God's Covenant with Abram

15 After this, Abram had a vision and heard the Lord say to him, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I will shield you from danger and give you a great reward.”

² But Abram answered, “Sovereign Lord, what good will your reward do me, since I have no children? My only heir is Eliezer of Damascus.^{[a] 3} You have given me no children, and one of my slaves will inherit my property.”

⁴ Then he heard the Lord speaking to him again: “This slave Eliezer will not inherit your property; your own son will be your heir.” ^5 (A)The Lord took him outside and said, “Look at the sky and try to count the stars; you will have as many descendants as that.”

^6 (B)Abram put his trust in the Lord, and because of this the Lord was pleased with him and accepted him.

⁷ Then the Lord said to him, “I am the Lord, who led you out of Ur in Babylonia, to give you this land as your own.”

⁸ But Abram asked, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that it will be mine?”

⁹ He answered, “Bring me a cow, a goat, and a ram, each of them three years old, and a dove and a pigeon.” ¹⁰ Abram brought the animals to God, cut them in half, and placed the halves opposite each other in two rows; but he did not cut up the birds. ¹¹ Vultures came down on the bodies, but Abram drove them off.

^12 (C)When the sun was going down, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and fear and terror came over him. ^13 (D)The Lord said to him, “Your descendants will be strangers in a foreign land; they will be slaves there and will be treated cruelly for four hundred years. ^14 (E)But I will punish the nation that enslaves them, and when they leave that foreign land, they will take great wealth with them. ¹⁵ You yourself will live to a ripe old age, die in peace, and be buried. ¹⁶ It will be four generations before your descendants come back here, because I will not drive out the Amorites until they become so wicked that they must be punished.”

¹⁷ When the sun had set and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch suddenly appeared and passed between the pieces of the animals. ^18 (F)Then and there the Lord made a covenant with Abram. He said, “I promise to give your descendants all this land from the border of Egypt to the Euphrates River, ¹⁹ including the lands of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, ²⁰ the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, ²¹ the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”

Hagar and Ishmael

16 Abram's wife Sarai had not borne him any children. But she had an Egyptian slave woman named Hagar, ² and so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Why don't you sleep with my slave? Perhaps she can have a child for me.” Abram agreed with what Sarai said. ³ So she gave Hagar to him to be his concubine. (This happened after Abram had lived in Canaan for ten years.) ⁴ Abram had intercourse with Hagar, and she became pregnant. When she found out that she was pregnant, she became proud and despised Sarai.

⁵ Then Sarai said to Abram, “It's your fault that Hagar despises me.^[b] I myself gave her to you, and ever since she found out that she was pregnant, she has despised me. May the Lord judge which of us is right, you or me!”

⁶ Abram answered, “Very well, she is your slave and under your control; do whatever you want with her.” Then Sarai treated Hagar so cruelly that she ran away.

⁷ The angel of the Lord met Hagar at a spring in the desert on the road to Shur ⁸ and said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?”

She answered, “I am running away from my mistress.”

⁹ He said, “Go back to her and be her slave.” ¹⁰ Then he said, “I will give you so many descendants that no one will be able to count them. ¹¹ You are going to have a son, and you will name him Ishmael,^[c] because the Lord has heard your cry of distress. ¹² But your son will live like a wild donkey; he will be against everyone, and everyone will be against him. He will live apart from all his relatives.”

¹³ Hagar asked herself, “Have I really seen God and lived to tell about it?”^[d] So she called the Lord, who had spoken to her, “A God Who Sees.” ¹⁴ That is why people call the well between Kadesh and Bered “The Well of the Living One Who Sees Me.”

^15 (G)Hagar bore Abram a son, and he named him Ishmael. ¹⁶ Abram was eighty-six years old at the time.

Circumcision, the Sign of the Covenant

17 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am the Almighty God. Obey me and always do what is right. ² I will make my covenant with you and give you many descendants.” ³ Abram bowed down with his face touching the ground, and God said, ⁴ “I make this covenant with you: I promise that you will be the ancestor of many nations. ^5 (H)Your name will no longer be Abram, but Abraham,^[e] because I am making you the ancestor of many nations. ⁶ I will give you many descendants, and some of them will be kings. You will have so many descendants that they will become nations.

^7 (I)“I will keep my promise to you and to your descendants in future generations as an everlasting covenant. I will be your God and the God of your descendants. ^8 (J)I will give to you and to your descendants this land in which you are now a foreigner. The whole land of Canaan will belong to your descendants forever, and I will be their God.”

⁹ God said to Abraham, “You also must agree to keep the covenant with me, both you and your descendants in future generations. ^10 (K)You and your descendants must all agree to circumcise every male among you. ^11-12 From now on you must circumcise every baby boy when he is eight days old, including slaves born in your homes and slaves bought from foreigners. This will show that there is a covenant between you and me. ¹³ Each one must be circumcised, and this will be a physical sign to show that my covenant with you is everlasting. ¹⁴ Any male who has not been circumcised will no longer be considered one of my people, because he has not kept the covenant with me.”

¹⁵ God said to Abraham, “You must no longer call your wife Sarai; from now on her name is Sarah.^{[f] 16} I will bless her, and I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she will become the mother of nations, and there will be kings among her descendants.”

¹⁷ Abraham bowed down with his face touching the ground, but he began to laugh when he thought, “Can a man have a child when he is a hundred years old? Can Sarah have a child at ninety?” ¹⁸ He asked God, “Why not let Ishmael be my heir?”

¹⁹ But God said, “No. Your wife Sarah will bear you a son and you will name him Isaac.^[g] I will keep my covenant with him and with his descendants forever. It is an everlasting covenant. ²⁰ I have heard your request about Ishmael, so I will bless him and give him many children and many descendants. He will be the father of twelve princes, and I will make a great nation of his descendants. ²¹ But I will keep my covenant with your son Isaac, who will be born to Sarah about this time next year.” ²² When God finished speaking to Abraham, he left him.

²³ On that same day Abraham obeyed God and circumcised his son Ishmael and all the other males in his household, including the slaves born in his home and those he had bought. ²⁴ Abraham was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised, ²⁵ and his son Ishmael was thirteen. ²⁶ They were both circumcised on the same day, ²⁷ together with all of Abraham's slaves.

Laziness and Foolishness

^1-2 Lazy people are no better than dung; they are repulsive, and no one wants to get near them.

³ It is a disgrace to a father to have an undisciplined child, especially if it is a daughter. ⁴ A sensible daughter will get a husband, but a shameless daughter brings her father grief. ⁵ A girl with no sense of propriety will disgrace both her husband and her father; neither will have any respect for her.

⁶ Lecturing your children can sometimes be as out of place as singing to people in mourning, but a whipping is a wise choice of discipline at any time.

⁷ Trying to teach a fool is like gluing a broken pot back together, like waking someone out of a deep sleep. ⁸ Explaining something to a fool is like explaining it to a sleepy person; when you have finished, he'll say,

¹¹ We mourn for the dead because they have no access to light. We ought to mourn for fools, because they have no access to intelligence. In fact, we should go into deeper mourning for fools, because the life they lead is worse than death. The dead are at least at rest. ^12 (A)For seven days we mourn the dead, but a foolish or ungodly person causes a lifetime of grief.

¹³ Don't visit stupid people or spend a lot of time talking with them. Avoid them; then they can't contaminate you, and you can live in peace without being troubled or worn down by their foolishness. ¹⁴ Such people are a heavier burden to bear than lead; and the only word that fits them is

¹⁶ A wooden beam can be put into a building so firmly that an earthquake cannot shake it loose; a person can be trained to use reason and good sense so well that he keeps his head when a crisis comes. ¹⁷ A mind that thinks things through intelligently is like a firm wall, finely decorated. ¹⁸ Small stones on top of a wall^[b] will not stay put when the wind blows, and a person whose stupid ideas have made him timid will not be able to stand up to frightening situations.