Abram’s covenant with God in Sunday’s first reading grows out of a vision. God promises Abram descendants as countless as stars in the night. God’s promise establishes a relationship with Abram and Sarai, his wife. Their faith that God can do the impossible deepens in their long wait for even one descendant.
God seals the covenant with Abram in an ancient way of making an oath of agreement. The parties to the agreement cut animals in half and walk between the two parts, acting out the meaning — may I be cut in half if I do not keep this covenant. The ancient Genesis story envelopes Abram in deepening and terrifying darkness and places him in a trance as God’s flaming torch passes between the animal halves.
God makes a covenant.
God took Abram outside and said: “Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can. Just so shall your descendants be.” Abram put his faith in the Holy One, who credited it to him as an act of righteousness.
God then said to Abram, “I am the Holy One who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land as a possession.” “O Holy God,” Abram asked, “how am I to know that I shall possess it?” God answered him, “Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old she-goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”
Abram brought all these, split them in two, and placed each half opposite the other, but the birds he did not cut up. Birds of prey swooped down on the carcasses, but Abram stayed with them. As the sun was about to set, a trance fell upon Abram, and a deep terrifying darkness enveloped him.
When the sun had set and it was dark, there appeared a smoking brazier and a flaming torch, which passed between those pieces. Then the Holy One made a covenant with Abram, saying: “To your descendants I give this land from the Wadi of Egypt to the Great River (the Euphrates).”
Genesis 15.5-12,17-18
- How has God been faithful to you? How have you been faithful to God?