The Calling of Abram and the Mission of God

The calling of Abram – whose name was eventually changed by God to Abraham – comes on the heels of the Tower of Babel story. This is important, because the calling of Abram and what happened at Babel are connected. Remember that at Babel, people tried to usurp God’s place by building a tower into heaven; Yahweh frustrated their efforts, confusing their tongues and sending them packing throughout the world. Some remained in the Fertile Crescent, but others headed to Asia, others to Africa, and others began plodding westward to Europe. Some of those who traveled to Asia eventually crossed into the Americas. These people groups – these ‘nations’ – weren’t cast off without a tether; Yahweh placed over them loyal members of his Divine Council (we know this not from Genesis 11 but from Deuteronomy 32). At some point these loyal ‘sons of God’ (Hebrew elohim) rebelled against Yahweh and sought the worship and devotion of the people under their charge. It seems this has happened by the time we get to Genesis 12 and the calling of Abram – the foreign nations worship ‘false gods,’ false in the sense not that they aren’t real (for they very much are) but false in the sense that they are not the Most High Creator. They are parodies of the Creator God Yahweh, and Yahweh will bring them to account. Even before Yahweh assigned ‘gods’ over the scattered nations, He decided He would have a nation for Himself. We see this in Deuteronomy 32.8-9:

    “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,

      when he divided mankind,

    he fixed the borders of the peoples

      according to the number of the sons of God.

    But the Lord's portion is his people,

      Jacob his allotted heritage.” [Deut 32.8-9, ESV]

This idea of the Israelites being Yahweh’s chosen people is seen again and again throughout scripture. In Exodus 4.22 God says, ‘Israel is my son, my firstborn,’ and God says in Hosea 11.1 that ‘out of Egypt I called my son.’ Abraham’s descendants, known as the Hebrews or the Israelites (the descendants of Jacob, who was renamed Israel after wrestling with God beside the stream Jabbok), are God’s chosen people. All other peoples were placed under the loyal sons of God who, sometime between Genesis 10 and 11, went rogue. In the days of the Israelite monarchy, the king – the head of the Israelite people and thus responsible for and representative of them – would be called God’s son (Psalm 2.7). Jesus, the Son of David and the prophesied Messiah, is called the unique Son of God, in a class altogether different than the ‘sons of God’ (elohim) whom Yahweh placed over the scattered nations. Following the institution of the New Covenant, those who belong to Messiah – Christians – are the reconstituted Israel, the ‘New Israel.’ Romans 8.14-17 tells us, ‘For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.’ As members of the New Israel, Christians are considered descendants of Abraham by faith. Galatians 3.26-29 tells us, “So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” The Apostle John tells us that everyone is someone’s child: we are either children of God or children of the devil (1 John 3.10); we are either under the lordship of the Creator Yahweh or under the dominion of the false gods set over the nations. 

In Genesis 10 we have the ‘Table of Nations,’ a breakdown of the seventy nations to which God scattered people after the Tower of Babel. The number seventy is significant. On the one hand, in the Ancient Near East the number seventy communicated completeness or totality. Genesis 10 doesn’t necessarily mean that there were exactly seventy nations and no more; it means, at the very least, that God scattered people in their totality. On the other hand, we know that the pagan god Baal had seventy subordinate celestial beings in his divine council; some have interpreted Baal as Satan in a new guise, and the subordinate deities the rogue sons of God who followed after him after being set over the nations. If this is the case, then the theological undertone of Genesis 10 is striking: it was Yahweh who scattered the nations, and the ‘gods’ over the foreign nations actually serve Him rather than Baal. We see this theme of seventy again when Israel is to be governed by seventy elders under Moses (Exodus 24.9-10). This set-up echoes Genesis 10-11: the seventy nations were placed under the dominion of lesser gods in the wake of God’s judgment of the nations at the Tower of Babel, and following the Exodus, God’s people are placed under a single leader (Moses, at that time) who was reinforced by a council of seventy. When we get to the New Testament, this structure is continued in the Jewish Sanhedrin, which was led by the High Priest and numbered seventy. 

The theological messaging in all this is important: Yahweh is revamping His intended Edenic rule with Israel, who will have a single earthly ruler, who will eventually be the Messiah, the promised Davidic King, who will rule over all the nations formerly disinherited by Yahweh. The message to the rogue sons of God can’t be missed: Yahweh may have scattered the nations, but He will bring them back into His fold. The pagan nations will be reclaimed. 

We see these two messages fleshed out in the New Testament. In Luke 10, Jesus sends out seventy disciples throughout the countryside to heal the sick and cast out demons. When they return from their mission, they’re jubilant and shocked at the fact that even demons submit to Jesus’ name. Jewish exorcists were common, and casting out demons wasn’t unique to Jesus, but demons were cast out in Jesus’ name, not by incantations or spells or ritualistic practices. This was unheard of. Jesus replies in verses 18-19, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy.” The disciples knew what was afoot: by sending out seventy disciples, Jesus was harking back to Genesis 10, and the power of the disciples over demons in Jesus’ name showcased the fact that the powers of darkness lording over the nations had no choice but to submit to Jesus’ kingship. The reclaiming of the nations was beginning. The fate of those pagan nations is given to us in Isaiah 24.23: ‘On that [final] day, Yahweh will punish the host of heaven, in heaven, and the kings of the earth, in the earth… Then the moon will be confounded and the sun ashamed, for Yahweh of the Angel Armies reigns on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and his glory will be before his elders.’ The corrupt sons of God who currently dominate the nations will be replaced by loyal members of God’s family. Paul is likely thinking of this when he asks the Corinthians, “Don’t you know that we will judge angels?” (1 Corinthians 6.3) 

With all this in the background, let’s see what God promised Abraham in Genesis. In Genesis 12.2-3, He promises Abraham, “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Yahweh promises that God will make Abraham into a ‘great nation’: in other words, his descendants will multiply and become a great nation themselves. This nation will be a blessing to ‘all peoples on earth.’ This isn’t just to say that everybody will be blessed by Abraham’s descendants; it’s harking back to what just transpired in Genesis 10-11: ‘all peoples’ are those who have been placed under the rule of rogue sons of God. In Genesis 17.4-5, God expounds upon what this means: he says, ‘As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations.’ What God says here is so huge and impactful that it results in Abram’s name being changed: Abram means ‘exalted father,’ but Abraham means ‘father of many.’ Not only would God make a great nation out of Abraham’s descendants, but He would make ‘many nations’ out of his descendants! In Genesis 12 God promised that all people would be blessed through him; now God promises that the nations themselves would become Abraham’s. Again, this is harking back to the Tower of Babel incident and the scattering of the nations: the disavowed nations would be brought back into submission to God, and it would happen through Abraham’s offspring. God’s promise reached a crescendo with the coming of Messiah Jesus: all those who submit to Christ become Abraham’s offspring, and it is the advance of the gospel throughout the world that results in rogue sons of God being overthrown and the nations submitting again to the Creator. Paul says, ‘For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants, that he would be heir of the world, was not through the law, but through the righteousness by faith… [Abraham] became the father of many nations, according to what was said, “so will your descendants be” (Romans 4.13, 18) The disinherited nations will be brought back into God’s fold, and the sons of God placed over them will be replaced glorified believers who will reign with Christ over the nations (2 Timothy 2.12, Revelation 2.26-27). So we see that Yahweh’s calling of Abraham was the beginning of the process of reclaiming the disinherited nations to Himself and executing judgment over the rogue elohim whom He placed over those nations. This reclamation of the nation reached a crescendo with Christ’s death and resurrection, and it continues to this day as the gospel advances across the globe.