Lech Lecha: on the run

The parsha explores the relationship between immigration and conquest. Gd tells Avram to go The Land, foreshadowing its  conquest.  Avram arrives as a wayfarer.  He, and his entourage, cannot stay because of the famine.  The famine also implies that, at the time,  this land is undesirable, it cannot support its inhabitants. The land is cheap, perhaps free for homesteaders. hefker. 

By the end of the first aliyah, Avram has left The Land, he is on his way to Egypt-Mizrayim. He confronts a problem of travelers - variations in law and customs.  He recognizes that in  Mizrayim,  he will probably be killed in order to make his beautiful wife available. He needs to go to Mizrayim to survive.  He choses the least evil path.  Sarai, his wife (and half sister) will skip the wife part. Gd takes care of the rest. Avram survives, the Egyptians do not have the guilt of killing Avram.  Sarai and Avram are reunited... and expelled from Egypt. 

More travel, back to the Land. Perhaps the famine is over. Alternatively, with riches, Avram et al. can survive the famine. Wealth generates strife. Avram and Lot (whose name means curse in Aramaic) travel away from each other. 

Then comes World War 0. The war of conquest. There is a lot of running here. Lot is taken away and the survivor of the battle comes running to Avram, informing him of Lot's capture.  Avram organizes a military campaingn,runs,  and frees all the captives.  Avram the conqueror,  is crowned by Malchizedek in (Jeru)salem.  The place names (14:6) Paran and Seir  are bookends, reappearing in Zoth Habracha (Deut 33:2).  Avram, the father of greatness (ram), the progenitor of the princes of Paran and Seir. 

Most dramatic is the running away of Hagar from Sarai. Sarai torments the pregnant Hagar.  Hagar has been abandoned to her mistress by Avram, the father of her child. She runs away to save herself, like all of the flights in the parsha.  An angel meets her at the well and tells her what to name her child (call him Ishmael) and the angel tells her to be a good muslim  ( in the sense of submission).

Immigration is conquest.  I pity the poor immigrant.  From the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave (immigrant?)