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.^(A)

¹⁴ and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and all the families of the earth shall be blessed^[a] in you and in your offspring.^(A)

¹² Yet you have said, ‘I will surely do you good and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted because of their number.’ ”^(A)

¹⁶ For this reason the promise depends on faith, in order that it may rest on grace, so that it may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (who is the father of all of us,^{(A) 17} as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”), in the presence of the God in whom he believed,^[a] who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.^{(B) 18} Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become “the father of many nations,” according to what was said, “So shall your descendants be.”