The Cutting Edge of the Covenant Text: Genesis 17:1-14
Introduction: Covenant and Controversy
We come now to a foundational chapter in the history of redemption. If you want to understand the Bible, you must understand the covenants. And if you want to understand the covenants, you must understand this one. Genesis 17 is where God formalizes, expands, and puts a visible, physical sign on the covenant He made with Abram back in chapter 15. This is not a new covenant, but a new administration of that same covenant of grace. And like all of God's dealings with men, it is filled with staggering promises and weighty obligations.
We live in an age that loves promises but despises obligations. We want a God who is a divine butler, on call to meet our needs, but we do not want a God who is a sovereign Lord, who sets the terms of our relationship with Him. Modern evangelicals, particularly those of the baptistic persuasion, have a notoriously difficult time with this passage. They want to treat the Old Testament like the embarrassing attic of the Bible, full of strange and dusty artifacts that have no bearing on our sleek, modern, individualistic faith. They want to chop the Bible in half and pretend the first two-thirds is for someone else.
But God's covenant dealings are organic and continuous. The New Covenant does not abolish the Abrahamic covenant; it fulfills it. The tree of redemption has one root, and that root is here. And what we find in this chapter is not some antiquated tribal ritual, but the very structure of God's relationship with His people, then and now. We see God's sovereign initiative, His gracious promises, His ethical demands, and the necessity of a visible, corporate sign that marks out His people from the world. The sign has changed from circumcision to baptism, but the underlying realities of the covenant have not. To misunderstand this is to misunderstand the nature of the church, the family, and our relationship to God Himself.
This passage confronts our modern sensibilities head-on. It establishes a covenant that is not just with an individual, but with a man and his seed, his household, down through the generations. It attaches a physical sign to a spiritual reality. And it pronounces a terrifying curse on those who would dare to disregard the sign. This is not a take-it-or-leave-it offer. This is a sovereign summons from Almighty God. Abram's response is to fall on his face, and that ought to be ours as well.
The Text
Now it happened that when Abram was ninety-nine years old, Yahweh appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; Walk before Me and be blameless, so that I may confirm My covenant between Me and you, And that I may multiply you exceedingly.” Then Abram fell on his face, and God spoke with him, saying, “As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, And you will be the father of a multitude of nations. And no longer shall your name be called Abram, But your name shall be Abraham; For I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. And I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings will go forth from you. And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your seed after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your seed after you. And I will give to you and to your seed after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.”
God said further to Abraham, “Now as for you, you shall keep My covenant, you and your seed after you throughout their generations. This is My covenant, which you shall keep, between Me and you and your seed after you: every male among you shall be circumcised. And you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be the sign of the covenant between Me and you. And every male among you who is eight days old shall be circumcised throughout your generations, one who is born in the house or one who is bought with money from any foreigner, who is not of your seed. A servant who is born in your house or who is bought with your money shall surely be circumcised; thus shall My covenant be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. But an uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant.”
(Genesis 17:1-14 LSB)
God's Preamble and Demand (vv. 1-2)
The scene opens thirteen years after the birth of Ishmael. Thirteen years of divine silence. Abram is ninety-nine, an old man by any standard, and God appears to him to reaffirm and formalize the covenant.
"I am God Almighty; Walk before Me and be blameless, so that I may confirm My covenant between Me and you, And that I may multiply you exceedingly." (Genesis 17:1-2)
God introduces Himself with a new name: El Shaddai, God Almighty. This name emphasizes His power, His omnipotence. Why now? Because Abram and Sarai are at the end of their rope. They are, in the words of the apostle Paul, "as good as dead." Their bodies are barren. The promise of a son seems like a biological impossibility. So God comes and says, in effect, "I am the God for whom nothing is impossible. I am the God who brings life out of death." This is the foundation of the entire covenant. It rests not on Abram's potency, but on God's omnipotence.
Based on who He is, God issues a two-fold command: "Walk before Me and be blameless." To "walk before" God is to live your entire life in His presence, conscious that He is watching. It is a call to a life of fellowship and integrity. To be "blameless" does not mean sinless perfection. Noah was blameless, and he got drunk. This means to be wholehearted, complete, without hypocrisy. It is a call to covenant faithfulness. Notice the order: God declares who He is, and then He commands. Grace precedes law. The indicative ("I am") is the foundation for the imperative ("you shall"). Our obedience does not earn the covenant; it is the proper response to the covenant.
God's Promises and Abram's New Name (vv. 3-8)
Abram's response is appropriate worship: he falls on his face. In this posture of humility, God lays out the magnificent scope of His covenant promises.
"As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, And you will be the father of a multitude of nations. And no longer shall your name be called Abram, But your name shall be Abraham; For I have made you the father of a multitude of nations." (Genesis 17:4-5)
God's side of the covenant is pure, unilateral grace. "As for Me," God says, "My covenant is with you." Then He gives Abram a new name. This is an act of sovereign lordship. To name something is to define it and claim ownership of it. Abram, which means "Exalted Father," is renamed Abraham, "Father of a Multitude." This is a staggering promise to a ninety-nine-year-old man with one son by a slave girl. Every time someone called his name for the rest of his life, it was a reminder of this seemingly absurd promise. It was a call to live by faith, not by sight. God speaks of the future as though it has already happened: "For I have made you the father of a multitude of nations." In God's economy, the promise is as good as the fulfillment.
The promises are then expanded. Not only will he be the father of many nations, but kings will come from him. This points ultimately to the King of Kings, Jesus Christ. And the covenant is declared to be "an everlasting covenant," established not just with Abraham, but with his "seed after" him. This is crucial. God does not deal with us as isolated individuals. He deals with us in federal headship, as representatives of our households and our posterity. The promise is, "I will be God to you and to your seed after you." This is the central blessing of the covenant: a saving relationship with the living God, extended through the covenant line.
Finally, the land promise is reaffirmed. All of Canaan is given as an "everlasting possession." This is tied directly to the central promise: "and I will be their God." The land is the theater where God's covenant people will live in fellowship with Him.
Man's Obligation and the Covenant Sign (vv. 9-14)
Now the terms shift from God's promises to Abraham's obligations. The covenant is gracious, but it is not unconditional. Faithfulness is required.
"Now as for you, you shall keep My covenant, you and your seed after you... every male among you shall be circumcised." (Genesis 17:9-10)
The primary way Abraham and his seed are to "keep" the covenant is by applying the covenant sign: circumcision. This is not optional. It is a divine command. Circumcision is the "sign of the covenant." A sign points to a reality beyond itself. What reality does it point to?
First, it is a sign of separation. It is a physical marking that sets the covenant people apart from the pagan world. Second, it is a sign of judgment. It is a "cutting," a bloody ritual. It signifies the curse of the covenant. It says, "If I am unfaithful to this covenant, may I be cut off from God's people just as this flesh is cut off." It points to the penalty for sin, which is death. Third, it is a sign of promised cleansing. It is the cutting away of the flesh, symbolizing the need for a corrupt nature to be cut away, a circumcision of the heart (Deut. 30:6). It is applied to the organ of generation because sin is passed down through the generations. It is a graphic reminder of original sin.
Notice the scope of the command. It applies to every male in the household: the eight-day-old infant, the homeborn servant, and the foreigner bought with money. This demolishes the individualistic framework of our Baptist friends. The covenant is corporate. The head of the household, Abraham, is responsible to apply the sign to all under his authority, including infants who cannot possibly make a profession of faith. The covenant is not based on their subjective experience, but on God's objective promise to be a God to Abraham and his seed.
The chapter concludes with a solemn warning. "But an uncircumcised male... shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant." To refuse the sign is to repudiate the covenant. To be "cut off" means to be excommunicated, to be treated as a pagan, to be put outside the camp and outside the promises of God. This is not a matter of personal preference. It is a matter of covenant life and death.
The Sign Fulfilled
So what does this bloody, ancient ritual have to do with us? Everything. The New Testament makes it clear that baptism is the new covenant sign that replaces circumcision (Col. 2:11-12). The realities that circumcision pointed to are now fulfilled in Christ.
Circumcision was a cutting in the flesh, a promise of judgment. Jesus, the true seed of Abraham, came and was circumcised on the eighth day, placing Himself under the law. On the cross, He was "cut off from the land of the living" (Isaiah 53:8). He endured the covenant curse that circumcision signified, so that we who are in Him would not have to.
Circumcision pointed to the need for a clean heart. In Christ, we receive a "circumcision made without hands," the spiritual reality of regeneration, the cutting away of our old, sinful nature by the Spirit of God. Baptism is the sign of this reality. It is the sign that we have been buried with Christ and raised to new life in Him.
And just as the old sign was applied to believers and their children, so is the new. The promise of the new covenant, articulated by Peter on the day of Pentecost, echoes Genesis 17 perfectly: "For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself" (Acts 2:39). The structure of the covenant remains. God is still a God to us and to our seed. Therefore, we bring our children, who are members of the covenant household by birth, and we apply the sign of the covenant to them, marking them as belonging to Christ. We baptize them, not because the water saves them, but because God's promise includes them.
To refuse this sign for our children is to operate with a truncated, individualistic gospel that is foreign to the Scriptures. It is to functionally "cut them off" from the visible people of God and to tell them they are little pagans until they have a conversion experience we approve of. But God's covenant is thicker, richer, and more gracious than that. He is El Shaddai, the Almighty God, who brings life from death, and who has promised to be our God, and the God of our children, for a thousand generations.