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27th July 2024
SaturdayReflection
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Donald C. McIntyre , shares
a licensed Southern Baptist minister
"See to This": The Meaning of "Jehovah Jireh"
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In Genesis 22, a new epithet for God is given, Jehovah Jireh, which is often translated as "the LORD will provide" and, when used as a name, "the LORD my provider".
Abram and Sarai are without a child in Haran when God conscripts Abram for service through a promised land grant.
Abraham and Sarah remain childless for a century until the Lord God visits them, as promised; and the miracle child Isaac is born.
But something happens in Genesis 22 that the reader is not expecting.
The LORD seeks to test Abraham by commanding him to offer up Isaac as a burnt sacrifice.
During the trek, Isaac asks his father of the location of the lamb for the burnt offering, and Abraham responds,
"God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering".
Eventually, Abraham and Isaac reach their destination, Abraham binds his son, raises the knife, and prepares to deal the death blow.
He is stopped by the audible intervention of the angel of the LORD who gives a divine commendation for his obedience and reveals a ram stuck in a thicket.
This new experience between the LORD and Abraham resulted in a new adjective to be appended to the name of the LORD, Jehovah Jireh (or YHWH Yireh) and a Hebrew proverb. "And Abraham called the name of that place 'The LORD will see to it.
What does that mean?
In Genesis 16, Hagar is oppressed by Sarai with Abram's permission and rebelliously flees to the desert.
God appears to her, promises her protection, and the child a blessed future of prominence.
As a result, Hagar gives God and the place of visitation a new name, which both incorporate verbs of seeing.
She calls God and the place of the spring as "the God who sees me," and "the Well of the Living One who Sees Me."
Similarly, in Genesis 22, the reader finds the promised child Isaac in danger of disappearing from the biblical narrative.
Unlike the despondent Hagar of Genesis 16, Abraham by contrast is resolute in his faith that Isaac will survive.
The book of Hebrews informs the Christian reader that Abraham knew that if need be, God would raise Isaac from the dead.
Though there may be a temporary break in the family, Abraham knew that when this was all over, he and Isaac would again be a proper family because the LORD would see to it.
When God did see to it, through the angel of the LORD and the provision of the ram, Abraham responded in worship describing God with a new adjective and renaming the place.
The Lord showed himself in that place to be Jehovah Jireh,
"the LORD who provides/sees to it,"
so that the mountain was later known as "the Mountain of the LORD" where the LORD saw to it.
Abraham finds himself in a broken family filled with drama throughout the early narrative due to the Hagar debacle.
Despite all the brokenness which fills Abraham's home life, God is working to fulfill his promise to Abraham to bless him with descendants as numerous as the stars.
Through Abraham's faith, God is forging a way for Abraham's descendants to be reconciled to God through a substitutionary sacrifice which God alone can provide.
What God sees literally, and what he provides for, is the spiritual well-being and physical safety of his people as they obediently take part in his redemptive purposes by following his divine commands.
The Abraham narrative only explains the fulfillment of one aspect of the Abrahamic promise: the beginning of Abraham's descendants who are growing as numerous as the stars.
The rest of the Pentateuch and Joshua will begin to deal with the aspect of the land grant.
The Abrahamic covenant is portrayed as being progressively fulfilled throughout the Bible, and still awaits final fulfillment.
The Abrahamic covenant has, and will, find its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus as "all nations of the earth" are in the process of being blessed through Abraham's ultimate descendant, Jesus.
This blessing has been initiated through the spread of the gospel and awaits final consummation.
Jesus, as God in the flesh, saw to the substitutionary sacrifice himself when he died on the cross as the lamb of God.
The lamb was sacrificed on the mountain of the LORD as a substitution for the sins of mankind.
Now all who have faith in Christ's substitutionary work on the cross can be recognized as sons of Abraham.
The spiritual offspring of Abraham can now enjoy the same provision of spiritual well-being as Isaac did with God because God himself has seen to the provision of the Lamb's substitutionary sacrifice.
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This is an edited version.
The full article and Bible references are avaiable on request
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Donald C. McIntyre
D. C. "Mac" McIntyre is a licensed Southern Baptist minister and concurrently a PhD student at Baptist Bible Seminary (Old Testament) and Liberty University (Theology and Apologetics).
Mac's research interests include the Pentateuch, Psalms, Matthew, intertextuality, and expository preaching.
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