As a young person hearing the story, I always pictured Abraham looking at the stars and focused on God’s promise to the childless Abram, “I will make you into a great nation….All nations on earth will be blessed because of you." Wasn’t that God’s promise…that the Messiah would come from Abraham? But God didn’t merely make a promise…it was a covenant…an agreement between two parties.
I now see the meat of this story in the strange ceremony described in verses 9-10. In this ancient covenant ceremony, animals were cut in half, and the halves were placed opposite each other. The contracting parties in the covenant then passed between the pieces…walking through the path of blood…vowing to keep their word to each other or bring upon themselves the curse of being killed like these animals if they violated the covenant. In Genesis, Abraham did not pass between the animal halves; instead, a "smoking firepot with a flaming torch" –pass between the pieces. God passes as himself and in Abraham’s stead.
God made a unilateral, unconditional covenant: Abraham plays no role in keeping the covenant and its promises. God takes upon Himself the task of fulfilling the duties and obligations of both sides. God alone is the one who guarantees that the covenant promises will be kept. Abraham can do nothing, except have faith. Sound familiar? So often it’s when we understand Old Testament history and culture, that clarity comes to the New Testament (see Galatians 3).
4So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother's son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, 6Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7Then the LORD appeared to Abram, and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. 8From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the LORD and invoked the name of the LORD. 9And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb.
Genesis 15
7Then he said to him, "I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess." 8But he said, "O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?" 9He said to him, "Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon." 10He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. 11And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
12As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him. 13Then the LORD said to Abram, "Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs, and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years; 14but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15As for yourself, you shall go to your ancestors in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. 16And they shall come back here in the fourth generation; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete."
17When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. 18On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, 19the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, 20the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites."
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