Genesis 17:6 - Printer Friendly

ESV: I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you.

NIV: I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you.

NASB: I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you.

CSB: I will make you extremely fruitful and will make nations and kings come from you.

NLT: I will make you extremely fruitful. Your descendants will become many nations, and kings will be among them!

KJV: And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee.

NKJV: I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you.

God continues to reveal His covenant promise to make Abram, now renamed Abraham, into a father of multiple nations. God insists that He will make Abram fruitful, causing many offspring to come from him. Earlier in Genesis, God commanded men like Adam and Noah to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28; Genesis 9:1). Now God tells Abraham that He will make him fruitful and cause him to multiply. Unlike those earlier encounters, God has now taken on Himself the responsibility to create nations out of a single patriarch.

Finally, God reveals that kings will come from Abraham, which makes sense if Abraham is to father nations. Still, God means for Abraham to understand that he will be the patriarch of multiple royal lines. At this point in the conversation, Abraham most likely still believes that Ishmael, his only son through his servant girl Hagar, is meant to be the fulfillment of these promises (Genesis 16:2, 16). It won't be until later, when God renames Abraham's wife as Sarah, and declares that she will be the mother of many nations, that Abraham realizes that God is predicting a newborn baby for a 99-year-old man and an 89-year-old woman (Genesis 17:16–17).

Genesis 17:1–14 describes God's appearance to a 99-year-old Abram. Again God confirms His expansive covenant promises: to make Abram a father of nations and to give to him and his offspring the land of Canaan. At this time, God even changes Abram's name to Abraham to mark the occasion. This time, though, the repetition of the promise comes with God's requirements for Abraham: walk with me, be blameless, and circumcise yourself and every male of your household from now through every generation in the future.

God appears to Abram once more in Genesis 17, but this instance is very different from prior meetings. God reconfirms His promises to make Abram a father of nations and to give to him and his descendants the land of Canaan. This time, though, God changes Abram's name to Abraham and gives him a requirement to circumcise himself and every male in his household forever. He also changes Sarai's name to Sarah. God announces that Abraham and Sarah will have a son, after all. His 13-year old son Ishmael will be blessed, but this new son, Isaac, to be born within the year, will be the one to whom God's covenant promises will pass.

Genesis 17 records the details of God's appearance to Abram, now 99. Thirteen years after the birth of Ishmael to Sarah's servant Hagar, God arrives to change Abram's name to Abraham, to confirm the covenant promises, and to command Abraham. He is to circumcise every male in his household as a sign of the covenant. Then the big news: within a year, Abraham's wife—now renamed Sarah—would bear Abraham a son. This long-awaited son would be the one through whom God would keep all of His promises to Abraham.

The book of Genesis establishes fundamental truths about God. Among these are His role as the Creator, His holiness, His hatred of sin, His love for mankind, and His willingness to provide for our redemption. We learn not only where mankind has come from, but why the world is in its present form. The book also presents the establishment of Israel, God's chosen people. Many of the principles given in other parts of Scripture depend on the basic ideas presented here in the book of Genesis. Within the framework of the Bible, Genesis explains the bare-bones history of the universe leading up to the captivity of Israel in Egypt, setting the stage for the book of Exodus.