New Names and the Covenant Sign

El Shaddai, “the Almighty God”, is heard here for the first time. Its meaning is disputed: “God of the mountain” from an Akkadian word, or the rabbis’ “he who is enough”. Exodus 6:3 looks back to it: “by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known.” Enoch and Noah walked with God; Abram is told to walk before him.

“Make” is literally “give”: God gives his covenant. It is the first divine word in thirteen years, since before Ishmael’s birth. The word covenant comes thirteen times in this chapter, more than in any other chapter of Genesis.

Abram falls face down and says nothing. From here to the end of the chapter God is called Elohim, though the LORD appeared in verse 1. Abram will fall on his face once more, in verse 17, and that time he laughs.

“As for me” is an emphatic “I”, and verse 9 answers it with “And as for thee”: God’s part of the covenant, then Abraham’s. “Many nations” is hamon goyim, and hamon means a crowd, the hum and roar of a multitude.

Abram means exalted father; Abraham is explained by av hamon, father of a multitude. The Talmud (Berakhot 13a) ruled that calling him Abram after this is a transgression. Rabbinic tradition said the added letter h was taken from the divine name and shared between him and Sarah.

“Be fruitful” was a command in 1:28 and 9:1. Here God says “I will make thee exceeding fruitful”: the blessing becomes something God undertakes to do. This is the first promise that kings will come from Abraham, and in 36:31 kings reign in Edom, Esau’s line, before any king in Israel.

“To be a God unto thee” is the first appearance of the covenant formula that runs through Scripture, completed later as “I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God” (Exodus 6:7) and heard again in Jeremiah 31:33 and Revelation 21:3.

“Everlasting possession” is achuzzat olam. Achuzzah, a holding, is the word used when Abraham buys the cave at Machpelah in 23:4, 9 and 20, “a possession of a buryingplace”. The only land he ever holds by that word is a grave.

The obligation is laid on “thy seed after thee in their generations”, people not yet born. In 18:19 God will give his reason for choosing Abraham in the same terms: that he will command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD.

Circumcision was not new. Herodotus reports it among the Egyptians, and a tomb relief at Saqqara from the Old Kingdom shows the operation. What is new here is the meaning given to it, and the age, since in Egypt it seems to have been done around puberty.

“Foreskin” is orlah. The word later becomes a figure for a closed and resistant heart: “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart” (Deuteronomy 10:16), and Jeremiah 4:4. Paul carries the image on in Romans 2:29.

The eighth day is set again in Leviticus 12:3 and kept for Jesus in Luke 2:21. John 7:22–23 notes that it overrode even the sabbath. The eighth day is also when a firstborn animal may first be given to God (Exodus 22:30).

“Must needs be circumcised” renders the Hebrew verb doubled for emphasis, as in 2:17’s “thou shalt surely die”. “My covenant shall be in your flesh”: the covenant is not only spoken and remembered, it is carried in the body.

The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Greek add “on the eighth day” to this verse, making the timing part of the penalty. How seriously the penalty was meant appears in Exodus 4:24–26, where the LORD meets Moses to kill him until Zipporah circumcises their son.

Sarai and Sarah both mean princess; Sarai may be an older form of the same name. She is the first woman in Scripture to be renamed. God tells Abraham her new name and never speaks to her in the chapter.

“I will bless her” is said twice in one verse. Outside Genesis the Old Testament names Sarah only once, in Isaiah 51:2: “Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you.” The New Testament names her in Romans 4:19, Hebrews 11:11 and 1 Peter 3:6.

“Laughed” is tsachaq, the root of Yitschaq, Isaac, “he laughs”. Abraham laughs first, a chapter before Sarah does in 18:12, and only hers is questioned. Targum Onkelos turned his laugh into rejoicing. The laugh is silent: he says it “in his heart”.

In Hebrew the plea is four words, lu Yishmael yichyeh lefanekha, “if only Ishmael might live before you”. God told Abram in verse 1 to walk before him; Abraham asks the same place for the son he already has.

“Indeed” is aval, which can mean “no, but” or “truly”; Rashi read it as confirming. After Ishmael in 16:11, Isaac is the second person in Genesis named by God before birth. The covenant runs to him in the words of verse 7, “with his seed after him”.

“I have heard thee” is shema’tikha, a pun on Ishmael, “God hears”, for a second time; in 16:11 it was his mother who was heard. The twelve princes are listed in 25:13–16, “twelve princes according to their nations”, as Jacob will have twelve sons.

“Set time” is mo’ed, the appointed time, the word used of the “seasons” in 1:14 and of the feasts in Leviticus 23. The phrase comes back in 18:14 and in 21:2, “at the set time of which God had spoken to him”.

“God went up from Abraham” is said again only of Jacob at Bethel, in 35:13: “God went up from him in the place where he talked with him.” The meeting ends with a departure upward, not a vision fading.

Ishmael is named first, straight after hearing that the covenant will go through Isaac. “Every male among the men of Abraham’s house” was a large number: 14:14 counted three hundred and eighteen trained servants born in the house alone.

The Talmud (Bava Metzia 86b) read the next chapter in the light of this verse: the LORD appears to Abraham in 18:1 on the third day after the circumcision, the day of greatest pain, and so the rabbis called it the model of visiting the sick. That is their reading of the sequence.

Thirteen is also the length of the silence between 16:16 and 17:1. Ishmael is old enough to know what is happening to him. The Mishnah (Avot 5:21) later sets thirteen as the age for the commandments.

The verb is passive, “was circumcised”, and the text never says who performed the rite on Abraham himself. The father of ninety nine and the son of thirteen from the two verses before are joined in a single clause.

“The stranger” here is ben nekhar, a foreigner, so the sign is carried by men born outside Abraham’s line. Exodus 12:44 and 48 follow the same rule: a bought servant or a stranger who is circumcised may eat the Passover.