The Everlasting Hatred Read Online Free PDF Page A

Lord concerning a promised son who would come from Abraham’s own body, and offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven. But Abraham still wanted more assurance regarding possessing of the promised land. So he asked, “O Sovereign LORD, how can I know that I will gain possession of it [i.e., the land]?” 12
    God’s response is one of the greatest demonstrations of how patient and gracious He is with mankind. God chose to accommodate Abraham’s continuing need for strong reassurance. He did this by performing a covenant-making ritual that was themost solemn and binding known to man in the culture of that time. Here is the account of how God reconfirmed to Abraham the title deed to the land and its boundaries. It is so important that I am quoting the ceremony in its entirety:
    So the LORD said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”
    Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.
    As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. Then the LORD said to him, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”
    When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates—the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.” 13
    This passage gives important details concerning the irrevocable nature of the covenant. This strange ritual gets at the heart of the meaning of the Hebrew word for covenant. It comes from the verb
barath
, which means “to cut.” In Hebrew, the expression formaking a covenant is “to cut a covenant.” The Hebrew scholar Franz Delitzsch writes concerning this ritual:
    The proceeding corresponded rather to the custom, prevalent in many ancient nations, of slaughtering animals when concluding a covenant, and after dividing them into pieces, of laying the pieces opposite to one another, that the persons making the covenant might pass between them… . God condescended to follow the custom of the Chaldeans, that He might in the most solemn manner confirm His oath to Abram the Chaldeans. 14
    This reveals much about the character of God. Certainly it shows that He is gracious and considerate of our human limitations. It demonstrates that He takes into account our degree of maturity and knowledge of Him in His treatment of us.
AN OATH THAT CAN NEVER BE BROKEN
    As the custom dictated, Abram laid the sacrifice halves opposite each other, making a path in the middle for those making the covenant to walk. The parties would then hold hands and walk together between the sacrifices, taking an oath on the terms of the covenant. They would then swear an oath that the one that breaks the covenant is to be hewn in pieces as the sacrifices had been. We are talking serious covenant making here.
    But in this case, a most unusual thing happened. Abraham was put into a deep sleep and shown a vision of God alone walking between the sacrifices and swearing an oath by Himself that He would give the land with its specific borders to Abraham and his descendents as an everlasting