“I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:2-3)
This was a common kind of covenant between
a ruler and a pagan god in ancient times, accept maybe the last line, “all
peoples of the earth will be blessed through you.” The god would covenant to
make the leader and his nation great and powerful and would curse all his
enemies. But when God speaks these words, they have a renewed meaning, which
people begin to understand as they learn his character. This is a common form
of communication in the Old Testament: God starts with where people are (their
current understanding of things) and draws them to the renewal he offers to us
in Christ.
God promised Abram he would make his nation
great. Israel did become a great nation, especially in the days of Solomon, and
so they could say God kept his word. But this wasn’t what God meant. He meant
through Christ, the lowly ruler, who would reign over the world in grace,
completely unlike Solomon. Christ’s reign would be much greater, both in extent
and in character. God also promised he would bless Abram’s friends and curse
his enemies. Everyone wants to hear this. But Abram didn’t misunderstand this.
He knew he had to deal honourably and truthfully with all his neighbours. And God’s
promise didn’t mean Abram or his seed wouldn’t suffer. It meant God would
protect them and cause his purposes to be fulfilled in their nation, through
Christ.
The blessing of all peoples on earth speaks
of a new family throughout the world that would bring new creation. This is a
continuation of God’s solution to the ancient destruction and the Flood that
followed. A new family wouldn’t seek retribution and genocide, but instead
forgiveness and restoration. Exploitation and empire would be replaced by an
interethnic family of acceptance and care. This is how Paul explained Abraham’s
promises in Romans and all his epistles: The Lord’s table of care between
gentile and Jew, rich and poor, free and slave. And this is how Jesus also
explained the new kingdom of God coming into the world through the gospel, in
his teaching on neighbourliness. The record in Genesis shows it took Abraham a
long time to begin to understand God’s project, but he trusted, or believed
God.
“At that time the Canaanites were in the
land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this
land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.”
(Genesis 12:6-7)
So much of what we see in the Old Testament
is God accommodating with the mindset of the people of the time. The land was
promised to Abram but not given to Israel until about 400 years later, when “the
sin of the Amorites (Canaanites) was full.” By then the land was being
devastated by the worst crimes imaginable, in rampant child and human
sacrifice, satanism, violence and all forms of human abuse. Even archaeology
affirms this. When Israel finally took the land, it was mainly the fortresses
they attacked. In accounts of war there is a lot of hyperbole and throughout
the Old Testament there is a lot of human forms of atonement (bloodletting, which
God even sometimes allowed), but his long-term goal was that the Torah point to
Christ and his reign of Jubilee, love for foreigner, the marginalised and even
the enemy, and peace. God even forbad Israel to build fortresses, use chariots
in war, or build a standing army. They weren’t even to have a king (the leader
of an army in those days.)
Genesis 12 concludes with an example of the favour of God
being upon Abram. In Egypt God blesses Abram with livestock and servants, but
curses Pharaoh with diseases for taking Sarai into his harem. God is speaking
in the language they understand (in the theology of their own gods), to show
them that he has a special purpose for Israel, to bring his love into the world
for all people. I find that many who don’t understand this text, or texts about
Israel later conquering the land, have not lived through terrorism and the evil
that then filled the region, or understand the ways of peace God shows us to
rescue ourselves and nations today. Their reflection on these texts is far too
shallow. Similarly, they criticise the Prophets for their fury, not recognising
the poetry, the laminations of a betrayed husband, who seeks the way of divine
love in the end. Such critics miss 99% of the content of the text and just focus
on this verse or that.
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