Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadPaul Kretzmann Commentary - Genesis 12:1 - 12:3
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
God Calls Abraham
v. 1. Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house unto a land that I will show thee. Here the real story of Abram, or Abraham, begins, to which the author has led up in a very skilful manner. God gave him a command which imposed upon him a threefold renunciation, Abram was to leave his fatherland, both Haran and Ur of the Chaldees being included in Mesopotamia. He was to forsake the members of his tribe, the other Chaldaic descendants of Shem, all of them now addicted to heathenism. He was to go forth even from his father's house, that of Terah and his family. The expressions are purposely heaped to indicate that it meant for Abram a complete severing of family ties: leaving everything behind that he had ever held near and dear but his wife, he was to journey, as a stranger, into a land which he would see by and by.
v. 2. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing;
v. 3. and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee; and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. Here are promises of both temporal and spiritual blessings. To the first belongs the fact that Abram's descendants were to be so great in number as to be a great nation. But of far greater importance are the promises that refer to spiritual gifts. For that Abram's name should be great, that the blessing of the Lord should rest upon him, that he should be distinguished so highly among men as to receive the thankful praises and the blessings of men and be shielded against any curse, that in him should be blessed all the families and tribes of the earth, all mankind: all this does not refer to any mere outward wealth which the Lord intended to shower upon Abram. The blessing rather, as the repetitions and extensions show, Gen_18:18; Gen_22:18; Gen_26:4, indicated that Abram (or Abraham) was to be a source of everlasting spiritual gifts and blessings through his seed, through one descendant in the great and blessed nation which would call him father, namely, through the Messiah, Jesus Christ, Act_3:25-26; Gal_3:16. The prophecy of the Seed of the woman, which had been narrowed down in a general way in the blessing upon Shem, was here given expressly to Abram and to the nation which was to descend from him.