And it came to pass when the sun had gone down, and it was dark, that behold, there was a smoking furnace, and a flame of fire which passed between those pieces.
Abram had asked how he could know the land would be his. God answered with a ceremony instead of an argument: animals cut in two, a long wait, deep sleep, and then, after dark, fire moving between the pieces.
Where the ESV says "smoking fire pot and flaming torch", older translations say a smoking furnace and a burning lamp. Walking between the pieces of a sacrifice meant pledging yourself to keep the agreement. Here only one side walks.
What sealed all this as a covenant was this: after dark, a smoking furnace and a burning lamp passed between the divided pieces of the sacrifice. God showed His presence in these two ways. There was no thought of Abram passing between the pieces, as if he were pledging himself to anything. It was God pledging Himself to do what He had just said, and to do it unconditionally. This appearance of God, passing between the pieces, was as striking as His appearance to Moses in the burning bush.
Abram is asleep for the decisive moment. Everything therefore rests on one side only.
This is hard to understand, but let me suggest what it means: everything depends on God. God went through the slaughtered animals alone. Everything depends on Him. If we stand on the basis of works of law, then it depends on us, and so it will never work. But when it depends on God alone, He is faithful, and then it all comes true.
God does not just repeat the promise. He answers Abram's question by binding Himself in a covenant of death.
Next, to reassure the weak heart of man, God binds Himself by covenant. This is grace stooping very low. But what does this amazing grace meet? — "How am I to know that I shall possess it?" Then, while nature and man pass through the dark shadow of the power of death (and Christ as man has done this for us), God passes between the pieces. He binds Himself in a covenant of death to fulfil this desire of the believer's heart, according to His own thoughts. And promise lays the sure foundation of it in Christ.
The same principle runs back through Genesis and forward through Scripture: what God gives freely, He gives on a bought basis.
The land is promised to him, but it is by the covenant of Him who passes through the pieces of the sacrifice. No promised blessing that is not a purchased blessing also — no throne of grace, as we have said before, that does not stay itself on the ark of the covenant.
The two fires trace the whole story of Abram's descendants.
One writer has well said that Israel's history could be summed up in two words: "the furnace and the lamp." Egypt was a furnace of testing for the descendants of Abraham. There the fire burned hot, but it was soon followed by "the burning lamp" of God's own deliverance… Satan might enjoy lighting the furnace and making it fiercer, but the blessed God, on the other hand, always delighted to let the rays of His lamp fall on the dark path of His suffering heirs.
The same two fires act as seals on the covenant. Each seal carries its own word:
These seals meant something. They carried the stamp of how God planned to deal with Abram's descendants, and He now revealed this to Abram: "affliction" written, as it were, on the one seal, and "salvation" on the other.
Faith can go slack, and the heart can go dark. The two fires answer both.
If the energy and watchfulness of faith fail, the furnace of trial will not fail as the appointed means of purifying. And for the darkness that unbelief brings, the burning lamp is just as surely provided. How sure the inheritance is for those to whom God has pledged Himself in Christ, to bring them through to enjoy it, and to secure the conditions that His holiness must impose!
The furnace and the lamp meet again at the cross and the tomb.
On the cross, too, He submitted to "the smoking furnace." Under the searching of that fire He vindicated the righteousness of God by the wrath He endured, while offended holiness found its food and satisfaction in the perfection of the offering it consumed… The furnace and the lamp have each done their own work at the cross and the tomb, for "from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour."
after fix: n/a
- Pieces — God made the covenant over slain animals, so the promise of the land stands on sacrifice, not sentiment.
- Alone — God alone passed between the parts while Abram slept. He asked nothing of Abram, so nothing in Abram could break it.
- Furnace — the fire marks affliction: Egypt first, and then the judgment Christ Himself bore in the darkness of the cross.
- Lamp — the light marks deliverance. God gives it for the very darkness that unbelief brings on, and He raised up rescue again and again.
- Inheritance — God pledged Himself, so the outcome is certain. He brings His people through the furnace, by the lamp, into what He promised.
On the same day Jehovah made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates;
That same day, God counted Abram's faith to him as righteousness. Then He went further. He bound Himself by a formal covenant and drew the borders of a land Abram did not own. Two questions follow. Who guaranteed the grant, and has that land ever been held?
The covenant is dated. It falls on the same day recorded earlier in the chapter. One writer shows why that order matters when the New Testament looks back at this scene.
To set out this great truth the Apostle turns again to Abraham's history. He speaks of the promise of the inheritance. God made, or renewed, this promise to Abraham on the same day He counted him righteous, as we read in Genesis 15:18. … God gave this promise of the inheritance long before the law, and it in no way depended upon works of law.
God sealed the covenant with a ceremony. Only one party walked between the divided animals.
After dark, a smoking furnace and a burning lamp passed between the divided pieces of the sacrifice. That is what ratified all this as a covenant. In this twofold way God showed His presence. There was no thought of Abram passing between the pieces, as though he were pledging himself to anything. It was God pledging Himself to do as He had just said, and to do it unconditionally.
The sacrifice was not a formality. One writer links the death of the animals to how God can keep such a promise and stay righteous.
A smoking furnace and a burning lamp passed between the pieces (Gen. 15). This declared that God could keep His covenant of promise to Abram and stay righteous in only one way: through the death of a substitute, and that under awful judgment.
The two rivers are not vague poetry. The word used for "river" rules out a seasonal stream, so one writer can name which waterway is meant.
God promised the whole land of Canaan to Abraham, and a further territory as well: "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates." Gen. 15:18; Gen. 17:8. The word used here three times for "river" is nahar. It does not apply to a winter stream. So "river of Egypt" almost certainly refers to the most easterly branch of the Nile, called the Pelusiac. These limits of Abraham's promised possession lie to the south-west and north-east. The Mediterranean is the western limit, and the eastern limit is not defined.
God speaks as though the land is already handed over. Yet the verses that follow list ten nations living on it.
Verses 18-21 speak of an unconditional covenant that the Lord made with Abram that day. He told Abram that He has given his descendants all the land from the river of Egypt (the Nile) to the river Euphrates. Ten different nations held part of that land at the time. When Israel came back from Egypt they did not possess anything like that whole territory, and never have. But the promise of God stands, and its fulfilment awaits the millennium.
Israel did once reach the northern boundary, but not for long.
Prophecy marks out the rivers Nile and Euphrates as the limits of the promised land (Gen. 15:18). For a brief season David and Solomon extended the royal authority to the Euphrates (1 Chron. 18:3; 2 Chron. 9:26). The division of the kingdom under Rehoboam cut this wide dominion back sharply.
The covenant was one-sided and confirmed. So what could the law do to it, arriving centuries later?
A later act cannot cancel a solemnly confirmed covenant, even among men. Now God had given the promise to Abraham apart from law, and confirmed it to Christ 430 years before the law came. So the law could not cancel the promise already confirmed, nor change its terms. No one could cancel it, and no one could add to it. It must be fulfilled as it was given.
- Day — God dated the land-covenant to the very day He counted Abram righteous. That was long before the law, so the inheritance never rested on works of law.
- Deed — God alone passed between the pieces. Abram pledged nothing, which makes the covenant unconditional from the first word.
- Death — The divided sacrifices point to a substitute. Only that death let God keep such a promise and stay righteous.
- Domain — The borders are real places: an eastern branch of the Nile, the great river Euphrates, and the Mediterranean on the west.
- Delay — Ten nations held the ground then. David and Solomon reached the Euphrates for only a short season, and Israel has never held the full territory. The promise is unconditional, so it still stands.