Genesis 12:2
New International Version
“I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

New Living Translation
I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others.

English Standard Version
And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

Berean Standard Bible
I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

King James Bible
And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:

New King James Version
I will make you a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing.

New American Standard Bible
And I will make you into a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing;

NASB 1995
And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing;

NASB 1977
And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing;

Legacy Standard Bible
And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing;

Amplified Bible
And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you [abundantly], And make your name great (exalted, distinguished); And you shall be a blessing [a source of great good to others];

Christian Standard Bible
I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

Holman Christian Standard Bible
I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

American Standard Version
and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and be thou a blessing:

Aramaic Bible in Plain English
And I shall make you a great people and I shall bless you and I shall enlarge your name and it will be blessed:

Brenton Septuagint Translation
And I will make thee a great nation, and I will bless thee and magnify thy name, and thou shalt be blessed.

Contemporary English Version
I will bless you and make your descendants into a great nation. You will become famous and be a blessing to others.

Douay-Rheims Bible
And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and magnify thy name, and thou shalt be blessed.

English Revised Version
and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and be thou a blessing:

GOD'S WORD® Translation
I will make you a great nation, I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

Good News Translation
I will give you many descendants, and they will become a great nation. I will bless you and make your name famous, so that you will be a blessing.

International Standard Version
I'll make a great nation of your descendants, I'll bless you, and I'll make your reputation great, so that you will be a blessing.

JPS Tanakh 1917
And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and be thou a blessing.

Literal Standard Version
And I make you become a great nation, and bless you, and make your name great; and be a blessing.

Majority Standard Bible
I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

New American Bible
I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

NET Bible
Then I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great, so that you will exemplify divine blessing.

New Revised Standard Version
I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

New Heart English Bible
And I will make of you a great nation. And I will bless you and make your name great. And you will be a blessing.

Webster's Bible Translation
And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:

World English Bible
I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. You will be a blessing.

Young's Literal Translation
And I make thee become a great nation, and bless thee, and make thy name great; and be thou a blessing.

Additional Translations ...
Audio Bible



Context
The Calling of Abram
1Then the LORD said to Abram, “Leave your country, your kindred, and your father’s household, and go to the land I will show you. 2I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you; and all the families of the earth will be blessed through you.”…

Cross References
Genesis 17:4
"As for Me, this is My covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations.

Genesis 18:18
Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and through him all the nations of the earth will be blessed.

Genesis 18:19
For I have chosen him, so that he will command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just, in order that the LORD may bring upon Abraham what He has promised."

Genesis 22:17
I will surely bless you, and I will multiply your descendants like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will possess the gates of their enemies.

Genesis 24:1
By now Abraham was old and well along in years, and the LORD had blessed him in every way.

Genesis 25:11
After Abraham's death, God blessed his son Isaac, who lived near Beer-lahai-roi.

Genesis 26:3
Stay in this land as a foreigner, and I will be with you and bless you. For I will give all these lands to you and your offspring, and I will confirm the oath that I swore to your father Abraham.


Treasury of Scripture

And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing:

Genesis 13:16
And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered.

Genesis 15:5
And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be.

Genesis 17:5,6
Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee…

thou shalt.

Genesis 14:14-16
And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan…

Genesis 18:18
Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?

Genesis 19:29
And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in the which Lot dwelt.

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Bless Blessing Great Making Nation
Genesis 12
1. God calls Abram, and blesses him with a promise of Christ.
4. He departs with Lot from Haran, and comes to Canaan.
6. He journeys through Canaan,
7. which is promised to him in a vision.
10. He is driven by famine into Egypt.
11. Fear makes him feign his wife to be his sister.
14. Pharaoh, having taken her from him, is compelled to restore her.
18. Pharaoh reproves Abram, whom he dismisses.














(2, 3) Thou shalt be a blessing.--More correctly, Be thou a blessing. The promises made to Abram are partly personal and partly universal, embracing the whole world. In return for all that he abandons he is to become the founder of a powerful nation, who will honour his name, and teach the inheritors of their spiritual privileges to share in their veneration for him. But in the command to "be" or "become a blessing," we reach a higher level, and it is the glory of Abram's faith that it was not selfish, and in return for his consenting to lead the life of a stranger, he was to be the means of procuring religious privileges, not only for his own descendants, but also "for all families of the earth" (Heb., of the ground--the adamah). Not for the earth as the material universe, but solely in its connection with man. Wherever man makes his home upon it, there, through Abram, spiritual blessings will be offered him.

I will bless . . . --These words indicate relations mysteriously close between Jehovah and Abram, whereby the friends and enemies of the one become so equally to the other. But in the second clause our version has not noticed an essential difference between the verbs used. They occur together again in Exodus 22:28, and are there more correctly rendered by "revile" and "curse." The one word signifies to treat lightly and contemptuously, the other to pronounce a curse, usually in a judicial manner. We might, therefore, translate, "I will curse--pass a sentence of rejection upon--him that speaketh lightly of, or revileth thee."

In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.--Some authorities translate, "shall bless themselves;" but there is a different conjugation to express this meaning, and no reason exists for forcing it upon the text. Henceforward Abram and the nation sprung from him were to be the intermediaries between God and mankind, and accordingly revelation was virtually confined to them. But though the knowledge of God's will was to be given through them, it was for the benefit of all the families of every race and kindred distributed throughout the habitable world, the adamah (Romans 3:29; Romans 10:12, &c).

Verses 2, 3. - And I will make of thee a great nation. A compensation for leaving his small kindred. The nation should be great

(1) numerically (Keil, Rosenmüller),

(2) influentially (Kalisch, Inglis),

(3) spiritually (Luther, Wordsworth). And I will bless thee. Temporally (Pererius, Murphy), with every kind of good (Rosenmüller), in particular with offspring (Vatablus); but also spiritually (Rupertus, Bush), in the sense., e.g., of being justified by faith, as in Galatians 3:8 (Candlish). The blessing was a recompense for the deprivations entailed upon him by forsaking the place of his birth and kindred (Murphy). And make thy name great. Render thee illustrious and renowned (Rosenmüller); not so much in the annals of the world as in the history of the Church (Bush); in return for leaving thy father's house (Murphy). So God made David a great name (2 Samuel 7:9; cf. Proverbs 22:1; Ecclesiastes 7:3). And thou shalt be a blessing. I.e. "blessed," as in Zechariah 8:12 (Chaldee, Syriac, LXX., Dathe, Rosenmüller, Gesenius); or "a type or example of blessing," so that men shall introduce thy name into their formularies of blessing (Kimchi, Clericus, Knobel, Calvin); but, best, "a source of blessing' (spiritual) to others" (Tuch, Delitzsch, Keil, Kalisch, Murphy). The sense in which Abram was to be a source of blessing to others is explained in the next verse. First, men were to be either blessed or cursed of God according as their attitude to Abram was propitious or hostile. And I will bless them - grace expecting they will be many to bless (Delitzsch) - that bless thee, and curse (with a judicial curse, the word being the same as in Genesis 3:14; Genesis 4:11) him - only an individual here and there, in the judgment of the Deity, being likely to inherit this malediction (Delitzsch) - that curseth (literally, treateth lightly or despiseth The verb is applied in Genesis 8:11 to the diminution of the waters of the flood) thee. The Divine Being thus identifies himself with Abram, and solemnly engages to regard Abrams friends and enemies as his, as Christ does with his Church (cf. Acts 1:4). And in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Not Mess themselves by thee or in thy name (Jarchi, Clericus); but in thee, as the progenitor of the promised seed, shall all the families of the ground (which was cursed on account of sin, Genesis ill 17) be spiritually blessed - cf. Galatians 3:8 (Calvin, Luther, Rosenmüller, Keil, Wordsworth, Murphy, 'Speaker's Commentary'). Thus the second sense in which Abram was constituted a blessing lay in this, that the whole fullness of the Divine promise of salvation for the world was narrowed up to his line, by which it was in future to be carried forward, and at the appointed season, when the woman s seed was horn, distributed among mankind.

Parallel Commentaries ...


Hebrew
I will make
וְאֶֽעֶשְׂךָ֙ (wə·’e·‘eś·ḵā)
Conjunctive waw | Verb - Qal - Conjunctive imperfect Cohortative if contextual - first person common singular | second person masculine singular
Strong's 6213: To do, make

you into a great
גָּד֔וֹל (gā·ḏō·wl)
Adjective - masculine singular
Strong's 1419: Great, older, insolent

nation,
לְג֣וֹי (lə·ḡō·w)
Preposition-l | Noun - masculine singular
Strong's 1471: A foreign nation, a Gentile, a troop of animals, a flight of locusts

and I will bless you;
וַאֲבָ֣רֶכְךָ֔ (wa·’ă·ḇā·reḵ·ḵā)
Conjunctive waw | Verb - Piel - Conjunctive imperfect Cohortative if contextual - first person common singular | second person masculine singular
Strong's 1288: To kneel, to bless God, man, to curse

I will make your name
שְׁמֶ֑ךָ (šə·me·ḵā)
Noun - masculine singular construct | second person masculine singular
Strong's 8034: A name

great,
וַאֲגַדְּלָ֖ה (wa·’ă·ḡad·də·lāh)
Conjunctive waw | Verb - Piel - Conjunctive imperfect Cohortative - first person common singular
Strong's 1431: To grow up, become great

so that you will be
וֶהְיֵ֖ה (weh·yêh)
Conjunctive waw | Verb - Qal - Imperative - masculine singular
Strong's 1961: To fall out, come to pass, become, be

a blessing.
בְּרָכָֽה׃ (bə·rā·ḵāh)
Noun - feminine singular
Strong's 1293: Benediction, prosperity


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OT Law: Genesis 12:2 I will make of you a great (Gen. Ge Gn)
Genesis 12:1
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