The God Who Walks Through the Pieces: Genesis 15

Genesis 15 contains one of the strangest scenes in the Bible, and one of the most comforting, once you know what you are looking at.

Abram asks how he can be sure of God's promise. God answers with a ceremony. Animals are cut in two and the halves laid opposite each other. Genesis 15:9-10 English - ESV In the ancient Near East this was how serious covenants were sealed: the parties walked between the pieces, and the walk meant "may this be done to me if I break my word." Jeremiah 34 refers to exactly this practice. Jeremiah 34:18-19 English - ESV Covenant-making was self-cursing.

Then comes the twist. As the sun sets, Abram falls into a deep sleep. Genesis 15:12 English - ESV And in the dark, "a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces." Fire and smoke are how God shows up in Exodus too, at the bush and on the mountain. The point is

Ark of the Covenant Relief. The world of sworn agreements that Genesis 15 borrows its ceremony from.

unmistakable: God walks the path of the pieces alone. Abram, the human party to this covenant, is unconscious.

In other words, God signs both lines of the contract. He takes the whole weight of the covenant's curse on himself, promising in effect: if this covenant breaks, I will bear the breaking. The apostles read the cross as exactly that promise kept.

Grace did not start in the New Testament. It is there in Genesis 15, in the dark, moving between the pieces while the man who contributed nothing but faith sleeps. And Genesis says of that faith: "he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness."

Genesis 15:17 English - ESV

Genesis 15 Berean Standard Bible - Bob Souer