Content. That's how Abram felt, I'm sure, as he watched his son Ishmael grow into his thirteenth year. Abram, growing older day by day (as one tends to do), figured he had everything stitched up. He'd found his niche in the world. He'd received the blessing of God, he'd gained the son he always wanted, he'd achieved a measure of peace (however tense) in his tents, he lived in a land where he felt at home, he believed in a bright future for his son's seed after him – everything was coming up Abram. And then “the LORD appeared to him” (Genesis 17:1), and what had been comfortable and settled soon... wasn't.
The LORD introduces himself in a way that catches our attention: “I am El Shaddai! Walk before me and be blameless” (Genesis 17:1). Now, that's an interesting name for God. See, later on, God seems to say to Moses that “I am the LORD; I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shaddai, but by my name 'The LORD' I did not make myself known to them” (Exodus 6:2-3). When we read Genesis, we've heard plenty about 'the LORD,' which is just our way of glossing the unpronouncable Hebrew name 'YHWH.' Ever since chapter 2, Genesis has clearly identified YHWH; but now Moses is hinting that this name is being read back into a time when it wasn't actually known – that it's a convenience for the Israelite reader, not what a microphone would've captured in the Middle Bronze Age. Instead, this same God more commonly introduced himself as El Shaddai.
So what does it mean to call God 'El Shaddai'? Well... we don't entirely know. The oldest translators were just guessing at it, and “modern scholarship has reached no consensus.”1 We know it was obviously a very ancient name for God; it only shows up in the Bible during the time of the patriarchs or in poetry that's deliberately old-fashioned. The only three people in the Bible who have names referring to 'Shaddai' were all born over a full generation before the exodus (Numbers 1:5-12), and we know of at least one maybe-Hebrew minor official in Egypt in the 1300s BC.2 But scholars have many guesses for where the name 'Shaddai' came from, like 'he who is sufficient,' or even 'the destroyer.'3 Your Bible probably guesses that El Shaddai means 'God Almighty,' but the most popular guess is that it's 'God of the Mountain,' the True Rock of the world.4 He's the stable and exalted God from whom blessings roll down in streams, whose touch brings life, fertility, nourishment.5
This is the God who's reaching out again to Abram. And he says, “I will set my covenant between me and you, and will multiply you very exceedingly” (Genesis 17:2), “and I will establish my covenant between me and you and your seed after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant” (Genesis 17:7). That's a bold statement God's making, because so far we've heard of just one other “everlasting covenant,” and it's God's pledge to sustain creation no matter what, to uphold the existence of life itself (Genesis 9:16). God is assigning his covenant with Abram the same kind of duration as life in the world. One medieval monk remarked here that God's covenant with Abram “will certainly not only be preserved for the whole of the time of this life..., but it will also be celebrated in the age to come eternally.”6 To put it mildly, “God has not forgotten his promises to him”; just the opposite, God keeps making them stronger, bolder, more sweeping, more daring!7
And in this chapter, this renewal and strengthening of the covenant is basically laid out by God in three parts.8 The first part, verses 4-8, is anchored by God's phrase 'As for me': this one's all about what God will do to hold up his end of the covenant, which is our major focus today. The second part is anchored by God's phrase 'As for you': this one covers what Abram is supposed to do to honor the covenant, which was our focus last week since it so deeply concerns the covenant sign and covenant command of circumcision. But then there is, surprisingly, a third part to the covenant, which we wouldn't expect. And it's anchored by God's phrase 'As for Sarai your wife,' meaning that she's becoming a covenant partner somehow.9
Up until now, zero of God's conversations with Abram have even mentioned Sarai, although some of God's acts have taken account of her (Genesis 12:17). But now, for the first time, Sarai is actually brought into covenant with God. He speaks her name. He recognizes her as Abram's partner, yes, but also as someone standing before God in her own right. And based on the writing so far, we'd expect the section 'As for Sarai' to tell us about what are Sarai's obligations in the covenant. But that's not what happens. Instead, we hear God telling Abram all about what he, God, aims to do in Sarai's life. And that's fascinating on the heels of the last chapter, where Sarai's rival Hagar, whom Sarai had humbled and afflicted, suddenly found herself recognized and consoled by God. For thirteen years, Sarai had lived in the knowledge that her husband had spoken to God, and her rival and servant had spoken to God, but that Sarai had been kept out of that loop. But now God talks about her to Abram in her very own section of the covenant, dealing with what God aims to do for her.
And the central feature of that pledge is this: “I will bless her, and moreover I have given you a son by her” (Genesis 17:16). This has got to be confusing and concerning to Abram. Has he misheard something here? Abram's already got a son, which Sarai arranged for him to obtain by Hagar – is that what God means? After all, when God had promised Abram a biological son (Genesis 15:4), he specified a father but not a mother;10 so naturally, when Sarai didn't become a mother, she reasoned that the LORD was obstructing her efforts to conceive, and now that door had closed, so clearly a surrogate was required (Genesis 16:2). It was the only logical solution, since hoping against hope would just be senseless. And now God is saying that the locked door they gave up banging on was the prize door after all? Now God's saying that their whole scheme, which had paid out at great cost over thirteen years, was a detour away from the promise? Now God is insisting barren Sarai is a mother to Abram's son – God speaking so confidently that he puts the future in the past tense?
What a joke! “Shall a child be born to a man who's a hundred years old?” Or shall this wife of his actually get pregnant and successfully bring a baby boy to birth despite being ninety years of age (Genesis 17:17)? This is utterly ridiculous. “The promises exceed human nature; it was like promising to make people out of stones.”11 It just doesn't make sense to Abram, to say nothing of being time-consuming and troublesome. Abram's content how things are, regardless how Sarai might feel about it (Genesis 17:18). But when he challenges God, God doubles down: “Your wife shall bear a son to you.... I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his seed after him” (Genesis 17:19).
Against everything Abram could say, God insists: Sarai's time has come now that time's long run out. Even if it'll take a miracle – actually, especially since it'll take a miracle, precisely since it'll take a miracle – God is determined to give her the recognition of which she's been starved. Abram is thus summarily disabused of the notion that Sarai had no relevance to God's promises to him. God now stitches her ineradicably into the quilt of his covenant plan. Abram may no longer think about the promises of God, may no longer plan for his legacy, without her: “She is neither an accessory nor an adjunct, but an equal.”12 It's her son, the one yet to be conceived and born, who can already expect that, once he exists, he'll sire seed who'll inherit God's everlasting covenant.
All this sudden reversal, by the way, is couched in the language of blessing: “I will bless her, and moreover I have given you a son by her” (Genesis 17:16). When God had first launched his world-changing relationship with Abram, those are the words he said to him: “I will bless you” (Genesis 12:2). Now, without taking any of that back, God's launching the same kind of world-changing relationship with Sarai: “I will bless her” (Genesis 17:16). From here on out, what they each can hope for becomes “extraordinarily parallel.”13
Not only does God promise Abram a son by Sarai, but he reminds Abram there will be seed in abundance. That wasn't new news; long already, God told Abram, “I will make your seed as the dust of the earth” in its countless extent (Genesis 13:16), and then later gave him a prediction of seed comparable to the stars beyond Abram's math (Genesis 15:5). But that seed is sure a special focus of this chapter. So far, the Bible's used the word 'seed' in Abram's story a total of eight times over five chapters; now, this chapter alone adds a perfect seven – more than any Bible chapter has used the word until now, even in creation.
Plus, for the first time, two creation words get newly looped into the promise. To Adam and Eve, God commanded, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). To Noah and family, God commanded, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 9:1). Now, for the third phase, God brings back the words not as a command, not even as an invitation, but as a divine intervention. “I will multiply you very exceedingly” (Genesis 17:2), “I will make you exceedingly fruitful” (Genesis 17:6). If Adam and Noah were to multiply themselves, for Abram it's an act of God and not of man. And what's more, for Abram God keeps adding this word 'exceedingly,' like sand and stars exceed Abram's eyes and mind.14 In fact, this multiplication 'exceedingly exceedingly' mirrors how the Bible spoke of the waters prevailing “exceedingly exceedingly” over the earth in the flood (Genesis 7:19). God wills to make Abram a human flood prevailing on the face of the earth! They'll flourish with the full force of fertility.
So then God turns to the social ramifications of making Abram multiply and be fruitful. Already God had said to Abram, “I will make you into a great nation” (Genesis 12:2). But now, God tells him, “I will make you into nations,” plural (Genesis 17:6). In fact, he goes so far as to label Abram a future “father of a multitude of nations” (Genesis 17:5). This is a major expansion of the prior promise.15 And now God adds about Sarai, “I will bless her, and she shall become nations” (Genesis 17:16). Her future, as much as his, is supposed to include multiplying into more than a single nation could accommodate; many nations will call Abram 'Dad,' Sarai 'Mom.' If only Abram had been given this promise, we could say that the Ishmaelite Arabs and Midianites would suffice to fulfill it (Genesis 17:20; 25:2).16 But Sarai is ancestress of only two nations: the Edomites, by her grandson Esau, and the Israelites, by her grandson Jacob. So maybe they'd be father and mother of many nations in the sense of “teacher of many nations,”17 carrying out “a leadership role for the family of man”?18 Otherwise, what blessing would it be to trace pagan nations to Abram? No wonder some Jews glossed this as “an assembly of a congregation of just nations” who would come from Abram as father and Sarai as mother.19
But as wild as this upgrade is, God has more to say. To Abram he announces, “I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you” (Genesis 17:6). Nor is Sarai left out, since “she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her” (Genesis 17:16). Before, Sarai's been captured by a king, Abram's feared and fought kings, and not until meeting Melchizedek did Abram ponder the mystery of a good king. But now Abram and Sarai will produce kings. In fact, “many nations and royal families will trace their ancestry” back to this couple.20 At minimum, this can encompass kings “from the house of Judah and Ephraim and the Edomites.”21 But some Jews also read it as meaning that “kings who rule over nations shall come forth from you,”22 as in Israelite governors appointed kings over other nations – after all, didn't Moses envision that Abram's seed would “rule over many nations, but they shall not rule over you” (Deuteronomy 15:6)?23
To commemorate these stunning promises, God does something we never would have expected: he remakes the man and the woman. And he remakes by renaming. “No longer shall your name be called Abram,” God tells Abram, stripping Abram's very name – his identity, his essence – away from him. But God swiftly reclothes him with a new self: “But your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations” (Genesis 17:5). If God had earlier promised to magnify Abram's name (Genesis 12:2), he's now done so literally, enhancing it by a bonus consonant. But Sarai isn't left out: “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name” (Genesis 17:5).
This is the first time in the Bible we see anybody's name change from one thing to another,24 although this was a known practice in the ancient world, where some kings gave themselves a new name upon reaching power, or where some kings were given a new name when installed by a higher king (e.g., 2 Kings 23:34; 24:17).25 God is both asserting authority over Abram and Sarai while also ennobling them and fitting them for a new role. It suggests “a real change in Abram's identity” as well as in Sarai's.26 Perhaps, like some ancient Jews thought, it signified a “change in character to the betterment of soul.”27 Both of them change their names by gaining the same Hebrew letter,28 and Hebrew readers observed it happens to be one of the letters in God's sacred name YHWH, as if this were about “divinizing [Abram's and Sarai's] worldly name” by grace.29 For both of them, “their natural names which they received at their birth in the flesh were changed.”30 Those natural names, those old names, had come from their shared father, the pagan Terah (Genesis 11:27; 20:12). When Abram was called to leave his father's house, he still went forth marked by his father's act of naming, as did Sarai (Genesis 12:1); but now God strips away the last bit of Terah's influence, replacing it with the fatherhood of God.31
As a rule, “names given to men by God,” such as the name 'Abraham' to Abram or 'Sarah' to Sarai, “always signify some gratuitous gift bestowed on them by him.”32 That was the judgment of one of history's greatest theologians. And it makes sense, because in the ancient world, “giving a name to a person amounted to creation of a new reality and destiny.”33 Such renaming was effectively “an act of new creation.”34 God thus “comes to propose a new covenant and to give Abram [and Sarai] a new charge,” a new mission in life; this is a sacred commissioning, a start to a new adventure together as a new man and new woman.35 For Abraham and for Sarah, “everything rings with newness!”36 Their new names engrave on them their new hope and new purpose.
Formerly he was Abram, apparently 'exalted father.' Now he's Abraham, which the text puns as 'father of a multitude.' Genesis doesn't give us any comment on Sarai's change in name, but the basic sense is 'princess.' These days, most scholars judge that the old and new names don't actually differ in meaning; they're variations in dialect.37 But some have guessed that both new names hint at an outward shift away from self toward a universal focus.38 It's not enough for this man to be an exalted father; he's got to be a father to the multitudes. It's not enough for this woman to be a princess to her family; she's got to be “a princess to all mankind.”39 And it's remarkable how aspirational both names are. Abram, while yet a father of one, is called by God a father of a multitude of nations; Sarai, while a nomad's wife in obscurity, is called by God a princess who shall rule! Both new names are oriented toward the future, toward a destiny not yet experienced, not yet tasted in its fruit.40
“I will give to you,” God then announces to Abraham (and thereby also to Sarah), “and to your seed after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan” (Genesis 17:8). We knew that already, because twenty-four years earlier, Abram heard him say that “to your seed I will give this land” (Genesis 12:7), and some years after that, Abram heard that “all the land that you see, I will give to you and your seed forever” (Genesis 13:15) – but now there's a new feature: he'll give them this land “for an everlasting possession” (Genesis 17:8). That sure sounds like it couldn't be alienated from them, couldn't be stolen, couldn't be lost. God would see to it that Abraham's seed would always hold this land as their grant, generation after generation. In one Pharisee's words, God was “revealing” to Abraham “how great nations and kings would spring from him, and how they would win possession, by war, of all Canaan from Sidon to Egypt.”41
That everlasting possession of land is nestled in the context of an “everlasting covenant,” and listen closely to how God describes the point of the covenant: “to be God to you and to your seed after you” (Genesis 17:7), “and I will be their God” (Genesis 17:8). We've heard before about how the LORD chose and led and made a covenant with Abram, but we haven't even yet heard God refer to himself as Abram's God, much less as the God of his seed. But now we hear of an ongoing relationship, of God giving himself to Abraham and his seed, of God taking them for his own treasured people. El Shaddai isn't just Abram's personal god, the way so many in his world had personal gods they were attached to; he's becoming the patron deity of the seed of Abraham, and of however many nations they become. Where other so-called gods were committed first to a place and only secondarily to whoever happened to live in it, El Shaddai commits himself first to a people, the seed of Abraham, and then gives them a place, a land, to be theirs.42 God is now “irrevocably committed to Abraham and his descendants and to their possession of living space.”43 They will always be able to count on him as their “redeemer God,”44 “with assistance from [God] in all situations.”45 They have “covenants of peace” which give them hope in their privileged access to this God as their God (Ephesians 2:12). That's what God is pledging.
“And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise” (Hebrews 6:15). When God called Moses from the burning bush, he identified himself as “the God of Abraham” (Exodus 3:6). He explained he was the God they knew as El Shaddai, and that “I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan,” and that “I have remembered my covenant” (Exodus 6:2-5). All they had to do was trust him: “I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God.... I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham.... I will give it to you for a possession. I am the LORD!” (Exodus 6:6-8).
Once set free, he offered them the prospect of becoming “to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5-6). God spoke over and over about “the land of Canaan, which I give you for a possession” (Leviticus 14:34). In his last sermon, Moses prayed “that he may establish you today as his people, and that he may be your God, as he promised you and as he swore to your fathers” (Deuteronomy 29:12-13). Then Moses bade them follow Hoshea ben Nun, whom Moses had renamed 'Joshua' (Numbers 13:16), thus taking away from his name the letter added to Sarai's while adding the letter removed from Sarah's.46 Where Moses had defeated “the kings of the land” east of the Jordan, Joshua led Israel to victory over thirty-one “kings of the land... on the west side of the Jordan” (Joshua 12:7-24). God “remembered his holy promise and Abraham his servant, so he... gave them the lands of the nations, and they took possession” (Psalm 105:42-44). “In those days, there was no king in Israel” (Judges 17:6), though Moses thought it inevitable (Deuteronomy 17:14-20).47
In time the people “made Saul king before the LORD” (1 Samuel 11:15), though he soon learned that “the LORD has rejected you from being king over Israel” (1 Samuel 15:26). In his place, David was raised up first as king of one tribe, then of Israel as a whole (2 Samuel 2:11; 5:3). For his faithfulness, God pledged to him: “I will raise up your seed after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom” (2 Samuel 7:12). Looking back on the promise with his dying breath, David was grateful that God “has made with me an everlasting covenant” (2 Samuel 23:5). God had begun fulfilling his promise to bring forth kings from Abraham and Sarah. From David came Solomon, then Rehoboam, who provoked most tribes into seceding; now the kingdom was divided, Israel against Judah, each with its own king (1 Kings 12:16-20). This blessed “nation whose God is the LORD” (Psalm 33:12) was now effectively “two nations... divided into two kingdoms” (Ezekiel 37:22). So it followed in north and south, king after king after king.
Until there weren't. “The king of Assyria carried the Israelites away to Assyria,” while then “Judah was taken into exile out of its land” to Babylon (2 Kings 18:11; 25:21). The land given as an everlasting possession was no longer possessed by the seed of Abraham; there was no king left of Abraham and Sarah's line. Far from many nations, did they even qualify as one? What had become of the everlasting covenant? Was the LORD still their patron deity, still God to them and for them?
The prophets wrestled fiercely with the questions, striving to assure this unnationed people that there remained “an everlasting covenant” for them that included God's “sure, steadfast love for David” (Isaiah 55:3). Though the people were estranged from the land promised to them, it couldn't be forever: “I will set my eyes on them for good, and I will bring them back to this land” (Jeremiah 24:5), “I will give you the land of Israel” (Ezekiel 11:17). Then “your people shall be righteous,” and so “they shall possess the land forever” (Isaiah 60:21). In fact, “they and their children and their children's children shall dwell there forever” (Ezekiel 37:25).
“And I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel..., and they shall no longer be two nations and no longer divided into two kingdoms” (Ezekiel 37:22). That reunified nation would attract nations and kings to their light (Isaiah 60:3) and would be nurtured by these nations and kings now at their service (Isaiah 60:16). For “the nations shall see your righteousness, and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give” (Isaiah 66:2). Her name will be changed from Azubah to Hephzibah, 'Forsaken' to 'My Delight Is In Her' (Isaiah 66:4). When God would do this, “I will set them in their land and multiply them” (Ezekiel 37:26); “I will multiply them, and they shall not be few” (Jeremiah 30:19). In fact, so blessed will they be that “the least one shall become a clan, and the smallest one a mighty nation” (Isaiah 60:22). Reunited as one nation, they would become a fruitful nation of nations.
But “one king shall be king over them all,” for “my servant David shall be king over them” (Ezekiel 37:22-24). When he reigns, God's everlasting covenant with Abraham will be made new. “I will make with them an everlasting covenant that I will not turn away from doing good to them..., an everlasting covenant that will never be forgotten” (Jeremiah 32:40; 50:5). “They shall be my people, and I will be their God, in faithfulness and righteousness” (Zechariah 8:8). “I will save them from all the backslidings in which they have sinned, and they shall be my people, and I will be their God” (Ezekiel 37:23), “for they shall return to me with their whole heart” (Jeremiah 24:7). “My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God” (Ezekiel 37:27).
The prophets were looking for “Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1), “the Christ – the King of Israel” (Mark 15:32) on “the throne of his father David” (Luke 1:32). He's the one to whom this promise to Abraham and Sarah was always driving at.48 To him did the Father say, “Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession” (Psalm 2:8). He is the guarantor of the new and everlasting covenant; he is the king in whom all promises find their Yes (2 Corinthians 1:20).
And as God, as El Shaddai made flesh, he began changing names. “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah!... I tell you: You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:17-18). Earlier, the prophet Isaiah preached to Israel: “Look to the rock from which you were hewn and to the quarry from which you were dug – look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who bore you” (Isaiah 51:1-2). There the rock is Abram, whose name was changed to Abraham; here the rock is Simon, whose name is changed to 'Rock,' Peter, to make him a sort of new kingly, priestly, Abrahamic father for the church via this special participation in Christ.
But that same Church is also Christ's Bride, his Sarah, whose calling is to bear many sons and daughters for him unto eternal life. No wonder we read that “the number of the disciples multiplied greatly” (Acts 6:7), that her gospel was “bearing fruit and increasing” (Colossians 1:6), that Christ chose her “to bear fruit for God” (Romans 7:4). If Jesus is the True Abraham (in whose name Peter is to be an Abrahamic rock, and in whose name the apostles are all enthroned as kings), then the Church is the New Sarah, a mother blessed by God to be exceedingly fruitful in bearing children for her Abraham, that they might multiply and flood the earth with life.
Jesus said that “the gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations” (Matthew 24:14), and bade his enthroned apostles to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations” as their royal mission (Matthew 28:19). “And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the nations by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, 'In you shall all the nations be blessed'” (Galatians 3:8). They'd be blessed by being assimilated to the seed of Abraham; sharing Abraham's faith would qualify them as his children. After all, Abraham put his faith in a “God who gives life to the dead.... In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations,” despite “his own body” being “as good as dead, since he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the deadness of Sarah's womb” (Romans 4:17-19). So now Abraham's seed can include not only those with his DNA or who can find him on their family trees, but also “the one who shares the faith of Abraham, the father of us all; for it is written, 'I have made you the father of many nations'” (Romans 4:16-17). By that faith in the God who raised Jesus from the dead, “we know that we were promised to Abraham,” for “each Christian is... a spiritual child of Abraham” and of Sarah.49 This multinational Church, with its many nations adopted into Christ the Seed of Abraham by faith, “is really the nation promised to Abraham by God when he told him that he would make him a father of many nations,” for “by our similar faith we have become children of Abraham..., a religious and righteous nation of like faith, and a delight to the Father.”50
In this nation of nations, this one Church, “there is no 'Jew and Greek,' there is no 'slave or free,' there is no 'male and female,' for you are all one in Christ Jesus; and if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, heirs according to promise” (Galatians 3:28-29), and “if we endure, we will also reign with him” (2 Timothy 2:12). Abraham and his seed had a promise “that he would be heir of the world,” not just of one land alone, however treasured (Romans 4:13). And the Holy Spirit has been sent as “a guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:14). This will be a transformed world, a new creation, “the inheritance of the saints in light” (Colossians 1:12). It exists now as a pattern yet to be seen by mortal eyes, “an inheritance that is imperishable and undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:4). No wonder early Christians “joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession – and an abiding one,” an everlasting possession (Hebrews 10:34)!
As the Bible looks ahead to that, it looks like an everlasting honeymoon of Christ and Church; it looks like a permanent wiping away of every tear and healing of every heart; and it looks like: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man! He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (Revelation 21:3) – just as the prophets dreamed. “And they will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light” in that land of light, “and they will reign forever and ever,” each saint drawn from each nation crowned a king or queen beneath the King of Kings (Revelation 22:5).
Now we anticipate a world that isn't yet so – here, though it exists in its completeness up above already. And as we wait patiently for these dazzling promises, Christ has a word for us: “To the one who conquers,” the disciple who joins the New Joshua in taking possession of the world by the power of self-giving love in the truth, “I will give some of the hidden manna,” the holy food for the holy people, “and I will give him a white stone with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it” (Revelation 2:17). What was true for Abram becoming Abraham, what was true for Sarai becoming Sarah, is true for everyone who conquers, everyone who overcomes, when “the victory that has overcome the world is our faith” (1 John 5:4).
I think I know who I am. You think you know who you are. But we don't yet, just as Abram and Sarai didn't yet know who they really were until God revealed it to them. Our revelation has begun, but only begun. There are new names awaiting us, names spoken by the mouth of the Lord. There's a new purpose, a new identity, on the other side, when we finally take possession of the fullness of the promises of God, when we finally live in the universe as truly our own, when we finally reap the fruits of the eternal covenant of Father and Son, when we sit on the thrones he's prepared for disciples from every nation. In the meantime, what's up to us is to believe in the God who gives life to the dead, to hope against hope in the promises too good to be bored by, to love with the abandon of a berserker at war, to obey our Father's teaching and further our Mother's fertility, and to fall down on the rock, stand forgiven, and walk blamelessly before El Shaddai, God of the Holy Mountain. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope” (Romans 15:13). Amen.
1 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 259.
2 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 384.
3 Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-17 (Eerdmans, 1990), 462.
4 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 384-385; Douglas R. Frayne and Johanna H. Stuckey, A Handbook of Gods and Goddesses of the Ancient Near East: Three Thousand Deities of Anatolia, Syria, Israel, Sumer, Babylonia, Assyria, and Elam (Eisenbrauns, 2021), 84.
5 Jonathan Grossman, Abraham: The Story of a Journey (Maggid Books, 2023), 121-122.
6 Bede, On Genesis 17:7, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:282.
7 Brian Neil Peterson, Genesis: A Pentecostal Commentary (Brill, 2022), 156.
8 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 259.
9 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 315.
10 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 123.
11 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 40.3, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:391.
12 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 193.
13 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 191.
14 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 39.7, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:379.
15 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 186.
16 Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 119.4, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 6:332.
17 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 39.11, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:382.
18 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 186.
19 Targum Neofiti Genesis 17:4-5, in Aramaic Bible 1A:101.
20 Alex Varughese and Christina Bohn, Genesis 12-50: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2019), 94.
21 Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 14.1, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:157.
22 Targum Onqelos Genesis 17:6, in Aramaic Bible 6:74.
23 Scott W. Hahn, Kinship by Covenant: A Canonical Approach to the Fulfillment of God's Saving Promises (Yale University Press, 2009), 115.
24 Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-17 (Eerdmans, 1990), 464.
25 Nathan Wasserman and Yigal Bloch, “'Let Your Name Be...': The Change of Names of Israel's Ancestors in Light of the Atra-hasis Myth,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 49/3 (March 2025): 307-308.
26 David W. Cotter, Genesis (Liturgical Press, 2003), 109.
27 Philo of Alexandria, On the Cherubim 2 §4, in Loeb Classical Library 227:11.
28 Jonathan Grossman, Abraham: The Story of a Journey (Maggid Books, 2023), 126.
29 R. R. Reno, Genesis (Brazos Press, 2010), 173.
30 Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Genesis 3.3, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 71:93.
31 Jonathan Grossman, Abraham: The Story of a Journey (Maggid Books, 2023), 128.
32 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q.37, a.2, in The Works of St. Thomas Aquinas 19:391.
33 Nathan Wasserman and Yigal Bloch, “'Let Your Name Be...': The Change of Names of Israel's Ancestors in Light of the Atra-hasis Myth,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 49/3 (March 2025): 306.
34 John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 279.
35 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 308.
36 Augustine of Hippo, The City of God 16.26, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/7:217.
37 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 126; Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-17 (Eerdmans, 1990), 476; David W. Cotter, Genesis (Liturgical Press, 2003), 108; Bill T. Arnold, Genesis (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 173; Tremper Longman III, Genesis (Zondervan Academic, 2016), 220; James Chukwuma Okoye, Genesis 12-50: A Narrative-Theological Commentary (Cascade Books, 2020), 94; and more.
38 Nathan Wasserman and Yigal Bloch, “'Let Your Name Be...': The Change of Names of Israel's Ancestors in Light of the Atra-hasis Myth,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 49/3 (March 2025): 316; cf. Terence E. Fretheim, Abraham: Trials of Family and Faith (Fortress Press, 2024; reprint from University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 41.
39 Genesis Rabbah 47.1, in Harry Freedman, ed., Midrash Rabbah (Soncino Press, 1983), 1:399-400.
40 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 262.
41 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.191, in Loeb Classical Library 242:95.
42 Daniel I. Block, The Gods of the Nations: A Study in Ancient Near Eastern National Theology, 2nd ed. (Wipf & Stock, 2013), 32.
43 James Chukwuma Okoye, Genesis 12-50: A Narrative-Theological Commentary (Cascade Books, 2020), 95.
44 Targum Neofiti Genesis 17:8, in Aramaic Bible 1A:101.
45 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 39.12, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:383.
46 Genesis Rabbah 47.1, in Harry Freedman, ed., Midrash Rabbah (Soncino Press, 1983), 1:399.
47 Scott Hahn, Kinship by Covenant: A Canonical Approach to the Fulfillment of God's Saving Promises (Yale University Press, 2009), 114-115.
48 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 265; Tremper Longman III, Genesis (Zondervan Academic, 2016), 224.
49 Augustine of Hippo, Letter 196.10-11, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century II/3:314-315.
50 Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 119.4-6, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 6:332.
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