The sacrifice had been made; Abraham’s faith had been tested and found perfect; “And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, and said, By Myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son; that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply5 thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea-shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of His enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed My voice.” Genesis 22.15-18
In the Epistle to the Hebrews we learn the significance of the fact that God swore by Himself. The reader will at once see that the following Scripture has direct reference to that which has just been quoted: —
“When God made promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no greater, He swear by Himself, saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men verily swear by the greater; and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath; that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us; which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil; whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.” Hebrews 6.13-20
The oath was not for Abraham’s sake. His belief in God was complete without the oath to back the promise. His faith had been shown to be perfect, before the oath was given. Moreover, if it had been given for his sake, there would have been no necessity of putting it on record, since he was dead long before the record was written. But God was willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, and so He confirmed the promise by an oath.
5“Blessing I will bless,” and “multiplying I will multiply,” is the literal translation of a very common Hebrew idiom. Emphasis in the Hebrew is denoted by repetition. Put into ordinary English, the text would read, “I will surely bless thee, and I will surely multiply thy seed.” Similar instances may be seen in the margin of Genesis 2.16, 17, “eating thou mayest eat,” and “dying thou shalt die,” for “thou mayest freely eat,” and “thou shalt surely die.” In Exodus 3.7, “I have surely seen,” the same idiom occurs, “Seeing I have seen.’ In Acts 7.34, this emphatic repetition is preserved in “I have seen, I have seen.”