Yahweh Cuts a Covenant with Abram: Genesis 15

In Genesis 15 Yahweh makes a covenant with Abram. He’s already made Abram promises in Genesis 12 and 13; now He takes it a step further and makes His promises official by putting Himself in covenant with Abram. This episode comes right on the heels of Abram’s encounter with Melchizedek. Abram has a ‘vision’ in which the word of Yahweh comes to him: ‘Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.’ God’s words to Abram hark back to the War of Kings: Abram’s success in his night raid against the Eastern Coalition is attributed to Yahweh acting as his shield, and though Abram refused bonus rewards from the King of Sodom, here God gives him a divine reward. 

When we picture this scene, we often imagine that Abram is asleep, for isn’t that when visions come? However, in the Bible, while visions can indeed happen in dreams, they aren't limited to dreams nor treated as dreams. Biblical visions can be auditory or visual; they can take place in natural or supernatural settings; and the observer can be either an observer or a participant. It seems that Abram is awake for this vision – for, as we will see, the Lord ‘takes him outside’ – and the setting is natural: Abram isn’t in Yahweh’s heavenly throne room but inside his tent when the dream begins. He isn’t just an observer but a participant in this vision. His tent may have looked something like the one below, assuming the historicity of the Beni Hasan Tomb Painting; we shouldn't picture his sleeping quarters as drab and ochre in the desert sands but as colorful and festive. 

Abram, promised reward from Yahweh, doesn’t seem too excited. After all, he’s already wealthy and has made a big name for himself. He’s one of the big-wig chieftains in Canaan, and he’s only expanded his booty from his almost-disastrous Egyptian sojourn. What reward could he possibly want? ‘Sovereign Lord,’ he says, ‘what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?’ Abram’s in the same straits as career-focused tycoons who reach old age, survey their vast holdings, and lament the greatest treasure of all: children. Because he’s childless, he’s made his servant (likely a right-hand man) Eliezar of Damascus his heir. This was in keeping with ancient Near Eastern customs in which a childless couple could adopt an indirect heir who would receive the inheritance in return for taking care of the elderly couple in their old age and assuring them a proper burial. ‘You have given me no children,’ he continues, ‘so a servant in my household will be my heir.’ The real reward that Abram wants is a son, and his words here almost come across as grumbling. It’s been a decade since he left Mesopotamia for the land of Canaan and he’s still waiting for Yahweh to make good on His promise.

Yahweh doesn’t seem put off by Abram’s grumbling. ‘This man will not be your heir,’ He tells Abram, ‘but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.’ God hasn’t forgotten His promise; He intends to see it through. At this point Yahweh takes Abram outside his tent, and he tells him, ‘Look up at the sky and count the stars, if indeed you can count them. So shall your offspring be!’ In Genesis 13 God promised that Abram’s descendants would be as numerous as the dust of the earth; here He reiterates that promise by assuring Abram that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars. Abram is comforted, and ‘he believed the Lord, and [the Lord] credited it to him as righteousness.’ (Gen 15.6)

Genesis 15.6 is the first instance in the whole Bible where we find the word ‘believed.’ As any student of Scripture knows, belief is a big deal in the Bible. While most world religions put the emphasis of rightness with their deities on works – behaviors and practice – the Bible makes ‘faith’ (or belief) of primary importance. As St. Paul says in Romans 3.28, ‘We maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from works of the law.’ A person is made right with God (justified) by faith. Works – obedient behaviors and practices – are an outflow of faith, and they have no role in making a person right with God. The kind of faith that God requires is a ‘trusting submission to the Lord.’ It is, in other words, loyalty to Him. It definitely involves believing the right things about Him (what we often call ‘assenting’ to the truth of Scripture), but the crux of the matter is whether or not one kneels before God and submits himself to Him. This is the kind of faith that Abram demonstrated: not only did he believe that God would do what He said He would do (mental belief), but he trusted in Yahweh and was loyal to Him. That loyalty manifested itself in obedience: when God called him to leave Mesopotamia and relocate to the land of Canaan, Abram obeyed. It wasn’t Abram’s obedience that justified him before God but his trust and submission to God which showed itself true in obedience. Abram serves as a measuring-rod for biblical faith, and this is precisely how Paul uses him in Romans 4.1-5:

What shall we say that Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh, has found? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? ‘And Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness.’ Now to the one who works, his pay is not credited according to grace, but according to his due. But to the one who does not work, but who believes in the one who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited for righteousness.

Many people erroneously believe that while Abraham was justified by faith, God required works from the rest of His people up until the coming of Christ. This belief is largely due to the Roman Catholic Church’s emphasis on works being used as an interpretive grid for ancient Judaism. While it’s true that the Israelites had a lot of laws to follow, it was never believed by any well-read Israelite that it was their obedience to those laws that justified them before God. The Israelites believed that they were justified before God by virtue of their being chosen by Him, and as His chosen people they were expected to live a certain way. Membership in God’s covenant comes not only with privileges but also responsibilities. A good Israelite obeyed God’s laws not to earn God’s favor but in gratitude for being shown God’s favor. From Day One, mankind has been justified by having faith in God. At no point has mankind ever been expected to earn God’s favor by works, for this is impossible. 

Getting back to our scene of Abram being shown the stars in the heavens, Yahweh says, ‘I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.’ This is nearly the same language word-for-word with which Yahweh gives the Ten Commandments in the Book of Exodus, hinting at the Torah’s unity of authorship. Abram asks God, ‘How can I know that I will gain possession of it?’ Though it may seem that Abram is doubting that God will do what He said, we must remember that Scripture explicitly says that Abram believed God. This isn’t doubt but Abram requesting a land grant treaty. In the ancient Near East, it was customary for land transactions to be ratified by a covenant ceremony. Yahweh is promising Abram land, and so Abram wants that promise ratified. 

Abram’s request for a land grant treaty leads to Yahweh showing His reliability by ‘cutting a covenant.’ The covenant that follows closely resembles the standard pattern of ancient Near Eastern land grant treaties. God commands Abram to bring him a heifer, goat, and ram – all three years of age – along with a dove and young pigeon. Abram knows what God is setting up, and it’s likely he wasted no time in procuring these animals from among his vast herds of livestock. One can only imagine what his servants would’ve thought, seeing him hustling through the herds, finding the choicest animals, and dragging them out to the hills as fast as his legs could carry him. Having brought the animals to a secluded place, Abram killed the animals, cut all but the birds in half (these would’ve had their necks wrung), and arranged the halves opposite each other with a bloody lane running down the middle. It was gruesome work, and it’s not surprising that he had to drive away droves of birds of prey hoping to feast on the bloodied carcasses. According to ancient customs, those entering into a treaty with one another would walk down the bloody lane, symbolizing that a curse would befall them if they violated the treaty: ‘If I break my word, then let what befell these animals befall me!’ By walking down the bloody aisle, the walker was binding himself by life and death to the treaty: if he broke it, he would have to die. This gruesome ceremony was prevalent in the ancient Near East, so it’s not surprising that the most common expression for forging a covenant in the Old Testament uses the Hebrew word karath (meaning ‘to cut’) because covenants usually involved literally cutting animals in half. 

Having prepared the ceremony, Abram now had to wait for Yahweh to come and instruct him on what was required of him, as it was customary for both parties involved to make promises and then both walk down the aisle, sealing and ratifying the treaty. As the sun sank to the west, Abram fell into a deep sleep. The Hebrew word used is tardema, referring to divinely-induced stupor, and it’s the same word used to describe the deep sleep of Adam when woman was made from his side. A thick and dreadful darkness came over him, and then he heard the voice of the Lord: ‘Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions.’

That’s quite an ominous way to open a treaty! God foretells the Israelites’ enslavement in Egypt followed by their deliverance from their oppressors. God says that they will spend ‘four hundred years’ enslaved in Egypt, which contrasts with the 430 years in Exodus 12.40-41. This is a distinction without a difference; as British scholar Kenneth Kitchen, professor of Egyptology at the University of Liverpool, wrote, ‘the 400 years is a round figure in prospect, while the 430 years is more precise in retrospect.’ God was giving Abram a general idea of the time his descendants would be enslaved but promised that the time would be definite: it wouldn’t last forever. Though they would, for a time, be slaves to an oppressor, they would indeed occupy the Promised Land after the fact. 

Yahweh assures Abram that he won’t experience this calamity: ‘You will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age.’ To ‘go to your ancestors’ is to go to Sheol, the realm of the dead. Though Sheol can be interpreted as an actual place cut off from the presence of God, populated by the disembodied spirits of judged Nephilim, and inhabited by both the dead righteous and unrighteous irrespective of their moral deeds, it can also simply refer to ‘the grave’ (or death). In Second Temple Judaism, Jewish teachers taught that Sheol was an actual place similar to the Hades of Greek mythology, but that it had different compartments for the righteous and unrighteous. Given the revelations of the New Testament, it is best to understand Sheol – at least for the righteous – as ‘the grave,’ for we know that the righteous dead don’t go to hell but to paradise with God. All this to say, here Yahweh assures Abram that he will die in peace. He won’t have to suffer enslavement along with his descendants.

God then gives a reason for the coming enslavement of Abram’s descendants: ‘In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here [the Promised Land], for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.’ The Hebrew word for ‘generation’ (dor) originally meant ‘lifetime,’ so that William F. Albright, a biblical scholar and archaeologist, could say, ‘The early Hebrews dated long periods by lifetimes, not by generations.’ Thus Yahweh is referring to a period of four lifetimes – about 400 years, given that all the patriarchs lived over a century – rather than four generations (which would be around 280 years with a ‘generation’ being about seventy years). The cause of this 400-year delay is due to the accumulating sins of the Amorites.

Remember that the Amorites were a nomadic people group who spread like kudzu through the Fertile Crescent, upsetting the status quo, and they may have been a prime factor in the Bronze Age Collapse that left the many walled cities of Canaan heaps of rubble. Though originally a nomadic people group, in time the word ‘Amorite’ became a cultural designation rather than an ethnic one. The Amorites were those who were subsumed into the Amorite culture in the wake of Amorite expansion. Peoples who settled in Canaan in the wake of the Bronze Age Collapse were both ‘Amorite’ and ‘Canaanite’ in the sense that they were culturally Amorite and geographically Canaanite. The Amorites were a brutal people, and during the Israelites’ Egyptian Bondage, they would reoccupy and rebuild the many towns and cities of Canaan. By the time the Israelites were delivered from Egypt, the land of Canaan would be rebuilt and ready for plunder. Not only that, but the Amorites would be ripe for judgment. These evil people – who are known for the most heinous practice of child sacrifice – would be judged by God as the Israelites marched into the land. Yahweh’s rooting out the inhabitants of Canaan during the Conquest wasn’t simply favoritism towards Abram’s descendants; it was also an act of judgment against the Canaanites for their abhorrent and detestable practices. As Yahweh says in Leviticus 18.25, ‘The land [of Canaan] became unclean, and I have brought the punishment of its guilt upon it, and the land has vomited out its inhabitants.’ While the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt, not only was God getting the land of Canaan rebuilt and ready for occupation, but He was also ensuring that the wicked Amorites were plump for judgment. Sometimes God allows wicked nations to flourish for a time so that when He executes judgment there can be no excuse. 

Having foretold the Israelite enslavement in Egypt along with the promise of Israelite deliverance, Yahweh went forward to ratify the treaty. A smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed down the bloody lane between the hewn animals. This was a theophany – or visible manifestation – of Yahweh walking down the bloody lane. By walking between the dismembered animals, He was bringing a self-malediction upon Himself: ‘May I be torn in half and left for the buzzards if I fail to fulfill My promise!’ Though this promise is connected generally to the promises God had already made to Abram – biological descendants and a land to call their own – it has a more intimate connection to God’s promise of delivering the Israelites from Egyptian bondage. The background of their future enslavement and deliverance makes sense of the manner in which God chose to reveal Himself, via a firepot and torch. Though firepots and torches were common emblems in ancient Near Eastern religious rituals, often symbolizing the presence of a deity and conveying a sense of purification, they are likely chosen here for their relevance to the Israelite enslavement. The firepot was a portable clay oven a few feet high, resembling an inverted bowl with a hole on the upper side for a draft; though used for baking bread and baking grain offerings, it was also used as a kiln for breaking bricks – precisely one of the main tasks thrust upon the enslaved Israelites! In biblical motifs, fire often symbolized God’s judgment; here it connects not only to God’s judgment of the Egyptians but also Him leading the people out of Egypt by a pillar of fire at night. Thus all three aspects of God’s message to Abram – the enslavement of the Israelites, the judgment of their oppressor, and their deliverance from that oppressor – are encapsulated in the firepot and torch. By walking down the bloody lane, Yahweh is in effect saying that if He fails to deliver Abram’s people out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, He will be destroyed!

Though it would’ve been a shock for Abram to see this theophany of God walking down the bloody lane and taking covenant curses upon Himself, it would’ve been no less shocking when Abram realized that he wasn’t summoned to walk the lane himself. There was only one situation in the ancient Near East where just one member of a treaty would walk down the lane, and that was when a servant was making a promise to his master. In that case, the servant would walk down the lane, embracing obligations and consequences of failing to meet those obligations, whereas the master was freed from any obligation. The reverse is true here: the master walks down the bloody lane, embracing obligations and consequences of failing to meet those obligations, while the servant is left ‘free and clear.’ This covenant is thus unconditional for Abram; it doesn’t require anything of him. This ‘covenant of the pieces’ was the second covenant God made with His creation, following the Noahic Covenant in Genesis 9, and like the Noahic Covenant, it was unconditional. Later covenants would be conditional in the sense that they would make demands on mankind; however, the first covenant God made with the Israelites was unconditional. 

The unconditional nature of the ‘covenant of the pieces’ is shocking all on its own, but perhaps even more surprising is the fact that God made a covenant with Abram at all! As biblical scholar Dennis Prager notes, ‘The idea of a covenant between God and man was revolutionary because all other cultures and religious believed that the gods acted capriciously and that the world was therefore completely erratic and unpredictable. When God covenanted with Noah and Abram, He pledged to be dependable and trustworthy, thereby creating for the first time immutable spiritual and moral laws.’

Having ratified His treaty with Abram, Yahweh returned to the crux of the matter. Remember that this whole episode revolved around Abram wanting confirmation of God granting him the Land of Canaan. This unconditional covenant, at its heart, was an ancient Near Eastern land treaty. To this end Yahweh reiterates to Abram, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates – the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.’ The ten people groups listed here make this list of pre-Israelite peoples the longest of seventeen such lists in the Old Testament (though, surprisingly, this is the only list to exclude the Hivites). The extent of the land given is definitely future in scope, for Israel wouldn’t occupy the breadth of land given here until the days of the United Monarchy nigh on a thousand years after Yahweh cut His covenant with Abram. We’ve already come across most of the people groups in this list, though a few are new. The Kenites were a seminomadic people group known for their metalworking and connected to both the Midianites and Amalekites; they hailed from the Sinai and Negev deserts and may have been named after Cain in Genesis 4. The Kadmonites are mentioned nowhere else in the Old Testament, but they may be the same as the seminomadic Kedemites (‘people of the east’) who ventured as far north as Aram in modern Syria and as far south as the Red Sea. The Kenizzites are connected to the Edomites, future descendants of Esau, and though we know little about the Girgashites, they’re mentioned a few times in Ugaritic texts.