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.