And he said to him, I am Jehovah who brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give thee this land to possess it.
Abram has just believed God, and God counted his faith as righteousness. Now God speaks again. He names Himself, recalls the rescue from Ur, and promises the land. Abram's next words ask how he can be sure of it.
Other passages also name Ur as the place Abram came from. One reference work locates it near the Euphrates:
A city or district somewhere near the Euphrates. God called Abraham from there. Genesis 11:28, 31; Genesis 15:7; Nehemiah 9:7. It is thought to be the site of Mugheir, one of the most ancient places in Chaldea.
God did not call this man because he was better than the people around him:
The call of God goes out in sovereign grace. He separates to Himself a man who was no better than his neighbours, but who was openly caught up in the idolatries of his fathers.
God raises the rescue Himself. He points Abram away from his own condition and back to the purpose God held before Abram wanted anything from Him:
The Lord goes further. He turns Abram's attention to Himself, and to His own part in it in grace (v. 7): "I am Jehovah who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give you this land to inherit it" — I came to you when you were a poor idolater, and I came with the purpose and the intention. Your lot depends on grace and purpose, not on your strength or your condition. It did not depend on them then; it does not now. I had the purpose when I visited you in your misery, when you did not even have the desire for it.
The promise rests on the identity of the One promising, not on the strength of the one hearing.
The basis of all blessing for the believer is the fact of who God is. This is why God reminds Abram in verse 7: "I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldees …" So Abram is encouraged to have the fullest confidence in the living God and in what He says.
The order in the chapter matters: the son is promised first, and the land follows. (Older translations read "to inherit it" where the ESV has "to possess.")
Abram is now made secure about the seed. At once he receives a renewal of the promise of the inheritance. The purpose of God runs like this: "if children, then heirs." At this the patriarch's faith grows bolder still. He wants, as it were, to read his title deed to this inheritance. He did not doubt the promise of the inheritance, any more than he had doubted the promise of the seed. But he wanted to search out the ground of his confidence; he would know the covenant of his God. And the Lord hears him in this too.
Abram answers this promise with a question in verse 8, and commentators read it differently. Some hear an honest question from a man who knew he was a sinner:
Is this a challenge to the promise? Is this calling God's truthfulness into question? No, indeed. It is only faith letting God know that a conscious sinner was listening to His promise. The promise therefore needed some warranty to carry it with certainty to the heart. And the Lord was well pleased with this. Faith always pleases Him, since without it nothing does. At once He prepares to let Abraham know that sacrifice sustained the promise.
Others hear a dip in Abram's confidence, though God still answered him:
He is asking, and Jehovah answers, no doubt. But he wants a sign by which he may know that he will inherit: "How am I to know that I shall possess it?" This does not seem to rise to the wonderful trust in Jehovah that marked him at other times.
Writers apply the land to the believer's own inheritance:
For us the land is the good land of our inheritance. The eyes of the Lord rest on it always. It is not earth, but heaven. What a wonderful place to enjoy our portion, when we really know what our portion is! "Where I am" is the Lord's own description of it.
- Grace first. God came to Abram in Ur while he was an idolater — the purpose was God's before the desire was ever Abram's.
- Grace names itself. "I am the LORD" is the foundation; blessing rests on who God is, not on the believer's strength or condition.
- Grace gives. The land is a gift attached to the promised seed: children first, then heirs — a title deed, never a wage.
- Grace bears questions. Abram asked how he could know. Commentators read his question differently. God answered him rather than rebuked him, and pointed him to sacrifice.
- Grace reaches us. The same pattern holds today. God brings people out of one place to give them another — not earth, but the place the Lord calls "where I am."
And he said, Lord Jehovah, how shall I know that I shall possess it?
God has just promised Abram this land, and Abram already stands righteous before Him through faith. Yet Abram asks for proof. Everything turns on what sort of question that is, and on how God answers it.
One reading takes Abram's words as the honest speech of a man who knows what he is. He is not testing God's word; he is telling God that a sinner needs a foundation under a promise before it can rest on the heart.
Is this a challenge of the promise? Is he calling God's truthfulness into question? No, indeed. It is only faith letting God know that the man listening to His promise was a sinner, and knew it. Such a promise therefore needed some guarantee behind it, to carry it to the heart with certainty. And the Lord was well pleased with this. Faith always pleases Him, as without it nothing does. And at once He prepares to let Abram know that sacrifice sustained the promise.
Commentators differ here. Others read the same words as a sign that Abram's faith needed support. They then aim the point at us, not at Abram.
Yet Abram feels that his faith needs help — some confirmation of God's promise. So he asks, "O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?" Surely God's word was enough, was it not? Yet we are all slow to rest fully in the perfect truth and reliability of that word alone.
Whichever way we read the question, God's response is the same. God does not repeat Himself louder. He moves from speech to action, and the benefit of that reaches far beyond Abram.
These may seem strange words, faced with God's absolute assurance. Yet such questions do speak to us of a need in man's heart. God's word alone does not meet that need; God's act must meet it. So in His grace He takes these questions up and answers them in earnest, and through all time we have the blessing of their answer.
Notice what God does not say. He points Abram to no feeling, no track record, no effort — but to slain animals. Assurance is learned at the sacrifice.
Did He tell Abram that it depended upon his experience, or duties, or feelings? No. He taught Abram that blessing comes to fallen man only through sacrifice. Sacrifice is what makes God's eternal blessings sure to us. So God sent him to the sacrifice to find assurance there... There, at the sacrifice, Abram was to learn God's character and mind. That is how he could be sure he would inherit the land.
The animals are not about dealing with sin here. They confirm a grant, like a legal bond. And God makes allowance for the man who asked.
This was of course no question of expiation. It was a matter of confirming God's grant of the inheritance. In the kind and the variety of the animals slain, God (as it seems to me) took account of the weak faith that asked for the sign. He does not decline to give Abram the bond that he asked, or to make all sure by death.
The surprise is not that Abram asked. It is that God stooped to give him a guarantee.
To assure the feeble heart of man, God binds Himself by covenant. What gracious stooping down this is! But what does this wonderful, stooping grace meet? — "O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?" 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 carry out this desire of the believer's heart... In this very remarkable passage we learn two things. God gives man blessed and perfect assurance in the righteousness of faith, and the covenant can never change.
Abram asked about a strip of ground. For us the same question points higher, and it turns into a challenge to look at what we are.
For us the land is the good land of our inheritance. It is the land the eyes of the Lord are always on — not earth, but heaven... But how is man to reach a land like this? A place with Christ, reader! Look at what you are, and answer me: what is to raise a child of earth up to the height of God's own heaven?
- Asked. Commentators read Abram's question two ways: faith wanting a foundation under the promise, or faith too slow to rest in God's bare word. Either way, God welcomed it.
- Answered. God met a need that His word alone was not meeting in Abram's heart — He moved from promise to act.
- Sacrifice. He sent Abram not to his experience, duties or feelings, but to the slain animals, to learn assurance there.
- Covenant. God did not refuse the bond Abram asked for. He passed between the pieces and bound Himself, making the promise unchangeable.
- Inheritance. The same question reaches us about heaven and a place with Christ. Nothing in us lifts a child of earth that high; God's own act must.
And he said to him, Take me a heifer of three years old, and a she-goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtle-dove, and a young pigeon.
Abram had just asked God for something to hold on to — a guarantee that the land promised to him would really be his. God's answer is not more words. He asks for five living creatures, to be brought and killed. Why sacrifice as the answer to a question about inheritance, and why five?
The animals here are not brought to deal with sin. One writer explains what these animals were for, and why God agreed to give the sign at all.
Of course this was not a question of atoning for sin. It was a question of confirming God's grant of the inheritance. In the kind and the variety of the animals killed, God (as it seems to me) took account of the weak faith that asked for the sign. He does not refuse Abram the guarantee he asked for, and He does not refuse to make it all sure by death.
The wording of God's command is noticed closely. The victims are called for by God, for Himself — and the number is explained as a concession to the learner, not a requirement of the Giver.
The Lord says to him, "Take me" — He does not say "Take yourself." Why these five animals? Would not one have been enough for God? I believe one would have been enough for God, but the five were needed for Abraham, and for us as learners of his lesson. I believe the truth brought out here is to show us that God's way of blessing is always based on death. Sacrifice is the means by which you and I can be justified, and by which God has been glorified concerning sin.
A heifer and a pigeon are not worth the same. That gap says something about us, not about the sacrifice.
Now notice that these five animals had different values... The heifer was worth much more than the she-goat. And what were the turtle-dove and the pigeon worth next to the heifer? Each victim presents Christ in death, but Christ grasped in a different way. Not Christ as God values Him, but Christ as you and I value Him... One sees the heifer, the other the pigeon, so to speak.
One writer takes each creature as its own portrait of Christ — the tame animals first, then the two birds.
God delights to gather up the pictures of what Christ is, and to press their meaning on us... The three animals are all tame, not wild. They did not need to be caught for us. They were the willing servants of man's need. Each is three years old — time unfolding a divine mystery in them. The first two are females, the picture of fruitfulness. The heifer stands for the patient Workman; the she-goat, for the Victim for our sins; the ram, in whom the meek surrender of the sheep becomes more positive energy — so later the ram is used for consecration and for the trespass-offering. The birds speak of One from heaven, One whom love made a man of sorrow (the turtle-dove), and One come down to a life of faith on earth (the rock-pigeon...).
Commentators read the repeated age differently. This writer sees it pointing past the death of Christ to what came after.
But the three animals that are three years old are meant to put special emphasis on the resurrection of Christ. His sufferings and death have infinitely great value in atoning for the guilt of our sins. But His resurrection matters just as much, because it proves that God accepted the sacrifice. Without it we could have no assurance that our sins are forgiven.
The dead animals serve a legal act. Later in the chapter one party walks between the pieces, and it is not Abram.
A covenant confirms the whole thing. In it God, as the light that guides and the furnace that tests, stoops to bind Himself to carry it all out. Death makes it sure. So the Lord confirms the covenant by passing, in grace, through what bound Him. Abram, heir of the promises, goes through the terror and the shadow of it. This is not exactly atoning for sin. It is what belonged to confirming the promises, by the only thing that could make them sure for man, a sinner.
Another writer notes that Abram is left out of the deal:
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 that in an unconditional way.
- Asked — Abram wanted proof of the inheritance. God answered with death, not with a louder promise.
- Given — God says "Bring me." The animals are His ask, and one would have been enough for Him. The five are for us.
- Grasped — the five animals differ in value. They picture one Christ, held in different measures by different believers.
- Guaranteed — the three-year-old animals point to the resurrection, God's proof that He accepted the sacrifice.
- Sealed — God alone walks between the pieces. The covenant rests on Him, and death makes it sure.
And he took all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid the half of each opposite its fellow; but the birds he did not divide.
Abram asked how he could know he would inherit the land, and God answered with a knife. Why these five creatures, why cut them open, and why leave the birds whole?
The action was not invented for Abram. It followed a known legal form.
The law of contract is one of the oldest kinds of law. In the world the book of Exodus speaks of, there was a firmly established custom of making a contract. The Hebrew word for making a covenant means to cut a covenant. The same ritual made every covenant, whether between men or, as in this case, between God and man. They took an animal and cut it in two. The parties to the contract then passed between the pieces, and blood sealed the covenant.
Abram wanted proof about the land, and God did not refuse him.
This was not a question of expiation. It was about confirming God's grant of the inheritance. In the character and variety of the animals killed, God (as it seems to me) took account of the weak faith that asked for the sign. He does not decline to give Abram the bond that he asked, or to make everything sure by death. (Compare Jeremiah 34:18-19.) But the promise was not to be made good without tribulation as well as patience from Abram's descendants.
The five creatures are not a random list. Commentators read them as a gathered picture of Christ.
God answers Abram by putting Christ before him as the pledge of the inheritance. God delights to gather up the types of what Christ is, and press their meaning on us. The three beasts are all tame, not wild. No one had to hunt them down for us; they are the willing servants of man's need, each three years old. The first two are females, the type of fruitfulness. The heifer speaks of the patient Workman; the she-goat, of the Victim for our sins. In the ram, the meek surrender of the sheep becomes more positive energy. The birds speak of One from heaven. Love made Him a man of sorrow — that is the turtle-dove. He came down to a life of faith on earth — that is the rock-pigeon.
Why cut them open at all?
In presenting these Abram divided the animals, but not the birds. This is because the animals speak of the Lord Jesus in His earthly walk and character of service and devotion to God. We may divide this for our own spiritual profit. In His service we see unswerving faithfulness and truth. We also see gentleness and love. As our Substitute He must be without any blemish or spot, a pure offering. He must also be tender enough to be a willing offering for us. In the ram He must be a submissive offering — yet not submitting out of slavish fear, but as One with a genuine will.
The birds are the exception, and that is deliberate.
But the birds teach us that He has a heavenly character, high above our ability to contemplate. Though He is true Man, yet He is the Lord from heaven, and as such He is inscrutable. Instead of understanding this great glory, we only worship. Therefore the birds were not divided.
A path lay open between the halves, and only one side walked it.
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 that in an unconditional way. God showed Himself here by passing between the pieces, as remarkably as He showed Himself to Moses in the burning bush.
God alone bound Himself, so the gift never depended on man's terms.
Here we have a covenant of gift. God was the only party to it. He stooped to enter into it, so that man might know how solemn and unchangeable His promise is. And here Paul contrasts the difference of the law and the gift of the inheritance. If the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise. But God gave it to Abraham by promise, and the law could not cancel that. The law was conditional, and the making of the golden calf forfeited it — before its conditions were even declared. But the inheritance was of promise, and therefore secure.
- Asked — Abram wanted to know he would inherit. God met his weak faith with a sign instead of refusing him.
- Cut — "Making a covenant" in Hebrew means to cut one. The parties walked between the split halves, and blood sealed the deal.
- Divided — Abram cut the heifer, she-goat and ram open. Christ's earthly service and His work as Substitute invite that close study.
- Undivided — The dove and pigeon stay whole. His heavenly glory is beyond us, so we worship instead of explaining.
- Alone — Abram never walks the path between the pieces. God alone passes through. So the inheritance rests on promise, not performance, and cannot be lost.
And the birds of prey came down on the carcases; and Abram scared them away.
Abram had asked God how he could know he would inherit the land, and God answered with a covenant sealed in death — animals killed, split, and laid open. Verse 11 is the one moment where Abram acts, and commentators read his guarding of the sacrifice as a picture of faith.
The slain animals are not offered here to deal with sin. They are God's way of putting His grant of the land beyond doubt.
This was not a question of expiation. It was a question of confirming God's grant of the inheritance. In the kind and variety of the animals killed, God (as I see it) took account of the weak faith that asked for the sign. He does not refuse Abram the guarantee he asked for, or refuse to make everything sure by death.
The same principle holds later. What secures blessing is never the strength of the one who asks. It is the death underneath the promise.
Abraham learns that the ground of all blessing must be sacrifice. We always have to remember that the everlasting basis of our blessing is the great sacrifice of Christ. "Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins." People may value the sacrifice of Christ in very different measures, probably pictured by the different animals Abraham was told to offer. But sacrifice alone can secure the blessing.
Commentators read the descending birds in more than one way. Most take them as hostile spiritual powers, drawn to the sacrifice to spoil it.
All of these were given to God in death, but not burned. Abram laid the pieces together, perhaps on an altar, though we are not told this. But the dead meat drew unclean birds, and Abram drove them away (v. 11). These birds speak of Satan and his band of unclean spirits (Matt. 13:4, 19), always ready to steal away from us the priceless value of the sacrifice of Christ.
Others read a second layer here: the divided pieces stand for Abram's descendants, and the birds for the nations that would prey on them.
All these animals appear later in the book of Leviticus, and as sacrifices they picture Christ. The birds that came down on the carcasses, and that Abraham drove away, picture evil… But the divided pieces, with the turtledove and the pigeon, lying open to the birds, also picture Israel, divided and cut through. And the birds can stand for the nations that feed on Israel.
Abram neither rebuilds the offering nor improves it. He refuses to let anything settle on it.
The birds came down to defile it if they could — that is, the activity of life. It is a scene full of hidden meaning. Abram keeps it all pure and clean. The main point is to keep the sacrifice untouched, the foundation of everything.
There is a sharp contrast worth noticing between the bird that comes down here and the bird that comes down at the baptism of Jesus.
There are certain birds that in fact are typical of the Lord Jesus, being used in the offerings, as in Leviticus 1:14-17, turtledoves or pigeons. Again, at the baptism of the Lord Jesus, we are told that "He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him" (Matt. 3:16). This is a precious contrast to Genesis 15:11, where the vultures came down on the carcasses of Abram's sacrifice with the object of devouring it, just as Satan tries to destroy the value of the sacrifice of Christ.
The way Abram handled the birds sets the pattern: no bargaining, no shared ground.
"The birds came down." Evil spiritual powers and principles never stop trying to take away the sign of the covenant. That is, they try to rob us of Christ, or of some part of who He is. Abraham shows us what we should do. He did not compromise with them or give them room; he "drove them away." We need the same constant watchfulness and firmness, giving up in our teaching no particle of the truth about His person or His work, His name or His word.
Abram's guarding lasts only until sunset, when deep sleep and darkness fall on him in the next verse. The offering does not depend on his staying awake.
So death passes over all these pictures of moral beauty, and they lie out in the open under the sky, with faith in Abram guarding the sacrifice from being defiled, until, "as the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him." Faith's watch is over. Darkness follows light. But this only brings out the supreme value of the sacrifice itself. Faith does not give the sacrifice its power; the sacrifice sustains faith.
- Foundation. The divided animals are God's guarantee of the inheritance. Sacrifice alone secures the blessing.
- Threat. The birds of prey picture unclean powers out to rob us of the value of Christ's sacrifice. Some also see the nations that would prey on Abram's descendants.
- Guard. Abram adds nothing to the offering — he only keeps it untouched, because the sacrifice is the foundation of everything.
- Method. He did not compromise or give ground. He drove them away. That is the pattern: give up no part of the truth about Christ's person or work.
- Rest. His watch ends at sunset, but the sacrifice still holds. Faith does not give the sacrifice its power; the sacrifice sustains faith.
And as the sun was just going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, a horror, a great darkness, fell upon him.
Abram had asked God for a sign that he would truly inherit the land. God's answer came as slain animals, a setting sun, a sleep Abram did not choose, and a darkness that terrified him.
The Hebrew word behind "deep sleep" is not the word for ordinary rest. It appears elsewhere only where God Himself is the one acting.
A deep sleep, tardemah, a term never used of natural slumber, but of sleep, either supernatural, for a special purpose (Gen. 2:21; Gen. 15:12; Job 4:13; Job 33:15), or spiritual, in the way God governs and deals with people (Prov. 19:15; Isa. 29:10).
The Morrish Bible Dictionary notes that the Greek Old Testament uses a word here meaning "ecstasy." It is the same word used later of Peter's vision on the rooftop and Paul's vision in the temple. In those visions the mind travels beyond the body.
Abram had cut the animals in two. Now something of that death reaches him. One writer sees the sleep as death's shadow falling on Abram himself.
So here God binds Himself by bringing in death. But the power of death also passes, in a way, on Abram. He gets the blessing only when a deep sleep comes upon him… Abram came under a deep sleep, and a horror of great darkness fell upon him. That is, in his own condition he came under the power of death. It was not actual death, of course, but the shadow of it — a picture of it. So we must die with Him. Death must pass on all flesh for it to inherit the promises.
Up to this point Abram had been the active one, driving the birds of prey away from the carcasses. The sleep ends that work.
Faith's watchfulness is over. Darkness follows light. But this only brings out the supreme value of the sacrifice itself. Faith does not give the sacrifice its power; the sacrifice sustains faith.
Because Abram is asleep, he takes no part in what happens next between the pieces:
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 that in an unconditional way.
The horror is not a sign that God has withdrawn.
Abram had to wait until sundown before anything happened. Then he fell into a deep sleep, and horror and darkness came with it. God was drawing near to him, and the covenant involved darkness as well as light.
Commentators differ on Abram's own state here. William Kelly links the darkness to the doubt behind Abram's asking for a sign. He sees a state that does not stand in the light of God. It stays with Abram's own needs, and with the sorrow such needs bring in a world like this.
Taken with the divided animals of verse 10, this scene has three parts.
Verse 10 has shown that the offering of the Lord Jesus was a sacrifice; now we read of a deep sleep falling upon Abram. This is a picture of the sleep of death, just as the sleep of Adam is in Genesis 2:21. Besides this, a horror of great darkness fell upon him. So the offering of Christ involved (1) sacrifice, (2) death, and (3) the awful darkness of being forsaken by God.
What Abram saw in this darkness, his descendants would live through in Egypt.
Egypt had been to them a place of refuge, a kindly shelter in the time of famine and affliction. It now became to them the house of bondage. In Genesis 15:12, when the "horror of great darkness" fell on Abraham, he had seen a "smoking furnace." Egypt became that furnace.
- Sleep — this word is never used of ordinary rest. God puts Abram out of action before He makes His pledge.
- Shadow — death's shadow falls on Abram himself. Flesh must die before it can inherit the promise.
- Silence — Abram sleeps, so only God passes between the pieces. The covenant rests on God's word alone.
- Substitute — sacrifice, death, and the darkness of being forsaken by God sketch what the cross would cost Christ.
- Sequel — the darkness Abram saw became the "smoking furnace" of Egypt for his descendants.
And he said to Abram, Know assuredly that thy seed will be a sojourner in a land [that is] not theirs, and they shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years.
Abram has just asked how he can know he will inherit the land, and God answers by cutting a covenant in sacrifice. The first thing He reveals is not the land. It is four hundred years of slavery for Abram's descendants. Why should so sure a promise run through so long a sorrow?
God speaks while Abram lies in a deep sleep, with terror and darkness over him. Two symbols then pass between the pieces of the sacrifice. One writer reads them as a summary of the whole prophecy:
This showed what lay ahead for Israel. The smoking furnace stood for their trial and affliction. The burning lamp that passed between the pieces stood for the hope of the deliverance that would rise out of the darkness. Such was God's dealing with them in righteous government.
God tells Abram to know this "for certain." He named the trouble before it came, and one writer takes that advance notice as proof of who controlled it:
This would seem to stand in the way of their blessing. But the very fact that God foretold it to Abram proves that God had this matter in as full control as He had their coming blessing. In other words, God's promise often means long waiting. That waiting is meant only as a needed trial of faith. God's purpose in blessing is not touched by the affliction.
The opening chapters of Exodus show this prediction coming true, cruelty and all:
This is the history of the first twelve chapters of Exodus… Even the anger of man is tied to the wheels of God's decrees. It was so when Christ was "delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God," and men crucified and killed Him (Acts 2:23).
The number raises a real problem, because Exodus 12:40 gives 430 years. Commentators differ over where the count starts. One explanation notes what this verse does not say:
Genesis 15:13 and Acts 7:6 say nothing about Egypt: "Your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs." God said this to Abraham. It may cover the whole period from Isaac's birth to the Exodus, which by the count above was four hundred and five years. That agrees with the round number of four hundred years. Exodus 12:40 is worded differently: "The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years." It is better to take the four hundred and thirty years as covering the sojourn of Abraham (after the promise), and of Isaac, and of Jacob.
Another writer reaches the same starting point from the promise of a return in the fourth generation:
God's promise to Abram in Genesis 15:13-16 mentions "four hundred years," and then the assurance that his descendants would return to the land of Canaan in the fourth generation. So the time of the sojourn, or pilgrimage, of the chosen family must be counted from the days of Abraham, and most likely from his entry into the land of Canaan.
Whatever the starting point, the ending was exact:
Verses 40-42 show us how exactly God keeps to His own appointed time. He had mentioned 400 years to Abraham, as we see in Genesis 15:13. We are not told the exact point from which the count of the 430 years starts. But on the very day it ended the people went out of Egypt. They are called "the hosts of the LORD," though to all appearance they were only a large crowd of freed slaves.
This affliction is not a break in the promise. It is part of it:
In God's promise to Abram, the emblems that represent Him as He binds Himself to give the inheritance are the furnace of fire and the burning lamp. This is the pledge that the discipline they need will not be missing, when the "deep sleep" falling on His people may call for it. Later the burning bush answers to this, and it is not burned up because God is in the fire. So the Egyptian oppression, on its other side, was covenant mercy. And this is only one example of a constant principle in God's ways.
This pattern reaches past Israel to every servant of God:
You reach the inheritance only through the furnace. The darker the smoke of the furnace, the brighter and more cheering the lamp of God's salvation will be… Jacob had to endure twenty-one years of hardship in the house of Laban. Joseph found his furnace of affliction in the dungeons of Egypt. Moses spent forty years in the desert. So it must be with all God's servants.
- Certainty — God named the affliction before it came. He held the suffering as surely as He held the blessing.
- Count — "four hundred years" is a round number. Some date it from Isaac's birth, others from Abraham's entry into Canaan. That longer count covers the 430 years of Exodus 12:40.
- Clock — however you measure the years, Israel left Egypt on the very day the time ran out.
- Crucible — the furnace was one of God's own covenant emblems. So Egypt's oppression was, on its other side, covenant mercy.
- Consequence — the pattern holds for every servant of God. The furnace comes first, the lamp after, and the road to the inheritance runs through both.
But also that nation which they shall serve I will judge; and afterwards they shall come out with great property.
God has just told Abram that his descendants will live as strangers and slaves for four hundred years. This verse is His answer to that dark news. He promises two things in advance. He will judge the nation that enslaves them, and He will bring them out rich.
The affliction was not an accident that God later repaired. God described it to Abram in detail, hundreds of years before any Israelite was a slave in Egypt. Exodus 1 opens by reporting that word coming true.
God foretold the condition of the children of Israel in Exodus 1 many years before, when He declared to Abraham... This is the history of the first twelve chapters of Exodus. So the first chapter brings us to the very edge of the fulfilment of God's ways with His people, as He foretold to Abraham. God harnesses even the anger of man to the chariot wheels of His decrees. So it was when He gave Christ up "according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God," to men to crucify and kill (Acts 2:23).
The four hundred years come as plain fact. The hope rests on what God says He will do at the end of them.
No doubt the Israelites were afflicted 400 years by the stranger; but the point of hope was the judgment of that nation, and Abraham's seed coming out with great substance.
This judgment was no side note in Israel's story.
As His mouth had threatened judgments on injurious enslavers, so did His hand perform in due season. And this dealing of the Lord the God of Israel fills the Law, and the Psalms, and the Prophets.
People have called the silver, gold and clothing Israel carried out of Egypt plain theft. Commentators answer that Israel was collecting pay it had already earned.
In truth their wages were long overdue and had never been paid. It is foolish to suppose that even the smallest wrong was done here... They were to plunder their oppressors by God's own authority, and there was no question at all of deceit or dishonesty. The Authorized Version gives the impression of "borrowing," but that impression is not necessary, and the passage does not call for it. Nothing here suggests that they had no right to what they took.
(The ESV says "great possessions." Older translations say "great substance," the phrase several writers use.)
In his vision Abram had seen a smoking furnace and a burning lamp. Both return in Egypt — the furnace is the slavery, the lamp is the rescue.
The smoking furnace had grown very hot under the pressure of the king's command. Here the Lord's own hand puts it out completely. And the burning lamp, which long before had passed in vision before Abram, now shines brighter and brighter, till its full glory breaks out. Now God fulfils the ancient word of promise for the seed of Abram (Gen. 15:14). The thankful, joyful praises of Moses and of Israel confess the love and faithfulness of the God of Abraham.
Two words in the verse carry the promise: afterward, and come out. The darkness was real, and so was the end God had fixed for it.
These children of Abram would suffer badly. They would pass through a horror of great darkness. Yet the end of it would be great substance. "THEY SHALL COME OUT." They were not to be wiped out or crushed in the furnaces. They were to go through it and come out of it, free and enriched. God had pledged Himself to that, and He would be with them to fulfil His pledge.
Commentators differ on where this promise ends. One writer reads the Exodus as a picture of a greater rescue still to come.
God's promise included His judging the nation that oppressed Israel, and not only freeing Israel, but blessing them with great substance. This came true at the exodus (Ex. 12:35-36). It is also a picture of the great blessing Israel will receive when the nation at last receives their Messiah. He will free them from the bondage to sin that has held them for centuries.
- Foretold — God announced the slavery to Abram centuries early. He harnesses even human cruelty to His purposes.
- Judged — God's hand carried out in due season what His mouth had threatened against the enslavers.
- Owed — The wealth was unpaid wages, taken by divine authority, not by deceit.
- Fulfilled — At the Exodus God put out the furnace and let the lamp shine. Israel's praise confessed His faithfulness.
- Afterward — God's people are not consumed in the furnace. They go through it and come out free and enriched — a pattern still to be repeated for Israel.
And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age.
God has just told Abram that his descendants will serve a foreign nation for four hundred years. Then He turns from the nation's future to the man himself, and raises the hardest question in the chapter: what good is a land promise to a man who will die long before God hands the land over?
This promise of a quiet death is part of a longer answer to a man who was unsure. One writer weighs what the vision gives him, and what it does not.
Here is God knowing what He means to do on earth, and giving a doubting friend the certainty of it. He secures and binds Himself, to comfort a faith that wanted unusual support. Yet there would still be affliction for his descendants. They would still serve a foreign nation. But in the end the LORD would bring them out in triumph. The vision is admirable, but it never looks up to the heights of God's glory, and it never goes down into the depths of His grace.
The phrase is God's plain way of telling Abram he will die. He will not be on earth to see any of this happen.
Now in verse 15 the Lord tells Abram himself that he would not remain on earth. He would go the way his fathers had — that is, through death — and be buried in a good old age. Indeed he would have a far better inheritance than his children, Israel.
Abram had been called out of Ur toward a land on earth. This verse and the next tell him he will never hold it. One writer treats that loss as the point where God opens something better to him.
Abraham was called to go out to a place which God would show him. So he had an earthly calling: the prospect set before him was a land on earth... But after he reached the land, God taught him clearly that his offspring would not really own it until the fourth generation (Gen. 15:15-16). He was to die without ever owning it himself. Would he be worse off through dying? No. He had a heavenly hope given him. He learnt that God had prepared for him a city, and he looked for that "city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God."
Genesis later records the exact end God describes here: the peace and the good old age both came true.
The history of Abraham is deeply instructive. It closes with a brief record of his peaceful end at "a good old age," and his burial by his sons Isaac and Ishmael in the cave of Machpelah. In striking contrast to poor Lot, Abraham finishes his pilgrim path with the respect and honour due to one who was "the friend of God" and "the father of all who believe."
That grave in Canaan did not end his claim on the land. One writer sees the burial place as a statement of hope.
In this life of faith and hope, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are one. Each in his day is gathered to his people. Each is "a handful of sacred dust" in the cave in the field of Ephron the Hittite, laid up there in sure and certain hope of a resurrection to life and to the inheritance.
God gives the reason in the next breath: the people living in the land are not yet ripe for judgment. His patience with them runs for centuries.
God is indeed "slow to anger." The evil of the Canaanite nations was great in Abraham's day. Even so, He held back their judgement for 400 years. "For," He said, "the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete" (Gen. 15:16). From Rahab's words to the spies we learn that the guilty nations knew God's executioners were on their way. She said, "I know that the LORD has given you the land... and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you" (Joshua 2:9). They had heard of God's heavy hand on Egypt... Yet there was no repentance on their part.
- Delay. God tells Abram his descendants will serve a foreign nation long before they own the land. The wait is long; the outcome is certain.
- Peace. Into that long delay God drops a personal word. Abram will not live to see it. He will go the way his fathers went, through death, and be buried in a good old age.
- Better. Dying without the land left him no poorer. God gave him a heavenly hope, and he looked for the city whose designer and builder is God.
- Kept. The promise came true to the letter — a peaceful end, a good old age, and burial by his sons, the honour due to the friend of God.
- Patience. God held back judgment until the sin of the Amorites was complete. He is slow to anger, and that patience is why Abram had to die first.
And [in the] fourth generation they shall come hither again; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.
God has just told Abram that his family will be slaves in Egypt for four hundred years. Here He explains the delay: judgment on the Amorites in Canaan is certain, but their sin is not yet full.
The delay is not indecision. Older translations read "not yet full," the wording the writers below use. They see God's settled method here. He lets evil grow to its full size, so no one can question the sentence when it falls.
God was going to permit the Amorites to fill up the cup of their iniquity before He drove them out and destroyed them. This is always the way He acts in His holy government. It explains the long-suffering He shows to the guilty world we live in. He knows the full nature of man's evil from the start. But He lets that evil come out in full. So when His judgment falls in full severity, every created being can see that it is right.
God deals the same way with nations that had no covenant with Him. His patience is not idle. It keeps working to bring people back, and it stops only when nothing more will help.
God is far from ending an arrangement as soon as man has failed to fulfil his duty under it. God uses long forbearance. He employs all sorts of means to recall man to his duty, until, as the word puts it, there is no remedy. He has shown this even towards those who had no covenant. He announced to Abraham that his offspring would go down into Egypt. And He added that they would not yet take possession of the promised land, because the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet complete.
This verse gives the moral ground for the later conquest of Canaan. Israel did not earn the land. God evicted the tenants because they had ruined the property.
Every landlord has a perfect right to evict bad tenants. The nations of Canaan had not only failed to pay their rent, as we say. They had also damaged and defiled the property so badly that God could no longer put up with them... The iniquity of the Amorites had reached its highest point. Nothing remained but for judgment to take its course... To bear with them any longer would have meant approving the most terrible evils. That, of course, was morally impossible.
Israel must not read the conquest as a compliment to itself. Moses said so plainly. God also warned that the land itself would turn on any people who defiled it — Israel included.
God clearly told Israel why He judged these nations: "Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you" (Deut. 9:5)... "But you shall keep my statutes... lest the land vomit you out when you make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation that was before you." So God let this people ripen to their full height of wickedness. Then He used them to show His righteous anger and power.
Read with verse 15, this verse tells Abram he will die before the promise arrives. One writer finds the answer to that loss in what God gave him instead.
After he reached the land, God taught him plainly that his offspring would not hold it until the fourth generation appeared (Gen. 15:15-16). He was to die without personally possessing it. Would he be worse off through dying? No. He had a heavenly hope given him. He learnt that God had prepared a city for him. He looked for that "city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God." So he wanted a better country than Canaan — a heavenly one.
How long was Israel in Egypt? The four hundred years of verse 13 and the four generations here do not fit together easily. One writer lines the generations up.
A much shorter period is implied in Gen. 15:16, which says of Israel in Egypt that "they shall come back here in the fourth generation"; and if we turn to Ex. 6:16-20 we find exactly four generations: Jacob's son Levi. Levi's son Kohath. Kohath's son Amram. Amram's son Moses.
Commentators differ on how tightly the phrase should be pressed. One warns against treating it as a headcount of everyone who lived in Egypt:
Nothing could be more fault-finding than to take Gen. 15:16 as limiting the Israelites who sojourned in Egypt to just the fourth step in family birth, or to assume that they had no children beyond those named for special reasons.
Writers apply this verse to our own day. It cuts against the assumption that the world is slowly improving.
A word may be needed on verse 16: "for the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full." So many of the Lord's people today have no idea that God allows iniquity to come to the full. They expect evil to lessen and slowly to stop. If we transfer this principle of the growth of evil from the Old Testament to the New... we may discover how unwilling our minds still are to face the character and growth of the evil described in 2 Thessalonians 2.
- Full, not fast — God does not strike at the first offence. He waits until evil is out in the open, so the sentence is beyond dispute.
- Full means patient — the delay is God's long-suffering toward the guilty. The world still lives under that same patience today.
- Full explains Canaan — God evicted the nations for their wickedness. He did not hand Israel the land as a reward.
- Full costs the faithful — Abram dies before the promise arrives, and God gives him a heavenly city instead of the land he never held.
- Full is still filling — the same pattern runs on today. Evil grows to its limit before judgment, so expect ripening, not improvement.
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.