Genesis 12:2-3 - Exposition

And I will make of thee a great nation . A compensation for leaving his small kindred. The nation should be great

And I will bless thee . Temporally (Pererius, Murphy), with every kind of good (Rosenmüller), in particular with offspring (Vatablus); but also spiritually (Rupertus, Bush), in the sense; e.g; of being justified by faith, as in Galatians 3:8 (Candlish). The blessing was a recompense for the deprivations entailed upon him by forsaking the place of his birth and kindred (Murphy). And make thy name great. Render thee illustrious and renowned (Rosenmüller); not so much in the annals of the world as in the history of the Church (Bush); in return for leaving thy father's house (Murphy). So God made David a great name ( 2 Samuel 7:9 ; cf. Proverbs 22:1 ; Ecclesiastes 7:3 ). And thou shalt be a blessing . I .e. "blessed," as in Zechariah 8:12 (Chaldee, Syriac, LXX ; Dathe, Rosenmüller, Gesenius); or "a type or example of blessing," so that men shall introduce thy name into their formularies of blessing (Kimchi, Clericus, Knobel, Calvin); but, best, "a source of blessing' (spiritual) to others" (Tuch, Delitzsch, Keil, Kalisch, Murphy). The sense in which Abram was to be a source of blessing to others is explained in the next verse. First, men were to be either blessed or cursed of God according as their attitude to Abram was propitious or hostile. And I will bless them —grace expecting they will be many to bless (Delitzsch)— that bless thee, and curse (with a judicial curse, the word being the same as in Genesis 3:14 ; Genesis 4:11 ) him —only an individual here and there, in the judgment of the Deity, being likely to inherit this malediction (Delitzsch)— that curseth (literally, treateth lightly or despiseth The verb is applied in Genesis 8:11 to the diminution of the waters of the flood) thee . The Divine Being thus identifies himself with Abram, and solemnly engages to regard Abrams friends and enemies as his, as Christ does with his Church (cf. Acts 1:4 ). And in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Not bless themselves by thee or in thy name (Jarchi, Clericus); but in thee, as the progenitor of the promised seed, shall all the families of the ground (which was cursed on account of sin, Genesis 3:17 ) be spiritually blessed—cf. Galatians 3:8 (Calvin, Luther, Rosenmüller, Keil, Wordsworth, Murphy, 'Speaker's Commentary'). Thus the second sense in which Abram was constituted a blessing lay in this, that the whole fullness of the Divine promise of salvation for the world was narrowed up to his line, by which it was in future to be carried forward, and at the appointed season, when the woman's seed was horn, distributed among mankind.