Genesis 15

Genesis 15 opens with a vision in which the word of the LORD comes to Abram, promising him great reward. Abram responds with the first recorded complaint in the patriarchal narrative: what will you give me, for I continue childless? God takes him outside and tells him to look at the stars: so shall your offspring be. And Abram believed the LORD, and the LORD counted it to him as righteousness. The verse is brief and almost casual in its context; its consequences for the history of Western theology are vast. Paul quotes it twice — in Romans 4 and Galatians 3 — to argue that justification before God is not based on keeping the law but on faith of the same kind Abraham exercised, centuries before the law existed. The Reformation's central debate about grace and works is conducted substantially through this single verse.

Abram then asks how he is to know the land promise will be kept, and God instructs him in a covenant ritual: bring a heifer, a female goat, a ram, a turtle-dove, and a pigeon; cut the mammals in two and lay each half opposite the other, but do not cut the birds. Abram drives away birds of prey that come down on the carcasses. At sunset a deep and terrifying darkness falls on him and God speaks: know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land not their own, and will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. As the sun goes down and darkness falls, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch — symbols of divine presence — pass between the pieces. Abram does not pass through. The covenant is unilateral: God binds himself without requiring a corresponding oath from Abram. The land is defined: from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates.