Abraham #3

Abraham (originally Abram) is called by God to leave Mesopotamia for an unknown land, with the promise that he would become a great nation, receive blessing, and be a source of blessing to “all families of the earth” (Genesis 12:1-3). This call inaugurates the covenant that structures the rest of the biblical story.

Call and Covenant

God formalizes the covenant when the childless, aging Abram is taken outside and told to “look now toward heaven, and tell the stars… so shall thy seed be”; Genesis records that “he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness” (Genesis 15:5-6), a verse Paul later cites directly as the pattern of justification by faith: “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness” (Romans 4:3). Years later God renews the covenant with the sign of circumcision, declaring, “thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee” (Genesis 17:4-5), changing his name from Abram to Abraham. Abraham’s household is also marked by tension: his wife Sarah, long barren, gives her servant Hagar to him to bear a son, Ishmael, whose line God also promises to make a great nation (Genesis 16:1-16; 21:13), while Sarah herself later bears the promised son, Isaac, in her old age.

Intercession and Testing of Faith

Abraham is shown pleading on behalf of others as well as receiving promises for himself: told of God’s intent to judge Sodom, he presses the question, “Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?… Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” and bargains God down to sparing the city for the sake of just ten righteous people, though none are found there (Genesis 18:23-25). The narrative’s climactic test comes when Abraham is commanded to sacrifice his long-awaited son Isaac on a mountain in Moriah. As he raises the knife, “the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven… Lay not thine hand upon the lad” (Genesis 22:11-12), and Abraham offers a ram caught in a thicket in Isaac’s place (Genesis 22:13). God responds by swearing to bless and multiply his descendants “as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore,” because he did not withhold his son (Genesis 22:16-18).

Legacy

Abraham is claimed as spiritual and/or physical ancestor by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Paul treats him as the paradigm of justification by faith rather than law-keeping, and the New Testament traces Jesus’s genealogy back through him, making Abraham’s original promise of blessing to “all families of the earth” a lens through which the whole Bible’s movement toward the nations can be read.