What Abraham Kept

The order of taking hold ended with remaining, and remaining was bound to keeping. Keeping and abiding were not first taught on the night Yeshua spoke of the vine, and Scripture shows it in the life of Abraham. The LORD Himself said it to Isaac, Abraham’s son, when He renewed to him the oath He had sworn to his father.

Genesis 26:5 because that Abraham hearkened to my voice, and kept my charge (mishmeret מִשׁמֶרֶת mish-meh'-reth), my commandments (mitzvot מִצוָה mits-vaw'), my statutes (chuqqot חֻקָּה khook-kaw'), and my Torah."

Kept Before Sinai

The words of this list are the words that would later describe what was given at Sinai. Yet Abraham lived long before Sinai, long before Moses, long before the tablets of stone. The verse does not explain how he knew what he kept. It simply records, in the words of the LORD, that he kept it.

The verb is shamar שָׁמַר shaw-mar'. It means to keep in the sense of guarding: watching over something that has been entrusted to you, so that it is not lost and not let go. A watchman keeps a city in this way. The word for “charge” in the same verse, mishmeret, comes from the same root. Abraham guarded what he had been given to guard.

In John 15:10, “If you keep My commandments, you will abide,” the Greek verb is tereo τηρέω tay-reh'-o, and it describes the same act that shamar describes in Hebrew: to watch over carefully and hold on to what has been entrusted. In John 15:10 that keeping and abiding stand side by side in one line. Genesis 26:5 is the record of a man who lived that abiding out, centuries before the words of John 15 were spoken.

Faith First, Then Keeping

This does not mean that Abraham earned God’s favor by keeping. Genesis itself sets the order. Long before the statement of Genesis 26:5, when Abraham had no son and only a promise, the record says this.

Genesis 15:6 And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.

Paul later builds his teaching on justification by faith on this verse. Abraham’s keeping came out of a life already counted righteous through believing. Faith came first, and the keeping followed, the same order that runs from John 3 to John 15.

The prophet Habakkuk gives the word that joins the two.

Habakkuk 2:4 Behold, the puffed up—his soul (nephesh נֶפֶשׁ neh'-fesh) is not upright within him; but the righteous shall live (chai חַי khah'-ee) by his faith.

Paul quotes the last words of this verse in Romans 1:17. The Hebrew phrase is be-emunato, which is the noun emunah (אֱמוּנָה) with “his” attached. Emunah is faith, and it is also faithfulness, a firm holding fast. The word comes from a root that speaks of being steady and sure. The righteous man lives by his emunah: by trusting, and by holding on in that trust.

What Scripture calls faith here is a life of keeping hold. It is not a single moment of agreement after which nothing more happens. It is a steady holding fast, and Abraham’s keeping of the charge, the commandments, the statutes and the Torah is what that faith looked like in a man’s life.

Jacob’s Vow

Jacob is the same, and his story shows the order clearly. When he first fled from his brother and slept on a stone at Bethel, the LORD stood over him in a dream and made him a promise.

Genesis 28:15 And behold, I am with you, and I will keep you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this ground (adamah אֲדָמָה ad-aw-maw'); for I will not forsake you, ad עַד ad(עד) I have done that which I have spoken to you of."

The verb for “keep” is shamar. Before Jacob kept anything, God promised to keep him. When Jacob woke, he answered with a vow.

Genesis 28:20-22 And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, "If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and a garment to put on, and I return in peace to my father's house, then the LORD shall be my God, and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be the house of God; and of all that you give me I will surely give a tenth to you."

Jacob’s vow uses the same verb. He asked God to do exactly what God had already promised. Then he bound himself to his part: the LORD would be his God, the stone would be the house of God, and he would give a tenth of all that God gave him.

Many years passed. Jacob served in Haran, married, had children, grew rich, and was cheated more than once. As Chapter 4 showed, the messenger of God came to him in a dream in those years and said, “I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar, where you vowed a vow to me.” God had not forgotten the vow, even while Jacob was far from the place where he made it.

Keeping the Vow

The keeping came long afterward, at the word of God.

Genesis 35:1-3 And God said to Jacob, "Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there; and make there an altar to the God who appeared to you when you fled from the face of Esau your brother." And Jacob said to his house and to all who were with him, "Put away the foreign gods that are in your midst, and purify yourselves, and change your garments; and let us arise and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar to the God who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way that I went."

Jacob obeyed, but before he went, he did something that shows what keeping meant to him: the house that was going up to the house of God had to be cleansed first. Then he gave the reason in words that look back over his whole life.

Those words answer the vow at Bethel. Jacob had asked, “If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go.” Now he says that God was with him “in the way that I went.” God had kept His promise first, and Jacob now kept his. The order is the same as in John 15:10. The One who keeps is the first to keep, and the one who has been kept answers by keeping what he promised.

Nothing New, and Yet

So keeping and abiding are not new ideas that began with the apostles. Abraham kept, Jacob kept, and Habakkuk said that the righteous live by holding fast in faith. What Yeshua spoke of on the night He was handed over had been lived out by the fathers of Israel long before.

But something in Jacob’s life raises a further question. The words he spoke at the end, the three names, were not words a man could invent. He named the One who had redeemed him, pointed to Shiloh from Judah, and confessed that he waited for the LORD’s salvation. Where did such speech come from? Peter gives the answer, and it concerns the Spirit who was at work within the prophets.