Glimpses of Grace: The Sacrifice of the Beloved Son (Part 1 - A Theodicy)

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At Genesis 22, we reach one of the most important Christological stories of the Old Testament, layered just as richly with hints of God's salvation through Jesus Christ as are the accounts of Noah's flood or the flight from Egypt. This story recounts how God asks Abraham to bring his beloved son Isaac up onto a mountain and to kill him there, sacrificing him as a burnt offering. Of course, that's not what happens in the end: God intervenes just before Abraham deals the fatal stroke, and a ram is substituted as the burnt offering in Isaac's place. For pathos and drama, there is no other story in the Old Testament that surpasses it.

The sacrifice of Isaac is usually taught as a tale about God testing Abraham's faithfulness. And it certainly is that--the story opens with the assertion "God tested Abraham" (v.1) and closes with the Angel of the Lord commending him for his faithful obedience (vv.15-18). But despite that clear, biblically founded interpretation, this story has always left students of the Bible with lingering questions, and sometimes with grave doubts concerning the character of God. After all, what sort of God would ask one of his followers to do such a thing as offer a child sacrifice? That's the sort of despicable, abhorrent behavior that characterizes the worship of demonic gods like Molech later in the biblical narrative, abominations which God himself passionately forswears. And while it's true that God's plan from the beginning was to save Isaac, Abraham is not clued in to that part of the drama. For all he knows, he actually is being asked by God to murder his beloved son, so it seems unnecessarily cruel to Abraham to put him through this kind of serious emotional trauma. 

Now, while Abraham knew God in a personal way, he certainly did not know God in the same intimate manner that we, who follow Christ and have the indwelling Holy Spirit, know God. Therefore, the doubts that pop up in our minds (such as, "This is simply not the sort of thing that the God revealed in Jesus Christ would ask someone to do") would not have occurred to Abraham. He did not have the same benefits of a fuller knowledge of God's character such as we have. He was still learning about this God, who had called to him out of the blue while he was living in Ur of the Chaldees, and what God asks of him here, while devastating, was perhaps not really something unheard of in the religious cultures around Abraham. So he, not yet fully knowing the infinite depth of this God's love, probably assumed that this command was sincere (indeed, Hebrews 11:17-19 assumes as much--that Abraham actually thought God would expect him to kill Isaac). And so his response is, indeed, an act of faithful obedience. Abraham himself is not some kind of monster for going along with this; he was simply a man of his time, seeking to obey the God that had personally called him, guided him, and shown him grace in countless ways up to this point. We don't know exactly what was in Abraham's mind at that moment, but it is certainly possible that, given the remarkable favor he had already received from God, he may have had a faithward inkling that there was some further grace yet to be played out in that situation. Hebrews 11:17-19 backs up this conjecture, by declaring the Abraham believed the promises of God having to do with Isaac to such an extent that he expected Isaac to be slain and then for God to raise him from the dead. I say all of this about Abraham's inner motivations in order to affirm his act of faith here, as Genesis itself does, because what I say next might seem to cast doubt on the merits of his act. The truth is, if someone in my church came to me and said that God had ordered them to kill their child, I would urge them, in the strongest possible terms, not to obey that command. (And then I would contact the police, as I am required to do by the laws of my state.) Why would I dissuade them? Because the command they heard cannot have come from the God that we know in Jesus Christ. It is simply not something that he would ask any believer to do.

And yet he does ask Abraham to do it. So what's going on here? How is it possible that God does something here that the God we know would never actually do? Well, this story represents a special case in the history of God's relationship with his people. In this story, God does, in fact, ask Abraham to do something that he will never (nor would ever) ask any of his followers to ever do again: kill his own child. (The only possible biblical parallel is the tragic story of Jephthah's daughter in the book of Judges, but that passage is best interpreted as a tragic shortcoming of Jephthah's wisdom and discernment, not of God's actual command.) The reason why God does this here, and nowhere else, is because he is setting up a scene, a play-acted drama, that will point directly to Jesus Christ, and the memory of this story will prepare the hearts of his people to understand the lengths God went to, out of love for us, to secure our salvation. Abraham has to play out a role that he didn't ask for and that he didn't want, simply because he was the forefather of God's chosen people, the only man through whom God could set up this scene to its desired effect. It may seem cruel to Abraham in that particular moment, but God allows him to suffer a short period of unknowing grief in order to make a much larger point, one that will carry down through the ages and prepare the people of Israel for the sacrifice of the Messiah: God was going to give up his only-begotten Son, the Beloved, to die as a sacrifice. Abraham, in this story, foreshadows the place of God the Father himself. So, yes, no doubt Abraham suffered terrible grief as he and Isaac walked up to the mountain of sacrifice. But it was a grief that God shared: the brokenhearted anguish of his beloved Son walking up the mountain with the wood on which he would be slain. And in the end, God in his mercy spares Abraham from experiencing the grief of actually losing his son. But two thousand years later, on perhaps that very same mountain, there was no one there to stop the death of God's Son. The Beloved was slain, and the heart of heaven grieved. In next week's post, we'll look at the specific symbols within this story of Genesis 22 that point unmistakably to Christ.

(Painting: "Abraham Sacrificing Isaac," by Gerhardt Wilhelm von Reutern, 1849)

Photo of the Week

He was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God’s power. Likewise, we are weak in him, yet by God’s power we will live with him.

- 2 Corinthians 13:4

Quote of the Week

"It is better to deserve respect and not have it, than to have it and not deserve it. God respects you. That is the most important thing. [...] Let the people of the world think what they will of you. God thinks well of you."

- Thomas Watson, Puritan author of The Art of Divine Contentment

(Painting: "Portrait of Paul Mounet," by Loius-Maurice Boutet de Monvel, c.1875)

Saturday Synaxis

Jesu, Deliverer! come Thou to me:

Soothe Thou my voyaging over life's sea!

Thou, when the storm of death roars, sweeping by,

Whisper, O Truth of Truth!--'Peace! It is I!'

- from an Eastern Orthodox hymn, translated by J. M. Neale

(Painting: "Christ Walking on the Water," by Julius Sergius von Klever, c.1880)

Glimpses of Grace: God Hangs Out with Abraham

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The story of Sodom and Gomorrah's destruction, along with Lot's escape, is the main concern of Genesis 18-19 (in which the first chapter contains God's dialogue with Abraham regarding the fate of those cities). There are some obvious parallels with the Christian Gospel, such as the destruction brought on as a penalty of sin. Lot's escape shows the grace of God, rescuing from wrath those who respond to the offer of redemption and who follow Christ out of sin and into a new life.

But Genesis 18 also contains an interesting theophany--that is, an appearance of God. As we've mentioned several times already in this series, it is always worth reading the text very carefully, because sometimes the action stated is not actually the same as what we are picturing in our heads. Whenever I read this story as a young man, I tended to gloss over the obvious physicality of the presence of God. Rather, I pictured Abraham's dialogue with God as constituting a man debating with a disembodied voice. But, no, this story is very clear that God has actually shown up in physical form, and Abraham can see him and talk to him. Once again, this sort of appearance has often been taken in the Christian tradition to signify a pre-Incarnation appearance of the Son of God, who is the self-expression of the Father towards mankind, "the image of the invisible God."

Here's the scene: Genesis 18 opens by saying that the LORD (that is, Yahweh) appeared to Abraham at Mamre. It then immediately goes on to describe how this appearance manifested itself: "Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby." At this point, the reader might be justly confused. Are the three men separate from the Lord who just appeared, or is the Lord one of them, or is he somehow all of them? The text doesn't say. Abraham greets them as "lords," which could be taken as a reference either to human or divine beings, so no help there. But as the story goes on, it becomes clear that at least one of these three is God himself. Abraham offers them his best hospitality, and while they are eating, one of them mentions, in an offhand way, the immanent fulfillment of God's promise to bring a natural heir to Abraham. Sarah overhears this and laughs, and the man who spoke before now speaks again, and is clearly identified as God himself: "Then the LORD said to Abraham, 'Why did Sarah laugh?'"

After they eat together, Abraham and these three visitors get up and walk toward a place where they can look down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and the LORD reveals to Abraham what he is about to do. In the process of this movement, however, it becomes clear that of these three visitors, only one bears the title and character of "the LORD" (that is, Yahweh), while the other two are referred to as "the men" or "the messengers/angels" (see v.22, 19:1). These two go on down toward Sodom, while the third visitor, still clearly identified as "the LORD" (v.22), stays back with Abraham. It's clear that God's presence is not just a disembodied spiritual reality, but a person, since "Abraham remained standing before the LORD" (and there's even a strong textual variant of this verse that has the Lord standing before Abraham rather than the other way around). So while Abraham and God are debating about the number of righteous people in Sodom vis-a-vis the fate of that town, God is actually standing right there beside him. This is backed up in the final scene of that chapter, v.33: "When the LORD had finished speaking with Abraham, he left."

As already mentioned, this is taken as a Christophany--an appearance of Christ before the incarnation. It also inspired one of the most famous pieces of Christian art ever created, the medieval Russian iconographer Andrei Rublev's Old Testament Trinity (pictured above), which portrays the three visitors at Abraham's table and infers that they are the members of the Trinity. Now, while the story itself only directly implies that one of the three visitors is divine (thus making the other two angels in all probability), the artistic tradition has taken the liberty of representing the oneness of the Trinity by making all three visitors appear as members of the Godhead. This story, then, has become a visual centerpiece for the faith of many millions of Christians throughout history, portraying the unity, character, and purpose of God two thousand years before Christ himself came.

Photo of the Week

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

- John 1:5

Quote of the Week

"The church is the one thing that saves a man from the degrading servitude of being a child of his own time."

- G. K. Chesterton

(Painting: "Interior of St. Paul's Antwerp," by David Roberts, 1859)

Saturday Synaxis

Christ Jesus, we beg you by your loneliness, not that you may spare us affliction, but that you may not abandon us in it. When we encounter affliction, teach us to see you in it as our sole comforter. Let affliction strengthen our faith, fortify our hope, and purify our love. Grant us the grace to see how we can use our affliction to your glory, and to desire no other comforter but you, our Savior, Strengthener, and Friend. Amen.

- Bernadette of Lourdes, adapted by Michael Counsell

(Painting: "My Soul is Sorrowful unto Death," by James Tissot, c.1890)

Genesis 17: Circumcision, Blood, and Promise on the Eighth Day

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As if God hadn't already asked Abraham to do a whole bunch of weird, crazy things (like moving to the other side of the known world and setting up a gruesome field of animal carcasses), the next act in God's relationship with him was intensely strange. He told Abraham, and all his male heirs in perpetuity, to express their fealty to the divine covenant by slicing the foreskin off of their genitals. (But remarkably, this is still not the wildest thing God will ask Abraham to do, as the story of Isaac's sacrifice in ch. 22 will demonstrate.) Male circumcision is not an uncommon ritual, as it appears in cultures all over the world, many of which had no direct connection to this biblical imperative. The story suggests, however, that it was not a normative practice in Abraham's own culture, and thus this story begs the question of why this particular rite, with all its messiness and indignity, is the one that God chooses as the definitive marker of the covenant-relationship.

Before we get into the possible meaning behind this ritual, let's first notice that this is not a story about God simply speaking his instruction to Abraham as a disembodied voice. No, this is a story in which God clearly shows up in a visible appearance in order to talk to Abraham (see verses 1, 3, and 22 of Genesis 17). As we've already mentioned, the early Christians saw in these visible appearances of the invisible, unknowable God a clear indication of the work of the Son of God, who is and always has been the Logos, the self-expression of the Father, and "the image of the invisible God." 

Now back to the question at hand: why circumcision? It goes without saying why this ritual strikes many as distasteful, so why does God elect this particular means as his chosen symbol? Why, when there were so many other noble, elegant possibilities, would he choose this gritty, pain-ridden, embarrassing act, which has nothing of dignity about it? 

There are a few possible answers. One direct connection should jump off the page immediately, given the way circumcision was described in the foregoing question. It just so happens that God's plan to save the world, his ultimate expression of his eternal covenant with mankind, would be accomplished through a gritty, pain-ridden, embarrassing act, which had nothing of dignity about it. The death of Christ on the cross was bloody, shameful, and shocking. It did not suit our sense of tastefulness or elegance. And yet that was the thing God used to remake the world and claim his people forever as his own: in a word, the blood and shame of the cross led to the final "circumcision of the heart" which the ancient prophets had foreseen. The indignity of circumcision thus seems to be a good fit as a possible foreshadowing of the cross, and a further potential connection might be seen in the fact that this ritual is enacted upon the generative member of the male body. After all, it is through the biological succession from Abraham that the promise will be fulfilled. Indeed, the main promise with which Genesis 17 is concerned is the promise of a baby: in this case Isaac (the child of promise who is himself a foreshadowing of Christ). With this fact in view, it is no surprise that the biological reality of procreation, which was the means by which Abraham's family would lead to Mary and her miraculous conception, would be highlighted in the manner of the definitive covenant-act.

There's another connection to Christ here, too. God instructs Abraham that this ritual of circumcision should be performed on male babies on the eighth day. There are likely practical and medical reasons for this period of waiting; practicing surgery on newborns was not necessarily the safest thing to do. But the fact that that period of waiting was eight days was immediately seized on by the early church. Eight, as we have seen in previous studies, is the number that indicates the New Creation (for more, read my earlier article on the meaning of God's Sabbath-Rest in Genesis 2). Just as seven is the number of completeness, of the fullness of a week, eight is the day of Jesus' resurrection, the beginning of a new week of creation which commences with the re-creation of the human heart through the salvific work of Christ. Indeed, the early church father Augustine said (in reference to circumcision in Genesis 17), "What else does the eighth day mean than Christ, who rose again when the week was completed?" So the fact that the sign of the covenant was to come on the eighth day is important: it definitely points the way straight to Jesus, and to the fact that his bloody and undignified act would be the one that would usher in the promise of New Creation and of the eternal covenant of the gospel of grace. 

There's one final connection to make. It's not implied in Genesis 17, but the New Testament makes a clear tie between circumcision and baptism (which is one of the reasons why paedobaptist denominations baptize infants, just as circumcision was practiced on infants). Colossians 2:11-12 says, "In [Christ] you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism..." This passage not only connects circumcision with baptism, but draws out another meaning of that bloody ritual. Just as circumcision entails the "putting off" of part of the old form of the body, so also our regeneration by grace includes the putting off of an old existence and the beginning of a new one, ushered in through the blood of Christ. Circumcision, then, is a ritual of regeneration, of the change that comes from putting off the "old man" and being transformed into something new. In this sense, it is the exact parallel of baptism, which also symbolizes the dying of the old man, his burial in the immersion of the waters, and then our rising again to new life in Christ. 

To put it plainly, circumcision without Jesus and without the gospel of grace would just be a weird, awkward, Bronze Age custom without much depth to its symbolism. But considered in light of Jesus' bloody, undignified sacrifice, which transforms us from an old existence into a new reality and which ratifies forever the eternal covenant of grace for us, circumcision becomes a potent, dramatic window into the salvation-plan of God.

Photo of the Week

Oh, wake, glad heart, awake, awake! And seek thy risen Lord: / Joy in his resurrection take, and comfort in his word. / And let thy life through all its ways one long thanksgiving be; / Its theme of joy, its song of praise: 'Christ died and rose for me.'

- Verses 5 & 6 of the 19th-century hymn "Awake, Glad Soul," by John Samuel Bewley Monsell

Quote of the Week

"Surely all good works please God equally. Scripture says that Abraham was hospitable and God was with him; Elijah loved quiet and God was with him; David was humble and God was with him. So whatever you find you are drawn to in following God's will, do it and let your heart be at peace."

- An early Christian hermit, in response to a question as to what good work the seeker should be doing (from Sayings of the Desert Fathers)

(Painting: "Scenes from the Lives of the Desert Fathers (Thebaid)," by Fra Angelico, 1420)

Saturday Synaxis

Lord, teach us to understand that your Son died to save us, not from suffering, but from ourselves. He died that we might live--but live as he lives, by dying as he died who died to himself. Amen.

- George Macdonald

(Painting: "Crucifixion (Pianto delle Marie)" by Giovanni Lanfranco, 17th cent.)

Glimpses of Grace: Ishmael, Isaac, and the Angel of the Lord

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In Genesis 16, the story of Abraham takes a sharp turn: Sarah decides to make her own arrangements to provide the family a son and heir, and so persuades Abraham to conceive a child with Hagar, a slave. The result of this plan is the birth of a son to Abraham and Hagar, Ishmael. This was a rather poor plan, because not only does Sarah end up feeling jealous at the end, but it soon becomes clear that this was not God's intended plan for providing an heir to Abraham, which would later come through the miraculous birth of Isaac to Sarah in her old age. These two sons of Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac--the son born of practical necessity on the one hand, and the other the child of promise, fulfilling the plan of God--were taken by early Christians as a foreshadowing of the two covenants. Ishmael and his mother Hagar represented the Old Covenant with the Law of Moses, the arrangement built out of practical necessity to prepare God's people for what was coming; and Isaac and his mother Sarah represented the New Covenant in Jesus Christ, the true and final fulfillment of all God's promises. And it wasn't just the early church fathers who held this view (though one couldn't be faulted for thinking so, because they certainly loved their allegorical interpretations); no, this reading of Scripture is built right into the New Testament itself, with the Apostle Paul saying in Galatians 4:24-28, "These things are being taken figuratively: The women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai...this is Hagar.... But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother.... Now you, brothers and sisters, like Isaac, are children of promise."

But there's another important connection to Christ in Genesis 16. Despite the whole messy affair of this misconceived plan, God shows tremendous sympathy to the victims of it, Hagar and Ishmael. After the pregnant Hagar runs away from Sarah's abusive behavior, she encounters a messenger of God out in the desert. This is usually portrayed as an angel, because the text in English reads, "The angel of the Lord found Hagar." But we must remember that in Hebrew, the word for "angel" (malak) is simply the word "messenger" (so, for instance, the prophet Malachi's name could be read as "my angel" but is more likely to mean "my messenger"). So when we see "angel" written in our Bibles, we need not immediately jump to the image of a white-robed, clean-cut guy sporting swan wings. There may be other interpretive options. 

In this passage, as in many others in the early books of the Old Testament, this "angel" appears to have a very specific and special identity. He is referred to as "the Angel of the Lord," and in most of the stories where he appears (which we will examine in this series of studies), he often ends up being referred to simply as "God" or "the Lord" by the end of the scene. In the story of Hagar's meeting with the Angel of the Lord, he commands her to return and gives her an encouraging prophecy about her son's destiny. The narrative is very clear at the outset that it is "the Angel of the Lord" who speaks to Hagar. But let's look now at the end of the story, which clearly identifies this character simply as "Lord" and "God." Verse 13 says, "She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: 'You are the God who sees me,' for she said, 'I have now seen the one who sees me.'" The story very clearly indicates that "the Angel of the Lord," the character who spoke to Hagar and whom Hagar saw, is not just any ordinary angel, but is, in some sense, God himself. Indeed, when the verse refers to "the Lord who spoke to her," it uses the Hebrew word for the personal name of God, Yahweh.

Now, if this were the only instance of this odd occurrence, we might write it off as just a peculiar spot of interpretation. But this same sequence happens repeatedly throughout the first seven books of the Bible (with a few further references even beyond those): the Angel of the Lord shows up, and by the end of the scene is being accorded the status of God himself. Because of this common pattern, Christian interpreters have often seen "the Angel of the Lord" as a pre-incarnation appearance of Christ, the Son of God. Indeed, Christ is "the Messenger of God," the fully-divine Logos which God the Father is eternally speaking forth as his self-expression toward his creation. The Son of God did not merely act as the Father's messenger once, during his incarnation; it has been his role from the beginning; and he appeared at many crucial moments in the history of his covenant-people to prepare their hearts for his "Great Entrance" (to borrow a phrase from the ancient Christian liturgy) in his incarnation as Jesus of Nazareth.

(Painting: "Hagar and the Angel," by Carel Fabritius, c.1645)

Photo of the Week

May none of God's wonderful works keep silence, night or morning.

Bright stars, high mountains, the depths of the seas, sources of rushing rivers:

May all these break into song as we sing to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

May all the angels in heaven reply: Amen! Amen! Amen!

Power, praise, honor, eternal glory to God, the only Giver of grace.

Amen! Amen! Amen!

- the prayer of an anonymous 3rd or 4th-century Christian from Egypt

Quote of the Week

"Lone on the land and homeless on the water
     Pass I in patience till the work be done.
Yet not in solitude if Christ anear me
     Waketh Him workers for the great employ,
Oh not in solitude, if souls that hear me
     Catch from my joyance the surprise of joy."

- F. W. H. Myers, from his poem "Saint Paul"

(Painting: "Saint Paul," by Bartolomeo Montagna, 1482)

Saturday Synaxis

(Painting: "Allegory of Salvation and Sin," by Hans Vredeman de Vries, 1596)

Helper of men who turn to you, Light of men in the dark, Creator of all that grows from seed, Promoter of spiritual growth: have mercy, Lord, on me, and make me a temple fit for yourself. Do not scan my transgressions too closely, for if you are quick to notice my offences, I shall not dare to appear before you. In your great mercy, in your boundless compassion, wash away my sins, through Jesus Christ, your only Son, the truly holy. Through him may all glory be given you, all power and honor and praise, throughout the unending succession of ages. Amen.

- by an anonymous 3rd or 4th-century Christian from Egypt

Glimpses of Grace: Jesus Takes Abraham's Place in the Covenant Sacrifice

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To many readers, Genesis 15 is one of the most mystifying chapters in the entire Old Testament, particularly in the odd scene of God appearing as a smoking firepot and torch between the slaughtered halves of the sacrificial animals which Abraham set up. I recall reading this passage as a teenager, and the only takeaway I could get from it was "Man, God can be pretty weird!" Well, while it might be true that an infinite being who is "wholly other" can indeed strike us as weird sometimes, the truth is that this chapter is layered with intricate symbolism that points powerfully to Christ.

The early Christian tradition found hints of Jesus beginning with the first line of the chapter: "The Word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: 'Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.'" While this might strike one as a simple statement of a mystical conversation with God such as Abraham often had, it's worth asking why it's phrased the way it is. In particular, if it is the word of the Lord that came to him, why is it described as a "vision," which usually entails seeing something? Why not just a disembodied voice? Wouldn't it be more consistent to say either (1) "The Lord came to Abraham in a vision," if there was something there to be seen, or (2) "Abraham heard the word of the Lord," if it was merely a vocal revelation. The way that it is phrased, however, seems to indicate that "the Word of the Lord" was a visible appearance of a person of the Godhead, and in Christian tradition he would be identified as the Son of God (see John 1:1). While we're putting a lot of weight on a simple turn of phrase, it may indicate that Jesus himself is talking to Abraham here. 

The conversation which follows leads to an important reaffirmation of God's earlier promise to bless Abraham's "seed," in which the Word of the Lord makes a specific promise of a flesh-and-blood heir to Abraham, as well as underscoring the further promise that this will lead to a "seed" as vast as the stars in the sky--a promise which is later fulfilled in the prophesied "seed," Jesus Christ, and in the members of his Body, who truly do outnumber the visible stars in the sky (see Gal. 3:16, 3:29). Genesis 15 sums up this conversation with verse 6, which would later form the foundation of Paul's interpretation of law and faith in the New Testament: "Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness." That is to say, it was by faith alone, apart from any works of the Law (which had not yet been established), that Abram was made righteous, and so too we are made righteous simply by faith in Christ Jesus.

But here's where things get weird. In verse 8, Abraham requests some kind of assurance of God's promises, so God instructs him to set up a covenant sacrifice. If you didn't know what the following scene meant in that cultural context, it would verge on the truly bizarre: Abraham must take one each of the three common sacrificial animals (cow, goat, and sheep), each three years old, and butcher them with halves of their carcasses arranged on one side and the other halves on the other side. He also took a dove and a young pigeon, which were killed but not split, and set one each on opposite sides. 

So you have a gruesome, bloody trail set up between the torn-apart carcasses of several animals. What's going on here? Thankfully, with a little study, we actually know what this all means. God is instructing Abraham to construct a covenant sacrifice, a common ritual in the wider Near Eastern culture. He is giving Abraham an affirmation that will be meaningful to him in his cultural context. Here's how such covenant-sacrifices worked: the two parties who were entering in covenant together would walk together down the trail between the torn-apart bodies as a solemn, blood-oath reminder that the same fate which befell those animals would befall whichever party was unfaithful to the agreement. So Abraham would be expecting God to appear in some form, and that he and God would walk together between the carcasses. In Hebrew, to make a covenant is literally described as "cutting" a covenant (in the same way that we describe "cutting a deal"); language that refers to this very practice.

Now before we get to what actually happens when God appears, it's perhaps worth pointing out that even in the animals themselves, we already have some familiar Christian typology. Note that they consist of the three common hoofed sacrificial animals, each three years old (a repetition of threes that, to the Christian mind, immediately draws the mind to the Trinity). The dove/pigeon (which, if you read my Theological Bestiary, you would know are essentially the exact same kind of bird), which is specifically commanded not to be split, draws to mind the common imagery of the Holy Spirit, which we've already noted at least once in Genesis, connected to the Noah stories. Now why would you need another symbol of the Holy Spirit, on its own, when you just had a symbol of the Trinity anyway in the other sacrificial animals? The answer may be that there will also be symbols of the remaining two persons of the Trinity appearing in this story, likewise in addition to the Trinitarian symbolism of the three hoofed sacrifices. 

Anyway, Abraham has to wait awhile for God to show up, and eventually he falls into a deep sleep (v.12, calling to mind Adam's deep sleep in the creation narratives--Gen. 2:21) and is surrounded by "dreadful darkness" (a common symbol for the awesome, ineffable unknowability of God, which Moses encounters in his ascent up Mount Sinai--Ex. 20:21; Ps. 97:2--and which later Christian tradition would apply to the Christian's experience of God in "the dark night of the soul"). Then the Lord speaks to him (again, in contrast to the apparent visible sight of "the Word of the Lord" in v.1) and gives a detailed prophecy of Abraham's descendants' exile in slavery in Egypt, after which they will return. It's important to note that God is telling Abraham about the set of events that form the clearest Old Testament allegory about his plan of salvation through Christ (slavery in Egypt=slavery in sin; liberation=salvation).

Next comes a visible apparition of God, but it's a strange one: "a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces" (v.17). We'll get to what the symbols mean, but first we should note that the thing that would have astonished Abraham the most about this was that he was not a participant! Remember, according to his cultural traditions, he would have been expected to walk with God through the pieces of the animals. Instead, you have two symbols of God himself carrying out the action of "cutting the covenant." Here we have God declaring that he takes upon himself the full responsibility for the covenant he makes with Abraham; that he will not break it, even if Abraham and his descendants are unfaithful. Further, by taking both roles in this ritual, God is essentially declaring that if Abraham or his heirs violate the covenant, God will take upon himself the penalty of having his flesh torn apart. With that staggering thought in mind, now consider the two images themselves: a smoking firepot and a blazing torch. Both of these incorporate symbols of fire and light, which were common ways that God portrayed himself in visible appearances (for instance, think of the pillar of fire that guides the Israelites through the desert). But there's more: the symbols are different enough from each other that they seem to indicate different parts of the Godhead. The word for "smoking firepot" designated a common piece of household furniture in the ancient world: a bed of embers from which one would light a torch. Please note, then: the torch shares the same nature of flame as the firepot ("of the same substance," to use a Christian theological phrase), but the torch's flame clearly comes from the firepot, and not the other way around. Thus we have two symbols, one of which appears to be the Begetter and one of which is the Begotten. The firepot, then, stands for God the Father, and the blazing torch stands for the Son of God, Jesus Christ, the Light of the World, eternally begotten of the Father. (And remember, the specific symbol of the third member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is already present in the unbroken bodies of the doves.) Essentially, then, you have the eternal, Trinitarian God declaring this covenant with Abraham and his heirs. And Jesus' role, as the blazing torch, is to stand in the place of Abraham, to represent his responsibility in the covenant arrangement and to take the penalty upon his own body should Abraham's heirs violate that covenant. And, of course, this is indeed what happens: because of our sin, Jesus Christ has his flesh torn and is put to death on the cross, in fulfillment of this prophetic covenant sacrifice. Considered in that light, then, this bizarre story becomes a startlingly clear portrayal of God's eternal plan to save us from our sins by dying for us on the cross in the person of Jesus Christ. 

In Genesis 15, the story concludes with God's specific promise to give Abraham and his descendants the Promised Land. This promise is fulfilled throughout the course of the Old Testament story, as the Israelites return to Canaan after their exile and take possession of the land. As we will see, the Christian tradition has often taken these events as a foreshadowing of the promise made to us, that we will likewise inherit the "promised land" of salvation, blessedness, and peace with God in his eternal glory (see Heb. 4). Thus we see that in this story of Abraham's encounter, we have both a specific short-term promise and fulfillment, in the redemption of Israel from Egypt and the possession of the Promised Land, as well as the further and final fulfillment in our redemption from sin and the possession of an everlasting life of blessedness in Christ--all ratified by Christ's decision to take our punishment upon himself.

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May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

- Galatians 6:14