Tuthmosis III, victorious, demanded concrete guarantees, such as the handing over of hostages, from the defeated Saushsha-Tar at Karkemish. Thus it was that Abraham took the road to Palestine, in the thirty-third year of Tuthmosis the Third's reign.
"So Abraham left Haran, as the Lord had told him. He was seventy-five. He took his wife Sarah, and his nephew Lot, his brother's son. They took with them all the possessions they had accumulated and the slaves they had acquired in Haran. They set out for the Land of Canaan and they arrived there. Abraham travelled through the land as far as the great tree of Moreh at Sechem. At that time the Canaanites were in that land. The Lord appeared to Abraham and said, 'This is the land I will give to you and to your offspring'. So in that place Abraham built an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him. From there he went on towards the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. Then he set out and continued towards the Negev" (Gen.12,6-9).
What do these altars mean? Modern Scriptural Scholars speak of "sanctuaries" founded by the Patriarch, but this does not seem to make much sense; he was on a journey moving from one place to another. In any case, it is quite clear that they were no more than simple piles of stones. On the basis of what has been said previously, it follows that they must have been raised to seal a pact and/or to define a boundary. The first altar was that of Sechem. In effect what occurred was that the Lord (that is, Tuthmosis III) met Abraham and made a pact with him, promising certain territories. Obviously a pile of stones had to be raised as testimony to the sealing of the pact, just as was effected at Galeed and at Karkemish.
As we have seen in the study of the Apiru, Abraham no doubt enjoyed a particular legal status. His presence on Egyptian soil was a guarantee that his father would respect the agreement made with Egypt. Therefore, he must have been subject to a certain form of surveillance and some limitations on his movements. On the other hand, he was after all the son of the most powerful ruler who had a common frontier with Egypt, so the Pharaoh would have ensured his personal safety in order to avoid trouble and would have kept him adequately provided, endowing him with the prestige to which a person of his rank was entitled--or rather two people, since Abraham's nephew, Lot, first born of his brother Haran, accompanied him.
The altar at Sechem, besides being a witness to the pact, perhaps defined the northern limit of the area in which Abraham was permitted to move--exactly as for the altars of Galeed and Karkemish, which constituted impassable limits. Sechem seems to have been a reasonable delimiter, since it gave the Mithani prince wide enough space to avoid feeling like a recluse, and also ensured an economic welfare sufficient for a person of his stature. It was also far enough away from his homeland to discourage any attempt to escape.
While the meaning of the Sechem altar seems clear enough, it is a different story regarding the altar erected a little later, "between Bethel on the west and Ai on the east." Here Abraham does not meet the Lord; he simply calls on his name, which is highly meaningful. The pedantry with which the cardinal points are defined also cannot be considered casual. This altar, like all the previous ones, is evidently a witness to a pact and perhaps defines a boundary. But between whom? Certainly the Lord (Yahweh) is not one of them; he is invoked only as a witness to the pact.
One of the two is Abraham, without doubt, since he raised the altar. To find the other contracting party it is necessary to turn to Genesis 13, where it states that "Abraham left Egypt and went (towards the south) up to the Negev with his wife and everything he had and Lot went with him (...) until he came to Bethel (...) and there where he had built an altar (..) Abraham said to Lot, '(..) let's part company; you have all this region in front of you. If you go to the left I'll go to the right; if you go to the right I'll go to the left'. So Lot looked up and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan was well watered, like the garden of Yahweh, like the land of Egypt, towards Zoar. This was before Yahweh destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and set out towards the east. The two men parted company. Abraham lived in the land of Canaan, while Lot lived among the cities of the plain and pitched his tents near Sodom."
To judge from the context in which this episode is presented, it seems that it should be fixed chronologically after Abraham left Abimelech's territory in the Negev; but a closer study reveals that it occurred during that same journey from Mesopotamia and immediately after the meeting with Yahweh at Sechem. Whoever made modifications to the original text, overlooked certain details which betray his intervention. First of all, it is affirmed that Abraham set out to go from Egypt, however, it is certain that he never arrived in that country. But the enlightening fact is that the text continues affirming that from there (Egypt) Abraham went "towards the south" until he arrived at Bethel; evidently his departure point was north of Bethel, therefore, it could not possibly have been Egypt; it can only be identified with Mesopotamia.
That the separation of the two men took place before Abraham reached the Negev and, therefore, during the initial displacement, is proved by the fact that Abraham, after leaving Gerar, settled in Hebron and never took his livestock outside the area between that city and Beersheba. Furthermore, there is not even the slightest mention of Lot in the three passages that tell of the relations between Abraham and Abimelech, yet his presence could not have passed unnoticed. On the other hand this agrees with the motives that compelled Abraham to go to Palestine. If Tuthmosis insisted upon having no less than two legal heirs of Saushsha-Tar handed over to him as hostages, he did so to obtain a double guarantee. There was no sense in the two distinguished hostages remaining together and having close relations with each other; this could even become dangerous.
It must be presumed that Tuthmosis had them separated from the very beginning, that he assigned them areas quite apart and that he did not permit them to have contact with each other. The altar located between Bethel and Ai may have constituted a boundary between the two territories allotted to Abraham and Lot. Apparently Tuthmosis left the choice of the territory to the two men; as far as he was concerned, it was a matter of complete indifference whether they lived in one place or in another.
The first choice went to Lot; that this was a gesture of generosity on the part of Abraham does not seem realistic. Rather, it was almost certainly due to the fact that Lot had the right to it. This confirms the theory advanced previously, whereby Abraham was the younger brother of Haran; being the latter's first born it was natural that Lot should have precedence over Abraham.