Text -- Genesis 26:5 (NET)

26:5 All this will come to pass because Abraham obeyed me and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.”

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Gen 26:5

¹ tn The words “All this will come to pass” are not in the Hebrew text, but are supplied for stylistic reasons.

² tn Heb “listened to my voice.”

³ sn My charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. The language of this verse is clearly interpretive, for Abraham did not have all these laws. The terms are legal designations for sections of the Mosaic law and presuppose the existence of the law. Some Rabbinic views actually conclude that Abraham had fulfilled the whole law before it was given (see m. Qiddushin 4:14). Some scholars argue that this story could only have been written after the law was given (C. Westermann, Genesis, 2:424-25). But the simplest explanation is that the narrator (traditionally taken to be Moses the Lawgiver) elaborated on the simple report of Abraham’s obedience by using terms with which the Israelites were familiar. In this way he depicts Abraham as the model of obedience to God’s commands, whose example Israel should follow.