Genesis 17

Abram Renamed Abraham
Sarai Renamed Sarah
Circumcision Instituted
Son Isaac Promised

1 When Abram was *ninety-nine years old, the LORD **appeared to him and said, "I am ***God Almighty; ****serve me faithfully and live a *****blameless life.

*ninety-nine years old – To emphasize the impossibility of Abram and Sarah to have any children together.
13 years after Ishmael was born. Ishmael was now legally an adult. We read of no appearances of God, no visions, no apparent spiritual progress in those 13 years! Thirteen years elapsed between the account of Chapter 16 and that of Chapter 17, and we can well suspect these were years of unhappiness and unrest in the household of Abram. The presence of Ishmael in the home created endless contempt, bitterness, envy, jealousy, weariness of spirit, and rebellion. These thirteen years were designed of God to teach Abram the folly of acting on his own.
24 years since Egypt. God now appears to Abram because Abram and Sarai know that they are both incapable of having children! God had already made his covenant with Abram; He was now ready to put it into force.
It has now been 23 years since the original promise.

***God Almighty – 1st occurrence of “El Shaddai”. It is El who helps in time of need. Shaddai is the plural form of the Hebrew word Shad, which is derived from the root Shadad, "to be strong or powerful"; therefore, Shaddai means "mighty ones". It is found 48 times in the Bible, and in every case is rendered "Almighty". In the Book of Job alone it is found 31 times. El Shaddai, which essentially means "the God who is sufficient," the all-competent God, the adequate God, who knows what he is doing and how to do it. God says, in effect, "You have been learning for thirteen years the total inadequacy of your own efforts, through Ishmael. Now learn a new thing about me. I am El Shaddai. You have discovered by sad experience how futile your plans and efforts can be without me. Now learn how capable I am to do everything that I desire to do, whenever I desire to do it."

****serve me faithfully and live a blameless life – Is this a rebuke to Abram for having a child with Hagar? walk before Me, and be thou perfect in the King James version.

*****blameless life - be thou perfect in the King James version. The word “perfect” or “blameless” is the Hebrew "tamim." The same word occurs in Psalm 19:7: The Law (Word) of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. It is the same word which is translated 44 times "without blemish”. The word “tamim” means to keep one’s commitment to God with integrity. The standard is pure devotion toward God, not moral perfection (16:9). When used with animals in Leviticus 1:3 & 10, “tamim” means “without blemish” when referring to animal sacrifice.
I discovered when “Googling” the word “tamim” that it is a common Arab name. So, many Arabs name their sons “without blemish” or “perfect”.
Hebrew dictionary: “תַּחַת tamim "complete, whole, having integrity or (most often) true".
Abram was to conduct himself as always being in God’s presence. Abram is being called to a higher standard – this isn’t about “salvation” or “justification”, this is about “walk”.
Matthew 5:48 - But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.

2 *I will make a **covenant with you, by which I will guarantee to make you into a mighty nation."

*I will – Count how many times “I will” is used in chapter 17!

**covenant - God is reconfirming the covenant made in chapter 15, and expanding on it. No sacrifice here. The emphasis was on land in chapter 15; here it is on an heir. “Covenant” occurs 11 times that I can find in this chapter.

Abrahamic Covenant:
Genesis 12
1. Make a great nation.
2. Bless you and your name.
3. Make you a blessing.
4. Bless those who bless you; curse those who curse you.
5. Give this land to your seed.

Genesis 15
1. Covenant to Abraham’s physical seed.
2. Land defined: Euphrates to Nile.

Genesis 17
1. Covenant with physical seed – forever.
2. Land of Canaan everlasting possession.

3 At this, Abram fell face down in the dust. Then God said to him,

4 "This is my covenant with you: I will make you the father of not just **one nation, but a multitude of ***nations!

**one nation – Israel

***nations – Not just Israel and the Arabs, but all who come to know Christ as Savior and are, therefore, children of Abraham.

5 What's more, I am *changing your name. It will no longer be **Abram; now you will be known as ***Abraham, for you will be the father of many nations.

*changing your name – In that culture, a change in name meant a change in either one’s character or one’s destiny (“Jacob” changed to “Israel”).

**Abram אַבְרָם means "exalted father"

***Abraham אַבְרָהָם means "father of many." “Abraham” is used from this point on in the Bible.

6 I will give you millions of descendants who will represent many nations. Kings will be among them!

7 "I will continue this *everlasting covenant between us, generation after generation. It will continue between me and your **offspring forever. And I will always be your God and the God of your descendants after you.

*everlasting – This covenant with Israel will never cease. This means that those who say the church supplanted Israel and its promises are wrong. If God fails here, He is a liar and is unable to “deliver” on His Word. This is one of the reasons Satan has tried so often and so hard to destroy the Jews.

**offspring - Hebrew “seed”. God’s purpose in this covenant is to have a people who worshiped only Him and which would bring the rest of the world to know and worship Him. Pagan gods were identified with a place, but this God was identified with a people and is often called “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”.

8 Yes, I will give all *this land of Canaan to you and to your offspring forever. And I will be their God.

*this land of Canaan – Per Leviticus 26:27-39, they would occupy the land only when they obeyed the law. Whenever Israel disobeyed God’s laws, they were expelled from the land and when they killed Messiah, they were expelled for nearly 2,000 years!

9 "*Your part of the agreement," God told Abraham, "is to obey the terms of the covenant. You and all your descendants have this continual responsibility.

*Your part – conditional!

10 This is the covenant that you and your descendants must keep: Each male among you must be*circumcised;

*circumcised – means “cut around”. Hebrew “brit milah” . This is a uniquely personal sign of devotion to God. It was primarily a sign only to the man circumcised, his parents and his wife. To his parents, it would confirm that they had been faithful in transmitting the “seed” to the son with whom God had blessed their union, and they were following God’s will in training him. To his wife, it would give assurance that he indeed was a descendant of Abraham. To the man himself, it would be a daily testimony that he and his family were consecrated to the God of Abraham. The “cutting” of the foreskin spoke of a surgical removal, a complete separation, from the sins of the flesh and the world. It symbolized to the Jewish man that he was a member of an elect nation, a peculiar people, distinctly holy before God.

THE BRIT MILAH CEREMONY:
The baby is brought in to the room, carried by the kvatter and kvatterin, considered by many to be the godparents.
Two chairs are prepared for the Brit. The first is for the Sandek, the individual who holds the baby on their knees during the actual circumcision. The lap of the Sandek is considered analogous to the altar of the Temple itself. It is considered a great honor to be the Sandek because there is a Cabbalistic tradition that links the soul of the Sandek with the child. In this way, the Sandek is considered the spiritual mentor of the child. In many instances, one of the grandfathers serves as the Sandek.

The second chair is set aside for the spirit of Elijah the Prophet, the "Angel of the Covenant". According to Jewish tradition, Elijah comes to every circumcision to testify before the Almighty to the commitment of the Jewish people to this great mitzvah throughout the generations. During the ceremony, just prior to the Brit itself, the baby is placed on the chair of Elijah, and the “Mohe” recites a special prayer asking for the spirit of Elijah to stand over him as he performs the Brit.

In the Torah it says that G-d changed Abraham's name from Abram to Abraham at the time of his circumcision. In keeping with that tradition, a Jewish boy is given his Hebrew name at the time of his Brit Milah.

Circumcision of the Heart
• Moses:
o God would “circumcise the hearts” of His people so that they might be devoted to Him: Deuteronomy 30:6 (“cleanse” in the NLT).
• Unbelief:
o Having an uncircumcised heart: Jeremiah 9:26, Ezekiel 44:7
• Paul:
o “Circumcision of the heart” evidences salvation and fellowship with God:
 Romans 2:28-29;
• For you are not a true Jew just because you were born of Jewish parents or because you have gone through the Jewish ceremony of circumcision. No, a true Jew is one whose heart is right with God. And true circumcision is not a cutting of the body but a change of heart produced by God's Spirit. Whoever has that kind of change seeks praise from God, not from people.
 Romans 4:9-12:
• Now then, is this blessing only for the Jews, or is it for Gentiles, too? Well, what about Abraham? We have been saying he was declared righteous by God because of his faith. But how did his faith help him? Was he declared righteous only after he had been circumcised, or was it before he was circumcised? The answer is that God accepted him first, and then he was circumcised later! The circumcision ceremony was a sign that Abraham already had faith and that God had already accepted him and declared him to be righteous--even before he was circumcised. So Abraham is the spiritual father of those who have faith but have not been circumcised. They are made right with God by faith. And Abraham is also the spiritual father of those who have been circumcised, but only if they have the same kind of faith Abraham had before he was circumcised.

11 the flesh of his foreskin must be cut off. This will be a sign that you and they have accepted this covenant.

12 Every male child must be circumcised on the *eighth day after his birth. This applies not only to members of your family, but also to the servants born in your household and the foreign-born servants whom you have purchased.

*eighth day (includes the day born – even done on the Sabbath)
• Vitamin K, clotting element, not form until the 5th to 7th day.
• Prothrombin, also necessary
o 3rd day: 30% of normal.
o 8th day: peaks at 110%, then levels off to 100% of normal
• How did Moses know to circumcise on the 8th day?
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From http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2204:
“In 1935, Professor H. Dam proposed the name “vitamin K” for the factor in foods that helped prevent hemorrhaging in baby chicks. We now know vitamin K is responsible for the production (by the liver) of the element known as prothrombin. If vitamin K is deficient, there will be a prothrombin deficiency and hemorrhaging may occur. Oddly, it is only on the fifth through the seventh days of the newborn male’s life that vitamin K (produced by bacteria in the intestinal tract) is present in adequate quantities. Vitamin K, coupled with prothrombin, causes blood coagulation, which is important in any surgical procedure. Holt and McIntosh, in their classic work, Holt Pediatrics, observed that a newborn infant has “peculiar susceptibility to bleeding between the second and fifth days of life.... Hemorrhages at this time, though often inconsequential, are sometimes extensive; they may produce serious damage to internal organs, especially to the brain, and cause death from shock and exsanguination” (1953, pp. 125-126). Obviously, then, if vitamin K is not produced in sufficient quantities until days five through seven, it would be wise to postpone any surgery until some time after that. But why did God specify day eight?

“On the eighth day, the amount of prothrombin present actually is elevated above one-hundred percent of normal—and is the only day in the male’s life in which this will be the case under normal conditions. If surgery is to be performed, day eight is the perfect day to do it. Vitamin K and prothrombin levels are at their peak. The chart below, patterned after one published by S.I. McMillen, M.D., in his book, None of These Diseases, portrays this in graphic form.



“Dr. McMillen observed:

“We should commend the many hundreds of workers who labored at great expense over a number of years to discover that the safest day to perform circumcision is the eighth. Yet, as we congratulate medical science for this recent finding, we can almost hear the leaves of the Bible rustling. They would like to remind us that four thousand years ago, when God initiated circumcision with Abraham....”

“Abraham did not pick the eighth day after many centuries of trial-and-error experiments. Neither he nor any of his company from the ancient city of Ur in the Chaldees ever had been circumcised. It was a day picked by the Creator of vitamin K (1984, p. 93).

Moses’ information, as recorded in Genesis 17:12, not only was scientifically accurate, but was years ahead of its time. How did Moses have access to such information? The answer, of course, is provided by the apostle Paul in 2 Timothy 3:16—“Every scripture is inspired of God.””
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13 All must be circumcised. Your bodies will thus bear the mark of my everlasting covenant.

14 Anyone who refuses to be circumcised will be cut off from the covenant family for violating the covenant."

15 Then God added, "Regarding *Sarai, your wife--her name will no longer be Sarai; from now on you will call her **Sarah.

*Sarai שָׂרָי means “quarrelsome” or “a princess”.

**Sarah שָׂרָה means "princess."

16 And I will bless her and give you a son from her! Yes, I will bless her richly, and she will become the mother of many *nations. Kings will be among her descendants!"

*nations – She is the ancestral mother of the nations Judah, Israel and Edom.

17 Then Abraham bowed down to the ground, but he *laughed to himself in disbelief. "How could I become a father at the age of one hundred?" he wondered. "Besides, Sarah is ninety; how could she have a baby?"

*laughed – shows that his hope of having a son by Sarah had been completely abandoned. Abraham did nothing to earn the gift of a son – Isaac was solely a gift of God’s grace. Neither Sarah nor Abraham could do anything themselves to bear this child. Later, Sarah too would laugh at this idea that she could bear a child.

Romans 4:19, 20 "And not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body, already dead (since he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah's womb. He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God."

18 And Abraham said to God, "Yes, may *Ishmael enjoy your special blessing!"

*Ishmael – He’s assuming that his action with taking Hagar was God’s means of achieving His promise – which wouldn’t require a miracle. He thought for 13 years that Ishmael had fulfilled God’s promise. He knows the impossibility of Sarah having a child and is offering a God a way out of an impossible promise.

19 But God replied, "Sarah, your wife, will bear you a son. You will name him *Isaac, and I will confirm my everlasting covenant with him and his descendants.

*Isaac means "he laughs."

20 As for *Ishmael, I will bless him also, just as you have asked. I will cause him to multiply and become a great nation. **Twelve princes will be among his descendants.

*Ishmael means “God listens”

**Twelve princes – Theses 12 are listed in the “generations of Ishmael” in Genesis 25:12-16.

21 But *my covenant is with Isaac, who will be born to you and Sarah about this time **next year."

*my covenant is with Isaac - God here is stating that the covenant is with Isaac, not Ishmael. Of course, the Arabs say the reverse.

**next year – God is not only making a promise; He is giving a date when this would happen. In other words, He’s saying that Sarah will become pregnant in about 3 months! Abraham will now in a year whether God was able to perform this miracle and whether God was serious about the covenant. The son would be a “down payment” on the promises of descendants and the land.

22 That ended the conversation, and God left Abraham.

23 *On that very day Abraham took his son **Ishmael and every other male in his household and circumcised them, cutting off their foreskins, exactly as God had told him.

*On that very day – Took a lot of faith on Abraham’s part because all the men would have been defenseless until they healed! So, they are depending fully upon God for protection. Also, it took a lot of faith by the men on Abraham and what he told them.

**Ishmael - Circumcision is also practiced by Muslims between the ages of four and 13 years.

24 Abraham was ninety-nine years old at that time,

25 and Ishmael his son was thirteen.

26 Both were circumcised the same day,

27 along with all the other men and boys of the household, whether they were born there or bought as servants.