Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

1%; 1-27 ’ GENESIS,, . :g:*F;
of the-family as the social unit. Circumcision served to
cement all families into a single family or people of God.
(A people is rightly designated a nation.) I It was the sign
that set the national family (people) apiirt as belonging
exclusively to the living and true God.
Skinner (ICCG, 293) : “The Beritb is conceived as a
self -determination of God to be to one. particular race all
that the word God implies, a reciprocal ’a~t, of. choice on
man’s part being no essential featuqe. of the relation.”
(Why say it was so conceived? According to. the text it
was a self-determination on God’s part.) . Concerning vv.
6-7, rr&ngs shall come out of thee” (.cf. Mic. 5:?), “I will
establish my covenunt . . , to be a God aMtLtO- thee.’: Jamieson
writes (CECG, 1 5 1-1 52) : “Had this communication
to Abram been made at the time of his call, it could have
conveyed no other idea to the mind of one who had been
an idolater, and was imbued with the prejudices’ engendered
by idolatry, than that, instead of the .ideal fictitious deities
he had been accustomed to look to and worship, the true,
living, personal, God was to be substituted. But he had
now for a long series of years become familiarized with
the name, appearances, and educational training of Him
who had called him, and therefore he was prepared to
accept the promise in a wider and more comprehensive
sense-to understand, in short, that to ‘be a God unto him’
included all that God had been, or had promised to be to
him and to his posterity-an instructor, a guide, a governor,
a friend, a wise and loving father, who would confer
upon them whatever was for their good, chasten them
whenever they did wrong, and fit them for the high and
important destiny for which he had chosen them. It is
perfectly clear that this promise was primarily meant to
refer to the natural descendants of Abram, who, by the
election of grace, were to be separated from the rest of
the nations, and to the temporal blessings which it guaranteed
to, them (Rom. 11:16, 15:8) .” Note again v. 7, “to
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