The Covenant Sealed

⁷The LORD also told him, "I am the LORD who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldees to give you this land as your possession." ⁸Abram asked, "Lord GOD, how can I be certain that I will possess it?" ⁹The LORD answered him, "Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon." ¹⁰Abram brought all of these, cut them down the middle, and arranged the halves opposite each other. However, he did not cut the birds in two. ¹¹Birds of prey swooped down on the carcasses, but Abram chased them off. ¹²As the sun was setting, a deep sleep overcame Abram, and a dreadful, thick darkness pressed down on him. ¹³Then the LORD told Abram, "Know for certain that your descendants will be foreigners in a country that does not belong to them. They will be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years. ¹⁴"But I will judge the nation they serve, and afterward they will leave with great wealth. ¹⁵"As for you, you will join your ancestors in peace and be buried at a ripe old age. ¹⁶In the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. ¹⁷After the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot and a flaming torch passed between the divided pieces. ¹⁸On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, declaring, "To your offspring I have given this land, from the river of Egypt all the way to the great river, the Euphrates— ¹⁹the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, ²⁰the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaims, ²¹the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites."