Genesis 15

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.”^{* 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?”^{s* 3}And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.”^{* 4}But 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.”^{* 5}He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”^{* 6}And he believed the Lord, and the Lord^t reckoned it to him as righteousness.

⁷Then he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you 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.” 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.^{* 11}And 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.^{* 13}Then the Lord^u 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,^{* 14}but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.^{* 15}As for yourself, you shall go to your ancestors 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.”^*

¹⁷When the sun had gone down and it was dark, 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 descendants 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, ²⁰the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, ²¹the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”