One of the things that makes reading the book of Genesis so great is how many different stories it contains. With each new story, we learn more about people from seeing them live, and often struggle, in different situations. We also learn more about God because we witness how God reveals the parts of Himself that people need most, exactly at the time they need it. This is true with the name El Olam.
The first time El Olam, often translated as Everlasting God, appears in the Bible is in Genesis 21:33, spoken by Abraham. It says, “Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beer-sheba, and there he called on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God.” Why was it important in that moment that the Lord was the Everlasting God? To answer that question, let’s track what Abraham had done up until this point.
Our Lord is still the Everlasting God. He is with us, and He has not changed and never will.
God called Abraham to leave his home without knowing where he was going, and he did (Genesis 12:1–4). Along the way, Abraham was afraid the people he encountered might want to kill him to get his wife, so on two separate occasions, he lied and introduced Sarah as his sister, allowing them to feel free to take her for themselves (Genesis 12:11–16; 20:1–2). Abraham was also told he would finally have a son, even in his old age (Genesis 15:4). He believed God, but since it did not happen immediately, and Sarah really was very old, he interpreted that promise to mean that he should sleep with Sarah’s slave to get her pregnant instead (Genesis 16:1–4a). Lastly, just before the occasion of 21:33 when he named the Lord “Everlasting God,” he decided to make a treaty with one of the men he lied to about Sarah, Abimelech. This treaty was meant to serve as a guarantee that Abraham and his descendants would be allowed to live in the land as long as they respected Abimelech and his descendants (Genesis 21:23–24). But we all know how those kinds of agreements usually turn out. Even if the ones who entered the agreement stay faithful, their descendants usually change their minds at some point.
It is in this light that Abraham, knowing everything he had done, acknowledged God as “Everlasting.” Abraham demonstrated unfaithfulness in situation after situation, and moved from one temporary solution for his problems to another. But he knew God was not like that. God would never waver, and Abraham worshiped him because of it. To take it even further, Abraham planted a tamarisk tree, which grows slowly and would go a long way toward demonstrating to future generations the steadfastness of God.
In all likelihood, that tamarisk tree probably did live for a very long time, but is not around now. But the good news is that our Lord is still the Everlasting God. He is with us, and He has not changed and never will. Many of us, when we look at ourselves, cannot recognize the people we used to be. So we can take solace in knowing the Everlasting God will always be there.
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