Abram was seventy-five when he left Haran, married to a woman who had never had a baby (Genesis 11:30, 12:4). God had called him to go, and nothing about his life stayed the same.
God's promises to Abraham are the root of a huge part of the Bible. The nation of Israel grows out of them. Moses prays them back to God. Paul builds his letter to the Galatians on them. If you want to understand what God has promised anyone, this is one of the best places to start.
This page does not march through Genesis verse by verse. It sorts what God said into three strands, shows how long Abraham had to wait for each one, and then looks at what the New Testament says those promises mean for people who were never part of his family tree.
The three strands of the promise
Ask what promises God made to Abraham, and you will hear different numbers: two, three, five, even seven. The answer depends on how you group them. Nearly everything God told him fits into three strands, braided together like a rope.
Land
A place to live. God pointed to Canaan and said it would belong to Abram's children. This strand is about geography, a real country with rivers and hills.
Seed
Children, and through them a nation. First one son, then descendants like the stars. In the King James Version, seed is the word for offspring.
Blessing
Good from God on Abram himself, and through him on the whole world. This is the strand that reaches furthest, all the way to the cross and to you.
All three show up at once in God's call recorded in Genesis 12:1 through 3. The land is the place God would show him. The seed is the great nation. The blessing runs from his own name out to every family on earth. In the years after, God came back to each strand and made it bigger and more exact.
A land he walked but never owned
When Abram arrived in Canaan, other people already lived there. The Bible says so plainly in Genesis 12:6. That same chapter is where God first tied the promise to a place:
And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the LORD, who appeared unto him.
Genesis 12:7 (KJV)
Look at who the land was for: Unto thy seed. Abram had no seed. He was being promised a country for children who did not exist yet. After Lot moved away, God told him to look north, south, east and west, and then to get up and walk the length and the width of it. You can picture an old man pacing out a gift he could not yet hold.
In Genesis 15 God marked the edges. The boundary ran from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates, and God named ten peoples living in it. In Genesis 17 He called the gift an everlasting possession.
Why did God promise Abraham the land of Canaan, and why not hand it over at once? Genesis 15:16 gives part of the answer. God said Abram's family would come back for it after four generations, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. God was being patient even with the nations living there. The land was also to be the home where the promised nation would grow and where God would make Himself known.
Here is the surprising part. Stephen, preaching in Acts 7:5, said God gave Abraham none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on. The only ground Genesis says Abraham bought was a field with a cave at Machpelah, to bury Sarah. He died holding a deed to a grave and a promise for everything else. Our page on God's promises to Israel follows what happened to that land in the generations after him.
A son first, then a people past counting
For years the seed promise must have felt like the hardest one. Abram said it out loud in Genesis 15:3: you have given me no child, and a servant in my house will inherit. God's answer was to take him outside and point at the night sky.
The pictures God used kept growing. Dust of the earth in Genesis 13. Stars of heaven in Genesis 15. Stars and sand on the seashore in Genesis 22. Each picture is something no one can count.
The waiting was real, and Abram and Sarai did not handle it perfectly. After ten years in Canaan, Sarai gave him her servant Hagar, and Ishmael was born. God was kind to Hagar and promised to make Ishmael a great nation too. But He was clear that the covenant son would be Sarah's own child. When Sarah laughed at the idea, God asked a question worth remembering on any hard day:
Is any thing too hard for the LORD?
How long Abraham waited: his ages in Genesis
Genesis gives Abraham's age at the key moments, so you can measure the wait yourself. From the first promise to the birth of Isaac took twenty-five years.
| His age | What happened | Where to read it |
|---|---|---|
| 75 | Leaves Haran for Canaan, as the LORD had told him | Genesis 12:4 |
| 85 | Ten years in Canaan, still no child; Sarai gives him Hagar | Genesis 16:3 |
| 86 | Ishmael is born to Hagar | Genesis 16:16 |
| 99 | God appears as the Almighty God, renames him Abraham and names the coming son Isaac | Genesis 17:1, 17:5, 17:19 |
| 100 | Isaac is born, with Sarah at ninety | Genesis 21:5, 17:17 |
| 175 | Abraham dies and is buried beside Sarah at Machpelah | Genesis 25:7 to 10 |
One more thing the numbers show. Isaac was sixty when his twins were born (Genesis 25:26), so Abraham was still alive for the first fifteen years of his grandson Jacob's life. Hebrews 11:9 says Abraham lived in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. He got to see the seed promise begin, two generations deep.
Every family on earth
The land strand was for one nation. The blessing strand was always for everybody.
And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.
Genesis 22:18 (KJV)
God spoke those words right after Abraham was willing to give up Isaac on a mountain in the land of Moriah. The man had shown he would hold nothing back, and God answered by widening the circle as far as it can go: all the nations of the earth.
Paul says this was the gospel announced ahead of time. In Galatians 3:8 he writes that Scripture preached before the gospel unto Abraham. A few verses later he points out that the promise says seed, not seeds, and he names that seed as Christ. In other words, the blessing for the nations came through one descendant of Abraham in particular, Jesus.
Staggered not: what kind of faith this took
Romans 4 is the New Testament's great chapter on Abraham's faith, and it does not pretend the facts were easy. Paul says Abraham's body was as good as dead at about a hundred years old, and Sarah's womb too, yet he did not weigh those facts against God's word, and he did not stagger.
He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.
Romans 4:20-21 (KJV)
Notice what his faith rested on. It was not on how strong he felt. It was on one thing he was sure of: God is able to do what He says. That is a faith anyone can borrow. Paul even adds that the account was written for us also.
Hebrews 6:13 to 15 adds the other side. God did not just give His word. He put Himself under oath, and since nothing outranks God, He used His own name to seal it. And Abraham after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. God bound Himself with an oath, and Abraham kept leaning on it. If you are waiting on God right now, our guide on when God's promises are delayed was written with you in mind.
Which parts belong to you?
Given to his family
The land of Canaan was promised to Abraham's descendants through Isaac and Jacob. Christians differ on how that land promise is fulfilled today, but reading it as a promise that you will own a particular piece of ground would stretch it past what God said. The same goes for the promise of a son: Isaac was Abraham's, not ours.
Open to every believer
The blessing for the nations is for you, if you belong to Christ. Galatians 3:29 calls believers Abraham's seed and heirs of the promise. You also share his way of being made right with God: he believed, and it was counted to him as righteousness. And you serve the same God who swears by Himself and keeps His word.
Abraham's story is also where the phrase you hear in so much of the Bible begins: the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. To see how the promise was handed down, read God's promises to Jacob, or step back and see the promises in Genesis as a whole.
Read them one at a time
The promises God spoke to Abraham are in Book One, each on its own page in the order Genesis gives them, with the King James verse, who it was made to, any condition, what it meant then, what it means for you and a prayer. Read the opening pages free with Look Inside on Amazon.