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The Covenant. describe the Covenant with the Patriarchs, including the promises of a People and a Land.
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The Covenant describe the Covenant with the Patriarchs, including the promises of a People and a Land
Genesis tells how G-d establishes a ‘covenant’ with Abraham to be passed on to future generations. The first statement of this special relationship appears in Chapter 12, in which Abraham promises to forego all allegiances to his previous idolatrous community and to make a new life in the "Promised Land": • And the Lord said to Abram, "Go forth from your land and from your birthplace and from your father's house, to the land that I will show you. • And I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great…and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves."
The covenant is restated in Chapter 15 with a dramatic contractual ceremony featuring a divine fire passing between sacrificial animals, and a promise that the descendants of Abraham will be restored to their land after four hundred years of slavery.
The covenant is sealed in Chapter 17, when Abraham agrees that the sign of the covenant will appear on the bodies of all his male descendants through circumcision. At the same time, G-d promises: • "And I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings will emerge from you. And I will establish My covenant between Me and between you and between your seed after you throughout their generations as an everlasting covenant, to be to you for a God and to your seed after you. And I will give you and your seed after you the land of your sojournings, the entire land of Canaan for an everlasting possession, and I will be to them for a God."
Abraham’s covenant is handed on to his son, Isaac, whom G-d explicitly blesses in Chapter 26, and through him to Jacob and his descendants. In Chapter 32, Jacob wrestles with an angel. Henceforth his name becomes 'Israel' - 'He who wrestles with G-d'. His descendants become “The Children of Israel”, and the land is known as “The Land of Israel”.