Heir of the World

Where does Paul get the notion that Abraham is “heir of the world”?   Mark Forman argues in a 2009 JSNT article that it arises from Paul’s seeing the story of Abraham through the lends of Isaiah 54.  Applying Richard Hays’s criteria for identifying echoes, Forman concludes that “there is good evidence that Paul is intentionally echoing this passage from Isa. 54 in Romans 4: the passage explicitly occurs in Galatians; there is a degree of verbal and conceptual correspondence between the two passages, and the use of the passage in this way is plausible in the context of the first-century Graeco-Roman world.”

How how does a quotation from Isaiah 54 fit into Romans 4, which is often understood as a passage about Abraham’s personal faith?  Forman shows that the promises of seed and land go together in Genesis, and argues that Paul has not spiritualized away the concern with territory.  He thinks Paul applies this promise specifically to the Christians at Rome, consisting mainly of the poor and marginalized, and concludes: “it seems likely that in Rom. 4.19-21 Paul deliberately alludes to Isa. 54.1-3, a passage originally used to provide hope in the midst of exile. The artists, poets and sculptors of first-century Rome were covering their ‘canvas’ with colours they perceived would or should be (or already were) the colours ofthe future. Paul appropriates Isa. 54.1-3 and the interpretive tradition associated with it in order to remind his audience that, although they are currently in the midst of a world fraught with inequality and injustice, and dwelling in the shadows of an empire which claims otherwise, it is the people of God, consisting now of believing Jews and Gentiles, who have been promised the inheritance ofthe earth.”