Genesis 15

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This verse is one of the most important in Genesis. It is referred to in Num. 25:11-12 (cf. Psa. 106:30-31); Rom. 4:3; Gal. 3:6; Jam. 2:23.

At the highest levels, traditional scholars have conspired to conceal the meaning of the Hebrew verb אָמַן. The fundamental meaning of the root is to support; in the Hipil perfect used here (הֶאֱמִן), it means: he had been making support. The perfect is translated past perfect continuous. The word “been” is not a passive.

הֶאֱמִן בּ. he had been making support in, or had been putting support on. The idea expressed here is not merely believe, but to commit oneself to Yăhwēh to trust and be faithful • וַיַּחְשְׁבֶהָ לּוֹ צְדָקָה: And he considered it to him as righteousness; the feminine pronoun it here (הָ), refers to the faithfulness implicit in trustingly faithful because the feminine noun form of the word is: אֱמוּנָה.

The root verbאָמַן’s most fundamental concordant meaning is to support (cf. BDB); the sense confirm is secondary, and is based on the idea that supporting a proposition is to confirm the proposition. The idea of nourish is fundamentally one person materially supporting another; the supporters of Aḥ´av̱, הָאֹמְנִים אַחְאָב; see also 2 Kings 10:1, 5. Est. 2:7: he was supporting Hadassah, יְהִי אֹמֵן אֶת־הֲדַסָּה. Num. 11:12: as the supporting father carries the sucking child, כּאֲשֶׁר יִשָּׂא הָאֹמֵן אֶת־הַיֹּנֵק; Isa. 49:23: kings will be your supporters; Ruth 4:16: and she became for it a supporter; 2 Sam. 4:4: and his supporter carried him, וַתִּשָּׂאֵהוּ אֹמַנְתּוֹ; the root is also applied to literal physical supports, 2 Kings 18:16: the doors of the Temple of Yăhwēh and the supports, אֶת־דַּלְתוֹת הֵיכַל יהוה וְאֶת־הָאֹמְנוֹת. In the Qal passive: those being supported in scarlet, הָאֱמֻנִים עֲלֵי תוֹלָע, Lam. 4:5.

The Niphal takes a stative sense, being supportive, Psa. 12:2, for have vanished ones-being-supportive from the sons of men: כִּי־פַסּוּ אֱמוּנִים מִבְּנֵי אָדָם, which is usually translated the faithful. The faithful person is one who loyaly supports another; 2 Sam. 20:19, Psa. 31:24, Pro. 11:13. That the sense of the Niphal is also non stative like Qal passive is proved in Isa. 60:4: and your daughters upon the hip will be supported: וּבְנֹתַיִךְ עַל־צַד תֵּאָמַנָה. We can thus see how using the Niphal in Gen. 15:6 would miss the sense as it would make the text say and he was supported by Yăhwēh.

Isa. 7:9 illustrates concordant sense with the Hiphil: If you will not give support, surely you shall not be supported, אִם לֹא תַאֲמִינוּ כִּי לֹא תֵאָמֵנוּ; the Hiphil adds the sense of make or cause to the verb. The subject makes or causes support to be in or on the object. The Hiphil does not change the fundamental idea of the root. Antinomian scholars are under the mistaken impression that it does, and thus after being true to the root in other stems, they depart and say the Hiphil only means believe. The causitive notion of the Hiphil infix can be glossed as give support (to) or put support (in, on); Making support on the object is the notion of Gen. 15:6: he had been making support on Yăhwēh, הֶאֱמִן בּיהוה; the sense obtained is both reliance on and putting one’s active support in Yăhwēh, which is to say it combines trust and faithfulness to Him. An excellent functional equivalent is he had been trustingly faithful in Yăhwēh. 2 Chr. 20:20 says literally: הַאֲמִינוּ בּיהוה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם וְתֵאָמֵנוּ הַאֲמִינוּ בִנְבִיאָיו וְהַצְלִיחוּ = Put your support in Yăhwēh your Almĭghty, and you will be supported; Put your support in his prophets, and you will prosper.

What makes the difference between the sense of merely believing and active support (fidelity, faithfulness, loyalty, steadfastness) is the object of the verb. If the object is a datum, idea, or concept to be believed, then believe will suffice. However, if the object is a person, the sense becomes trust and loyalty, what is usually termed fidelity in English. Thus to support an idea is to confirm it or believe it, but to support a person is to be loyal to that person. In the vast majority of the usages, the object is a person, and that person is Yăhwēh, who became the Messiah.

We should not assume the Hiphil is behind every NT usage of the Greek equivalent (πιστεύω) of this verb. John habitually uses the participle with the preposition: πιστεύων εἰς αὐτὸν; what motivated John to use the unusual preposition εἰς with πιστεύω was his desire to correct the notion that the verb only meant supporting on Him, which indeed could be construed as mere trust. John saw it was necessary to explain the Hebrew הֶאֱמִן בּ better as supporting to Him = הָאֹמֵן לוֹ, which means be faithful, or be loyal to Messiah; the sense is contextual paralleled with obey in John 3:36: the one supporting to the Son holds fast life everlasting, but the one disobedient to the Son will not see life, which I render, the one trustingly faithful to the Son. Thus John is shutting the door of missing the full Hebrew sense of the בּ (in, on) preposition by using the ל preposition. In LXX Greek and Hebrew the two prepositions overlap in meaning sufficiently, but in Koine Greek there was a tendency to reduce the meaning of ἐν to trust only or mere belief.

Short of outright denial or insult, or appeal to tradition and authority, the only kind of argument that antinomian scholars are going to make is to claim that הֶאֱמִן בּ does not mean what I have said here based on positing that differences in the Stem used are equivalent to secondary meanings of the root, i.e. believe instead of support, or that the preposition used with the root governs the meaning of the root. Such ideas are linguistically naive at best or more likely shrewdly diabolical, being pushed by language deconstructionists pushing post-modern theology. The meaning of language is not determined by dichotomizing the lexemes into new meanings for every variation of usage. Rather meaning is determined by seeking concordance of meaning, as invariant as possible over all the variations of usage. Only then can one be sure he has really got the meaning. The Stem meanings, Hiphil, Niphal, Qal, and Qal passive are not concordantly determined anew for each conjugation of the root. This may be true with Modern Hebrew to some extent where we have the living language to examine. But modern Hebrew has changed from ancient. The only tool we have with ancient Hebrew is strict linguistic analysis of written texts. And here we must understand the nature of the Stem from the whole language, and not by trying to dichotomize the meaning within a lexeme to suit our modern assumptions about what it should mean. Further, arguments based on different preposition use are usually made by someone not familiar enough with Hebrew to know the vast variation that is possible. The only determinant can be knowledge of the variation by knowledge of the language and a sense of logic of which meaning fits. The language of Scripture, as observed by careful linguistic study is the final objective arbiter of revealed truth. The subjective arbiter is the Spirit of the Almighty. The study of Scripture requires the same approach that creationists take toward understanding creation, which is to use the scientific method without the baggage of evolutionary theology, i.e. theological assumptions. Hypothesis must agree with the facts or be revised. I trust the Spirit will confirm this with anyone who honestly takes this approach.

Verse 6 starts out with a waw conjunctive in the middle of a context of imperfects. The wayyqtl imperfects carry the sequence of the narrative, i.e. vs. 5, “Then he brought,” “Then said” (vs 5b; 7, 8, etc.). In vs. 6, the text is clearly a narrators insertion to give us more info that is not in the dialogue. But narrator does not use an imperfect. He uses the perfect with conjunctive waw. By this he is giving background info that is not viewed as part of the sequence; it is the reason that A̓v̱ram put his support in Yăhwēh in this instance (which is to support the truth of what Yăhwēh said in this instance). It was because he “had been trustingly faithful.” Verse 6 is a past perfect piece of background information with continuing results in the present. Verse 6b is a subordinate imperfect with waw consecutive (wayyqtl) to the perfect at the start of the verse. The perfect states that he entered into a state of faithfully trusting in the past, possibly an iterative state, and then the subordinate imperfect addresses the results of the perfect. The state of trusting faithfulness as it produces trustingly faithful acts is counted as righteousness. It is subsequent to Av̱ram´s first act of putting support in/to YHWH. The waw consecutive at the middle of the verse is “therefore”; it cannot be then next, because the imputation is concurrent with the faithfullness. Neither can it be “at that time” since this was not a singular instance (cf. James 2:23). The waw consecutive is a concluding waw citing a logical result.

Vs. 6 gives background information based upon which we can predict Av̱ram´s response to Yăhwēh´s promise due to his support for Yăhwēh. Thus, vs. 6 is not a single instance case of “belief” in a single promise. It is the narrator´s insertion to tell us that A̓v̱ram had been faithful to Yăhwēh.

The preposition with the divine name ביהוה, ב is an abstract use, “in connection to,” which is also possible to explain with the abstract ל “with respect to”; Yoḥanan almost always makes the change to ל (εἰς) to emphasize the “be faithful (to)” aspect of the Greek πιστεύω. This was to prevent readers from thinking that he meant “trust” and no more than “trust.”

15:6‡ ^ = “Then:” This is a concluding waw. The subject of the sentence is Yăhwēh, denoted by “He.” And the indirect object is A̓v̱ram, “to him”. The word “it” הָ ha, is a third person feminine pronoun, and it is the direct object, which refers to the faithfulness which A̓v̱ram placed Yăhwēh. The feminine gender is on account of the Hebrew word for faithfulness, אֱמוּנָה e̓mūnah, also being feminine in gender.

15:9¹ ^ מְשֻׁלֶּשֶׁת = being made to be three.

15:13¹ ^ The four hundred years starts with the birth of Isaac.