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New American Bible 2002 11 11 IntraText - Text |
Chapter 15
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Some time after these events, this word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: "Fear not, Abram! I am your shield; I will make your reward very great."
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But Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what good will your gifts be, if I keep on being childless and have as my heir the steward of my house, Eliezer?"
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Abram continued, "See, you have given me no offspring, and so one of my servants will be my heir."
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Then the word of the LORD came to him: "No, that one shall not be your heir; your own issue shall be your heir."
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He took him outside and said: "Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can. Just so," he added, "shall your descendants be."
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1 Abram put his faith in the LORD, who credited it to him as an act of righteousness.
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He then said to him, "I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land as a possession."
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"O Lord GOD," he asked, "How am I to know that I shall possess it?"
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2 He answered him, "Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old she-goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtle-dove, and a young pigeon."
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He brought him all these, split them in two, and placed each half opposite the other; but the birds he did not cut up.
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Birds of prey swooped down on the carcasses, but Abram stayed with them.
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As the sun was about to set, a trance fell upon Abram, and a deep, terrifying darkness enveloped him.
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Then the LORD said to Abram: "Know for certain that your descendants shall be aliens in a land not their own, where they shall be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years.
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But I will bring judgment on the nation they must serve, and in the end they will depart with great wealth.
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You, however, shall join your forefathers in peace; you shall be buried at a contented old age.
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3 In the fourth time-span the others shall come back here; the wickedness of the Amorites will not have reached its full measure until then."
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4 When the sun had set and it was dark, there appeared a smoking brazier and a flaming torch, which passed between those pieces.
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5 It was on that occasion that the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying: "To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the Great River (the Euphrates),
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the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites,
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the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim,
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the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites."