Free Walking the Bible by Bruce Feiler

a river; it crosses a ravine. “It’s a small country,” Avner said apologetically.
    The road has other Israeli idiosyncrasies. The first is that almost every driver—including Avner—was cradling a mobile phone. Also, every car had at least one bumper sticker, mostly on political topics, like GIVING UP TERRITORY IS DANGEROUS FOR JEWS , some were emotional, like SHALOM HAVER , or “Good-bye Friend,” which is what President Bill Clinton said at the funeral for slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. “We’re drawn to written things,” Avner said, explaining the stickers. “We’re still a people of the Book.”
    We zigzagged along the mountains for an hour while Avner began to sketch what Abraham would have found in Canaan. Though today the central hills are a mix of coffee-colored ridges, butterscotch boulders, and caramel soil—blended with groves of olive trees—the land wasn’t always this parched. In the patriarchs’ time, Canaan was a leafier place, covered with sycamores, oaks, and pistachios, as well as fields of wheat and barley. Canaanites built their cities in areas flush with trees, and thus water. Specifically this meant the Mediterranean coast, the Galilee, and the foothills of the central mountains. Abraham may have stopped in these areas, but when it came time to settle more permanently he moved farther south, to the threshold of the desert. “Wandering tribesmen didn’t need areas to cultivate,” Avner said. “They also didn’t want conflict with cities. They wanted to be on the edge of civilization.”
    After several hours we neared the edge ourselves. The browns and beiges dissolved into a chalky moonscape of ashen hills, cracked mounds, and mesas that jab the air like fists wrapped in gauze. SuddenlyAvner steered the car over, jumped out, and plopped down in the dirt. “You need a geology lesson,” he said.
    As he started constructing a model in the sand, I pulled out my Bible. After Abraham arrives in the Negev from Bethel, a severe famine strikes the land and he is obliged to seek relief in Egypt. This excursion inaugurates a new, much more detailed part of Genesis, in which Abraham finally emerges a more fully realized character, with feelings for his wife and nephew, and the foundations of a code of conduct centered on right and wrong. As Abraham is about to enter Egypt he says to Sarah, “I know what a beautiful woman you are. If the Egyptians see you, and think, ‘She is his wife,’ they will kill me and let you live. Please say that you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that I may remain alive thanks to you.” Events transpire as he predicted. The pharaoh takes Sarah into his possession and pays Abraham a rich dowry, including sheep, oxen, asses, and camels, as well as male and female slaves. But God intervenes before the pharaoh has relations with Sarah, and she is released. Abraham and Sarah, now further enriched with gold and silver from the king, return to Canaan.
    Once they arrive, tensions arise between Abraham and his nephew, Lot, who also became wealthy in Egypt. “The land could not support them staying together,” the text says, “for their possessions were so great.” Their herdsmen start to quarrel. Abraham, in a touching act of generosity, tries to assuage the problem, saying to Lot, “Let there be no strife between you and me, between my herdsmen and yours, for we are kinsmen. Is not the whole land before you? Let us separate: if you go north, I will go south; and if you go south, I will go north.” Lot surveys the land, noticing how well watered the land of Jordan is, “like the garden of Eden.” Lot, naturally, chooses the nicer land, “the whole plain of Jordan,” while Abraham is left with the deserts of Canaan. Soon, though, God appears to compensate Abraham for his munificence. “Raise your eyes and look out from where you are,” God says, promising to give Abraham all the land he sees, including Jordan. “I will make