Promise Of a Son to Abraham

Year of Prophecy: ©1977 BC (Covenant with Abraham – Gn 15)

Year of Fulfillment: 1952 BC (birth of Isaac – Gn 21:2)

Time until fulfillment: ~25 years

The promise of a son to Abraham is an example of fulfilled Biblical Prophecy. To show how the amount of time passing between prophecy and fulfillment doesn’t matter, we will cover ten of such prophecies. This is the first of ten.

Abraham was born as Abram in the land of Ur (Gn 11:27), which is in modern Iraq. Abraham had received a special call from God to leave his homeland (Gn 12:1). It is unknown why Abraham received such a call. However, the genealogical record in Genesis gives evidence that Noah may still have been alive during Abraham’s early years. Perhaps through his influence or other godly descendants of Noah, Abraham’s heart was softened to God’s direction and leadership. As is usually the case then as today, all around Abraham was ungodliness – even his own father worshipped idols (Js 24:2). God’s challenge to Abraham was to ‘step up to the plate’ and choose whom he was going to serve. Abraham chose wisely and reaped an everlasting benefit not only for himself but also for his descendants (Gn 17:7).

Abraham, as great as he was, was still human. As so many married couples do today, Abraham and Sarah desired a child. Not just a child, but one of their very own (Gen 15:2). Throughout history, being childless has often had a hurtful stigma to a Jewish couple. It was said that he who had no child was like one dead.  We don’t know exactly when the promise God made to Abraham that he would have a son occurred (Gn 15:4), but it was at least 10 years after they had reached Canaan that Sarah and Abraham began to compromise (Gn 16:3). Perhaps the reasoning went something like this: I believe what God said, but He stated that I would have a son from my own body, but he did not exactly state Sarah would be the mother, so perhaps it is okay to go with custom and have a son through my wife’s maidservant. It was God who instituted one man and one women to be together (Gn 2:24), so for what reason would God yield to man-made customs over His own declaration? Bottom line, man is weak. However, God did not give an exact date for Isaac’s birth until Ishmael, the son of Hagar (Sarah’s maidservant) and Abraham, was 13 years old (Gn 17:21) – one year after the establishment of the circumcision as the sign of God’s covenant with Abraham and his descendants, and the changing of Abram’s name to Abraham (Gn 17:5) and Sarai’s name to Sarah (Gn 17:15). Isaac was born at least 25 years after God’s first proclamation of the promise – a lifetime of wait for any couple, but just in time on God’s timetable. Isaac was born after the sign of God’s covenant to Abraham was established.

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Visit Books & Words to Inspire by Randy C. Dockens