Rabbi Shai Held-- philosopher, theologian, and Bible scholar-- is President and Dean at the Hadar Institute. He received the prestigious Covenant Award for Excellence in Jewish Education, and has been named multiple times by Newsweek as one of the fifty most influential rabbis in America and by the Jewish Daily Forward as one of the fifty most prominent Jews in the world. Rabbi Held is the author of Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence (2013), The Heart of Torah (2017), and Judaism is About Love (2024) and he is the host of Hadar's newest podcast, Answers WithHeld.
The Torah subtly juxtaposes Abram's character and Lot's. Despite being the elder, Abram self-effacingly defers to Lot, allowing him to choose whichever part of the land he desires. Lot does not respond in kind. "Courtesy demands that Lot defer to his uncle, but shockingly, he agrees to make the selection himself. He promptly (and discourteously) chooses the Jordan valley, leaving the dry and rocky hill country to his uncle.... He chose the best for himself without hesitation or apology."
David Kimchi (Radak) (1160-1235) was a Provencal rabbi, biblical commentator, grammarian and philosopher, born to a family of grammarians and commentators.
ושמתי את זרעך כעפר הארץ, a figure of speech, poetic license, exaggeration. We find more such metaphors, such as in Genesis 22,17 ככוכבי השמים, “as numerous as the stars in heaven.” According to the Midrash Aggadah, Vayetze 25,13 the reason why on occasion the Jewish people and their numbers are compared to dust and on other occasions to the stars, is that when they deserve it they are comparable to the stars in heaven, whereas at times when they do not deserve it, they are compared to the dust of the earth which everyone steps on.
Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) was a German scholar, rabbi, activist, and pioneer of the Torah Im Derekh Eretz school of contemporary Orthodox Judaism. He received both a general and religious education as a youth, the latter taking place under the mentorship of Chakham Isaac Bernays and Rabbi Jacob Ettinger.
One may doubt whether here it means exactly a literal "countless," uncountable number. Israel has actually repeatedly been counted, and altogether has never been prominent on account of its numbers. So that it does not refer to the number of Abraham's descendants living at any particular time, but to the unlimited generations of an immortal nation which will continue through the centuries. But still, even so the analogy does not fit. For dust is something contemporary. But it is possible that the People of Abraham are distinguished by the fact that other nations hardly come from one single derivation whereas here such a comparatively numerous nation whose numbers form one single family, descend from one man. The Jews are perhaps the largest "family" on earth.
And Abram moved his tent, and came to dwell at the terebinths of Mamre, which are in Hebron; and he built an altar there to יהוה.