And Abram said, Lord Jehovah, what wilt thou give me? seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus.
God has just promised to be Abram's shield and his very great reward. Abram answers with a question: what good is a reward to a man with no son, whose servant stands to inherit everything?
The Promise That Draws Out the Want
God's promise did not settle Abram. It made him feel the gap between what God said and his empty house.
But notice the effect. It awakens the sense of wants, and it draws out the expression of those wants. If Abram had long felt any such desire in secret, there is no reason to think he had ever told it out to God before. Now he does… He was not content with the general terms God had used with him so far. Where was the value of God being ever so great a reward, if after all he was childless?
Faith Bold Enough to Answer Back
The question sounds like a complaint. Read another way, it is faith at its boldest.
But faith is bold, very bold, apparently aiming higher than the purposes and undertakings of grace. Abraham seems to throw back the words of the Lord. "I am your shield; your reward shall be very great," says the Lord. Abraham replies, "What will You give me?" This was bold; but, blessed to say, not too bold for the ear of the Lord, who finds His richest joy in language of faith like this.
No Son, No Inheritance
Abram's logic is exact. A servant may manage the estate, but only a son inherits it.
Notice how exactly Abram lays hold of the great principle the Spirit brings out later in Romans 8. "If children, then heirs." Abram felt that sonship and heirship cannot be separated. Without the first, the second could not exist. This is the meaning of his question. Abram rightly judges that to have "no seed" was to have no inheritance, for the word is not "if stewards or servants, then heirs," but "if children, then heirs." (Rom. 8:17)
(Older translations read "the steward of my house," where the ESV has "the heir of my house.")
Faith Pressed Down by Circumstances
Commentators differ on how to read Abram's tone. Others read it more plainly: his situation weighed on him more than the promise did.
Abram's circumstances pressed heavily on his soul at this time. So when he answered the Lord, he did not rise to the level God wanted to lift him to… God had promised him many descendants in Genesis 13:16, but as he says, God had not given him any offspring (v. 3). He was no longer a young man and did not see any prospect of having a son.
God Comes Down to Where Abram Is
God does not scold the question. He answers it, and He measures the answer to what Abram can take hold of.
How flat all God's assurances seem to have fallen with the pattern man of faith! And yet in all this we may very clearly find our own pattern… Do you know what it is to reach out for this immense God as your portion, apart from Christ as now revealed to us? If you do, you will know how the wings of faith flutter uselessly in the void and cannot rise to it. Thank God, if you cannot rise, God can come down; and so He does here to Abram. Calmly He comes down to the low level of Abram's faith, and goes on to give him what it can grasp.
The Servant Set Aside for the Son
Eliezer is a servant, not a son. Setting him aside leaves room for someone else, and the same pattern returns later in Abram's story.
What is the setting aside of Eliezer the steward but the making room for a child of promise, the son in the house? We find the same thing in Genesis 16, in the story of Sarah and Hagar, and of Isaac and Ishmael. There stands the further reality that the "son of the slave woman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman."
Where the Question Lands
God's answer to the question turned this childless man into the example Paul later points back to.
The answer to this was the word of promise. It drew out Abram's simple acceptance of God's word, so clearly and so fully that he stands for all time as the pattern of faith. Paul appeals to his example in Romans 4, calling him "the father of all who believe." The word to this childless man was that he should have true offspring as many as the stars of heaven.
Summary
- Promise exposes want. God's offer of Himself as shield and reward did not silence Abram; it drew out of him a desire he had never spoken before.
- Want becomes prayer. Abram tells God the one thing missing, and such boldness is "not too bold for the ear of the Lord."
- Sonship carries the inheritance. A steward runs the house; only a son inherits it — "if children, then heirs."
- God stoops to weak faith. Abram did not rise to God's level, so God came down to his, giving him something he could grasp: the stars.
- Servant out, son in. Eliezer's place goes to the child of promise, and the childless man becomes the pattern of faith for all who believe.