Bible Study · Including The Chapters Nobody Preaches

Abraham In The Bible: The Whole Record

Twenty five years of waiting, two occasions he passed his wife off as his sister, and a test in Genesis 22 that should never be smoothed over.

By Apostle Johnny Ova · Sound of Heaven · 13 Min Read
The Short Answer The Actual Sequence The Parts Skipped Saying It Plainly What Romans 4 Argues Where This Lands
The Short Answer

Mostly A Story About Waiting

Straight Answer

Abraham in the Bible is a man called at 75 to leave everything for a promise, and a father at 100. Twenty five years sit in that gap, and they are most of what Genesis actually records.

He is called the father of many nations and the friend of God. He also passed his wife off as his sister twice and laughed in God's face at the promise. Scripture keeps all of it.

Which is the first thing worth noticing. The Bible does not clean him up, and the New Testament builds its whole argument about faith on a man it declines to flatter.

The Sequence

What Actually Happens, In Order

Genesis 12 to 25The RecordAbout A Hundred Years
The call, age 75

Genesis 12:1 to 4. Leave your country, your people and your father's household. The promise is land, a great nation, and blessing for all peoples on earth.

The covenant, Genesis 15

God counts the stars with him and credits his belief as righteousness. Then a covenant ceremony in which God alone passes between the pieces, taking the obligation on Himself.

Hagar and Ishmael, Genesis 16

Ten years in, Sarai proposes a solution and Abram agrees to it. The result is a son, a broken household, and a woman in the wilderness being met by God.

The name change, age 99

Genesis 17. Abram, exalted father, becomes Abraham, father of many. He is given a new name a full year before he has the son it refers to.

Isaac, age 100

Genesis 21:5. The name means laughter, and both parents had already supplied it. Then Genesis 22, then Sarah's death at 127, then his own at 175.

Takeaway

Read the chapter headings and it looks like a highlight reel. Read the ages and it is a man being given a promise and then living a quarter of a century without it.

Honest Ground

The Chapters That Get Skipped

Children's Bibles jump from the call to the stars to Isaac. Here is what sits in between.

Genesis 12:10 to 20

A famine sends him to Egypt, where he tells Sarai to say she is his sister. She is taken into Pharaoh's house. Pharaoh is the one who ends up rebuking him.

Genesis 20

He does it again, with Abimelek, years later and after the covenant. Twice, with the same excuse, and the second time is worse because he has more reason to know better.

Genesis 17:17

Abraham falls facedown and laughs, asking whether a child will be born to a man of a hundred. Sarah laughs in the next chapter and gets asked about it.

Genesis 21:14

Hagar and Ishmael are sent away with bread and a skin of water. The text records Abraham's distress and records that he did it anyway.

None of this is presented as acceptable. Genesis simply reports it, and the New Testament writers who praise Abraham's faith had all of it in front of them. Hebrews 11 lists him without a footnote about Egypt, which tells you something about what faith is being credited for.

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Saying It Plainly

Two Things To Say Straight

One about Genesis 22, and one about the way his name gets used in giving appeals.

Where We Stand, Plainly

Genesis 22 should not be smoothed. God tells a man to sacrifice his son, and Amanda Benckhuysen notes that “Abraham seemingly complies without protest”. The same man argued with God at length over Sodom a few chapters earlier, and here he says nothing. That silence is part of what makes the chapter unbearable, and any sermon that resolves it in ten minutes has not read it.

What we will say plainly is this. The chapter ends with God stopping it, providing a ram, and the place being named the Lord will provide. Everything around it in the ancient world normalised child sacrifice, and Israel's law prohibits it repeatedly and in the strongest terms, in Leviticus 18:21, Deuteronomy 12:31 and Jeremiah 7:31, where God says it never entered His mind. So whatever Genesis 22 is doing, it is not establishing a pattern. Nobody today should hear a command like that and act on it, and a church that leaves that unsaid is being careless with something dangerous.

The second thing is the blessing of Abraham, which has been turned into a fundraising phrase. Galatians 3:14 defines it inside the verse: so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit. That is the blessing. Not a house, not a settlement, not a return on a seed. Paul spends the chapter arguing that the promise reaches non-Jewish people through Christ, and what arrives when it does is the Spirit.

Anybody quoting Abraham's wealth as a template has also skipped what the wealth cost him and what he was asked to give up. And they have skipped Genesis 15:1, where God says I am your shield, your very great reward. The reward in the text is God. The rest is furniture.

What does Galatians 3:14 say the blessing of Abraham is?

Material increase and land
The promise of the Spirit, received by faith
A guarantee of many children

The verse defines itself: so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit. Paul's argument is that the promise reaches the nations through Christ, and what arrives is the Spirit.

The Argument

Why Paul Keeps Going Back To Him

“Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”

Genesis 15:6
The order matters

Romans 4:10. Paul points out that this happened in Genesis 15, and circumcision arrives in Genesis 17. Credited first, marked afterwards, and the sequence is his whole case.

Before the law

Galatians 3:17. The promise predates Sinai by 430 years, so the law cannot be the mechanism. Abraham is the proof that it never was.

Who counts as family

Galatians 3:7 and 29. Those who have faith are children of Abraham, and if you belong to Christ then you are Abraham's seed. Descent is relocated.

The nations clause

Genesis 12:3 said all peoples on earth will be blessed through you, and Paul calls that the gospel announced in advance in Galatians 3:8.

So the reason Abraham carries so much weight in the New Testament is not that he was impressive. It is that he was reckoned righteous before he had done any of the things people usually count, which makes him the wrong man to cite if you want to argue that God responds to credentials.

Where This Lands

A Long Time With Nothing To Show

If the record is mostly waiting, then the useful part of Abraham is mostly the waiting too.

He got a promise at 75 and a son at 100. In between he made a bad decision in Egypt, an understandable and destructive decision with Hagar, and the same bad decision again with Abimelek. God did not rescind anything over it.

He also never received the land. Hebrews 11:13 says these people were still living by faith when they died, and they did not receive the things promised. The one piece of ground he owned in Canaan was a burial plot he paid full price for in Genesis 23.

So if you are somewhere between a promise and its arrival, this is the man the New Testament holds up. Not because the gap was short, and not because he handled it well. Because God kept His word through a quarter of a century of somebody else's poor judgment, which is the only reason any of this is encouraging.

For related ground, see Hagar and the well, Jacob, righteousness, grace, the new covenant, the Davidic covenant and the Edomites.

The Whole Thing In One Line

Called at 75 and a father at 100, with twenty five years of waiting and two recorded occasions of passing his wife off as his sister, tested in a chapter that should never be smoothed, and used by Paul precisely because he was reckoned righteous before he had earned anything.

If You Are In The Gap

Between a promise and its arrival is where most of this story happens, and it is a hard place to stand. Send it in and somebody at Sound of Heaven will pray over it with you.

Questions People Ask

Questions About Abraham

Who is Abraham in the Bible?

A man from Ur, then Harran, called in Genesis 12 at the age of 75 to leave his country for a land he had not seen. He is promised descendants, land and blessing for all nations, and he waits twenty five years for the first son of that promise. He is called the father of many nations, and Paul makes him the case study for how a person is put right with God, in Romans 4 and Galatians 3.

How long did Abraham wait for Isaac?

Twenty five years. He is 75 when the promise is given in Genesis 12:4 and 100 when Isaac is born in Genesis 21:5. Inside that gap sit Egypt, the separation from Lot, the covenant in Genesis 15, Hagar and Ishmael, the name change from Abram to Abraham at 99, and the laughter of both Abraham and Sarah at the idea. The waiting is most of the story.

What did Abraham do wrong?

Two serious things, both recorded without excuse. In Genesis 12 he tells Sarai to say she is his sister, and she is taken into Pharaoh's house. In Genesis 20 he does the same thing with Abimelek, years later and after the covenant. He also laughs at God's promise in 17:17 and sends Hagar and Ishmael away in chapter 21. Scripture keeps all of it, which is the opposite of how heroes are usually written.

What is happening in Genesis 22?

The hardest chapter in the book. God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, and Amanda Benckhuysen notes that Abraham seemingly complies without protest, which is part of what makes it so difficult. The son is not harmed, a ram is provided, and the text calls it a test. We do not think this should be smoothed into a simple lesson, and we do not think it licenses anybody to hear a similar command today.

What is the blessing of Abraham?

Galatians 3:14 defines it in the verse itself: so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit. Paul is not describing material increase. He is saying the promise made to Abraham reaches non-Jewish people through Christ, and what arrives is the Spirit. Anyone quoting the blessing of Abraham to mean financial prosperity has stopped reading in the middle of the sentence.