There is a lot here but I am going to attempt to make this one shorter. It has come to my attention that a book-length blog a day keeps the housework and/or sleep away. At the moment, it’s sleep. The dishes and laundry.., oh shoot… I forgot- I have a load in the washer that needs to go in the dryer. Hang on…

Ok. We’re good now. 🧺

Let’s go.

“After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision…”

Remember WAY back in Genesis 3 when the “voice” of the Lord was heard walking among the trees? That’s not a disembodied orb of light. It’s a person. In the beginning was the Word. The Word of the Lord Who visits Abram in this vision is the one that Dr. Heiser calls “The Second Yahweh figure.” He is YHWH. But not. The term “avatar” is not theologically correct but it might be helpful conceptually. This is the version of YHWH with Whom humans can interact without dying. The Lord identifies Himself as the God Who called Abram to move to from Ur to Canaan.

In this vision, the Word takes Abram outside. So, is he sleepwalking? It’s night. Because God asks him to count stars. This is when God repeats the 2 promises He already gave to Abram. First: your descendants will number like the stars in the sky. Second: you and your descendants will possess this land (which, recall, is full of some very sketchy tribes).

“Then he believed in the Lord; and He credited it to him as righteousness. But he said, “Lord God, how may I know that I will possess it?” Genesis‬ ‭15‬:‭6‬, ‭8‬ ‭NASB2020‬‬

This reminds me of Mary in the Christmas story. “How shall these things be?”

God’s answer is to turn the promises into a covenant. The word covenant carried the idea of “cutting.” Ancient covenant rituals were highly symbolic. And often bloody. Let’s walk through the one here.

Abram takes 5 critters: a cow, a female goat, a ram, a dove and a pigeon. He kills them. The mammals he cuts in two from nose to tail. He takes the carcass halves and lays them out as to make a path between them. One bird on each side. It seems like this may have taken quite a while to do and Abram shooed the buzzards away from the carcasses all day.

If two men walked between the pieces of such an arrangement, they would be saying, “May I become as these animals if I fail to keep my covenant with you.” It’s basically the “hope to die” part of “swear to God and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.” Only, Abram doesn’t walk between the pieces. God does. Alone. Sort of.

After God tells Abram the future of his descendants for the next few centuries, this happens:

“And after the sun had gone down and it was dusk, behold, a smoking firepot and a flaming torch passed between those half pieces.” Genesis‬ ‭15‬:‭17‬ ‭LEB‬‬

A smoking firepot AND a flaming torch. Are these the two YHWH figures together? I think so. Translation:

God: If I do not keep my covenant with you, Abram, may I be as these animals- dead and cut in two.

God is saying, “My promises fail to come to pass? Over my dead body.”

Anybody gonna be able to pull that off? Bisect the Almighty? No? Abram, you’re going to be a dad. And your kids will possess this land.

And then Abram does what many of us do. We think that we have to bring about God’s promise with our own effort. In chapter 16, poor Hagar, the Egyptian maidservant of Sarai was turned into a concubine for Abram because- I mean, God can do amazing things, but 75-year-old women do not have babies. I’m sure Abram and Sarai had been trying for a few months (and obviously years before now) but- no pregnancy. What Sarai did was completely normal in the ancient world. And isn’t it typical that we look around to what’s normal in our culture and try that if God’s plan doesn’t work like we think it’s supposed to. When it’s supposed to.

Hagar conceives and thus elevates her status in the household. Sarai chews her out something fierce and Hagar runs away. The Angel of the Lord appears to her. This is the Voice from the Garden, the Word, the 2nd YHWH figure. He speaks in first person as YHWH. The Lord heard her suffering and tells her to name the child she is carrying Ishmael, which means: God will hear.

I love that even though the humans have clumsily attempted to bring God’s promise about, the Lord is patient and he is gracious to Hagar. None of this was her fault. She returns to Abram & Sarai, but does not continue as Abram’s concubine.

Then 13 years pass.

This reminds me of Jesus waiting 3 days after Lazarus dies before going to resurrect him. Let’s make it good and impossible so no one, absolutely no one, will question whether or not a miracle has happened.

God appears to Abram and changes his and Sarai’s names. The Lord puts an H in their names. It’s the Hebrew letter Hey. The Paleo form was a stick man with his arms up. I’m serious! Draw a stick man with arms bent at the elbows in the stick-em-up pose. You just drew a paleo Hebrew letter hey. And that letter by itself meant Look! Behold! Or reveal. But it also meant man, existence and life.

Abram means high/exalted Father. You wanna do an amazing dip into paleo Hebrew? Watch this!

A (aleph) means chief, strength.

B (bet) means house.

Put them together. Ab. (Rhymes with Bob) The chief-strength of the house is Ab. Ab is Hebrew for father.

😁🤩🤯

Ab-rm.

R (resh) means head, top

M (mem) means waters, lift up like waves

Ab – father, rm – lifted up on top

What letter does God add?

H (hey) means behold! Life!

H is the sound of breath. Life.

God breathed life into an old man named “exalted father” who had no children, and well, as the song says, “Father Abraham had many sons. And many sons had Father Abraham.”

What about Sarai?

Do I have time? No. But I can sleep when Jesus returns.

“So Lacy, what did you do during the Millennium? “

“Well, I planned to create music by artfully arranging stones in rivers, but I ended up taking a nap.”

😆

Sarai (which I’ve just learned is actually pronounced like “sorry”), means ruler. The root lemma SR means a head person, general, chief, captain, governor. The yod (Y) at the end of it means hand, make/do, power, authority. Don’t mess with the boss-lady. God removes Sarai’s hand (the yod) from the controls, from her identity, and replaces it with a Hey- the breath of God which creates in her a hey, a man, life, existence; a life named Isaac that she will bear for Abraham at the golden age of 90. She’s still the chief, the leading lady, but Hey, Look, Behold what God did with His Yod (His hand).

Is that cool or what?!!

Oh- and when God tells Abraham that Sarah is going to have a baby he is literally ROFL (rolling on floor laughing).

The chapter ends with the institution of circumcision as part of God’s covenant with Abraham. Remember how I said that covenant involves cutting?

Here is the divinely inspired commentary by the Apostle Paul on what circumcision represents. Speaking of Christ he says:

“in whom also you were circumcised with a circumcision not made by hands, by the removal of the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which also you were raised together with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. And although you were dead in the trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses,“
‭‭Colossians‬ ‭2‬:‭11‬-‭13‬ ‭LEB‬‬

It’s the renunciation, repentance, and cutting away of the me-oriented self-life, the flesh, the sinful nature. This is removed from our hearts when the flesh dies and is buried in Christ in a baptism of faith.

For Abraham and his male descendants, it was also a reminder that the seed of Abraham was special and called by God to be a blessing to all nations.

The next time Abraham has an encounter with YHWH, it won’t be a vision and God won’t look like a torch. He’ll be a man who eats veal, cheese curds, and flatbread.