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NASB | Genesis 22:16 and said, "By Myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son, |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Genesis 22:16 and said, "By Myself (on the basis of Who I Am) I have sworn [an oath], declares the LORD, that since you have done this thing and have not withheld [from Me] your son, your only son [of promise], |
Bible Question:
I was kind of blind-sided in class today when a student asked about Genesis 26:5 where God reaffirms the covenant promises to Isaac and then says: "because Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws." I had never noticed this before and my commentaries are not helping! How do we reconcile this with Genesis 15 where God makes a unilateral covenant with Abraham? That is such an important doctrine and has profound implications! |
Bible Answer: montanadove, First, I'd push the problem back even further to Genesis 22:16 where God basis His oath to Abraham on his obedience. Second, I am supposing that you are thinking with some type of covenantal framework to have this degree of a concern. Now in an attempt to help, I would suggest to you that the only theological difficutlty is that it is important that God's promised blessings to Abraham rely on a promise and not something else. And in this we still find the promise to Abraham resting on a firm promise. Now if obedience on his part prompted that promise, it does not at all change that it was a unilateral promise. Point being: The only difficulty is an apparent fuzziness on from what the promise flowed from, the difficulty is not a change from the Abrahamic covenant being based on promise in one passage and Law in another. I can't help but wonder if your theological leanings cause you to interpret the Abrahamic covenant and the New covenant as the same covenant. Imagining that you see it this way and that you are concerned with a shift from promise to Law here is what I'm guessing is the issue. Also, in scripture we see a good bit of the covenant promises being hinged on obedience in a secondary sense, while relying entirely on God's promise in a primary sense. We see this finding harmony in God granting the the obedience. This is how we can say things like "faith alone" and at the same time say to "pursue holiness without which no one will see the Lord." (Heb 12:14) In Christ, Beja |
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Questions and/or Subjects for Gen 22:16 | Author | ||
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montanadove | ||
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Beja | ||
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DD4Truth |