Genesis 17

At some point in your education, you may have read Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and you discovered in act 2 that famous quotation: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.’’

Juliet spoke those words as she talked to herself on her balcony, ignorant of the fact that Romeo was listening below. She was pondering the fact that she belonged to the Capulet family and he to the rival Montagues, and that this accident of birth hindered them from getting married. What difference did two names make? No matter what his name was, Romeo was still her love!

Shakespeare notwithstanding, if you had asked a biblical character the question, “What’s in a name?’’ that person would have replied: “Everything! Our names are very important!’’ Names might record something significant about one’s birth (Gen. 29:31—30:24) or about some life-changing experience. Jacob was renamed Israel after a night of wrestling with God (32:24–32), and Simon received the name Peter (rock) when he met Jesus Christ (John 1:40–42). The names assigned to unborn babies even carried messages (Gen. 16:11; Matt. 1:18–25).

In this chapter, you will discover four new names and a name that will always be old because it cannot be changed.

Revelation. The Hebrew name is “El Shaddai’’ (shuhDYE), and this is the first time it occurs in Scripture. “Shaddai’’ is translated as “Almighty’’ forty-eight times in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, the Greek equivalent is used in 2 Corinthians 6: and Revelation 1:8; 4:8; 11:17; 15:3; 16: and 14; 19: and 15; and 21:22. It is translated “Almighty’’ except in Revelation 19: (“omnipotent’’).

“El’’ is the name of God that speaks of power; but what does “Shaddai’’ mean? Scholars do not agree. Some say it comes from a Hebrew word meaning “to be strong’’; others prefer a word meaning “mountain’’ or “breast.’’ Metaphorically, a mountain is a “breast’’ that rises up from the plain, and certainly a mountain is a symbol of strength. If we combine these several ideas, we might say that “El Shaddai’’ is the name of “the allpowerful and all-sufficient God who can do anything and meet any need.’’

But why would God reveal this name to Abraham at this time, at the close of thirteen years of silence? Because God was going to tell His friend that Sarah would have a son. The Lord wanted Abraham to know that He is the God who is all-sufficient and all-powerful, and that nothing is too hard for Him. God says “I will’’ twelve times in this chapter; He is about to do the miraculous.

After Abraham’s battle with the four kings, God came to him as a warrior and told him He was his “shield.’’ When Abraham wondered about his refusal of Sodom’s wealth, God told him He was his “exceedingly great reward’’ (Gen. 15:1). Now when Abraham and Sarah were “as good as dead,’’ God assured them that He was more than sufficient to bring about the miracle birth. God comes to us in the ways we need Him most.

Responsibility. Revelation always brings responsibility. Enoch and Noah had walked with God (5:22; 6:8–9), but Abraham was to walk before God, that is, live in the knowledge that the eyes of God were always upon him (Heb. 4:13). The word “perfect’’ does not mean “sinless,’’ for that would be an impossible goal for anyone to reach (1 Kings 8:46). The word means “single-hearted, without blame, sincere, wholly devoted to the Lord.’’ In Exodus 12:5, the word refers to a “perfect’’ sacrifice without blemish. It was a call for integrity.

This is not to suggest that God’s people should settle for anything less than striving to conform to His will. “His desire for us should be our aim and desire for ourselves,’’ wrote Alexander Maclaren. “It is more blessed to be smitten with the longing to win the unwon than to stagnate in ignoble contentment with partial attainments. Better to climb, with faces turned upwards to the inaccessible peak, than to lie at ease in the fat valleys’’ (Expositions of Holy Scripture, vol. 1 [Baker Book House, 1974], 120).

The secret of a perfect walk before God is a personal worship of God. Like Abraham, every believer must fall before the Lord and yield everything to Him. If He is “El Shaddai—God Almighty,’’ then who are we to resist His will?

Relationship. The phrase “My covenant’’ is used nine times in this chapter and defines God’s relationship with Abraham. This was not another covenant, different from the one God had already established with Abraham (Gen. 12:1–3; 15:1–21). It was a reaffirmation of that covenant, with the important addition of circumcision, the sign and seal of the covenant.

God promised once again to multiply Abraham’s family, even though he and his wife did not have any children. His descendants would be “as the dust of the earth’’ (13:16) and as the stars of the heavens (15:5). These two comparisons—earth and heaven—suggest that Abraham would have a physical family, the Jews (Matt. 3:9), and a spiritual family made up of all who believe in Jesus Christ (Gal. 3:26–29).

The people. “Abram’’ means “exalted father’’; “Abraham’’ means “father of a multitude.’’ When Abraham informed the people in his camp that he had a new name, some of them must have smiled and said, “Father of a multitude! Why, he and his wife are too old to have children!’’ Whether he looked beneath his feet or up into the heavens, or whenever anyone called him by name, Abraham was reminded of God’s gracious promise to give him many descendants.

Keep in mind that Abraham’s descendants include not only the Jewish people, but also the Arab world (through Ishmael) and the nations listed in Genesis 25:1–4. All who trust Jesus Christ as Savior are spiritual children of Abraham (Gal. 3:6–9), and that will be a vast multitude (Rev. 7:9).

In being fruitful for God, we have nothing in ourselves that will accomplish the task. Abraham and Sarah had tried their own plan, and it failed miserably. Jesus said, “Without me, ye can do nothing’’ (John 15:5). “We say that we depend on the Holy Spirit,’’ wrote Vance Havner, “but actually we are so wired up with our own devices that if the fire does not fall from heaven, we can turn on a switch and produce false fire of our own.’’

I read about a young Scottish minister who walked proudly into the pulpit to preach his first sermon. He had a brilliant mind and a good education and was confident of himself as he faced his first congregation. But the longer he preached, the more conscious everyone was that “the Lord was not in the wind.’’ He finished his message quickly and came down from the pulpit with his head bowed, his pride now gone. Afterward, one of the members said to him, “If you had gone into the pulpit the way you came down, you might have come down from the pulpit the way you went up.’’

The land. God’s everlasting covenant also included an everlasting possession: the land of Canaan. This land is a battleground today and always will be until the Lord returns to reign. But as far as God’s covenant is concerned, the land belongs to Israel.

The Jews’ ownership of the land depends solely on God’s gracious covenant with Abraham: God gave them the land. But their possession and enjoyment of the land depends on their faithfulness to obey the Lord. This was the theme of Moses’ messages in Deuteronomy. More than sixty times in that book, Moses told the people they would inherit or possess the land, and at least twenty-five times, Moses reminded them that the land was a gift from the Lord. God’s name was there (Deut. 12:5, 11, 21), and He would watch over the land to bless it, if His people walked in His ways.

The only piece of ground all the patriarchs possessed was the cave Abraham purchased from Ephron, the son of Zohar, to become a family burial place (Gen. 23; 49:29–31). Jacob and his family had to leave the land and go to Egypt (Gen. 46), but God had promised that they would return to Canaan at the appointed time (15:13–17).

Joshua led them into their land where they conquered the inhabitants and claimed their inheritance. But the people did not stay true to the covenant, so God had to discipline them in the land (Judg. 2:10–23). He raised up enemy nations to defeat Israel and put her in bondage. Israel was in the land, but she did not control it or enjoy it (Deut. 28:15ff.).

During the reigns of David and Solomon, the people enjoyed their inheritance and served the Lord faithfully. But after the kingdom divided, Israel and Judah both decayed spiritually (except for occasional interludes of revival) and ended up in bondage: Assyria defeated Israel, and Babylon conquered Judah. It was then that God disciplined His people outside their land. It was as though He were saying, “You have polluted My land with your idols, so I will put you in a land that is addicted to idols. Get your fill of it! After you have been away from your land for seventy years, maybe you will learn to appreciate what I gave you.’’

God permitted a remnant to return to the land, rebuild the city and the temple, and restore the nation, but it never became a great power again. However, whether Israel is faithful or faithless, the land belongs to her, and one day she will inherit it and enjoy it to the glory of God. Israel’s title deed to the land is a vital part of God’s everlasting covenant with Abraham.

The sign. In Genesis 17:4, God said, “As for Me,” but in verse 9, He said, “As for you’’ (nkjv, nasb, niv). Abraham’s part in the covenant was to obey God and mark each male in his house with the sign of the covenant. Circumcision was not a new rite, for other nations practiced it in Abraham’s time; but God now gave it new importance and special meaning. For the descendants of Abraham, circumcision was not an option; it was an obligation.

It is important to note that circumcision was not a “sacrament.’’ The performing of it did not convey spiritual blessing to the recipient. An eight-day-old baby boy (Lev. 12:3) would not even understand what was going on, and when he got older, the ritual would have to be explained to him. It was the obedience of the parents that was important, for if they did not obey God in this matter, their son would be cut off from his people (Gen. 17:14). The covenant people must bear the mark of the covenant.

Since God’s covenant involved Abraham’s “seed,’’ it was fitting that the mark of the covenant be on the male organ of generation. Since all people are conceived in sin (Ps. 51:5), this special mark would remind them that they were accepted by God because of His gracious covenant. It was God who chose the Jews, not the Jews who chose God (Deut. 7:1–11), and He chose them to be a holy people. Immorality was rampant among the Canaanite peoples, and was even a part of their religion, but the people of Israel were “marked’’ to be separate from the evil around them.

Unfortunately, the Jewish people eventually made this ritual a means of salvation. Circumcision was a guarantee that you were accepted by God. (Some people today place the same false confidence in baptism, Communion, and other religious rites that can be very meaningful if rightly used.) They did not realize that circumcision stood for something much deeper: the person’s relationship to God. God wants us to “circumcise our hearts’’ and be totally devoted to Him in love and obedience (Deut. 10:16; 30:6; Jer. 4:4; Rom. 2:28–29).

Romans 4:9–12 makes it clear that the physical operation had nothing to do with Abraham’s eternal salvation. Abraham had believed God and received God’s righteousness before he ever was circumcised (Gen. 15:6). Circumcision was not the means of his salvation but the mark of his separation as a man in covenant relationship with God. The legalistic element in the early church tried to make circumcision and obedience to the law a requirement for salvation for the Gentiles, but this heresy was refuted (Acts 15:1–35). In his Galatian epistle, Paul argues convincingly for salvation by grace alone.

What does all of this mean to Christian believers today? The seal of our salvation is not an external rite but the presence of an internal witness in the person of the Holy Spirit of God (Eph. 1:13; 4:30; Rom. 8:9, 16). We have experienced a “spiritual circumcision’’ (Col. 2:9–12) that makes us part of the “true circumcision’’ (Phil. 3:1–3). When we trusted Christ to save us, the Spirit of God performed “spiritual surgery’’ that enables us to have victory over the desires of the old nature and the old life. Circumcision removes only a part of the body, but the true “spiritual circumcision’’ puts off “the body of the sins of the flesh’’ (Col. 2:11) and deals radically with the sin nature.

This “spiritual circumcision’’ is accomplished at conversion when the sinner believes in Christ and is baptized by the Spirit into the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13). This baptism identifies the believer with Christ in His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, and also in His circumcision (Col. 2:11–12; Luke 2:21). It is not “the circumcision of Moses’’ but “the circumcision of Christ’’ that is important to the Christian believer.

Donald Grey Barnhouse has said, “We have a nature of sin that must be dealt with by the knife … The thing must be dealt with as a whole, and not piecemeal.’’ In Christ, we can “walk in the Spirit and … not fulfill the lusts of the flesh’’ (Gal. 5:16).

Abraham immediately obeyed God and gave every male in his household the mark of the covenant. No doubt when he told them his new name, he also explained what this ritual meant.

The third new name was “Sarah,’’ which means “princess.’’ (We are not certain what “Sarai’’ means. Some say “to mock’’ or “to be contentious.’’ It could also be another form of the word “princess.’’) Since she would become the mother of kings, it was only right that she be called a princess!

We must not minimize the place of Sarah in God’s great plan of salvation. Like her husband (and all of us), she had her faults, but also like her husband, she trusted God and accomplished His purposes (Heb. 11:11). She is not only the mother of the Jewish nation (Isa. 51:2) but also a good example for Christian wives to follow (1 Peter 3:1–6). The Christian husband should treat his wife like a princess, because that is what she is in the Lord.

Three different occasions of laughter are associated with Isaac’s birth: Abraham laughed for joy when he heard his wife would give birth to the promised son (Gen. 17:17); Sarah laughed in unbelief when she heard the news (18:9–15); and Sarah laughed for joy when the boy was born (21:6–7). The name Isaac means “he laughs.’’

Motherhood should be highly esteemed, and the birth of a baby welcomed with joy. While God does not call all women to marry, or all married women to bear children, He does have a special concern for both mothers and children (Ps. 113:9; 127:3–5; Matt. 19:14). In a selfish society, too many people see motherhood as a barrier and children as a burden. In fact, some people consider children such a burden that they destroy them before they have an opportunity to become a blessing.

The womb of the mother is a Holy of Holies where God is at work (Ps. 139:13–18). How tragic that we turn that womb into a tomb, that Holy of Holies into a holocaust.

The first baby in the Bible who was named before birth was Ishmael (16:11), and the second was Isaac. As we shall see when we study Genesis 21, these two boys represent two different births: (1) Ishmael, our first birth after the flesh, and (2) Isaac, our second birth through the Spirit. (See John 3:1–8 and Gal. 4:21–31, especially vv. 28–29.)

From the human point of view, we can understand why Abraham interceded for Ishmael. Ishmael was his son, and the father loved him dearly. They had been together now for thirteen years, and Ishmael was entering adulthood. Was God going to waste all that Abraham had invested in Ishmael? Was there to be no future for the lad? After all, it wasn’t Ishmael’s fault that he was born! It was Abraham and Sarah who sinned, not the boy.

But from the spiritual point of view, Ishmael could not replace Isaac or even be equal to him in the covenant plan of God. God had already promised to bless Ishmael (Gen. 16:11), and He kept His promise (25:12–16), but the covenant blessings were not a part of Ishmael’s heritage. Isaac alone was to be the heir of all things (25:5–6; Rom. 9:6–13).

There is a practical lesson here for all who seek to live by faith: When God is preparing a bright future for you, don’t cling to the things of the past. Ishmael represented the past, Isaac the future. Ishmael symbolized man’s fleshly way of accomplishing something for God, but Isaac was a miracle baby, born by the power of God. Ishmael brought dissension into the home, but Isaac brought laughter. If you have an “Ishmael’’ in your life, yield it up to God. God has a perfect plan, and what He plans is the best. It may pain you to give up your cherished dreams, but God’s way is always the right way.

Amy Carmichael, missionary to India, wrote to a friend who was perplexed about a painful experience, “I will say what our Heavenly Father said to me long ago, and says to me still very often: ‘See in it a chance to die.’”

Perhaps we all need to pray, “Oh, that Ishmael might die within me!’’

Ishmael did not get a new name, because he represents the flesh, and the flesh cannot be changed. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh’’ (John 3:6) and always will be flesh. “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing’’ (Rom. 7:18). “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing’’ (John 6: nkjv). The old nature can be disciplined, subdued, and even to some extent controlled, but it cannot be changed. Until we receive our glorified bodies in the presence of the Lord, the struggle between the flesh and the Spirit will continue (Gal. 5:16–26).

It was the beginning of a new day for Abraham and Sarah, for Sarah was going to have a baby boy!

“Your father, Abraham, rejoiced to see my day,’’ said Jesus; “and he saw it, and was glad’’ (John 8:56).