Genesis 15

¹ Some time after these events, this word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: Fear not, Abram! I am your shield; I will make your reward very great.

² But Abram said, O Lord GOD, what good will your gifts be, if I keep on being childless and have as my heir the steward of my house, Eliezer?

³ Abram continued, See, you have given me no offspring, and so one of my servants will be my heir.

⁴ Then the word of the LORD came to him: No, that one shall not be your heir; your own issue shall be your heir.

⁵ He took him outside and said: Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can. Just so, he added, shall your descendants be.

⁶ Abram put his faith in the LORD, who credited it to him as an act of righteousness.

⁷ He then said to him, I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land as a possession.

⁸ O Lord GOD, he asked, How am I to know that I shall possess it?

⁹ He answered him, Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old she-goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtle-dove, and a young pigeon.

¹⁰ He brought him all these, split them in two, and placed each half opposite the other; but the birds he did not cut up.

¹¹ Birds of prey swooped down on the carcasses, but Abram stayed with them.

¹² As the sun was about to set, a trance fell upon Abram, and a deep, terrifying darkness enveloped him.

¹³ Then the LORD said to Abram: Know for certain that your descendants shall be aliens in a land not their own, where they shall be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years.

¹⁴ But I will bring judgment on the nation they must serve, and in the end they will depart with great wealth.

¹⁵ You, however, shall join your forefathers in peace; you shall be buried at a contented old age.

¹⁶ In the fourth time-span the others shall come back here; the wickedness of the Amorites will not have reached its full measure until then.

¹⁷ When the sun had set and it was dark, there appeared a smoking brazier and a flaming torch, which passed between those pieces.

¹⁸ It was on that occasion that the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying: To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the Great River (the Euphrates),

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.