Catholic Commentary
God Departs from Abraham
22When he finished talking with him, God went up from Abraham.
Genesis 17:22 records God's departure from Abraham after completing their covenantal conversation, using the verb "ascend" to emphasize God's transcendent return to heaven rather than a casual departure. The passage marks the transition from divine revelation to human obedience, as Abraham immediately performs circumcision the following day.
God's departure from Abraham is not abandonment—it is the moment when faith stops waiting and starts acting.
In the moral sense, the "going up" of God signals the moment when faith must act on what has been received. The encounter is not the totality of the spiritual life; the departure is not abandonment. Rather, it marks the moment the soul must internalize and embody the word it has heard. The mystics of the Catholic tradition speak of this as the return from consolation to the ordinary work of discipleship — what John of the Cross describes as the movement from sensible divine presence into the dark night, which is itself a higher form of intimacy.
Catholic tradition illuminates this verse with particular richness at the intersection of divine transcendence and covenantal intimacy.
Divine Transcendence and Condescension. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that God "transcends all creatures" (CCC 300) and yet freely enters into relationship with humanity. The ascending of God in Genesis 17:22 holds both truths simultaneously: God truly was present with Abraham in a real, communicative encounter, and yet He remains the sovereign Lord who withdraws at will. This is not the withdrawal of a God who is indifferent; it is the withdrawal of a God who is other, holy, and free. St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae (I, q. 43), explains divine missions — the sending of divine Persons into creation — as always ordered toward a return to the divine source. The ascent of God from Abraham in Genesis 17 is a proto-type of this Thomistic structure: the divine condescension serves the creature's elevation.
The Pattern of Theophany. The Church Fathers recognized a consistent structure in Old Testament theophanies: divine approach, revelation, and withdrawal. St. Augustine (City of God, Book XVI, ch. 26) reflects on the appearances to Abraham as genuine encounters with the divine Word acting through angelic mediation, and notes that the withdrawal underscores Abraham's subsequent faith: he acts on the word after the presence has departed, which is a higher exercise of faith than acting under visible divine compulsion.
Covenant Sealed, Not Suspended. Pope Benedict XVI, in his Verbum Domini (2010, §72), writes that in Scripture "the word and the event are inseparable." God's departure does not un-speak the covenant; the word has gone out and will accomplish its purpose. The circumcision Abraham performs that very day (v. 23) enacts the permanent seal of the covenant in human flesh — the first sacramental sign of the Old Covenant. The Church teaches (CCC 1150) that such signs of the Old Covenant prefigure the sacraments of the New.
Genesis 17:22 speaks with quiet but urgent force to the contemporary Catholic: every genuine encounter with God in prayer, the sacraments, or Scripture has an ending — a moment when the consolation lifts, the Mass concludes, the retreat ends, and ordinary life resumes. The temptation is to treat this departure as spiritual loss or failure. Abraham's example corrects that misunderstanding. God's "going up" was not abandonment but the signal for action. Abraham circumcised his entire household that very day (v. 23) — he did not wait for another vision, another confirmation, another sign.
For a Catholic today, this means that spiritual experiences — even profound ones at Eucharistic adoration, in the confessional, or during personal prayer — are given not to be preserved under glass but to be enacted. When the feeling of God's nearness subsides, the word He spoke remains. The practical question after every encounter with God is Abraham's implicit question: What does obedience look like today, in my household, with these people, in this flesh? The answer will rarely be dramatic. It will look like a father being patient, a mother persevering in prayer for a wayward child, a young person making a difficult moral choice. God ascends; we descend into the ordinary — and there we find that the covenant holds.
Commentary
Literal Sense and Narrative Function
Genesis 17:22 is deceptively brief: "When he finished talking with him, God went up from Abraham." In the Hebrew, the phrase כִּלָּה לְדַבֵּר אִתּוֹ ("when he had finished speaking with him") uses the Piel stem of כָּלָה (kālāh), indicating a deliberate, completed action — the conversation is not interrupted or abandoned; it is finished, whole, sufficient. Everything necessary has been communicated. The divine word is not fragmentary; it accomplishes what it intends (cf. Isaiah 55:11). This completion underscores the totalizing nature of the covenant just enacted: names have been changed (Abram to Abraham, Sarai to Sarah), circumcision has been commanded, the promise of Isaac reaffirmed, and Ishmael blessed. Nothing is left unresolved.
The phrase וַיַּעַל אֱלֹהִים מֵעַל אַבְרָהָם ("God went up from Abraham") uses the verb עָלָה (ʿālāh), "to go up, to ascend," the same root used of smoke ascending in sacrifice and of the LORD's ascending presence. This vertical language is theologically deliberate. God does not simply "leave" or "go away" — He ascends, implying that His origin and destination are above. The spatial idiom communicates transcendence: God condescended to speak with Abraham, and now returns to His proper dwelling. This is not the departure of an equal; it is the withdrawal of the Most High.
Narrative Placement
The verse follows immediately after God's instruction about circumcision (vv. 9–14), the renaming and promise regarding Sarah (vv. 15–21), and the blessing of Ishmael (v. 20). God's departure seals all of this. What follows in v. 23 is Abraham's immediate compliance with the circumcision command — "that very day." The juxtaposition is intentional: God speaks and departs; Abraham acts at once, without hesitation or deliberation. The departure of God, far from creating paralysis, unleashes obedient action. The theophany ends; the covenant life begins.
Typological and Spiritual Senses
In the allegorical sense, the ascending of God from Abraham prefigures the pattern of divine encounter followed by mission that runs throughout salvation history. The Ascension of Christ (Acts 1:9) recapitulates this structure on the grandest scale: the Lord speaks His final commission (Matthew 28:19–20), then is "taken up" (using the Greek ἀνελήμφθη, Acts 1:9), and the disciples do not remain passive but return to Jerusalem to await the Spirit and begin the Church's mission. Just as Abraham's immediate circumcision of his household answers God's ascent in Genesis 17, so the disciples' return to Jerusalem answers Christ's Ascension.