“The gates of salvation do not swing open at all with the solemn disclosure that God would give this land to Abraham. Rather, this promise is strangely contiguous to the statement that at that time the Canaanites were dwelling in the land. Abraham is therefore brought by God into a completely unexplained relationship with the Canaanites, and Yahweh does not hurry about solving and explaining this opaque status of ownership as one expects the director of history to do.”*2
