Biblical Promise

PROMISE. There is in the Heb. OT no special term for the concept or act of promising. Where our English translations say that someone promised something, the Hebrew simply states that someone said or spoke (’āmar, dāḇar) some word with future reference. In the NT the technical term, epangelia, appears chiefly in Acts, Galatians, Romans and Hebrews.

A promise is a word that goes forth into unfilled time. It reaches ahead of its speaker and its recipient, to mark an appointment between them in the future. A promise may be an assurance of continuing or future action on behalf of someone: ‘I will be with you’, ‘They that mourn shall be comforted’, ‘If we confess our sins, God will forgive us our sins.’ It may be a solemn agreement of lasting, mutual (if unequal) relationship: as in the covenants. It may be the announcement of a future event: ‘When you have brought the people from Egypt, you will serve God on this mountain.’ The study of biblical promises must therefore take in far more than the actual occurrences of the word in the evv. (See also *Word, *Prophecy, *Covenant and *Oaths.) An oath often accompanied the word of promise (Ex. 6:8; Dt. 9:5; Heb. 6:13ff.).

That what he has spoken with his mouth he can and will perform with his hand is the biblical sign manual of God, for his word does not return void. Unlike men and heathen gods, he knows and commands the future (1 Ki. 8:15, 24; Is. 41:4, 26; 43:12, 19, etc.; Rom. 4:21; cf. Pascal, Pensées, 693). Through the historical books, a pattern of divine promise and historical fulfilment is traced (G. von Rad, Studies in Deuteronomy, 1953, pp. 74ff.), expressive of this truth.

The point of convergence of the OT promises (to Abraham, Moses, David and the Fathers through the prophets) is Jesus Christ. All the promises of God are confirmed in him, and through him affirmed by the church in the ‘Amen’ of its worship (2 Cor. 1:20). The OT quotations and allusions in the Gospel narratives indicate this fulfilment. The Magnificat and the Benedictus rejoice that God has kept his word. The promised Word has become flesh. The new covenant has been inaugurated—upon the ‘better promises’ prophesied by Jeremiah (Je. 31; Heb. 8:6–13). Jesus is its guarantee (Heb. 7:22, and the Holy Spirit of promise its first instalment (Eph. 1:13–14).

Awaiting the promise of Christ’s coming again and of the new heavens and a new earth (2 Pet. 3:4, 9, 13), the church sets forth on her missionary task with the assurance of his presence (Mt. 28:20) and with the news that ‘the promise of the Father’—the Holy Spirit (after Joel 2:28)—is given to Jew and pagan in Jesus Christ, fulfilling the promise to Abraham of universal blessing through his posterity. The promise is correlated to faith and open to all who, by imitating Abraham’s faith, become ‘children of the promise’ (Gal. 3; Rom. 4; 9). (*Eschatology, *Scripture.)