| 1. | Some time after these events, this word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: "Fear not, Abram! I am your shield; I will make your reward very great." |
| 2. | But Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what good will your gifts be, if I keep on being childless and have as my heir the steward of my house, Eliezer?" |
| 3. | Abram continued, "See, you have given me no offspring, and so one of my servants will be my heir." |
| 4. | Then the word of the LORD came to him: "No, that one shall not be your heir; your own issue shall be your heir." |
| 5. | He took him outside and said: "Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can. Just so," he added, "shall your descendants be." |
| 6. | Abram put his faith in the LORD, who credited it to him as an act of righteousness. |
| 7. | He then said to him, "I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land as a possession." |
| 8. | "O Lord GOD," he asked, "How am I to know that I shall possess it?" |
| 9. | He answered him, "Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old she-goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtle-dove, and a young pigeon." |
| 10. | He brought him all these, split them in two, and placed each half opposite the other; but the birds he did not cut up. |
| 11. | Birds of prey swooped down on the carcasses, but Abram stayed with them. |
| 12. | As the sun was about to set, a trance fell upon Abram, and a deep, terrifying darkness enveloped him. |
| 13. | Then the LORD said to Abram: "Know for certain that your descendants shall be aliens in a land not their own, where they shall be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years. |
| 14. | But I will bring judgment on the nation they must serve, and in the end they will depart with great wealth. |
| 15. | You, however, shall join your forefathers in peace; you shall be buried at a contented old age. |
| 16. | In the fourth time-span the others shall come back here; the wickedness of the Amorites will not have reached its full measure until then." |
| 17. | When the sun had set and it was dark, there appeared a smoking brazier and a flaming torch, which passed between those pieces. |
| 18. | It was on that occasion that the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying: "To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the Great River (the Euphrates), |
| 19. | the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, |
| 20. | the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, |
| 21. | the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites." |
