Genesis 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 

Psalms 105:9

105:9 the promise ⁵  he made to Abraham,

the promise he made by oath to Isaac!

Isaiah 45:23

45:23 I solemnly make this oath ⁶  –

what I say is true and reliable: ⁷ 

‘Surely every knee will bow to me,

every tongue will solemnly affirm; ⁸ 

Jeremiah 49:13

49:13 For I solemnly swear,” ⁹  says the Lord, “that Bozrah ¹⁰  will become a pile of ruins. It will become an object of horror and ridicule, an example to be used in curses. ¹¹  All the towns around it will lie in ruins forever.”

Jeremiah 51:14

51:14 The Lord who rules over all ¹²  has solemnly sworn, ¹³ 

‘I will fill your land with enemy soldiers.

They will swarm over it like locusts. ¹⁴ 

They will raise up shouts of victory over it.’

Amos 6:8

6:8 The sovereign Lord confirms this oath by his very own life. ¹⁵ 

The Lord, the God who commands armies, is speaking:

“I despise Jacob’s arrogance;

I hate their ¹⁶  fortresses.

I will hand over to their enemies ¹⁷  the city of Samaria ¹⁸  and everything in it.”

Luke 1:73

1:73 the oath ¹⁹  that he swore to our ancestor ²⁰  Abraham.

This oath grants ²¹ 

Romans 4:13-14

4:13 For the promise ²²  to Abraham or to his descendants that he would inherit the world was not fulfilled through the law, but through the righteousness that comes by faith. 4:14 For if they become heirs by the law, faith is empty and the promise is nullified. ²³ 

Hebrews 6:13-14

6:13 Now when God made his promise to Abraham, since he could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself, 6:14 saying, “Surely I will bless you greatly and multiply your descendants abundantly.” ²⁴ 

[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.

[105:9]  ⁵ tn Heb “which.”

[45:23]  ⁶ tn Heb “I swear by myself”; KJV, NASB “have sworn.”

[45:23]  ⁷ tn Heb “a word goes out from my mouth [in] truth and will not return.”

[45:23]  ⁸ tn Heb “swear” (so KJV, NAB, NIV, NRSV); NLT “confess allegiance.”

[49:13]  ⁹ tn Heb “I swear by myself.” See 22:5 and the study note there.

[49:13]  ¹⁰ sn Bozrah appears to have been the chief city in Edom, its capital city (see its parallelism with Edom in Isa 34:6; 63:1; Jer 49:22). The reference to “its towns” (translated here “all the towns around it”) could then be a reference to all the towns in Edom. It was located about twenty-five miles southeast of the southern end of the Dead Sea apparently in the district of Teman (see the parallelism in Amos 1:12).

[49:13]  ¹¹ tn See the study note on 24:9 for the rendering of this term.

[51:14]  ¹² tn Heb “Yahweh of armies.” For an explanation of this rendering see the study note on 2:19.

[51:14]  ¹³ tn Heb “has sworn by himself.” See the study note on 22:5 for background.

[51:14]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “I will fill you with men like locusts.” The “you” refers to Babylon (Babylon is both the city and the land it ruled, Babylonia) which has been alluded to in the preceding verses under descriptive titles. The words “your land” have been used because of the way the preceding verse has been rendered, alluding to people rather than to the land or city. The allusion of “men” is, of course, to enemy soldiers and they are here compared to locusts both for their quantity and their destructiveness (see Joel 1:4). For the use of the particles כִּי אִם (ki ’im) to introduce an oath see BDB 475 s.v. כִּי אִם 2.c and compare usage in 2 Kgs 5:20; one would normally expect אִם לֹא (cf. BDB 50 s.v. אִם 1.b[2]).

[6:8]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “swears by his life”; or “swears by himself.”

[6:8]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “his,” referring to Jacob, which stands here for the nation of Israel.

[6:8]  ¹⁷ tn The words “to their enemies” are supplied in the translation for clarification.

[6:8]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “the city”; this probably refers to the city of Samaria (cf. 6:1), which in turn, by metonymy, represents the entire northern kingdom.

[1:73]  ¹⁹ tn This is linked back grammatically by apposition to “covenant” in v. 72, specifying which covenant is meant.

[1:73]  ²⁰ tn Or “forefather”; Grk “father.”

[1:73]  ²¹ tn Again for reasons of English style, the infinitival clause “to grant us” has been translated “This oath grants” and made the beginning of a new sentence in the translation.

[4:13]  ²² sn Although a singular noun, the promise is collective and does not refer only to Gen 12:7, but as D. Moo (Romans 1-8 [WEC], 279) points out, refers to multiple aspects of the promise to Abraham: multiplied descendants (Gen 12:2), possession of the land (Gen 13:15-17), and his becoming the vehicle of blessing to all people (Gen 12:13).

[4:14]  ²³ tn Grk “rendered inoperative.”

[6:14]  ²⁴ tn Grk “in blessing I will bless you and in multiplying I will multiply you,” the Greek form of a Hebrew idiom showing intensity.