# Abram, Lot, and the Meek Who Inherit the Earth (Genesis 13) **Author:** Garth Watson **Published:** 2026-09-16 **Last updated:** 2026-09-16 **Canonical URL:** https://doxa.app/blog/daily-deeper-dive-21-genesis-13-1-13 ![A rough field-stone altar of piled uncut stones on a high open ridge between two hills at dawn, warm early light raking across the stones and the dry grass, a wide land of valleys and distant hills opening beyond under a bright pale sky, unstaged documentary landscape, no people, no faces, no text, mid-tones and warm highlights](https://doxa.app/images/blog/daily-deeper-dive-21-genesis-13-1-13-hero.jpg) The rescue from Egypt is behind him. What Abram does with his first free morning back tells you who he had become. ## Back to the altar first Abram goes back to the altar near Bethel where he last called on the name of the LORD, because in Egypt he had drifted from God's word and now he wants to stand under it again. He comes up out of Egypt loaded with livestock, silver and gold ([Genesis 13:2](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/13#v2)), and he does not stop to enjoy it. He travels north until he reaches "the site where he had built the altar. And there Abram called on the name of the LORD" ([Genesis 13:4](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/13#v4)). The phrase is *qara* ([H7121](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h7121)), to call, on the *shem* ([H8034](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h8034)), the name, of the LORD, the same act he had performed on the way into the land ([Genesis 12:8](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/12#v8)) and the same act that went missing the whole time he was in Egypt. Down there was no altar, no calling, no promise from God, only a frightened man managing his own survival. Here the practice comes back online. To call on the name is to speak God aloud as the one you answer to, to put yourself back under the word you drifted from. Abram's repentance is a set of footsteps back to the place he last heard from God. ## Too rich to stay together Prosperity, oddly, is the problem. Both Abram and Lot have grown so rich in flocks and herds that "the land was unable to support both of them" ([Genesis 13:6](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/13#v6)). The verb for support is *nasa* ([H5375](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h5375)), to lift or carry or bear; the land could not carry the weight of the two of them together. So "there was discord between the herdsmen of Abram and the herdsmen of Lot" ([Genesis 13:7](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/13#v7)), the word *riv* ([H7379](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h7379)), strife, a courtroom-flavoured term for a dispute that can harden into a feud. And the narrator adds a quiet warning in the same verse: "the Canaanites and the Perizzites were also living in the land" ([Genesis 13:7](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/13#v7)). The watching neighbours make the family's infighting a testimony problem, not only a logistics one. ## Abram gives Lot first choice Abram gives Lot first choice because God has already promised him this whole land, so he has nothing to win by choosing first. By every custom of the age the older man, and the one holding the promise, picks first. Abram inverts it. "Please let there be no contention between you and me, or between your herdsmen and my herdsmen. After all, we are kinsmen" ([Genesis 13:8](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/13#v8)), he says, using *ach* ([H251](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h251)), brother; the tie of blood outranks the grazing rights. Then he opens his hand: "If you go to the left, I will go to the right; if you go to the right, I will go to the left" ([Genesis 13:9](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/13#v9)). The word for their parting is *parad* ([H6504](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h6504)), to separate or divide. Abram can afford to divide the land and take whatever is left because his portion was never his to secure; God had already promised this whole land to his offspring ([Genesis 12:7](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/12#v7)). A man standing on a promise from God does not need to win the negotiation. He already knows what he will inherit. ## Lot chooses by sight Lot sees rich, well-watered land, and it ruins him because he chooses by sight alone, with no promise from God, and his choice sets him down beside Sodom. He decides the opposite way from Abram, by his eyes. He "looked out and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan, all the way to Zoar, was well watered like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt" ([Genesis 13:10](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/13#v10)). The Hebrew has him lift up his eyes, *nasa* ([H5375](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h5375)) again, the same verb that a moment ago said the land could not bear them both. The land could not carry the two of them, so Lot raises his gaze and helps himself to the richest part of it. He *chose*, *bachar* ([H977](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h977)), the whole plain for himself ([Genesis 13:11](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/13#v11)). Notice what his eyes reach for: land like the garden of the LORD, the *gan* ([H1588](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h1588)), garden, and like the land of Egypt. He measures his future by an Eden he never saw and by the Egypt Abram just fled. He walks by sight, with no promise from God anywhere in the calculation, and the text springs the trap: he "pitched his tent toward Sodom" ([Genesis 13:12](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/13#v12)), and "the men of Sodom were wicked, sinning greatly against the LORD" ([Genesis 13:13](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/13#v13)). Two loaded words close the scene, *ra* ([H7451](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h7451)), evil, and *chatta* ([H2400](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h2400)), sinners. Lot's eyes found the richest soil on the map and set him down at the gate of the city God was about to burn. ## Free to let go God honours the one who trusts His word enough to let go, as Abram did. Lot grasps the visible best and loses everything he moved toward; Abram releases his claim and keeps the promise whole. Centuries later Jesus names Abram's exact posture a blessing: "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth" ([Matthew 5:5](https://doxa.app/bible/MAT/5#v5)), *praus* ([G4239](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/g4239)), gentle, the strength that has nothing to prove and nothing to seize. Abram is meek in that sense, and God answers by giving him the very land he had just let Lot pick over, all of it, forever ([Genesis 13:14-15](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/13#v14)). The pattern runs on to Christ, the truly meek one, who let go of His rights, took the lowest place, and was given the name above every name and the nations as His inheritance. To know the God who speaks is to trust His word enough to open your hands. The man who returns to the altar, calls on the name, and lets his brother choose first is the man who ends up holding the land. Walk back to what God has said, and hold it more tightly than you hold your grip on what your eyes can see.