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)

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)

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)

The Restoration of Israel

^10 [a]Yet the number of the people of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which can be neither measured nor numbered, and in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it shall be said to them, “Children of the living God.”^(A)

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)

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)

⁴ I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and will give to your offspring all these lands, and all the nations of the earth shall gain blessing for themselves through your offspring,^(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.^{(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.” ¹⁹ He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already^[b] as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), and the barrenness of Sarah’s womb.^(B)

²² For though your people, O Israel, were like the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will return. Destruction is decreed, an overwhelming verdict.^(A)

⁸ and will come out to deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, in order to gather them for battle; they are as numerous as the sands of the sea.^(A)