God’s Covenant with Abram
15After
these things the word of the Lord
came to Abram in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, Abram, I am
your shield; your reward shall be very great.’
2But Abram said,
‘O Lord God, what will you give me,
for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is
Eliezer of Damascus?’*
3And Abram said,
‘You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my
house is to be my heir.’
4But the word of
the Lord came to him, ‘This man
shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall
be your heir.’ 5He
brought him outside and said, ‘Look towards heaven and count
the stars, if you are able to count them.’ Then he said to
him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’
6And he believed
the Lord; and the
Lord
*
reckoned it to him as righteousness.
7 Then 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 turtle-dove, 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.
12 As the
sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep
and terrifying darkness descended upon him.
17 When 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,