Saturday, March 26, 2022

Mark S. Smith on Genesis 15:6

  

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