After the blessing by Melchizedek, God appeared to Abraham in a vision and said:
“Do not be afraid, Abraham, I am your shield, your reward shall be very great.”
As I discussed earlier, God appeared to Abraham in Chapter 12 with a sevenfold promise. God then inaugurated the covenantal promises by blessing Abraham through the patriarch Shem, also known by his throne name as Melchizedek. After this inaugural blessing, Abraham probably expected more things to happen, but nothing did. If he was to become a great nation, he would expect that his wife Sarai would become pregnant. However, a full twenty five years passed with Abraham sojourning in the land that he did not possess and having no heir.
We can’t blame Abraham if he was a little confused at this point. God promised that he would make him a great nation, but he had no natural heir. Since Sarah had been barren throughout her life and was well past childbearing age, and Abraham himself was approaching one hundred years old, Abraham questioned God about his reward. Specifically, he asked how he could receive a great reward if he had no heir. Abraham proposed that God make Eleazer, his chief servant, his heir, but God rejects this idea insisting that the heir would be a child coming from Abraham and Sarah. Through that child, he would make Abraham a great nation.
He then took Abraham outside his tent and showed him the stars. He told him to count them if he was able to and that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars:
“The Lord brought him outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.'”
-Genesis 15:5
St. Paul says in the Epistle to the Romans as he quotes Genesis, that against all hope, in hope, Abraham believed and God counted it to him as righteousness.
“Abraham believed and God reckoned it to him as righteousness.”
-Genesis 15:6
God then said that he would give Abraham the land. After all, how can one become a great nation with many descendants if the descendants had no place to call home? The idea of nationhood and the land were closely connected. Abraham asks for an assurance that these promises would be fulfilled. Some would say that he was wavering in his unbelief because he was asking for a sign. In actuality, what he was doing was asking for God’s covenantal promises to be ratified. It had been twenty-five years since God first spoke the covenantal promises, and the covenant had not been ratified yet. This was a perfectly legitimate thing for Abraham to ask. Covenant arrangements were very common in the ancient Near East.1
Covenants of the Ancient Near East
Parties in the ancient Near East made covenants with each other to establish kinship bonds.2 In essence, covenants turned strangers into family. Furthermore, through a powerful concept known as a covenant, two complete strangers could be bound together. In essence, this covenant transformed them into a family unit, carrying the weight of all the privileges and responsibilities that such a close bond entails. We see a clear reflection of this concept today in the institution of marriage. A marriage covenant symbolizes a sacred union, joining two biologically unrelated people together and creating a bond as strong and enduring as any family relationship. A covenant was more than a contract. It was very serious and had serious implications if the terms were broken. The parties were committed to each other personally, and not just legally.
Furthermore, there were three types of covenants made in the ancient Near East. Initially, there were “kinship” covenants, where both parties pledged obligations to each other (Genesis 21:31).3 In addition, there were “vassal” covenants, where the inferior party pledged submission and loyalty to the superior party (Genesis 17:9-14). Finally, we can now call the third type, exemplified here, a “grant” covenant. In this type, the superior party pledged to benefit the inferior party.
To make serious covenants like these, people performed animal sacrifices. They would cut the animals in half, and then the parties making the commitment would walk between the halves.4 Those who walked between the splayed animals would be saying that may the same thing happen to them if they fail to keep the terms of the covenant (Jeremiah 34:18-20).
This was so common that the expression for making covenant at that time was the phrase, “cutting a covenant.”5
The following passage is from Genesis 15:
“As the sun was going down, a deep sleep feel upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him. When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking post and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.”
Just like God bound himself to the created order through the covenant with Noah (post 14), He now entered into a covenant with Abraham guaranteeing that he would fulfill all of the promises that he had made to him. The fact that God alone, in the form of a theophany, walked through the animal halves further indicates that God was making a grant covenant with Abraham. God alone would be responsible for fulfilling the terms of the covenant. Through this act, God solemnized his promise to make Abraham a great nation.
The Promises of Genesis 12
The sevenfold promise of Genesis 12 can be distilled down to three main features:6
First-
-Abraham would be a great nation – fulfilled in the covenant under the Mosaic covenant (Deuteronomy 1) and prefigured in Genesis 15.
Second-
– The concept of a great name, signifying kingship in the ancient Near East, was foreshadowed in Genesis 17 and later fulfilled in the Davidic covenant (2 Samuel 7) through Abraham.
And third-
-Abraham would be a universal blessing – fulfilled in the New Covenant under Jesus (Matthew 26:26-28) and prefigured in Genesis 22.
The Abrahamic covenant is the foundational covenant in the Old Testament. It is from this covenant that God brought forth a nation from which the Messiah arose who is a blessing to all nations. Just as God ratified his covenant with Abraham through the broken bodies and shed blood of animals, so he ratified the New Covenant through the broken body and shed blood of his Son. The New Covenant includes people from all nations that partake in the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
Matthew 26:27-28 says:
“While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.'”
The Relationship Between Christ and Abraham
On one hand, Jesus Christ was a son of Abraham according to his human nature. As such, he became the heir and fulfillment of the promises of the Abrahamic covenant. Another way of saying this is that Jesus Christ is the end or telos of the Abrahamic covenant. On the other hand, according to his divine nature, the Son of God preceded Abraham. Jesus claimed as such in His discussions with the Jews:
“Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.
“You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”
“Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!”
-Gospel of St. John, 8:56-58
Jesus proclaims his divinity here in two ways. First of all, that he preceded Abraham, and secondly, He refers to Himself as “I am” which is clearly a reference to the “I Am” of the Old Testament. This was so offensive to the Jews that the picked up stones to stone Him because from their perspective He committed blasphemy by equating Himself with God. And it would be if He weren’t truly God in the flesh.
Now, let’s consider the statement, “Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.” This enigmatic statement has two key parts. First and foremost, we see that Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing “my day.” In fact, Abraham’s ministry was fundamentally anticipatory in regards to Christ. After all, the promises that were to be fulfilled through him would ultimately culminate in Christ. Within the context of this anticipatory ministry, he even encountered the pre-incarnate Christ. This occurred through various types, a type being an Old Testament prefiguration of a New Testament reality. Perhaps the most poignant type of Christ for Abraham was the near sacrifice of his only son Isaac, where he figuratively received him back from the dead. He also encountered Him as the flaming torch that passed between the halves of the animal sacrifices in Genesis 15.
But more than that, Abraham also encountered Christ as a theophany, an Old Testament appearance or manifestation of God. Some call this appearance a Christophany if it is specifically of the pre-incarnate Christ. In Genesis 18, three men appeared at the tent of Abraham. The text refers to the main figure who converses with Abraham as the Lord, a term equivalent to the Hebrew Yahweh. The two other men are simply called angels. Abraham rejoiced as he encountered Christ.
Abraham Rejoiced as He saw the Day of Christ
In the above passage, Jesus states that Abraham not only rejoiced at the thought of seeing Christ’s day, but that he saw it and was glad. There is both an anticipatory aspect and a fulfillment aspect to this statement. Not the following passage where Jesus says the following:
“But concerning the dead rising, have you not read about the burning bush in the Book of Moses, how God told him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken.”
-Gospel of Mark 12:26-27
Jesus says something profound here. The Old Testament believers, such as Abraham, were not dead, but alive. There bodies were dead, but their souls were alive. The New Testament Christians, surrounded by a cloud of Old Testament witnesses (Hebrews 12:1), were then aware of what was happening on earth. No only aware, but they were sometimes participatory as when Moses and Elijah appeared with Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration. If Moses and Elijah, who were descended from Abraham, literally saw Christ’s day, how much more the father of the them all?
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Deo Gratias
Featured Book
Amazon Review: “This book is the fruit of an immense amount of research in the contemporary study of the Biblical covenant. No one who takes up the challenge to study it, whether scholar or not, will come away from reading it without being more astute in matters human and divine. The thesis of the book is masterly in its basic insight: life lived under Biblical covenant cannot be separated from life lived in relationships dictated by familial terms and ties. It is the family which is central to the Bible’s view of life for the simple reason that the family is central to life itself.”—James Swetnam, S. J., Pontifical Biblical Institute
Footnotes:
- Lauinger, Jacob, “Approaching Ancient Near Eastern Treaties, Laws, and Covenants,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 136, No. 1, January-March, 2016, pp. 125-134, Published by: American Oriental Society, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7817/jameroriesoci.136.1.125?seq=1
- Balentine, Samuel E., editor, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Theology: Two-Volume Set, Vol. 1, p., 151-3, Oxford University Press, Oxford, England, 2015
- Balentine, Samuel E., editor, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Theology: Two-Volume Set, Vol. 1, p., 154
- Executive Committee of the Editorial Board, Kaufmann Kohler, Louis Ginzberg, Richard Gottheil, Isaac Broyde, Emil G. Hirsch, J. Frederic McCurdy, Jewish Encyclopedia, https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4714-covenant
- Ibid.
- Hahn, Ph.D., Scott, A Father Who Keeps His Promises, pp. 93-110, Franciscan Media, Cincinnati, 1998
Bibliography and Sources:
Balentine, Samuel E., editor, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Theology: Two-Volume Set, Oxford University Press, Oxford, England, 2015
De Mieroop, Van, A History of the Ancient Near East, ca. 3000-323 BC, 3rd Edition (Blackwell History of the Ancient World), Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken, N.J., 2015
Hahn, Ph.D., Scott, A Father Who Keeps His Promises, Franciscan Media, Cincinnati, 1998
Hahn, Ph.D., Scott, Kinship by Covenant: A Canonical Approach to the Fulfillment of God’s Saving Promises, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT., 2009
Voegelin, Eric, Order and History, Vol. 1: Israel and Revelation, classic reprint hardcover, Forgotten Books Publishers, London, 2018
Weinfeld, M., “Covenant Terminology in the Ancient Near East and Its Influence on the West.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 93, no. 2, 1973, pp. 190–199. JSTOR
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