Word of the Lord

“The Word was God,” says John. Where’d he get that?

Genesis 15:1 is the first place where Scripture uses the phrase “word of Yahweh” ( dabar-YHWH ), and already here the use of the phrase hints that the dabar is a person. The word of Yahweh “came” to Abram (15:1, 4); and the phrasing of both verse 1 and 4 suggests that the word of Yahweh is the one speaking to Abram in vision. Hebrew introduces speeches, including divine speech, with le’omer , “saying” (cf. Genesis 2:15; 8:15; 9:8).

Genesis 15:1 records that “the word of Yahweh came . . . saying,” and then records what was said, apparently by the word of Yahweh (cf. the similar phrasing of Genesis 21:22; 34:20; 42:49). The implied pronoun “He” in v. 5 has no antecedent but the “word of Yahweh,” since there has been no reference to Yahweh Himself coming; it’s the word of Yahweh that shows Abram the stars.

Yet, this word of Yahweh is also identified with Yahweh. The word assures Abram that He is “a shield to you” (v. 1), promises that He will have descendants from his own body (v. 4) and that his seed will be like the stars (v. 5). Abram believes Yahweh, and Yahweh reckons that faith as righteousness (v. 6); but Yahweh hasn’t spoken, only the word of Yahweh. But the word was Yahweh.

Verse 7 makes it explicit. Following the implied pronoun of verse 7 (“He said”) back to its antecedent, we find that the only one speaking to Abram is the word of Yahweh, yet in verse 7 He identifies Himself specifically as Yahweh: “I am Yahweh who brought you out of Ur.” Yahweh is the one who commanded Abram to leave his country (12:1), but in 15:7, the one who leads is the word of Yahweh.

It’s interesting that Genesis 15 is the first appearance of the “word of Yahweh” as a “character” in Scripture. Yahweh has spoken before – to Adam, to Eve, to Cain, to Noah, and so on. But only when He comes to reveal Himself to Abram does He appear explicitly as Word. Yahweh comes as Word to the father of the the faithful, to the father of the astral seed that Yahweh, the word of Yahweh, will deliver from Egypt.