How to bless Abraham biblically is a strange question to be addressing in 2024, considering the man has been dead for close to 4,000 years. If you want to understand how we can live a life of blessing, that is blessing others and being blessed, there are many passages in the New Testament that teach us how to live such a life.
A prominent example would be the Beatitudes by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. However, many Christians today are persuaded by a relatively historically novel interpretation of Genesis 12:1-3 that to bless Abraham, and guarantee blessing, we should bless the modern secular and godless state of Israel. This includes supporting them in their grossly disproportionate war of destruction against the Palestinian people.
Genesis 12:1-3 says:
“Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
It is clear that this is a promise for Abraham himself. I think it is severely debatable whether or not we should even apply the promises of being blessed to those who support Abraham’s descendants from this passage. But if you read further in Genesis you will see that God reiterates that promise to Abraham’s immediate descendants (cf. Gen. 26:15 for instance) and this promise to bless those who bless God’s people is carried through scripture. So, we will leave that discussion aside for now.
What I want to discuss is whether or not we are required to “Stand with Israel” in their war efforts because of Genesis 12:1-3. There are two ways I could argue against this position:
(1) I could show you conclusively that the promise of blessing is carried on to the descendants of promises of God, that is those who believe, not the descendants of the flesh. But this argument seems to go over the head of most people, and indeed has since Paul’s day. Paul spent most of his ministry combatting Judaizers who believed the blessings and favour of God came through their being the flesh and blood ancestors of Abraham.
Or (2) we can grant that this verse means you need to bless Abraham’s descendants to be blessed, and show that this does not mean funding their war efforts and encouraging them in their conquest of the land. We can show this by showing how foreigners were blessed by blessing Isaac, Abraham’s son. In other words we can see how the Bible itself understood this concept of blessing.
In Genesis 26:6-15, we read this:
“So Isaac settled in Gerar. 7 When the men of the place asked him about his wife, he said, “She is my sister,” for he feared to say, “My wife,” thinking, “lest the men of the place should kill me because of Rebekah,” because she was attractive in appearance. 8 When he had been there a long time, Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out of a window and saw Isaac laughing with Rebekah his wife. 9 So Abimelech called Isaac and said, “Behold, she is your wife. How then could you say, ‘She is my sister’?” Isaac said to him, “Because I thought, ‘Lest I die because of her.’” 10 Abimelech said, “What is this you have done to us? One of the people might easily have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.” 11 So Abimelech warned all the people, saying, “Whoever touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.”
12 And Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. The Lord blessed him, 13 and the man became rich, and gained more and more until he became very wealthy. 14 He had possessions of flocks and herds and many servants, so that the Philistines envied him. 15 (Now the Philistines had stopped and filled with earth all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father.
We should observe here that Abimelech blessed Isaac by doing something very simple: he left him and his wife alone. He chose not to steal this man’s beautiful wife. In fact, he seemed indignant at the suggestion that he would allow himself, or any of his men, to take Isaac’s wife. But he does something else, he also asks Isaac to leave him alone.
We read from verses 16-33:
“16 And Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we.” 17 So Isaac departed from there and encamped in the Valley of Gerar and settled there. 18 And Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of Abraham his father, which the Philistines had stopped after the death of Abraham. And he gave them the names that his father had given them. 19 But when Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found there a well of spring water, 20 the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, “The water is ours.” So he called the name of the well Esek, because they contended with him. 21 Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over that also, so he called its name Sitnah. 22 And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called its name Rehoboth, saying, “For now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.”
23 From there he went up to Beersheba. 24 And the Lord appeared to him the same night and said, “I am the God of Abraham your father. Fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham’s sake.” 25 So he built an altar there and called upon the name of the Lord and pitched his tent there. And there Isaac’s servants dug a well.
26 When Abimelech went to him from Gerar with Ahuzzath his adviser and Phicol the commander of his army, 27 Isaac said to them, “Why have you come to me, seeing that you hate me and have sent me away from you?” 28 They said, “We see plainly that the Lord has been with you. So we said, let there be a sworn pact between us, between you and us, and let us make a covenant with you, 29 that you will do us no harm, just as we have not touched you and have done to you nothing but good and have sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the Lord.” 30 So he made them a feast, and they ate and drank. 31 In the morning they rose early and exchanged oaths. And Isaac sent them on their way, and they departed from him in peace. 32 That same day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well that they had dug and said to him, “We have found water.” 33 He called it Shibah; therefore the name of the city is Beersheba to this day.”
Abimelech here has clearly observed that the hand of God is on Isaac to bless him and prosper him in all he does. So, does Abimelech conclude from this that he needs to make himself subservient to Isaac, place himself under Isaac, give large amounts of his tax money to Isaac, and use his armed forces to fight for Isaac?
No, in fact he comes to a completely different solution when he says, “And Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we” (v.16). He decides to send off Isaac in peace so that they can live separately and not interfere with each other.
Abimelech even makes a covenant with Isaac and look what it says in verses 28-31:
“28 They said, “We see plainly that the Lord has been with you. So we said, let there be a sworn pact between us, between you and us, and let us make a covenant with you, 29 that you will do us no harm, just as we have not touched you and have done to you nothing but good and have sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the Lord.” 30 So he made them a feast, and they ate and drank. 31 In the morning they rose early and exchanged oaths. And Isaac sent them on their way, and they departed from him in peace.”
“…We have not touched you and have done to you nothing but good and have sent you away in peace…” What is the nothing but good that they have done? They have not stolen their women, or their flocks, or sought to harm them, and they have left them in peace. This is blessing. You have no requirement to make your nation subservient to Abraham, Isaac or Jacob, to bless them, all you need to do is leave them alone, do nothing but good, and let them go in peace.
The idea of how to bless the nation of Israel has become perverted and corrupted in today’s world. It has been used cynically by corrupt politicians and false teachers in the Church to teach Christians they have a responsibility to stand with Israel in their efforts to conquer the land. But Abimelech understood the blessing and did not come close to anything like this conclusion. He simply wanted to leave Isaac alone, and the passage clearly affirms this as a fulfilment of the blessing.
You need to distinguish sharply between what the Bible says and then what people say it means. Genesis 12:1-3 is best seen fulfilled in Jesus, not a secular state in the land of Canaan. But even if you were to apply it to that land and state, there is still no moral requirement to support Israel in their wars. In fact, we would be required to do “nothing but good”, which would require us to not be involved in their wars, to speak honestly about them, and to hold them to an honest account of how they are acting. As we would do with any other nation or individual.
Don’t let Christians push you around with a bad reading of Scripture to cajole you to support what you genuinely believe to be evil, because there are verses that seem to imply we should bless the descendants of Abraham. Even those who say they are just taking these verses literally are not looking at how the Bible itself applies these verses in the very context in which they are given.
Genesis 26:1-5 shows that God will bless those who bless Isaac, and the rest of the chapter shows how a king blessed Isaac by basically distancing himself from Isaac and his people, by leaving him alone. Nations are meant to be focused on their own affairs, not the affairs of other nations, and we see this theme being exemplified very early in the Scriptures.
