Thirteen years pass between chapters. When the Lord returns to Abraham, He speaks a name He has not yet used in Genesis. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 17:1 keeps it in its original Hebrew shape: El Shadai.
Abraham is ninety-nine years old. The Lord appears and says: I am El Shadai. Serve before Me, and be perfect — shelim — in thy flesh.
The Aramaic shelim, whole, is a hinge word. It will soon be translated into flesh itself, through the commandment of circumcision that fills the rest of this chapter. To be whole in your flesh in this verse does not mean untouched. It means sealed — marked as belonging.
The Targum hears the whole paradox in a single line. El Shadai — often interpreted as the God who is sufficient — is the name of completeness. And the command He gives is not stay as you are but be made whole. Wholeness, in Abraham's life, will arrive through a cut.
The Maggid reads this as the sober opening of Genesis 17. Abraham at ninety-nine is asked to accept that there is still a missing piece of his covenant, still a surgery to undergo, still a change in his body to match the change in his future. Shelim is not a status he is given; it is a work he is called to (Genesis 17:1). The name of the God of sufficiency begins a chapter in which Abraham is told to let himself be marked.