Did Abraham Live Long Enough to See His Grandchildren

Did Abraham Live Long Enough to See His Grandchildren -- Esau & Jacob?

What’s your answer?  Yes? or No?  Can you prove it?

 

NO, Abraham never met his grandchildren! It’s plain as day and it’s right there in the Bible! There’s roughly 2000 Biblical years from Adam to Abram (who becomes Abraham), 2000 Biblical years from Abraham to Jesus, and -- as we know from our history books -- another 2000 years from Jesus until NOW, which means that either Christ is coming again very soon as the Third Adam or he’s here now or he’s already come, spent a long life teaching all those things Jesus wanted to teach us, and ascended into the Eternal Realm to sit with Jesus on his throne. What’s most curious is that those first 2000 years are told completely in the first 25 chapters of Genesis. The other 25 chapters and all the rest of the Bible tell the story of the next 2000 years until Jesus and the Revelation of John on the Isle of Patmos. As we read in Genesis 25, after Sarah dies, Abraham marries Keturah and has six more sons (25:1-2), dies at age 175 (25:7), and is buried by his sons Ishmael & Isaac in the Cave of Machpelah (25:9). After that begins the story of the next 2000 years of Biblical history with the genealogies of his sons Ishmael & Isaac. There is no mention in the Bible that he met any of his grandsons from either of his sons.

 

YES, Abraham surely lived long enough to meet his grandsons Esau & Jacob, and you can reason this out if you read the Bible carefully and just do the math! We learn as we read Genesis 17 that Abram was 99 years old when God appeared to him, changed his name from Abram to Abraham, established His Covenant with him, set circumcision of the flesh as the sign of the Covenant, changed the name of his wife Sarai to Sarah, and announced that he and his wife would have a son and call his name Isaac, which means laughter. In Genesis 18, God and two angels appear as three men to Abraham as he is sitting in his tent door by the terebinth trees of Mamre and again promises that “according to the time of life … Sarah your wife shall have a son.” Sarah is listening to all this and also “laughs within herself,” and there is a bit of Biblical humor here when the Lord asks Abraham why Sarah laughs. Then -- after the “story within the story” of Sodom, Gomorrah, and Lot in Genesis 19 and a second “story within the story” about Abraham & Abimelech in Genesis 20 -- “Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son [Isaac] in his old age” when he was 100 years old (21:1-7). In Genesis 24, when “Abraham was old and well advanced in age,” he sends “the oldest servant of his house … to Mesopotamia, to the City of Nahor [Abraham’s deceased brother],” to find a wife for Isaac from his kin. That servant finds Rebekah, the granddaughter of Nahor, the daughter of Bethuel by Milcah, and the sister of Laban. Rebekah is a remarkable young woman, because she quickly consents to go with a stranger she just met to marry a man she never met. Nevertheless, go she does, and “Isaac brought her into his tent … loved her … and was comforted after his mother’s death.” Genesis 25:19-28 tells us that “Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebekah as wife” and “was 60 years old when she bore” the twins, Esau & Jacob. So now let us reason together, do the math from these given Biblical facts, and calculate our result. Abraham was 100 when Isaac is born. Isaac is 60 and Abraham 160 when Esau and Jacob are born. Abraham dies at age 175, so it’s clear from the Biblical record that he lived 15 years after his grandsons are born, so there’s no doubt that he had many opportunities to cherish them.