Genesis 15:9-21
New Catholic Bible
9 He said, “Take a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old she-goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”
10 He took all these animals and split them in two and placed each half opposite the other (except for the birds). 11 Birds of prey landed upon the carcasses, but Abram chased them away.
12 As the sun was setting, a trance fell upon Abram, and a fearful darkness descended upon him. 13 The Lord said to Abram, “Know that your descendants shall be foreigners in a land that is not their own. They shall be made slaves and oppressed for four hundred years. 14 But I will execute my judgment upon the nation that they will have served. They will leave it with great riches. 15 As for you, you will go in peace to your fathers, and you will be buried at a happy old age. 16 In the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites has not yet come to full measure.”
17 When the sun set, it was dark, and a smoking brazier and a flaming torch passed between the carcasses of the animals that had been split in two.[a] 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, “To your descendants I will give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates, 19 the dwelling place of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, 20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”
Read full chapterFootnotes
- Genesis 15:17 This ancient covenant rite signified that the contracting parties called down on themselves the bloody fate of the animals if they violated the solemn commitment they had accepted (see Jer 34:18-20). The flame or lightning flashes express omnipotence; the smoke or darkness signifies the mystery of God that is inaccessible to the human gaze.
