16 S Genesis 15:2
2 But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me s ince I remain
childless and the one who will inherit a my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?”
3 And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my house
hold will be my heir.”
4 Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir,
but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” 5 He took him
outside and said, “Look up at the sky and c ount the s tars — if indeed you can
count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring b be.”
6 Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
7 He also said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chal
deans to give you this land to take possession of it.”
8 But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain posses
sion of it?”
9 So the Lord said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three
years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”
10 Abram b
rought all t hese to him, cut them in two and arranged the h
alves
opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. 11 Then birds of
prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.
12 As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and
dreadful darkness came over him. 13 Then the Lord said to him, “Know for
certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a
country not t heir own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated t here.
14 But I will punish the nation they s erve as s laves, and afterward they will
come out with great possessions. 15 You, however, will go to your ancestors in
peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation your descen
dants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet r eached its
full measure.”
17 When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a
blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. 18 On that day the Lord
made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land,
from the Wadi c of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates — 19 the land of the
Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites,
Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”
Hagar and Ishmael
16
Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had b
orne him no children. But she had an
Egyptian slave named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept
me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a fami l y
through her.”
Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in Ca
naan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to
her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.
When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. 5 Then
Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put
my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises
me. May the Lord judge between you and me.”
6 “Your slave is in your h
ands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you
think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.
7 The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a s pring in the desert; it was the
spring that is beside the road to Shur. 8 And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai,
where have you come from, and where are you going?”
“I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.
9 Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit
to her.” 10 The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that
they will be too numerous to count.”
11 The angel of the Lord also said to her:
“You are now pregnant
and you will give birth to a son.
a 2
The meaning of the Hebrew for this phrase is uncertain. b 5 Or seed c 18 Or river