Abraham's life
Genesis 11:2–25:11
Out of Ur with his father, up the river to Haran, down the ridge of Canaan, into Egypt and back, and finally into the only piece of that land he ever owned — the cave at Machpelah he paid four hundred shekels for, and was buried in. Every stage below draws the verses that move him, one sentence at a time.
The road before the call
Genesis 11:2–32
The story does not begin at the call. Terah takes the family out of Ur for Canaan and stops halfway, at Haran, and it is his son who finishes the road.
The call and the ridge
Genesis 12:1–9
Seventy-five years old, walking out of the town his father died in, and then four hundred miles south to the oak of Moreh. The camp between Bethel and Ai is the most precisely sited sentence in his life.
- Genesis 12:4Seventy-five years old, walking out of the town his father died in
- Genesis 12:5The road Genesis 11:31 set out on, finished
- Genesis 12:6The first place inside the land, and the first altar beside it
- Genesis 12:8A tent on the ridge with a town on either side of it, and an altar
- Genesis 12:9A direction of travel, and no arrival
Travel to Egypt
Genesis 12:10–13:2
The hill country lives on rain and the Nile does not, so a famine sends him down to Egypt — and the only verse that walks the famine road backwards brings him up again.
The parting from Lot
Genesis 13:3–18
Back to the exact camp he left, and then the ground is too small for both of them. Lot looks east at the valley, takes it, and pitches as far as Sodom; Abram settles at the oaks of Mamre, and everything after this happens from there.
- Genesis 13:3Fifty miles north to the exact patch of ground he left
- Genesis 13:10Well watered everywhere, like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt
- Genesis 13:11He took the whole valley, and they separated from each other
- Genesis 13:12Two men settle in one verse, and only one of them has a town
- Genesis 13:18The address he keeps for the rest of his life
The campaign of the four kings
Genesis 14
A war that starts nine hundred miles away and ends with Abram's nephew carried off. Ten verses of it are on the map, because almost every verse of the chapter is a place being reached — the march down the Transjordan, the battle in the Valley of Siddim, the pursuit to Dan, and Melchizedek at Salem on the way home.
- Genesis 14:1Four kings, four countries, and nine hundred miles between the first and the last
- Genesis 14:5Three peoples beaten in one sentence, on a road running south
- Genesis 14:6As far south as the road goes, and then the wilderness
- Genesis 14:7Then they turned back, and came at the rebels from the south-west
- Genesis 14:8Six place names in one verse, and every one of them lands on the same dot
- Genesis 14:12The verse where a war becomes Abraham's business
- Genesis 14:14Three hundred and eighteen men, and a hundred and thirty miles
- Genesis 14:15He divided his forces by night, and did not stop at the border
- Genesis 14:17Two kings come out to meet him, and the map only knows where one of them is going
- Genesis 14:18The first time Jerusalem appears in the Bible, under a shorter name
The covenant and Hagar
Genesis 15–17
A land grant with two borders on it, and a woman running for Egypt who is stopped at a spring on the road to Shur. The well she names is fixed between Kadesh and Bered, and the story comes back to it twice more.
The road to Sodom, and the plain destroyed
Genesis 18–19
The men set out from Mamre and look down toward the plain, Abraham walking them out. What follows is the single event the whole southern Dead Sea frame exists for, and the morning after it he stands on the same ridge and sees the smoke.
- Genesis 18:16The one view in Abraham's life that decides something
- Genesis 19:1Thirty miles and four thousand feet, done between a meal and nightfall
- Genesis 19:23A journey with a time on it, and two answers to how far it was
- Genesis 19:24The single event the whole southern Dead Sea frame exists for
- Genesis 19:28Abraham's own verse in the chapter, and he is thirty miles away in it
- Genesis 19:30The last movement in the story of the plain, and it is uphill
Journey to Gerar
Genesis 20
The whole of Abraham's move south in one sentence, with four places on it: away from the ridge, between Kadesh and Shur, and then sojourning in Gerar.
Beersheba and Moriah
Genesis 21–22
Hagar and Ishmael sent into the wilderness, a well and an oath that give Beersheba its name, and the three days' walk to a mountain named only once — the verse without which the whole episode is off the map.
- Genesis 21:14Bread, a skin of water, and a country given instead of a destination
- Genesis 21:21Two countries, a marriage, and no road between them the text will name
- Genesis 21:31The verse that puts the name on the map, and says what it is made of
- Genesis 21:33A tree that takes fifty years, planted by a man who lives in a tent
- Genesis 22:2A country named, a mountain withheld, and the sources forty-seven kilometres apart
- Genesis 22:14A name given to a place, and the map is not allowed to say which place
- Genesis 22:19The walk back, and the map has no honest place to start it
The field and the grave
Genesis 23:1–25:11
Sarah dies at Hebron and Abraham buys a field to bury her in: the cave, the trees and every border of it, the only ground he ever owned. He is laid in it himself by Isaac and Ishmael together, and the story goes on without him.
- Genesis 23:2The first death in the family, and the verse gives the town two names and a country
- Genesis 23:17A deed read out in full, and its one bearing does not check out
- Genesis 23:19Every name the chapter has been using, in one sentence, over a grave
- Genesis 24:10Four hundred miles back to the country the family left, and Abraham will not go
- Genesis 25:9Two sons at one grave, on the only ground he ever owned
- Genesis 25:11The story goes on without him, at the well a runaway slave named