In the previous chapter, the creative word of God placed us before the human tragedy, which is the fall. Man was a friend of God who spoke to him face to face, but now he runs away from him and hides. “I heard your voice... so I hid” (Genesis 3:10). But God does not abandon His creation. The entire Book of Genesis, immediately after the fall of Adam, shows us God’s mercy upon His creation, and His care for its salvation.

The first eleven chapters of Genesis do not relate directly to sacred history. In the twelfth chapter, and only with Abraham, the history of salvation begins.

The first chapters relate to the general history of humanity. Moses, the writer of the book, collected some of the first information preserved in the memory of all nations in those days, writing the history of humanity before God chose Abraham. This history is characterized by several features: God, first of all, does not abandon His creation. Rather, He appears as divine providence that manages and manages matters as a cosmic system, presiding over the natural phenomena necessary for human life. This is because man was not able to transcend this stage of divine revelation: God’s revelation of Himself. in the universe.

God also appears in this general history of humanity as patience, meaning that He accepts the new situation without sin and does not propose to annihilate it forever. He does not remove sin, violence, lies, and evil all at once, but rather is patient. He gives a deadline and knows why he is giving it. When He annihilates the earth with a flood, He does not annihilate it entirely, but rather saves Noah in order to restore the order of the world through Him.

Then with Noah we encounter the first covenant which is a model and example for all of God's subsequent covenants. Noah accepts from God this cosmic covenant: “And as long as the earth endures, seeding and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will never cease” (Genesis 8:22). God guarantees the natural order. It is only a natural promise, but it secures the external conditions of its supernatural promise. God assures Noah and humanity after him that the order of nature will not be disturbed despite man’s sin. This is the maximum that man could accept after his fall (1).

But God’s word is love, as we have seen, and love wants to save the fallen. God's word is salvation. But there must be an addressee who understands and obeys Him. God was not content with ensuring the cosmic order, but He took a deeper step in declaring Himself to people, which is declaring His will towards the spiritual being, the will of salvation for man. After the week of creation, the “week of redemption” begins. It is a creation incomparably higher than the creation of the universe. The Word of God is now creating for itself a people, a human generation that must cross not the earth but time and history and prepare as a vessel to accept a greater revelation, the total revelation that is the incarnation. God’s goal is to create a faithful people throughout time to accept salvation.

The Book of Genesis, starting from chapter 12 until the end, tells us that. And all of this, in this second stage, “the stage of promise,” God promises a man whom he will find and associate with to achieve the purpose of salvation: he is Abraham. Chapters 12 to 26 narrate the history of Abraham who accepts the promise, and chapters 26 to 50 narrate the history of Abraham’s direct descendants: their wars and their faithfulness... to The next stage begins, which is exit.

The promise stage contains many secondary ideas that compose it and help us understand it:

1- The living God: Chapter 12 of the Book of Genesis begins in a strange and surprising way: “And the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country, from your kindred, and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you’” (Genesis 12:1-2). God has revealed Himself up until now, since the fall of Adam, through the natural order of the universe as we have seen. But paganism is based on confusing God with the results of His providence in nature, so it does not reach the living God.

Reaching the living God occurs when He takes the initiative and speaks. Not through creation, but directly to the will of man. A living God who speaks and speaks directed to the will. God chooses a man and calls him to proclaim a special design through him to the universe: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great, and through you all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” A design that is not within the scope of cosmic order, but rather different from it, a design on its own, declared by one who has choice and freedom. “For I know that he will command his children and his family after him to keep the way of the Lord, to teach righteousness and justice, until the Lord fulfills to Abraham what he promised him.” (Genesis 18:19) The pagan gods represent the natural order, but the living God reveals a supernatural purpose and secret.

2- God addresses Abraham with a command and a promise: After the fall, man stopped accepting and obeying God’s words. But now Abraham accepts an order and obeys it. “Depart from your land, your kindred, and your father’s house...” With this command, God removes Abraham from the natural order, and begins to separate him and distinguish him from others. God's command establishes those who obey it in a supernatural order (2). Abraham and his group set off and came to the land of Canaan. “And the Lord appeared to Abraham and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land’” (Genesis 12:4-7).

For the first time in the book, the purpose and essence of God’s words appear, and the gratuitousness of God’s love appears: He shows us the horizon of His gift. “To your descendants I give this land.” God makes Abraham a completely free, almost crazy promise: Abraham is an old man of seventy-five, alone and defenseless, and the Canaanites are occupying the country, so how can he take over the land? But he obeys based on the divine promise. He hardly lives in time, but rather resides in eternity, extending forward. This is the beginning of this amazing adventure.

3- A promise becomes a covenantI mean, it takes a visible sign that confirms it, seals it, and makes it an unbreakable covenant. Chapter 15 tells us this: “Do not be afraid, Abram: whoever comes out of your loins will be your heir... and your descendants will be like the stars in the sky... and I will give you this land as an inheritance - Oh God, how will I know that I will inherit it?” So God makes a contract with Abraham according to the custom of the Canaanites: Abraham divides some animals in half and places each half opposite its owner, then a hibernation falls upon Abraham. (3) And terror...and a smoking furnace and a torch of fire passed between the pieces, and the covenant was established. “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’” (4) But God alone crosses between the pieces, not Abraham, meaning that the contract is one-sided and that God is the guarantor of the covenant in truth, and He crossed it like fire that burns but does not burn.

Thus, in chapter 17, God also confirms the covenant and gives another sign, which is circumcision (see Genesis 17).

4- Ibrahim’s face: The person of Abraham is a living symbol that represents the other group, the group to whom God addresses with a command and promise and establishes a covenant with them. In this Abraham we find several aspects:

A- Faith It is the strongest and most visible character. Abraham is our father in faith, he is the first of the believers. We see faith realized in Abraham, embodied powerfully and in a human tragedy that makes him a living symbol of faith forever. Through Abraham, the “astonishing” character of faith appears, faith as an adventure outside of oneself, as a renunciation of the self, the starting point, and the axiom, and attachment alone, to faith alone, to the word of God alone alone. By faith we know God and acknowledge His beauty, and our acknowledgment of God (our faith in Him) is the only way we have to thank and reward Him. By faith we also praise God, because the most perfect praise is total obedience, and where there is obedience, there is no need for the praise of the lips. Faith reveals God. Where there is a believer, God resides on earth and appears to people. Since Adam, God no longer dwells with people, and now through Abraham and thanks to faith, God returns to earth as a living God. By faith, Abraham deserved to realize his faith: he deserved to see God.

Chapter 18 of the Book of Genesis tells us how Abraham saw God at the oak of Mamre in an astonishing vision that is typical of the Sufis. The Apostle James says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness, and he was called the friend of God” (James 2:23). This and the change of Abraham’s name from Abram to Abraham after his faith symbolizes his entry into a new life, and from that time he becomes the living God, “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” It is a relationship of name, a personal relationship between God and man. It is a name other than the natural name, the name of God’s will for Abraham from eternity.

B- Alienation: God's choice of Abraham makes him a stranger. Instead of the human happiness that he enjoyed among his family and his clan, he is taken away from his homeland: he has no place on earth, but only a promise. What meaning does this alienation carry? It is Adam's alienation from the lost paradise. Adam was expelled from Paradise for disobeying the word of God. As for Abraham, he walks again towards Paradise. He is the first to find Paradise in the word of God. Paradise is not behind him, but in the word of God. Always forward. Abraham crosses history and the land forward, a stranger, faithful to God's promise. And this is our father. Therefore, we must maintain that faithfulness, in the wilderness that we walk, to truly be His children. The Jews forgot to remain open to faith, to the word of God, so they closed themselves and resided in the land. They are children of Abraham by flesh, not by faith.

C- Ordeal: “And it came to pass after these things, that God tested Abraham...” (Chapter 22 of the Book of Genesis and the story of the sacrifice of Isaac). After faith and exile, tribulation inevitably comes. It is not possible to live by faith without adversity, because faith is jihad. Faith strips us of normality, and so normality tests us. As for overcoming adversity, it is accomplished precisely by deepening the faith and contemplating it by accepting everything in faith. God calls Abraham and he answers: “Here I am, Lord.” It is an eternal presence before the Lord. So God says to him: “Go from your land.” It is an eternal journey towards the Lord. The whole fate of Abraham is between these two phrases, “Go” and “Here I am,” in that cross consisting of one direction for movement and departure and another for steadfastness and stability. (5). God commanded Abraham to take his only son, whom he loved, Isaac, and go to Mount Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering (Mount Moriah is the place where the temple was built and Jesus was judged). So Abraham walked with Isaac for three days (Jesus also walked three days towards Jerusalem before the cross...). Isaac is not a natural son like Ishmael, but rather he is the son of promise, and so Abraham must sacrifice him to God in order to obtain him from him again. Thus, he returns and obtains it as a representation of his resurrection from the dead (see Hebrews 11:17). This is the result of the ordeal, and the book will show that all the fathers, starting with Abraham, will struggle like him “against God” and emerge from the battle broken but blessed. Yes, faith is not comfort and peace according to what the world understands.

D- Blessing: “And I will bless you...and you will be a blessing, and I will bless those who bless you...and through you all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Genesis 12:2-3). With Abraham begins a new chain, a chain of blessing that ends in the body. What is a blessing? It is the external act of a positive, good meaning that includes adoption. But it is also deeper than that: it is like the presence of God. It is the presence of God that blesses, magnifies, and saves. God’s blessing to Abraham: “I will bless you and make your name great...” means that he received God’s presence. This presence continues in the descendants of Abraham in a chain that reaches the incarnation of God and His very presence. The fathers did not know what this blessing conveyed. “We see in Jacob’s blessing of his two grandsons, Ephraim and Manasseh, in the form of a cross, a foreshadowing of the secret of the blessing.” But it was fulfilled when the angel announced to the Virgin Mary: “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb... Emmanuel, which is interpreted as God with us.” It is the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham. The fulfillment will be complete on the day of the ascension, and while he was blessing them, he separated from them and ascended to heaven (Luke 24:51), and they returned to Jerusalem with great joy (Luke 24:52): This is because God has become with us forever. It is not now the blessing of the angel of the Lord (as Jacob received it) nor the blessing of one of the fathers (such as Jacob's blessing of Joseph's sons), but the blessing of God Himself, and the blessing of God remains forever. God blesses us and is present with this blessing in the church and in the world.

(1) See the fountain of the Mass of Saint Basil, which clearly displays God not abandoning His creation immediately after sin, but rather saving it many times and in various forms through prophets, wonders, and saints from all nations until He gave it the law etc...

(2) This is done gradually. We do not reach the top of the sky, so we must be properly prepared, otherwise we will fall from the top of the ladder. It is narrated that three Jewish elders tried to enter Paradise without preparation. The first, called Judas, entered Paradise and was not paying attention. He left as he entered, and the second, Gamaliel, entered out of curiosity and lost his mind. The third, Simon, was not purified, so when he approached, he was pushed away and thrown on the ground. As for Aqiba, who was obedient and prepared, he entered and left safely.

(3) It is an unnatural slumber that symbolizes stupor.

(4) The custom of the Canaanites for the two parties to pass between the pieces is an indication of their acceptance of dividing such animals if they break the covenant.

(5) The jealous Elijah will also repeat, “As God lives, before whom I stand.” And Moses, in his vision of God, teaches us that the condition for the journey is to stay in the cleft of the rock.