Bible Synapse
Did Abraham know where he was going?
Hard question · Creation, the flood and the patriarchs · raised by 2 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
God tells Abram to leave his country and kindred and go “unto a land that I will shew thee”.
Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee:
Abram and his household set out “to go into the land of Canaan”, and they arrive there.
And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.
Only once Abram is in Canaan does God say, “Unto thy seed will I give this land.”
And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the land. And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto him.
By faith Abraham obeyed and went out “not knowing whither he went”, and lived in the land of promise as a stranger.
By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:
The objection
Genesis says that Abram set out “to go into the land of Canaan” and got there (Genesis 12:5). Hebrews says he went out “not knowing whither he went” (Hebrews 11:8). If his destination was Canaan, he knew where he was going.
The answer
Hebrews describes the call; Genesis 12:5 describes the journey as the narrator, writing afterwards, knew it ended. God’s call named no land: Abram was to go “unto a land that I will shew thee” (Genesis 12:1), and Stephen quotes the call in the same terms (Acts 7:3). Abram may have known the general direction, since his father Terah had already set out from Ur for Canaan and stopped at Haran (Genesis 11:31). But he did not know which land God meant to give him, or what it would be like, until he arrived and God said, “Unto thy seed will I give this land” (Genesis 12:7).
Hebrews stresses exactly this: he went out to a place “which he should after receive for an inheritance”, without knowing where that place would be. Even in Canaan he lived in tents and moved from place to place as a stranger (Hebrews 11:9; Genesis 12:8–9). Genesis 12:5 tells where the road led; Hebrews 11:8 tells what Abraham knew when he set out.
From the classic commentators
He does not say, ‘It is a land that I will give thee,’ but merely, ‘a land that I will show thee.’ Nor does he tell him what land it was, nor what kind of landMatthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, on Genesis 12:1
yet, when God called him to go forth, and he prepared to obey his call, he knew not what land he was to go into; for it is only said, Genesis 12:1, unto a land that I will show theeJohn Gill, Exposition of the Bible, on Hebrews 11:8