B'reisheet (Genesis)
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Meaning
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Day Four
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Haftara
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B'rit Hadashah
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1 Our Father, we receive Your Words and hide Your commandments with us; 2 we incline our ear unto wisdom, and apply our hearts to understanding; 3 We cry after knowledge and lift up our voices for understanding; 4 we seek it as silver; and search for it as for hidden treasures; 5 We declare that we shall understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God. Declaration of Proverbs 2:1-5
Genesis 15:1-21 (NASB)1
1 After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, saying, "Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; Your reward shall be very great." 2 Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what will You give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" 3 And Abram said, "Since You have given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir." 4 Then behold, the word of the LORD came to him, saying, "This man will not be your heir; but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir." 5 And He took him outside and said, "Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them." And He said to him, "So shall your descendants be." 6 Then he believed in the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness. 7 And He said to him, "I am the LORD who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it." 8 He said, "O Lord GOD, how may I know that I will possess it?" 9 So He said to him, "Bring Me a three year old heifer, and a three year old female goat, and a three year old ram, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon." 10 Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, and laid each half opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds. 11 The birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, and Abram drove them away. 12 Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him. 13 God said to Abram, "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years. 14 "But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. 15 "As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age. 16 "Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete." 17 It came about when the sun had set, that it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces. 18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your descendants I have given this land, From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates: 19 the Kenite and the Kenizzite and the Kadmonite 20 and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Rephaim 21 and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Girgashite and the Jebusite."
3 But thou, O LORD, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head. Psalm 3:3. Welcome to our fourth day of the week. The same word for shield in Hebrew is the same one in this verse from the Psalms. The third psalm is believed to have been written at the time that David was being persecuted by his own son, Absalom.
“Shield” is מָגֵן mâgên, maw-gane' also (in plural) feminine מְגִנָּה mᵉginnâh; from H1598; a shield (i.e. the small one or buckler); figuratively, a protector; also the scaly hide of the crocodile:—× armed, buckler, defence, ruler, scale, shield. masculine noun. The root of magen is H1598. That is: גָּנַן gânan, gaw-nan' a primitive root; to hedge about, i.e. (generally) protect:—defend. Verb. This appears to be an act of support and love from The Creator that is not promised by any other small ‘g’ god who was birthed in the minds of men. Our God is a shield and a defensive hedge around the righteous. I believe that in these cycles of Torah, we’ve established that any believer who is upright and in unbroken covenant with Yah is considered a righteous person. Certainly, we’ve seen how the upright and faithful heroes in Bible history are righteous. This state of being is obtainable by believers, shall we say, in “good standing” with God. We’re privy today to the exchange between God and Abram when, once again, God confirms that Abram will have an heir, but not the one
he chose. It wasn’t to be his trusted right-hand man who had been loyal to him through all circumstances. His heir would be one who would be his own son from his own body. And Abram, who knew what it was to have a faithful servant, was himself a faithful servant, and look what it says about Abram!
6 And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness. Genesis 15:6.
Here is another component of ‘righteousness’ that is: FAITH. WOWSERS! So many live by their senses and believe only what they can see. They follow after empty and useless things. Among these people, there is none righteous, no, not one! I'm pounding this nail in yet again. But this is huge! We see this morning that Abram “believed in the LORD” and it was counted to him as righteousness, and that about blows my mind! This is what happens when you spend enough time in THE WORD! I know there are other parts of this marvelous Bible where the enemy has twisted the meaning so that we read it, and it appears to contradict itself. Keep in mind that in the original, there were no chapter divisions and no verse numbers. It was one single, flowing document in Hebrew. (When I remember what the scrolls of Scripture looked like in my trip to the Houston Museum, those ‘Dead Sea Scrolls' had such symmetry and beauty! Thank you, Lena May and Ann, for making that one of the most memorable days of my life!) When we look at the opening verse in this apparently NEW chapter, looking at it as if the chapter division wasn’t there, we can intuit that the phrase “after these things” would refer to the battle against the kings, the redemption of Lot, his family and goods, AND the meeting between Melchizedek and Abram. It was after these things that God met with him again and confirmed his covenant. The ‘Amorite’ is mentioned twice, and that means something. Their ‘iniquity’ was not yet ‘full’ and wouldn’t be until the fourth generation of Abram’s descendants. These Amorites were from the fourth son of Canaan (Genesis 10:16 and 1 Chronicles 1:14). They were described in the Jewish Encyclopedia as “characterized by R. Jose, the chronicler, as the most intractable of all nations.” According to the Book of Jubilees, these Amorites originated with the Rephaim (giants). Their stature was great, and their evil and sinful ways were THE worst. The Amorites did not believe in the Creator God. From the Bible Hub, the Amorite religion was noted.
“The gods of the Amorites played a significant role in the religious and cultural practices of the region, often standing in opposition to the worship of Yahweh, the God of Israel.”
We could infer from what we've read already that the Amorites had no component of righteousness. They worshiped the creation instead of The Creator. But Abram believed in Yahweh.
Abram was to have heirs. Sarah is barren, yet she was to conceive. Abram’s reward would be as numerous as the stars of the heavens. The second promise is that his descendants will be given the land from the River Nile in Egypt to the Euphrates. Yah proposes a covenant.
7 And he said unto him, I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it. Genesis 15:7.
Abram would have children, and he would be given land. Adam Clarke gives us a lot to think about regarding that selection of animals that Abram was instructed to lay out.
“Take me a heifer - עגלה eglah, a she-calf; a she-goat, עז ez, a goat, male or female, but distinguished here by the feminine adjective; משלשת meshullesheth, a three-yearling; a ram, איל ayil; a turtle-dove, תר tor, from which come turtur and turtle; young pigeon, גוזל gozal, a word signifying the young of pigeons and eagles. See De 32:11. It is worthy of remark that every animal allowed or commanded to be sacrificed under the Mosaic law is to be found in this list. And is it not a proof that God was now giving to Abram an epitome of that law and its sacrifices which he intended more fully to reveal to Moses; the essence of which consisted in its sacrifices, which typified the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world? On the several animals which God ordered Abram to take, Jarchi remarks: "The idolatrous nations are compared in the Scriptures to bulls, rams, and goats; for it is written, Ps 22:12: Many bulls have compassed me about. Da 8:20: The ram which thou hast seen is the king of Persia. The rough goat is the king of Greece. Da 8:21. But the Israelites are compared to doves, etc.; Song 2:14: "O my dove, that art in the cleft of the rock. The division of the above carcasses denotes the division and extermination of the idolatrous nations; but the birds not being divided, shows that the Israelites are to abide for ever."
It was the standard type of covenant back in the day. Animal carcases were divided, and the men making the covenant would walk between them to signify that the pact or contract that they made between them was sealed. The description of those hours when Abram had to keep the birds of prey from stealing the carcasses rolls in my head like a movie in the film projection room of my mind. The sun sets. Abram is SO weary that he unintentionally falls into sleep and has some of the strangest dreams he’s ever had in his life. Was it dreams or a supernatural communication between the Spirit of the Living God and the spirit of His righteous servant? Perhaps it was a supernatural dream where God actually told Abram his future and that of his descendants.
17 And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces. 18 In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates: 19 The Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, 20 And the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims, 21 And the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites. Genesis 15:17-21.
That is a lot of land and certainly more than what Israel lives on now. All the land of all those people groups were promised to Abram and his descendants, that were to be uncountable! Another short movie rolled in my head this morning, thinking about Abram trying to keep the carrion away from those animals, while waiting for God to make his passage between them. You might call it the ‘second feature’ that rolled through my imagination. I saw the life of every believer once they’ve made their decision for Messiah, Christ/The Anointed. We make that profession for Yeshua. Then we spend the rest of our lives watching for incursion of the enemy and making a defensive stand against his foul spirits that attempt to befoul our witness and testimony at every turn in our walk. So, in reality, we aren’t that much different from Abram. When we’re somewhat weary with the way this world is going these days, we take comfort and joy that our faith can count as righteousness, AND we have The Almighty God Creator as our shield.
The expanse of land that was promised was rather extensive. As a matter of fact, the land that the nation of Israel lives in now is only a small slice of what they were originally meant to have. Adam Clarke (and others) stated that the river of Egypt is not the Nile but another river in or bordering Egypt near the isthmus of Suez, called the river Sichor or Sihor. This part of the land wasn’t even taken yet in the days of Joshua.
3 From Sihor, which is before Egypt, even unto the borders of Ekron northward, which is counted to the Canaanite: five lords of the Philistines; the Gazathites, and the Ashdothites, the Eshkalonites, the Gittites, and the Ekronites; also the Avites... Joshua 13:3.
But in the days of David and Solomon, the borders of Israel did indeed stretch this far.
26 And he reigned over all the kings from the river even unto the land of the Philistines, and to the border of Egypt. 2 Chronicles 9:26.
Sadly, after Solomon died, it all changed. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
What a day that was for Abram! He spent all afternoon chasing away the birds of prey. He was exhausted. Then, in the cold and damp of the desert night, he was told marvelous things! His heirs would live in a land not their own and would be persecuted. But after four generations, they would return. And at some point in the darkness, a bright, smoky flame passed between those carcasses of the animals. What a sight that must have been! He likely smelled the acrid smoke and the singed fur and feathers. Perhaps it not only appeared as an oven, but he could feel the heat and the roar of the flaming torch as it moved through. The Creator God Himself passed between those two halves of the animals and the bodies of the birds. But because no man has ever seen Him, He was cloaked by the fire. The Lord God, who created all things and Who cannot be contained because He is a spirit, came down cloaked in the essence of fire, and completed the oath of covenant with Abram.
It wasn’t until Abram separated himself from his nephew Lot that the covenant was ratified between Abram and the LORD Yahweh. The word covenant in the Hebrew language is b’rit for covenant, pact, or treaty. In ancient times, a covenant was “cut” by the cleaving of an animal, and the two parties would pass between the halves of the animal. The word b’rit implies that the shedding of blood is associated with the sealing of the covenant.
This makes the term for the “New Testament” in Hebrew much more meaningful. B’rit Hadashah is a new (Hadashah) covenant (B’rit) that is associated with the shedding of blood, Messiah’s blood to be exact. It must have been one lengthy day for Abram to be there, waiting for the coming of the Lord to seal this pact.
Abram, by leaving Ur with his father, was on his way to his destiny. When he left Haran, he was getting that much closer. The Hebrew words that name our portion this week are quite prophetic and descriptive. Lech by itself means to go in the second person. Then lecha or l’kha is an article that identifies that the previous word is in the second person. But the verb ‘to go’ is already in the second person, so that makes the word lecha or l’kha superfluous. We know from exegesis that when God repeats something, it has serious importance. Commentators suspect that because of this extra article, the sentence could read “Go for yourself”, “Go by yourself”, or “Go to yourself”. Or could we determine that all three of these commands were in operation when Abram got that message to ‘go out’? Perhaps Yah was expressing the immediacy and expediency of the imperative:
“Shield” is מָגֵן mâgên, maw-gane' also (in plural) feminine מְגִנָּה mᵉginnâh; from H1598; a shield (i.e. the small one or buckler); figuratively, a protector; also the scaly hide of the crocodile:—× armed, buckler, defence, ruler, scale, shield. masculine noun. The root of magen is H1598. That is: גָּנַן gânan, gaw-nan' a primitive root; to hedge about, i.e. (generally) protect:—defend. Verb. This appears to be an act of support and love from The Creator that is not promised by any other small ‘g’ god who was birthed in the minds of men. Our God is a shield and a defensive hedge around the righteous. I believe that in these cycles of Torah, we’ve established that any believer who is upright and in unbroken covenant with Yah is considered a righteous person. Certainly, we’ve seen how the upright and faithful heroes in Bible history are righteous. This state of being is obtainable by believers, shall we say, in “good standing” with God. We’re privy today to the exchange between God and Abram when, once again, God confirms that Abram will have an heir, but not the one
he chose. It wasn’t to be his trusted right-hand man who had been loyal to him through all circumstances. His heir would be one who would be his own son from his own body. And Abram, who knew what it was to have a faithful servant, was himself a faithful servant, and look what it says about Abram!
6 And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness. Genesis 15:6.
Here is another component of ‘righteousness’ that is: FAITH. WOWSERS! So many live by their senses and believe only what they can see. They follow after empty and useless things. Among these people, there is none righteous, no, not one! I'm pounding this nail in yet again. But this is huge! We see this morning that Abram “believed in the LORD” and it was counted to him as righteousness, and that about blows my mind! This is what happens when you spend enough time in THE WORD! I know there are other parts of this marvelous Bible where the enemy has twisted the meaning so that we read it, and it appears to contradict itself. Keep in mind that in the original, there were no chapter divisions and no verse numbers. It was one single, flowing document in Hebrew. (When I remember what the scrolls of Scripture looked like in my trip to the Houston Museum, those ‘Dead Sea Scrolls' had such symmetry and beauty! Thank you, Lena May and Ann, for making that one of the most memorable days of my life!) When we look at the opening verse in this apparently NEW chapter, looking at it as if the chapter division wasn’t there, we can intuit that the phrase “after these things” would refer to the battle against the kings, the redemption of Lot, his family and goods, AND the meeting between Melchizedek and Abram. It was after these things that God met with him again and confirmed his covenant. The ‘Amorite’ is mentioned twice, and that means something. Their ‘iniquity’ was not yet ‘full’ and wouldn’t be until the fourth generation of Abram’s descendants. These Amorites were from the fourth son of Canaan (Genesis 10:16 and 1 Chronicles 1:14). They were described in the Jewish Encyclopedia as “characterized by R. Jose, the chronicler, as the most intractable of all nations.” According to the Book of Jubilees, these Amorites originated with the Rephaim (giants). Their stature was great, and their evil and sinful ways were THE worst. The Amorites did not believe in the Creator God. From the Bible Hub, the Amorite religion was noted.
“The gods of the Amorites played a significant role in the religious and cultural practices of the region, often standing in opposition to the worship of Yahweh, the God of Israel.”
We could infer from what we've read already that the Amorites had no component of righteousness. They worshiped the creation instead of The Creator. But Abram believed in Yahweh.
Abram was to have heirs. Sarah is barren, yet she was to conceive. Abram’s reward would be as numerous as the stars of the heavens. The second promise is that his descendants will be given the land from the River Nile in Egypt to the Euphrates. Yah proposes a covenant.
7 And he said unto him, I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it. Genesis 15:7.
Abram would have children, and he would be given land. Adam Clarke gives us a lot to think about regarding that selection of animals that Abram was instructed to lay out.
“Take me a heifer - עגלה eglah, a she-calf; a she-goat, עז ez, a goat, male or female, but distinguished here by the feminine adjective; משלשת meshullesheth, a three-yearling; a ram, איל ayil; a turtle-dove, תר tor, from which come turtur and turtle; young pigeon, גוזל gozal, a word signifying the young of pigeons and eagles. See De 32:11. It is worthy of remark that every animal allowed or commanded to be sacrificed under the Mosaic law is to be found in this list. And is it not a proof that God was now giving to Abram an epitome of that law and its sacrifices which he intended more fully to reveal to Moses; the essence of which consisted in its sacrifices, which typified the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world? On the several animals which God ordered Abram to take, Jarchi remarks: "The idolatrous nations are compared in the Scriptures to bulls, rams, and goats; for it is written, Ps 22:12: Many bulls have compassed me about. Da 8:20: The ram which thou hast seen is the king of Persia. The rough goat is the king of Greece. Da 8:21. But the Israelites are compared to doves, etc.; Song 2:14: "O my dove, that art in the cleft of the rock. The division of the above carcasses denotes the division and extermination of the idolatrous nations; but the birds not being divided, shows that the Israelites are to abide for ever."
It was the standard type of covenant back in the day. Animal carcases were divided, and the men making the covenant would walk between them to signify that the pact or contract that they made between them was sealed. The description of those hours when Abram had to keep the birds of prey from stealing the carcasses rolls in my head like a movie in the film projection room of my mind. The sun sets. Abram is SO weary that he unintentionally falls into sleep and has some of the strangest dreams he’s ever had in his life. Was it dreams or a supernatural communication between the Spirit of the Living God and the spirit of His righteous servant? Perhaps it was a supernatural dream where God actually told Abram his future and that of his descendants.
17 And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces. 18 In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates: 19 The Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, 20 And the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims, 21 And the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites. Genesis 15:17-21.
That is a lot of land and certainly more than what Israel lives on now. All the land of all those people groups were promised to Abram and his descendants, that were to be uncountable! Another short movie rolled in my head this morning, thinking about Abram trying to keep the carrion away from those animals, while waiting for God to make his passage between them. You might call it the ‘second feature’ that rolled through my imagination. I saw the life of every believer once they’ve made their decision for Messiah, Christ/The Anointed. We make that profession for Yeshua. Then we spend the rest of our lives watching for incursion of the enemy and making a defensive stand against his foul spirits that attempt to befoul our witness and testimony at every turn in our walk. So, in reality, we aren’t that much different from Abram. When we’re somewhat weary with the way this world is going these days, we take comfort and joy that our faith can count as righteousness, AND we have The Almighty God Creator as our shield.
The expanse of land that was promised was rather extensive. As a matter of fact, the land that the nation of Israel lives in now is only a small slice of what they were originally meant to have. Adam Clarke (and others) stated that the river of Egypt is not the Nile but another river in or bordering Egypt near the isthmus of Suez, called the river Sichor or Sihor. This part of the land wasn’t even taken yet in the days of Joshua.
3 From Sihor, which is before Egypt, even unto the borders of Ekron northward, which is counted to the Canaanite: five lords of the Philistines; the Gazathites, and the Ashdothites, the Eshkalonites, the Gittites, and the Ekronites; also the Avites... Joshua 13:3.
But in the days of David and Solomon, the borders of Israel did indeed stretch this far.
26 And he reigned over all the kings from the river even unto the land of the Philistines, and to the border of Egypt. 2 Chronicles 9:26.
Sadly, after Solomon died, it all changed. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
What a day that was for Abram! He spent all afternoon chasing away the birds of prey. He was exhausted. Then, in the cold and damp of the desert night, he was told marvelous things! His heirs would live in a land not their own and would be persecuted. But after four generations, they would return. And at some point in the darkness, a bright, smoky flame passed between those carcasses of the animals. What a sight that must have been! He likely smelled the acrid smoke and the singed fur and feathers. Perhaps it not only appeared as an oven, but he could feel the heat and the roar of the flaming torch as it moved through. The Creator God Himself passed between those two halves of the animals and the bodies of the birds. But because no man has ever seen Him, He was cloaked by the fire. The Lord God, who created all things and Who cannot be contained because He is a spirit, came down cloaked in the essence of fire, and completed the oath of covenant with Abram.
It wasn’t until Abram separated himself from his nephew Lot that the covenant was ratified between Abram and the LORD Yahweh. The word covenant in the Hebrew language is b’rit for covenant, pact, or treaty. In ancient times, a covenant was “cut” by the cleaving of an animal, and the two parties would pass between the halves of the animal. The word b’rit implies that the shedding of blood is associated with the sealing of the covenant.
This makes the term for the “New Testament” in Hebrew much more meaningful. B’rit Hadashah is a new (Hadashah) covenant (B’rit) that is associated with the shedding of blood, Messiah’s blood to be exact. It must have been one lengthy day for Abram to be there, waiting for the coming of the Lord to seal this pact.
Abram, by leaving Ur with his father, was on his way to his destiny. When he left Haran, he was getting that much closer. The Hebrew words that name our portion this week are quite prophetic and descriptive. Lech by itself means to go in the second person. Then lecha or l’kha is an article that identifies that the previous word is in the second person. But the verb ‘to go’ is already in the second person, so that makes the word lecha or l’kha superfluous. We know from exegesis that when God repeats something, it has serious importance. Commentators suspect that because of this extra article, the sentence could read “Go for yourself”, “Go by yourself”, or “Go to yourself”. Or could we determine that all three of these commands were in operation when Abram got that message to ‘go out’? Perhaps Yah was expressing the immediacy and expediency of the imperative:
“Go! Go! Go!”
1 NASB www.lockman.org for daily reading and KJV in commentary unless otherwise specified
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