The Covenant with Abram.
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Some time afterward, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: Do not fear, Abram! I am your shield; I will make your reward very great.
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But Abram said, “Lord GOD, what can you give me, if I die childless and have only a servant of my household, Eliezer of Damascus?”
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Abram continued, “Look, you have given me no offspring, so a servant of my household will be my heir.”
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Then the word of the LORD came to him: No, that one will not be your heir; your own offspring will be your heir.
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He took him outside and said: Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can. Just so, he added, will your descendants be.
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Abram put his faith in the LORD, who attributed it to him as an act of righteousness.
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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.
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“Lord GOD,” he asked, “how will I know that I will possess it?”
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He 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.
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He brought him all these, split them in two, and placed each half opposite the other; but the birds he did not cut up.
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Birds of prey swooped down on the carcasses, but Abram scared them away.
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As the sun was about to set, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a great, dark dread descended upon him.
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Then the LORD said to Abram: Know for certain that your descendants will reside as aliens in a land not their own, where they shall be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years.
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But I will bring judgment on the nation they must serve, and after this they will go out with great wealth.
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You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace; you will be buried at a ripe old age.
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In the fourth generation your descendants will return here, for the wickedness of the Amorites is not yet complete.
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When the sun had set and it was dark, there appeared a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch, which passed between those pieces.
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On that day 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,
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the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites,
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the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim,
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the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.