Intertextuality Pair

Hebrews 11:8-19 → Genesis 15:6

Allusion

Later text

Hebrews 11:8-19BSB

By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, without knowing where he was going. By faith he dwelt in the promised land as a stranger in a foreign country. He lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. By faith Sarah, even though she was barren and beyond the proper age, was enabled to conceive a child, because she considered Him faithful who had promised. And so from one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore. All these people died in faith, without having received the things they were promised. However, they saw them and welcomed them from afar. And they acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. Now those who say such things show that they are seeking a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them. By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac on the altar. He who had received the promises was ready to offer his one and only son, even though God had said to him, “Through Isaac your offspring will be reckoned.” Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and in a sense, he did receive Isaac back from death.

Earlier text

Genesis 15:6BSB

Abram believed the LORD, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

Significance

Genesis 15:6 is the OT's first faith-imputation statement: Abram rests on Yahweh's bare promise of innumerable offspring — "Abram believed the LORD, and it was credited to him as righteousness" — and God reckons (Hebrew ḥāšab) that trust as covenant-standing. Hebrews 11 does not quote the verse (Paul and James do that; Heb 11 dramatizes it), but reads Abraham's whole life as a single faith-trajectory enacting the very believing Gen 15:6 credits. Two beats land on Gen 15 directly: Heb 11:11 — "she considered Him faithful who had promised" (Greek piston hēgēsato ton epangeilamenon) — names the trust that received the offspring-promise of Gen 15:5-6, so that "from one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars" (11:12) is Gen 15:5's stars-promise believed; and Heb 11:17-19, where Abraham "reasoned that God could raise the dead," shows that same faith holding the promise even against the command to slay its heir (the Aqedah, Gen 22). The connection is Longitudinal Theme, not typology — Hebrews does not set Abraham's believing as a shadow against an escalated antitype but presents it as the same justifying, persevering faith the whole canon traces and the church is now to imitate (11:39-40, "commended for their faith... so that together with us they would be made perfect"); it is Redemptive-Historical Progression in that Hebrews locates Abraham's faith as an earlier, now-clarified stage of the one people of God who see the promises fulfilled in Christ. The telos: the faith that justified Abraham was never confidence in his own resources — it was confidence in a God faithful who had promised and able to raise the dead, the God who in Christ has actually raised the dead. To behold this is to find that resting on such a God is not bare duty but the deepest rest of the soul — Abraham's God, seen clearly, is supremely worth trusting, and the believer who beholds Him is drawn to the same restful, savoring faith.

Found via
Anchor-Text Network (Genesis 15:6 — Abraham Believed God)
Reference Type
Allusion
Connection Method(s)
Longitudinal Theme; Redemptive-Historical Progression

▸ Abraham Believed God

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