Genesis 15:1-21
15 After these things Jehovah’s word came to Abram in a vision “Do not be afraid, Abram: you have me as shield; your reward shall be very great.”
2 * And Abram said “Lord Jehovah, what will you give me, seeing I am going away childless and the heir presumptive of my house is Dammesek Eliʽezer?”
3 And Abram said “Here you have given me no issue, and the son of my household is to succeed to my possessions.”
4 But he found Jehovah’s word coming to him “This man shall not succeed you; the one who shall come out of your own body, he shall succeed you.”
5 And he had him go outside, and said “Look at the sky, and count up the stars if you are able to”; and he said to him “Such shall your descendants be.”
6 And he believed Jehovah, and he credited it to him for righteousness.
7 And he said to him “I am Jehovah, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this country to possess.”
8 And he said “Lord Jehovah, by what shall I know that I am to possess it?”
9 * And he said to him “Get me a three-year-old heifer and a three-year-old she-goat and a turtledove and a squab.”
10 And he got all these, and clove them through the middle and put each cleft opposite its mate, but did not cleave the birds;
11 and the vultures came down on the carcasses and Abram shooed them off.
12 And when the sun was about to set Abram fell into a trance and felt a terror, a great darkness falling upon him;
13 and he said to Abram “You shall know that your descendants will be immigrants in a country not their own, and be enslaved to them, and they will be wearing them down, four hundred years;
14 but, withal, the nation they are enslaved to I will bring to justice; and after that they shall go out with great chattels.
15 But you yourself shall go to your fathers untroubled; you shall be buried in good old age.
16 And in the fourth generation they shall come back here. For the guilt of the Amorites is not complete as yet.”
17 And when the sun had set and it was dark, there was a smoking firepot and a burning torch that passed between those pieces.
18 That day Jehovah made a covenant with Abram, “To your descendants I give this country, from the River of Egypt to the Great River, the river Euphrates:
19 the Cainites and the Kenizzites and the Kadmonites
20 and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the ogres
21 and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Girgashites and the Jebusites.”
Footnotes
^ 15:2 (Dammesek Eliʽezer) Unc.; susp.
^ 15:9 Or a third-born heifer and third-born she-goat
