Some
time later, the Lord spoke to Abram in a vision and said to him, “Do not be afraid,
Abram, for I will protect you, and your reward will be great.”
But
Abram replied, “O Sovereign Lord, what good are all your
blessings when I don’t even have a son? Since you’ve given me no children,
Eliezer of Damascus, a servant in my household, will inherit all my wealth. You have given me no descendants of my own, so one of my
servants will be my heir.”
Then
the Lord said to him, “No, your servant will not be your heir, for you
will have a son of your own who will be your heir.” Then the Lord took Abram outside and said to him, “Look up into the sky and
count the stars if you can. That’s how many descendants you will have!”
And
Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith.
Then
the Lord told him, “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land
as your possession.”
But
Abram replied, “O Sovereign Lord, how can I be sure that
I will actually possess it?”
The Lord told him, “Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old
female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” So
Abram presented all these to him and killed them. Then he cut each animal down
the middle and laid the halves side by side; he did not, however, cut the birds
in half. Some vultures swooped down to eat the carcasses, but Abram
chased them away.
As the
sun was going down, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a terrifying darkness
came down over him. Then the Lord said to Abram, “You can be sure that your descendants will be
strangers in a foreign land, where they will be oppressed as slaves for 400
years. But I will punish the
nation that enslaves them, and in the end they will come away with great
wealth. (As for you, you will die
in peace and be buried at a ripe old age.) After four generations your descendants will return here to this
land, for the sins of the Amorites do not yet warrant their destruction.”
After
the sun went down and darkness fell, Abram saw a smoking fire-pot and a flaming
torch pass between the halves of the carcasses.
So the Lord made a covenant with Abram that day and said, “I have given this
land to your descendants, all the way from the border of Egypt* to the great Euphrates River— the land now occupied by the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.”
But God told Abraham,
“Do not be upset over the boy and your servant. Do whatever Sarah tells you,
for Isaac is the son through whom your descendants will be counted.
* In
Hebrew the river of Egypt, referring either to an eastern branch of
the Nile River or to the Brook of Egypt in the Sinai
~ Source : Genesis
15:1-21; 21:12 [Holy Bible -NLT] taken from https://www.biblegateway.com
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