What Does Genesis 15:2 Mean?
And Abram said, Lord GOD, what will you give me, since I walk on without a child, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And Abram said, Lord GOD, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?THE KEY
The man who appears to inherit Abram’s house is named “My God is help,” so Abram’s question about what God will give is spoken beside a name that already carries help.
THE MEANING
Abram tells God the unsoftened facts: he has no child, and Eliezer of Damascus is steward of his house. He asks what God will give while the expected line of inheritance appears to pass through his steward; the lack remains unresolved in this verse.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the idea that an honest question about what is missing is a failure of faith: Abram brings the absence and his concrete concern directly to God.
THE ROOT
אֱלִיעֶזֶר
ʾĔlîʿezer
GROWS FROM
עזר
Help, aid, support
The name Eliezer combines ʾEl, “God,” with ʿezer, “help,” so the apparent successor carries “My God is help” in his name. That does not answer Abram’s question; it places the language of help inside the very household arrangement he is questioning.
ALSO GROWS
ʿēzer: Help, aid
עֵזֶר
In Genesis 2:18, the same word names the help God provides, showing the root as support that meets a need.
ʿāzar: To help, support
עָזַר
This verbal form makes the root an action: help is something given and enacted, echoing Abram’s direct question, “what wilt thou give me?”
THE PATTERN
Scripture gives unresolved need a direct voice before God.
To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?O LORD, how long shall I cry out, and you will not hear and respond? I cry out to you of violence, and you will not deliver.At once the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I lean my weight on you. Help where I cannot lean.THE THREAD
And the name of the other was Eliezer, my God is help; for the God of my father, he said, was my help, and snatched me from the sword of Pharaoh.Eliezer is the same name compound, “My God is help,” and this verse spells out its meaning: “the God of my father … was mine help.” In Genesis, that name belongs to the steward Abram names while asking what God will give, so the language of help sits inside the question without resolving its tension.
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