"1: Now G-d said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will show thee 2: and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make they name great; and be thou a blessing"
Imagine my surprise later in life when I actually read the two verses immediately preceding these in Gen. 11!
31: And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there. 32: And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.
So Abraham was not even in his homeland then! This is an example of what Biblical scholars call a "doublet," the same basic story retold with the details slightly different. Abraham goes from Mespotamia to Canaan, but the circumstance are very different. Instead of a Divine call, in the first version Abraham is just following his father. Genesis is full of examples of doublets [see earlier post]. What surprised me, however, is how many doublets written together end up get split into different Parshas (Weekly Torah Portions). Since the topic is the same, rightfully they should not be broken up this way. But it usually happens that the first one is relegated to the end of a Parsha to be mostly overlooked, while the second, which starts the next week's reading, becomes famous and talked about in Sermons constantly. Another example is the foretelling of the birth of Issac:
Gen 17:6 And I will bless her [Sarah], and moreover I will give thee a son of her: yea, I will bless her, and she shall be [a mother of] nations; kings of peoples shall be of her. 17 Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is a hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?...19 And God said, Nay, but Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son; and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his seed after him...21 But my covenant will I establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year...
Gen 18:1 And G-d appeared unto him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day;2 and he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood over against him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself to the earth,... 9 And they said unto him, Where is Sarah thy wife? And he said, Behold, in the tent.10 And he said, I will certainly return unto thee when the season cometh round; and, lo, Sarah thy wife shall have a son. And Sarah heard in the tent door, which was behind him. 11 Now Abraham and Sarah were old, [and] well stricken in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women.12 And Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also? 13 And G-d said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a surety bear a child, who am old? 14 Is anything too hard for G-d? At the set time I will return unto thee, when the season cometh round, and Sarah shall have a son.
Here the elements are very similar. A prediction is made that Sarah will have a son. Someone laughs (which is how Isaac gets his name, since it is related to the Hebrew word for laughter) since Abraham and Sarah are both advanced in age, then G-d affirms the promise. But the second story, which leads off the Parasha "Va'yera," is MUCH more famous than the narrative with Abraham alone. While it is possible to read the stories consecutively, it makes more sense to say that they both came from the same source - analogous to the duplication and subsequent mutation of a gene.
