The endangered and reaffirmed promises of God: a fruitful framework for biblical theology

The third, equally central, element of the pattern, the reaffirmation of the promises, arises out of Israel's experience that God ultimately makes good on what God has promised, whatever the source of and however seemingly devastating the endangerment.

Again, the Genesis narratives are foundational, both because they shape Israel's understanding of God as a promise-maker and promise-keeper, and because they so clearly evince the whole pattern. So after apparently many years of dealing with the shame and hopelessness of barrenness, during which God's promise of progeny was reduced to a running joke, the narrator of Genesis relates, finally, "The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised. Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him" (Gen 21:1-2). A more straightforward depiction of God as faithful promise-keeper is not to be found.

Likewise, the remaining two cycles see the promise emerge intact, even, as noted above, in the face of willed and attempted fratricide, challenges to God's goodness and sovereignty, and doubts about God's willingness to forgive. And the closing chapters of the book clearly serve to keep the interplay among promise, endangerment, and reaffirmation to the fore. First, in chapter 49, Jacob blesses his twelve sons, laying out this interplay clearly in Israel's "future." Then there is the scene in which Joseph's brothers come to him, fearing for their lives; Joseph's response appears to be a programmatic statement of how God intends to deal with the challenges to the promise that come from God's covenant partners: "Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today" (50:19-20). In other words, here is a reminder both that the promises of God are being affirmed--the promise of progeny explicitly, but implicitly the promise of blessing, since Abraham's descendants literally did save the world--and that this took place in spite of human efforts to subvert it. And finally, in the last verses, Joseph (who, in this cycle, speaks for God) proclaims the promise anew, with emphasis on the piece that has yet to see fulfillment: "God will surely come to you, and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob" (50:24).

So, too, in the ensuing stories, the tension between the original promise and its endangerment finds its resolution, even if temporarily, in an action of God on Israel's behalf: The rescue from Egypt, and ultimate conquest of the land, the return from exile and rebuilding of the temple. Of course, sometimes God needed more than a little prodding--from Abraham, who held God accountable to God's own claims of justice (Gen 18); from the Israelites, who groaned for four hundred years before God heard their cry (Exod 3); from Moses, who had to remind God of the promise to Abraham, and that it would not look good if God "consumed from the face of the earth" the people God had chosen (Exod 32); and from the many who cried to God in their distress through psalms. In these times especially, the close connection between the endangerment and the promise emerges. Overall, though, Israel's testimony is that God is faithful. As Brueggemann puts it: