Read the Introduction
by Aaron Theophilus
COUNTER-ROLL PUBLISHING
The second volume closed at the door of Terah's house in Ur of the Chaldees, with the record narrowed to the line of Shem and the generations that lead to Abram. The present volume takes up that line and follows it through the sixth toledoth of the book of Genesis, the generations of Terah, which the record turns upon the calling of Abram. Here is the first decoupling, the word that sends a man out from his country and from his kindred and from his father's house into a land that the Grantor will show him. Here the threefold promise is spoken, land and seed and blessing, and the altar is raised at the first stopping places of the covenant people.
Its span carries the record from the call to the purchase. Abram goes down into Egypt and fails the trust under famine; Lot divides the land by sight while the Grantor surveys it by promise; the kings make war and Melchizedek comes forth with bread and wine, and the tithe enters the record. The covenant is cut in the divided pieces with the smoking furnace and the burning lamp passing between them, and the day-certain promise is sworn. Ishmael is born to the flesh's attempt, the sign of circumcision is set in the household as its registration, and the three visitors sit under the oak of Mamre while Abraham pleads for the ten. Sodom falls in executed judgment; Isaac is born to the promise at Beer-sheba; and the Akedah tests the trust itself, the oath sworn by the Grantor with the ram caught in the thicket as the substitute. The volume closes where the promise touches the ground: the purchase of the field of Machpelah, the deed weighed out in current money with the elders of the Hittites for witness, and the generations of Ishmael disposed of in their roll. The heir is buried in the promised ground, and the seed of the covenant is secured in the land of the promise.
The doctrine carried in this volume is the law of the trust under testing: the first decoupling from the foreign jurisdiction, the covenant as an instrument cut in blood and sworn by the Grantor's own oath, the seal set in the flesh of the household, the intercession of the friend of God, the substitute offered in the place of the heir, and the deed of the field as the model of the perfect land transaction, weighed and witnessed before the gate.