JY: Welcome to GearTalk, a podcast on biblical theology. How should we understand the nature of the covenant God made with Abraham? How does it relate to the covenants before and after? What contribution do Genesis 12, 15, 17, and 22 make to our understanding? And how does the whole Abrahamic covenant contribute to how all Scripture progresses, integrates, and climaxes in Christ?

This interview with Jason DeRouchie originally aired on Caleb Leonard’s exceptional Theology for the Church podcast on July 8, 2025. It is part of an eight-episode series that walks through all the biblical covenants, and we highly encourage you to listen to all of them. We are going to air it in two parts.

CL: Welcome to the Theology for the Church podcast. Today, I’m joined by Doctor Jason DeRouchie to discuss the Abrahamic covenant. Brother, welcome to the show, and thanks for joining me for this conversation.

JD: I am delighted to be with you.

CL: Yeah, I’ve had you on the show before, so we won’t make listeners listen to us talk about our life stories. But still at Midwestern Seminary, still doing biblical theology things, all that going well?

JD: Yes. Midwestern biblical theology. Just got back from my thirteenth trip to Ethiopia, and that’s just part of my ongoing mission. I’m connected with a small mission organization called Hands to the Plow Ministries, the weekly GearTalk biblical theology podcast, and then this ministry globally. And then an unexpected treasure this last year—God led my family to plant a church. So I am pastoring once again, this time Sovereign Joy Baptist Church here in Kansas City, Missouri. So it’s filling up our lives.

CL: Awesome. That’s good to hear, brother. And so maybe to kind of get us into our conversation here: why is it important for Christians to understand the Abrahamic covenant?

JD: Well, the Abrahamic covenant is foundational to the entire biblical storyline. A problem has been set forth in the Adamic and Noahic covenants—this relationship through these two mediators with all creation. And that problem is curse; that problem is global rebellion. And it’s specifically through the agency of Abraham and all that would come from him that God has purposed to alter the course of the world, to bring new creation overcoming the old broken creation.

As Paul will say in Galatians 3:8, Scripture foretold to Abraham the gospel when he declared, “In you shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” So this is gospel hope intruding into a world. The need for blessing is established in those creation relationships, and now through the Abrahamic covenant, we get the workings of God that clarify hope for how that blessing will come.

CL: Yeah. I think that’s really helpful just to kind of set the context for this conversation. And so maybe another one that’d be helpful before we start considering some passages here is: how does Abraham and his family inherit the commission and role of Adam and Noah in the storyline of Scripture?

JD: In Genesis 1:28, the first couple receives a blessing from God, and that blessing has its makeup in this commission: be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion over all life. What we have then is this call for those made in God’s image, set apart to revere, reflect, and resemble God as his royal children on the earth—commissioned to put him on display in the world.

The vision is that this couple, both made in God’s image, would come together and create a God-honoring family that would expand into a God-honoring community until the whole world is filled with God’s glory like the waters cover the sea.

CL: Yeah.

JD: And the fall alters the course of humanity. Rather than operating as God’s royal king and queen, Adam and Eve give that royal responsibility over the earth to the serpent. From that point forward, he becomes what the New Testament calls the god of this world.

And yet the vision for humanity is always to fill the earth as those made in God’s image, putting him on display, to reclaim what has been taken, to begin to rightly represent, reflect, and resemble God on the planet. In the midst of the sea of debauchery, the sea of brokenness, we start with all creation and then narrow to Adam as a representative of humanity, then to Noah as the all-representative of all living humanity after the flood.

After Noah comes Shem, and through this line of Shem, God brings Abraham. It’s this increasing narrowing—Shem is this focused member of living humanity. Out of Shem, through the linear genealogy giving us one descendant each generation who is hoping in that offspring promise from Genesis 3:15.

In Genesis 5, we move from Adam all the way to Noah, who has three sons. Then in Genesis 11, from Shem all the way to Terah, who has three sons—the first of which is Abraham. God is preserving this hope of the coming deliverer generation by generation.

We have a book focused on a vision of expansion, carried along by these headings: “These are the generations of…” It’s moved ahead through this linear genealogy, knowing there are two key offspring—there’s the serpent and there’s the woman. The serpent has offspring, and the woman will have an offspring. They set the stage for a book dominated by genealogy with two different lines of descent: the remnant and the rebel. The rebels make up most of the culture.

After we get through the flood and arrive at the Tower of Babel, God takes those three families—Shem, Ham, and Japheth—and disperses them into seventy nations, as counted in the table of nations in Genesis 10. Those seventy nations are set out into the world. God chooses one of them in the line of Abraham and explicitly says in Genesis 12:3 that those very families scattered at the Tower of Babel become the object of God’s missionary efforts. They are the families of the ground that God is going to seek to bless.

Or as we move into later promises in the patriarchal narrative, it’s the nations of the earth. The very nations, seventy of them scattered at the Tower of Babel, become the object of God’s redemptive pursuits, and he’ll do that through Abraham and his offspring.

CL: Yeah, that’s really helpful and fascinating—and it’s such a fast-paced narrative, right? Genesis 1 to 11, and then it takes a pretty good pause here with Abraham. Maybe I can provide a little map for us, and then we’ll zoom in on a couple of these key moments in Abraham’s life. Some of the key points in the narrative regarding God’s covenant with him are: the giving of the covenant promise and Abraham’s call in Genesis 12; then the making of the covenant—the promise of descendants and land—in Genesis 15; then affirming the covenant—the sign of circumcision—in Genesis 17; and then confirming the covenant, or Abraham’s obedience and confirmation of the promises by oath, in Genesis 22, the story of him and his son Isaac.

Maybe let’s consider Genesis 12 first. The passage is divided into two sections: the divine word to Abraham in verses 1 through 3, and then Abraham’s response in verses 4 through 8. As you note in your work, there are two command-promise units in verses 1 through 3 that identify how God would reverse the curse and also foresee two major stages in salvation history. I think this is really important. Could you unpack those two ideas a bit for us?

JD: I’d love to. It’s often missed in our English contemporary translations. We do see it in the New American Standard, but in texts like the ESV or the Christian Standard Bible, the CSV, the NIV, it only looks like there is one command. That’s because the translators note that if there are two Hebrew command forms, called imperatives, connected by the conjunction, the second is usually a consequence of the first.

But what often happened in the translations is that they wash out the fact that the second command is still a command. I’m drawing attention to the fact that God commands Abraham, “Go.” Go to the land, and then he follows it by three promises. The Hebrew construction suggests these promises express the purpose for why Abraham needs to go.

Go to the land so that I may make you into a great nation, so that I may bless you and make your name great. Abraham is going to become the father of a nation, a single nation in a single land. God is going to bless him, but he’s got to go. So there’s a contingency there, but that’s not the only command.

After he arrives in the land and is experiencing God’s blessing, the call of the text is “And be a blessing.” That command—be a blessing—up to this point the book has been filled with curse. Curse is the opposite of God; it’s a testimony of rebellion. So blessing is in some way representing God, displaying God, and the call is that Abraham or his representative would be this to the world.

The promise that accompanies it is that if you or your representative are a blessing, then I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you, I will curse. God is going to elevate Abraham or his representative as an agent of blessing in the world.

Then it explicitly says this by changing the Hebrew verb form with the ultimate result: “In you shall all the families of the ground”—the very ground that was cursed in Genesis 3. My ESV says “earth,” but the term is the same as the ground cursed in Genesis 3:17-19—the very families of the ground will be blessed.

That’s the ultimate goal. As we step back, just like you were saying, it seems we’re actually getting a picture of the story of redemption. Abraham will be a father of one nation in one land, but God set apart that nation to raise up an offspring, to raise up an individual through whom all the families of the ground would be blessed. That only happens in the new covenant era.

What I think we’re seeing here is, like you said, a two-stage Abrahamic covenant. Stage one: Abraham is the father of one nation in one land, associated with the Mosaic covenant era, which dominates the Old Testament. But then the second command, “Be a blessing,” finds its ultimate resolve only in the new covenant, where Jesus represents Abraham and stands as the agent who blesses the world and through whom all the world is blessed.

So it’s a two-stage Abrahamic covenant—stage one fulfilled in the Mosaic covenant, stage two fulfilled in the new covenant—and we’ll see both aspects as we walk through the Genesis narrative. We’ll see both highlighted at different points, and we’ll see the second stage, associated ultimately with the new covenant.

That stage—even within the book of Genesis—is going to narrow in on a specific seed of Abraham, a specific offspring who, reaching backward, is the same offspring of the woman promised to ultimately crush the serpent’s head. That seed is now realized through Abraham, and it’s in his days that blessing will reach the world.

CL: Yeah, that’s really helpful. Maybe now’s a good time to drill down on the seed language there. Both Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants incorporate seed language, but in various ways. How do they do that, and how does it relate to Paul’s application of the seed designation to both Jews and Gentiles in Christ?

JD: Right. I’m thinking of Romans 4 and Galatians 3, which mark a redemptive-historical shift from an age of promise to an age of fulfillment.

Yes, Galatians 3—we’re going to go there more during this podcast, I assume. But you have both the singular and plural realities. In Galatians 3:16, it says the promises were made to Abraham and to his seed—not “seeds” referring to many, but “seed” referring to one, who is Christ. Then in Galatians 3:29, if you belong to Christ, then you become Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise. You become Abraham’s seed. But it only happens if you are in the singular seed.

Within Genesis, we see both singular seed and plural seed. Just like in English, the Hebrew term for seed is always grammatically singular, but you can look for features in the context to see if the author clarifies whether it’s singular or plural.

In Genesis 3:15, the seed of the woman is designated as “he.” A masculine singular pronoun is used: “He will crush your head, serpent, but you will bruise his heel.” The pronoun designates a singular male offspring.

In contrast, in a text like Genesis 17:7 or 17:8, the pronoun used with the term seed is plural. For example, in Genesis 17:8, God says, “I will give to you and to your offspring the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.” It uses a masculine plural pronoun. So Moses is able to use singular or plural pronouns to clarify to us whether the seed is singular or plural.

What I think is significant is that in Genesis 15, Abraham is longing for an offspring. He says, “God, what other reward could you give me other than letting me participate in the promise that was given so long ago?” God says, “Eliezer of Damascus is not going to be your heir, but one from your own loins will be your heir.” From that one from his own loins an offspring will come. Isaac is not the offspring; it is through Isaac, told in Genesis 21, that the offspring of promise would be named.

In Genesis 15, God takes Abraham outside and says, “Look at the sky. Look at the stars. So shall your offspring”—who I think is singular in that text—“So shall your offspring become.” So that singular offspring is going to multiply to as many as the stars. Paul in Romans 4 cites that text to show that the church of Jesus has expanded, exploded to include the nations. He says, “so it was promised” the singular individual has become many.

We see that very explicitly in Genesis 22, which we’ll talk more about. In Genesis 22, the same singular pronoun from Genesis 3:15’s offspring promise shows up when we  God promises Abraham, after his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, “By myself I have sworn because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will bless you and multiply your offspring like the stars of the sky.” That recalls Genesis 15.

After mentioning “stars of the sky,” the offspring will multiply like the stars. It’s a third masculine singular pronoun. The seed will possess the gate of his enemies, another masculine singular pronoun. Because Moses can use in Genesis a plural pronoun to designate an offspring people, the singular pronoun clarifies we’re looking at an offspring person.

The offspring that will multiply as the stars is an individual. That offspring, the one we know as Jesus, just as Paul said, is the one who will possess the gate of his enemies. It is that singular seed through whom all the nations regard themselves as blessed.

We’ll talk more about that multiplication and that passage later.

For now, my point is that there’s a plural offspring of Abraham—a people that will possess the land of Canaan. But after stage one of the Abrahamic covenant, the Mosaic age, after that stage is when the individual seed will rise. The individual seed will multiply into a people—the church. Through that church the world will be blessed. Through the multiplied seed, that individual seed becomes the agent of blessing and will possess the gate of his enemies through the multiplied people.

So we are seeing two different stages. As we read Genesis, it’s important to keep those two stages in mind: When is Abraham the father of one nation in one land, and when has he become the father of a multitude of nations and even lands? That happens only in the second stage when the individual seed of the woman has come to crush the serpent and bring blessing in the world.

CL: Yeah, it’s really beautiful and exciting, super fascinating as well. If we hop back to Genesis 15, this is where the promises of Genesis 12 are formalized as a covenant. Can you walk us broadly through what takes place here and how it moves our understanding of the Abrahamic covenant forward?

JD: Genesis 15 is very significant for the development of the Abrahamic covenant. We start with the focus on the seed promise, then it moves to the land promise. Both play a key role in this chapter. Abraham’s longing for that offspring moves God to take him outside to look at the stars. In this context of longing for that offspring, whom I argue is an individual—we know of him as Christ—the writer of Genesis, Moses, first introduces the language of faith: “Abraham believed the Lord, and the Lord counted it to him as righteousness.”

Faith in Genesis reaches back at least to Caleb—the writer of Hebrews saw Caleb, Enoch, Noah believing. Abraham, even in Genesis 12, when called to go to the land he did not know, obeyed by faith and went. But the language “faith” first appears here in Genesis 15 in the context of the offspring promise. For Abraham, it was prospective—he was looking ahead, seeing something but not having received it, seeing and longing. Jesus said Abraham saw his day and rejoiced. Abraham believed the Lord regarding the offspring promise.

Remember, Abraham’s wife was barren; it would take a miracle. Abraham brought nothing to this interchange; he could not produce the heir. It would take a miracle. That sets the context for God counting Abraham’s faith as righteousness. Paul in Romans 4—the very chapter that he will talk about the stars in the sky—the same notes that justifying faith is the same faith believers enjoy. Abraham trusted God to do for him what he couldn’t do on his own. It’s significant God counts it to him as righteousness because righteousness in Moses is about doing—tangibly aligning with God’s definition of right order—and Abraham was bringing nothing. God reckons what was not as righteousness—like Laban, father of Rachel and Leah later in Genesis 31, who the girls say reckoned his daughters as foreigners, though they were his daughters. They were his daughters, but he regarded them for what they weren’t. In Genesis 15, that is what is happening. God is reckoning Abraham as righteous when he is not. Paul interprets the text this way in Romans 4.

That’s the first half, but then we move to the actual covenant-making ceremony. And it’s a fascinating text, and it can seem so strange because Abraham says, “God, how will I know that you’ll give me the land?” And God’s response is, “Bring me a heifer.” Bring me this cow. And Abraham knows he’s supposed to split the animal in two. And God, we’re told, just like he had done with Adam in the garden, moves Abraham into a deep sleep, and Abraham sees a vision. He’s not there. Instead, what he sees is a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day. It’s a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch, it says.

And between these cut animal parts, this presence moves. And I think Moses and his readers, having just experienced the exodus, the power of God at Mount Sinai.

And sometime between Mount Sinai and the death of Moses, after the forty years, during that wilderness period, Moses is writing down Genesis.

His audience has seen the glory cloud, and I think they would have recognized this as the divine presence. This is like God himself moving between these parts.

And we have to jump all the way to Jeremiah 34 to get a glimpse of what’s actually going on. But there we read that God declares the men who transgressed my covenant.

So this is a different covenant, but a very similar symbolic act is going on. God says, “The men who transgressed my covenant and did not keep the terms of my covenant that they made before me, I will make them like the calf that they cut in two and pass between its parts.”

And then God declares the kind of judgment he’ll bring upon them. “Their dead bodies shall be food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the field.”

So they made a vow, a covenantal vow to God, when they went between the parts. It was as if they were saying, “Let happen to me what’s happened to these animals if we fail to keep our part of this covenant.”

And they failed. And so God says, “In accordance with the covenant, I’m going to make you like the very animals that were cut in two between which you walked.” And what’s amazing is that in Genesis 15, Abraham is seeing the vision, and it is God who goes through those parts.

Abraham’s question, “How will I know that you’ll give me the land?” because that’s stage 1. And if God fulfills stage 1, we can be confident he’s going to be able to fulfill stage 2.

But how will I know? And the answer is: God says, “Let me be destroyed from being God if I fail to fulfill this promise.”

This puts a promissory punch on the entire Abrahamic covenant. It bears this level of certainty because God has put his own existence on the line.

And, therefore, whatever God commands Abraham to do, even sacrificing his son, his only son, through whom the victory and the hope and the triumph was promised to come.

Even if God says, “Take Isaac and slaughter him as a burnt offering,” Abraham is willing to do it because God has put his own existence on the line.

There’s nothing comparable in modern day to that type of command given to Abraham to sacrifice his son in light of the covenantal context it’s been placed in.

Everything is hinging on the coming of the offspring who would rise through Isaac’s line. And I think Abraham, now years before, is being given a level of certainty, in the trustworthiness of his God that is going to impact all the rest of his life.

CL: Yeah. That’s super, super fascinating. You can see how crucial it is for understanding God’s commitment, right, to this covenant.

It’s not just like, oh, yeah. “Hey, trust me, Abraham.” But there’s this visual that he gets. It’s going to stay with him for the rest of his life, right? And it’s written down for us to see—this is the kind of God that we serve and his commitment to his creation, right, to bring about this promise of redemption.

And so I think that—

JD: It builds right off of his promises to Noah, with God’s commitment to withhold that wrath, to point his bow, his war bow, upward rather than downward.

It provides the context for this type of saving grace to be operative. And Abraham is now seeing it worked out. He is going to be the agent through whom all of your and my problems are going to find solutions.

And you and I, and men and women from every tongue, tribe, and nation around this globe, throughout all time, are finding hope because of the certainty that God will fulfill what he had promised.

CL: Yeah. Absolutely. And so we’ve seen the giving of the covenant, Genesis 12, the making of the covenant, Genesis 15.

And then there’s the affirming of the covenant. We get the sign of circumcision here in Genesis 17. And so, you know, there are a couple of questions I want to ask you about here, but maybe to start just: what’s happening in Genesis 17? How’s it connected with what we’ve seen in Genesis 12 and 15?

Well, Abraham was seventy-five years old when he left Ur of the Chaldeans for the promised land.

They hung out in Haran, and yet he is captured and called to the land of Canaan. Then Genesis 15 happens at some point in the midst of it.

And when we get to the end of chapter 16, he is now eighty-six years old. But as soon as we jump into chapter 17, he’s ninety-nine, which means twenty-five years have passed.

Since he obeyed God and went, since the God of glory appeared to him in Mesopotamia, moving him, proving to him that he was not only setting before him desirable promises, but that he was a trustworthy promise maker.

And that moved Abraham to obey. It’s been twenty-five years of journeying with God. And so, when we get to Genesis 17, God is reaffirming the promises so that Abraham doesn’t forget.

Already, Abraham has taken into his own hands the possibility of having an offspring. He’s he’s gotten Hagar, and he’s borne Ishmael.

And yet, that’s not the means God intends to supply. And so God shows up. Abraham is ninety-nine years old.

And, talk about narrative time, like, the narrative is the story. Narrative time slowing down. The next six chapters are going to take place in only a single year of Abraham’s life.

From ninety-nine to one hundred, chapter 17, you get the covenant of circumcision, And a promise that Abraham is going to be the father of a multitude of nations.

Then in chapter 18, you’re going to get the introduction of the Sodom and Gomorrah episode and the promise by Yahweh that one year from now, Abraham, you’re going to have a son. And his name’s going to be Isaac. And Sarah’s going to laugh. And God’s going to say, “It’s going to happen.” And then we’re going to come to Genesis 22.

This is, like, near the, the story is going to slow way down. And there’s going to be so much detail incomparable to anywhere else in this book.

And so, God starts out with Abraham giving him two new commands and a promise. And the structure is identical to the grammatical structure that we saw in Genesis 12.

And the ESV actually renders this verse how I wish they would have rendered Genesis 12 to highlight the two commands and their relationship.

God says, “I am God Almighty. El Shaddai. Walk before me,” first command, “and be blameless.”

So it recognizes that here are two commands connected by and, and the second command, the ESV left as a command form. And then it renders that I may make my covenant between me and you and between your offspring and that I may multiply you greatly.

When God says he wants to make his covenant, that is, give his covenant fulfillment. That’s what I think he’s saying. And what’s significant here is that he stresses it’s contingent again.

It’s conditioned on walking before him and being blameless. Blameless is not about being perfect. Blameless is like the language of being above reproach in the eyes of all those around.

And God is calling Abraham to live a blameless life as he walks before him. And the result will be that God will bring about the fulfillment of the covenant.

He then goes on and says, “Your name’s no longer Abram, but instead it will be Ab-raham, father of a multitude.”

And this pushes us into stage two of the Abrahamic covenant. This vision. So it starts out: Abraham would be a nation, and then through him, through his being that nation, all the world will be blessed.

Well, that was Genesis 12. Now Genesis 17 is starting with the international scope, and then it’s going to move in and narrow in on how are we going to get there.

And it’s going to start with Abraham being the father of one nation. So the vision is you’ll be the father of a multitude of nations. I’ll make you exceedingly fruitful and make kings come from you.

But then he says, “I’ll establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you for their generations.”

So now we have an offspring people. And then he says, “I will give to you and to your offspring,” this plural, “the land of Canaan.”

For an everlasting possession, “I will be their God.” So we’ve just narrowed in. The chapter starts out with an international focus.

But now it narrows in on stage one of the Abrahamic covenant. It will be him being the father of one nation in what’s now designated the land of Canaan.

And it’s in this context that we get the covenant of circumcision as a sign for this particular expression of the Abrahamic covenant.

It’s given specifically to Abraham. It’s called a sign of the covenant, just like the rainbow is a sign. And so we have to ask: in what way is it a sign?

And there’s different types of covenant signs. Usually, they are in some way symbolic, representing either the blessings or the curses of the covenant.

So in the Noahic covenant, the sign was the rainbow, and it appears to be in the shape of a war bow pointed upward. So it represented the blessing of the covenant.

God was going to withhold his wrath. But in circumcision, you’re taking a knife in a covenant where the ultimate hope is offspring, an offspring.

And you’re taking a knife and using it on the male reproductive organ. And it symbolically appears to say that if you fail in your covenant loyalty, you and your offspring will be cut off.

That’s the image of circumcision. Now, what’s distinctive about it is that only Jews in the ancient world removed foreskin.

And this is a little bit of graphic language, but it’s necessary for us, I think, to understand what’s going on. Other nations like Egypt circumcised, but circumcision by its nature doesn’t require the removal of the foreskin.

It only requires the freeing of the glands of the male reproductive organ, or some cultures even do female circumcision.

The freeing of the glands of the female reproductive organ. But Israel, only the male reproductive organ, and only Israel among the ancient world, actually removed the foreskin.

And because of that, it could become a picture. The foreskin became a picture of the nations and what was hostile to God. It was as if there was a shell that was not allowing full freedom as God had intended humans to function.

Function. And so it begins to be used metaphorically even. Or, and so we—you and I are aware of how Moses is able to use the language in Deuteronomy of an uncircumcised heart.

And how God will circumcise the heart. And by that, meaning he’s going to remove that shell that is like the world so that the heart can be free as a spiritual organ of hunger, of desire, and of delight.

And so physical circumcision was a sign of a covenant pointing to a greater reality that we find out is only ultimately realized for the majority in stage two of the Abrahamic covenant fulfillment—that is, in the age of the church.

JY: Thank you for joining for GearTalk. For resource connected to biblical theology, visit handstotheplow.org and jasonderouchie.com. To support the work of Hands to the Plow, visit handstotheplow.org.