Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Less oversimplified?

As a follow-up to this post, I thought I'd publish a couple of thoughts.

In Genesis 12-17, I would identify at least these 6 distinct promises that God makes to Abraham:

1- Make you a great nation (many descendants, bless you, be very fruitful, etc)
2- Will give this land (forever)
3- Make your name great (cf Babel)
4- You will be the reference point of blessing and cursing (Ie, will bless those who bless you, curse those...)
5- All peoples on earth blessed through you. (not to be confused or conflated with 4)
6- I will be your God and the God of your descendants (relationship, forever)

I would probably argue that all of these promises hold significant biblical theological weight, and even if you could conflate a couple of them I reckon you'd be hard-pressed to reduce them to 3 without losing some seriously significant stuff.

In fact, I reckon not understanding the significance of the bits that are normally left out of the standard Goldsworthian threefold schema would lead to a much less clear reading of the Deuteronomic histories, the prophets and even the Psalms.

Particularly, I say this in terms of the laments where the writers are struggling with the dissonance between these promises and the current or past experience of Israel. Their dilemma is partly trying to put together the promises made to Abraham and the fact of their being oppressed by outside nations.

More thoughts?