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| Of the Order and Nature of the Promises of God Which Were Made to Abraham.
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Chapter 16.—Of the Order and
Nature of the Promises of God Which Were Made to
Abraham.
God’s promises made to Abraham
are now to be considered; for in these the oracles of our God,901
that is, of
the true God, began to appear more openly concerning the
godly
people, whom prophetic authority foretold. The first
of these reads thus: “And the Lord said unto Abram, Get thee
out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s
house, and go into a land that I will show thee: and I will make
of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee and magnify thy name;
and thou shall be blessed: and I will bless them that bless thee,
and curse them that curse thee: and in thee shall all tribes of
the earth be blessed.”902
Now it is to be observed that two
things are promised to Abraham, the one, that his seed should
possess the land of Canaan, which is intimated when it is said,
“Go into a land that I will show thee, and I will make of thee a
great nation;” but the other far more excellent, not about the
carnal but the spiritual seed, through which he is the father, not
of the one Israelite nation, but of all nations who follow the
footprints of his faith, which was first promised in these words,
“And in thee shall all tribes of the earth be blessed.”
Eusebius thought this promise was made in Abraham’s seventy-fifth
year, as if soon after it was made Abraham had departed out of
Haran because the Scripture cannot be contradicted in which we
read, “Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out
of Haran.” But if this promise was made in that year, then of
course Abraham was staying in Haran with his father; for he could
not depart thence unless he had first dwelt there. Does this,
then, contradict what Stephen says, “The God of glory appeared to
our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in
Charran?”903
But it is
to be understood that the whole took place in the same year,—both
the promise of God before Abraham dwelt in Haran, and his dwelling
in Haran, and his departure thence,—not only because Eusebius in
the Chronicles reckons from the year of this promise, and shows
that after 430 years the exodus from Egypt took place, when the law
was given, but because the Apostle Paul also mentions
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