Holiest of All by Andrew Murray

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from the example of Abraham, wliat this means. It first points
us, as ever, to what God promises, and then to the disposition
in man which this claims and works.
For when God made promise to Abraham, since He could
swear by none greater, He sware by Himself, saying, Surely
blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee.
The deeper our insi^dit
into the certainty and the fulness of the
blessing of God, the more will our hearts be roused to believe
and to persevere. The word of God is our assurance of what
we are to expect. Mow much greater must our confidence
be when that word is an oath ? Of this the following verses are
to speak. Mere the fulness of God's blessing is set before us in
the ])romise given to Abraham : as his seed we are his heirs,
and what God promised him is for us too. We need be content
with nothing less ; nothing less will stimulate us to a life like
his in faith and patience.
Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will
multiply thee. In Hebrew the repetition of a verb is meant to
give force to uhat is said, to express the certainty and the
greatness of what is asserted. In the mouth of God the
repetition, Blessing I will bless, multiplying I will multiply,
was meant to waken in Abraham's heart the confidence that the
blessing was indeed to be something very wonderful and woi'thj'
of God, blessing in divine power and fulness. What that
blessing was to be, the second half of the sentence shows.
Multiplying I will multiply thee.
Scripture teaches us that the
highest blessing which God can bestow, that which makes us
truly Godlike, is the power of multiplying ourselves, of becoming,
as God is, the source antl the blessing of other lives. So the
two words are connected in passages like Gen. i. 32, 28 ; ix. i.
Of the living creatures it is said : Cod b/cssed thcni, saying. Be