In verse 6, Abram is said to “put
his faith in the Lord,” a form of religious trust as echoed in Nehemiah 9:8: “You
found his heart faithful” (the word is the basis for the English word, Amen).
As a result, the Lord “attributed it to him as an act of righteousness.” The
same noun “righteousness” is applied to “what is right and just” in humans in
Genesis 18:19, suggesting that God recognizes Abraham’s faith as meeting the standard
of “right” action (so also the deed of Phinehas in Ps 106:31). A similar
expression is used for a positive judgment of a good act in Deuteronomy 24:13
(Westermann, Genesis 12-36, 223, following von Rad that the expression
has a cultic background, i.e., “before the Lord, your God”). (Mark S. Smith, “Genesis,”
in The Jerome Biblical Commentary for the Twenty-First Century, ed. John
J. Collins, Gina Hens-Piazza, Barbara Reid, and Donald Senior [3d ed.;
London: T&T Clark, 2022], 221-22)
Further Reading
Response
to a Recent Attempt to Defend Imputed Righteousness
“In
the Eyes of God”: More Evidence against Imputation
Loren Blake Spendlove, "Abraham’s
Amen and Believing in Christ: Possible Applications in the Book of Mormon Text,"
Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 49
(2021): 37-62
