Kejadian 12:2

12:2 Then I will make you ¹  into a great nation, and I will bless you, ² 

and I will make your name great, ³ 

so that you will exemplify divine blessing. ⁴ 

Yeremia 30:19

30:19 Out of those places you will hear songs of thanksgiving ⁵ 

and the sounds of laughter and merriment.

I will increase their number and they will not dwindle away. ⁶ 

I will bring them honor and they will no longer be despised.

Roma 4:18

4:18 Against hope Abraham ⁷  believed ⁸  in hope with the result that he became the father of many nations ⁹  according to the pronouncement, ¹⁰  “so will your descendants be.” ¹¹ 

Ibrani 11:12

11:12 So in fact children ¹²  were fathered by one man – and this one as good as dead – like the number of stars in the sky and like the innumerable grains of sand ¹³  on the seashore. ¹⁴ 

[12:2]  ¹ tn The three first person verbs in v. 2a should be classified as cohortatives. The first two have pronominal suffixes, so the form itself does not indicate a cohortative. The third verb form is clearly cohortative.

[12:2]  ² sn I will bless you. The blessing of creation is now carried forward to the patriarch. In the garden God blessed Adam and Eve; in that blessing he gave them (1) a fruitful place, (2) endowed them with fertility to multiply, and (3) made them rulers over creation. That was all ruined at the fall. Now God begins to build his covenant people; in Gen 12-22 he promises to give Abram (1) a land flowing with milk and honey, (2) a great nation without number, and (3) kingship.

[12:2]  ³ tn Or “I will make you famous.”

[12:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “and be a blessing.” The verb form הְיֵה (hÿyeh) is the Qal imperative of the verb הָיָה (hayah). The vav (ו) with the imperative after the cohortatives indicates purpose or consequence. What does it mean for Abram to “be a blessing”? Will he be a channel or source of blessing for others, or a prime example of divine blessing? A similar statement occurs in Zech 8:13, where God assures his people, “You will be a blessing,” in contrast to the past when they “were a curse.” Certainly “curse” here does not refer to Israel being a source of a curse, but rather to the fact that they became a curse-word or byword among the nations, who regarded them as the epitome of an accursed people (see 2 Kgs 22:19; Jer 42:18; 44:8, 12, 22). Therefore the statement “be a blessing” seems to refer to Israel being transformed into a prime example of a blessed people, whose name will be used in blessing formulae, rather than in curses. If the statement “be a blessing” is understood in the same way in Gen 12:2, then it means that God would so bless Abram that other nations would hear of his fame and hold him up as a paradigm of divine blessing in their blessing formulae.

[30:19]  ⁵ tn Heb “Out of them will come thanksgiving and a sound of those who are playful.”

[30:19]  ⁶ sn Compare Jer 29:6.

[4:18]  ⁷ tn Grk “he”; the referent (Abraham) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[4:18]  ⁸ tn Grk “who against hope believed,” referring to Abraham. The relative pronoun was converted to a personal pronoun and, because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[4:18]  ⁹ sn A quotation from Gen 17:5.

[4:18]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “according to that which had been spoken.”

[4:18]  ¹¹ sn A quotation from Gen 15:5.

[11:12]  ¹² tn Grk “these”; in the translation the referent (children) has been specified for clarity.

[11:12]  ¹³ tn Grk a collective “the sand.”

[11:12]  ¹⁴ sn An allusion to Gen 22:17 (which itself goes back to Gen 15:5).