Faith and the Covenant Promise

“The word of the LORD came” is the formula of the prophets, “the word of the LORD came unto me” in Jeremiah 1:4, and this is its first use; in 20:7 God will call Abraham a prophet. “Fear not” is heard here for the first time in Scripture. “Reward” is sakhar, a labourer’s wage.

“Lord GOD” is Adonai YHWH, used here for the first time; the King James capitals mark the divine name read aloud as “God”. “I go childless” means I am passing out of life without a child. The steward’s title, ben mesheq, is obscure, and seems to chime with Dammesek, Damascus.

Abram speaks twice with no reply between, the second time more bluntly. Tablets from Nuzi show childless couples adopting a servant as heir, with the adoption set aside if a natural son was later born, which is the custom scholars commonly place behind this verse.

“Out of thine own bowels” is the phrase God uses again when he promises David a son in 2 Samuel 7:12, “thy seed … which shall proceed out of thy bowels”. The answer names the one heir Abram has given up on and dismisses the one he has.

“Tell” means count, as a bank teller counts. The stars are visible, so it is night, yet in verse 12 the sun is only now going down; either the vision spans a night and a day, or the scene is not in order of time. Genesis Rabbah read “brought him forth abroad” as taking Abram out of his star-gazing.

“Believed” is he’emin, from the root of amen. “Counted” is chashav, the word for a priest reckoning an offering acceptable in Leviticus 7:18. Psalm 106:31 uses the same phrase of Phinehas. The Hebrew does not say who counted what, and Nachmanides read it as Abram counting God’s promise as righteousness.

The self-introduction is shaped exactly like the opening of the Ten Commandments: “I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 20:2). Abram has his exodus first, from Ur.

Zacharias asks the angel almost the same question in Luke 1:18, “Whereby shall I know this?”, and is struck dumb for it. Abram asks, and is answered with a ceremony.

Heifer, she-goat, ram, turtledove, young pigeon: every kind of animal the Law will accept for sacrifice in Leviticus 1, all here before the Law. “Take me” means take for me. Each of the larger animals is three years old, at full strength.

The birds are left whole, as Leviticus 1:17 later requires of a bird offered: it is torn open by the wings “but shall not divide it asunder”. The halves of the larger animals are laid in two rows facing, with a path between them.

The “fowls” are ayit, birds of prey, the word Isaiah 46:11 uses for the ravenous bird from the east. The carcasses are pegarim, the word for corpses. Abram, who has just been told of the stars, spends the afternoon driving vultures off meat.

“Deep sleep” is tardemah, the sleep the LORD God caused to fall on Adam in 2:21 before Eve was made. The horror is three words piled together in Hebrew: dread, darkness, great.

“Know of a surety” is the verb doubled, “knowing, know”. Exodus 12:40 gives four hundred and thirty years for the sojourn; Stephen quotes the round four hundred in Acts 7:6, and Paul in Galatians 3:17 counts four hundred and thirty from the promise to the Law.

“Judge” is dan, the verb Rachel will build into the name Dan (30:6). “Great substance” is fulfilled when Israel leaves Egypt with the jewels of silver and gold the Egyptians gave them, and “spoiled the Egyptians” (Exodus 12:35–36).

“Go to thy fathers” is said of a man whose father Terah served other gods (Joshua 24:2); Rashi drew from it that Terah repented. “A good old age” is kept word for word in 25:8, where Abraham dies “in a good old age, an old man, and full of years”.

Here a generation seems to mean a full life, about a hundred years, to fit the four hundred of verse 13. Moses stands fourth from Levi, through Kohath and Amram (Exodus 6:16–20). “Hither” is Canaan, the ground Abram is standing on.

The “smoking furnace” is a tannur, a clay baking oven or firepot, and the “burning lamp” is a lappid, a torch. At Sinai the mountain smokes “as the smoke of a furnace” (Exodus 19:18) and the people see the lappidim, the torches or lightnings (Exodus 20:18).

“Have I given” is in the past tense, as if the gift were already complete. “The river of Egypt” is probably the eastern arm of the Nile, not the wadi called “the river of Egypt” in Numbers 34:5, which is another word. Only Solomon’s reign is described as reaching the Euphrates (1 Kings 4:21).

The Kenites are the smiths’ clan of Moses’ father-in-law (Judges 1:16), usually friendly to Israel. Caleb is called “the Kenezite” in Numbers 32:12, and Kenaz is an Edomite name in 36:11. The Kadmonites, “easterners”, are named only here.

Ten peoples in all, the longest roll of the land’s inhabitants in Scripture; the usual lists, as in Exodus 3:8 and Deuteronomy 7:1, run to six or seven. The Hivites, present in almost every other list, are missing from this one.

The list ends with the Jebusites, whose city will be the last to fall, taken only by David (2 Samuel 5:6–7). Ten nations are promised to a man with no son, and the next verse opens: “Now Sarai Abram’s wife bare him no children.”