John Calvin Commentary Genesis 17:4

"As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be the father of a multitude of nations." — Genesis 17:4 (ASV)

As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee. Those who translate the passage, ‘Behold, I make a covenant with thee,’ or, ‘Behold, I and my covenant with thee,’ do not seem to me to faithfully represent the meaning of Moses. For, first, God declares that He is the speaker, so that absolute authority may appear in His words.

For since our faith can rest on no other foundation than His eternal veracity, it is, above all things, necessary for us to be informed that what is proposed to us has proceeded from His sacred mouth. Therefore, the pronoun ‘I’ is to be read separately as a preface to the rest, so that Abram might have a composed mind and might engage, without hesitation, in the proposed covenant.

From this a useful doctrine is deduced: that faith necessarily relates to God, because, even if all angels and men should speak to us, their authority would never appear great enough to confirm our minds. And it is inevitable that we should at times waver, until that voice sounds from heaven, ‘I am.’

From this it also appears what kind of religion the Papacy is, where, instead of the Word of God, the fictions of men are the sole subject of boast. And those who depend on the word of men are justly exposed to continual fluctuation, acting unjustly towards God by ascribing more to them than is right. But let us have no other foundation for our faith than this word ‘I’—not as spoken indifferently by any mouth whatever, but by the mouth of God alone. If, however, myriads of men set themselves in opposition and proudly exclaim, ‘We, we,’ let this single word of God be sufficient to dissipate the empty sound of multitudes.

And thou shalt be a father of many nations. It is asked, what is this multitude of nations? It obviously appears that different nations had their origin from the holy Patriarch: for Ishmael grew into a great people; the Idumeans, from another branch, were spread far and wide; large families also sprang from other sons, whom he had by Keturah.

But Moses looked still further, because, indeed, the Gentiles were to be, by faith, inserted into the stock of Abram, although not descended from him according to the flesh—a fact of which Paul is to us a faithful interpreter and witness.

For Paul does not gather together the Arabians, Idumeans, and others for the purpose of making Abram the father of many nations; rather, he extends the name of father so as to make it applicable to the whole world, so that the Gentiles—in other respects strangers and separated from each other—might from all sides combine into one family of Abram.

I grant, indeed, that for a time the twelve tribes were like so many nations, but only to form a prelude to that immense multitude which, at length, is gathered together as the one family of Abram. And that Moses speaks of those sons who, being regenerated by faith, acquire the name and pass over into the stock of Abram, is sufficiently proved by this one consideration.

For Abram’s carnal descendants could not be divided into different nations without those who departed from the unity being immediately considered strangers. Thus the Church rejected the Ishmaelites, Idumeans, and others, and regarded them as foreigners.

Abram, therefore, was not called the father of many nations because his seed was to be divided into many nations, but rather because many nations were to be gathered to him. A change of his name is also added as a token. For he begins to be called Abraham, so that the name itself might teach him that he would not be the father of only one family, but that a progeny should rise up for him from an immense multitude, beyond the common course of nature. For this reason, the Lord so often renews this promise, because its very repetition shows that no common blessing was promised.