"So shall your offspring be"

The Abrahamic Covenant reimagined in biblical perspective

“You may think that there is another reason for our silence about heaven–namely, that we do not really desire it. But that may be an illusion…There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else.” — C.S. Lewis

¹In the wake of a world that rejected God and tried to reach the heavens without Him (Gen 11:1-9), humankind was given up—given over to those “sons of God” (Deut 32:8²) they would rather worship than Yahweh. But God didn’t give up on His plan to have a family eager for His showered blessings. He didn’t give up then, just like He didn’t before when violence spread throughout the earth thanks to other “sons of God” (Gen 6:1-5), just like He didn’t when His perfect creation chose to listen to lies over truth (Gen 3). He started over, creating a new nation to receive that everlasting inheritance of love: Israel (Deut 32:9).

To do so, He started with one man: a shepherd named Abram. The story is a familiar one. In the course of bringing Abram to the center of the known world, smack dab in the middle of those very nations God relinquished and “divided” up, God made a promise of blessing not only to Abram’s family, but eventually to all families of the earth in the midst of those nations (Gen 12:1-3). Thus one of the great redemptive arcs of humanity began, though God had to remind His children of it many times.

The next time God made a promise to Abram, He added a detail: “I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring can also be counted” (Gen 13:16). The third time, He gives another:

“Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able…so shall your offspring be.” (Gen 15:5)

“So shall your offspring be.” We modern readers often see this as mere repetition; just as the particles of dust on the earth are uncountable, so are the stars in heaven. But is this all God intended when He said this to Abram and preserved it in His written Word? What if the promise is not just quantitative, but also qualitative? I propose that it is.³

To ground our hermeneutic, I’d like to ask an initial question: what did “so shall your offspring be” mean to Abram when he first heard it? Furthermore, what did it mean to the many ancient Semites in the Near-East who heard it? In answering the question, we have to temporarily forget all we know about outer space and balls of flaming gas, millions of lightyears away.

The ancients had a different understanding of the cosmos, one we usually think of as primitive and pagan. In most ways we’d be right, since their worldview was full of astrotheology—star worship and astral religion. They saw the heavenly bodies as supernatural beings, moving throughout the universe and watching over them, affecting the natural world and their daily lives. What if I told you this is not just true of the pagans, but also the monotheistic Israelites?

Before we continue, a clarification is necessary. The Israelites—at least those that weren’t apostate—were monotheists. They believed one Being created all things out of nothing (Gen 1:1-2). Included in “all things” were angels and other supernatural or spiritual beings, which they believed the stars to be. This isn’t unexpected if you think about it. By the time of Abram, God was entering a world that had already rejected Him, a world already full of pantheistic and pagan worship of parts of the natural world they believed to be more than natural, a world with an existing culture. It is out of that culture Abram was called, and he would learn, perhaps slowly, that the God who had called him was the God who had created all things, even the stars: the God of gods.

Forget what you know about hydrogen and helium and put yourself in Abram’s shoes.

“Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able…so shall your offspring be.”

What do you hear? I hear something far more powerful than a simple poetic expression of “numerousness” in repetitive parallel with “the dust of the earth” or “the sand of the sea.” I hear God telling Abram his descendants will receive an elevated status and shine like the stars—like the gods the other nations worship.

Sound familiar? Some New Testament ideas about shining like the stars or reigning with Christ might be popping into your head. Genesis is where it started, but the New Testament authors didn’t skip from A to Z. During the Second Temple Period (516 BC-70 AD), Jews continued to think about this promise and explore its implications. In one of Daniel’s apocalyptic visions, we learn that in the end times “those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever” (Dan 12:3). The author of Daniel might have gotten some of his language from Proverbs, which says “the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day” (Prov 4:18), but he was certainly thinking about that ancient promise to Abram as well.

Before we get to the days of Jesus, who actually referenced this verse in Daniel (Matt 13:43), we would do well to remember the broader cultural context of hard-thinking Jews in the last decades and centuries before the New Testament was written.

In one of the apocryphal psalms in the Dead Sea Scrolls, written or compiled by Jewish separatists before the turn of the era, there is a beautiful parallelism of God’s people and the stars in heaven in which they praise the Lord after His defeat of Satan, or Belial:

So, let heaven and earth praise as one, let all the twilight stars give praise! Rejoice, O Judah, rejoice, rejoice now and be glad! Make your pilgrimages, fulfill your vows for Belial is nowhere to be found.⁴

A similar parallelism is found in the Bible during God’s first response and challenge to Job, where the stars are called the “sons of God,” a term sometimes used to refer to angelic beings:

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

   Tell me, if you have understanding…

when the morning stars sang together

   and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (Job 38:4-7)

Another relevant parallel is found in the song of Moses:

Rejoice with him, O heavens;

   bow down to him, all gods,

for he avenges the blood of his children

   and takes vengeance on his adversaries. (Deut 32:43)

In books like 1 Enoch and Jubilees, which speculate on various Old Testament passages, the stars are recognized explicitly as divine beings, some of whom were the “sons of God” that rejected Him in Gen 6:1-4. In the opening to the apocryphal Psalms of Solomon, it is the wicked oppressors who are described as being lifted like stars to the heavens, arrogantly believing they will never die:⁵

Their wealth spread to the whole earth,

   and their glory unto the end of the earth.

They were exalted unto the stars;

   They said they would never fall.

But they became insolent in their prosperity,

   And…

Their sins were in secret,

   And even I had no knowledge (of them).

At one point, 1 Enoch speaks of evil beings as stars who will be taken from their thrones and cast into darkness by the Messianic Son of Man, and who will be judged by the righteous people of God:

And this Son of Man whom thou hast seen Shall raise up the kings and the mighty from their seats…

And darkness shall be their dwelling, And worms shall be their bed,

And they shall have no hope of rising from their beds, Because they do not extol the name of the Lord of Spirits.

And these [the righteous] are they who judge the stars of heaven.⁶

The righteous are described in star-language several times in 1 Enoch:

And the righteous and elect shall be without number before Him for ever and ever.

And all the righteous and elect before Him shall be strong as fiery lights,⁷

And again,

I swear unto you, that in heaven the angels remember you for good before the glory of the Great One: and your names are written before the glory of the Great One. Be hopeful; for aforetime ye were put to shame through ill and affliction; but now ye shall shine as the lights of heaven, ye shall shine and ye shall be seen, and the portals of heaven shall be opened to you…Be hopeful, and cast not away your hope; for ye shall have great joy as the angels of heaven.⁸

In Jubilees, we learn the author’s interpretation of God’s promise in Gen 15:5 includes the inheritance of the cities of the enemies of God’s people;⁹ in other words, when the ruler-stars (whether human or divine) of this world are cast down from their thrones, it is God’s people who replace them.

It is with this last idea we begin to look to the New Testament. Although the above references are not part of the inspired Word of God, they do provide context for the cultural milieu into which Jesus was born. These were the ideas floating around in the heads of literate Jews, who read spiritual books other than the Bible just like we do today. These ideas are relevant to our understanding the New Testament.

It is not with a mere reference to Daniel by Jesus that the New Testament explores the idea. This only scratches the surface. Will believers really “judge the stars of heaven” in the end times? Paul seemed to think so:

If any of you has a dispute with another, do you dare to take it before the ungodly for judgement instead of before the Lord’s people? Or do you not know that the Lord’s people will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? (1 Cor 6:1-3, NIV)¹⁰

The entire first letter to the Corinthians ends up being an important piece of the puzzle. In a lengthy and puzzling passage about the resurrection of the dead—which I would argue has already happened to baptized believers and is still yet to happen in the fullest sense (Rom 6:1-11, 8:1-11)—Paul describes the nature of our resurrected bodies (1 Cor 15):

But someone will ask, '“How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” You foolish person!

Ouch. Perhaps Paul expected his audience to be more in tune with biblical contexts and the common interpretations of God’s Word in their day than they actually were. Paul continues,

What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory for the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.

I won’t pretend to know all that Paul means here, but it seems believers’ bodies are the sown seeds, being resurrected into something far more glorious than the “bare kernel” that was buried. Also, Paul makes a distinction between earthly bodies and heavenly bodies, knowing we will be resurrected into a heavenly, or spiritual, body:

So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of a man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

Wow. The last Adam, the Man of heaven, Jesus, restores believers into something spiritual and heavenly. The Messiah, who was long ago predicted as the “star” that “shall come out of Jacob” (Num 24:17), will restore us into something that bears His star-like image. This was God’s plan all along (Gen 1:27)! Paul wraps up the idea:

I tell you this, brothers [and sisters]:¹¹ flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall all be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.”

What a future awaits those who believe. Paul is not just drawing on the Old Testament passages and extrabiblical literature we have already referenced, but also the words of Jesus:

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” (Matt 5:14-16)

“Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” (Matt 13:43)

“And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light.” (Matt 17:2)

“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)

“While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” (John 12:36)

This transfigurative,¹² star-likeness aspect of the implications of God’s promise to Abram was entirely foreign to me only a couple of years ago, when I was first exposed to the idea through The Unseen Realm by Michael S. Heiser. I was at first skeptical of his material in some places, especially in his discussions of 1 Corinthians 15. Over the last couple years, I found myself coming around on it entirely. He passed away only a few weeks ago as I write this, which I suppose means he now has a more complete understanding of the resurrection of the dead than any of us still here. This post is intended in part to be a small contribution to honoring his memory.

If any of this was as foreign to you as it was to me two years ago, then I hope these ideas help you paint a fuller picture when you read the Bible even if you disagree with the interpretation laid out here. Putting on immortality means being clothed with Christ (Gal 3:27), our armor of light (Rom 13:11-14) which helps us shine like stars in the night (Php 2:15¹³). When morning comes, God’s people who are arrayed in holy splendor (Psa 110:3) and waited for Him like watchmen in the night (Psa 130:6) will take their place alongside Him in the new heaven and earth, reigning with Him (e.g. 2 Tim 2:12, Rev 20:6) in place of the fallen stars—the fallen sons of God—in a world of peace. Abraham’s offspring shall indeed be like the stars.

1. Opening quotation from The Problem of Pain, 1940.

2. See the ESV, which is one of the few translations that incorporates the Dead Sea Scrolls reading into the verse. Unless otherwise specified, biblical quotations will be in the ESV.

3. I do not mean to suggest this is a new interpretation or that it is unique to me. This is arguably the most ancient understanding (or at least one facet of it) of the Abrahamic Covenant and is held by several modern scholars and theologians like the late Michael S. Heiser in his seminal 2015 book, The Unseen Realm.

4. Dead Sea Scrolls 4Q88 Column 10:5-10. Translation by Michael O. Wise et al in The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (2005).

5. Psalms of Solomon 1:4-7. Translation by David A. deSilva et al in The Lexham Old Testament Apocrypha: A New Translation (2023).

6. 1 Enoch 46:4-7. Translation by R.H Charles in The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (1913). Compare also to 48:9, which says of the kings of the earth: “As straw in the fire so shall they burn before the face of the holy.”

7. Ibid, 1 Enoch 39:6-7.

8. Ibid, 1 Enoch 104:1-4.

9. Ibid, Jubilees 18:15.

10. Most translations render hagioi as “saints” (ESV, KJV, NASB, NET, etc.) instead of the NIV’s choice of the “Lord’s people.” Although “saints” is technically correct on some levels, I prefer the NIV and other options like “believers” (NLT) or the literal “holy ones” (NAB) because the word “saints” in modern vernacular often obscures the full range of meaning and interpretations like the one I implicate in this post. God’s people are holy ones, just like the unfallen angels.

11. For all the excellent translation choices in the ESV, perhaps its greatest flaw is a rigid reactionary take on the word adelphoi, which they translate as “brothers.” Paul’s original audience was the entire church, which obviously included women. In this as in many other cases, it is preferable to translate adelphoi as “brothers and sisters” (CSB, NASB, NET, NIV, NLT, NRSV, etc.).

12. e.g. 2 Cor 3:18, Php 3:21.

13. cf. Deut 32:5.