1. The present arrangement of the text

2. The three promises in the text

3. A look at the earlier text

4. A look at the later text

5. A look at the means of certifying the promise

6. The way the text was understood in the New Testament

1. The present arrangement of the text creates the first problem. It appears that two or more accounts of this incident have been woven together to create the present text. We can divide it in some way like this, though our division if far from perfect.

A. The first part reflects a very ancient text, perhaps written well before King David came to the throne of Israel:

1: After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, "Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great." 2: But Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what wilt thou give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Elie'zer of Damascus?" 4: And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, "This man shall not be your heir; your own son shall be your heir." 5: And he brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be."
6: And he believed the LORD; and he reckoned it to him as righteousness.

B. This part of the text appears to come from a later time, perhaps the time of King David or shortly thereafter:

3: And Abram said, "Behold, thou hast given me no offspring; and a slave born in my house will be my heir." 7: And he said to him, "I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chalde'ans, to give you this land to possess." 8: But he said, "O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?" 13: Then the LORD said to Abram, "Know of a surety that your descendants will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and will be slaves there, and they will be oppressed for four hundred years; 14: but I will bring judgment on the nation which they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15: As for yourself, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. 16: And they shall come back here in the fourth generation; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete."

C. The third story comes from a time even earlier than the first. It has to do with the way that a promise is certified between the parties to the promise.

12: As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram; and lo, a dread and great darkness fell upon him. 9: He said to him, "Bring me a heifer three years old, a she-goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon." 10: And he brought him all these, cut them in two, and laid each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. 11: And when birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, Abram drove them away. 17: When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. 18: On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphra'tes,

2. The three promises. In the text as it stands God gives not one promise to Abram but three. God promises the childless Abram that his own descendants shall be his heirs. God promises that while Abram's descendants will be enslaved in another country, they shall be freed from their slavery and then they shall return to the land. God also promised a gift of land to Abram.

In 15:4, the word of the Lord came to Abram and promised him an heir of his own issue. To underscore the promise, God has Abram go out into the night sky and look up at the stars. "Count the stars," said God. "So shall the number of your descendants be."

In 15:13-14 God declared that Abram's descendants will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and they will be oppressed for four hundred years. But afterward God will bring them out of that land, and they shall come out with great possessions.

In 15:7 and 15:18 God made another promise, a promise of land. "To your descendants I give this land." The promised land was huge. It extended from the River Euphrates far to the east to the "Brook of Egypt," to the south and west. It included the "land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites." We do not know where all these tribes resided, but we can be assured that the promise covered a great deal of territory. Only in the time of King Solomon was the Kingdom of Israel extended to include most of these places.

This last fact may give some clue to the reason this incident in Genesis was so important to Israel at the time of David and Solomon. At Mount Sinai under Moses God had made a covenant with Israel that said God was God and that the people had to organize their lives around the stipulations that God had given them when the covenant was established. If Israel did not live up to these stipulations, God was free to cast them off and make covenant with other peoples. The scribes of David and Solomon had made changes in that covenant. They insisted that God had put David and his descendants upon the throne of Israel forever and that God had given "the land" to the house of David forever. God could chastize the kings of the house of David if they did wrong, but God could not withdraw his support from them. The way this incident is written in Genesis pushes these promises of God all the way back in history to Abram himself. God promised a son to Abram; God promised the land to Abram.

It is interesting that in Genesis the promise to Abram is formulated in the same manner as is the promise to David in the books of Samuel. God chooses Abram (Gen 12:1-3); God chooses David (1 Samuel 16). God saves Abram from Egypt (Gen 12:10-20); God saves David from his enemies (2 Sam 5:24-25; 7:1). Abram worships God (Gen 12:7-8; 13:18); David worships as well (2 Sam 6:15-17). God establishes the covenant with both (Gen 15:18; 2 Samuel 7). Since this account of the promise of God to Abram was written at the time of David and Solomon, we have every right to assume that in the account they were describing the relationship between God and Abram in terms of their present understanding of the relationship between God and David.

It was to the benefit of the kings of Israel to do this. Their own scribes were changing the terms of the covenant between God and Israel. In the covenant under Moses, God could do with Israel what he found necessary to do: be their God if they acted in a proper manner toward God, or cut them off if they did not. In the covenant under David and Solomon, God had no such freedom. God was bound to support the House of David forever, no matter how improperly these kings acted. If it could be shown that God had made an earlier covenant with the people, through Abram, that promised "the land" to them forever, they could say that the covenant with Abram preceded the covenant with Moses by many centuries. Being given earlier than the covenant made through Moses, it was the Abramic covenant that Israel and its people had to honor.

3. The earlier account of the story.

There are at least two reasons that I say the first part of this account was a very ancient text.

a. God is called "the shield." This reflects the ancient names given to God in Genesis: The Shield of Abraham (Gen. 15:1), the Kinsman of Isaac (Gen. 31:42,53), and the Mighty One of Jacob (Gen. 49:24). These names were later gathered into a single phrase, "the God of our fathers."

b. The naming of a precise man, "Eliezer of Damascus," as the heir of Abraham. The famous archaeologist, William Albright (Biblical Period, 8), points out that this was done in accord with laws of the ancient land of Nuzi, whose laws were recognized throughout the middle east at the time of Abraham. Nuzi law provided that a man could adopt another man as his legal heir. This man would receive the property of his "father" upon his father's death. The adopted "son" also promised to take care of the "father" during his lifetime and provide for his burial upon his death. Eliezer of Damascus was the man so designated.

There is another aspect of these laws to which William Albright calls our attention. Albright reminds us that Abraham was a donkey caravaneer who would need to establish credit in order to purchase donkeys and other supplies needed for his business. Albright goes on to say that such a man might adopt a money-lender as his "son," so that the lender would help him establish credit for the purchase of these supplies. If the recipient of the loan died before it was repaid, the money-lender would cover his loan by inheriting the property of the one who received the loan. Since Damascus was one of the most important caravan centers of that age, the situation is obvious. A caravan leader would have to purchase donkeys and other supplies, whose acquisition would be impossible unless he could establish credit. By being named "heir," this man could make the loan without fearing that the loan would be lost, while the would-be borrower could more easily find someone willing to lend him money.

But Eliezer was not to be Abram's permanent heir. A son would be born to Abram, and Abram's natural son would be Abram's legal heir. To seal the promise, God had Abram go out from his tent and look up into the night sky. "See those stars there," God said to Abram. "Your heirs will be more numerous than those stars."

4. A look at the later text

In this later text, Abram complains to God that he has no offspring. Instead, says Abram, a slave born in my house will be my heir. That, of course, would be Ishmael, the son of the slave girl Hagar. This is an arrangement that is not satisfactory to Abram.

God says, I brought you out of Ur of the Chaldees that you might possess this land. Abram asks, "How do I know that?" God replies, "Your people shall be taken from this land, and be oppressed in another land. But I will bring judgment on that land and your people will come out with great possession."

In this text we have the shadow presence of the greatest event in the life of Israel. "I am the Lord your God who brought you from Ur of the Chaldees," this passage says to Abraham. The same words are used when God gives his Great Covenant to Israel on Sinai: "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." The first "exodus" was from Ur of the Chaldees when God called Abram from his ancestral home. The second exodus was the flight from Egypt, when God brought Israel out of the land of oppression.

This promise to Abram included gifts and rewards for the man himself. He would receive the land. He would see his children multiply. He would live to an old age. He would die in peace and be gathered to his ancestors. No Israelite man would ask for more than this.

5. A look at the means of certifying the promise

In the story as it stands, Abram wants some means of certifying that God's promise will be fulfilled. That the request of Abram for certification of the promise seems to nullify the statement that "Abram believed what God had said and that was enough for him" did not bother the writer of Genesis. He incorporated in his account a story about Abram that had been circulating for a long time, and, indeed, may not have originally been about Abram at all but only about a means by which a god certifying a promise that he had made.

The arrangement by which Abram was to know that God had promised him "the land" came in a very unusual ritual. It has only one precedent in the Scripture and very little in any other archaeological record.

As the ritual began, "A deep sleep fell upon Abram and a dread and great darkness fell upon him." This "deep sleep" is similar to that which had come upon Adam when God took his rib to create Eve. The sleep was a revelatory trance, acted out on the level of the subconscious or the unconscious. Abram was to learn from God the results of the revelation, but the means by which it came was beyond his ability to comprehend it. Whatever it was, it was a terrifying experience, a deep and dismal darkness, that had fallen upon Abram.

God was to receive a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, and a three-year-old ram, a turtle-dove and a young pigeon. The animals were to be cut open, the birds were not. The parts were to be laid side by side, and the parties to the agreement were to walk between them. In the dream a "smoking fire pot and a flaming torch" passed between the pieces of the sacrificed birds and animals. This smoke and fire represented God to Abram as it was to do to later Israelites. God is a burning fire. God is hidden in the smoke of the fire. In his dream Abram had "seen God." No wonder he was terrified.

In our one Scriptural allusion to this kind of ritual, Jeremiah 34:18-20, the striking thing about the arrangement is that the participants said they should die if they broke the terms of the agreement they had made. By walking between the parts of the sacrificed animals, Abram was promising that he would die if he did not uphold his end of the bargain. But God also seems to be taking suffering upon himself if he fails to uphold the agreement. Whatever else we can say about this passage, here we have God making his promise to Abram in the context of death. Divine faithfulness to Abram comes at the cost of divine willingness to suffer for the sake of the promise.

6. The way the text was understood in the New Testament

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this obscure text is that the Apostle Paul incorporated it into his own thinking: "Abram believed God, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness (15:6)." By human standards Abram is not presented to us as a particularly moral man. He was willing to give his wife to the Pharaoh of Egypt as one of his harem (12:10-15). He fought with the petty monarchs that ruled the land (14). He was later to be the patriarch of a very dysfunctional family, willing to cast out one son at the behest of Sarai, ready to sacrifice his other son when he heard some stirrings in his soul. Ishmael and Isaac stopped talking to each other. Sarai and Hagar hated one another. What is "righteous" about all that?

One thing, one thing only, and the most important thing: Abram trusted God. If God said, "Go out of your father's house," Abram went. If God said, "Sacrifice this one son I have given you," Abram made preparations for the sacrifice. In his life, Abram was sure of only one thing: God's mercy and grace had the first and the last word in Abram's affairs. When God spoke a word to him, Abram trusted that that word was true. When God did not speak to him, Abram was still ready to sally forth into life in a trusting spirit. This trusting spirit was the key to the right relationship that God and Abram had. God was faithful to Abram in every way. God expected Abram to be faithful to him in every way. When Abram responded to God in this way, it could be said of him that "he trusted God, and God accounted that to Abram as righteousness."

PSALM 27: "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?"

Psalm 27 is marked by three things: images of God, imperatives of prayer, and imperatives to fulfill the godly life. We turn first

to the images of God:

The Lord is my light;

The Lord is my salvation;

The Lord is my protector;

The Lord is my shelter;

The Lord is my tent of cover;

The Lord is my rock;

The Lord is my temple of singing.

The Lord is my salvation.

The imperatives of prayer follow. First, they concern the negative things that happen to God's servant:

Do not hide your face from me;

Do not turn your servant away in your anger;

Do not cast me off;

Do not forsake me;

Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries;

The imperatives of prayer that lead to new life with God conclude the set:

Hear, O Lord;

Be gracious;

Answer me;

Teach me your way;

Lead me on a level path;

Wait for the Lord;

Be strong;

Let your heart take courage;

Wait for the Lord.

We have to take notice of verse 4. The psalmist loves his place of worship. I know what he means, because I love church buildings. I love them whether they are full of people or whether no one is in them. They are what the Celts used to call "thin places," places where the barriers between God and us are penetrated on God's side and where we too can reach up from below to experience the beauty of the Lord. I think of St. Timothy's Chapel, where I preach in the summertime: 7,000 feet high in the Montana mountains, from whose spacious windows we can see four ranges of the Rockies, look down on Georgetown Lake a thousand feet below, and gaze into the skies filled with luminous clouds. I think of the Chapel on the Island of Iona. St. Columba built the first Christian chapel on that rugged shore, set in the midst of the squalls and gales of the Irish Sea, rebuilt by the Catholic monks in the twelfth century, and again by Protestants in the twentieth; God lurks around it. I think of Salisbury Cathedral rising from the meadow below to a height no other church steeple in England can match; artists loved to draw its portrait. I scurry there any time I am in England, just to sit in its magnificent space, perhaps to enjoy the choir at Evensong. I think of the Gothic mystery of the First Presbyterian Church of Wooster, where I ministered in the sixties, and the convoluted light shining through its stained glass windows, and of the New England whiteness of Westminster Church, Akron, Ohio, to which I went in its quiet simplicity to have my soul restored. I know what the psalmist meant: "One thing I ask of the Lord, that will I seek after: to live in the house of the Lord all my days, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple."

This is a psalm of deep confidence in God. It calls for faith, not fear. It calls for hope, not anxiety or despair. It calls for love, for God, for those we love, and for those who do not love us. The new relationship that we have with God leads us to new relationship with one another in the affairs of this life.

PHILIPPIANS 3:17-4:1: "Join in imitating me," said Paul to the Christians in Philippi. It seems strange, even arrogant of Paul to set himself up as a model of Christian behavior. But think of the times. There were few people to whom to point in order to understand what it meant to be a Christian. Epaphroditus the slave was one, Timothy the companion of Paul another, but who else? Paul pointed to himself. This is what the faith means to me:

3:7 Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8: Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ 9: and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith; 10: that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11: that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

12: Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13: Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14: I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 15: Let those of us who are mature be thus minded; and if in anything you are otherwise minded, God will reveal that also to you. 16: Only let us hold true to what we have attained.

These are the words that Paul wrote just before he asked the Philippians to be imitators of him. There is no arrogance in this, no boasting, only the humble plea that Christ may be in him and that in Christ he could press forward to the goal before him. "Imitate me in this," said Paul, "and you will know the core of the Christian life."

With tears in his eyes and voice, Paul went on to talk of those who live as enemies of Christ. "Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, they glory in their shame, they have set their minds on earthly things." These could be the fast-living Greeks who wanted nothing more than to add to what they already had and engaged in a quest for these "earthly things." Fortunately Paul did not describe them further. Christian behavior is best when it does not identify its enemies. When we do that, we have a tendency to demonize those who oppose us. Paul did not descend to that level. He simply asked his people not to imitate them, not to make a god of the belly or seek out "earthly things" alone.

"Our citizenship is in heaven." The Greek word is "politeuma." It is related to the Greek "polis," which means "city. A Greek city was more than merely the people who lived in a particular geographic area. Each city had its own history, its own role of citizens, its own benefactors who gave statutes and fountains and temples to all the people, its own laws and traditions that set it off from all other cities. The Philippians were trying to develop all these in their own city. Philippi had been founded just a few decades before Paul wrote to them, and it was striving to be among the finest of the cities of the Roman empire. It wanted to be a "polis" of which its people could be proud.

The word Paul uses is based on "polis" but it has its own particular meaning. The politeuma was a recognized "government within a government." In Alexandria, for instance, the Jewish population had organized themselves into a politeuma, and by virtue of this Rome gave them certain rights. The Jewish people of Alexandria had their own governor, the Jewish ethnarch; their own laws and law courts; their own religion which was exempt from taxation for other pagan religions; their own system of local taxes. It was in defense of this Jewish politeuma that the great Jewish scholar, Philo, went to Rome near the end of his life to plead with the Emperor Claudius that these rights not be taken from them. Politeumas, recognized governments within governments, probably existed in other cities of the Roman Empire in addition to Alexandria.

Paul is saying to the Christians in Philippi, "You are really a government within the government of the city. Your true citizenship is not in the city of Philippi. It is in heaven with our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform us from our present humiliation into his own glory." This was a bold demand to place upon the Christians of Philippi. They were proud of their newly formed city, its laws, its temples, its theater, its traditions, its walls, its towering acropolis. Leave that behind, said Paul. Place yourselves under the care of the commonwealth of heaven, its law, its congregations, its writings, its savior Jesus Christ. E. W. Sanders (95) has caught the sense of this exactly: "The little assembly of Christians in the colony of Philippi are reminded that they are citizens of another commonwealth than that of Rome, a politeuma that is another world entirely, yet one that already exists in this present world in the form of the church. The church is an advance copy, a sneak preview, of the heavenly reality."

I did not know until I was studying for this section that this is the only use in Paul's writings of the title "Savior" for Jesus Christ. This unique title has led some scholars to suggest that Paul did not compose this passage on his own but was quoting a hymn that was used in Christian worship in Philippi. If this is so, the hymn would go like this:

From heaven we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
He will transform the body of our humiliation

by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.

Paul's concluding words in this passage show his love for the congregation of Philippi and its people. "Therefore, brothers and sisters, whom I love, whom I long for, my joy, my crown, stand firm in the Lord, my beloved."

LUKE 13:31-35: Pharisees warn Jesus to leave Galilee. The reason? The ruler of Galilee, Herod Antipas, grandson of Herod called "The Great," is determined to kill him. Herod had already carried out the execution of John the Baptist, that strange prophet that had arisen on the borders of Galilee. Now he turns his attention to the other prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, who has had the temerity to preach and heal in Herod's own territory. Why was Herod afraid of Jesus? Jesus seemed to be doing nothing that would threaten Herod, why should Herod threaten him? Herod had his reasons. Jesus was preaching of the coming of another kingdom than the Rome that propped up Herod and held him in his luxurious place as long as he kept the law and order Rome desired. Jesus spoke of the coming of another king than Herod. Jesus was gathering a community around him that was far different from those gathered around Herod. Jesus lived by values that Herod could not fathom. Destroy him therefore! This was Herod's method of keeping the peace. Identify the enemies of Rome and destroy them. Jesus certainly fit Herod's description of an "enemy of Rome."

Jesus' reply to the warning of the Pharisees encompasses a great number of thoughts and ideas.

He calls Herod a "fox." Did that mean that Herod was sly and cunning, stealthy in going about his work? A fox is that kind of an animal. R. BUTH, ("That Small-fry Herod Antipas, or When a Fox Is Not a Fox," JerusalemPersp 40 ('93) 7-9, 14.) has another suggestion. "Jesus' designation of Herod Antipas as a 'fox' refers not to Herod's craftiness but rather to his ineptitude or inability to carry out his threat. Jesus was questioning Herod's pedigree, his moral stature, his leadership by labeling him as a 'fox' and not a 'lion.'"

Jesus announces that he will leave Galilee when he is ready and not when Herod is ready for him to leave. Jesus has work yet to do in Galilee. "I cast out demons and I perform cures today and tomorrow," he says. "On the third day I will finish my work." "The third day" may merely refer to the time that Jesus will leave Galilee. He will follow God's schedule for himself and not Herod's. In a passage filled with prophecy, dread, and death, however, "the third day may refer to his crucifixion and his resurrection "on the third day." Jesus' work is not finished until God has raised him from the dead. Indeed it is only finished when God raises him up to sit on the right hand of Power.

But Jesus will go to Jerusalem. He knows that death awaits him there. He is too sensitive to the mood of the authorities, too tuned in to the political realities around him to have missed the fact that they are out to get him and that he is about to die. He does not intend to die anywhere but in the city of Jerusalem. A prophet must arrange that if he is to die, he will die in the city of Jerusalem.

Jesus' complicated feelings toward Jerusalem are summed up in the next verses.

"Jerusalem, that city that kills the prophets," he says. A prophet named Uriah was killed there (Jer 26:20-23). So was Zechariah (2 Chr 24:20-22). The evil king Manasseh killed many prophets in the Holy City (2 Kgs 21:16; 24:4). According to later legends, Isaiah himself was killed there. Jeremiah had certainly come close to death many times at the hands of Jerusalem authorities. Jesus saw himself as standing in the line of the prophets killed in Jerusalem.

"How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing." Jesus pictures himself as a mother hen who would gather her brood under her wings. The hen is the exact obverse of the fox. The fox tries to kill and eat the chicks. The hen turns herself to protect them. Jesus sees himself as that mother hen. Barbara Brown Taylor gives us this picture of Jesus' words. "Jesus won't be king of the jungle in this or any other story," she writes. "What he will be is a mother hen, who stands between the chicks and those who mean to do them harm. She has no fangs, no claws, no rippling muscles. All she has is her willingness to shield her babies with her own body. If the fox wants them, he will have to kill her first.

"Which he does, as it turns out. He slides up on her one night in the yard while all the babies are asleep. When her cry wakens them, they scatter. She dies the next day where both foxes and chickens can see her - wings spread, breast exposed - without a single chick beneath her feathers. It breaks her heart, but it does not change a thing. If you mean what you say, then this is how you stand." (CHRISTIAN CENTURY February 25,1998)

"See." says Jesus, "Your house is left to you." These may be the most terrible words in this whole dread-filled passage. "Jerusalem is yours," Jesus is saying. "God is done with it. Take it, use it as you will, until such a day when God destroys it once more." God did that quickly. Within forty years of this pronouncement of woe upon the city, Roman legionnaires stormed the temple gates, and Roman fires burned homes and public buildings. Such was the fate of Jerusalem when Jesus announced, "Your house is left to you."

"I tell you," said Jesus, "You will not see me until the time comes when you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'" The citizens of Jerusalem would say these words soon enough. Jesus was to arrive, parading into the city on a donkey. They would shout these words and swing palm branches when he made his appearance. But he had come to Jerusalem not to be pronounced king like Herod but to suffer and die. He entered the city to cleanse its temple, to have a last meal with his disciples, to be arrested in Gethsemane while he was at prayer, to stand trial before Herod and Pilate, to be whipped and then to be hung on a cross. Then - on resurrection day - he would appear once more, and those who loved him could truly say, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord."