Die Bibel

 

Genesis 13

Lernen

   

1 And Abram went up out of Egypt, he and his wife, and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the south.

2 And he was very rich in possession of gold and silver.

3 And he returned by the way that he came, from the south to Bethel, to the place where before he had pitched his tent between Bethel and Hai:

4 In the place of the altar which he had made before; and there he called upon the name of the Lord.

5 But Lot also, who was with Abram, had flocks of sheep, and herds of beasts, and tents.

6 Neither was the land able to bear them, that they might dwell together: for their substance was great, and they could not dwell together.

7 Whereupon also there arose a strife between the herdsmen of Abram and of Lot. And at that time the Chanaanite and the Pherezite dwelled in that country.

8 Abram therefore said to Lot: Let there be no quarrel, I beseech thee, between me and thee, and between my herdsmen and thy herdsmen: for we are brethren.

9 Behold the whole land is before thee: depart from me I pray thee: if thou wilt go to the left hand, I will take the right: if thou choose the right hand, I will pass to the left.

10 And Lot, lifting up his eyes, saw all the country about the Jordan, which was watered throughout, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrha, as the paradise of the Lord, and like Egypt as one comes to Segor.

11 And Lot chose to himself the country about the Jordan, and he departed from the east: and they were separated one brother from the other.

12 Abram dwelt in the land of Chanaan; and Lot abode in the towns that were about the Jordan, and dwelt in Sodom.

13 And the men of Sodom were very wicked, and sinners before the face of the Lord, beyond measure.

14 And the Lord said to Abram, after Lot was separated from him: Lift up thy eyes, and look from the place wherein thou now art, to the north and to the south, to the east and to the west.

15 All the land which thou seest, I will give to thee, and to thy seed for ever.

16 And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: if any man be able to number the dust of the earth, he shall be able to number thy seed also.

17 Arise and walk through the land in the length, and in the breadth thereof: for I will give it to thee.

18 So Abram removing his tent came and dwelt by the vale of Mambre, which is in Hebron: and he built there an altar to the Lord.

   

Kommentar

 

Time

  

Time is an aspect of the physical world, but it is not an aspect of the spiritual world. The same is true of space: There is no space in heaven. This is hard for us to grasp or even visualize, because we live in physical bodies with physical senses that are filled with physical elements existing in time and space. Our minds are schooled and patterned in terms of time and space, and have no reference point to imagine a reality without them. Consider how you think for a second. In your mind you can immediately be in your past or in some speculative future; in your mind you can circle the globe seeing other lands and faraway friends, or even zoom instantly to the most distant stars. Such imaginings are insubstantial, of course, but if we could make them real we would be getting close to what spiritual reality is like. Indeed, the mind is like a spiritual organ, which may be why physicians and philosophers have had such a hard time juxtaposing its functions to those of the brain. What this means in the Bible is that descriptions of time -- hours, days, weeks, months, years and even simply the word "time" itself -- represent spiritual states, and the passing of time represents the change of spiritual states. Again, we can see this a little bit within our minds. If we imagine talking to one friend then talking to another, it feels like going from one place to another, even though we're not moving. The same is true if we picture a moment from childhood and then imagine something in the future; it feels like a movement through time even though it's instantaneous. Changing our state of mind feels like a physical change in space and time. The Bible simply reverses that, with marking points in space and time representing particular states of mind.