The Mystery of Esau and Ephraim

In Chapter 14, Abraham had refused all share in booty, a large sacrifice. Now he might fear lest the four kings he had routed should rally and fall upon him; but here he is promised protection, “I am thy shield!” and “a Great Reward” from God!

Genesis 15 “I am thy shield!”

¹ After these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, “Fear not, Abram. I am thy shield and I will give you a great reward.” — up to this time Abram had received only general promises of offspring, and of the land being the possession of his seed; where is hat land? and years were passing by, and the fulfilment of his hopes remained distant as ever;

— but the war with the Elamite king he had also made for himself powerful enemies; and though the immediate result was fortunate, yet many Canaanite nations may have witnessed with displeasure so remarkable an exhibition of the power and energy of an intruder, an “immigrant!”

— and thus the time had come when the patriarch needed and obtained more formal assurances, first, of the bestowal upon him of offspring (Genesis 15:1-6), and, secondly, of the future possession of that land, now called Palestine (Genesis 15:18-21);

² And Abram said, “Lord God, what wilt Thou give me, seeing I go childless and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?” — Abram is still childless and landless;

— what wilt thou give me? there is a slight tone of complaint in these words. God promised Abram a “reward great exceedingly.”

— Abram answers that no reward can really be great so long as he has no heir.

³ And Abram said, “Behold, to me Thou hast given no seed; and lo, one born in my house is mine heir.” — “What wilt thou give me?” Of what use will land or wealth be to me, the immediate reward specified by the promise?

⁴ And behold, the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, “This shall not be thine heir, but he that shall come forth out of thine own loins shall be thine heir.” — but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir; that is, one shall inherit all thou hast, that shall be begotten by thee;

— an own son of Abram’s, and not a servant born in his house; one that should spring out of his own loins: one “out of thy womb”, that is, out of his wife’s, which was his; the phrase designs a genuine and legitimate son of his, who would be legally his heir.

⁵ And He brought him forth outdoors and said, “Look now toward heaven and count the stars, if thou be able to number them.” And He said unto him, “So shall thy seed be.” — Abram’s seed according to the flesh were like the “dust of the earth,” Genesis 13:16, and his spiritual seed are like the stars of heaven.

⁶ And he believed in the Lord; and He accounted it to him for righteousness. — Abram believed the Lord. And the Lord accepted Abram’s faith, and that faith made him right with God.

⁷ And He said unto him, “I am the Lord who brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give thee this land to inherit it.” — the Lord next confirms and explains the promise of “the land” to Abram and further assurance was given tohim of “this land ” the land of Canaan for an inheritance.

⁸ And he said, “Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?” — he asks a sign, not out of distrust of God’s promise, for he was strong in faith, but for further assurance and confirmation.

⁹ And He said unto him, “Take Me a heifer of three years old, and a shegoat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” — the sign to Abram is the sign of the covenant:

— take me an heifer; offer me a sacrifice, a occasion of great importance, when two or more parties join in a compact, they either observe precisely the same rites as Abram did, or, where they do not, they invoke the lamp as their witness;

¹⁰ And he took unto Him all these, and divided them in the midst and laid each piece one against another; but the birds divided he not. — divided them in the midst; that is, the three animals, the heifer, goat, and ram into two equal parts; this was done for two reasons.

1. To represent the torn and distracted condition in which his seed was to lie for a season.
2. To ratify God’s covenant with Abram and his seed; for this was a rite used in making covenants, as appears both from Scripture, Jeremiah 34:18, and other authors.

— laid each piece one against another, one half against the other, the left side against the right, shoulder against shoulder, and leg against leg, so that they might seem to join;

— partly in hope they would join together, that God would in his time put those parts together, and unite those dry bones, (to which the Israelites are compared, Ezekiel 37:1-28), and clothe them with flesh; and partly that the persons entering into covenant might pass between those parts, and so testify their union and conjunction in one and the same sacrifice.

— but the birds divided he not; but laid them one against another, as the pieces were laid; so the birds used in sacrifice under the law were not to be divided, Leviticus 1:17; which may signify that when the people of the Jews, in the latter day, are brought together into their own land, when they will better answer the character of turtles and doves than they ever did, will be no more divided and separated from each other;

— but the intended offerings were not burnt, hence, perhaps, God’s commitment of “I am thy shield!” is debatable; or conditional?

¹¹ And when the fowls came down upon the carcasses, Abram drove them away. — and when the birds of prey came down upon the carcases, Abram scared them away;

— had there been a sacrifice the fire would have kept the vultures from approaching; but the bodies lay exposed, and Abram therefore kept guard over them, lest the purpose of the ceremonial should be frustrated by any want of respect shown to the outward symbols.

¹² And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and lo, a horror of great darkness fell upon him. — when the sun was going down; the time described was the evening following the night on which he had received the assurance that his seed should be countless as the stars.

¹³ And He said unto Abram, “Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years. — thy seed shall be strangers; so they were in Canaan first and afterward in Egypt: before they were lords of their own land, they were strangers in a strange land;

— only by entering under Joshua 400 years later would the land be theirs, otherwise they were only strangers to the land;

¹⁴ And also that nation whom they shall serve will I judge, and afterward shall they come out with great substance. — that nation; had it been expressly revealed that the country that would afflict them was Egypt, the principal seat of their servitude, and the instrument of their sorest bondage;

— will I judge: that is, punish after judgement, which prediction was in due course fulfilled – and afterward shall they come out with great substance;

¹⁵ And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried at a good old age. — and thou shall go to thy fathers in peace; or die, which is a going the way of all flesh;

¹⁶ But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.” — for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full; from this sentence we have much to learn:

— the Amorites in Amos 2:9, “whose height was like the height of the cedars, and he was strong as the oaks; yet I destroyed his fruit from above and his roots from beneath.“ Perhaps like Hamas today;

— first; the Lord foreknows the moral character of people; second. In his providence he administers the affairs of nations on the principle of moral rectitude; third. Nations are spared until their iniquity is full; fourth; they are then cut off in retributive justice in due time. 

¹⁷ And it came to pass that when the sun went down and it was dark, behold, a smoking furnace and a burning lamp passed between those pieces. — behold a smoking furnace; this signified the affliction of his seed in Egypt: they were there in the furnace of affliction, and labouring in the very fire.

— a burning lamp; this speaks comfort in this affliction: and this God showed Abram at the same time with the smoking furnace. The lamp indicates direction in the smoke; God’s word was their lamp, a light shining in a dark place.

¹⁸ On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the River Euphrates:

— from the river of Egypt; the river of Egypt is the Nile, which overflowed it annually and made it fruitful; so the Targum of Jonathan calls it the river of Egypt; it may be rendered, “from the river Mizraim or Egypt” for the name of Egypt was given to the river Nile as well as to the country;

— Keil and Delitzsch: the river (נהר) of Egypt is the Nile, and not the brook (נחל) of Egypt (Numbers 34:5); the character of the promise, the two large rivers, the Nile and the Euphrates, are mentioned as the boundaries within which the seed of Abram would possess the promised land,

— and from hence to the river Euphrates, the eastern boundary, was the utmost extent of it in which it was ever possessed, as it was in the times of David and Solomon, II Samuel 8:3.

¹⁹ the Kenites and the Kenizzites and the Kadmonites, — the Kenites; thought to be the Idumeans, who sprung from Kenaz of Esau’s race; found among the Amalekites in the south (1 Samuel 15:6); note that Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, was a Kenite (Judges 1:16);

— the Kenizzites are also supposed by some to be the descendants of Kenaz, a grandson of Esau, Genesis 36:11; but then they must be so called here by anticipation, or  that is, the land they were anticipated to live there; since Kenaz was not then born; Caleb, the head of the tribe of Judah, was a Kenizzite, Numbers 32:12, Joshua 14:6;

and from Deuteronomy 2:5:

Meddle not with them [the children of Esau, who dwell in Seir]; for I will not give you of their land, no, not so much as a foot breadth, because I have given Mount Seir unto Esau for a possession.

— the Kadmonites; elsewhere the Kadmonites are never mentioned again; probably dwellers on the eastern desert frontier of the Jordan, an eastern or an ancient people, of whom we know nothing;

— besides, none of the land of the children of Esau, at least of those that dwelt about Mount Seir (Deuteronomy 2:5) was to be given to the children of Israel; henced could the Edomites or Idumeans (at least a portion of them had left, some remained) have moved away while the children of Israel were in Egypt?

²⁰ and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Rephaim, — the Hittites, who had their name from Heth, a son of Canaan, see Genesis 10:15; they dwelt about Hebron, in the south of the land of Canaan:

— the Perizzites and the Rephaim; probably these are included in the common name of Canaanites, those that lived in the land of Canaan; 

²¹ and the Amorites and the Canaanites (descendants of Canaan) and the Girgashites and the Jebusites.” — v 16 above; “for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full” but soon it would be full, like Hamas today;

— the Jebusites; who inhabited Jerusalem and its surroundings, which was first called Jebus, from the founder of this nation;

— in this and the previous verses ten nations are reckoned as occupying the land of Canaan at that time, whereas only seven are mentioned in the times of Moses and Joshua; Deuteronomy 7:1; Joshua 3:10;

— although the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the River Euphrates,” that seed were meant to be the whole house of Israel. Hence, during the Exodus, Moses was tasked of bringing the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, for “I have also established My covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers” Exodus 6:4.

“When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee — the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou—” Deuteronomy 7:1

And Joshua said, “Hereby ye shall know that the living God is among you, and that He will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Hivites and the Perizzites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Jebusites” Joshua 3:10.

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and from MSG

When the sun was down and it was dark, a smoking firepot and a flaming torch moved between the split carcasses. That’s when God made a covenant with Abram: “I’m giving this land to your children, from the Nile River in Egypt to the River Euphrates in Assyria—the country of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaim, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.”

— Deuteronomy 7:1; Joshua 3:10; and these three -the Kenites and the Kenizzites and the Kadmonites- were not among them. Perhaps they were all from the children of Esau, a posterity of Shem (whereas the others are mostly posterity of Ham), and during this time interval of over 400 years, had moved north and eventually settled in Spain and onto the New World;

— note, too, that several of the states of the United States (namely Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and California) have the Spanish Mexicans settled there first, then later during the Mexican-American War from 1846 to 1848, the American zionists took over, which accounted for a loss of 55% of Mexico’s territory.

for a more indepth study of Esau or Edom, see Obadiah;

~ by Japheth on October 26, 2023.

Posted in Books of Moses, Ephraim, Five Eyes, Zionism