And he believed in the Lord. The hiphil of the verb aman, to prop or stay, signifies to build upon, hence to rest one's faith upon; and this describes exactly the mental act of the patriarch, who reposed his confidence in the Divine character, and based his hope of a future seed on the Divine word. And he counted it to him. ἐλογίσθη αὐτῷ (LXX.), which is followed by nearly all the ancient versions, and by Paul in Romans 4:3; but the suffix ךָ, clearly indicates the object of the action expressed by the verb הָשַׁב b, to think, to meditate, and then to impute ( λογίζομαι), followed by לְ of pers. and acc. of the thing (cf. 2 Samuel 19:20; Psalms 32:2). The thing in this case was his faith in the Divine promise. For righteousness. צְדְקְהְ— εἰς δίκαιοσύνην (LXX.); neither for merit and justice (Rabbi Solomon, Jarchi, Ealiseh), nor as a proof of his probity (Gesenius, Rosenmüller); but unto and with a view to justification (Romans 4:3), so that God treated him as a righteous person (A Lapide), not, however, in the sense that he was now "correspondent to the will of God both in character and conduct" (Keil), but in the sense that he was now before God accepted and forgiven' (Luther, Calvin, Murphy, Candlish), which "passive righteousness, however, ultimately wrought in him an "active righteousness of complete conformity to the Divine will" ('Speaker's Commentary').
HOMILETICS