Genesis 15:1

After these things,.... The battle of the kings, the captivity of Lot, the rescue of him and his goods, and of those of Sodom and Gomorrah by Abram, and the conversation that passed between him, and

After these things the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward. After these things - the conquest of the invading kings.

GENESIS CHAPTER 15 A comfortable promise to Abram, . His prayer for an heir, ,3. The promise of an answer to his prayer, ,5. Abram’ s faith, . He desires a sign, ,8. God gives him one, . He observes it, ,11. God appears to him when in a deep sleep, . A prediction of evil to befall his posterity, . Their deliverance, . The covenant concerning Canaan renewed, . God anciently revealed himself to men two ways; either, 1. When the man was asleep, in a dream; or, 2. In a vision, , when he was awake: and this either, 1. When he was rapt into an ecstasy, wherein his senses are idle, but his mind is active and elevated to the contemplation and understanding of what God reveals. See 24:4 ,11. Or, 2. When the thing was manifested by an external representation. So here, God seems to have appeared to Abram in the shape of a man, as he did , as may be gathered from ,10. Fear not, Abram; neither the return of those enemies whom thou hast smitten and provoked, nor the envy of thy neighbours for this glorious victory, nor for thy own desolate condition. Seeing thou didst trust to my protection, I will be a shield or a protector to thee; and seeing thou didst so honourably and for my sake reject other rewards, taken by thyself, and offered by the king of Sodom, thou shalt be no loser by it; I will abundantly recompense all thy piety to me, and charity to thy afflicted kinsman Lot, and thy liberality towards others: I will bless thee with all sorts of good things, as well as defend thee from all evil; which two things make a man completely happy.

Genesis 15:1 After these things the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I [am] thy shield, [and] thy exceeding great reward.Ver. 1. Fear not, Abram.] Either as Daniel feared upon sight of a like vision; or as Jacob feared after the sack of Shechem, lest he should be set upon by those whom he had lately discomfited. Or, fear not lest thou shalt die childless; which seemeth to be that which chiefly affrighted and afflicted him at this time. The heart is not in case to receive promises till freed of false fears. These are quelled and killed by faith only. I am thy shield.] From the envy of thy neighbours, and enmity of others, whom thou hast lately vanquished: yea, I will deliver thee from all danger, as I have done from this. See a like promise to all believers, Psalms 115:9-11. The shield is between the body and the thrust; so is God between his and harm. He "beareth them as on eagles’ wings". The eagle fleeth with her young on her back; there is no shooting them but through her body. No more can any devoratory evil, as Tertullian’ s phrase is, befall the saints, but through God. And thy exceeding great reward.] So that thou shalt lose nothing by refusing the king of Sodom’ s offer. God is a liberal paymaster, and his retributions are more than bountiful. A hundredfold here, and heaven hereafter. Not only Caleb shall have Hebron for his valour, but Nebuchadnezzar shall have Egypt as his pay for his pains at Tyre. Never ask with Peter, What shall we have? You shall have whatever heart can wish, or need require. The world gives hard wages; but God’ s reward is exceeding great. He will also recompense our losses for his sake, as the king of Poland did his noble servant Zelilaus; having lost his hand in his wars, he sent him a golden hand for it: so Gaius gave Agrippa, that had been imprisoned for his sake, a chain of gold as heavy as his chain of iron had been. Aquilae pullos suos in alis portant; alites reliqui inter pedes . - Munster, in Scho. ex Rab. Salom. Cromerus.

XV.JEHOVAH’S WITH ABRAM.(1) After these things.—After the war with Chedorlaomer. The word of the Lord came (Heb., was) unto Abram.—This phrase, used so constantly afterwards to signify revelation, occurs here for the first time. The revelation on this occasion is made by night (Genesis 15:5), not however in a dream, but in a trance, in which the senses of Abram were closed to all earthly impressions and he became passive in the hands of the Almighty. Up to this time Abram had received only general promises of offspring, and of the land being the possession of his seed; but years were passing by, and the fulfilment of his hopes remained distant as ever. By the war with the Elamite king he had also made for himself powerful enemies; and though the immediate result was fortunate, yet many Canaanite nations may have witnessed with displeasure so remarkable an exhibition of the power and energy of an “immigrant.” And thus the time had come when the patriarch needed and obtained more formal assurances, first, of the bestowal upon him of offspring (Genesis 15:1-6), and, secondly, of the future possession of Palestine (Genesis 15:18-21).

CHAPTER XV God appears to Abram in a vision, and gives him great encouragement, 1. Abram's request and complaint, 2, 3. God promises him a son, 4; and an exceedingly numerous posterity, 5. Abram credits the promise, and his faith is counted unto him for righteousness, 6. Jehovah proclaims himself, and renews the promise of Canaan to his posterity, 7. Abram requires a sign of its fulfilment, 8. Jehovah directs him to offer a sacrifice of five different animals, 9; which he accordingly does, 10, 11. God reveals to him the affliction of his posterity in Egypt, and the duration of that affliction, 12, 13. Promises to bring them back to the land of Canaan with great affluence, 14-16. Renews the covenant with Abram, and mentions the possessions which should be given to his posterity, 18-21. NOTES ON CHAP. XV Verse 1. The word of the Lord came unto Abram] This is the first place where God is represented as revealing himself by his word. Some learned men suppose that the דבר יהוה debar Yehovah, translated here word of the Lord, means the same with the λογοςτουΘεου of St. John, John 1:1, and, by the Chaldee paraphrases in the next clause, called מימרי meimeri, "my word," and in other places מימרא דיי meimera daiya, the word of Yeya, a contraction for Jehovah, which they appear always to consider as a person; and which they distinguish from פתגמא pithgama, which signifies merely a word spoken, or any part of speech. There have been various conjectures concerning the manner in which God revealed his will, not only to the patriarchs, but also to the prophets, evangelists, and apostles. It seems to have been done in different ways. 1. By a personal appearance of him who was afterwards incarnated for the salvation of mankind. 2. By an audible voice, sometimes accompanied with emblematical appearances. 3. By visions which took place either in the night in ordinary sleep, or when the persons were cast into a temporary trance by daylight, or when about their ordinary business, 4. By the ministry of angels appearing in human bodies, and performing certain miracles to accredit their mission. 5. By the powerful agency of the Spirit of God upon the mind, giving it a strong conception and supernatural persuasion of the truth of the things perceived by the understanding. We shall see all these exemplified in the course of the work. It was probably in the third sense that the revelation in the text was given; for it is said, God appeared to Abram in a vision, מחזה machazeh, from חזה chazah, to see, or according to others, to fix, fasten, settle; hence chozeh, a SEER, the person who sees Divine things, to whom alone they are revealed, on whose mind they are fastened, and in whose memory and judgment they are fixed and settled. Hence the vision which was mentally perceived, and, by the evidence to the soul of its Divine origin, fixed and settled in the mind. Fear not] The late Dr.

1–6. The Promise of an Heir 1. After these things] A vague note of time. Cf. Genesis 22:1; Genesis 22:20; Genesis 40:1; Genesis 48:1. the word of the Lord] i.e. the word of Jehovah, as in Genesis 15:4. This is a technical expression in the O.T. for a Divine revelation to a prophet. It occurs nowhere else in the Pentateuch. It suggests the prophetic character of Abram, and should be compared with Genesis 20:7 (E), where Abram is spoken of as a prophet. in a vision] Evidently, as is shewn by Genesis 15:5, the vision occurs in a dream, or in the condition described in Numbers 24:3-4; cf. Job 4:13, “in thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men.” Fear not] The situation requiring this particular encouragement is not described. Abram, alone, childless, surrounded with foreigners, is not a coward, but is tempted, at times of depression, to fear that there is to be no fulfilment of the promise. thy shield] A poetical simile of frequent occurrence, e.g. Deuteronomy 33:29; Psalms 3:3; Proverbs 2:7, “He is a shield to them that walk in integrity”; Genesis 30:5, “He is a shield unto them that trust in him.” and thy exceeding great reward] So the Lat. et merces tua magna nimis. But R.V. marg. thy reward shall be exceeding great is preferable. So the LXX. That for which Abram shall be rewarded is his trust.

- The Faith of Abram 1. דבר dābār, “a word, a thing;” the word being the sign of the thing. 2.

1. After these things — After the exciting events of the last chapter Abram returned to the oak grove of Mamre, and seems to have grown despondent.