7 And the Lord came to Abram, and said, I will give all this land to your seed; then Abram made an altar there to the Lord who had let himself be seen by him.
And to you and to your seed after you, I will give the land in which you are living, all the land of Canaan for an eternal heritage; and I will be their God.
Now the Lord came to him by the holy tree of Mamre, when he was seated in the doorway of his tent in the middle of the day;
For all the land which you see I will give to you and to your seed for ever.
Now to Abraham were the undertakings given, and to his seed. He says not, And to seeds, as of a great number; but as of one, he says, And to your seed, which is Christ.
The agreement which he made with Abraham, and his oath to Isaac; And he gave it to Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an eternal agreement; Saying, To you will I give the land of Canaan, the measured line of your heritage: When they were still small in number, and strange in the land;
To the place where he had made his first altar, and there Abram gave worship to the name of the Lord.
Truly, not one of the men of twenty years old and over who came out of Egypt will see the land which I gave by oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; because they have not been true to me with all their heart;
And Jacob gave that place the name of Peniel, saying, I have seen God face to face, and still I am living.
Then he made an altar there, and gave worship to the name of the Lord, and he put up his tents there, and there his servants made a water-hole.
And moving on from there to the mountain on the east of Beth-el, he put up his tent, having Beth-el on the west and Ai on the east: and there he made an altar and gave worship to the name of the Lord.
All these came to their end in faith, not having had the heritage; but having seen it with delight far away, they gave witness that they were wanderers and not of the earth.
Now we, brothers, as Isaac was, are the children of the undertaking of God.
That is, it is not the children of the flesh, but the children of God's undertaking, who are named as the seed.
And when the Lord your God has taken you into the land which he gave his oath to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, that he would give you; with great and fair towns which were not of your building;
See, all the land is before you: go in and take for yourselves the land which the Lord gave by an oath to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to their seed after them.
And there he put up an altar, naming it El, the God of Israel.
And he saw the Lord by his side, saying, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac: I will give to you and to your seed this land on which you are sleeping.
And they came to the place of which God had given him knowledge; and there Abraham made the altar and put the wood in place on it, and having made tight the bands round Isaac his son, he put him on the wood on the altar.
And Abram went down on his face on the earth, and the Lord God went on talking with him, and said,
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Genesis 12
Commentary on Genesis 12 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 12
The pedigree and family of Abram we had an account of in the foregoing chapter; here the Holy Ghost enters upon his story, and henceforward Abram and his seed are almost the only subject of the sacred history. In this chapter we have,
Gen 12:1-3
We have here the call by which Abram was removed out of the land of his nativity into the land of promise, which was designed both to try his faith and obedience and also to separate him and set him apart for God, and for special services and favours which were further designed. The circumstances of this call we may be somewhat helped to the knowledge of from Stephen's speech, Acts 7:2, where we are told,
Gen 12:4-5
Here is,
Gen 12:6-9
One would have expected that Abram having had such an extraordinary call to Canaan some great event should have followed upon his arrival there, that he would have been introduced with all possible marks of honour and respect, and that the kings of Canaan should immediately have surrendered their crowns to him, and done him homage. But no; he comes not with observation, little notice is taken of him, for still God will have him to live by faith, and to look upon Canaan, even when he was in it, as a land of promise; therefore observe here,
Gen 12:10-13
Here is,
Gen 12:14-20
Here is,
Lastly, Observe a resemblance between this deliverance of Abram out of Egypt and the deliverance of his seed thence: 430 years after Abram went into Egypt on occasion of a famine they went thither on occasion of a famine also; he was fetched out with great plagues on Pharaoh, so were they; as Abram was dismissed by Pharaoh, and enriched with the spoil of the Egyptians, so were they. For God's care of his people is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.