2
¶ And Abram said, Lord GOD, what wilt
thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this
Eliezer of Damascus? 3 And Abram said,
Behold, to me thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is mine
heir. 4 And, behold, the word of the
LORD came unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall
come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir. 5 And he brought him forth abroad, and said,
Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and
he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. 6
And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.
Abram poses the impertinent question of what can God
give him of value since he has been denied a child. God’s plan is greater than
Abram, in his complaint, can imagine. He will not only give Abram what Abram
desires; an heir, but God intends to give him a great heritage, more than he
can imagine.
God challenges Abram to count (tell as in a bank
teller) the stars if he can, as the number of his descendants shall be like the
number of stars.
Up until the invention of the telescope mankind was
able to count only a few thousand stars. However, God likens their number to
the number of particles of sand on the sea shore. This is not an exact
numerical comparison but an equivalence, meaning the numbers are similar, an
amount too great for a man to number.
Hebrews
11:12 Therefore sprang there even of
one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and
as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable.
However, it is not so with God. He can count them and
has names for every one. This is one of those amazing facts about how great the
God who created the universe and who orders all matter, energy, space, and time
is.
Psalm
147:4 He telleth the number of the
stars; he calleth them all by their names.
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