It appears that God appeared to Avraham and instructed him to continue the journey which the family had begun, and travel to Canaan. What prevented him from continuing before? Was there a change in the meantime?
Parashat Lekh-Lekha begins with God’s command to Avraham to leave his birthplace and resettle in “the land which I will show you” (12:1), which, of course, turned out to be Canaan. As many commentators noted, Avraham seems to have already planned on settling in Canaan. Several verses earlier (11:31), we read that Avraham’s father took the family from Ur Kasdim, their homeland, and set out to live in Canaan. They stopped along the way in Charan, and settled there. It appears that God then appeared to Avraham and instructed him to continue the journey which the family had begun, and travel to Canaan.
The Ramban, in his comments to the final verses of Parashat Noach (11:28), explains the sequence of events based on the famous tradition that Avraham was pursued by the government of Ur Kasdim for disseminating the monotheistic belief. Avraham’s family decided to escape the authorities and settle in Canaan, a distant land, where Avraham was not known and the family could live safely and securely. But the family ended up staying in Charan, which was along the way to Canaan. God then appeared to Avraham and commanded him to continue traveling and to settle in Canaan.
Here in Parashat Lekh-Lekha (12:1), the Ramban proposes that Avraham intuitively recognized Canaan as God’s special land, and for this reason had planned to settle there initially even before God’s command. The Ramban does not explain why Avraham decided to stay with his family in Charan and not proceed to Canaan (until God instructed him to go), if he was aware of the land’s special quality and had initially desired to live there.
Returning to the Ramban’s earlier claim, that Avraham’s family had set out for Canaan to flee the authorities in Ur Kasdim, one may question the Ramban’s underlying assumption that the family felt they would be safer in Canaan. The Torah writes (12:6) that when Avraham first arrived in Canaan, in Shekhem, “the Canaanites were in the land at that time.” The Ramban explains that upon his arrival in Canaan, Avraham was afraid to erect an altar and publicize God’s existence, fearing the response of the hostile, native Canaanites. As we read in the next verse, God then appeared to Avraham in Shekhem and promised that his offspring would inherit this area, and at that point (verse 8), Avraham felt secure and erected an altar.
As Rav Yaakov Koppel Schwartz notes in his Yekev Efrayim, it seems that Avraham faced risks in Canaan, too, perhaps calling into question the Ramban’s understanding of the events, according to which the family sought refuge in Canaan. Of course, one might claim that geopolitical conditions had changed in the interim. In fact, Rashi (12:6) writes that the area had been under the peaceful control of the descendants of Shem, but had now come fallen under the rule of the hostile descendants of Canaan (a son of Noach’s son Cham). According to Rashi, we might say that Canaan was safe and secure when Avraham’s family first set out to reside there, but in the interim the situation deteriorated due to the Canaanite conquest. However, as Rav Schwartz observes, the Ramban disagrees with Rashi’s account of the events, and claims that Canaan had always been under the rule of the Canaanites. In his view, then, one might wonder why Avraham’s family felt Canaan would provide them with a safe haven, in light of Avraham’s fear upon arriving there. Rav Schwartz does not offer any explanation.