The Call of Abram

12 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.^{(A) 2} I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.^{(B) 3} I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”^[a](C)

¹⁴ The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Raise your eyes now, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward,^{(A) 15} for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever.^{(B) 16} I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted.^{(C) 17} Rise up, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.”^(D)

God’s Covenant with Abram

15 After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”^{(A) 2} But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?”^{[a](B) 3} And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.”^{(C) 4} But the word of the Lord came to him, “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.”^{(D) 5} He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”^{(E) 6} And he believed the Lord, and the Lord^[b] reckoned it to him as righteousness.

⁷ Then he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.”^{(F) 8} But he said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?”^{(G) 9} He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” ¹⁰ He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other, but he did not cut the birds in two.^{(H) 11} And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.

¹² As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him.^{(I) 13} Then the Lord^[c] said to Abram, “Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years,^{(J) 14} but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.^{(K) 15} As for yourself, you shall go to your ancestors in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age.^{(L) 16} And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”^(M)

¹⁷ When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.^{(N) 18} On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates,^{(O) 19} the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, ²⁰ the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, ²¹ the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”