The covenant that God made with Abraham marks an important point in God’s relationship with him. The covenant was established at a time when Abraham was struggling with the fact that he was old and still childless. In light of Abraham’s doubts, God establishes a covenant with him and makes a vow to assure Abraham that the promise will be fulfilled. In this covenant, God made a solemn oath to assure Abraham that the promise of a son was irrevocable.

The Background of God’s Covenant with Abraham

God’s covenant with Abraham (Genesis 15:1–14) occurred right after his battle with the four kings from the East (Genesis 14). After these kings invaded Canaan and took Lot captive, Abraham led 318 trained men—people born in his house—and pursued the four kings all the way to Dan (Genesis 14:14).

It is possible that Abraham’s life was endangered because of his battle with the invaders. If this is true, then the danger to Abraham’s life could jeopardize the fulfillment of the promises God made to him.

When God appeared to Abraham, Abraham only had questions for God. His questions were related to an unfulfilled promise God had given him. Abraham had doubts about God’s promise to provide him with a son: “To your sons will I give this land” (Genesis 12:7). Genesis 15 shows Abraham fearing that God would not fulfill his promise to give him a son. God appears to Abraham to reassure him: “Do not be afraid, Abram” (Genesis 15:1).

If Abraham feared for his life, God reassured him of his protection: “I am your shield.” These words show that God would serve as his shield against all his enemies.

But Abraham’s despair was evident, since he had no son to inherit the land. For ten years, Abraham had been following God, yet he remained without children. Abraham said to God: “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir” (Genesis 15:3).

Abraham had given up hope of becoming a father of a son. He followed the customs of his homeland and adopted a slave as his heir. But God reassured Abraham once more that he would keep his promise: “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir” (Genesis 15:4).

God’s Promises to Abraham

But, there was another doubt in Abraham’s mind—his doubt about possessing the land. Abraham asked the Lord: “O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess [the land]?” (Genesis 15:8). Given the presence of the Canaanites in the land, fulfilling the promise seemed almost impossible.

Once again, God answered Abraham and renewed the promise that his descendants would receive the land: “The LORD said to Abram, ‘Know this for certain’ . . . I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.” (Genesis 15:3; 15:7). God reaffirmed his promise to Abraham by saying that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in heaven.

When Abraham heard God’s reassuring words that the promises would be fulfilled, he believed in God’s promises: “Abraham believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6).

The word translated “believed” means “to trust.” Abraham trusted that God’s promises would come true. Genesis 15:6 is referenced several times in the New Testament to teach about justification by faith. The reason the New Testament uses this verse is that it shows that faith is trusting in God’s promises.

To affirm his promise to Abraham that he would have a son and that his descendants would inherit the land of Canaan, God made a covenant with Abraham, in which he swore an oath to guarantee the truth of the promise.

Yahweh’s Enactment of the Covenant with Abraham

When God called Abraham and told him to go to the land of Canaan, both Abraham and Sarah were old, and Sarah was barren. Abraham went because he believed God’s promise that he would become a great nation. As Abraham grew older and the promise remained unfulfilled, he began to doubt whether it would ever be realized and whether he would become the father of a son.

At this pivotal moment in Abraham’s life, God appeared to him to reaffirm the promise and reassure Abraham that the commitment made—that he would become the father of a son—would definitely be fulfilled. The LORD told Abraham: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great” (Genesis 15:1). God’s words of assurance were meant to confirm that the promise remained valid.

God told Abraham that his reward would be “very great.” Although the LORD does not specify Abraham’s reward, the reward he would receive was the land where his descendants would someday live. Abraham protested that he had no heir to inherit the land. According to the customs of his time, Abraham adopted a slave, Eliezer of Damascus, as the heir to his household.

But God reassured Abraham that a slave would not inherit the land that was promised to him: “This man shall not be your heir.” Only Abraham’s son could become the recipient of the promise: “your very own son shall be your heir” (Genesis 15:4). To emphasize that the promise would become a reality and that Abraham would have many descendants, God told Abraham to lift his eyes to heaven, look at the stars, and then count them. As Abraham looked at the myriads of stars in the sky, God told him: “So shall your offspring be” (Genesis 15:5).

When Abraham heard God’s promise and the assurance that he would have a son, Abraham believed because he was convinced that the God who made the promise was the same God who would fulfill it.

When God called Abraham to leave his family and go to a strange land, Abraham departed without knowing his destination, only trusting God’s promise to guide him. Now, God appeared again and promised that he would have a son in his old age. Without any concrete evidence that an elderly man and a barren woman could have a child, Abraham believed God’s promise.

Could an old man, “and him as good as dead” (Hebrews 11:12), become the father of a son, and could his descendants become as numerous as the stars of heaven and as countless as the grains of sand on the seashore?

Abraham believed that God’s promise would come true despite being old and despite ‘the way of women had ceased to be with Sarah” (Genesis 18:11). The promise’s future relied on God’s assurance, even though the current situation offered little hope for the future.

Although Abraham trusted God’s promise, he still needed a sign to confirm that it would come true. Discussing Abraham’s request for a sign, Fretheim writes, “It is not unnatural to faith, or unbecoming to believers, that questions persists in the midst of belief” (Fretheim 2007: 37). Aware that Abraham and Sarah could doubt the validity of the promise, and in response to Abraham’s request, God chose to establish a covenant with Abraham, sealing the promise with an unusual ritual that has raised questions among readers of the book of Genesis.

The covenant-making ritual described in Genesis 15:9–10, 17 involves a solemn oath meant to reinforce the promise.

[The LORD] said to [Abraham], “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. . . . When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.

The covenant-making ritual where animals are cut in half and one passes between the parts is found in Mesopotamia and appears twice in the Bible: in Genesis 15:9–10 and Jeremiah 34:17–22. The ritual is connected to a blood oath and involves a self-curse: the person who passes between the pieces will be like the dead animals if they violate the covenant.

Claus Westermann wrote: “The one who passes between the divided halves of the slain animals invokes death upon himself should he break the word by which he has bound himself in the oath” (Westermann 1981:225).

The most remarkable part of the covenant between God and Abraham is that it is God, represented by the “smoking fire pot” and the “flaming torch,” who passed between the pieces. By doing this, the LORD was invoking a self-curse upon himself to show that what he had promised to Abraham would be fulfilled. There is no indication that Abraham was required to meet any obligation to fulfill his part of the covenant.

A similar ritual is referenced in Jeremiah 34:18: “And the men who transgressed my covenant and did not keep the terms of the covenant that they made before me, I will make them like the calf that they cut in two and passed between its parts.”

The ritual in Jeremiah involves only one animal, but the purpose remains the same. This second reference to a blood oath ritual in the Hebrew Bible shows that the ritual involves “a conditional self-cursing under the form of the split animal; the one who passes between them calls the fate upon himself should he violate the obligation” (Westermann 1981: 228).

The fact that God is the one taking the oath has sparked much debate among scholars. Some have tried to allegorize the theophany in Genesis 15:17 to downplay the fact that it was God himself who walked between the pieces of the dead animals and who invoked a curse upon himself if the promise he made was not fulfilled.

The characterization of God in this text shows how God chooses to get involved in human affairs. The God of Israel decided to engage with humans by calling a man and promising him a great reward—a land his descendants would inherit. To fulfill this promise, God entered into a binding agreement with Abraham, following a common practice in Mesopotamian societies.

This theophany of God is unique, and to some, even blasphemous. The God of Israel, to assure Abraham that his promise was genuine, entered into a binding relationship with him by passing between the halves of the sacrificed animals to guarantee the fulfillment of his promise. Therefore, by taking this blood oath, God is subjecting himself to the same curse that humans accept for themselves.

This view of God disturbs many because they believe that “God is not a man” (Numbers 23:19). Yet, for the relationship he established with his creation, God (John 1:1) became a man (John 1:14). We can trust God’s promises. As the writer of Hebrews said: “Let us keep firm in the hope we profess, because the one who made the promise is trustworthy” (Hebrews 10:23 NJB).

Abraham’s Second Failure

God called Abraham to become the father of a people who would then do God’s work in the world (Exodus 19:5–6). These are the promises God made to Abraham:

1. God promised to give Abraham the land of Canaan: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1).

2. God promised Abraham that he and his descendants would become a great nation: “I will make of you a great nation” (Genesis 12:2).

3. God promised Abraham that he would bless him: “I will bless you” (Genesis 12:2).

4. God promised Abraham that his name would be great: “I will make your name great” (Genesis 12:1).

5. God promised Abraham that he would mediate blessings to others: “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3).

But the fulfillment of God’s promise depended on the birth of a son who would carry on Abraham’s legacy. However, Abraham doubted that God would give him a son in his old age. Abraham said to God, “O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.”

After ten years of receiving God’s promise, Abraham remained childless. Abraham blamed God for his inability to have a son. He said to God, “You have given me a son.” Not trusting that God would give him a son, Abraham followed the traditions of his homeland and adopted his trusted slave, Eliezer of Damascus, as the heir to his house. According to Mesopotamian tradition, a childless man could adopt someone who would manage the household after his death.

Abraham adopted Eliezer because he was a slave born in his household and a trusted servant. This adoption posed a threat to God’s promise to Abraham because Eliezer was not a biological son of Abraham and could not inherit the promise.

In response to Abraham’s lack of trust in him, God told Abraham that Eliezer was not the heir of the promise: “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.”

To fulfill his promise to Abraham, God made a covenant with him, swearing an oath to confirm the promise. The following are the elements of the covenant ritual.

The Meaning of God’s Covenant with Abraham

This ceremony of passing between the cut animals serves as an oath and a self-curse, in which God commits to fulfilling the promises made to Abraham. The covenant will also extend to Abraham’s descendants: “I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you” (Genesis 17:7).

Implications of God’s Covenant with Abraham

Since it was only God who passed between the cut animals, God took an oath and committed himself to fulfill the promises he made to Abraham. This act by God is very significant; “In this self-imprecation, God in effect puts the divine name on the line, ‘writing the promise in blood’” (Fretheim 2007: 37).

By means of this covenant, God assures Abraham that he would have a son, that his descendants would inherit the promised land, and that God would fulfill the promise he made to Abraham. Abraham’s problem was that he doubted that an old man, “and him as good as dead” (Hebrews 11:12), could become the father of a son and could his descendants become as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand on the seashore? When Abraham heard God’s promise and the assurance that he would have a son, Abraham believed because he was convinced that the God who had made the promise was the God who would fulfill it.

Completed Studies on Abraham’s Failures

The Five Failures of Abraham (June 14, 2022)
Ur and Haran: Abraham’s Background (February 16, 2023)
The Failures of Faith in Abraham’s Journey
Abraham and Terah: Family Dynamics and Divine Calling
Abraham Before His Call: The Mesopotamian Context
The Call of Abraham: Divine Initiative and Human Response
Abraham and Lot: Separation and Its Implications
God’s Promises to Abraham
Abraham’s First Failure: Egypt and the Wife-Sister Deception
Abraham’s Second Failure: The Eliezer Solution
Abraham’s Third Failure: The Hagar Alternative
Abraham’s Fourth Failure: Laughter at Divine Promise – Part 1
Abraham’s Fourth Failure: Laughter at Divine Promise – Part 2
Abraham’s Fifth Failure: Gerar and Repeated Deception – Part 1
Abraham’s Fifth Failure: Gerar and Repeated Deception – Part 2
The Testing of Abraham: From Failure to Faith

NOTE: For several other studies on Abraham, read my post Studies on Abraham.

Bibliography

Fretheim, Terence E. Abraham: Trials of Family and Faith. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2007.

Westermann, Claus. Genesis 12-36: A Commentary. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1981.

Claude Mariottini
Emeritus Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

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