Genesis 15:2 Commentary and Bible Study

‘Lord God, what wilt thou give me seeing I go childless?’ This is very reverent. It was concern and anxiety about the seed that God had promised to him: that he would have seed in excess of the sand on the sea shore, that through him and his countless seed all the nations of the world would be blessed. He has had the promise of a great nation, unlikely as it seems, but now he is about one hundred-year-old, and the promise is still unfulfilled. You can see what's on his mind: ‘The years are passing since the promise was first made, and I am going on in my journey on this earth and it is coming to the end. Now I am old; I was old when the promise was first given and so was Sarai my wife, too old for children, but now more years have gone past, and still I go childless.’ So that may have been his chief fear. Not that he lacked faith; he believed the promise of God, but it seemed increasingly unlikely that the promise could be carried out. Just put yourself in Abram’s place. It is one thing to have faith in God that through Christ our soul is saved and safe, and heaven awaits us. It is another thing to be a very old man and the promise is that numerous of his offspring are going to take possession of an entire land. That just does not seem practical now. Has he got it wrong? He is anxious. As we read that we can see that Abram really is saying, ‘How can it be done? What will happen to us to bring about the promise? How will it take place?’ He is not really doubting the promise: ‘This cannot be.’ He is not complaining. He is not sulking. Increasingly he cannot see how the promise can be accommodated in his lifespan, how it can be done. So ‘what wilt thou give me?’ is more a question about what form it will take, ‘seeing I go childless and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?’ Abram continues, See, behold to me personally ‘thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir.’ That is the way it looks as though it is going to go. Is my chief servant and steward, Eliezer, perhaps, to be recognized as my heir? Is that possibly what he's asking? That is unlikely. Some more modern writers on this chapter think that Abram is asking for consent to allow that to be the case, to formally recognise this one, this Eliezer, to be his heir. But there is no need to take that view. It's put as a question, but not a serious question, almost as though Abraham says, ‘Surely it can't be Eliezer. It's to me the promise has been made.’ It is merely Abram saying, ‘At the moment there seems to be no other possibility, but that this servant’ – good servant no doubt – ‘will be my heir.’ So in this anxiety he unfolds his heart before the Lord, but he doesn't doubt him. It is the ‘how’ which is the difficulty.‘Behold the word of the Lord came unto him’ – the first time this statement of an oracle being revealed to a prophet comes – ‘saying, This shall not be thine heir, but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir.’ The promise will be kept, and kept literally. You will have a child and that child will be born in the normal way. How will it be done that two aged people so far past childbearing age will have a child with enough time to see the beginning of a great succession? That question is never really answered.