Holly Bible - KJV with Concise Commentaries by Z Selam - HTML preview
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impossible, Mk 10:23, 24. Abram was very rich and yet very religious. Nay, as piety is a friend to outward prosperity (1Ti 4:8), so outward prosperity, if well-managed, is an ornament to piety, and furnishes an opportunity of doing so much the more good.
Very rich—compared with the pastoral tribes to which Abraham belonged. An Arab sheik is considered rich who has a hundred or two hundred tents, from sixty to a hundred camels, a thousand sheep and goats respectively. And Abram being very rich, must have far exceeded that amount of pastoral property. "Gold and silver" being rare among these peoples, his probably arose from the sale of his produce in Egypt.
3 And he went on his journeys from the south even to Beth-el, unto
the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Beth- el and Hai;
His removal to Beth-el, Ge 13:3, 4. Thither he went, not only because there he had formerly had his tent, and he was willing to go among his old acquaintance, but because there he had formerly had his altar: and, though the altar was gone (probably he himself having taken it down, when he left the place, lest it should be polluted by the idolatrous Canaanites), yet he came to the place of the altar, either to revive the remembrance of the sweet communion he had had with God in that place, or perhaps to pay the vows he had there made to God when he undertook his journey into Egypt. Long afterwards God sent Jacob to this same place on that errand (Ge 35:1), Go up to Beth-el, where thou vowedst the vow. We have need to be reminded, and should take all occasions to remind ourselves, of our solemn vows; and perhaps the place where they were made may help to bring them afresh to mind, and it may therefore do us good to visit it.
4 unto the place of the altar, which he had made there at the first:
and there Abram called on the name of the Lord.
There Abram called on the name of the Lord — He felt a strong desire to reanimate his faith and piety on the scene of his former worship: it might be to express humility and penitence for his misconduct in Egypt or thankfulness for deliverance from