The Ancient Witnesses

120 • The Ancient Witnesses: A Journey to Discover Our Sacred Roots

will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. 2 Mentor held up his hand as a signal for Cesar to pause the reading. “Abram obeys the voice of God and makes his way to Canaan,” Mentor summarized, then prompted Cesar to continue his reading. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your seed I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. “If we compare Abram with Noah, for God also made a promise to Noah’s seed,” 3 explained Mentor, “we see that His promise to Abram’s seed includes a personal blessing, ‘I will bless you and make your name great…’, and the promise of land. Thus, we read of the Lord’s intention to create a new nation from Abram’s seed. ‘I will make of you a great nation’” he says, “and ‘to your seed I will give this land.’” “While the Hebrews sojourned in Canaan,” Mentor continued, “they had no homeland and were not a people. 4 Now, God adopts them, promising to make them his own.” 5

2 Gen. 12:2-3,7.

3 See Gen. 9.

4 See Deut. 26:5 and Hos. 1:9-10.

5 Exod. 6:7.