GEN767 A central biblical affirmation is that knowledge of God and of the true nature of existence will be a blessing for the nations. Therefore, God called his covenant people into existence to serve as paradigm and witness to the true nature and destiny of human life, to human value, to relationship to God, to ultimate redemption. This calling, this responsibility could only be lived out in history, in the human realm, and everyday life. Were it not so, those called to serve as paradigm and as witness would be unable to speak to humankind and its lot. Thus, the people which is rooted in God and serves as proof that existence in God is ultimately the only assured existence must simultaneously live in the world. This people needs land, security, health; it is affected by war, drought, death; it must meet the challenges and temptations of existence as best it can. In these experiences, it must be conscious of and faithful to its Lord. By their very nature, then, all aspects of the religious life are dialectical, oriented both to the world and to God. The call that initiates Jewish faith and peoplehood contains an exquisite dialectic, incorporating Israel's rootedness in God and in the land [this virus]. The patriarch's first act involves an uprooting, a transfer of the center of gravity from the natural ground to life in the Lord. But he does this by going to a new land--to found a people. The act of living in God does not illuminate the natural life; it illuminates it. The natural life is not repudiated in following God; rather, it is enriched, and quite literally so (Genesis 12:2). To deepen the dialectic: the destined land is not identified ahead of time. Going there will take faith in God and willingness to set out on roads unknown which leads one knows not where. It is not a land which is self-evidently holy, a paradise or sacred ground so full of divine forces that the worshiper can only submit to it. It is "a land that I will show you." Only God's election and the believer's actions will reveal its holiness. And to complete the dialectic: the acts of creating a people and looking to a land – – acts so particular, so involved in turning inward --are accompanied by the promise that they are of universal significance. Abraham is told, "In you, the nations of the earth will be blessed" (Genesis 12:3). Even as Abraham begins to settle the land, he experiences it as the gift of God. (Genesis 13:14-15). When God and Abraham enter into a covenant, the land becomes the actual substance of that covenant. The extraordinary biblical claim is that God, too, is bound by the covenant. God self-obligates to give Abraham the land. The divine understanding is expressed by symbolically passing between the pieces. (N.B.: God is bound first). Later, a complementary covenant is made. Abraham and his seed will uphold the covenant to be God's people, marking it in their very flesh with circumcision. In turn, God will be their God and will give the land to Abraham and his seed forever, in fulfillment and sign of the covenant (Genesis 17:1-14). Thus, the land is the very essence of the covenant.