Genesis 15:9

God begins with his name: “I am the LORD”. The Hebrew is Yᵉhôvâh, God’s own personal name, which Strong’s explains as “the self-Existent” or “the Eternal”. It is the name of the God who is always what he is, who enters into a relationship with the people he calls and keeps every promise he makes to them. By saying it here, God assures Abram that the one promising him the land is the one true God, distinct from every god Abram had known before.

He then points to something he has already done: he “brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees”. The verb yâtsâʼ means to go or come out, and in the form used here it means to bring out. Abram’s leaving Ur was God’s doing from the start, as the call in Genesis 12:1–3 shows. Ur was Abram’s homeland, a great and prosperous city whose people worshipped many gods, the moon god chief among them. To leave it, Abram had to rely entirely on a God he could not see. Now God sets that past act before him as the ground for what he promises next. The God who had already kept his word in bringing Abram out could be trusted for the rest of it. Moses later teaches Israel the same thing about him: he is the faithful God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love (Deuteronomy 7:9).

Abram answers, “Lord GOD, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?” The address is ʼĂdônây Yᵉhôvih in Hebrew. ʼĂdônây is an emphatic form of the word for lord or master, used as a name of God, and with it Abram speaks as a servant before his master, with reverence even as he asks his question. The word printed “GOD” in capitals is the sacred name with different vowels, Yᵉhôvih, used so that readers would avoid repeating the same sound straight after ʼĂdônây. Together the two words address God as both sovereign and bound to Abram by covenant.

“Whereby” stands for the Hebrew mâh, a question word, and here Abram is asking for a means: something by which he can be sure. The verb yâdaʻ, “know”, is the ordinary word for knowing, and it covers knowing by experience as well as knowing by being told. Abram has heard the promise and understood it. He asks for a way of being certain that it will come to pass.

“And he said unto him, Take me an heifer…” The verb ʼâmar, “said”, is the ordinary word for saying, and here it introduces a command, as the words that follow show. “Take” is lâqach, a verb with a wide range: to take, fetch, accept or receive. As a command it gives Abram his own part to do. He is to fetch these animals himself, and he is to bring them to God, “take me”.

God names five animals: a heifer, a she goat, a ram, a turtledove and a young pigeon. The words “three years old” stand three times in the verse, once for each of the larger animals. The Hebrew shâlash means to do a third time, to be threefold, or to be three years old, and the last is its sense here. Animals of that age were full grown, healthy and valuable, fit for a covenant of this weight.

All five are animals the law of Moses later uses for offerings. The law names the herd and the flock as the source of burnt offerings (Leviticus 1:2–3), and goats and rams were among the most common sacrifices. Turtledoves and young pigeons were allowed to those who could not afford a lamb (Leviticus 5:7), and a mother brought them for her purification after childbirth (Leviticus 12:8). So the list runs from the large and costly animals to the small birds within reach of the poor.

The command also shows who leads. Abram asked how he could know, and God took up the question himself, setting out exactly what the covenant would need.

“And he took unto him all these” records Abram’s obedience, complete and without delay. He “divided them in the midst”. The verb is bâthar, which means to cut in two, and the noun for each “piece” is bether, a part or section, here each half of an animal. Abram cut the heifer, the goat and the ram down the middle and laid each half opposite its other half, so that a path ran between the rows.

“And when the fowls came down upon the carcases, Abram drove them away.” These birds are different from the ones in Abram’s offering. The word is ʻayiṭ, a hawk or other bird of prey, a ravenous bird. Drawn by the blood, they came down, yârad, the ordinary verb for going or coming down, onto the halves that lay in the open. Birds feeding on the carcases would have torn apart what God had told Abram to prepare. So Abram drove them off. The verb nâshab means to blow, and from that to scatter, and Abram kept scattering them while he waited for God to act.

The verse shows Abram’s part in the covenant. God makes the promise and God alone will pass between the pieces, and while Abram waits he guards what God told him to set out. He treats the occasion as holy, and he keeps the sacrifice whole for the LORD.

The promises in these verses find their fullness in Christ. The land of Canaan was a real inheritance, and it also pointed ahead to a greater one. Christ is the Seed of Abraham to whom the promises were made (Galatians 3:16), and as God brought Abram out of Ur, Christ brings his people out from under sin into the kingdom of God. Believers are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17), with an inheritance that cannot perish or fade, kept in heaven for them (1 Peter 1:3–5). There remains a rest for the people of God (Hebrews 4:9), and the Bible ends with a new heaven and a new earth where God dwells with his people (Revelation 21:1–7).

The cut animals point to the one sacrifice that seals the new covenant. Jesus is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). He entered once into the holy place by his own blood and offered himself without spot to God (Hebrews 9:11–14), and so he is the mediator of a new covenant, through which those who are called receive the promise of eternal inheritance (Hebrews 9:15). It is a better covenant, founded on better promises (Hebrews 8:6), and by one offering he has perfected for ever those who are sanctified (Hebrews 10:14). As God alone passed between the pieces, the new covenant rests on Christ’s finished work.

Abram asked how he could know. The believer’s assurance rests on the same God. Jesus was raised again for our justification (Romans 4:25), and the Holy Spirit seals those who believe as the earnest of their inheritance until it is fully theirs (Ephesians 1:13–14).

Abram guarded an animal sacrifice from the birds, and Christ offered himself undefiled. He showed the same zeal for what belongs to God when he drove those who defiled the temple out of it (John 2:15), and on the cross he triumphed over principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15), so that nothing can snatch away the covenant he has made.

In these verses God answers a believing man’s honest question with a covenant he will keep by himself. He reminds Abram of what he has already done and gives the land as a gift. Then he sets up the most solemn pledge Abram could understand, and he is the one who will walk between the pieces. Abram’s part is to believe, to obey, and to watch while he waits.

The same God speaks to us through these verses. He brings his people out before he brings them in, he is patient with those who ask him how they can be sure, and he has bound himself by promise and oath, and finally by the blood of his Son. When the birds come down in the time of waiting, Abram’s example shows us to keep watch over what God has given until he comes to fulfil his word.