When the evening came, God appeared in the form of a “smoking fire pot and flaming torch passed between the pieces” (Genesis 15:17). However, there was an important difference in the blood oath that God made with Abraham in Genesis 15. The parties involved would walk the path between the slaughtered animals so to say, “May this be done to me if I do not keep my oath.” Jeremiah 34:18-19 also speaks about this type of oath-making. A blood covenant communicated a self-maledictory oath. Through this blood covenant, God was confirming primarily three promises He had made to Abraham: the promise of heirs, of land, and of blessings (Genesis 12:2-3). In ancient Near Eastern royal land grant treaties, this type of ritual was done to “seal” the promises made. Then, Abraham was to cut them in half (except the birds) and lay the pieces in two rows, leaving a path through the center (Genesis 15:9-10). He asks Abraham to find and kill a heifer, a ram, a goat, a dove, and a pigeon. Except this time, God graciously reassures His promise with a visual of His presence. The fifteenth chapter of Genesis reiterates the covenant God had made with Abraham at his calling. A covenant is a kind of promise, a contract, a binding agreement between two parties. When God called Abraham out of his hometown and away from all things familiar, He gave Abraham some promises. The arrangement of divided animal carcasses would have been instantly recognized as the set-up for making a type of blood covenant. But in Abraham’s time it would not have been so menacing. The scene would look quite ominous to modern-day observers-five bloody animal carcasses on the ground, three of them split in half, with the halves separated a short distance from each other.
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