Read with Me
Genesis 15:7-21 (HCSB)
He also said to him, “I am Yahweh who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.”
But he said, “Lord GOD, how can I know that I will possess it?”
He said to him, “Bring Me a three-year-old cow, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”
So he brought all these to Him, split them down the middle, and laid the pieces opposite each other, but he did not cut up the birds. Birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away. As the sun was setting, a deep sleep fell on Abram, and suddenly great terror and darkness descended on him.
Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know this for certain: Your offspring will be foreigners in a land that does not belong to them; they will be enslaved and oppressed 400 years. However, I will judge the nation they serve, and afterward they will go out with many possessions. But you will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a ripe old age. In the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”
When the sun had set and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch appeared and passed between the divided animals.
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 Euphrates River: the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaim, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.”
Listen with Me
After reassuring Abram that the promise was still in effect, just awaiting completion, God reaffirmed his identity to Abram: He was the same God who had called him out of Ur and had promised the land in which he was then living.
Abram asked for confirmation. Some wonder at this because God had just promised him an heir, and he had believed without proof (verse 6). But Abram was still learning about God, and needed reassurance, which God was not averse to supplying.
In Abram’s time solemn agreements were formalized by a covenant ceremony, all the elements of which are included here. First, sacrificial animals were killed and divided into halves, placed across from each other with an aisle in between. In this case, every kind of clean animal from which sacrifices could be made to God were included.
The next step was for the parties to the covenant to walk between the halves of the animals as a sign of the sealing of the agreement. God did not appear right away, so while the sun was still up, Abram had to shoo away the birds of prey that tried to come and snatch up the dead animals.
Finally, just as the sun was setting, God appeared as a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch that passed between the hawks of the carcasses. And He reaffirmed that Abram’s descendants, which He had promised and which He would provide, would indeed inherit the land in which he was dwelling. But it would not be soon. In fact, it would be more than 400 years before the promise would be completely fulfilled.
In the meantime, Abram and his descendants would live in lands in which they were wanderers without the ability to hold property. God even revealed the future slavery in Egypt that lay just three generations away, although He did not specify to Abram specifically where it would take place.
The reason given to Abram for the delay was that the iniquity of the Amorites had not yet reached its full measure. Even though God knew that in 400 years the Amorites and the others living in the land would be so wicked that they would not be responsive to God’s effort to recapture their devotion, even though at that time, they would be idolaters who even sacrificed their own children, that time was not yet. Until they reached that point, God was not willing to destroy them and thus to remove their opportunities to repent, even if He knew they wouldn’t take them.
Pray with Me
Father, I am hard-pressed to find a better example of Your love and Your grace outside the cross itself. Even though You knew without a doubt that the cause of the Amorites was hopeless, You were still unwilling to remove their opportunity to repent until they reached the point where they would not repent. You stuck with the hopeless cause out of Your love for people until Your omniscience showed that no more of them would ever repent. Only then did You bring Your judgment on them in the form of the invading Israelites and destroy them utterly. Lord, You stuck with me when I was in the far country because You knew I would return to You, and You did not destroy me even though I had strayed so far from You. Thank You for Your love and your grace that never gives up as long as there is hope. Amen.