And Jehovah said to Abram, after that Lot had separated himself from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art, northward and southward and eastward and westward;
The timing of these words matters as much as the words. Abram has just handed his nephew Lot the first choice of the land, and God speaks only after Lot has gone.
One writer reads God's timing as deliberate, and notes that God had never given this command before:
After Lot had taken the best for himself, Another settles the matter. It was disgraceful that the nephew dared to act that way in a land God had promised to Abram only. "The LORD said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him." So the Spirit notes here that everything followed the simple will of God. He was no careless onlooker, and He does not fail to clear away what hinders. Now that it was so, the LORD said, "Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward." He had never said this before.
Four verses earlier Lot lifted up his eyes and saw the well-watered plain. The same words now come to Abram. The difference lies in what each man saw:
"Lot lifted up his eyes," and what they rested on was, as you would expect, what suited his natural desires — "well-watered plains." However lovely they looked to man, in the sight of the Lord they were filled with terrible wickedness (compare verses 10 and 14). Abram, on the other hand, had let his eye wander over the length and breadth of the promised inheritance. Nothing else swayed him. He looked at the portion which God was keeping for him and his offspring, and took his position in line with it.
Lot looked; God told Abram where to look. The four directions are the point:
This is exactly what Lot had done (v. 10), but he had limited his sight to what appealed to him. God tells Abram to look to the north, south, east and west. He would give Abram and his descendants all the land that he saw. How much broader is God's view than that of our natural selfishness!
Abram's offer to take whatever Lot left was not weakness. One writer explains why he could afford it:
Abram says to Lot: take what you want, do not let us quarrel. The promise is my portion. I am a complete stranger here; the city of God is open in glory before me. His heart is set on the promises of God, and everything else is nothing in comparison. It might seem foolish to let Lot choose. The right to choose was certainly Abram's own. But his heart is elsewhere, and his faith goes entirely free from earthly advantage.
The same writer draws a wider lesson from Abram's trust:
How sweet that Abram trusted in the Lord! The whole question seemed to rest with Lot, but it really rested with the LORD. When will we learn to be that simple and trusting? We will surely learn something else at the same time. The Lord always answers a giving up of self. He answers it in His grace, in the sweet assurance of that grace to our souls, and by a better gift still through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Abram could look at the land in every direction, yet everything he had rested on a promise:
Wherever he looked around, his eye fell on part of the land of his inheritance, which God had promised to give him. But all his security for possessing that land lay in God's promise. God gave him no other guarantee about it.
Abram uses his eyes here, but only at God's direction — and a writer applies that to us:
Now Abraham uses his eyes, but at the direction of the LORD. When Lot had separated from him, the LORD said, "Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are." He is to look in every direction at the land which the LORD has given him. And it is well for us too, when we are freed from the weight of those who have no faith for the outside path. It is well if we set our minds on things above and "look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen." It is well if we seek to enjoy all that God has revealed about the world to come, the heavenly country with its city that has foundations.
- Separated — God spoke after Lot was gone; He clears away what hinders before He enlarges the vision.
- Directed — Lot lifted his eyes and chose; Abram lifted his at God's word, and God showed him north, south, east and west.
- Surrendered — Abram could give up the choice because the promise was already his. His faith went free of earthly advantage.
- Answered — no giving up of self goes unanswered by the Lord; He replies with a better gift.
- Unseen — Abram held the land by promise alone, with no other security. The same call comes to us: look at what is unseen, not only at what appeals to the eye.
for all the land that thou seest will I give to thee, and to thy seed for ever.
Lot has just taken the best of the Jordan plain for himself. Only then does God speak to Abram and tell him to lift up his own eyes. What God hands him is far larger than Lot's choice: the whole land, and forever.
Abram had the right to choose first, and he let it go.
But notice how good it is to bow before the Lord and to refuse to fight for our rights, however natural that is to the heart. The moment Abram gives up to Lot, Jehovah appears again. God never gave anyone a gift in terms as clear and as large as the one He now gives Abram. Lot lifted up his eyes, looked over the plain of Jordan, and chose the best of it. Now Jehovah speaks to Abram after Lot had separated from him — that is, after Lot had taken his ill-gotten gains. He says, "Lift up your eyes." How blessed are the words of the Lord!
Two things carry the weight of the verse. God gives the land, and He gives it forever. He asks nothing from Abram in return, and He sets no end date.
Just then, while the patriarch was living between Bethel and Ai, the Lord confirmed the promise He had made to him at Shechem — and apparently without His servant asking… The promise of the land to Abraham's seed at Shechem had been unconditional. Now he heard that his offspring would enjoy it for unlimited time. God is the God of the whole earth. He alone had the right and the power to give away any part of the globe as He pleased. He bound Himself in this way to Abraham and to his seed. What a thing it was to deal with the one true God, who could act with such grace! Abraham had once worshipped idols, and he must have felt it.
God told Abram to look over land he did not own. He had no title and no deed, and other peoples were living on the ground in front of him.
They are clearly in the place of strangers ("the Canaanites and the Perizzites were dwelling in the land"). They have nothing in possession, "not even a foot's length"; everything depends on their valuing the promises (Heb. 11:9). They have just two things, the altar and the tent. Travelling about, and worshipping God, they are strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
God promised the land to Abram himself, not only to his descendants. Abram died without owning it. So the promise reaches past the grave.
God never gave the land of Israel into the actual possession of Abraham or Isaac or Jacob while they were alive in their natural bodies; yet He did promise them the land — not merely to their children, but to themselves. So they must rise to have the land promised to them. God gave them the land in promise, but they never owned it. Since they cannot own it while they are dead, they must live again to receive the promised land.
This promise still stands over the same land today, whatever nations have fought over it since.
Not the smallest detail of what God has promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will fail. He will do it all. Despite everything said and done against it, God remembers His promises, and He will fulfil them… Dynasties have risen and played their part on the stage of this world. Thrones have been built on the apparent ruins of Jerusalem's ancient glory. Empires have flourished for a time and then fallen into decay. Ambitious rulers have fought to possess "the land of promise". All these things have happened. But the LORD has said about that land, "The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine" (Lev. 25:23).
God does not stop at the promise. He tells Abram to get up and walk through the land He has given him.
It was a turning point for Abraham as it was for Lot. God told him He would give him all the land, and said, "Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land." When he had made the good choice and accepted the portion from God, then God showed him far more fully all that He had given him… All the land is ours, but we have to realise it. It produces happy worship in the heart when we live as strangers and pilgrims, seeking nothing in the world… Gifts are precious as they put us in touch with the Giver. The love that gives is more precious than the gift.
- Give up — Abram let Lot choose first; the promise came only after he stopped defending his rights.
- Look up — Lot's own eyes picked out a fragment. God showed Abram the whole land, in every direction.
- Hold on — Abram had a tent and an altar and not one foot of ground. His entire security was the word of God.
- Rise — God promised "forever" to Abraham himself. He died without owning the land, so God must raise him to receive it.
- Walk — God gave the land first, then told Abram to cross it. We enjoy God's gifts by walking through them — and the Giver is worth more than the gift.