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The Lord appeared to Abram and said: To your descendants I will give this land. So Abram built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him.(A)

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18 now that he is to become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth are to find blessing in him?(A)

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17 I will bless you and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore; your descendants will take possession of the gates of their enemies,(A) 18 and in your descendants all the nations of the earth will find blessing, because you obeyed my command.”(B)

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21 For this reason, God promised him with an oath
    to bless the nations through his descendants,
To make him numerous as grains of dust,
    and to exalt his posterity like the stars,
Giving them an inheritance from sea to sea,
    and from the River[a] to the ends of the earth.

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Footnotes

  1. 44:21 The River: the Euphrates; cf. Gn 2:14.

16 Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his descendant.[a] It does not say, “And to descendants,” as referring to many, but as referring to one, “And to your descendant,” who is Christ.(A) 17 This is what I mean: the law, which came four hundred and thirty years afterward,[b] does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to cancel the promise.(B) 18 For if the inheritance comes from the law,(C) it is no longer from a promise; but God bestowed it on Abraham through a promise.[c]

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Footnotes

  1. 3:16 Descendant: literally, “and to his seed.” The Hebrew, as in Gn 12:7; 15:18; 22:17–18, is a collective singular, traditionally rendered as a plural, descendants, but taken by Paul in its literal number to refer to Christ as descendant of Abraham.
  2. 3:17 Four hundred and thirty years afterward: follows Ex 12:40 in the Greek (Septuagint) version, in contrast to Gn 15:13 and Acts 7:6, for chronology.
  3. 3:18 This refutes the opponents’ contention that the promises of God are fulfilled only as a reward for human observance of the law.

29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendant, heirs according to the promise.(A)

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