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Genesis 15
The divine promises and Covenant
1 It happened some time later that the word of Yahweh was spoken to Abram in a vision, ‘Have no fear, Abram, I am your shield, your reward will be very great’.
3 Then Abram said, ‘See, you have given me no descendants; some man of my household will be my heir’.
4 And then this word of Yahweh was spoken to him, ‘He shall not be your heir; your heir shall be of your own flesh and blood’.
5 Then taking him outside he said, ‘Look up to heaven and count the stars if you can. Such will be your descendants’ he told him.
6 Abram put his faith in Yahweh, who counted this as making him justified.
7 ‘I am Yahweh’ he said to him ‘who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldaeans to make you heir to this land.’
8 ‘My Lord Yahweh,’ Abram replied ‘how am I to know that I shall inherit it?’
9 He said to him, ‘Get me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove and a young pigeon.’
10 He brought him all these, cut them in half and put half on one side and half facing it on the other; but the birds he did not cut in half.
11 Birds of prey came down on the carcases but Abram drove them off.
12 Now as the sun was setting Abram fell into a deep sleep, and terror seized him.
13 Then Yahweh said to Abram, ‘Know this for certain, that your descendants will be exiles in a land not their own, where they will be slaves and oppressed for four hundred years.
14 But I will pass judgement also on the nation that enslaves them and after that they will leave, with many possessions.
15 For your part, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a ripe old age.
16 In the fourth generation they will come back here, for the wickedness of the Amorites is not yet ended.’
17 When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, there appeared a smoking furnace and a firebrand that went between the halves.[*a]
18 That day Yahweh made a Covenant with Abram in these terms: ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the wadi of Egypt to the Great River, the river Euphrates,
20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim,
21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites’.