Following the judgment of the flood, the descendants of Noah gathered in the east in Babylonia and built a city with a tower reaching to the heavens to ‘make a name’ for themselves (11:4). Their actions challenged God’s authority; so he confused their language. This resulted in their migration, in groups who formed various nations (10:1–32; 11:1–9). As God had shown mercy to sinful humanity in the past, so he now set in motion the creation of a nation by choosing Israel’s fathers descended from the line of Shem (9:26; 11:10–26).
Call of Abraham (blessing)
The promised blessings bestowed on all humanity would be fulfilled exclusively through the family of Abraham. The LORD would be for ever known as the ‘God of Abraham’. The word ‘bless’ occurs five times in the call of the patriarch (12:1–3); this was the gracious counterbalance to the five ‘curses’ against fallen creation and humanity (3:14, 17b; 4:11; 8:21; 9:25). Abraham, as the mediator of blessing to all ‘peoples’ (mis¥paœhΩa®), was himself the progenitor of a ‘great nation’ (gôy), which inherited a promised land (eresΩ). This divine agenda was a gracious response to the formation of the nations at Babel according to their ‘peoples’ (mis¥paœhΩa®) and ‘nations’ (go®yim) which had scattered across the face of the ‘earth’ (eresΩ) (10:5, 20, 31–32).
Promise of a nation (seed)
The promise of a ‘great nation’ (12:2) implied a large population, but Sarah was barren (11:30). The question of an heir for Abraham and Sarah is the major tension in the Abraham story. Although the prospects for the promise’s fulfilment were dim, Abraham believed God and responded obediently (15:6; also 12:4; 22:16–17). A decade later Isaac was born to Sarah as the appointed heir of the blessing (21:12b). The creation ordinance called for humanity to increase in number (1:28; 9:1, 7), and in the patriarchal promises God said that Abraham’s descendants would flourish as the ‘dust of the earth’ (13:16; 22:17; 28:14; 32:12) and the ‘stars of the sky’ (15:5; 22:17; 26:4). Genesis anticipated the founding of Israel as the future realization of this promise (Exod. 1:7; 3:15–17; 6:2–8; 32:13; Deut. 1:10; 10:22).
Canaan homeland (land)
For the LORD to make Abraham into a ‘great nation’, the Hebrew people required a homeland. Repeatedly the LORD assured Abraham and his successors of a promised land, the land of Canaan, which the LORD himself would ‘give’ them (12:7; 13:15, 17; 15:7, 18; 17:8; 24:7; 26:3; 28:13, 15; 35:12; 48:4; 50:24). ‘Go from your country … to the land I will show you’ is the first recorded command to Abraham (12:1; 15:7). Abraham obeyed the LORD by migrating to Canaan (12:4), but the patriarch had only a tentative foothold in the land. Famine forced his immediate departure to Egypt, but he returned enriched by Pharaoh (12:10–20). Israel’s future claim to the land was prefigured by the journeys of Abraham, who traversed the land (12:4–9), entered into treaties with neighbours (21:22–34), and purchased the family burial site at Machpelah (ch. 23; 25:7–11; 50:13). The chief tension in the Jacob narrative is the patriarch’s absence from Canaan. Fearing for his life because he had stolen Esau’s blessing, he fled to Aram where he lived for twenty years (31:38). Later, he also left Canaan for Egypt with his sons (46:26–27). Yet the LORD brought Jacob back from Aram to the land of his father (28:15; 31:3; 35:12; 48:4); as a portent of better days when God would bring back the people of Israel from Egypt (46:4), Jacob’s body was returned to Canaan for burial with his fathers in Machpelah’s cave (49:29; 50:4–14).
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