Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

17: 1-27 GENESIS
modern analytical (destructive) criticism deals with this
phase of the Promise: “With this cf. Ps. 105:44-45, where
the possession of the land is regarded as necessary if Israel
is to keep God’s statutes and observe his laws. The chosen
people was no abstract idea. Israel was a concrete reality,
a people, however unique, among the peoples of the earth.
To be itself and to achieve its destiny it needed its own
land, in which would be the center of its religion-the
temple-and within which it could freely order its life in
accordance with the divine law. . . , This insistence on the
part of P was in part an expression of the natural love of
a people for its home. It was in part a consequence of the
fact that Israel had as yet no adequate belief in life after
death, so that God’s promise had to be realized, if at all,
here and now on this earth. Nevertheless, in insisting upon
the importance of the natural community he was on sure
ground for, without this insistence, belief in the supernatural
becomes little more than a world-escaping piety”
(IBG, 611-612)‘ Note well tbut under this view the
spiritual (mtitypical) aspect of this pbuse of the Promise,
which indeed perrneutes the Bible throughout, in the Old
Testament us‘ unticipution, in the New us fulfillment, is
utterly ignored. The, critics seem to be completely blind
with respect to the unity of the Bible us a whole. (2)
“This covenant, as it respected the Hebrew nation, together
the possession of Canaan, and the various ceremonial
ordinances by which they were marked the peculiar people
of God, and in the observance of which they were to enjoy
their rest and prosperity in Canaan, is represented as everlasting
or for ever; but in these passages no more than a
long time is meant (Gen. 48:4; Exo. 12:14, 17; 21:6,
31:17, 32:13, 40:lF; Lev. :34; 25:23, 40, 46; Nurn.
10:8, lF:lF,’l8:9, 2F:13; t. 4:40, lF:17, 18:s; Josh.
14:9, etc.).
But as this covenant respected Christ,
and believers in him, it, and all the spiritual blessings con-
tainqd in it, are everlasting in the strictest sense (Heb.
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