from the bones he dragged out of the dogs' mouths. And there are lives like his still—those who struggle with sinners for morsels of carrion, whilst they themselves are possessors of heavenly estates and endowments. But Abram, “lofty patriarch,” is a truly rich man in every sense, inwardly and outwardly; he has a large, strong, generous, and richly endowed nature; he responds in every action to that noblest of mottoes, Noblesse oblige. He is a light in the darkness; an obedient servant to Almighty God; a gracious master to his own servants; a self-sacrificing friend, and a magnanimous foe; the father of the faithful, and the friend of God.