Genesis 12:2 - Printer Friendly

ESV: And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

NIV: I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

NASB: And I will make you into a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing;

CSB: I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

NLT: I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others.

KJV: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:

NKJV: I will make you a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing.

In the previous verse, God began His seemingly out-of-the-blue contact with Abram. God commanded Abram to go away from his country, his people, and his father's household and to go to an unspecified land God would show him.

Now God begins a series of huge and powerful promises to Abram, which will accompany this leaving behind of everything he knows. God vows to make Abram—through his descendants—a great nation. God will bless Abram. God will make Abram's name great. God will make Abram a blessing.

These promises were the very things the great kings and leaders of Abram's time would have longed for themselves. We're told nothing of Abram's personal ambitions, but it seems likely these promises would have surpassed his wildest expectations for his life. Keep in mind, when these messages came to Abram, he was a childless 75-year old man living in his father's household!

Even so, the next verse contains yet more promises from God.

Genesis 12:1–9 is a landmark passage in the Bible. God calls Abram to leave his people and land behind. He also promises to bless Abram and to make his descendants into a great nation who will one day occupy the land of Canaan. Though childless, and with no obvious path to becoming a father of an entire culture, Abram begins to worship the Lord in the land of Canaan, journeying through the land and building altars to God.

Genesis 12 contains one of the key moments in the history of the world. God chooses Abram as the first step in building His people Israel. Abram obeys God's call, and heads into the land of Canaan, territory which God promises to Abram's offspring. Quickly, though, Abram fails a test of faith in the land of Egypt while seeking food in a famine. God does not fail, however, to step in to save Abram's family and protect His agenda for Abram's life.

The end of Genesis 11 tells the story of Terah, Abram's father, and the family's journey to a new home in Haran. Genesis 12 shifts the story to Abram and his journey on into the land of Canaan. God promises to make Abram the father of a great nation, and to give Abram's descendants that very land. Abram begins to worship the Lord, but quickly fails a test of his faith in Egypt. God shows Himself faithful in a miraculous way, preparing Abram for what's to come in chapter 13.

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.

Accessed 5/7/2024 9:15:47 PM