Sermon Bible Commentary
Genesis 12:3
I. A double stream of narrative runs through the first four books of the Pentateuch. One of these may be called the Priestly narrative the other, the Prophetical narrative. The text sets before us one of the characteristic features of the Prophetical narrative that consciousness of the ideal destiny of Israel which developed afterwards into the definite hope commonly called Messianic. Unfettered by the political and material limitations of his age, the narrator discerns in dim outline the far-off goal of Israel's history, and enables his reader to discern it with him. We have first the familiar Protevangelion of the third chapter, where hope already steps in to alleviate the effects of the fall. Then comes the blessing given to Shem, and then the promise of our text.
II. What is the source of this conception of the ideal destiny of Israel which dominates so many points of the Old Testament? Israel was the people of Jehovah. They knew that the God of heaven and earth had really become their God, and had separated them to Himself as a peculiar people. Israel is the people of God: here is the fruitful germ of their whole future. The earliest records of the Old Testament are inspired by the consciousness of a noble ideal, which, so far from proving itself an illusion, was more or less completely realised. We may notice some of the more salient aspects of its development: (1) The establishment of the monarchy forms an epoch in Israelitish history. The monarchy created in Israel a sense of unity, and gave a new impulse to national feeling. (2) The great prophets amplify in different directions the thought of Israel's ideal future. (3) In the great prophecy of Israel's restoration, which occupies the last twenty-seven Chapter s of Isaiah, we find the nation no longer viewed as an aggregate of isolated members, but grasped as a whole, dramatised as an individual, who stands before us realising in his own person his people's purposes and aims. In his work as prophet he endures contumely and opposition, and though innocent himself, he sacrifices his life for others. Such is the personality upon whom, in the mind of Isaiah, the future alike of Israel and the world depends. In Christ as King and Christ as Prophet, the Founder and Head of a new social state, the hope of Israel, which but for His advent had been as an illusion or a dream, finds its consummation and its reward.
S. R. Driver, Oxford University Herald,Oct. 31st, 1885.
"All the families of the earth."
St. Paul finds the key to the constitution and the order of the human home in the spiritual sphere. Christian philosophy is inevitably transcendental that is, it believes that earthly things are made after heavenly patterns, and that the "things seen and temporal" can only be fully understood by letting the light fall on them from the things which are not seen and eternal.
It was the redemption of the home when Christ's redeeming love to the world was made the pattern of its love. That home is the highest in which love reigns most perfectly.
I. The home is the instrument of a double education. Its function is to develop the Divine image in parent and in child. The sentence on man after the fall was disciplinary, while on the tempter it was penal. The sentence on the tempter was utter and final degradation, while on man it was literally a sentence to a reformatory school. In sorrow, toil and tears, he was to learn how the devil had cheated him, in the hope that when he had learnt that lesson his heart might be open to the instruction of God once more.
II. As the first step to the fulfilment of his purpose in restoring man to his own image, God set "the solitary in families," He laid the foundation of the home as the fundamental human institution, the foundation of all true order, the spring of all true development in human society. Out of the home State and Church were to grow; by the home they were both to be established. And so God took the dual head of the first human home, the father and mother, and made them as gods to their children, and He set them there to study the pain and the burden of the godhead as well as the power and the joy. This was the only way by which man could gain the knowledge of the mind and heart of God.
J.Baldwin Brown, The Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvii., p. 341,
From the text we learn three things: (1) there was to be a seed, a natural seed, including a spiritual seed, and this again including an individual seed. (2) The seed of Abraham is to have a relation to all the families of the earth. As Abraham was not a head of all mankind, like Adam or Noah, it was necessary to emphasize the universality of the blessing. (3) The benefit conveyed by the seed is here characterised by the word blessed. Blessing is like mercy in this: that it sums up in one word the whole salvation of which the Bible is the gospel. It involves redemption and regeneration, both of which are necessary to salvation.
J. G. Murphy, The Book of Daniel,p. 12. Reference: Genesis 12:3. Expositor,2nd Series, vol. viii., p. 200.