On Genesis 15, That Ancient Near Eastern Tough Mudder

Author’s note: The following is an adapted excerpt from my recent book, From Eden to Egypt. You really should read Genesis 15 beforehand, or you’ll probably be confused.

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I promised my wife I’d do the dishes before bed, but I forgot. I promised a church member I’d give her feedback on a teaching outline, but that was months ago—and I still haven’t looked at it. I promised Johnny I would throw football with him “in just a few minutes,” but I kept finding one thing after another I “had to do.” I promised my daughter Zoë she would be disciplined if her defiance persisted, but I lost heart. I promised my daughter Elliot I would jump off the diving board at least one time last summer, but Labor Day came and went and I never found the time or got the nerve. She reminded me of this the day the pool closed for the season.

We oversleep, we double-book, we show up late. We tell someone we won’t tell anyone anything, but we whisper to someone else if they promise not to tell. We run into an old friend and say, “Let’s get together!” but we know we’ll never initiate. Some fictions are so ordinary. Others are world-shattering. Marriages soberly and eagerly entered into before a crowd of smiling friends are crushed under a pile of “irreconcilable differences.” Kids wait on doorsteps, listening for rattling engines that never come; they sit by phones that never ring.

Our unread emails and overlooked texts collect our most recent and well-meaning failures. Our kids and loved ones carry our most egregious. God help us. We all break promises sometimes.

Thankfully, the LORD is “not like man”; he never lies (Num. 23:19). On our good days, we believe this. We really do. But sometimes, circumstances pile up and prosecute our faith. And, if we’re honest, we begin to wonder if they’re presenting compelling evidence.

In Genesis 15, Abram is thumbing through some evidence—he still doesn’t have an heir—and he’s facing a gnawing question: “LORD, how can I know for sure that you’re trustworthy?”

In Genesis 15:9–20, we read about a bizarre, one-act play that answers this question. It’s as if the LORD tells Abram, “Okay, though my word should be sufficient for your faith, I’ll give you something more.”

When you first read this passage, I suspect you closed your Bible and said something like, “Okay, then . . .” It is, admittedly, quite weird. It’s unfamiliar. But just because it’s unfamiliar to us doesn’t mean it’s nonsense. Imagine if we somehow plopped Abram down into this year’s Kentucky Derby. Or at the starting line of a Tough Mudder. He’d have lots of questions, but we could explain to him what was going on.^{11 .} Well, if it were a Tough Mudder, you would have to explain it to him what’s going on because I couldn’t.

So let me attempt to do that. These verses describe a covenant ceremony.  It’s a two-scene, one-act play.

Scene 1

In Scene 1, Abram builds a road. But instead of using asphalt and iron, he uses split-up cows, goats, and rams, along with a few birds, which he for some reason keeps intact. After this bloody construction project, the LORD knocks him out and then gives an ominous, spoiler-ridden soliloquy about Israel’s future.

Did you catch what the LORD said about Israel in Genesis 15:13? Let’s not forget the question this whole spectacle is supposed to be answering: How can I know I can trust you about this land? So far, the LORD “reassured” Abram by putting him to sleep and then telling no one in particular that his descendants will be estranged slaves in a country “not their own.” Oh, and it will be this way for 400 years! Script doctors would have a field day with Moses’ depressing plot. But there’s good news here, too: the LORD also promises that he will one day punish these enslavers and enrich Abram’s descendants in the process. This will all begin well after Abram is in the grave (15:15), and it won’t end until the time is right (15:16). That enigmatic phrase about the Amorites is essentially saying, “Your descendants will return when your enemies’ sin has outlasted my patience.”

If I could summarize the LORD’s promise to Abram in a slightly wordy compound sentence that’s kind of cheating because of an em-dash: even though my promise will seem precarious for a really, really long time, you have nothing to worry about because I’m totally good—and I’m totally in control.

So Scene 1 concludes with a rousing speech from the LORD while our protagonist snores nearby. We still hear him snoring when the curtain comes up for Scene 2.

Scene 2

It’s dark and getting darker. After a while, we can no longer see the bloody appendages that double as guardrails for the short road. After a longer while, we smell something before we can see it—it’s smoke. Our eyes water at first and then burn. We finally see what’s causing the smoke: a fire-pot and a blazing torch, side-by-side like eternal friends. They—surely there’s a better word for this, right?—walk the road from end-to-end, from goat-to-pigeon and ram-to-dove. Once they get to the end, a disembodied voice thunders from above, “To your descendants I give this land . . .”

And then the curtain falls yet again. End scene. The pot and the torch bow center-stage. We’re afraid to throw flowers at them; it might cause the theatre to burn down. So we just clap. That’s it. That’s the LORD’s one-act covenant ceremony.

What Does It Mean?

At this point, you’re wondering if this whole thing is just a bit too avant-garde, an esoteric piece of abstract art with a question-begging title. Will You Trust Me? By God. But don’t worry, this is just an Ancient Near Eastern Tough Mudder. We can grasp it with a bit of effort and explanation.

Today, when two parties make a covenant,^{22 .} My working definition of “covenant”: mutual promises that assume blessings for faithfulness and curses for unfaithfulness. they pay lots of different people—lawyers, loan officers, notaries, etc.—lots of money to tell them where to sign on lots of pieces of paper. Sometimes, such “covenants” are followed by a ceremony like taking an Instagram photo with your now-richer realtor or ringing the bell on the New York Stock Exchange. Several thousand years ago, when two parties made a covenant, they didn’t have lawyers to pay or papers to sign. So to solemnify their agreement, they would engage in a covenant-binding ceremony like the one you just read in Genesis 15. Both parties would walk the bloody road. In doing so, they would be saying to each other and to everyone else, “If I fail to keep the terms of this covenant, then let what’s happened to these animals happen to me.”^{33 .} Jeremiah 34:18 alludes to this. The LORD promises to judge Israel’s priests because they have failed to keep the terms of the covenant.

So that’s the basic framework. Now let’s think about it in context. In Genesis 12:1–3, the LORD put forward the terms of agreement and bound the two parties—the LORD and Abram—together by word. Genesis 15:9–20 binds the same two parties together by deed. Now what words does Abram say in Genesis 12? None. Moses simply reports, “So Abram went” (12:4). Similarly, what does Abram do in Genesis 15? Apart from some stage design, nothing. He’s snoring. In both cases, the LORD initiates contact with Abram, and in both cases Abram is a passive yet blessed recipient.

If my reconstruction is accurate, then audiences who aren’t dealing with cultural static like us would have expected both parties to show up during Scene 2. Remember: if both parties agree, then they must walk the bloody road. But what do we get? Or, more precisely, who do we get? We only get the LORD. He’s the smoking firepot and blazing torch. He’s the one who—all by himself—passes between the pieces, saying to himself and to all creation, “If I fail to keep the terms of this covenant, then let what’s happened to these animals happen to me.” Or, put another way, “If I lie, you can kill me.”

We all break promises sometimes. Will you, LORD? That’s the question Abram asked at the beginning of Genesis 15. Scripture’s answer so far, even just fifteen chapters in, is a confident, unequivocal, static-free no. He’s told us who he is, he’s shown us who he is, and we can trust him. Even glimpses of the LORD ought to inspire lifelong faith.

On our good days, like I said, we believe this. We really do. But what do we do when the bad days come, when the smoke-and-fire of the LORD’s presence is gone and all that surrounds us are foggy circumstances and fading promises?

Abram and Sarai are about to face a day like that.

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Editor’s note: This excerpt of From Eden to Egypt: A Guided Tour of Genesis is republished with permission from Zondervan. For more on Genesis 15, listen to Bible Talk, Ep. 5 with Alex Duke, Jim Hamilton, and Sam Emadi.