such an event. In Abram’s time two parties making a legal agreement in a covenant would sacrifice animals and cut them in two. Often the weaker partner in a covenant made between a suzerain (leader) and a vassal would pass between the two halves as a means of saying that if he should fail to keep his end of the treaty, this—being cut in two—is what should happen to him. But what is striking about this passage? The smoking firepot, which is the visible manifestation of God in this passage, passes