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.”^(A)

¹² Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, “as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.”^(A)

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.”

¹⁰ The Lord your God has multiplied you, so that today you are as numerous as the stars of heaven.^(A)

¹³ Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’ ”^(A)

¹⁷ I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies,^(A)

²² Your ancestors went down to Egypt seventy persons, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in heaven.^(A)

⁷ and not all of Abraham’s children are his descendants, but “it is through Isaac that descendants shall be named for you.”^{(A) 8} This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as descendants.

²² Just as the host of heaven cannot be numbered and the sands of the sea cannot be measured, so I will increase the offspring of my servant David and the Levites who minister to me.^(A)