Genesis 15
After this, Abram had a vision and
heard the Lord say to him, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I will shield you from
danger and give you a great reward.”
But Abram answered, “Sovereign Lord,
what good will your reward do me, since I have no children? My only heir is
Eliezer of Damascus. You have given me no children, and one of my slaves will
inherit my property.”
Then he heard the Lord speaking to
him again: “This slave Eliezer will not inherit your property; your own son
will be your heir.” The Lord took him outside and said, “Look at the sky and
try to count the stars; you will have as many
descendants as that.”
Abram put his trust in the Lord, and
because of this the Lord was pleased with him and accepted him.
Then the Lord said to him, “I am the
Lord, who leod you out of Ur in Babylonia, to give you this land as your own.”
But Abram asked, “Sovereign Lord,
how can I know that it will be mine?”
He answered, “Bring me a cow, a
goat, and a ram, each of them three years old, and a dove and a pigeon.” Abram
brought the
animals to God, cut them in half, and placed the halves opposite
each other in two rows; but he did not cut up the birds. Vultures came down on
the bodies, but Abram drove them off.
When the sun was going down, Abram
fell into a deep sleep, and fear and terror came over him. The Lord said to
him, “Your descendants will be strangers in a foreign land; they will be slaves
there and will be treated cruelly for four hundred years. But I will punish the
nation that enslaves them, and when they leave that foreign land, they will
take great wealth with them. You yourself will live to a ripe old age, die in
peace, and be buried. It will be four generations before your descendants come
back here, because I will not drive out the Amorites until they become so
wicked that they must be punished.”
When the sun had set and it was
dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch suddenly appeared and passed
between the pieces of the animals. Then and there the Lord made a covenant with
Abram. He said, “I promise to give your descendants all this land from the
border of Egypt to the Euphrates River, including the lands of the Kenites, the
Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the
Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”