Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Genesis · About this commentary
He believed Yahweh
Genesis 15:1-6
1 After these things Yahweh’s word came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Don’t be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.” · WEB
Abram tells God the promise has not worked, God takes him outside, and one sentence about his response becomes the foundation of the New Testament's argument.
Don't be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward. The words land immediately after a battle and a refused fortune, and they answer both: a shield for a man who has made enemies of four kings, and a reward for one who has just turned one down.
Abram's reply is the first time he speaks to God in the book, and it is a complaint. Lord Yahweh, what will you give me, since I go childless? Ten years have passed since the promise in Haran. He is prosperous, respected, and militarily formidable, and none of it addresses the one thing he was told. His household steward stands to inherit everything, which is what happened when a man died without a son.
The honesty of it is worth marking. He does not pretend the promise is proceeding well. He says plainly that the arrangement as it stands will end with a servant holding his estate, and Scripture records the objection without a word of rebuke.
God's answer corrects the assumption rather than the tone: the heir will come from his own body. And then he is taken outside. Look now toward the sky, and count the stars, if you are able to count them... So your offspring will be.
Nothing has changed materially. Sarai is still barren, he is still eighty-five, and there is still no child. What he has been given is a promise restated under a sky he cannot count.
Then the verse: He believed in Yahweh, who credited it to him for righteousness.
The verb translated credited is a bookkeeping word — to reckon something to an account. What is reckoned is righteousness, and what it is reckoned for is believing. The sentence does not say Abram became righteous, or was found righteous, or earned it. It says God put it to his account when he believed.
The placement of it is what the New Testament argues from, and the chronology is decisive. This is chapter fifteen. Circumcision is not commanded until chapter seventeen, at least thirteen years later. The law comes four centuries afterward. So when Paul asks how righteousness was reckoned to Abraham — in circumcision or in uncircumcision — the answer is fixed by the order of the chapters, and he says so: not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision Romans 4:10, which is why the same reckoning is available to people who never come under the law at all Galatians 3:6–9.
What Abram believed is also worth stating, because it was not a doctrine. It was a promise about a future he could not produce, made by someone he had no way of compelling. Faith in this book is trusting a person about something not yet done, and the response God credits is that and nothing more elaborate.
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