It is I behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of a multitude of nations.
Abram is ninety-nine, his body past hope of children, and he has just tried to make God's promise good by his own effort. Now God speaks, and the first thing He says about the covenant is not what Abram must do but where it rests — with Him.
God calls it "my covenant," and that "my" sets the tone for the whole chapter. One writer counts how often God takes the weight of the promise on Himself:
You will have noticed that at least ten times in this chapter God says, "I will." That stands in sharp contrast to the "you shall" repeated in the law. It is beautiful to see how God commits Himself to work out all He has set His heart on. He says, "I will set my covenant between Me and you." So He sets up a definite bond between Himself and Abram, in order to carry out His purpose.
The list of what God takes on is long, and it comes with no conditions attached:
God reveals Himself — He appeared to him — as the Almighty God. A covenant between God and him, to multiply him... father of many nations — and kings — a God to him and his seed after him — the land and their God. All this for ever, without condition, and his name changed for the covenant.
The timing of this word matters. God waits until every natural possibility has run out:
Chapter 16 is a kind of side note. Abram has a promise, and now tries to make it good on his own, apart from God. But once Abram is set aside — his body now dead at ninety-nine years old — God reveals Himself. He says: I am going to give you many descendants, and you must circumcise them, and so on. That is, now that you are viewed as dead, I can do something with you.
Up to this point God had promised Abram a land and a line of descendants. A "multitude of nations" — "many nations" in older translations — opens something far larger:
Now we have the wide extent of the earthly purposes of God beginning to unfold before us, even as far as the whole earth, and Abram was concerned in all... Not a word of this had been breathed before. That he should have a line to succeed him, one that should inherit the land and have it for ever: such was the utmost already granted... But here all is of another order and measure — beneficence according to the grace and purposes of God.
God does more than announce the promise. He stamps it on the man's own name:
So Abram, "great father," becomes Abraham, "father of a multitude." The change comes by adding a single letter in the Hebrew, "he," the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Number five speaks, as we know, of God with man. How truly does God with man change the lonely individual into the father of a multitude.
From that day he carries a name for something that had not yet happened:
To confirm this covenant God changed Abram's name to Abraham, meaning "Father of a multitude." From this point on Scripture uses the new name, even though the promise wrapped up in that name had not yet come true. So God pledged Himself to bring it to pass in His own way.
The promise came by faith and not by law, and that makes the door it opens wide:
As faith is opposed to works, so grace is opposed to law. The grace of God who gave the promise opens the door of faith — the only door, and a wide one — to Gentiles no less than to Jews... grace goes out to the Gentile no less than to the Jew, who could hardly limit Abraham's fatherhood of "many nations" to his own people.
One writer follows the promise on to Christ:
Now this promise was to Abraham's Seed, that is, to Christ, as we learn from the letter to the Galatians. Is not the Lord Jesus Christ Himself also the Father of the many nations? A time is coming when He will be shown in this character, and will gather His households around Him like flocks of sheep.
- Source. God calls it "my covenant" — His own undertaking. In this chapter He says "I will" at least ten times, against the law's "you shall."
- Condition. God gives the blessings "for ever, without condition"; nothing in them waits on Abram's strength.
- Timing. God speaks only once Abram is "viewed as dead" at ninety-nine, so that the fruitfulness belongs to God alone.
- Name. A single Hebrew letter turns "great father" into "father of a multitude" — a name given before any child arrived, because God had pledged Himself to make it true.
- Reach. A "multitude of nations" cannot shrink to one people. The door swings open to Gentile as well as Jew, and the promise points on to Christ, the Seed.
And thy name shall no more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of a multitude of nations have I made thee.
Abram is ninety-nine and still has no child by Sarai. God speaks to him and gives him a name that describes a family he does not yet have. That change raises three questions. Why does God take the right to rename a man? Why now? And how far does "a multitude of nations" reach?
The whole change is one letter in Hebrew:
So Abram, "great father," becomes Abraham, "father of a multitude." The change comes from adding one letter in Hebrew: "he," the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The number five speaks, as we know, of God with man. How truly does God with man change the lonely individual into the father of a multitude.
The old name described the man; the new one describes the family growing out of him.
The name Abram means "great, or high, father," showing what he himself was as head of the family of faith. But Abraham points us to the greatness of the family he heads. The name means "father of a multitude" — not only of people, but of nations. In giving this name God is showing the vast results of the principle of faith and of promise. Nothing is so fruitful as faith. It is "exceedingly fruitful." It is the only principle that brings forth anything for God, because it counts on His power alone.
God Himself does the naming here.
There is another element here, a common one in Scripture: God's giving a name to Abram and to Sarai also. It signifies the title of direct authority, and entering into relationship on this ground. So Adam, so Pharaoh, so Nebuchadnezzar. Here, God having revealed His own name, gives one to Abram in connection with Himself. From then on He is the God of Abraham, revealing Abraham's place.
Other renamings in the Bible follow the same rule.
The changing of a name always implied that the one whose name was changed was subject to the one who changed it (see Gen. 17:5-15; Gen. 32:28; Gen. 35:10; Gen. 41:45; Dan. 1:7; Dan. 5:12).
The new name arrives at the exact point where Abram can do nothing about it.
Chapter 16 is a kind of parenthesis. Abram has a promise, and now tries to make it come true without God. But then Abram is set aside. His body is dead at ninety-nine years old. God reveals Himself and says: I am going to give you many descendants, and you must circumcise them, and so on. That is, now that you are viewed as dead, I can do something with you.
God gave the name before there was any child to show for it.
Abram then receives the promise of descendants. God changes his name to Abraham — "father of a great multitude" — and as yet he had no children at all! But God's promise is better than anyone else's performance. The promise has two sides. His children were to be like the stars — the heavenly family, those who inherit his faith, as Rom. 4:16 shows, and that includes every believer. And they were to be like the sand on the sea shore — the earthly descendants.
This promise goes far beyond anything Abram had heard before.
Now the wide extent of God's purposes for the earth begins to unfold before us. It reaches as far as the whole earth, and Abram had a part in all of it… No word of this had been spoken before. Until now God had granted only this much: a line to succeed him, one that would inherit the land and have it for ever.
Paul reaches back to this sentence. He uses it to explain how people outside Israel come into the blessing.
Verse 16 states the result for Gentiles who believe the gospel. The promise is of faith, so that it might be by grace. In that way it stands sure to all the seed of Abraham to whom God gave the promise. It is sure not only to the seed under the law, but to all who had the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all before God, as it is written: "I have made you the father of a multitude of nations."
- Named by God. Giving a name is a title of authority and of relationship; the one renamed belongs to the One who renamed him.
- Named when dead. Abram's own strength was gone first. Then came the promise of a multitude — "now that you are viewed as dead, I can do something with you."
- Named for a family. Abram spoke of the man. Abraham speaks of the multitude he heads. Faith bears fruit because it counts on God's power alone.
- Named before proof. He carried the name "father of a multitude" while childless. God's promise is better than anyone else's performance.
- Named for the nations. Paul quotes this verse to show the promise reaching every believer — stars in heaven, sand on the shore, Abraham "the father of us all."