Genesis 15--God's Covenant With Abram

​Genesis 15 English Standard Version (ESV)
LISTEN:  https://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/esv/Gen.15
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God's Covenant with Abram

15 After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” 2 But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” 4 And behold, the word of the Lord came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” 5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 6 And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

7 And he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.” 8 But he said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” 9 He 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.” 10 And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. 11 And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.

12 As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. 13 Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. 14 But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15 As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. 16 And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”

17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, 19 the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, 20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.”

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This is one of the moments we've been building to for quite a while.  I have mentioned the Abrahamic covenant several times and while God has given glimpses of it already, it is mostly revealed in today's passage and we'll now talk about what it means to "cut" a covenant (language we still use today).

We have just come off of the epic battle of chapter 14 and God speaks to Abram to confirm something we said back then.  Abram didn't need to be afraid because the Lord was his shield and defender, but then God throws in "and your reward."  Remember that Abram had just refused to take his portion of the spoils of war, so another way that you will hear this in the lyrics of some songs is "the Lord is my portion." 

This revealed the emptiness that Abram felt from being childless which at that time was seen as a great curse, and imagine having to walk around and tell everyone your name meant "father" and them naturally asking, "So how many children do you have?" and having to say, "Well, I don't have any yet, but God has promised me a great nation." when you at least 75 years old (the age when God called him out of Ur of the Chaldeans).  Abram offers God a suggestion, not so much in a lack of faith, but to ask, "Is it your plan for me to have an heir that these blessings will pass on to?"  Remember this has already happened once as Terah, the father of Abram, was given the command to go to Canaan by God but stopped short in the land of Haran, and God's blessing seemed to pass from Terah to his son Abram.

Abram suggests that maybe he "adopt" his servant Eliezer of Damascus as his heir and let him have a son for him since Eliezer was still young and fertile.  God clearly said, "The man will not be your heir; your very own son will be your heir."  Then as only God can do, he compounded the promise by telling Abram that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars of the heavens. And it is here that we are told that Abram believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness (we'll see this verse quoted several times in the New Testament, but most often in the book of Romans).  What exactly did Abram believe and what does it mean to be "credited to him as righteousness?"  We'll wait until the book of Romans to unpack all that.  For now, understand that there is some connection between believing God's promises by faith and the righteousness that God credits to our account, because our own righteousness is insufficient.

We then see God use what I'll call "covenant language" as when God will open nearly every covenant with His people with a statement that says I am the one that took you from where you were to where you are today.  In this case, "I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess."

Abram has moved on from the question of children for the moment, but is still asking God how he will know that he himself, Abram, could possess such a great territory of land.  God decides to cut a covenant with Abram and instructs Abram to bring him some animals--a three-year old heifer, a three-year old female goat, a three-year old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.  I have a sense that Abram was familiar with the practice of cutting covenants and probably had some idea what was going on here as he knew that he was supposed to cut each of them in half and lay the halves against each other.  Typically when such a covenant is "cut" at these times the two people making the covenant will join hands and walk through the middle of the cut animals as a sign to say "Let the same happen to me if I break this coveannt with you."

Before striking the covenant, the Lord added these words to the covenant (an amendment of sorts).  "Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”

So, God clarifies that the descendants of Abram will be away from the land for 400 years and He will bring judgement on that land and bring them out of it back to this land with great possessions.  Abram will die at a "good old age" in peace and it would be in the fourth generation that they will return and God will cause all these things to come to pass.  God's reason for the delay?  The iniquity of the Amorites (the ones that Abram has been living in the midst of) is not yet complete.  They are not yet ready to face the judgment that is to come, but soon their wickedness would be as great as that of any of the other Canaanite clans and God would use this time of sojourning and slavery in Egypt to protect His people from the wickedness of the Canaanites.

Now is typically when the two would join hands and walk through the pieces of the cut animals, but we see God causes Abram to fall asleep and see in a vision that God alone walks through the pieces of the animals as to say "I alone can do this and will be held accountable to keep My word."  God puts Abram under no obligation in the covenant to do anything to keep the covenant or state any conditions of what Abram could do that would cause the covenant to be broken and God swore by Himself and His name, so that as long as God is who He is, this covenant would be in effect.  This is why we call this one of the everlasting covenants in the Bible.  God will always remember Abram (soon to be Abraham) and his descendants and the land will always belong to them, and God will be faithful to make a great nation of them.

What land exactly is promised to the descendants of Abram?  Everything between the Nile river in Egypt to the Euphrates river--sometimes known as The Great River or simply The River because it was known as a great boundary in the ancient world.  Does all of this land belong to the Jewish people, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob?  We'll see.  God will continue to pass His covenant along to future generations and let's see if the promise of land ever changes to give us any indication that any of this land belongs to any of the other children of Abraham (such as Ishmael who we will learn about in the next chapter).  As time goes on, more and more details of the covenant will be made clear.