The Sound of Infinity
The Rev. Stephen D. Cole
And thy name shall no more be called Abram; and thy
name shall be Abraham, for as the father of a multitude
of nations have I given thee. (Genesis 17:5)
The Power of Names
Names in Scripture have power. The name that a person carries gives that
person a role to play and a significance that goes beyond this world and the
time in which he or she lived. Often the giving of a name, whether at birth or
at a renaming, is attended with solemnity and weighted with meaning.
The renaming of Abram and, a few verses later, the renaming of Sarai,
represents a change in the role that they will play, or at least a change in their
understanding of that role. God had made grand promises to them in the past,
but they had been more general and less defined. Now the Lord makes clear
that the heirs to the great inheritance that He offers them will be their own
lineal descendants, extending through Isaac, the son whose birth He now
predicts.
Abram’s name change can be understood either in terms of the meanings
of the words of which the names are composed or in terms of the change in
the sounds of the letters. In both names the first element, “Ab-” (“Ahv-” in the
Hebrew) means “father.” In the original name “Abram,” the second part of the
name means “lifted up” or “exalted.”
So the name, as a whole, is understood to mean “father of what is high.”
This literal meaning of the name fits the representation of Abram as he appears
in the history recorded in Genesis, in that he stands for the Lord. But as the first
in the series of patriarchs in the Scripture story, he portrays the states of the
Lord in earliest childhood, at the start of the process of glorification.
The renaming of Abram signifies the stage of the Lord’s glorification at
which He made the highest level in Himself Divine. At this point the focus
begins to shift to Isaac, whose life represents the next stage in the Lord’s
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