Genesis 12:1-3

"Now Jehovah said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will show thee. And I will make of thee a great nation, I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and be thou a blessing: and I will bless them that bless thee, and him that curseth thee I will curse; and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed."

"Jehovah said unto Abram ..." We are not informed as to the manner of God's communicating with Abram; but Acts 7:2 declares that, "The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham." God is Spirit, and it might be conjectured that in this call there occurred one of the great theophanies which, again and again, marked God's dealings with His people.

"Unto the land that I will show thee ..." This is apparently abbreviated, because, at least, Abram knew that the first part of the journey involved his going to Canaan, as indicated in Genesis 11:31.

"I will make of thee a great nation ..." The Gargantuan size of this promise is seen against the physical facts prevailing at the time, in that Abraham had no child whatever, and that Sarai his wife was barren! Yet God did exactly what He said He would do. A mighty nation indeed did descend from Abraham, a nation which, in the racial sense is still counted in the earth's family of nations, and which, in the spiritual sense, is visible in every village and hamlet on earth! Abraham has been compared to a lofty mountain peak, down the several sides of which flow three great rivers of earth's populations: (1) those of the racial Jews; (2) those of the Arabians; and (3) those of the entire Christian world. Muslim, Christian and Jew alike hail Abraham as a sacred ancestor.

"I will bless thee ..." As Unger expressed it, "Blessing for Abraham, as for all of God's people, was dependent upon faith proved by obedience."[1] This contingency is always in effect, whether stated or not; and it applies to the so-called "land promise" and everything that God promised Abraham. The usual observation that many feel compelled to make was stated thus by Leupold:

"It would appear that this initial summons (of Abraham) was merely by the mercy of Him who called and not upon the strength of the merits of the one who was called."[2]

To be sure, Abraham did not merit or deserve God's salvation, as is certainly true of all people. Nevertheless, God did choose Abraham on the basis of certain abilities that Abraham had (Genesis 18:19). Thus, we reject the old fatalistic notion that God's election is capricious, being exercised after the manner of a totally blind man separating a jar of black and white marbles at midnight in a cellar without light! There were holy and divine reasons that underlay the choice of Abraham, and there was nothing capricious or partial involved. God was looking to the salvation of all people, to the extent that all people might consent to it. All people, therefore, may thank God for the choice of Abraham, that in him indeed God found a man who could do what had to be done!

"And be thou a blessing ..." Abraham was chosen and elevated to his high post, not for his own sake, but for the sake of the blessing that he would become to all people. This is fully in keeping with the frequent N.T. revelation that "we are saved to save others"; "we are healed to serve others"; and "we are blessed to bless others."

"I will bless them that bless thee ... and him that curseth thee I will curse ..." This was fulfilled literally in the long centuries of God's chosen mantle of protective love that sheltered and preserved the Chosen People until at last the Christ was born in Bethlehem; it continues to be fulfilled in the blessing of those who aided the progress of Christianity and in the woes that fell upon the persecutors. Lactantius wrote twenty pages of the most interesting discussions of the awful punishments, judgments, and miseries that befell the notorious persecutors of Christianity, giving in detail the things that happened to Nero, Domitian, Decius, Valerian, Aurelian, Diocletian, etc.[3] Without any doubt, this great promise today belongs to the true Israel of God in exactly the same manner as it applied under the old covenant to the old Israel. Jesus said as much in Matthew 28:18-20 and in Luke 18:7.

"And in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed ..." We have no patience whatever with the critical enemies of God's Word who butcher this place by rendering it, "By thee shall all families of the earth bless themselves!"[4] All of the cunning arguments based on the niphal or the hithpael forms of the verb here, or whether or not the reflexive of the passive sense is to be understood dissolve into nothingness in the simple fact that it is an utter impossibility for all the families of the earth to "bless themselves in Abraham"! What a preposterous perversion of God's Word such a rendition is. Yes, it is true that such a rendition is theoretically possible, but, as Peake (himself a liberal, critical scholar) admitted, "The traditional rendition `be blessed' is permissible."[5] One should not, therefore, be deceived by the deliberate choice of a foolish rendition as long as a reasonable rendition is just as permissible and a thousand times more appropriate. Whitelaw's comment on this is:

"In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed, not bless themselves (Jarchi, Clericus); but in thee, as the progenitor of the promised seed, shall all the families of the ground (i.e., cursed on account of sin, Genesis 3:17) be spiritually blessed (Calvin, Luther, Rosenmuller, Keil, Murphy, Wordsworth).[6]

A promise as big as this one can be fulfilled in only one thing, and that is by the coming of the Son of God to save all people from sin. Many discerning commentators have seen this. God had promised the "seed of woman" as the One who would accomplish this (Genesis 3:15); and, "Now it becomes clear that it would be accomplished through Abraham's own family."[7] "Only in the idea of the Messiah does the depth of the thought (of this passage) adequately display itself. The old conservative interpretation is well established in every way. It alone meets the needs of the case."[8]

The real objection that some scholars have to the proper rendition of this place was stated thus by Willis:

"Due to the influence of Wellhausen, other literary-historical scholars, and certain history-of-religion analysts, it is widely believed that Israel's interest in and concern for the nations was highly improbable before she was carried into Babylonian exile ... They conclude that this verse could not manifest a universal concern and therefore translate it in a non-universal sense."[9]

No one can question the views of such scholars, except to bemoan the blindness of them. Sure, Israel was never interested in all the world, and that condition did not materially improve after the Babylonian exile. They were not even interested when Jesus came, and they opposed the acceptance of Gentiles into the covenant with God with every hatred and ingenuity that Satan could invent. What has any of that got to do with what "God SAID" in this passage? The question here is not what did Israel think, but is it true that "Jehovah said unto Abram... in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed"? We believe it is true, and that God had in view from the very first the salvation of all people, not just Jews.