God Makes a Covenant with Abram

After these events, the word of Yahweh came to Abram in a vision. Yahweh told him not to be afraid and said that he himself would be Abram’s shield and very great reward. But Abram spoke honestly. He had no child, and he wondered who would inherit what he had.

Then Yahweh answered Abram. The one now set to inherit would not be his heir. Instead, a son from Abram’s own body would be his heir. Yahweh brought Abram outside and told him to look at the sky and count the stars, if he could. That is how Abram’s offspring would be. Abram believed Yahweh, and Yahweh counted it to him as righteousness.

Yahweh also reminded Abram that he had brought him from Ur of the Chaldees to give him this land to inherit. Abram asked how he could know it. So Yahweh told him to bring a heifer, a female goat, and a ram, each three years old, along with a turtledove and a young pigeon. Abram arranged them as Yahweh directed, and when birds of prey came down, Abram drove them away.

As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram, and terror and great darkness came over him. Then Yahweh told him what would happen in years to come. Abram’s offspring would live as foreigners in a land not their own and be afflicted there for four hundred years. But Yahweh would judge that nation, and afterward Abram’s offspring would come out with great wealth.

Yahweh said Abram himself would go to his fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation, his offspring would return, because the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full. After dark, Abram saw a smoking furnace and a flaming torch pass between the pieces. On that day Yahweh made a covenant with Abram and gave this land to his offspring, from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates, where many peoples were living.