I Am Your Shield
Abram answers the promise with his real complaint: he is childless. Our Father takes him outside to the stars, and Abram believes him. Then a dark dread falls and the promise gets harder — four hundred years of slavery before the land is theirs.
15 1After these things, our Father's word came to Abram in a vision: "Don't fear, Abram. I'm your shield, your very great reward."
2But Abram said, "My Sovereign Father, what will you give me, since I'm childless, and my heir is Eliezer of Damascus?" 3Abram said, "You've given me no offspring; a servant born in my house will inherit from me."
4The word of our Father came to him: "This man won't be your heir; a son from your own body will be your heir." 5He brought him outside and said, "Look at the sky and count the stars, if you're able." Then he said, "So will your descendants be."
6Abram believed our Father, and our Father credited it to him as righteousness.
7He said to him, "I am your Father, who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess."
8But Abram said, "My Sovereign Father, how can I know that I will take possession of it?"
9He said to him, "Take me a three-year-old heifer, goat, and ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon."
10Abram brought all these to him, cut them in half, and set each half opposite the other; but did not cut the birds. a a v10 In an ancient way of sealing a covenant, the partners cut animals in two and passed between the halves, pledging their own lives to keep their word. 11When birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. 12As the sun set, deep sleep fell on Abram, and great terror and darkness fell over him.
13Then our Father told Abram, "Be certain: your descendants will live as foreigners in a land not theirs, enslaved and oppressed 400 years. 14I will also judge the nation they serve, and afterward they will come out with great wealth. 15You will go to your fathers in peace, buried at a good old age. 16In the fourth generation they will return here, for the Amorites' guilt is not yet complete."
17After sunset, in the dark, a smoking firepot and blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. b b v17 In ancient covenant ceremonies, both parties would walk between the split pieces of animals — a vow that meant, "May I be split like these if I break my promise." Here our Father alone passes through as a blazing light, taking the full weight of the covenant on himself.
18That day our Father covenanted with Abram: "I give your descendants this land, from Egypt's river to the great river, the Euphrates, 19the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, 20the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaites, 21the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites."
