Genesis 12-13
Introduction
This lesson covers the covenant with Abraham and its implications.
Gen. 12
This is where God first speaks to Abram. He tells him to pick up everything and everyone who belongs to him, and go someplace without knowing where he’s going. Then God promises to make a great nation out of him, in spite of the fact that he was 75 years old and childless. On top of that, God promises that whoever blesses Abram will be blessed, but whoever curses him will be cursed.
That last part is where a lot of controversy comes from, regarding how Christians should treat Jews. This isn’t limited to Abram himself but extends to all his progeny, the great nation
. Recalling the previous lesson regarding ethnos, it would seem silly to say that God was going to make of Abram a great Gentile. Does this mean Christians can never criticize the nation of Israel? On the other hand, does it mean we can wish to wipe them off the map without suffering the curse of God?
Those who believe that God is finished with the physical nation of Israel will dismiss details such as a great nation
as now only referring to some vague spiritual state. But there are three specific elements of this promise, which will be repeated and expanded in chapters 13, 15, and 17, and none of them depend on any conditions.
- Abram himself is promised that his name will be held in high regard.
- Abram will have uncountable numbers of physical children that will become a great nation, and this includes a physical land with physical borders. Nothing in this promise hints at anything spiritual or allegorical. Later God will narrow down the blessed line of descent to be through Isaac and Jacob, such that not all of Abram’s descendants are part of this promise. This is made very clear in Gal. 4.
- Through Abram all the nations of the world will be blessed. We aren’t given the details of what this means, but in hindsight we know of course that at the very least it includes redemption through the Messiah. Yet this blessing to the nations depends on whether they bless or curse Abram and his descendants. This is the only part of the Promise that is conditional. We can see throughout the Old Testament that nations mistreating Israel suffered God’s wrath, but this seems to have held true for the modern nation as well.
The Promise is reduced to nonsense if we treat all this as merely allegorical or ultimately only spiritual. What sense can we make of the phrases great nation
and all the families of the earth
, if they’re all the same in the end? What is the meaning of a land with boundaries marked by rivers and mountains, if it’s only spiritual? To take a context that is literal in every sense of the word, and blur it into undefined and arbitrary spiritual fulfillment, is to render Bible study pointless. On what basis do we believe that Jesus rose from the dead, if the scriptures are only codes or allegories about good and evil?
Some argue that since people not of Abram’s line could become members of Israel, then literal genetic bloodlines are irrelevant. But this again robs God’s promise of all meaning, of a literal son from Abram’s own body. What’s the point of such a miracle?
This is not to say that no spiritual blessing is involved at all; we have explicit statements of this in the New Testament, such as in Rom. 4:11 and Gal. 3:7 and 29. But there is no warrant to throw out the physical just because of the spiritual. Even within the physical line of Abram, individual faithfulness was required, and it is those physical descendants with faith who are spiritual Israel
— not the church. This is the point in Gal. 3. The three recipients of God’s promise to Abram cannot be blended into one, without twisting the scriptures beyond recognition.
So what should the church do with modern Jews and the modern nation of Israel? The answer depends on whether we take the scriptures literally, or whether we take them as cryptographic and bendable to every possible interpretation. For both approaches, it is never proper for any Christian to hate, or to wish destruction, or to ignore the sins of our own people while pointing out the sins of Israel. But for the literalist, we must find the balance between blessing them as a people, and blindly supporting everything their secular government does.
After such a promise from God, one might expect Abram to live a nearly flawless life. But the rest of ch. 12 tells of his plot to pawn off his wife Sarah just to save his own skin when they passed through Egypt. Even so, God made sure the Pharaoh never touched her, and he sent Abram out with a lot of wealth. God is very patient and merciful!
Gen. 13
This chapter tells of the parting of the households of Abram and his nephew Lot, and the fateful choice of Lot to settle in Sodom. But we see again, in the last half of the chapter, God’s repeating of his promise, which once again concerns physical land and descendants. The fact that the New Testament often uses these real, physical, literal people and events as object lessons, cannot mean they have no literal and physical fulfillments.
If these chapters show us anything, it’s that our approach to scripture has wide-ranging implications. The allegorist could get as much life advice from any other source, but cling nonetheless to a literal Jesus rising physically from the dead. This is inconsistent at best. But the literalist enjoys all the riches of the unfolding plan and mercy of God through the ages, which also gives us a concrete hope for the future and a mature, confident grasp of the times in which we live. This does take much more effort than required of the allegorist, but things of great value are rarely easy to obtain. Through the centuries, many have suffered and died to preserve the pages of the Bible; will we honor them by considering it precious, or will we treat their sacrifices with contempt? People don’t suffer and die for an allegory.