Genesis 18:1,2; John 8:58
And the LORD appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; and he lift up his eyes and looked…
Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad.
J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): When our Lord used these remarkable words, Abraham had been dead and buried at least 1850 years! And yet he is said to have seen our Lord’s day! How wonderful that sounds! Yet it was quite true. Not only did Abraham “see” our Lord and talk to Him when He “appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre,” the night before Sodom was destroyed, but by faith he looked forward to the day of our Lord’s incarnation yet to come, and as he looked he “was glad.”
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): Abraham rejoiced, or he leaped at it. The word, though it commonly signifies “rejoicing,” must here signify a transport of desire rather than of joy, for otherwise the latter part of the verse [says the same thing twice in different words]—he “saw it, and was glad.” He reached out, or stretched himself forth, that he might “see my day.”
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): What were Abraham’s views of Christ?
THOMAS GOODWIN (1600-1679): Christ appeared to him, as also to Jacob, and, as some think, in the likeness too that He was to take.
JOHN WESLEY (1703-1791): Possibly he had likewise a peculiar revelation either of Christ’s first or second coming.
MATTHEW HENRY: There is room to conjecture that Abraham had some vision of Christ and His day, for his own private satisfaction, which is not, nor must be, recorded in his story, like that of Daniel’s, which must be “shut up, and sealed unto the time of the end,” Daniel 12:4. Some understand it of the sight Abraham had of it in the other world―Calvin mentions this sense of it.
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): They explain it to mean, that Abraham, being already dead, enjoyed the presence of Christ, when He appeared to the world; and so they make the time of desiring and the time of seeing to be different―but I do not know if so refined an exposition agrees with Christ’s words.
MATTHEW HENRY: It is more commonly understood of some sight he had, in this world, of Christ’s day.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): I understand the term, “Christ’s day,” to mean, first, His day of humiliation here upon earth…How did Abraham see Christ’s day? I answer, first, by a far-seeing, clearsighted faith. I do not know what Revelation, which is not recorded, God may have made to Abraham—but, whatever he did know, he turned it to practical use by believing it.
JOHN CALVIN: But a question now arises, How did Abraham behold, even with the eyes of faith, the manifestation of Christ? For this appears not to agree with another statement of Christ, “Many kings and prophets desired to see the things which you see, and yet did not see them,” Luke 10:24.
MATTHEW HENRY: They that “received not the promises,” yet “saw them afar off,” Hebrews 11:13. Though he saw it not so plainly, and fully, and distinctly as we now see it under the gospel, yet he saw something of it―more afterwards, than he did at first.
J. C. RYLE: That he saw many things, through a glass darkly, we need not doubt. That he could have explained fully the whole manner and circumstances of our Lord’s sacrifice on Calvary, we are not obliged to suppose. But we need not shrink from believing that he saw in the far distance a Redeemer.
C. H. SPURGEON: In what respects did Abraham see Christ’s day?
JOHN WESLEY: He saw it by faith in types, figures, and promises.
MATTHEW POOLE (1624-1679): He saw it by the eye of faith in the promise which was made to him, That in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed, Genesis 12:3.
JOHN GILL (1697-1771): He saw the Messiah in his type of Melchizedek, who some think was the Son of God Himself, Genesis 14:18; Hebrews 6:20 -7:28.
MATTHEW HENRY: In the casting out of Ishmael, and the establishment of the covenant with Isaac, Genesis 17:18-21, he saw a figure of the gospel day, which is Christ’s day; for these things were an allegory, Galatians 4:22-21.
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): To mark this with precision is no easy matter. If we suppose that Abraham understood the types as we do, his views of Christ were complete indeed: for, from the appearance of Jehovah to him in human shape, he would behold the incarnation of Christ; and from Melchizedec, to whom Abraham himself offered tithes of all that he possessed, and from whom also he received a blessing, he would know the everlasting priesthood of Christ, and the necessity of depending on him for all spiritual blessings. Moreover, from his being ordered to offer Isaac upon an altar on Mount Moriah―the very place where Christ was afterwards crucified―and from Isaac being restored to him, when in Abraham’s purpose he was already dead; he would learn the sacrifice of Christ by the hand, as it were, of his own Father, Isaiah 53:10, and his resurrection from the dead. And as he is said to have made this offering “by faith,” and to have “received his son from the dead in a figure,” Hebrews 11:19, we are by no means certain that he did not see the mystery contained in that remarkable transaction.
JOHN CHRYSOSTOM (347-407): Christ, by the word “day,” seems to signify that of His crucifixion, which was typified in the offering up of Isaac and the ram, Genesis 22.
MATTHEW HENRY: In offering Isaac, and the ram instead of Isaac, he saw a double type of the great sacrifice; and his calling the place “Jehovah-jireh”― “In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen, Genesis 22:14, intimates that he saw something more in it than others did, which time would produce.
C. H. SPURGEON: More than that, to Abraham God’s name was more fully revealed that day. He called Him Jehovah-Jireh, a step in advance of anything that he had known before.
D. L. MOODY (1837-1899): I have an idea that God then and there just lifted the curtain of time for Abraham. He looked down into the future, saw God’s Son coming up Calvary, bearing his sins and the sins of all posterity. God gave him that secret, and told him how His Son was to come into the world and take away his sins.
C. H. SPURGEON: We have no record of the subject of his morning meditations when he rose early that he might spend some time alone with the Lord before the world became dim with smoke, or the business or ordinary occupation of the day had commenced. At such seasons I have no doubt that Abraham was in his chosen place of prayer, waiting and watching—looking into the far-distant future and seeing with gladdened heart that day of the Lord which now has come—and that other day of the Lord which is yet to arrive.
