Genesis 13:14 Commentary and Bible Study

But the Lord then speaks to Abram. ‘Lift up now thine eyes and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward, for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it and to thy seed for ever.’ That little word ‘now’ in our English version – ‘Lift up now thine eyes’ – is usually skipped, omitted, in more modern translations. It is just ‘Lift up your eyes’ and that is all. Is it a very significant word? Yes, because there is another way of translating it. Our King James translators have said, ‘Lift up now thine eyes’, but many experts argue that it should really be translated, ‘Lift up please thine eyes’, because the little word in the Hebrew is used more often than not used in that sense: ‘please do this’, not, ‘do it at this time’. This is probably what the King James translators meant. In Jacobean speech it was a way of saying, ‘Lift up, if you please’. What is so significant about this? Well it is significant because God only uses this language to Abram three times. Each time it is when he calls upon Abram to do something that will really stretch his faith. ‘Lift up your eyes please; look at the land all around you; I am giving it to you.’ It is a call to faith. You find it again in chapter 15:5-6: ‘And he brought him forth abroad and said, look now’, or look please, if you please, ‘toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be.’ And Abram ‘believed in the Lord, and he counted it to him for righteousness’ – that great statement of Abram being justified by faith, which was the basis of his relationship with God and the ground of his salvation is connected with this little word, please. You read it again in chapter 22:2. This was perhaps the very hardest thing that Abram was called upon to do. And God said, ‘take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering.’ Note that little word, ‘take now thy son’, take if you please thy son. They are the only three occasions when God addresses Abram in that way. It is a summons to faith. Faith only will get him the blessing and see him through. ‘Look from the place where thou art’ in every direction, ‘for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever.’ That's the promise of God. It would be given to Abraham to live in as a nomad, to travel in throughout its length and breadth. It would be given for a more settled possession to his physical descendants. But it will be given to his spiritual descendants, his children by faith, that is to say, it would be given to Christ and all who are in Christ in the eternal heavens. After the earth has been destroyed on the final Day of Judgment, and wonderfully reconstituted and probably made many times bigger than it now is, it will be made to be a place where glorified souls can live in occupation. Somehow it will be merged with heaven itself, a place of glory and wonder, and then the spiritual seed of Abraham shall have it forever. The promise encompasses all those phases of the use of the land.