The Holy Bible – Knox Translation
The Book of Genesis
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Chapter 15
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1
It was after this that the Lord sent word to Abram in a vision, Have no fear, Abram, I am here to protect thee; thy reward shall be great indeed.
2
But Abram answered, Lord God, what can this gift of thine be? I must go the way of childless men; Damascus here, the son of Eliezer, is but the son of my steward;✻
3
to me (Abram added) thou hast given no children, so that all the heir I have is a slave born in my house.
4
Whereupon the Lord sent word to him, This man shall not succeed thee; thou shalt have an heir sprung from thy own body.
5
Then he took him out of doors, and said to him, Look up at the sky, and count, if thou canst, the stars in it; thy race, like these, shall be numberless.
6
So Abram put his faith in God, and it was reckoned virtue in him.✻
7
And now God said to him, I am the Lord, who brought thee out from Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee possession of this land instead.
8
And when he asked, Lord God, what assurance may I have, that it is mine?
9
the Lord answered, Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old she-goat, and a three-year-old ram, and a turtle-dove, and a pigeon.
10
All these he brought to him, and cut them in half, laying the two halves of each on opposite sides, except the dove and the pigeon; he did not divide these.
11
The whole day long Abram stood there, driving away the carrion-birds as they swooped down on the carcases;
12
but when the sun set, deep sleep fell upon him, and in the darkness a great dread assailed him.
13
So a voice came to him, This thou must know, that thy race will live as strangers in a land not their own, reduced to slavery and ill-used for four hundred years.
14
But I am there to pass judgement on the nation which enslaves them; and when this is done, they shall come back rich in possessions.
15
For thyself, thou shalt be buried with thy fathers, grown old in comfort;
16
but the fourth generation will have come before these return hither; the wickedness of the Amorrhites has not reached its full term.
17
So the sun went down, and when the darkness of night came on, a smoking furnace was seen, a torch of fire that passed between the pieces of flesh.
18
And the Lord, that day, made a covenant with Abram; I will grant this land, he told him, to thy posterity, with its borders reaching up to the river of Egypt, and the great river Euphrates;
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the land of the Cinites, and the Cenezites, and the Cedmonites,
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the Hethites and the Pherezites, the Raphaim, too,
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and the Amorrhites, and the Chanaanites, and the Gergesites, and the Jebusites.
