The Abraham Story Part 10: God's Covenant with Abram

God’s Covenant with Abram

Setting - After these things . is Abram back at the sacred trees of Mamre or is he outside of Salem? Outside of Salem is the last place we saw him, but his camp was outside of mamre. The answer is we don’t know.

We are having another conversation with God.

Genesis 15:7–21 NASB95

7 And He said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it.” 8 He said, “O Lord God, how may I know that I will possess it?” 9 So He said to him, “Bring Me a three year old heifer, and a three year old female goat, and a three year old ram, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” 10 Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, and laid each half opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds. 11 The birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, and Abram drove them away. 12 Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him. 13 God said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years. 14 “But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. 15 “As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age. 16 “Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.” 17 It came about when the sun had set, that it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land, From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates: 19 the Kenite and the Kenizzite and the Kadmonite 20 and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Rephaim 21 and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Girgashite and the Jebusite.”

Remember, what was the first conversation about? It was about seed. There’s two main promises to Avram, seed and land. So the first dialogue was about seed, this one is about land. “I brought you out of one land to bring you in and give you this land to inherit it.” And Avram says, “Master Yahweh, how can I be certain that I’m going to inherit the land?” So notice that’s exactly, God made a promise about seed. “Now here’s the thing, I’m naked, and how is this gonna work?” And he trusted God on that one.

God brings up the land, as if that’s any more or less impossible than seed. And he responds with the same, a doubt-filled question again, “How can I know that I’m going to inherit it?” And so that second doubt, here’s God’s response to it. “Get some animals.

Take for me a three-year-old calf, a three-year-old goat, a three-year-old ram, a dove, and a pigeon.”

Or really Avram, if you need help, just go check out Leviticus chapter 1 and you’ll know that I’m having you order, I’m ordering up, you know, the offerings from Leviticus chapters 1 through 7.

So get those animals. “And so, he took for himself all of these, and then he halved them in the middle.

And he set each half so that it met its neighbor. But the birds, he did not half.” And speaking of birds, “Birds of prey came down upon the corpses, and Avram had to run around blowing them away.”

So the first narrative, was a dialogue about seed. God made a promise, Avram responded with doubt.

Second part of the conversation, God took Avram outside at night, Avram trusts, and God says right relationship.

So in that first little scene, radical trust and faith leads to right relationship with God. And God was patient walking him through the doubt. Second scene here, another promise about land. Once again, Avram responds with doubt. And so Yahweh is going to take Avram outside at night again, and he’s gonna repeat the promise, and something else is going to happen. And what that conversation is gonna lead to is not faith and righteousness, but rather doubt is going to lead to Yahweh formalizing his promise with the covenant oath.

Faith leads to right standing with Yahweh, which just means we’re good. Like, “I’m just gonna trust you on your word.”

Doubt forces God to say, “Okay, you’re not gonna trust me. How can I make you trust me? Okay, let’s get formal about this thing.” And so the covenant represents this formalizing of the relationship.

Now, it’s not bad, but you just have to sit and say, why are these two scenes next to each other? Which is more ideal, that God has to put in writing, “Here’s what I’m gonna do so that you can trust me?” Or like the first scene, is it more ideal that God would just say, “Listen, I’m gonna do it, just trust me and then you just trust me”? There’s a contrast here.

In other words, covenant, this is the second covenant that’s gonna be made in the story of the Bible. The first one was through Noah with all creation.

And there, remember the covenant was a ceasefire treaty.

People had filled the land with blood of the innocent. It cries out to God. God’s like, “That’s not gonna do at all,” so undo creation. And then Noah gets off the boat, surrenders everything through a sacrifice, and God says, “Okay, I’ll work with this righteous guy on behalf of everybody else. And to show you that I’m never going to let the cosmos collapse again,” he makes a covenant.

So covenants have this interesting role in the story.

It’s sort of like the thing that you have to do to formalize a relationship that’s not going great.

In contrast to trust and righteousness, which is just like, “We’re good. We don’t have to write it down. Like, you trust me, I’ll trust you, and we’ll let the thing work more organically.”

our own experience of having to write up contracts. Which is good, It ensures the rights and interests of all the different parties. But there’s also something kind of sad when you have to do that, especially with somebody that you know, “I promise not to hurt you and take advantage of you. I mean, I wasn’t planning on it. But I guess I can’t promise that I might not hurt you and take advantage of you, so let’s put it into writing.” So there’s something interesting here where this covenant, like it’s good, it will sustain the relationship, but it’s not ideal.

Not that covenants are bad, but that they are an unfortunate necessity when dealing with people like us. And what is God to do in dealing with people like us?

He wants us to trust, but when we don’t trust, he’ll put it in a formalized writing process that is called a covenant.

The other interesting thing is that word for “halving, splitting in half,” it’s a verb that’s the same three letters as the noun “covenant.” So the noun “covenant” is “berit,” and to split something in half is the same letters but swapped around, it’s “batar.” And so already in the halving, you’re starting to hear in Hebrew the word “covenant” repeating in this. You know a covenant’s coming.

So there’s some kind of sacrifice being made. A covenant is being made through the death of these animals. What is going on? The story is about to get even more interesting.

Verse 12.

“Now as the sun was going, a deep stupor-sleep fell upon Avram.” I think most translations do a deep sleep. It’s not normal sleep. The last time somebody fell asleep like this was the human in the garden. When it was not good that there wasn’t a corresponding partner for the human, and there was no delivering help, certainly not the animals. I mean, the animals are cool, yeah, they’ll hang out with you, but you can’t multiply with those and be the image of God. So the human could do nothing in and of themselves to provide the solution to the crisis. So God makes the human pass out and then does on their behalf, by splitting the human, does on their behalf what they couldn’t do for themselves. So something similar is happening here.

“A deep stupor-sleep fell upon Avram, and look, terror, darkness, great, fell upon him, descending into night.

And he said to Avram, ‘You must know this, your future seed,’” you know, that you just trusted me for, “’they’re going to be immigrants in a land that is not their own.

And they, that is your seed, is going to serve or become slaves to them, that is the land that’s not their own. And they, that is the land that’s not their own, are going to oppress your seed for centuries, 400 years.

And also that nation that they’re enslaved to, I’m gonna bring judgment upon it. And after that, they will go out with many possessions.’” I’ve heard that story before, I think.

“’But as for you, Avram, you will go to your fathers in completeness. You’ll be buried at a good old age. And the fourth generation will return here because the crookedness of the Amorites, the Canaanite inhabitants of the land, yeah, they haven’t filled up, completed the measure of crookedness that I know is coming.’

Now the sun was going.” Did we already say that? Okay, so just to remind you, the sun, this whole thing is taking place at night when the light turns into dark. “And there was darkness and a furnace of smoke and fiery flame starts passing in between the severed animal pieces” laying bloody on the ground.

“And on that day,” then the narrator speaks up. The narrator says, “Okay, if you’re puzzled, you have no clue what’s going on right now, let me just make it very clear for you. Yahweh’s cutting a covenant right now with this guy, Avram, who’s passed out on the ground over there.” “And Yahweh cut a covenant on that day, saying, ‘To your seed,’” promise number one, “’I’m going to give this land,’” promise number two.

“’From the river of Egypt down south all the way to the great river Euphrates,’” that runs right along Babylon, from Egypt to Babylon, “’I’m going to give you all of it, your seed. Along with all the Canaanites that live in the middle, times 10, the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.’” Jebusites are the inhabitants of Jerusalem before David declared it his capital.

So this little scene has four parts.

you got two note, two like little time notes about it was getting dark and Avram just inexplicably just got real tired real quick, and he just passes out on the ground. At the same time, that darkness descends on the scene, and Yahweh shows up in the form of a fiery furnace and pillar of smoke.

And there’s two, there’s some bad news and there’s some good news.

The bad news is your seed is gonna go through a real difficult season of oppression and exile in a land that is not their own.

I’m going to vindicate them, bring judgment on their oppressors. They’ll get rich off the deal.

But this is long after you pass from the scene.

And to that seed that will go through a season of oppression and be liberated, I’m going to give them this amazing stretch of land that exceeds the boundaries, beyond your wildest dreams, from the empire down south of Egypt, who thinks they rule the world, to the empire up north, Babylon, they think they rule the world. No, no, no, no. I’m gonna give your seed all of the lands that these empires claim.

So and then, that’s the scene, that’s the covenant promise here.

So you’ve got faith leads to righteousness and right standing, then you’ve got doubt which leads to a covenant. And so Yahweh formalizes the promise. And then this is the scene before us. This is the first covenant God makes with Abram and and his family. And notice how we’re peering into the, this is a big narrative anticipation that stretches all the way into the book of Joshua. Think through the horizon of how far we’re looking down the Hebrew Bible here. We’re looking into the exodus, and then the deliverance out of Egypt, and then the possession of the promised land into the, so we’re really stretching, casting our glance way, way forward here.

Cutting the Pieces of the Covenant:

So we’re developing this image of the splitting of the Adam from the Eden story, the splitting of the human. But here, it’s these sacrificial animals that are split, and then the symbolic passage through the pieces. What is going on here?

So the narrator knows you don’t have a clue, ‘cause the narrator comes in at verse 18. It’s just like, “Hey, if you’re lost, just know this is a covenant ceremony.” Right? That’s the baseline. But we’re like, “What kind of covenant is this? What is this about?”

So I don’t claim to fully understand what’s going on here.

There is one Hyperlink that’s very helpful, and it’s a good example of how the Hebrew Bible as a collection is meditation literature, where there’ll be little puzzles hidden early here, and the clarifying, like, light bulb moment is buried in some other part of the collection so that you go, “Ah, I get it,” and then you come back and you read it with brand new eyes. So in this case, the light bulb moment is buried in the book of Jeremiah. Now, why it’s in the book of Jeremiah where it is in the book of Jeremiah, that’s what I don’t fully understand yet. But I know that it’s important.

Jeremiah 34:13–20 CSB

13 “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I made a covenant with your ancestors when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery, saying, 14 ‘At the end of seven years, each of you must let his fellow Hebrew who sold himself to you go. He may serve you six years, but then you must let him go free from your service.’ But your ancestors did not obey me or pay any attention. 15 Today you repented and did what pleased me, each of you proclaiming freedom for his neighbor. You made a covenant before me at the house that bears my name. 16 But you have changed your minds and profaned my name. Each has taken back his male and female slaves who had been let go free to go wherever they wanted, and you have again forced them to be your slaves. 17 “Therefore, this is what the Lord says: You have not obeyed me by proclaiming freedom, each for his fellow Hebrew and for his neighbor. I hereby proclaim freedom for you—this is the Lord’s declaration—to the sword, to plague, and to famine! I will make you a horror to all the earth’s kingdoms. 18 As for those who disobeyed my covenant, not keeping the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will treat them like the calf they cut in two in order to pass between its pieces. 19 The officials of Judah and Jerusalem, the court officials, the priests, and all the people of the land who passed between the pieces of the calf—20 all these I will hand over to their enemies, to those who intend to take their life. Their corpses will become food for the birds of the sky and for the wild animals of the land.

In Jeremiah 34, God mentions a group of people who have broken a covenant with him, it’s the rulers of Jerusalem and Judah.

And they’ve broken the covenant, ‘cause that’s what mostly Israelites do, is they break their promises. And so God says, “I’m going to give these people who transgressed, or broke, my covenant, they haven’t fulfilled the words of the covenant that they made before me when they cut the calf in two and they passed between its pieces— the officials of Judah, the officials of Jerusalem, the officers, the priests, all the leaders, they passed between the pieces of the calf.” So in other words, this is some kind of symbolic ritual. And what does it mean to pass through severed bodies as you walk through, as you make a promise?

Well, what God says is, “Listen, they broke their promise, so I’m going to give them into the hands of their enemies and into the hands of those who seek their lives. And their dead bodies will be food for the birds of the sky and for the beasts of the earth.” So what we’re dealing with is the ancient covenant ritual where, “Hey, I promise not to hurt you. You promise not to hurt me. And if either of us ever does hurt each other, may our fate be like these animals that are lying here on the ground.” And you walk through the dead animals, right, that you just killed, making a promise not to ever kill each other.

So that’s what’s going on here. So again, I don’t claim I understand everything about this, but that much seems fairly clear. So let’s turn our attention back to the Genesis scene here and ask ourselves, who were the parties involved in this covenant? We’ve got two parties, we’ve got Yahweh and we’ve got Avram and his seed, which are right now in his innards and in Sarai’s innards. And so Yahweh’s gonna make a covenant pact to fulfill his end of the bargain.

And so what’s interesting about the scene, there’s something missing in Genesis 15. ‘Cause when you make a promise in a pact, the whole point is you go through together.

And where is one of the covenant partners in this little grizzly scene right here? He’s passed out on the ground. But who made Avram pass out on the ground? It’s not Avram’s fault. God did it. This is a strange form of delivering help.

So and then Yahweh alone, in the form of a fire cloud, which is a little, this is another little seed planted here because whenever Yahweh shows up later on at the tabernacle or the Mount Sinai, it’s gonna be the same thing here, the fire cloud and so on. And so Yahweh alone passes through. So you just have to stop and think about that.

So if both the people who walk through the animals are bearing responsibility to keep their ends of the covenant and also to bear the consequences if the covenant is broken, which would mean that if Avram turns out to be unfaithful to the covenant, his life, you know, his life will be the cost. And what do we know about Avram? How good is he at being faithful? Sometimes, sometimes he gets it right. Sometimes he really gets it wrong.

And my hunch is that Yahweh is, he knows that. I mean, what we’re looking at is an amazing act of mercy.

There is judgment for those who break the covenant, and it’s gruesome. The outcome of ruining God’s good world and breaking faith, not trusting him, leads to a lot of pain on the land, and Yahweh doesn’t want that. And he hands over to judgment people who wreak havoc and pain in his world. And if Avram were to bear the full responsibility for the weight of his failures, his life would be forfeit.

And so this is a scene of both judgment and mercy in the making of the covenant.

Yahweh is bearing responsibility for both parties.

So he is bearing responsibility to both fulfill the covenant, and then he just made the one who would suffer for breaking the covenant pass out on the ground. So the narrative doesn’t say it, it just gives you this vivid scene and you’re just forced to be like, “Wait a minute, what is going on here?” So there’s a long tradition of interpretation in Jewish and Christian history that sees this as a moment where God takes on the role of both covenant partners and takes responsibility for both the success of the covenant and bearing the responsibilities for the failure of the covenant, which means God is, right in this moment, signing himself up to suffer, to participate in the suffering of his faithless people.

There’s something very profound happening here. I don’t claim to fully understand, but the narrative, once you get the images, the images kind of do the work for you. And this the first covenant God makes with Avram.

You could say that the gospel authors the way, what they’re trying to tell us about the meaning of Jesus’ death, this story is certainly in the background of what they want us to call up to mind and use this story to help us understand what’s happening on the cross.

So the question is if you have Israelites being in Egypt as immigrants, being oppressed by them, but how did, how was that whole, what are the sequence of events that are gonna lead up to that? The next chapter is going to be about Israelites oppressing Egyptian immigrants. And there’s some, in the macro design of Genesis, the exodus becomes this sad, inverted consequence of what Avram and Sarah do to Hagar. ‘Cause that conflict is gonna lead to a division in the family that’s gonna keep ricocheting through the rest of Genesis that is going to lead them down to Egypt in the first place. And so it’s as if God can see here the outcome of what Sarah and Avram are gonna do in the next story, which is oppress the Egyptian immigrant. So when you get into the laws of the Torah that say, “Hey, Israelites, never oppress the immigrant,” it’s not just remembering the exodus, it’s also linked all the way back up to this next story that God can see coming.

How does God promise to give a land already occupied to Avram? Does it have something to do with verse 16, “because the crookedness of the Amorites,” and he’s in the land of Mamre who is an Amorite?

The Cosmic Promised Land

The boundaries of the promised land, which take up the promises of Genesis 12:7 and 13:14-18, offer the first rough description of the land promised to Avram.

Genesis 15:18–21 CSB

18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “I give this land to your offspring, from the Brook of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates River: 19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hethites, Perizzites, Rephaim, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.”

This passages invites us to explore a long-standing puzzle that involves two distinct mapping patterns found in biblical descriptions of the promised land

Promised Land Mapping Pattern 1

Numbers 34:2–12 NIV

2 “Command the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you enter Canaan, the land that will be allotted to you as an inheritance is to have these boundaries: 3 “ ‘Your southern side will include some of the Desert of Zin along the border of Edom. Your southern boundary will start in the east from the southern end of the Dead Sea, 4 cross south of Scorpion Pass, continue on to Zin and go south of Kadesh Barnea. Then it will go to Hazar Addar and over to Azmon, 5 where it will turn, join the Wadi of Egypt and end at the Mediterranean Sea. 6 “ ‘Your western boundary will be the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. This will be your boundary on the west. 7 “ ‘For your northern boundary, run a line from the Mediterranean Sea to Mount Hor 8 and from Mount Hor to Lebo Hamath. Then the boundary will go to Zedad, 9 continue to Ziphron and end at Hazar Enan. This will be your boundary on the north. 10 “ ‘For your eastern boundary, run a line from Hazar Enan to Shepham. 11 The boundary will go down from Shepham to Riblah on the east side of Ain and continue along the slopes east of the Sea of Galilee. 12 Then the boundary will go down along the Jordan and end at the Dead Sea. “ ‘This will be your land, with its boundaries on every side.’ ”

Other examples of this boundary pattern: Joshua 15:1-63; Ezekiel 47.

Promised Land Mapping Pattern 2

Exodus 23:31 CSB

31 I will set your borders from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates River. For I will place the inhabitants of the land under your control, and you will drive them out ahead of you.

Deuteronomy 11:24 CSB

24 Every place the sole of your foot treads will be yours. Your territory will extend from the wilderness to Lebanon and from the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Joshua 1:4 CSB

4 Your territory will be from the wilderness and Lebanon to the great river, the Euphrates River—all the land of the Hittites—and west to the Mediterranean Sea.

Other examples of this boundary pattern: Deuteronomy 1:7-8; Genesis 2:10-14; 1 Kings 4:20-21.

These two maps seem to have different symbolic value, so they communicate different things.

Pattern 1 is smaller and more historically realistic to the actual proportions of Israel’s  territory. The boundaries shrank throughout time, as they lost more and more land to their neighbors. You could call this the “realistic map.”

Pattern 2 is much larger and more historically idealistic. For a brief period of Solomon’s reign, it seems he had influence over this region, but it quickly ended when he died. This map, however, has symbolic value connected to the garden of Eden, which was itself the source of these two rivers.

There is also significance in the fact that the two rivers on each side of this description are the life sources of Israel’s two greatest imperial enemies in the biblical story: Egypt and Babylon.

“The two maps reflect Israel as conceived in relation to the two great empires that it was engaged by Egypt and Babilonia. The first mapping pattern encompasses the boundaries of province of Canaan under Egyptian rule. In the symbolism of the exodus story, God liberated Israel from slavery in Egypt and then gave them the land of Canaan … The borders of map 1 are the Egyptian-defined border, rather than a description of Israel’s exact borders at any specific moment in its history. The map expresses Israel’s resistance to Egyptian rule. The second mapping pattern presents Israel as a power reaching up to the river that sources Babylon. Babylonian propaganda considered all the land west of the Euphrates as conquered territory. The biblical map turns this around. The land west of the Euphrates is the land of promise for Israel. Thus, both maps represent one way in which Israel resisted the imperial powers, as they symbolically push their enemies back behind the rivers from which they came.” Parry, Robin (2014). The Biblical Cosmos: A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Weird and Wonderful World of the Bible. Cascade Books. 67.

The Oppression of Hagar

Bibliography

https://bibleproject.com/classroom/abraham

Middleton, J. Richard. Abraham’s Silence: The Binding of Isaac, the Suffering of Job, and How to Talk Back to God. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2021.

Cotter, David W. Genesis. Edited by Jerome T. Walsh, Chris Franke, and David W. Cotter. Berit Olam Studies in Hebrew Narrative and Poetry. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2003.

Josephus, Flavius, and William Whiston. The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1987.

Richard N. Longenecker, “The Melchizedek Argument of Hebrews: A Study in the Development and Circumstantial Expression of New Testament Thought,” in Unity and Diversity in New Testament Theology: Essays in Honor of George E. Ladd (ed. Robert Guelich, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 161.

https://bible.org/article/melchizedek-covenantal-figure-biblical-theology-eschatological-royal-priesthood#P8_421

Anders Aschim, “Melchizedek and Jesus: 11QMelchizedek and the Epistle to the Hebrews,” in The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism: Papers from the St. Andrews Conferences on the Historical Origins of the Worship of Jesus (eds. Carey Newman, James Davila, and Gladys Lewis, JSJSup. 63; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 130.

Paul J. Kobelski, Melchizedek and Melchiresa (CBQMS 10; Washington DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1981), 126-7.

https://bible.ca/manuscripts/Septuagint-LXX-Shem-was-Melchizedek-Masoretic-chronology-Messiah-Jesus-Christ-priesthood.htm

https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-ancient-traditions/history-circumcision-0010398