GENa
Genesis 12-50
A tomb Painting from Beni Hasan in Egypt (ca. 1890). An inscription reads, “The arriving, bringing eye-paint, which 37 Asiatics brought to him.”
The God of the Fathers: A God of People
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is a God of people, not cosmic domains (ANE). In so doing, he risks his reputation.
If we were to ask church leaders, pastors and teachers, “what should be our fundamental beliefs about God?”, many would mention the doctrines of monotheism and sovereignty, along with attributes of love, faithfulness, and righteousness.
But if we are correct to see the stories of Abraham as the beginnings of salvation history and of God’s progressive revelation, we are struck by a quite different agenda in God’s curriculum for his people. “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Gen 24:12; 26:24; 28:13; 31:42; Exod 3:6, 15-16) is a statement that this God is fundamentally a God of people—one who identifies himself by associating with people.
We are immediately struck by how personal this deity is. Unlike other deities of the ancient Near East, he is not known primarily as a god of nature or of place (as, e.g., Marduk is the storm god and patron deity of Babylon). Instead of associating himself with powerful forces in nature or with a city, he links himself with persons. His primary domain is not natural forces; he is a patron of people. At the beginnings of Yahweh’s saving story he does not enmesh himself with political entities and their armies but with a nomadic family. He will later be known as the God of the storm and as the God of Israel, but his first point of emphasis is that he is the God of Abraham.
Another point we should take to heart from “the God of Abraham” is that if we want to know who this God is, we must know the narratives about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In other words, he makes himself known not by theological doctrines, propositions or concepts, but by stories—stories that are entwined with all the particulars of time, location, and culture.
Also striking in this choice of self-designation is God’s condescension: he ties his own reputation to the behavior and welfare of particular individuals. God takes certain risks in doing so. We could well imagine Abraham’s contemporaries not being impressed with him and his patron deity. While Abraham does enjoy a measure of wealth, he obtains it by his own conniving and suffers more domestic disputes than any of us would choose. Were we to ask Pharaoh (Gen 12) or Abimelech, king of the “Philistines” (Gen 20), they would not have been charmed by his “testimony.” Nevertheless, Yahweh continues to remain “the God of Abraham” and remains loyal to him.
Another risk God takes lies in the potential misunderstanding that he is merely a clan deity—among many other patron deities. This risk may not enter the minds of Christian readers because preceding Gen 12 is the primeval history of chapters 1-11, which portray Yahweh as the one and only God.
The Hebrew ancestors conceived of their deity as "God of the fathers," who acted as guardian deity of the clan.
But in the original telling of the story and certainly from the perspective of the characters within the stories themselves, there is no claim that Abraham’s God is the one true God of all. For example, this becomes clear in the encounter between the patriarchs of their respective clans, Laban (Gen 31:29) and Jacob (Gen 31:42). The deity of Jacob's clan is not the deity of Laban's. And while Abraham's servant is on an expedition to find a wife for Isaac, he prays to "the God of my master Abraham" (Gen 24:12). Evidently, God’s first priority in salvation history is to say that he is a God of people—not that he alone is God.
Info Box: Apparent Polytheism and a Scribal Gloss
Gen 31:53 reads literally, “‘the God of Abraham and the God of Nahor—may they judge between us—the God of their father.’ And Jacob swore by the Fear of his father Isaac.” The odd placement of “the God of their father” in the sentence is probably best explained as a later scribal gloss, which attempts to rationalize the apparent polytheistic belief, as evidenced by the plural verb. This phrase is actually missing in two manuscripts of the Hebrew Masorectic text and in the Septuagint, a Greek translation.
Most readers of the Bible do not take particular interest in personal names and their meanings, but they can be very revealing about their popular beliefs. If we look at the personal names that parents gave their children prior to Moses and his reception of the personal name “Yahweh,” we see God was sometimes conceived as a kinsman or relative of the name bearer. (While most of the following people are contemporary to Moses, their parents named them before he became their leader.) “Eli-ab” means “my God is Father” (Num 1:9). “Ammi-El” means “my kinsman is God” (Num 13:12). “Abi-ram” means “my father is exalted” (Num 16:1), where father denotes “my divine father,” not the human father. We often think that understanding God as our heavenly Father was an innovation from Jesus, but we find this belief already implicit in the early pages of the Old Testament. Jesus, in fact, simply develops this revelation in his own distinctive way. This tradition carries over to Yahwistic names: Abijah (אֲבִיָּה, אֲבִיָּהוּ, אביו in Samaria Ostracon 52).
God’s Purposes and Mundane Living
While Abraham is occupied with family life, he seems unaware that he is an agent in God's larger plan of bringing blessing to the nations.
Often we do not stop to consider the literary structure of an entire biblical book or collection of books, but this can be one of the most helpful exercises to shed light on the key points God is making for us readers.
A primary purpose of the primeval history in Genesis 1-11 is to state the problem of escalating human sin and divine punishments (as we proceed through the stories of the fall, Cain and Abel, the flood, and the Tower of Babel). The following chapters, and indeed the rest of the Bible, present God’s solution to this stated problem.
Genesis 12 is thus the formal beginning of salvation history. Here God moves from nations and newspaper headlines (Genesis 11) to a single, nomadic family (Genesis 12). And so we should ask, does Abraham have any clue that he is the beginning of God’s solution to the crises of the Tower of Babel, the flood, the fall of Adam and Eve, and even the human condition? Hardly! God’s opening promises (Gen 12:1-3) might engender dreams that his descendants will one day form a great nation and that he will have a great reputation, so much so that other people’s will bless themselves by Abraham’s name. But this is a scarcely what actually unfolds and climaxes in his descendant, Jesus of Nazareth.
To underscore the surprise this should evoke we may imagine the solutions we might propose to the problem of escalating sin and judgment, perhaps a church committee with an extensive PR campaign along with strategies to place godly Christian leaders in key positions of government. Our plans would be a far cry from God’s hidden and yet profound work. In fact, what preoccupies Abraham is food for his family (which explains why he passes straight through the so-called promised land), rescuing his nephew, having a child and heir, and settling numerous domestic disputes. There is nothing here that is extraordinary (except perhaps the heroics in Genesis 14). We should also observe the time frame of these stories. We have perhaps imagined that life in Bible times was full of miracles and that as we flip the page from one chapter of the Bible to the next we are simply waking up the next morning to hear another conversation between God and his believers. But in fact, between Genesis 12 and 21 there passes 25 years (cf. Gen 12:4 and 21:5).
Again, if we imagine we had delegated a committee to solve the problems of Genesis 1-11 and they focused on one family and spent 25 years before delivering on a key promise, how would we evaluate their work? No doubt, we would fire them for lack of effectiveness and efficiency. But God clearly has another agenda, different values and time frames. His actions, or apparent lack thereof, may not be understandable to us, but these observations of the past should help us appreciate the mysteries of our lives in the present. We should be encouraged with the awareness that as we go about our day-to-day, mundane affairs God may be working his divine purposes. We may think we are simply raising children, herding sheep or working in an office, but God may be aware of a work that changes people’s destinies.
We may be so accustomed to the stories Genesis that we find it unremarkable that salvation history begins with the stories of Abraham and his family. But when we consider that when ancient literature began in Egypt and Mesopotamia, their monuments and stories concerned the gods and kings. But Yahweh, on the contrary, first identifies himself as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. These human figures are not royalty but chieftains of nomadic clans at best. This deity associates not with the elite alone but with common folk.
God’s Agents and the Nations: The Purpose of Election
The belief that one has been chosen by God can fill the believer with comfort and assurance—one is special to God! But this belief, of course, is a matter of perspective. To outsiders it smacks of exclusivism and favoritism.
God chooses Abraham's family, not as an end in itself, but as a means of bringing blessing to all the families of the earth.
The belief that “we are the chosen” endears some and enrages others. Why should God “choose” anyone—with the implication that he is not chosen others? In theological terms, God’s “choice” has to do with the doctrine of “election.”
The notion of God’s chosen people begins when God first speaks to Abraham. While Genesis 12:1-3 does not actually use the word “choose,” Yahweh obviously separates him from homeland and “kindred.” His descendants he promises to make a distinctive “nation.” Moreover, Yahweh makes Abraham himself the touchstone of whether people will be blessed or cursed. While this certainly marks out Abraham as special, it is not an end in itself. This is made clear by the promise’s final clause: “and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Info Box 9.2: “Be blessed” or “bless themselves” (Gen 12:3)?
As the marginal note in the NRSV indicates, the clause, “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed,” could also be translated, “by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves” (וְנִבְרְכוּ, Niphal). In other words, it is possible that this blessing is not one granted by God (understanding “be blessed” as a theological passive) but one that the families of the earth simply invoke on themselves: “May we be blessed like Abraham has been blessed.”
Here is stated the purpose of God’s election of Abraham. The mention of “all the families of the earth” connects with “the families of Noah’s sons” (Gen 10:5, 18, 20, 31, and esp. Gen 10:32). Evidently, God has chosen Abraham in order to bring blessing to all the human families. This connection is made all the clearer when we observe the thematic links between the Primeval History of Genesis 1-11 and the stories about Abraham and sons in Genesis 12-50. Simply stated, a dominant theme of Genesis 1-11 is the problem of escalating sin and punishments. Genesis 12 begins to narrate God’s solution. The peoples of the earth will obtain God’s blessing through Abraham’s descendants.
The purpose of election has to do with God’s means of bringing salvation to all; it is not God’s end in order to have his favorites and exclude others. When we flip the page from the “Table of Nations” in Genesis 10 and the “Tower of Babel” in Genesis 11 to the story of Abraham in Genesis 12, the stage of the narrative shrinks considerably: from all families and nations to one family! But while the means of salvation narrows, the scope of salvation remains universal. We must not confuse God’s favor with favoritism. Election is not about a pool of God’s blessing but a channel of God’s blessing.
Christians claim ownership to the first three-quarters of their Bible by calling them the “Old Testament.” But even Christians should take their lead from the apostle Paul who identifies the gospel as “the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom 1:16, cf. 2:9-10; 3:1ff.). And the Old Testament itself makes a clear claim on the matter: “He declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and ordinances to Israel. He has not dealt thus with any other nation; they do not know his ordinances. Praise the LORD!” (Ps 147:19-20). One scholar has characterized the church’s adoption of Israel’s scriptures as “reading someone else’s mail”—a privilege that Gentile Christians have been granted in the New Testament and a privilege foreshadowed in the Old Testament (Paul van Buren, “On Reading Someone Else’s Mail: The Church and Israel’s Scriptures,” in Die Hebräische Bibel und ihre zweifache Nachgeschichte (FS R. Rendtorff; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1990) 595-606; cited in Christopher R. Seitz, Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), see esp. pp. 73, 214).
Nevertheless, the OT is relatively silent about the nations sharing in God's blessing until Isaiah 40-66, some 1500 years later.
We have seen that God’s choice or “election” of Abraham and his seed/descendants was in direct response to the dire need of “the families of the earth” for God’s blessing Gen (12:1-3 and 10:32).
While we might understand Genesis 12:3 as a programmatic statement that God’s ultimate intention is to bless all nations through Abraham’s descendants, we should also note the Old Testament’s relative silence about God’s interests in the Gentiles. Little is said about God’s concern for the nations/Gentiles, surprisingly, until Isaiah 40-66! Even in these chapters foreigners are viewed largely negatively, and if they are to be included in any sense among the people of God, their position is clearly subordinate.
But there are expressions in the so-called “Servant Songs” that clearly reach out to the nations: “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations…. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching…. I am the LORD, … I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations” (Isa 42:1). And in the second Servant Song, the servant himself speaks: “Listen to me, O coastlands, pay attention, you peoples from far away! … He [Yahweh] says, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isa 49:1, 6; see also 52:15). And even outside of the Servant Songs, Yahweh extends a virtual “altar call” to the nations: “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other” (Isa 45:22).
To our surprise the Old Testament is virtually silent about God’s salvation for the nations from Genesis 12 to Isaiah 42. Historically that represents the gap of approximately 1500 years (ca. 2000 BC to ca. 550 BC)! Since most Christians are Gentiles, we should have a great deal of self-interest vested in this issue.
The “Will of God” and the Promise of Land to Abraham (Gen 11-15)
Biblical narratives reflect the
complex interplay between
God's will and human decisions,
and between divine sovereignty
and human responsibility.
If we are interested in how God interacts with individuals, the stories about Israel’s ancestors—namely Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph—are particularly fruitful ground for exploration. Here we find a concentration of incidents where both parties take initiatives and respond to each other.
Biblical narratives reflect the complex interplay between God's will and human decisions, and between divine sovereignty and human responsibility.
These narratives are sometimes subtle in the messages they contain. We may have read these stories about Abraham dozens of times without realizing that they give us hints regarding the age-old question concerning the will of God and our role in decision making. An excellent example occurs early in the Bible where Yahweh first promises land to Abram in Genesis 12. As the story unfolds, he reveals his will in stages. He clarifies his promises and directives as Abram encounters new experiences. These clarifications become more understandable once we consider what events have happened since Yahweh’s previous revelation. Yahweh indeed gives the initial directive and ultimately achieves his goal, but this does not preclude human decisions and complications along the way.
We should take note that Yahweh’s initial promise and directive is not very specific: “go (הלך) … to the land that I will show you.” Strictly speaking, Yahweh has not promised to give any land to Abram, only to “show” it to him. Three verses later we are told that Abram “went (הלך) as the Lord had told him,” but where he goes we are not told until the next verse. Here we are informed that “they set forth to go (הלך) to the land of Canaan,” but who specified this direction and destination?
The reader may wonder whether this was Abram’s decision or a directive from Yahweh not contained in the story. We should note that even prior to Yahweh’s first words to Abram, Terah—Abram’s father—had decided to move the family from Ur “to go (הלך) into the land of Canaan” (Gen 11:31). This would make the choice of Canaan a third-party decision, involving neither Yahweh nor Abram directly. On the other hand, Yahweh—later—claims, “I am the LORD who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it” (Gen 15:7). So, what may have appeared to be simply a human decision turns out to be divinely instigated. Some decisions may be made by a third party—and still work within God’s will.
However Abram arrived in Canaan, Yahweh reveals his first clarification regarding the promise of land in Gen 12:7: “To your offspring I will give this land.” This promise offers the good news of a land-grant but contains the bad news that Abram himself will not receive it, only his descendants. The narrator has just informed his readers that someone else resides in it: “At that time the Canaanites were in the land.” Nevertheless, Abram’s construction of an altar implies he responds with gratitude in worship.
The extent of this “land” Yahweh does not spell out until his second clarification regarding the promise: “Raise your eyes now, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever” (Gen 13:14-15). What has happened in the meantime since Yahweh’s last promise regarding the land (Gen 12:7)? Abram’s first experience of the promised land had been that it could not support his family because “there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to reside there as an alien, for the famine was severe in the land” (Gen 12:10). Then after returning to Canaan, Abram and Lot have since learned that “the land could not support both of them living together” (Gen 13:6, and the next verse reminds us that Canaanites and now Perizzites crowd the land). Moreover, Abram has just seen Lot choose “the plain of the Jordan” that “was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord” (Gen 13:10).
The reader is left to wonder if Abram was getting concerned about the value and extent of his “land.” And so the narrator informs us that it is immediately “after Lot had separated from him” that Yahweh reassures him of his promise and clarifies that Abram’s land extends as far as the eye can see.