God Makes a Promise to Abram

Before the stars and before the covenant, this chapter starts with a conversation. God speaks comfort. “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward” (15:1). Abram answers honestly. “Lord God, what will You give me, seeing I go childless…?” (15:2). He means that a great reward is not much use if he has no child to leave it to. Then he says it a second time: “Look, You have given me no offspring” (15:3). People say look like that when they think someone has not been listening. God does not scold him. He does not tell him to have more faith or to stop complaining. He answers the question. Then He takes Abram outside to show him something. Abram asks again in verse 8: “how shall I know that I will inherit it?” Again God does not scold him. His answer is so serious that it fills the rest of the chapter.

In 15:1-8 Abram talks to God with real honesty. God begins with words of comfort — al-tira, do not fear — and says two things about Himself: magen lakh, a shield for you, and sekharkha harbeh me'od, your very great reward. Abram replies, mah-titten-li, what will you give me? It is a real question, and it is aimed at the second thing God said. He is not refusing the promise. He is saying that a reward makes no sense to a man with no child. In 15:3 Abram says it again, starting with hen — behold, look. This small word points to something the speaker thinks has been missed. His second question in 15:8, bammah eda, by what shall I know, is a request for proof. He asks it after verse 6 has already said his faith was credited to him. That matters. The man whose belief is counted as righteousness in verse 6 asks for proof in verse 8. God gives it and does not scold him. In this chapter, faith does not mean having no questions. God welcomes Abram's honest questions and answers them.

God has just told Abram not to be afraid. Then Abram speaks. “Lord God, what can You give me?” he asks. “I do not have a son.” That is what he tells God. It might sound a little rude. He is saying the promise has not come true yet. So what does God do? He does not tell Abram off. He answers the question. It is not wrong to tell God what is bothering you. Abram did it twice in this chapter. God answered him both times.

Abram told God he was sad. He had no children at all. And God did not get angry with him.

Genesis 15:6 is one of the most quoted verses in the Bible. It helps to know where Abram was when he believed. Where Abram is standing. He is outside at night. He is old and has no children. A servant is still named as his heir. Nothing has changed between verse 5 and verse 6, except that God has spoken. The stars do not prove that the promise is working. They are a picture of something that has not started happening yet. What the verse says. “And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness” (15:6). Accounted is a word from keeping money records. It means credited, written into the account. Abram did not become righteous by doing enough right things. God credited it to him. What God credited was Abram taking Him at His word. The New Testament uses this verse. Paul quotes it in Romans 4:3 and again in Galatians 3:6. He uses it to show that God has always worked this way, even four hundred and thirty years before the law was given. James quotes it too (2:23). When the Bible wants to show what faith is, it uses this verse.

15:6 is the center of this chapter. Much of the New Testament's teaching about faith is built on it, so it helps to understand the Hebrew. Wehe'emin ba-YHWH wayyachsheveha lo tsedaqah. The verb he'emin comes from aman (it is the form Hebrew grammar calls hiphil). It means to treat something as reliable, to lean your whole weight on it. Here it is joined to be, which points it at a person, not at an idea. Abram trusts the One speaking, not just the words. Chashav is a bookkeeping word: to count, to credit to an account. God is the one doing the counting, and what He credits is Abram's trust. So the grammar shows God giving Abram right standing. It is not God noticing goodness that Abram already had. Paul makes this same point in Romans 4:4-5: when someone works, his pay is counted as something owed, not as grace. When this happens matters too. There is no sacrifice yet, and no circumcision — that comes in chapter 17. The law will not come for another four hundred and thirty years, which is Paul's point about timing in Galatians 3:17. God counts Abram right because he trusts a promise. He has nothing to see that backs it up, and he has done nothing to earn it. This verse is not about a private religious feeling. Abram trusts a clear promise about children, and right after this God makes a formal covenant with him. Faith here believes something definite, and it shapes what happens next in the story, not only what happens in the heart.

Then God took Abram outside into the dark. “Look up,” He said. “Count the stars.” Of course he could not. Nobody could. “That is how big your family will be,” said God. Remember where Abram was. He was an old man with no children at all. Nothing had changed. There was still no baby. All he had was what God had just said. And the Bible says that Abram believed God. Then it says something very important. God counted that as Abram being right with Him. It was not because of the good things Abram did. It was because he took God at His word.

God showed Abram all the stars. “Your family will be like that,” He said. And Abram believed God.

Abram's second question is “how shall I know?” (15:8). God's answer is so serious that it fills the rest of the chapter. God tells him to cut a covenant. That is the Bible's way of saying “make a covenant,” and this time there really is cutting. Five animals are cut in two. The halves are laid opposite each other with a path between them (15:9-10). This was a real ceremony in the ancient world. We do not have to guess about it. Jeremiah 34:18-20 describes the same ceremony and tells what it meant. What the walk meant. The two people making the agreement would walk together down the path between the pieces. By doing this they were saying: if I break this promise, let me be made like these animals. It was the most serious way a person could say “I mean it.” Abram gets it ready and waits. Verse 11 gives a small, human detail: the vultures come down, and Abram drives them away. Hours pass. Nothing happens. He asked God for certainty. Now he is standing in a field, chasing birds away from dead animals, waiting for God to come.

The usual Hebrew way to say "make a covenant" is karat berit, to CUT a covenant, and 15:9-10 shows why. The five animals are split battavekh, down the middle. Each piece is set liqrat re'ehu, opposite its partner, so that the pieces form a lane between them. Jeremiah 34:18-20 helps us understand it. There God condemns the men of Judah “who have transgressed My covenant… when they cut the calf in two and passed between the parts of it”. The punishment He names is that they will be made like the calf. So the ceremony is an oath that calls a curse down on yourself: the one who walks through is saying that if he breaks his word, he should end up like the split animal. The birds in 15:10 are not split, which matches the later laws about offering birds. In 15:11 Abram drives off birds of prey. It shows how long Abram had to wait. Keep Abram's question from verse 8 in mind the whole way through. He asked for assurance. God does not give him an argument. He gives him a legal act, and the surprise is who carries it out.

Next Abram asked his second honest question. “How can I be sure I will get this land?” he asked. God answered in the most serious way there was. He told Abram to bring five animals. Abram cut them in half and laid them out. Half went on one side and half on the other. That made a path down the middle. People really did this back then. It was how they made a very big promise. Both people would walk down that path together. It was a very serious thing to do. It meant, “If I break my word, let this happen to me.” So Abram set it all up, and waited.

God told Abram to bring some animals. He cut them and made two rows. There was a path down the middle.

In verse 17 God does something no one expected. The ceremony does not go the way it normally would. First, Abram falls asleep. “A deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him” (15:12). He can no longer take part. He could not walk down that path even if he wanted to. God tells him the hard part first. His family will spend four hundred years as strangers and slaves in a land not theirs (15:13). Then God goes straight on: “also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions” (15:14). God does not hide the cost of the promise. He tells Abram all of it. Verse 17. “There appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces.” All through the Bible, God shows up with smoke and fire. Smoke and fire will also lead Israel out of the very slavery He has just described. Two walkers were needed. The ceremony needs two people. One is asleep. God walks between the pieces alone. That means He has taken both sides of the agreement on Himself. He promises to keep His own half, and He also promises to cover Abram's half. That is why the promise lasts through everything Abram does wrong in chapters 12, 16 and 20.

In 15:12-17 the ceremony is turned upside down, and this shows us the heart of God. Tardemah in 15:12 is the same word used for Adam's sleep in 2:21. It is a deep sleep sent by God, not ordinary sleep. So Abram cannot take part before the ceremony even begins. The words that go with it, eymah chashekhah gedolah, a dread, a great darkness, describe what it is like when God appears. They show the fearful holiness of God drawing near. In 15:13-16 God tells Abram what will happen and hides nothing. Four hundred years of slavery are stated plainly. Before and after them come God's judgment on the nation that enslaves them and the exodus birkhush gadol, with great possessions. Verse 16 gives a moral reason for the wait: the Amorites' wrongdoing has not yet reached its full measure. This shows the delay as God's patience with the Canaanites, not as God not caring about Israel. God was giving the Amorites time to turn from their sin. His judgment, when it came, was slow and just. Then 15:17. Tannur ashan welappid esh, a smoking oven and a torch of fire, pass bein hagezarim ha'elleh, between these pieces. The picture looks ahead to Exodus 13:21 and to Sinai, and it stands for God. The ceremony needs both people in the covenant to walk the lane. Only one does. God has put the other one to sleep. So the covenant of 15:18 is one-sided in form. God takes the curse of the oath on Himself for both sides. This answers the problem of Abram's failures in the rest of his story. The covenant does not keep going because of how well he does, because he never swore to it. He was asleep.

Now the sun went down and it got dark. A deep sleep came over Abram, and a great darkness. First God told him the hard part. His family would be slaves in another country. It would last four hundred years. But God said He would bring them out again. God did not hide the bad news from him. Then a smoking oven and a blazing torch appeared. They moved down the path, between the pieces. Remember who was supposed to walk there? Both people. Both sides of the promise had to walk. But Abram was fast asleep. He could not walk. So God walked it alone. He took on the whole promise.

Abram fell fast asleep in the dark. Then God walked the path alone. God did the whole promise by Himself!