History of the Old Covenant. By J. H. Kurtz [pp. 451-486]

Kurtz on the Old Covenant.
or a single family, and that wandering from place to place with
no fixed habitation, the redemption that was to overspread the
world could not be introduced through them. The first thing to
be done, then, in preparation for the salvation that was to
come, was to provide a nation and a land. This was 4he end
after which the patriarchal age was striving; this was the prime
want, which was awakened in their minds; it was this to which
the leadings of God were conducting them. When this should
be accomplished the first stage would be passed. It was with
reference to this, therefore, in particular, that they needed to
be assured that it should be effected, that what in their times
seemed primarily to obstruct the entrance of the promised good
for the world should be taken out of the way; their descendants
should grow to a mighty nation, should be settled in Canaan,
and the world should be redeemed. It was not until after this
first step Was taken, and IsraeI had become a nation and Canaan
was theirs, that it was made apparent that not the time of
complete fulfilment had arrived, but only that the first stage of
approach to it had been traversed. A sense of fresh wants was
awakened in the chosen seed, and there was needed the assurance of God that these too should be supplied, and should not
be permitted to: stand for ever in the way of the expected deliverance. To conclude, therefore, from the prominence assigned
to a large posterity and the inheritance of Canaan in the revelations made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that this was all
they looked for, that their expectations were wholly of a temporal and earthly nature, and that they had no idea of a spiritual redemption, is not only to run counter to the authority of
the New Testament, which in repeated passages ddelares the
reverse, but to mistake all the aims and tendencies of the
history itself. The end ever held before them was the blessing
of God upon all nations; and a multiplied seed and the promised
land were regarded ever not as temporal advantages, not as
an end in themselves, but as opening the way to the salvation
of the world, which was through this medium to be effected.
The call of Abraham was grounded in both an objective and
a subjective necessity. On the one hand it, was necessary in
order to sunder him from the idolatrous influences to which he
was exposed in the land of his kindred, and to make of his
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