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The Covenant with Abram

1

Some time after these events, this word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: "Fear not, Abram! I am your shield; I will make your reward very great."

2

But Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what good will your gifts be, if I keep on being childless and have as my heir the steward of my house, Eliezer?"

3

Abram continued, "See, you have given me no offspring, and so one of my servants will be my heir."

4

Then the word of the LORD came to him: "No, that one shall not be your heir; your own issue shall be your heir."

5

He took him outside and said: "Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can. Just so," he added, "shall your descendants be."

6

Abram put his faith in the LORD, who credited it to him as an act of righteousness.

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He then said to him, "I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land as a possession."

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"O Lord GOD," he asked, "How am I to know that I shall possess it?"

9

He answered him, "Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old she-goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtle-dove, and a young pigeon."

10

He brought him all these, split them in two, and placed each half opposite the other; but the birds he did not cut up.

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Birds of prey swooped down on the carcasses, but Abram stayed with them.

12

As the sun was about to set, a trance fell upon Abram, and a deep, terrifying darkness enveloped him.

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Then the LORD said to Abram: "Know for certain that your descendants shall be aliens in a land not their own, where they shall be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years.

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But I will bring judgment on the nation they must serve, and in the end they will depart with great wealth.

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You, however, shall join your forefathers in peace; you shall be buried at a contented old age.

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In the fourth time-span the others shall come back here; the wickedness of the Amorites will not have reached its full measure until then."

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When the sun had set and it was dark, there appeared a smoking brazier and a flaming torch, which passed between those pieces.

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It was on that occasion that the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying: "To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the Great River (the Euphrates),

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the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites,

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the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim,

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the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites."