The Abrahamic Covenant

The Abrahamic Covenant

The seventeenth chapter of Genesis takes on new meaning for us now. We see that when God appeared to Abraham to make a covenant with him, that Abraham knew what it meant. God was coming into a covenant of strong friendship with him. (The Blood Covenant was called the Covenant of Strong Friendship.) That is why Abraham was called the friend of God (James 2:23; Isaiah 41:8 and II Chronicles 20:7).
Abraham is the only human being who was called the friend of God in the Old Testament.

The Covenant that God cut with Abraham was to bring the Israelitish nation into being as a Covenant people (Genesis 17:7). Then God gave to Abraham the method of cutting the Covenant (Genesis 17:10-14). The seal of the Covenant was Circumcision. Every male child was circumcised at the age of eight days, and that circumcision was the entrance into the covenant. Genesis 17:26, in the selfsame day, Abraham was circumcised; and thenceforward he bore in his flesh the evidence that he had entered into the Blood Covenant of friendship with God. To this day, Abraham is designated in the East as the “friend of God.”

After the formal covenant of blood had been cut between God and Abraham, there came a testing of Abraham’s fidelity to that Covenant. This testing would also give evidence to the future generations of the fact that the cutting of the covenant on the part of Abraham in the rite of Circumcision had not been an empty ceremony, but that in that he had pledged his very life to Jehovah. Genesis 15:6, “He believed in Jehovah, and He reckoned it to him for righteousness.” The Hebrew word, “Heemeen,” here translated, “believed in,” carries the idea of an unqualified committal of one’s self to another. Abraham so trusted Jehovah that he was ready to commit himself to Jehovah as in the rite of the Blood Covenant.

Therefore, God counted Abraham’s spirit of loving and longing for trust as ready for a blood covenant friendship between them. Genesis 22:1-19, the testing came when Isaac, a blood covenant child that God had miraculously given to Abraham, was eighteen or twenty years old.

Abraham’s Testing

Genesis 22:1, 2, “And it came to pass that God did prove Abraham and said unto him, Abraham; and he said Here am I. And He said, Take now thy son, thy only son whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I tell you of.” And Abraham rose instantly to respond to the call of his Divine Friend.

Just here, it is well to recognize the Oriental thought in a transaction like this. An Oriental father prizes an only son more than he prizes his own life. For an Oriental father to die without a son is a terrible thought, but with a son to take his place, he is ready to die. For Abraham to have surrendered his own toil-worn life, now that a son of promise had been born to him, would have been a minor matter, at the call of God; but for Abraham to surrender that son and to become again a hopeless, childless old man, was a different matter.

Only a faith that would neither reason nor question, only a love that would neither fail nor waver, could meet an issue like that. All the world over, men in the covenant of blood-friendship were ready to give that which was dearer than life itself to their Blood-Covenant brothers or their gods. Would Abraham do as much for his Divine Friend as men would do for their human friends? Would Abraham surrender to his God all that the worshippers of other gods were willing to surrender in proof of their devotedness? These were questions to be answered before the world.

Genesis 22:3-10, Abraham showed himself capable of even such friendship as this in his Blood Covenant with Jehovah. And when he had manifested his spirit of devotedness, he was told to stay his hand (Hebrews 11:17-19). Genesis 22:15-17, then it was that the “angel of Jehovah called unto Abraham a second time out of heaven and said, By myself have I sworn (by my life).” Here is the foundation of that covenant, Godward. There was nothing that God could swear by except Himself. To the Oriental, it meant: “I swear by myself. Now if this fails, I become your slave; you own me. I put myself in bondage to you.”

They are bound together; all that God is belongs to Abraham, and all that Abraham is or ever will have belongs to God in this Covenant Relationship. Now you can understand why so many times He said, “I am Jehovah, who keepeth covenants.” He is the Covenant-keeping God. Back behind Israel was this solemn covenant that God had sealed on His side by putting Himself in utter, absolute bondage to that Covenant.