And Abram said, Lord GOD, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus? What wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless - The anxiety of the Asiatics to have offspring is intense and universal. Among the Hindoos the want of children renders all other blessings of no esteem. See Ward.
And the steward of my house - Abram, understanding the promise as relating to that person who was to spring from his family, in whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed, expresses his surprise that there should be such a promise, and yet he is about to die childless! How then can the promise be fulfilled, when, far from a spiritual seed, he has not even a person in his family that has a natural right to his property, and that a stranger is likely to be his heir? This seems to be the general sense of the passage; but who this steward of his house, this Eliezer of Damascus, was, commentators are not agreed. The translation of the Septuagint is at least curious: Ὁδε υἱος Μασεκ της οικολενους μου, οὑτος Δαμασκος Ελιεζερ·. The son of Masek my homeborn maid, this Eliezer of Damascus, is my heir; which intimates that they supposed משק meshek, which we translate steward, to have been the name of a female slave, born in the family of Abram, of whom was born this Eliezer, who on account of the country either of his father or mother, was called a Damascene or one of Damascus. It is extremely probable that our Lord has this passage in view in his parable of the rich man and Lazarus, Luke 16:19. From the name Eliezer, by leaving out the first letter, Liezer is formed, which makes Lazarus in the New Testament, the person who, from an abject and distressed state, was raised to lie in the bosom of Abraham in paradise.