Covenant - Genesis 15

After returning from rescuing Lot and being blessed by Melchizedek, Abram has a vision in which God says, “Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.” Maybe it’s a just a different want of speaking, but if someone told me “don’t worry I am your reward for obedience,” I would be very skeptical about the whole deal. But this could also be similar to God promising eternal life with Him, in fact, that’s probably exactly what it’s like. But Abram’s concern about this promise is that he doesn’t have any kids and the main steward of his house “is this Eliezer of Damascus.” Abram has just come back from being blessed by Melchizedek and has already been blessed by God with a Promised Land that is currently inhabited by several groups of people and “seed as the dust of the earth in number.” He’s probably thinking “I have a small group of soldiers and no kids and my wife and I are getting old how is all of this going to be fulfilled?” So he’s asking God is this Eliezer is going to be the heir that he was promised, probably because if he is, then Abram needs to start treating and training him as such. God answers that no, Eliezer is not going to be the heir, it’s going to be Abram’s biological child, and in fact his descendants will be as numerous as the starts in the sky. There is an important JST for verse 6 that adds in about 4 verses in which Abram asks God “how wilt thou give me this land for an everlasting inheritance?” This seems like a more appropriate question than how it’s phrased in verse 8 which says, “whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?” Maybe he did ask both versions and they mean different things but they seem very similar to me. In the JST God answers Abram’s question with a somewhat abstract statement, and what I can figure that it means is that God is able to grant this land to Abram for an inheritance for now and the eternities because “the day cometh, that the Son of Man shall live.” Basically, all this is possible because of Jesus Christ and the atonement, and in fact, “Abram looked forth and saw the days of the Son of Man, and was glad, and his soul found rest, and he believed in the Lord.” About this JST, the IM notes, “Once again it is clear that the early patriarchs knew far more about Christ and His mission than the present Old Testament record indicates.” After this vision, Abram asks the whole “whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?” which must indicate Abram’s desire to not only take what was promised but his willingness to promise something in return, to make a covenant. God’s response is for Abram to be a 3 year old cow, “she goat”, and a ram, as well as “a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” Abram gets all these animals “and divided then in the midst,” which I assume means that he cut them up and laid them in a certain pattern, and he waited. While he was waiting, the “sun was going down (and) a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and lo, an horror of great darkness fell up him.” Now this word “darkness” made me think about the “darkness” that Joseph Smith experienced right before the First Vision, and there’s even a cross-reference to the Joseph Smith-History where he talks about that, and it makes me wonder why was Abram exposed to the same Satanic forces at that time? I wonder if it was so that Abram knew that when he made that covenant with God, just how serious it was because he would have to battle the powers of hell to keep his end, just like the rest of us do. It might be easy to take the promises that God offers and think that they are immediately going to happen, and honestly that’s exactly what I do, but God warns Abram that for 400 years “thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them.” This is a pretty rough concept to accept, but it is what it is, but God promises that His judgment will be on that enslaving nation and that when Abram’s seed leave they will do so with “great substance,” and that’s when his people will inherit the land that is being promised. I don’t know if this is the only reason why the Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt, and I’m sure it’s not, but God does provide an interesting explanation which answers a lot of my questions, saying, “But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.” This reminded me of when Nephi teaches that the people local to Israel who were destroyed by the Israelites when they came through, were destroyed because they were wicked. Nephi specifically asks “do ye suppose that the children of this land, who were in the land of promise, who were driven out by our fathers, do ye supposed that they were righteous? Behold, I say unto you, Nay.” He states that the local people would not have been destroyed if they were righteous because “the Lord esteemeth all flesh in one; he that is righteous is favored of God.” This is supported by the statement here that Abram’s seed can’t inhabit the land of promise yet because “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.” They aren’t worthy of being destroyed, so the just God that he is cannot allow it. With that being all the experiences that day, when the sun set and it was dark outside “behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces. In that same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram.” I’m not sure what that means, but I’ve heard that it was like lightening coming down and coursing a way through the halves of the animals, so there could have been no other interpretation than God accepts Abram’s covenant.