[B-Greek] Rm 9:7a Seed of Abraham or Children of Abraham

Iver Larsen iver at larsen.dk
Sun Apr 30 04:33:02 EDT 2006



> In a message dated 4/29/2006 1:01:14 PM Central Daylight Time,
> hholmyard at ont.com writes:
>
>
>> HH: Romans 9:7 for the basic text, and Gen 21:12 for the OT reference.
>>
>> Yours,
>> Harold Holmyard
>>
>
> Hi Harold,
>
> I guess I knew that.  What threw me off was the use of Isaac, instead of
> Jacob in the descussion.  There is more evidence in Scripture to support this.
> Jacob adopted and blessed the two sons of Joseph and cut Reuben from the
> first-born blessing  for being a bad boy (smile), and God cuts Dan and Ephraim off
> for bringing idols into Israel (see that they are not sealed with the twelve
> tribes in Revelation).
>
> Doug
> Rev. Doug Pickrel, Litt.D.
> Tejas Valley
> San Antonio, Texas

What you are alluding to bears no relationship to the text in Romans that we were discussing.

In order to get a better background for this text in Romans, it is very helpful to study Galatians. In Gal 4:21-31, you 
will see Paul's argument about Isaac as the child that God had promised Abraham, as opposed to Ishmael who was a child 
born according to "the flesh" i.e. based on human planning (Sarah's in this case) and without any need for a miracle. 
That is why Paul allegorises (4:24 ALLHGOREW) and uses Isaac as a figure of the spiritual children, children of faith, 
free children, children of promise, true Israel, the believers in Christ etc. whereas Ishmael is used as a figure of the 
carnal/fleshly/physical only children, children of the law, slave children, children of human plans, the old/natural 
Israel, the non-believers in Christ, etc.

Iver Larsen




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