READING TIME: 4-7 MINUTES
May 14, 2020
David, could you please give me an overview of the Abrahamic Covenant?
Part 1
Approximately 4000 years ago God initiated a new stage in the drama of redemption. God made an unconditional covenant with Abram and called him to leave his hometown of Ur to embark upon a pilgrimage in search of that city whose maker and builder was God (Heb. 11:10). In a cluster of predictions during the Patriarchal era, God defined clearly the chosen line through which Messianic blessing would come into the world. It becomes clear in Gen. 12-28 that the channel of blessing would be Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Toward the end of the Patriarchal period, Jacob singled out Judah as the chosen one among his twelve sons.
The Patriarchal promises were given on six occasions to Abraham (12:1-3, 7; 13:14-18; 15:4, 5, 13-18; 17:1-8; 18:17-19; 22:15-18). Twice those promises were given to Isaac (26:4, 23-24).
UR — ABRAHAM’S HOMETOWN
The city that Abraham came from (in southern Iraq; 200-220 miles southeast of Baghdad; halfway between Baghdad and the Persian Gulf) was not primitive in the standard of his day. As I describe what this city was like, imagine the faith in God that Abraham must have had to leave the city where he had grown up. So, you see that Abraham the patriarch turned his back on a rich, sophisticated society in response to the divine imperative.
Sir Leonard Woolley discovered a lot of fascinating things in Ur during his excavations there from 1922 to 1934 for the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania. Ur was a city with a complex system of government and a well-developed system of commerce, one with writing in common use for the issue of receipts, and the making of contracts.
There were town drains, streets, two-story houses, a great temple tower (called a ziggurat), trade routes joining the town with other great towns to the north and the south, and various other pieces of evidence of a highly-developed civilization.
Schools in Ur were used to train people for religious, commercial, and governmental work. The curriculum included mathematics, language, geography, botany, and drawing.
Ur was sustained by a healthy agricultural system based on irrigation ditches from the riverbank, stone plowshares, and flint sickles. With this technology, the Babylonians grew two crops each season.
The Royal Tombs of Ur reflect the wealth of the city. Kings and queens drank from gold and silver beakers. For show, the kings wore daggers with golden blades.
In a typical house the street door opened into a small lobby, perhaps provided with a jar of water for those arriving to wash their feet. A doorway at one side led into a courtyard. There were other rooms around the sides of the courtyard, among them store-rooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen. In the kitchen, there might be a well, a brick-built table, an oven, and grinding stones for making flour, as well as the pots and pans the last owners left behind. A long room at the center of one side could have been the reception room. In these houses, there is usually a well-constructed staircase at one side of the courtyard. Arab houses built in recent times in the towns of Iraq follow almost the same plan.
Clay tablets left in the houses, some in small archive rooms, tell what the occupants of those houses were doing. Among them were merchants, local businessmen, priests, and others in the service of the temple. Their records deal with the sale and purchase of houses and land, slaves and goods, with adoption, marriage and inheritance, and all the affairs of a busy city.
In a few houses, there were many tablets of a much different nature. On round balls of clay, flattened to a bun shape, pupils had copied the teacher’s handwriting in exercises to learn how to form the cuneiform signs. The teachers helped their pupils learn the old Sumerian language by using tables of verbs, and for arithmetic, they had tables of square and cube roots and reciprocal numbers.
Citizens of Ur during the time of Abraham were able to enjoy quite a high standard of living in their prosperous city. So, it is not surprising to find that they felt superior to the nomads who lived in the semi-desert beyond the areas watered by the Euphrates. Abraham’s life after God called him was very different from the life he had before he was called. At the call of God, Abraham left the sophisticated city, with all its security and comfort, to become one of the despised nomads!
AN UNCONDITIONAL COVENANT
By “unconditional” it is meant that God’s promises in the covenant will be fulfilled unconditionally — that the covenant promises will be fulfilled despite man’s success or failure to keep whatever conditions or commandments may be contained in the covenant. Fulfillment is dependent upon God and not man. God intends to fulfill the terms of the covenant regardless of whether man fulfills his obligations. Abraham may have had some obligations to fulfill, but even if Abraham failed to fulfill those obligations, God’s promises to Abraham would have still been fulfilled.
WHAT PART DID OBEDIENCE PLAY IN THE COVENANT?
While the enjoyment of the blessings of the covenant may be conditioned upon obedience, the fulfillment of the promises is not. While possession and ownership of the land were unconditional, the enjoyment of the land is conditional.
ONLY ONE CONDITION!
The only condition for the Abrahamic Covenant was the command for Abraham to leave the land of his birth and to enter a new land. Once Abraham obeyed this one imperative, it rendered the covenant unconditional. In other words, whether or not God would make a covenant program with Abraham did depend upon Abraham’s act of obedience in leaving the land, but when Abraham obeyed, then God made an irrevocable and unconditional covenant. Once Abraham obeyed, the covenant that God made with Abraham did not depend on Abraham’s continued obedience but the character of our LORD.
THE PROVISIONS OF THE COVENANT
(1) A great nation was to come out of Abraham, namely, the nation of Israel (12:2; 13:16; 15:5; 17:1-2, 7; 22:17b)
(2) He was promised a land specifically, the Land of Canaan (12:1, 7; 13:14-15, 17; 15:17-21; 17:8) — it does not matter whether the Jew people are in the land or outside of the land or whether anyone else may control it by conquest or any other means, for the land belongs to the Jewish people by divine right.
(3) Abraham himself was to be greatly blessed (12:2b; 15:6; 22:15-17a)
(4) Abraham’s name would be great (12:2c)
(5) Abraham will be a blessing to others (12:2d)
(6) Those who bless will be blessed (12:3a)
(7) Those who curse will be cursed (12:3b) — again and again, this principle is operative in the prophets as they pronounce judgment on the nations surrounding Israel for the treatment of His chosen people.
(8) In Abraham, all will ultimately be blessed, a promise of Gentile blessing (12:3c; 22:18)
(9) Abraham would receive a son through his wife Sarah (15:1-4; 17:16-21)
(10) His descendants would undergo the Egyptian bondage (15:13-14)
(11) Other nations, as well as Israel would come forth from Abraham (17:3-4, 6; the Arab states are some of these nations)
(12) His name was to be changed from Abram to Abraham (17:5)
(13) Sarai’s name was to be changed to Sarah (17:15)
(14) There was to be a token/sign of the covenant — circumcision (17:9-14).