Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Genesis 17:4 - 17:4

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Genesis 17:4 - 17:4


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

On the part of God אֲנִי placed at the beginning absolutely: so far as I am concerned, for my part) it was to consist of this: (1) that God would make Abram the father (אַב instead of אֲנִי chosen with reference to the name Abram) of a multitude of nations, the ancestor of nations and kings; (2) that He would be God, show Himself to be God, in an eternal covenant relation, to him and to his posterity, according to their families, according to all their successive generations; and (3) that He would give them the land in which he had wandered as a foreigner, viz., all Canaan, for an everlasting possession. As a pledge of this promise God changed his name אַבְרָם, i.e., high father, into אַבְרָהָם, i.e., father of the multitude, from אב and רָהָם, Arab. ruhâm = multitude. In this name God gave him a tangible pledge of the fulfilment of His covenant, inasmuch as a name which God gives cannot be a mere empty sound, but must be the expression of something real, or eventually acquire reality.