Genesis 15:6

he believed in the Lord Abram believed (1) in God's protection (Genesis 15:1), (2) in the fulfilment of the promise of a son (Genesis 15:4), and (3) of innumerable descendants (Genesis 15:5). It is this trust to which St Paul refers (Romans 4:18), "who in hope believed against hope, to the end that he might become a father of many nations, according to that which had been spoken, So shall thy seed be."

"Believed in," i.e. "believed," "trusted," as with the same Hebrew construction, Exodus 14:31; Jonah 3:5.

In the Ep. to the Hebrews (Genesis 11:8; Genesis 11:17) Abram's faith is not illustrated from this, passage, but from his leaving his country (chap. 12) and from his sacrifice of his son (22).

and he counted it to him for righteousness A short pregnant sentence of abstract religious thought. The word "righteousness" (ṣedâqâh) occurs here for the first time in Scripture. It denotes the qualities of the man who is "righteous," or "right with God" (see note on ṣaddîq, Genesis 7:1). To the Israelite, "righteousness" implied the perfect obedience of the law. The writer records that, at a time when there was no law, Jehovah reckoned the faith of Abram, shewn in simple trust and obedience, as equivalent to the subsequent technical fulfilment of legal righteousness. The trustful surrender to the loving will of God is represented, in this typical instance of the father of the Israelite people, as, in Divine estimation, the foundation of true religion.

For the phrase, cf. the reference to Phinehas, Psalms 106:31, "and that was counted unto him for righteousness."

For the argument based by St Paul on this verse in connexion with the doctrine of the justification by faith, see Romans 4:1-25; Galatians 3:6: cf. James 2:23.