Genesis 15
After these things the word of the Lord came
to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am
your shield; your reward shall be very great.”
2 But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will
you give me, for I continue childless, and the
heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3
And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me
no offspring, and a member of my household
will be my heir.” 4 And behold, the word of
the Lord came to him: “This man shall not
be your heir; your very own son shall be
your heir.” 5 And he brought him outside
and said, “Look towards heaven, and number
the stars, if you are able to number them.”
Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring
be.” 6 And he believed the Lord, and he
counted it to him as righteousness.
As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on
Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness
fell upon him. 13 Then the Lord said to Abram,
“Know for certain that your offspring will be
sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will
be servants there, and they will be afflicted for
four hundred years. 14 But I will bring judgment
on the nation that they serve, and afterwards
they shall come out with great possessions.
15 As for yourself, you shall go to your fathers
in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age.
16 And they shall come back here in the fourth
generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not
yet complete.” 17 When the sun had gone down
and it was dark, behold, a smoking firepot and a
flaming torch passed between these pieces.
18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with
Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land,
from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river
Euphrates.”
The plain sense of this passage is rather straightforward: Abram wants children because he wishes to have a biological heir. “The word of the Lord” comes to Abram and promises a biological heir to Abram. Abram fell asleep and God speaks to Abram in the form of a dream; God describes a situation that no parent desires to hear: your children, your children’s children, your children’s children’s children, and your children’s children’s children’s children will be enslaved; however, God also promises to “bring judgment” on the nation that enslaves Abram’s offspring and insures “great possessions” to Abram’s offspring post-enslavement. God makes a promise to Abram as well: “you shall be buried in a good old age.” This particular passage closes with God making “a covenant with Abram and specifying the land that will be given to Abram’s offspring.
In “Homily IX” of his sermons on Genesis, the early Church theologian Origen (182 – 254) says this about Genesis 15 (Origen, Homilies on Genesis and Exodus, pgs. 150-151):
At that time in the first promise there is no reason stated why the promise is given, only that he brought him forth and “showed him…the stars of heaven, and said ‘So shall your seed be’.” But now he adds the reason on account of which he confirms with an oath the promise which will be steadfast. For he says [in Genesis 22]: “Because you have done this thing and have not spared your son.” He shows, therefore, that because of the offspring or passion of the son the promise is steadfast. This clearly points out that the promise remains steadfast because of the passion of Christ for the people of the gentiles “who are of the faith of Abraham” [Romans 4].
Origen’s interpretation is helpful because it gets us, as readers during the Lenten Season, from God’s covenant with Abram (Abraham) to “the passion of Christ.” Origen is a master of reading Scripture inter-textually and weaving together biblical narratives that help clarify one another, and the result of this inter-textual reading is what the Lutheran theologian George Lindbeck (1923 – ) calls “intratextuality”: “The direction of the flow of intratextual interpretation is that of absorbing the extratextual universe into the text, rather than the reverse (extratextual) direction” (Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, pg. 118). What ought to be more normative, more real for Christians during the Lenten Season: the world of experience and sense perceptions all around us, or the world of the canonical biblical narratives inviting us into the covenantal promises of God?
We live in world where promises are often broken, both accidentally and deliberately. Earlier this week, I promised my eldest daughter ice cream if she finished her dinner. We also had a dentist appointment in the afternoon, before dinner, where we learned that she had a cavity in one of baby teeth hard to reach by a toothbrush. The dentist made it clear to both us: no sugar and no sweet desserts until this cavity is cared for. I had to break the promise I made to her, from earlier in the day, because the circumstances changed: no ice cream even if she completed eating all of her dinner. In this scenario, I deliberately broke my promise because it was in the best interests of my daughter and her cavity-stricken tooth.
God does not break his promises. This is the world that the biblical narratives invite us into as participants: a world where promises are not broken no matter the age of the characters, the circumstances of sin and suffering, nor the pains involved with the sacrifice of a son/Son. In our world, the world of experience, promises are often broken: sometimes for good reasons and other times for no reason at all. In the world of the biblical narratives, one of the consistent and constant features of the character of God is that God refuses to break promises made to God’s people. Abram is old and tired of waiting on his biological heir: God keeps his promise, and Abraham has two sons. God promises his covenant for all people, Jew and Gentile alike, yet the Gentiles are not the biological heirs of Abraham: God sends his Son in the form of Jesus of Nazareth to engraft Gentiles into God’s covenant with God’s people. The Gentiles refuse to act like God’s people, within the covenant, and throw away the Law: the Apostle Paul reminds us in Romans that God remains faithful even if, even when God’s people do not. Why is this? Because God cannot, does not, and will not break God’s promises. And this helps us properly identify a feature of the world that Christians are invited into during the Lenten Season: a world in which God does not break God’s promises to his people. We await the promised, crucified one (Good Friday); we await the promised, resurrected one (Easter Sunday).
Dr. Jacob L. Goodson serves as Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Southwestern College. He is the author of Narrative Theology and the Hermeneutical Virtues: Humility, Patience, Prudence (Lexington Books, 2015). He is a member at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, where he teaches Adult Education classes on Christian doctrine. His wife, Angela McWilliams, is in the Lutheran Deaconess Association and works as a Chaplain at Wesley Medical Center in Wichita. He has two daughters: Sophia Grace is 9 years old, and Seraphina Rose is 7.
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