Genesis
Chapter 15
Abram’s Covenant with the Lord
After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision:
“Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward will be very great!”
Abram said:
“My Lord God, where are your promises? I am still childless, and all I have will go to Eliezer of Damascus.
You have given me no children, so a slave of mine will be my heir.”
Then the word of the Lord was spoken to him again:
“Eliezer will not be your heir, but a child born of you (your own flesh and blood) will be your heir.”
Then the Lord brought him outside and said to him: “Look up at the sky and count the stars if you can. Your descendants will be like that.”
Abram believed the Lord, who, because of this, considered him a righteous man.
And he said:
“I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land as your possession.”
Then Abram asked:
“My Lord, how am I to know it shall be mine?”
The Lord replied:
“Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon.”
Abram brought all these animals, cut them in two, and laid each half facing its other half, but he did not cut the birds in half.
The birds of prey came down upon them, but Abram drove them away.
As the sun set, deep sleep descended upon Abram, and a dreadful darkness enveloped him.
Then the Lord said to Abram:
“Know for certain that your descendants will be exiles in a land that is not theirs. They will be slaves there, oppressed for four hundred years.
But I will judge the nation that oppresses them; after that, they will not leave empty-handed.
As for yourself, you shall go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a ripe old age.
Your descendants of the fourth generation will return here, for the wickedness of the Amorites has not yet warranted that I take the land from them.”
When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot and a flaming torch passed between the halves of the victims.
On that day, the Lord made a Covenant with Abram, saying:
“To your descendants, I have given this country from the river of Egypt to the Great River, the Euphrates,
The land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites,
the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim,
the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”
Commentaries
Abram’s Covenant with the Lord.
God retakes the initiative in this story with Abram, which began in chapter 12. Once more, a promise: “Do not be afraid, I am your shield” (1). For the first time, Abram responds to the Lord: without heirs, gifts are of little use (2-3). Then follows the ratification of the promise, which will be infinitely prolonged thanks to an heir born from the very entrails of the patriarch (4). This promise has not yet been fulfilled, but the Word of the Lord is committed to it. Verses 9f describe how a covenant or alliance was sealed. The novelty of this covenant between the Lord and Abram, emphasizing its absolute gratuitousness, is that God is one of the covenanters or co-participants. In standard practice, the divinity or divinities served as witnesses of the covenant; here, God is both witness and covenanter, providing even greater assurance of fulfillment.
Some argue that, given this condition, one cannot speak strictly of a covenant, but instead of God’s firm promise to Abram. Regardless of the case, what stands out in the story is the deep and intimate union of God with the people, whose bonds are definitively strengthened by a covenant whose immediate effect is to establish paternity on the part of the principal contracting party—in this case, God himself— the filiation of the secondary contracting party, in this case Abram, and the fraternity of all among themselves. These types of bonds, created by alliances, prove to be much stronger than the blood bonds themselves.
Verses 13f serve not primarily as predictions of what will happen to the people of Egypt but rather as confirmations of what has occurred. Verses 18b-21 detail the geography of the promised land, the entirety of which could never be fully realized.