NOTES for Gen 12:1-4

Abraham is seventy-five years old. However one treats this number, it is already clearly the wrong age to leave one's place and go into the unknown. If we recall other examples, Peter is over forty, the age when it is thought that everything in a person's life should be settled. John, by contrast, is altogether too young to decide anything at all. Whomever you look at, there is no age suited for answering the voice of God. We can never be responsible enough, wise enough, good enough to get up and go to the mountain, to another land, into complete uncertainty, in order to see what it is still impossible even to speak about.