Lent - Pt 4

And he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.” But he said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” (Genesis 15:7-16 ESV).

Our reading today (Genesis 15) presents one of the most remarkable if not unusual episodes in the life of Abraham. For a nomad, the promise of a land to possess would have been both comforting as well as difficult to believe, so it is only natural that Abraham would respond to God’s promise (v. 7) with a request for assurance (v. 8). What is surprising is not the request, but the sign that God provides. Animals are brought before God, split in two, and then arrayed before him. The writer makes clear that as the sun goes down, Abram does not merely fall asleep, but experiences a “dreadful and great darkness.” In the thick darkness, a smoking fire pot and flaming torch pass between the pieces and the episode ends with the statement, “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram” (v. 18). Since this imagery is so foreign for us in our modern culture, we must explore a bit to truly see the significance of this experience. In the Ancient Near East, when parties entered a covenant it was often dramatized by a sacrifice or some other enactment of the penalty that would fall on the party who did not keep up their end of the bargain. This signified that both parties were willing to honor the arrangement at the possible expense of their lives; they were making a solemn vow that their fate would be the same as that of the animals should anything break the promise. That which is so important to note is that in the “darkness” Abraham witnesses God, who is represented as a fire pot and torch, passing through the pieces, and yet he himself is not required to do the same. The gospel writers note that when Jesus died, darkness fell over the land, and in that moment, we see the sacrifice God made in order to honor his promises to us. It is a reminder that he went to the grave to give us the skies, became alienated to give us a home, and experienced deep darkness to bring us into the light. In fact, this vision is what comforted Abraham’s fear in Genesis 15:1 (“Fear not, Abram, I am your shield.”). That should be our comfort too!