Genesis 12:6-9

"And Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, unto the oak of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the land. And Jehovah appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto Jehovah, who appeared unto him. And he removed from thence unto the mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west, and Ai on the east; and there he builded an altar unto Jehovah, and called upon the name of Jehovah. And Abram journeyed, going on still toward the south."

"Unto the place of Shechem ..." Abram did not go to this city to participate in the pagan worship observed there, the name of the place being significant only because of what Abram did there. He built an altar unto Jehovah who appeared unto him. By such action, he laid claim to all of Canaan as belonging to his posterity as revealed in the promise of God. "This action expressed Abraham's faith that the land was the Lord's to give, and that he accepted as true his promise that his seed would occupy it."[12]

"There he builded an altar ..." Some critics affirm that despite the fact of Abram's building an altar, no sacrifice was offered, but such a view cannot possibly be correct. The erection of an altar implies the sacrifice also.

"Unto the oak of Moreh ..." This landmark has no significance here except as a place of designation. There is no need to dig up the alleged root meaning of Moreh and make out of this tree some kind of pagan shrine, in which Abram could not possibly have had any interest.

"The Canaanite was then in the land ..." There is absolutely nothing in this that indicates a time long afterward following Israel's conquest of Canaan. Moses, the author, merely affirmed in this that when Abram arrived at the "promised land" it was already occupied by a native pagan population, thus contrasting the ideal with the practical state of Abram's affairs. That pagan population was composed in large part of the descendants of Cain, notoriously distinguished for their sexual lust and depraved pagan worship. This statement has absolutely nothing to do with determining the date of the writing of Genesis.

It is simply a declaration that the land was not an unoccupied stretch of territory but a populated region, thus making the fulfillment of the ensuing promise all the more difficult, and all the greater a trial for the faith of the patriarch.[13]

"On the east of Bethel ..." This was not a stop at Bethel, but at a place between Bethel and Ai, right in the shadow of places that celebrated pagan shrines and altars, but Abram again built an altar and called upon Jehovah.

Von Rad pointed out that Abram's building these altars, the very first to be erected in the Holy Land, was a symbolical action "of infinite significance."[14] We may also be certain that the writer of Genesis did not record such names as Bethel and Shechem in this narrative in order to enhance their religious importance later on, but that he simply listed Abram's stopping there, "recording the event as an event,"[14] because it was an event in Abram's life.

"Jehovah, who appeared unto him ..." These occasions of God's actually appearing to Abraham are understood by many as "preincarnate appearances of Christ."[15]

Leupold commented on the claim of critics that this passage belongs to "J," and that "J" never actually refers to the patriarch's offering sacrifice. However, "Altars became altars only when the victim was slain."[16] If this had not been the case, the narrator of Genesis would merely have said that Abram dedicated a pile of rocks to God!

Regarding the preoccupation so many scholars have with "P" and "J" and "Pr," etc., it should be pointed out that there are no such documents! They exist only in the imaginations of men, and just about the most unscientific thing one can do is to drag these imaginary "sources" into interpretative studies of Genesis. In March, 1983, the Jerusalem University published a complicated computer analysis of Genesis, stating that the conclusion is that a SINGLE author wrote the whole Pentateuch. News services all over the world carried the report. We believe that the author was Moses, as traditionally affirmed by the Jews, the only exceptions being the account of Moses' death and a few other explanatory items added independently by truthful men, or, more accurately, inspired men. There is absolutely nothing in the multiple sources nonsense about the Pentateuch that has any merit whatever. There could have been "sources" that aided Moses in his writings, but he alone must be credited with the completed account which has descended through history. The theoretical and imaginative examination of such "sources," about which nothing is known is merely an exercise in futility.