Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 (NRSV)

 After 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?” ³ And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and 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 reckoned it to him as righteousness.

⁷ Then 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.” ¹⁰ He 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.

¹² As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him.

¹⁷ When 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,

               In Chapter 15, we have a reaffirmation of the election of Abram we witnessed in Chapter 12. Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 is part of a larger section in which verses 1-6 take up the matter of who will follow Abram as head of the family and verses 7-24 show that an heir to Abram goes beyond his personal considerations and to the plan of God.[1] Abram experiences yet another vision-visit from the Lord. Once again, the Lord promises great rewards, having obediently turned down the gifts offered by the king of Sodom (14:22).

We learn that ¹after these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, a phrase common to prophetic literature, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” Abram will clearly express his doubt and anxiety. Abram asks questions after the Lord makes promises to him.  

Abram will bring up his slight problem to the Lord. ² Nevertheless, Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” The primary concern of Abram is for an heir. There are cases in the Nuzi texts of the 1400's BC of owners adopting slaves as children in the case of childlessness. ³ Further, Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” Abram points out that the only "heir" who currently stands to continue Abram's household after his death is neither blood-kin nor even a free man. This is how the conversation between Abram and the Lord begin. The good news is that the Lord loves conversations with his people. You might argue, based on the Genesis creation account, that the sole reason for the very existence of human beings is that they provided the potential for conversation. That did not work out so well with Adam and Eve, but it appears to be working with Abram. How about with you? Do you believe the Lord? Okay, then. What would you like to talk about? If you are going to have a good relationship with the Lord, you are going to have to talk. Abram did; we should, too. In this case, the conversation starts with Abram admitting the difficulty of believing that he could have a son, and that this son would be the beginning of a people of the Lord.  Asking questions is part of our nature.  One of the first words that little children learn is "why."  Often, things that we adults have just accepted for years become the objects of questioning.  Such questioning may wear us out at times. I hope we never lose that sense of wonderment about life and about the Lord that we become afraid or disinterested enough not to ask questions. Despite the success Abram has had in acquiring wealth, for him, it is all pointless if he does not have an heir.  ⁴ However, the word of the Lord came to him in the form of a promise, “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.” ⁵ The Lord brought him outside hammering home the enormity of this promise by directing the attention of Abram to the night sky -- still the most powerful visual image of vastness and limitlessness imaginable, and said, “Look toward heaven and, issuing a challenge to Abram, count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then the Lord said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” The author leaves the stargazing Abram and turns to us as readers and informs us of the theological importance of this story. ⁶ And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.With nothing more than an extravagant reiteration of the promise of offspring, Abram drops his question and trusts in the Lord. J asserts faith but does not explain it. Faith is silent listening and looking.  The question of Abram leads to a powerful experience of the Lord.  Did you notice what happened to him?  He does not receive all the intellectual answers he might have asked for.  He still just had the promise of the Lord to create a people.  The Lord does not answer all his questions concerning how this would happen.  However, he does receive the gift of an experience of the Lord.  The deepest issues of life do not particularly have intellectual answers.  If we are open at all to what the Lord is doing in our lives, such an experiential encounter with the Lord can be transforming. Note that the righteousness of Abram comes from his relationship to God, not obedience or the cult.  With this, the call of Abram concludes. In verse 6, one small, unembellished act Abram takes determines the entire future of the relationship between Israel and the Lord is. Abram "believed the Lord." Not "believed in the Lord," but "believed the Lord." This single act becomes the springboard from which an even more amazing divine response leaps: "and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness." Abram's naive trust in the divine word, in the extravagant promise the Lord makes to this yet childless father of a nation, is all that stands on the human side of the unconditional covenant commitment the Lord now extends toward Abram. One act of faith, which the Lord “reckoned ... as righteousness”, became the bedrock of a unique and everlasting relationship with the divine. Paul will use this act of faith in the promise of the Lord as a way of showing that his view of faith is not alien to the Jewish tradition, especially in Romans 3:31, 4:3, and Galatians 3:6. When Abram believed the promise, he did so because he believed the Lord, who with the promise guaranteed its fulfillment. Thus, the prophetic word has a special reference to predicted events, so that its quality as a word from the Lord depends on its fulfillment. This view, which Pannenberg has espoused, encountered much criticism. He did not believe anyone had refuted him. For him, even the truth of the promises made to the patriarchs has the character of promise and fulfillment.[2] Faith has a higher estimation in Israel as compared to knowledge. Knowledge has an orientation to the present or to what one already experiences. Faith directs itself to the future as trust. If the future alone will teach us what finally stands, then the decisive thing in the relation to truth is faith rather than knowledge. The presupposition is that something new has bound itself up with the future, something that we cannot know in advance. Therefore, knowledge as a way toward truth has a limit, while faith ventures beyond this boundary. Of course, what is knowable matters to faith. Faith needs knowledge as an initial acquaintance with the truth. The faith of Israel included knowledge, for it presupposes coming to know the Lord and the works of the Lord. The reality of the Lord is not something one grasps first or solely in an act of faith. Even the patriarchs saw the Lord in dreams and visions. Yet, this seeing did not itself already mediate true knowledge of the Lord. They already relied upon God and became open to experience divine power by historical leading. These experiences would become a new basis for trust in this God. This verse becomes an example of the open dimension of the historicity of the relation to divine truth in which the concept of faith finds its central function.[3] Paul refers to faith as a personal act of trust in God alone. Yet, this personal relation of faith to God comes through the historical self-revelation of God and through our knowledge of it. Even here, for Paul, Abram was already righteous before the Lord by his faith, but the promise that he believed refers to coming of Christ, as Paul puts in Galatians 3:8 and Romans 4:11. In Romans 4:19-21, Paul will intricately connect this faith of Abram to hope as well.[4]

⁷ Then the Lord said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, a resemblance to the beginning of the decalogue in Exodus 20:2 that reinforces the sense that the life of Abram foreshadows that of his descendants, to give you this land to possess.” Faith is willingness to journey forth, just as Abram had to journey forth, not knowing exactly about the destination. How many of us today could make the same leap of faith that Abram took? How many of us today could disregard our own voice of reason and listen to the astounding voice of promise from the Lord? We live in a time when our culture would encourage us to keep looking always, never to make commitments.  We live in a time when we are supposed to keep all our options open.  We expect to always have choices, and for our society to give us as many choices as possible.  Yet, it may well be that true joy in life is discovering that we are part of a grand and mighty purpose. We spend our lives in the confidence of this purpose before we come to the known end of death. The world will not devote itself to making us happy. None of our complaining and indecision in the face of the challenges of life will make us happy.[5]

⁸ However, Abram said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” Although Abram believed, he still wants to know. The Lord offers no further explanations, but rather, requires an act of covenant.  Then we have the offering of birds of prey in Genesis 15:9-12. 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 He 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. The animals are not sacrifice; Abram does not burn or eat them.   Note that the Lord enters this most solemn act of human guarantee of contract security. Nowhere does the Lord give instructions that Abram construct an altar for this occasion. Neither does the Lord articulate the method of sacrifice. The Lord merely gives the directive "bring." Yet Abram himself seems to know what God expects of him.  In a traditional Near-Eastern covenant ceremony, animal sacrifice played an important part. Covenants were not simply "made" or agreed upon. Participating parties did not just exchange handshakes and fountain pens and go home satisfied. A binding covenant had to be "cut." Without the shedding of blood, there could be no covenant. Blood symbolized the awesome life-and-death solemnity of the occasion. Blood sealed the sanctity of the promise.  Although our text details neither the altar construction nor the blood-letting ritual, the ceremonial cutting in two of the carcasses and laying "each half over against the other" (v.10) is typical of the covenant-cutting preparations we know of from other records. Why the birds were not prepared in this same fashion is a question left unanswered by the text. In fact, a few scholars and some non-canonical texts suggest that the fact that the birds were not cut in two may indicate the birds were not even killed.  ¹¹ Further, when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. The birds of prey may represent evil powers trying to interfere with the covenant.  The evidence of the scrupulousness of Abram in carrying out the order of the Lord to "bring" is in his faithful guarding of the cut-up carcasses --even driving off the carrion-feeding birds that smelled the blood and quickly hurried to the site. ¹² As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him. This suggests a magical practice, carrying the feeling of awe and mystery. Amorites and Akkadian literature have examples of such practices. 

¹⁷ When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. The sun goes down and natural, normal darkness begins to cover the earth. Against this backdrop, symbols of Yahweh (smoking fire pot and flaming torch) alone take the binding covenant-walk between the divided animal carcasses. In human-to-human covenants, it was typical for both covenanting parties to walk between the sacrifices, declaring in effect, "May it happen to me as to these animals if I do not keep the promises of this covenant" (see Jeremiah 34:18-20). Nevertheless, Abram does not join in this covenant pledge. The divine presence makes the self-curse an unconditional promise to Abram. He will have land and progeny. The covenant Yahweh makes here with Abram is unilateral. All the specified requirements, all the blessings and benefits to derive from this covenant relationship, are the responsibility of the Lord alone. The Lord does not pledge Abram to any special acts or works of obedience at this time. Only divine promises occur at this covenant ceremony. This election and covenant is foundational to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. As the Lord has judged human sin in the story of Noah, flood, and the Tower of Babel, the Lord is now making a provision for that sin in providing a way out. Instead of making a name for himself, as occurred at the Tower of Babel, Abram will accept the name the Lord gives to him. 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, the extent of land mentioned equaling that of Solomon’s day.

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[1] Textual history by some scholars has some variety. Von Rad thinks it unlikely that the E source begins in verses 1-6. Others think that the passage is a blend of J and E. Others conclude that the passage is all J. 

[2] (Pannenberg, Systematic Theology 1998, 1991) Volume 1, 251)

[3] (Pannenberg, Systematic Theology 1998, 1991) Volume 3, 137)

[4] (Pannenberg, Systematic Theology 1998, 1991) Volume 3, 153)

[5] "This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy." --George Bernard Shaw, from "Epistle Dedicatory," the preface to his play, Man and Superman: A Comedy and Philosophy, 1903.