The answer is in Genesis 17:1-8, “When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, ‘I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless. And I will make My covenant between Me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly.’ Then Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying: ‘As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, and you shall be a father of many nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but YOUR NAME SHALL BE ABRAHAM; FOR I HAVE MADE YOU A FATHER OF MANY NATIONS. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I WILL MAKE NATIONS OF YOU, and kings shall come from you. And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you. Also I give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.”

God had already told Abram in Genesis 12:2, “I will make you a GREAT NATION” and in Genesis 15:5 God told him, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them…So shall your descendants be.” But in our passage above we see God “renewing His covenant” with him and then adding to the covenant by promising him that he would be “a father of MANY NATIONS.” He was not only to be the “father of the Hebrew nation (the Jews);” he would also be the father of the Arab world through his son Ishmael and other nations would come through another wife (Keturah) who would bear him many sons (Genesis 25:1-4). And then we learn in Galatians 3:6 that all “those who are of faith are sons of Abraham,” meaning that many believers from MANY NATIONS would be his “spiritual descendants” during this present Church Age and even into the Tribulation Period as we see in Revelation 7:9 & 14, “After these things I looked, and behold, a GREAT MULTITUDE which no one could number, of ALL NATIONS, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands…These are the ones who come out of great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” The name Abram means “exalted father” and the name Abraham means “father of a multitude” so the change in his name reflects the truth that a multitude from MANY NATIONS would be “children of Abraham.” In Romans 4:11 he is called “the father of all those who believe” and in Galatians 3:29 believers are told, “And if you are Christ’s, then YOU ARE ABRAHAM’S SEED, and heirs according to the promise.”

If we were to read on in Genesis 17:9-14 we would learn that this COVENANT involved having Abraham’s male descendants CIRCUMCISED as a “SIGN of the COVENANT.” This “cutting off of the foreskin” of the male child marked him out as being in an “outward covenant relationship” with God. It did not mean each child was one of Abraham’s “spiritual children” for only those who were of faith (as we saw in Galatians 3:6) could be called Abraham’s spiritual seed (Galatians 3:29). Sadly, in time the Jewish nation made this rite of circumcision a “means of salvation” but a “true Jew” was a matter of “faith in the heart” as we see in Romans 2:28-29, “For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God.” After God set the nation of Israel aside because of their unbelief and rejection of Christ as their Messiah, the physical mark of circumcision was not required for believers in Christ, though it says of us in Philippians 3:3, “For we are the circumcision” for we have experienced a “spiritual circumcision in Christ” (see Colossians 2:11).  (DO)  (668.3)