While God had promised Abram an abundant progeny, he and Sarah were still childless following his encounter with Melchizedek. Abram offered a solution. According to the custom of the day, he proposed making a servant born in his household the heir of his estate.
So convinced that the obstacles of Sarah’s barrenness and his own advanced aged could not hinder God from keeping His promises, Abraham believed God and lived to see the promise of a son fulfilled.
For the LORD will comfort Zion, He will comfort all her waste places; He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD . . .
You are the Lord God, Who chose Abram, and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans . . .
Traveling from Haran to Shechem, their journey was an act of obedience based on Abram’s faith in God’s promise to give him the land of Canaan as a possession, a posterity to inhabit the land and a name of great renown.