The Covenant with Abram

The event

Genesis 15 answers a question Abram is bold enough to ask out loud: "O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless?" God's answer is to take him outside and point to the stars — "so shall your offspring be." And then comes one of the most important sentences in the whole Bible: "And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness." Centuries later, Paul will build much of the book of Romans on that one verse (Romans 4:3), making Abram the pattern for everyone who is ever justified by faith rather than by works.

God then seals the promise in a way Abram's original culture would have immediately recognized — a covenant ceremony involving split animal carcasses, with the parties expected to walk between the pieces as a self-curse ("may I become like these animals if I break this oath"). But it's God alone, appearing as a smoking firepot and a flaming torch, who passes between the pieces while Abram sleeps. God is binding himself unilaterally; the promise does not depend on Abram's performance.

In the same scene, God tells Abram plainly that his offspring will be sojourners in a land not their own, enslaved and afflicted for four hundred years, before returning to possess Canaan "in the fourth generation." It's a remarkable moment: centuries before Joseph, before Egypt, before Moses, God has already announced the shape of Israel's coming exile and exodus. Nothing that follows in Genesis catches him by surprise.

Dating

Placed here because Genesis 16:3 notes Hagar was given to Abram "after Abram had lived in Canaan ten years," putting Genesis 15 sometime before that. The exact year is not stated in the text.

Scripture references

• Genesis 15:1-21
• Romans 4:1-5
• Galatians 3:6-9