Genesis15chapter 15

Genesis 15:1

After these things points back to the battle of the kings, where Abram had just refused the king of Sodom from a thread even to a shoelatchet. God answers that refusal by naming himself the shield and the exceeding great reward, so the man who turned down spoil is told what he has instead. Four expressions enter Scripture in this one verse: the word of the LORD came, in a vision, Fear not, and shield.

Genesis 15:2-3

The complaint is that the house already has an heir and he is a servant, Eliezer of Damascus, adopted rather than born. Genesis had put this obstacle in front of the promise from the start, since Sarai's barrenness is stated in 11:30, one verse before God tells Abram he will make of him a great nation. Abram is proposing his own repair for it here, and in the next chapter he proposes another one with Hagar. Both times he tries to supply the promised seed from inside his own household.

Genesis 15:4-5

God rejects the servant heir and specifies one that shall come forth out of thine own bowels, which rules out adoption and leaves Abram nothing to arrange. Then he is brought outside to count stars, having been told in 13:16 that his seed would be as the dust of the earth, and at 22:17 the promise adds the sand of the sea shore. The measure grows each time God restates it, and the last enlargement comes only after the son has been laid on the altar.

Genesis 15:6

This is the first time Scripture uses the word believed and the first time it uses the word righteousness, and the two stand in one short sentence. Paul builds Romans 4 on it and Galatians 3 on it, arguing that the reckoning came before circumcision in chapter 17 and four hundred and thirty years before the law. James 2:23 quotes the same line toward a different point, and both apostles are reading the words that stand here.

Genesis 15:7-8

God identifies himself by a rescue already performed, and the sentence has the shape Exodus 20:2 uses when the law is given at Sinai, I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt. Abram answers with a question, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it, and the question is not rebuked. Jerome records that some read the Hebrew behind Ur as the fire of the Chaldees, which is the reading standing behind the old Jewish story of Abram in the furnace.

Genesis 15:9-11

The five creatures named here are the whole list the law will later permit for sacrifice, and no instruction is given on handling them because Abram already knows the custom. Cutting animals in two and walking between the halves is how binding agreements were made in that world, and Jeremiah 34:18 describes the same act centuries later while condemning men who broke one. Abram lays the pieces out and then spends the wait driving off birds of prey, which is the only thing he does in the entire ceremony.

Genesis 15:12

The word for deep sleep has appeared once before, when God put Adam under in 2:21 and made Eve out of him. Both times the man is unconscious while God does the work, and here the sleep falls just before the covenant is cut. What comes with it is a horror of great darkness, a phrase found nowhere else in Scripture, and the affliction announced in the next verse accounts for it.

Genesis 15:13-14

Abram is given the shape of the Exodus before Egypt has any hold on his family: down into a land not theirs, affliction, judgment on that nation, then out with great substance. He had walked that road himself in chapter 12, driven down by famine and sent back out rich after the LORD plagued Pharaoh. Jacob's whole house goes down in 46:3 with God promising to bring them up again, and Exodus 12:36 records the substance they carried out. Four hundred years is the figure here, Exodus 12:40 gives four hundred and thirty, and Paul uses the longer number at Galatians 3:17.

Genesis 15:15

The land is granted to Abram in the same breath that tells him he will be buried before any of it happens. The only ground he ever owns in Canaan is the cave at Machpelah, bought for four hundred shekels in 23:16 to bury Sarah, and Jacob later buys one parcel at Shechem for a hundred pieces of money. Hebrews 11:13 says they all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off.

Genesis 15:16

The delay is explained by the state of the people already in the land rather than by anything in Abram or his seed. Judgment waits until it is due, so four centuries of patience toward the Amorites are also four centuries of affliction for Israel. Clarke reads the fourth generation as the same span the previous verse counted in years, and the two figures are set beside each other rather than against each other.

Genesis 15:17

Both parties to such an agreement walk between the pieces, and here only one does. Abram is asleep on the ground, so the covenant is one-sided and the keeping of it rests entirely on the one who passed. The furnace and the lamp are the two images Israel meets on the way out of Egypt, the iron furnace of Deuteronomy 4:20 and the pillar of fire that went before them by night.

Genesis 15:18-21

This is the first place Scripture says the LORD made a covenant, and the grant is worded in the past tense, unto thy seed have I given this land. Boundaries run from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates, and then the sitting occupants are listed by name, ten peoples where Deuteronomy 7:1 later counts seven. The Rephaim stand on the list at verse 20, the giant clans Genesis has already named at 14:5 and Israel meets again under Joshua.