Today’s Passage: Genesis 15
This is one of the great chapters of the whole Bible, and you must read it slowly, because a single verse in the middle of it will echo all the way to the end of the book. Years have passed since God called Abram out of Haran, and the old man is still waiting for the son he was promised. So God comes to him in a vision and says, do not be afraid, I am your shield, your very great reward. Abram answers honestly that he is still childless, that a servant stands to inherit everything he owns, and God does not scold him for saying it. Instead He takes him outside under the night sky and tells him to count the stars, if he can, for so many will his children be. And then comes the sentence the rest of Scripture will build upon: Abram believed the LORD, and it was credited to him as righteousness. After that God makes a solemn covenant, cutting animals in two and passing between the pieces Himself while Abram sleeps in a deep and dreadful darkness, binding His own name to a promise no man could keep. So the chapter holds a childless man, a sky full of stars, one word of faith, and a God who swears the whole thing on Himself.
As you read, hold this: Abram believed God, and God counted it as righteousness.
Context The world of Genesis 15
To feel the weight of this chapter you have to remember how old Abram already is, and how long he has been waiting. God first promised him a great nation back in chapter twelve, and since then Abram has walked through Canaan, gone down to Egypt and back, rescued his nephew Lot from raiding kings, and grown rich and gray, and still there is no child. The promise has had years to feel thin. When God says here, I am your very great reward, He is speaking to a man who has every earthly reason to wonder whether the promise will ever come true.
Then there is the strange ceremony in the second half, which would have made perfect sense to Abram even though it looks foreign to us. In the ancient world, when two parties made a binding agreement, they would sometimes cut animals in half and lay the pieces in two rows, and then both would walk the path of blood between them. The walk was a kind of solemn oath, a way of saying, may I be cut in pieces like these animals if I break my word. It was the most serious promise a person could make.
Keep that picture in your mind, because the astonishing thing in this chapter is who walks the path and who does not. Abram prepares the animals, but when the moment comes, a deep sleep falls on him, and it is God alone, appearing as a smoking firepot and a blazing torch, who passes between the pieces. Abram only watches. The covenant is real, and its whole burden rests on God.
Genesis 15:1-6 (BSB)
¹ After these events, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” ² But Abram replied, “O Lord GOD, what can You give me, since I remain childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” ³ Abram continued, “Behold, You have given me no offspring, so a servant in my household will be my heir.” ⁴ Then the word of the LORD came to Abram, saying, “This one will not be your heir, but one who comes from your own body will be your heir.” ⁵ And the LORD took him outside and said, “Now look to the heavens and count the stars, if you are able.” Then He told him, “So shall your offspring be.” ⁶ Abram believed the LORD, and it was credited to him as righteousness.
Listen to the tenderness of how it opens: do not be afraid, Abram. God does not begin with a rebuke or a demand, but with comfort, and He gives Abram two enormous things to hold onto. I am your shield, He says, the one who guards you, and I am your very great reward, the one worth more than anything you could gain. And Abram, instead of pretending to be braver than he is, tells God the plain truth of his heart. What good is any reward, he asks, when I have no son to give it to, and a servant from Damascus will inherit my house? It is honest, aching, grown-old prayer, and God receives it.
So God answers, first with a word and then with a picture. The servant will not be your heir, He says, but a son from your own body will be. And then He does something you can almost feel. He takes the old man outside, into the open air of the night, and tells him to look up and count the stars if he can, and says, so shall your offspring be. A man with no children at all is asked to stand under a sky too full to number and believe that his family will be like that. And here is the hinge of the whole Bible: Abram aman, pronounced ah-MAHN. Strong's H539, to be firm, steady, faithful; to trust, believe. This is the root that stands behind a word you say all the time, for it is the very word we turn into our amen. At its heart it means to be firm, to be steady, to lean your whole weight on something and find that it holds. When the Bible says Abram believed the LORD, it is not describing a light opinion or a passing hope. It is the picture of a man putting the full weight of his life down on the promise of God, the way you would trust your whole body to solid ground. That is what faith is. It is not pretending to be certain about the stars you cannot count; it is trusting the God who made them, and resting there. And every time you say amen at the end of a prayer, you are speaking Abram’s word, saying, this is firm, this is sure, I lean on it. the LORD. He did not see a single child yet. He simply took God at His word. And God credited that faith to him as tsedaqah, pronounced tseh-dah-KAH. Strong's H6666, righteousness, right doing, justice, standing right with God and others. This is the word for being right, for standing in a right relationship, for being just and true. And notice the wonder of where it lands in this verse. Abram had done no great deed to earn it. He had, in fact, stumbled more than once. Yet when he believed God, that faith was credited to him as righteousness, set down in his account as though it were the very thing that made him right. This is the seed from which the whole gospel will one day grow. Long before there was a law given at Sinai, before there was a temple or a sacrifice, God showed the way a person is made right with Him: not by a lifetime of flawless works, but by trusting the promise of a gracious God. Everything the New Testament will say about being justified by faith is already planted, quietly, in this one line. , counting a trusting old man as right with Himself, not because of anything Abram had done, but because he believed the God who promised. Thank God that this is how a sinner is set right, then and now: by trusting the One who keeps His word.
Genesis 15:7-11 (BSB)
⁷ The LORD also told him, “I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.” ⁸ But Abram replied, “Lord GOD, how can I know that I will possess it?” ⁹ And the LORD said to him, “Bring Me a heifer, a goat, and a ram, each three years old, along with a turtledove and a young pigeon.” ¹⁰ So Abram brought all these to Him, split each of them down the middle, and laid the halves opposite each other. The birds, however, he did not cut in half. ¹¹ And the birds of prey descended on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.
Now God turns from the promise of a son to the promise of a land, and He reminds Abram who has been leading him all along. I am the LORD, He says, who brought you out of Ur to give you this land. And once again Abram asks an honest question, but do not mistake it for the same kind of doubt as unbelief. How can I know that I will possess it, he asks, not because he is refusing to trust, but because he longs for something to hold. And God, in great kindness, gives him exactly that. He tells him to bring the animals for a covenant.
So Abram does the careful, bloody work of it. He brings a heifer and a goat and a ram, each three years old, and a turtledove and a pigeon, and he cuts the larger animals down the middle and lays the halves facing each other, making the path between them that the two parties would walk. Then, in a small and vivid detail, the birds of prey come circling down onto the carcasses, and Abram has to drive them away. He waits by the pieces through the long hours, guarding the covenant ground, keeping it ready. It is a picture of faith at work: not passive, not idle, but tending what God has told him to prepare, and waiting for God to act.
Genesis 15:12-16 (BSB)
¹² As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and suddenly great terror and darkness overwhelmed him. ¹³ Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. ¹⁴ But I will judge the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will depart with many possessions. ¹⁵ You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a ripe old age. ¹⁶ In the fourth generation your descendants will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
As the sun goes down, a deep sleep falls on Abram, and with it a great terror and a thick darkness settle over him. This is no ordinary nightfall. It is the hush before God speaks something solemn, and into that darkness God tells Abram the long road his family will have to travel. Know for certain, He says, and then He lays out four hundred years in advance: Abram’s descendants will live as strangers in a land not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated. It is a hard word to receive, and God does not soften it or hide it. He tells His friend the truth about the road ahead.
But listen to what God folds inside that hard word, for it is full of mercy. I will judge the nation that enslaves them, He says, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You yourself will die in peace, in a good old age. And in the fourth generation your children will come back to this very land. God even tells him why the wait must be so long: the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete, meaning God will not sweep a people from the land before their wickedness has run its full course. He is patient and just, even toward the nations that do not know Him. So Abram is given a promise stretched across centuries, with suffering in the middle of it and deliverance on the far side, and the God who tells him all of it is the God who will see every year of it through.
Genesis 15:17-21 (BSB)
¹⁷ When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, behold, a smoking firepot and a flaming torch appeared and passed between the halves of the carcasses. ¹⁸ On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land—from the river of Egypt to the great River Euphrates— ¹⁹ the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, ²⁰ Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, ²¹ Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.”
Now comes the moment the whole chapter has been building toward, and it is one of the most beautiful things in all of Scripture. Full night has fallen, and out of the darkness comes a smoking firepot and a blazing torch, and it moves down the bloody path between the pieces of the animals. This is God Himself, passing through. And here is the wonder you must not miss: Abram is asleep. By every custom of that world, both parties should have walked between the pieces, each swearing his own life on the keeping of the promise. But God alone walks the path, and Abram never takes a step. God takes the entire covenant onto Himself.
Think of what that means. When a promise is sworn this way, the one who passes through is saying, let it be done to me as to these animals if I fail to keep my word. And God, who cannot fail, walks it alone, so that the whole weight of the berit, pronounced beh-REET. Strong's H1285, covenant, a solemn binding agreement. A berith is a binding agreement, a solemn bond sworn between two parties, and it is one of the most important words in the whole Bible, for the story of Scripture is the story of the covenants God makes with His people. What makes this covenant so remarkable is that it flows in one direction. In many agreements, both sides take on obligations, and the bond holds only as long as both keep their part. But here God does the passing through alone, and so this berith rests entirely on what God will do. It is grace cut into the shape of a promise. Every later covenant that leads to the cross carries this same signature within it: a God who does not wait for us to prove ourselves worthy, but who binds Himself first, and keeps His word to the end. rests on His faithfulness and none of it on Abram’s. Then He speaks the boundaries of the gift, a great land from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates, naming people after people who dwell there now but whose land will one day belong to Abram’s children. The promise is enormous, the boundaries are wide, and the surety of it is God’s own unbreakable oath. Praise the God who does not merely ask us to keep covenant with Him, but binds Himself to keep covenant with us.
Study notes Going deeper
Of all the verses in this chapter, one was singled out by the New Testament and set like a jewel at the very center of the gospel. When the Apostle Paul wanted to prove that a person is made right with God by faith and not by works, he did not reach for something new. He reached all the way back to this old man under the stars.
"For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”" Romans 4:3 (BSB)
And then Paul drew out the very heart of it, in words that turn the whole world’s thinking upside down.
"However, to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness." Romans 4:5 (BSB)
Do you see how far the light of Genesis 15 reaches? The way Abram was made right with God is the very same way any of us are made right with Him: not by piling up enough good works to earn His favor, but by trusting the God who justifies those who could never earn it. Abram believed the promise of a son he could not yet see, and we believe the promise of a Savior who has already come. And the God who walked the path of blood alone for Abram walked another lonely road for us, all the way to a cross, taking the whole covenant onto Himself. Thank God that our standing with Him has never rested on how strong our grip is, but on how sure His promise is.