Fr. Stephen De Young: So, chapter 17, verse one: “When Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, ‘I am your God. Be pleasing before me and blameless.’ ” Once again, notice the language: Yahweh appears before him to talk to him: not a voice, not a vague impression or feeling of where he’s being led. This is: God appears and speaks to him, says, “I am your God. Be pleasing before me and blameless.” “Walk before me and be righteous,” we heard before.

“ ‘I will establish my covenant between me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly.’ ” So we have this reiteration. Now what’s this “I will establish my covenant”? I thought we just did that two chapters ago. So “establish”… We tend to think of “establish” as like “founded” or “began.” So this bank was established on this date: that’s the date they opened. But “establish” is more like “found” in the sense of “place on a foundation,” like firm up, secure. It’s more like that idea. So he’s saying, “That covenant I already made with you, I’m going to found, I’m going to secure it. I’m going to solidify it. It’s going to be established in that sense. And that’s why he refers to “multiplying you exceedingly,” sort of as shorthand for all the promises. Now it’s going to happen.

Verse three: “Then Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying, ‘As for me, behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of many nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations.’ ” So this is good, because now I can stop correcting myself and flipping back and forth between Abram and Abraham, because now he’s Abraham. [Laughter]

We talked about how Abram, Avram, means great or high father, and probably in context we talked about this was Terah, naming his son, like “my father is high or exalted,” because fathers when they named their sons were not very humble in the ancient world. [Laughter] But it’s changed to Avraham, Abraham. Avraham means the father of many or the father of a multitude. It is directly related to “you’re going to be the father—” And again, notice the reiteration of “many nations” not “a great nation that I like more than all the other ones,” but of many nations.

“I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you and kings (plural) shall come from you. I will establish my covenant between me and you and your seed after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be your God and the God of your seed after you. Also, I will give you and your seed after you the land you are occupying as a sojourner. All the land of Canaan is an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”

“Seed” in this case is plural, and this is why— So these promises are made to Abram—Abraham, now, I can say—Abraham and his seed forever, as the Theotokos would say at the end of the Magnificat. And so this is why, when we get into the New Testament, both in the gospels and in St. Paul, the question is about who is Abraham’s seed. So the question is never “is this still true?” because it says everlasting several times. The question is not “is this still true, are these promises still valid, is this covenant still valid?”; this question is “who is and how do you reckon who is Abraham’s seed?” That’s going to be the question. Is it possible—is it just the people biologically descended from Abraham? Was it ever that?

Q1: [Inaudible]

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, well, we’re going to see the Torah doesn’t even say that that’s true. [Laughter] But Paul is going to re-emphasize that in how he interprets the Torah. He’s going to point that out. Somebody was asking before we started about Romans 9-11. Romans 9, he’s making that point, like: “Hey, you notice Abraham has two kids, Isaac and Ishmael. And it’s through Isaac that his seed is reckoned.” And he goes: “Isaac has two kids, Jacob and Esau. And it’s through Jacob that his seed is reckoned.” And that’s part of the point he’s making there, is that in terms of the inheritance of the promises, there’s this firstborn—the person who has the firstborn status not necessarily the first one physically born. And that firstborn status and being in a relationship of faithfulness to the one who has that firstborn status is what makes you a child of Abraham.

And so what St. Paul is ultimately going to argue there in Romans is that, ultimately, it’s the Messiah, Christ—because that’s what that means: it’s Jesus as the Messiah—who has that ultimate firstborn status, who is the ultimate heir of all the promises. And so, if someone wants to be a son of Abraham, they need to be in this relationship of faithfulness with the Messiah, who is the proper recipient of those promises. Which is not an outlandish thing for a Jewish person in the first century to say. Jewish people in the first century may have disagreed about whether Jesus was the Messiah, but in terms of saying, “Well, yeah, when the Messiah comes, you’re going to need to be in covenant with the Messiah”… Well, yeah. This is something everyone would have agreed to.

So he’s going to argue that there, and he’s also— Earlier in Romans and in Galatians he’s going to point especially to the context of this here. What is the context? What is the first thing God says? The “walk before me and be righteous” part. “Be pleasing and walk in my sight.” That it’s the person who does that who is really the son of Abraham. And he’s playing there on this idea of sonship, which is sort of built into the way the Hebrew language was used. If you are the son of blank, that means you’re the image of it; you’re the embodiment of it. The son is sort of the new embodiment of his father, the image of his father. Not just that they look similarly, tend to, but this is in a real sense.

And so when Barnabas— We talked about this in Acts with Barnabas, Bar-Nabas, the son of encouragement. This means he’s sort of the embodiment of encouragement. When Judas is called the son of perdition, the son of hell, essentially, that’s like saying he’s an embodiment of evil and of condemnation. And so if you’re going to be the son of Abraham in any kind of real sense, then that’s going to mean you’re going to have to be the image of Abraham; you’re going to have to be the embodiment of who he was and how he lived, which means you’re going to have to live faithfully the way he lived faithfully. And if you’re biologically descended from him but you don’t live faithfully, St. Paul’s going to point to you an example of ten tribes’ worth of Israelites who did that and look where that got them. [Laughter] That doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. And you can think about Christ saying that God could make children of Abraham from these stones if he wants to, from a bunch of rocks. So, yeah, that’s the discussion, because it’s made very clear here: these promises go to the seed, go to the descendants. So who, then, is a son of Abraham?

Verse nine: “Then God said to Abraham, ‘As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your seed after you throughout their generations.’ ” Remember we talked about last time sort of the format of covenant documents. They start with the king who’s issuing it identifying himself. Notice: “I am your God.” Then it outlines what the king has done for the vassals. We have this outline of the promises. And then in the covenant it has: “Now here are your responsibilities,” and here we have: “And as for you, here’s what you’re going to do.” So this discussion with Abraham is following that pattern, too, this sort of covenant-institution pattern.

“ ‘As for you, you and your seed will keep my covenant. This is the covenant you shall keep.’ ” So here’s your end: “ ‘Between me and you and your seed after you, throughout their generations. Every male child among you shall be circumcised, and you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin. It shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.’ ” We’ll stop here. So he is given this particular sign as a commandment. “This is something you have to do.” Notice: “This is something you have to do.” I’m only emphasizing this because there are a lot of people who say that Abraham just had faith and he didn’t have to do anything. This is something he has to do, not only for himself but—sorry, Baptists—he also has to do it to his infant sons. [Laughter] So, something he needs to do.

And that is going to serve as a mark of the covenant, and we talked a little bit about how— or a sign of the covenant. That this is a sign; this is a visible sign—of what?

Q1: Promises?

Fr. Stephen: No! [Laughter] No, this is a visible sign of his obedience. This is a visible sign of his end, because this isn’t the only thing he has to do. It’s not like: “Oh, okay, you’re circumcised: you’re good.” [Laughter] “Live however you want to, do whatever you want to in the world. You’re circumcised! You’re all good. You’re going to receive all the promises.” Right? It’s not that at all. So this is: for this circumcision to be meaningful, it has to be the beginning, then, of him living a life that is pleasing before God, of living a life that is righteous before God. And him obeying in this one thing is the sign that he’s at least endeavoring to obey the rest of it, that he’s seeking to obey the rest of it. And if you won’t even obey in this, then you’re not obeying the rest of it! We’ll come back to this when we get to Moses, because there’s some issues with Moses about this with his son. So that’s what it’s a sign of: it’s a sign of the obedience on his end.

Why this particular sign, out of all the things? It could have been “cut your hair short”; it could have been “shave your beard”; it could have been a lot of things that would be a lot less painful, and that would be more obviously signs to other people, because Abraham’s not just walking around naked so everyone can see that he’s circumcised. It could even have been something that was generalizeable, that wouldn’t be just males. It could have been something that was done with or to everybody, male and female. Out of all the available options, why this?

First—and the Greek word literally means “to cut around,” but this is quite literally a cutting off. Something is being cut off, and it’s being cut off in a way that distinguishes Abraham and his male descendants from the rest of the male humans in the world. This is not just an image, but a sort of ritual enactment, of being set apart, of being separated, of being cut off from the rest of the world and its system and what’s going on there. Because what’s going on there? What are our three problems from Genesis 1-11? The reign of death, through sin, and the evil spiritual powers that are operating out there. So it’s being cut off from that. So there’s the element of a cutting off that’s happening here; that’s number one.

Number two, in terms of where it’s a cutting off. You could cut off an earlobe—there’s lots of things you could— You could cut off the end of your pinkie. This is obviously particularly related to the means of reproduction, the means of having children, which was not just a concern for Abraham. This isn’t just a one-off that this guy happens to not have any kids and be very old. This is an overriding concern in the ancient world, because of death. You work your whole life to build something, to provide for a family. You’re a part of or maybe even the head of this big extended family unit. You build, you create, you nurture: you do all of this, and then you die. What happens to it? Does it all fall apart? Does the memory of you vanish from the earth? Was it all for nothing? Was it all vanity? Was it all meaningless?

Well, if you have an heir, if you have a son in the ancient world to carry that on—to carry your name on, to remember you in the world, to continue to build and to nurture and to care for what you’ve worked to create, to continue that work—this is the closest thing they have to immortality that’s available in an immediate sense. And so the issue of having an heir, of having progeny, of having children, was what divided their life from just meaninglessness, from being completely futile and ending in death. So this is an overriding concern.

We’re going to see— I don’t think we’ve seen it yet. We’re going to see later there are going to be places where people make oaths, and the way it gets translated in English, because we love euphemisms, is “he put his hand on his thigh.” That’s not putting his hand on his thigh; it’s putting his hand on his genitals, because if that’s the meaning of reproduction and the future is all about reproduction, that’s the most precious part of you. Everything hinges upon this. So if you swear an oath on that, that’s serious. [Laughter] That becomes a serious thing.

And so this sign of cutting off is applied to this most precious area. It symbolizes the future, that you’re being cut off from the world, and you’re entrusting the future to—what? Not to the world, not to what you build in a city, not to a monument to yourself, not to any of those other things that are going on in the world, but to God. You’re entrusting the future to God, which is exactly what Abraham has been called upon to do in these last few chapters. “No, don’t go try and make a baby by your own ends. No, don’t fall into despair because your heir is some servant of yours. Trust that you need to entrust your future to God; it is in the hands of God.” So this is an action, a ritual action that is doing that. And then when that son is born, who’s going to be the heir, you’re going to enact this same sign upon him, intending it for the future.

And so this symbol is not going to be implied to women. And the way it’s going to work for women is that a woman who is the wife or the daughter of a circumcised male is going to be made holy—“holy” meaning “set apart”—by his circumcision.

And this understanding of circumcision is going to become important in St. Paul’s epistles. He’s going to make two arguments based on it. First, he’s going to argue pretty directly that baptism does the same thing as circumcision. And one of the clearest places where he does that, where maybe people don’t realize that he’s doing that, is when he talks about Christians who are married to non-Christians—Christians who are married to pagans, basically. And he says that the believing spouse, the baptized spouse, whether it’s a man or a woman—the baptized spouse makes the other spouse and the children holy. And it can work that way because baptism gets applied to women, too. Men and women are baptized. And so he’s saying baptism— Right there he’s taking the theological understanding around circumcision and applying it to baptism. And since baptism is applied to both spouses, it goes both ways.

The other place where it becomes important is actually in Colossians. We read this on January 1, because January 1 in the Orthodox Church, we tend to emphasize St. Basil the Great; it’s also the feast of Christ’s circumcision. It’s the eighth day after his birth. And, yes, there are some icons that, from our modern sensibilities, are kind of creepy, of Christ’s circumcision. Because they depict it, in fairly accurate ways. But we read from Colossians St. Paul saying that we have all been circumcised with Christ’s circumcision. This is part of his argument as to why Christians, Gentile Christians, no longer need to be circumcised. Why? We’ve all been circumcised with Christ’s circumcision. What does that mean? If Christ is a circumcised male, then his bride, his wife, is made holy by being married to him. That means all of us Gentiles. Gentile Christians: we’re married to him. Therefore, we’re made holy by his holiness. We’re circumcised with his circumcision.

This is part of St. Paul’s vehemence in saying that Christian males, Gentile Christian males, should not go and be circumcised, because what would that represent? That would represent: “Well, me receiving these promises in Christ is not enough for me. That’s not real enough for me. I need to go and get circumcised and keep Torah and qualify for them on my own.” See how that’s a problem?

Q1: Like making a baby on your own.

Fr. Stephen: Right, like going and making a baby on your own with a slave. [Laughter] And that’s why St. Paul says to Gentile Christians: if you go and are circumcised, then you’ll have no part of Christ, because as it is, as a baptized Gentile Christian, you have all of Christ. All of those blessings in Christ are yours. He says, “You are an adopted son. You are a co-heir with Christ of the promises.” So going and trying to establish that on your own, saying, “No, that’s not good enough,” that constitutes a rejection of Christ, of saying, “No, Christ isn’t the Messiah. I need to go do this.” “Jesus isn’t the Messiah”: “Christ isn’t the Messiah” is self-contradictory! But “Jesus isn’t the Messiah. I need to go do this on my own.”

So that’s what’s going on in his— But this is given as this sign in perpetuity as part of this, and that’s why Christ is circumcised and why that’s narrated in the gospels, which it is, and why that’s referred to by St. Paul directly.

Verse twelve: “ ‘A child of eight days old shall be circumcised by you, every male child throughout your genealogy. He who is born in your house or bought with money from any foreigner not of your seed.’ ” So this includes the slaves; this is the whole household. Let’s pause again since we were talking about slavery. If this mark is applied to a slave in Abraham’s household, what does that mean? What is it a sign of?

Q1: The slave is inheriting.

Fr. Stephen: The slave is a son of Abraham, and the slave is holy and set apart because of it. So this is going to then mitigate against the whole institution. If he’s now your son and heir and holy, that’s going to affect how you have to treat him or her—in this case, him, since they’re being circumcised. And again, this is going to show up in the New Testament when St. Paul talks about slavery in the Roman world. If you’re a Christian and you claim to own someone who’s also a baptized Christian, that has to transform this whole relationship. This whole thing, this whole conception needs to change, just based on that.

Verse 13: “ ‘He who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money must be circumcised, and my covenant will be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant.’ ” So it’s going to be marked right there. But again, the slaves are part of it; the whole household was part of it.

And again, notice he doesn’t say, “Well, you know, let them grow up. Let them decide if they want to be circumcised, if they want to be part of your household or not, if they want to be Jewish.” And to think that is to misunderstand what it is; it’s to misunderstand the whole purpose.

“ ‘And the uncircumcised male child, who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin on the eighth day, that soul shall be cut off from his people, for he has broken my covenant.’ ” There’s deliberate wordplay there about not being circumcised and therefore being “cut off.” That’s a deliberate— So the person who isn’t has set themselves outside of the covenant, outside of the people.

Verse 15: “Then God said to Abraham, ‘As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.’ ” So this name change is subtle, and is sort of a change from “princess” to “queen,” and it’s God trying to emphasize the way he’s been treating her, the way he’s been interacting with her, to sort of help transform that.

But notice he’s saying this to Abraham. What direction did we see things going in the last chapter? We saw Sarai making not-good decisions, Abraham going along with them, and then her blaming him for what he did after the fact, for her own bad decision that he went along with. And so God coming and talking to Abraham about her is again trying to switch: you need to see her in a different light and to help her see herself and understand herself in a different light.

“ ‘And I will bless her and also give you a son by her, and I will bless him, and he shall become nations (plural), and kings of peoples shall be from him.’ Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed.” [Laughter] This is the second time he fell on his face. The first time he was worshiping; this time he thinks it’s hysterical, because he’s 99 and she’s, like, 89.

“And said in his mind, ‘Shall a child be born to a man who is 100 years old, and shall Sarah, who is 90 years old, bear a child?’ And Abraham said to God, ‘O that Ishmael might live before you.’ ” So he thinks that. [Laughter] He thinks, “That’s ridiculous!” And he says, “Well, hey, how about Ishmael?” [Laughter] “We got Ishmael, right? Let’s work with what we’ve got. I mean, let’s not get silly here.”

Verse 19: “Then God said, ‘No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son and shall call his name Isaac,’ ”—which means laughter, since you think it’s so hysterical—” ‘And I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him.’ ” So he’s like: “Nuh-uh, no, no, no, no. God talking. This is going to happen.”

“ ‘As for Ishmael—’ ” So he doesn’t say, “Get out of my face with this Ishmael stuff.” “ ‘As for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him, and I will increase and multiply him exceedingly. He shall beget twelve nations, and I will make him a great nation.’ ” Why this emphasis on twelve? The twelve tribes of Israel. So this is deliberately trying to parallel. The Torah, over and over again, rather than trying to demean and diminish these other nations over against Israel, is actually always arguing the other way, is always presenting them as similar, even parallel.

Q1: Do these other Abrahamite nations practice circumcision?

Fr. Stephen: Yes. Yes, they do. As we’re going to see when we get into Exodus, they actually maintain the worship of Yahweh better than Israel did, for a while at least.

Verse 21: “ ‘But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year.’ So God finished talking with Abraham and departed from him.” So again, this is where St. Paul is getting it: this lineage that’s going to lead up to the Messiah, that’s going to lead up to the final receipt of the promises to Abraham, that’s going to be reckoned through Isaac. But Ishmael has a part of this, too, has a part to play in this, too.

Verse 23: “So Abraham took Ishmael his son, all who were born in his house, and all who were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham’s house, and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskins that very same day as God said to him. Now Abraham was 99 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin.” That must have been some recovery time! Because, keep in mind, we’re talking about flint knives and stuff. We’re talking about— Yeah. This is not being surgically done.

“And Ishmael his son was 13 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. That very same day Abraham was circumcised and his son Ishmael, also all the men of his house, born in the house or bought with money from a foreigner, were circumcised with him.” So again, I just want to reiterate: notice, Ishmael is not being demeaned at any point in this text. None of these other Abrahamites are demeaned anywhere in the Torah, frankly. I mean, there’re individual people who do bad things, but as a group… He’s one of the first to receive circumcision, which means he’s part of the covenant; he’s part of the promises. He has this share in them.

So we will leave off here, after completing two chapters, a feat thought unachievable by many. [Laughter] And next week we’ll pick up here in Genesis 18. Thank you, everybody.