God’s covenant with Abram
Genesis 15 details God’s covenant with Abram.
The story has two sections. In the first Abram raises the issue of his promised offspring and his barren wife, in the second, he inquires after the land his offspring will inherit. The Notes point out that the two sections have different styles and settings, and – like the story of Lot’s rescue – can’t be “assigned to the major pentateuchal sources”. There must have been many stories about the patriarch Abram and his adventures, and I guess the compilers of Genesis “mixed and matched” them into a single narrative.
God comes to Abram in a vision and tells him that his “reward shall be very great”. Abram uses the opportunity to ask “what will you give me, for I continue childless”. He is reassured that “your very own issue shall be your heir”, and that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky above him.
In the second section God reminds Abram that he brought him from Ur “to give you this land to possess”. Abram seems to find it difficult to believe, and asks how he is to know that he will indeed possess it. He is instructed to bring some animals and birds, and to cut the animals in two. (The Notes say that the “ceremonial splitting of animals is an old West Semitic rite that seals oaths or covenants” – the parties to the oath pass between the parts.) At dusk a deep sleep claims Abram, and God says to him:
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. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for yourself, you shall go to your ancestors 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.
Once it’s dark “a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch” pass between the animal halves. And so God seals the covenant between himself and Abram.
The “land that is not theirs” is Egypt, and God is prophesying about the future Egyptian oppression and the exodus. It couldn’t have been very reassuring for Abram to hear of the 400 years of servitude his offspring would endure. Unless I missed something there hasn’t been any hint of such travails before – only the “terrifying darkness” that descends on him in his deep sleep before God reveals them. Maybe Abram was right to be doubtful …
The story of Abram and Sarai’s sojourn in Egypt is a kind of pale echo of what is to come for all his offspring. Both stories start with a voluntary move to Egypt in a time of famine; both end with plagues facilitating the “exodus” back home. It seems small consolation that, as Abram left Egypt more well-off than he entered it, his offspring will leave it with “great possessions”.
Points to ponder: God regards the Amorites as iniquitous. The Notes point out that the return of Abram’s descendants to “this land” will entail the destruction of the Amorites. Yet in the previous chapter Abram was allied with three Amorite brothers (all of a sudden).
Notes:
- Abram says that in the absence of a natural son “Eliezer of Damascus” will be his heir. This is the first and last mention of such a person. He also says “a slave born in my house is to be my heir” – it is not clear whether he also means Eliezer by this.
- The four generations God mentions “correspond[] to the four generations from Levi to Moses” in Exodus (Notes).
- Note that all the promised lands are already populated – the lands of the Hittites, Perizzites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.
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