GENESIS 15 After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” 2 But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue[a] childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” 4 And behold, the word of the Lord came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” 5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 6 And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
7 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.” 8 But he said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” 9 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.” 10 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. 11 And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
12 As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. 13 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. 14 But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15 As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. 16 And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, 19 the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, 20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.”
As the sun dipped below the horizon, the smell of blood clotted in the air. A cloud of flies droned. Crows pestered a growing assembly of carrion birds. An array of animals – heifer, goat, ram – lay severed, their halved carcasses arranged opposite one another, forming a gruesome path of flesh and bone. Flies buzzed in the stillness. Abram stood amidst the mess of covenant, silent, watching, until a deep sleep overcame him. In that heavy darkness, a smoking firepot and a blazing torch drifted between the torn bodies…
According to custom, it should have been two parties walking that path, both pledging loyalty to the covenant under threat of death.
But Abram was put to sleep.
And God walked the path between the pieces, alone.
If this covenant is broken, let the curse fall on Me.
And centuries later, it would.
On a Roman cross outside Jerusalem.
The cutting of a covenant
In ancient Near East practices, a covenant was a whole lot more than a handshake. These sacred agreements were made between two parties – kings, tribal leaders, or deity and human. Equal parts legal and relational, they were often sealed in blood and invoked divine witness and consequence.
An especially solemn form involved the “cutting of a covenant,” in which animals were slaughtered and split in two, laid out on either side of a path. To confirm the covenant, the two parties would walk between the pieces, symbolically saying, “May what happened to these animals happen to me if I break this covenant.”
Genesis 15 records what Jewish tradition calls the “Covenant Between the Pieces” (Brit Bein HaBetarim) – a powerful berit ceremony in which God “cut” a covenant with Abram not through mutual agreement, but by divine self-obligation.
Berit (בְּרִית)
- Hebrew: berit or bᵉrît
- Meaning: Covenant, agreement, alliance
- Root word meaning: “to cut,” hence, to “cut a covenant”
So, you may hear our Genesis 15 scene called:
- The Berit Ceremony
- The Covenant of the Pieces
- The Cutting of the Covenant
What this covenant was about
The parties: God, Abram, and by extension, Abram’s descendants.
What it did:
- It established Abraham as the father of a chosen people, through whom all nations would be blessed (Genesis 12:3).
- It gave the Jewish people their covenantal claim to the land of Israel, by right of divine promise.
- It introduced the idea of a people set apart by faith. As Genesis 15:6 says, “Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness.”
Why did God need to make it a covenant? His LOVE for humanity, directly represented by Abram. Just ponder that for a moment!
The fulfillment of a covenant
Genesis 15 is a picture of divine condescension and covenantal faithfulness.
The fulfillment of this covenant wasn’t dependent on Israel’s faithfulness – it depended on God’s.
At the cross, God took on Himself the full consequence of covenant failure, just as He promised Abram. What a grisly picture of grace!
My three takeaways from this picture of covenant:
1. God keeps His promises, at the greatest expense to Himself.
God says, “If this covenant fails, may the consequences fall on Me.”
And in the fullness of time, they did.
The crucifixion wasn’t a contingency plan. It was the plan all along.
2. Jesus fulfills the covenant
- God’s covenant with Abram was unconditional – and where Israel repeatedly failed to keep the later Mosaic covenant (Exodus 19-24), God never did.
- Israel’s unfaithfulness didn’t negate God’s faithfulness – it magnified the need for a New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31–34).
- Jesus, the physical representation of the Father, came to bear the covenantal consequences on behalf of Israel (…and all humanity), fulfilling it (…not abolishing it: Matthew 5:17).
- On the cross, Jesus became the covenant-keeper and the curse-bearer. He fulfilled Israel’s obligations and bore the consequences of their failure (Isaiah 53:5–6).
3. The promise has heirs
The covenant and promises God made to Abram are our inheritance, too. The New Covenant invites God-fearers into this promise, if we believe His Son. Galatians 3:29: “If you belong to Messiah, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” (Galatians 4:4)
This is astounding. Not only did Jesus fulfill (and more) His covenant to Abram and Abram’s descendants, but those who aren’t his descendants – no birthright – are invited into it. That’s me!!
Foreshadows & whispers
Blood and covenant go together like bread and wine.
- In Genesis 15, blood was spilled to establish the covenant.
- In Exodus 24, Moses sprinkled blood on the people to seal the Mosaic covenant.
- At the Last Supper (Luke 22:20), Jesus says: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”
Yeshua’s blood is the covenantal blood – at once fulfilling the Old Covenant and sealing the New Covenant promised in Jeremiah 31.
We were never left uncovered for one second.
Covenant, not ritual
By nature, covenants aren’t meant to be repeated – God’s covenants are one-time, irreversible acts of self-binding grace.
A short digression into doctrinal waters: When Jesus says in Luke 22:20, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is poured out for you,” He’s invoking Genesis 15 imagery – sacrifice, blood, covenant. He’s NOT initiating a ritual to be repeated (such as the “re-presented sacrifice” of what has become the Eucharist). Rather, at the table He was declaring that His covenant with Abram was about to be completed and that a new Covenant would continue to build on its foundation.
The book of Hebrews makes this crystal clear:
“But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God.” (Hebrews 10:12)
“We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” (Hebrews 10:10)
And Hebrews 9:15: “He is the mediator of a new covenant… since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.”
There’s no need to walk that blood path again.
Under the ensuing covenant He would make with Moses, the blood of lambs and goats had covered sin, but His blood would remove it.
Shadow to substance, law to grace, promise to fulfillment.
…You just read your origin story.
This scene is the moment God pledged Himself to you – binding Himself in blood – long, long, loooong before you were born.
In Romans 4 and Galatians 3, Paul says that those who share Abraham’s faith are his children. We’re grafted into this covenant story (Romans 11), and we get to marvel at a God who doesn’t just make promises – He keeps them. Both sides. Even at the expense of Himself.
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”
– Galatians 4:4-5