Genesis17chapter 17

Genesis 17:1-2

Thirteen years pass in silence between the birth of Ishmael in 16:16 and this appearing, and the promise picks up where it left off with the same word about multiplying exceedingly. El Shaddai is spoken here for the first time in Scripture, and a first use sets the sense a name carries afterwards, which is the reading method Missler works from. Enoch and Noah are each said to have walked with God, while Abram is told to walk before me.

Genesis 17:3-5

Abram goes face down before God has said a word about the name, and Bede notes that no man earlier in the book is recorded doing this. The new name adds one Hebrew letter, the he, and Sarai receives the same letter before the conversation ends, so both carriers of the promise are renamed in the same hour. Clarke grants that the exact etymology of Abraham is harder to settle than it looks, while the verse itself supplies the sense, a father of many nations. Paul quotes that clause in Romans 4 and reads the many nations as everyone in every nation who believes.

Genesis 17:6-7

Kings are promised to a man who has one son by a servant and no child at all by his wife, and the same promise is made over Sarah ten verses on. Matthew opens his gospel by tracing that line from Abraham through David to Jesus Christ. The word everlasting is fastened to this covenant four times in the chapter, at verses 7, 8, 13 and 19, and the ground given for it is that God will be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.

Genesis 17:8

One verse calls Canaan an everlasting possession and calls Abraham a stranger in it, and both statements stand. The only ground he ever owns there is the cave at Machpelah, bought for four hundred shekels of silver in 23:16-20, and the only other plot any patriarch buys is Jacob's field at Shechem for a hundred pieces in 33:19. Hebrews says they all died in faith without receiving the promises, having seen them afar off. Clarke and Jamieson take the everlasting differently, the one reading it of the term of the Mosaic dispensation and the other of heaven as the better country.

Genesis 17:9-11

The sign is cut into the flesh at the place where seed passes from one generation to the next, which is the thing this covenant is about. Abraham's faith had already been counted to him for righteousness in 15:6, at least fourteen years before this, and Paul builds his argument in Romans 4 on that order, since a sign that comes after the faith seals it and cannot be what produced it. Ambrose makes the same point another way, that the sign is not the reality itself but points to a reality.

Genesis 17:12-14

The eighth day is fixed, and Clarke ties it to the rule that no calf, lamb or kid was offered to God before it was eight days old. The sign is commanded for every male in the household, the servant born in the house and the man bought with money of a stranger, so it reaches past the bloodline from the day it is given. Being cut off for refusing it is the hardest sentence in the chapter, and the same weight shows later when Moses is met at the inn in Exodus 4 and when Joshua circumcises the whole nation at Gilgal. Moses and Jeremiah both turn the sign inward and call for the foreskin of the heart to be circumcised, and Paul takes that up in Romans 2.

Genesis 17:15-16

Sarah is renamed in the same conversation as her husband and given the same promise of nations and kings, which no other woman in Genesis receives. Her barrenness was stated in 11:30, one verse before the promise of descendants, so the book put the obstacle in front of the promise from the start. Twenty-four years have run since the call in chapter 12 and she is ninety. Rebekah waits twenty years in 25:21 and Rachel waits until God remembers her in 30:22, so the long delay is the family pattern rather than one woman's misfortune.

Genesis 17:17-18

Abraham laughs and no rebuke follows, and the Hebrew verb behind the laugh, tsachaq, becomes the boy's name. It runs on through the story: Sarah laughs in 18:12 and is questioned for it, she says in 21:6 that God has made her to laugh, Ishmael is found mocking on the same root in 21:9, and Isaac is caught sporting with Rebekah by that word in 26:8. Clarke reads the laugh as joy and points to Paul saying in Romans 4 that Abraham did not stagger at the promise, while others have read it as a man doing the arithmetic on a hundred years. His next words ask God to take the son he already has instead.

Genesis 17:19-20

Both prayers are answered and only one line carries the covenant. Ishmael is blessed, made fruitful, multiplied exceedingly and promised twelve princes, which is the same count as the twelve tribes that will come out of the younger line. Genesis keeps taking the later son over the earlier, Abel over Cain in 4:4-5, Isaac over Ishmael here, Jacob over Esau in 25:23, and Ephraim over Manasseh in 48:14-20. Paul takes up this pair in Romans 9 and reads the choice as resting on God's word rather than on birth order, which is where the traditions begin to divide rather than where they settle.

Genesis 17:21-22

A date is put on it, at this set time in the next year, which turns an open hope into an appointment. The same word is brought again in 18:10 and repeated in 18:14, and Genesis later states its own rule about a thing said twice, that the doubling means the matter is established by God and he will shortly bring it to pass. Then the talking simply stops and God goes up from Abraham, which Clarke reads as proof to Abraham that he had not been speaking with a man.

Genesis 17:23-24

Abraham obeys the day he is told, and the text says so twice, here and again in verse 26. He is ninety-nine, and the command falls on his own body as much as on his household, which is a different kind of obedience from hearkening to a plan in 16:2. Ishmael is circumcised with the rest although the covenant has just been directed past him, so the sign goes on a son who will not inherit it. Henry takes that as ground for treating the children of believing households as belonging to the visible church.

Genesis 17:25-27

Ishmael is thirteen, which makes the thirteen silent years since 16:16 the exact length of his life so far. Gill records that the Arabs long circumcised at thirteen on the ground that Ishmael was circumcised at that age, and cites Josephus and Origen for the custom. The chapter closes with every man in the house under the sign, the born and the bought alike, and Gill notes the older Jewish reading that they came to it willingly rather than by force. The two sons separated in this chapter stand together again only once, at their father's grave in 25:9, where Isaac and Ishmael bury Abraham in the field he had bought.