“And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing;” Genesis 12:2

As we learned in my most previous blog entry, part of God’s call to Abram was to leave everything that he knew and go to an unknown land that God would show him.

After the call to leave everything familiar to him, God promises Abram that He will make him into a great nation, that God would bless him, and that God would make his name great; the result of God’s blessing would be that Abram’s offspring would be a blessing as well.

It is very important that we understand that the promise of the blessing is from God. When God makes the covenant with Abram, He repeats numerous times, “I will”. While I will write on this further in my coming blog entries, I want to make sure to set the foundation for you to understand.

This covenant between God and Abram is totally up to God to fulfill. Abram’s part is to obey – to leave everything he knows, and in faith, follow God in a journey to an unknown land.   The rest is up to the Almighty.

Let us be very clear; there is no condition to the promise of God to Abram to make him into a great nation – no condition to the promise of God to Abram to bless him, and no condition to God’s promise to Abram to make his name great among the nations. In other words, this is an unconditional covenant that God made with Abram.

In concluding this foundational and extremely important first part of the upcoming series, we must agree upon the following points:

1. God chose Abram.

2. God called Abram.

3. God’s call to Abram included a Land.

4. God promised Abram that He (God) will make him a great nation, will bless him, and make his name great.

5. This promise is an unconditional promise, or in other words, is and unconditional covenant.

Shabbat Shalom,

Moran